455: ‘I’m Thinking X, Not X’, With Andru Edwards

Airplane window etiquette

0:00Andrew, welcome back to the talk show. I think you were here a year ago. I think before the Apple event. Was it? Was it that long ago? I think so. But now I've had to hear after an Apple event.

But you're fresh off an airplane, and I have to tell you, amongst numerous things that I've written in the last month, the one that has gotten among the most reader feedback was a footnote where I pointed out about, is it just me, or is there this trend where no matter what time of day you fly, everybody keeps the windows all the way shut, and you're flying in the dark, and I get it early in the morning. I totally get it. I do it. If I had a window. But in the middle of the day, I want the sunlight. I don't get it.

It throws me off being in a dark aluminum tube. It's hard enough to adjust to time zones. But when it's 12 noon and you're taken off from the East Coast, it should not be dark. What are your thoughts on this?

0:58Just hit my feedback. You might not like this. But I think you have a decision. You have a decision to make, okay? You can be an aisle guy, or you can be the window guy in charge of the window. We all know window seat gets the window, aisle guy has the easy access, and the middle seat gets both armrests, right? So if you are going to be an aisle guy, you just have to put up with whatever the window person's up to. Me personally, I like the window because no matter how long my flight is, unless it's international, I'm not moving.

1:28I'm not going to the restroom. I'm just locking in, and I'm going to take my laptop out. Maybe my Vision Pro, I'm going to do some work. So basically, I use the window as needed for what I'm trying to do for work. So if my laptop doesn't need a window, and it's better while I'm editing to close that down, I'm closing it. Yep. So what I don't like, though, hopefully you're not one of these guys. Are you one of the guys that, the people that reach over in the middle or the aisle try to activate the window? I had one of those a couple of weeks ago. I was in shock.

1:59No. No. Sometimes you take what you can get if you book last minute, but even so, you get what you get. You get your real estate, and the window seat gets the window. No, that's ridiculous. That's almost as bad as if they reached over and took food off your tray. Exactly. Exactly. Took the drink off your tray, and we're like, you're not drinking this, are you? I mean, that's a little presumptuous. No, and it's like a weird cultural change, though. I feel like everybody, and again, I'm not a doomer about screens, and everybody's addicted to screens, and everybody's down about how much time they spend on devices.

2:34I get it, and I think about it, too, and I'm trying to be mindful about it, and trying to adapt and not get into habits about it, or break some habits about it. But I do think it's definitely a reflection of that. It absolutely is, and that people are not amazed by being 38,000 feet in the air and getting to see this magnificent earth. I mean, you really do. I'm an aisle guy, but my next choice is a window. I've sat in a window, and there's always some point on a long flight where you just look out the window, and you're like, wow, look at that.

3:09And nobody is amazed by that. What they are amazed by is the dumbass movie they're watching on their laptop. And when you're watching a movie, you don't want the window open. You don't want the reflections, and so— You need that contrast. Yeah, so I don't know, but it is—I got so much email about it, mostly from people who are like, yeah, I'm annoyed by this, but nobody—everybody sees there's nothing to be done about it. So most people were in agreement with you. And I remember from years ago when it was a lot rarer to have a laptop on a flight, right?

3:45Oh, yeah. And I remember when I first started flying with a laptop 20-some years ago, you had to—I don't know, like a PowerBook of the time would get like 2.5 hours of battery life. So if you're on a five-hour flight, you could board, you could read for a bit, you could wait for the food cart to come down the aisle, and then take your laptop out and hurry up and do some work. And then your laptop would be dead by the time you got to like the Rocky Mountains, and then you'd put it away and read for the rest of the flight, and you know, you didn't have to worry about it.

4:21Because you didn't have the outlets like could power a laptop back then. Oh, yeah, you definitely didn't have—yeah, no, you didn't have outlets, you didn't have anything. And it just seemed at the time, sure, I'll close my window because I don't want the glare on my screen, but it doesn't—me closing my window isn't going to make the whole cabin dark because most other people aren't doing that. And now everybody's in the same boat, and everybody with a window seat is thinking, well, I'm going to close the window. And the other thing that I think has happened is that there's a certain tipping point culturally where even people who aren't acting out of their own self-interest because they don't want the glare on their screen and their window seat,

4:58they kind of get the vibe like, uh-huh, everybody has their windows closed. I guess I'm supposed to keep mine closed too, right? There's like a tipping point where it used to be the default was, well, of course you want this open because you have a window seat. You want to look out the window as you're amazingly 30-some thousand feet up in the air. And now it's like the cultural norm, just the vibe in the cabin is, huh, it seems like everybody has a closer. It's keeping it closed. I better keep mine closed too, even if I want to look. Because I often—the other thing too, I've seen this, is I've seen people next to me, and they go to open it, and I think, ah, that's good.

5:32I'm glad he's opening that window or she or whoever, and they open it, and they take a peek, and then they close it.

5:39I've seen that. I have done that myself. But, you know, so I travel a lot. I just got off—you mentioned I got off a plane today. I just got off my 46th flight of 2026 so far. That is amazing. And what I have noticed, though, over the past, like, two years, or maybe even post-COVID, when we get on the plane, all the windows are already closed. And I feel like before, all the windows used to be open. So I'm also wondering if it's a thing where it's like people get on the plane and they're just—oh, it's supposed to be like this. It's supposed to be, like—it's supposed to be all closed.

6:12And if you got on the plane and all the windows were open, would people close them or just leave them alone? Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed too. And it's something I've gone to Disney World a lot, and I actually was just in Vegas a couple weeks ago. And it's like there are certain—like Vegas in August is like this, where they want it closed because they want to keep the cabin as cool as possible in the desert sun. But now it doesn't really matter where you are or what time of year. It seems like you board the plane and the windows are closed by default. It's just shut down. Yeah. And anyway. 46 flights.

6:43Man, oh, man. I would—that's something. I know. And we still got more to come. It's Q4. It's about to ramp up. It is—it's been just a busy couple of days.

The Apple event location

6:52We saw each other at the Apple event, which is, I guess, two weeks ago now. And it was funny. And I told you when I asked you to be on the show that I've been thinking about it ever since. And so let's just talk about it. Let's talk about that Apple event. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it. It was—I saw you in—I actually saw you in Steve Jobs Theater, too. I think I was moving down the aisle trying to get a seat. Yep. But then I ran into you. They did a weird—or they mix it up every year. But they had, like, a—what'd they call it? Briefings and something else?

7:23Content center? A whole different building. I mean, it's a—yeah, content center. Content center. It's a building, apparently, that they use. There's an Apple building in the area about 20 minutes from Apple Park. And this was pretty unique. They said 20 minutes. See, I will be a—I'll be a whiny baby on the podcast in a way that I wouldn't in my writing. But they said it was about 20 minutes away. I—the couple of times I took the shuttle, it was, I don't know, 30, 30-plus minutes? Yeah, I guess so. Closer.

7:54Closer to—I was looking, and they were like, don't—please don't share the location, which is fine. You agree to this stuff. It's not a secret, but they don't want you to tell people the exact address. But I mean, you can look on your— It wasn't knowing, though. So, yeah, you can look on your phone and see where you are. And we were almost all the way to Menlo Park. And I'm not super familiar with every single area in the valley, but that's not close to Cupertino. No, it's not.

8:24It's not. It was strange. Like you said, they didn't want to tell you the exact address. And when I was—so I left there, and I wanted to come back. And where I was much closer to that than going back to Apple Park—and they were like, oh, no, we can't tell you the address. You have to go all the way back to Apple Park and take a shuttle. I'm like a two-minute Uber away. Nope, you got to go all the—I got to go 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back. This is—only Apple would do this. This is insane. That's like a video game, right? It's like the level got reset.

8:56And it's like, yeah, I know where I was. I was so close to the end of the level. And they're like, no, you got to start the level over. You got to go all the way back to the business or something. And it's like, ah, goddammit, this part, I already beat this part.

Event seating strategies

9:06I know. Terrible. One thing I noticed about you, by the way, at the last few Apple events that I've observed and seen you, you don't take the same strategy that us video people do. Which is, we try to sit as far back as possible in Steve Jobs' theater so that when it ends, we can just get up and turn around and get right to the devices. You seem to almost be more into taking in the whole scene as opposed to, let me get to the devices and check them out right away.

9:40Yeah. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's very true. This time I sat in the front row center. I should, I didn't publish, I don't know where to publish the photos, but I have some good photos. I was right above the main camera. It's sort of like there's theater seating where they put all the media people and then they're sort of halfway through. You know this. I'm trying to describe it for the audience. About halfway into the theater, there's like a 50-yard line and the seating in front of that is different and better.

10:12It's, and it's closer to the stage. But in between the two seating areas is sort of a well where there's this whole AV professional rig with big cameras and all sorts of audio stuff and probably the lighting controls. I was right above them. It's, and it's sort of the seating is raised. It's the part where us and the media get in the back sort of goes up and that front part is more flat. And so I just went all the way down until an usher said that with my color badge for the media, I couldn't go anymore.

10:46And I looked over to the side and there was still, there was a seat right in the middle and I sat there. I was actually right in front of Austin Mann, the photographer, and he, I think he was jealous because he wanted to sit one row closer. But he likes to sit in the middle too. Who else was I next to? Chance Miller, who was just on the talk show last month from 9 to 5 Mac, a few other people. But yeah, that's my strategy. And I, and I do, I think you and I were talking to some people on threads who had just been invited for the first time.

11:16And that's one of my little tidbits of advice, not like tons of people ask me for advice on how to attend these things. But one of my things to, if you've never been there is to consider that, that if you might rush in when they open the theater and want to get as close as possible, which is sort of what I do now, but it's considered. But then you have to realize that when the keynote is over, it will be several minutes before you get out of the theater. And in the meantime, the hands-on area will be filled up.

11:47It's filling up quickly. Yes. And if what you want to do is capture B-roll footage or just get some hands-on time as much as possible, you want to sit in the back.

11:58That's always my strategy. As far back as possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you were seated. At the aisle too. You had an aisle seat. That's right. That's right. I was right there. I was ready to go. I'm giving up your secrets.

12:11No, it's definitely. Absolutely true.

Influencers and media access

12:13Wendy, there was a discussion before we talk about the event itself. It was sort of a meta discussion. Mark Gurman had tweeted, and Gurman does not get invited to Apple events for obvious reasons. Well, nobody, it's Apple, so they don't explain it, but one can surmise the reasons. But Gurman tweeted, Apple's new focus on influencers for events and product quote reviews, sort of dick quotes around reviews. People who say nothing but positive things and never ask a legitimate question of Apple

12:47executives in exchange for free devices, travel, and more is a serious issue. This echo chamber will lead to mediocrity. I've actually talked to Mark privately about that. Surprising to some, Mark and I get along in person pretty well. I know what he's getting at there. The list of people who are invited to Apple events, it's always been evolving, right? And the media is always evolving, but it's, there is a different crowd that, not YouTubers,

13:22it is, video is just, is now no longer new. I mean, one of the funniest things I saw in all of the post keynote thing was, I'm already forgetting his name. Who's the guy who did the flips in front of Ternus? I Show Speed. I Show Speed. So I Show Speed is an influencer and he's this perfect type of guy who I'm talking about. He's 21 years old. He's got, I don't know, 20 zillion followers on YouTube and social media and he does a lot of live streaming and he posted a video where he went up to Marquez Brownlee to, and I guess

13:59they'd never met before and was telling Marquez, Hey man, I grew up watching your videos and I'm like, Oh, this is great. Marquez is getting what I've gotten years ago. The, yes, I grew up, which was also funny, but the idea that Marquez Brownlee is now the veteran who newcomers to Apple keynotes are coming up to and saying, Oh, I grew up enjoying your coverage of these things.

14:29Oh, I loved watching that. It is funny. That is funny. Um, I think it's an interesting discussion, but I do think there's a lot of misconceptions, I guess, when it comes to the approach. So obviously these Apple events, like event is almost like a key word. These are events. Apple is putting on an event and unlike WWDC, which is also an event, but really geared towards developers, this is the one, this is their big one of the year that the average person

15:01is going to care about and want to know about. And so it's, it would be a silly strategy not to take advantage of, it's like advertising, right? And today's advertising just happens to be influencers have a lot of attention. Like you said, like I show speed is on, we're never allowed to live stream these things, but I show speed was in their live streaming all over the place. He has some special permission. And when you look at his numbers, when he was live streaming, it's, it's almost a million

15:31people watching this man just walk around. So I know I saw that. How would you not, how do you not say to yourself? And by the way, he's someone who every year would do a live stream about the new iPhone just on his own, right? He, cause he's just interested in it. So why would you not say to yourself, you know what? If we're going to bring in celebrities that love our brand, let's bring this guy in. There were some other celebrities there too. Kiki Palmer was there. Hikari was there. There was people there who are not reporters who are just like tastemakers or seen as,

16:06or well-followed celebrities. Now, that being said, I feel like the word influencer gets kind of, it kind of annoys me because it mixes people up like me who I'm literally there to do my job to report on what Apple is doing and share that with people who are interested in that versus the influencer which, Hey, I'm just, people just find me interesting and I just do stuff and people watch me. That's not me. But I think what most people don't also realize is it's not like everybody that goes and sits

16:37in Steve Jobs theater goes home with an iPhone that day for free. Most people do not leave with an iPhone, whether it's that day or after. It's actually a small subset of people that do. And the majority of people who do are doing it because it's our job to cover it and we wouldn't be able to do our job properly if Apple didn't do that. So when I read Mark's comment there, it was like, I see what he means, but I also, it's

17:08like, I disagreed with half of it because I think it told the wrong story to the average person who just wouldn't read his tweet and what they would glean from it. I thought it was not actually accurate. Yeah, I think so too. And I don't think knowing Mark, it is not because Mark is jealous, right? Mark knows the score with Apple. I mean, I think if they said, okay, sure, you know what? And I've seen him at Apple events. The last time I remember seeing him at one was, it might not be the last one he was at,

17:39but I just remember very vividly. It was the one for the iPhone 10. So that would be 2017, I believe. And the night before he had leaked, shocker, leaked, had a leak that they were going to call it in print iPhone space capital X. I was like, oh God, another fucking X. Because after all these years of people calling it Mac OS X, are they going, when it was stood

18:11for Mac OS X, are they going to call it the iPhone with an X thinking it's 10 and wanting you to say 10 and the whole world's going to say iPhone X? And Gurman said they were going to call it 10. And I said, I think if it's an X, they actually, maybe they think X is cool and they're going to tell you to say X. It's just a spitball, you know? And I guess wrong all the time. There's one that I guess wrong right there. And I remember I ran into Gurman in the lobby, the right, not the upstairs lobby at Steve

18:43Jobs Theater, after they let us down, but in that, what turns into the hands-on area afterwards, behind the seats. And I say, and you know, we said hello. And I just said, I'm thinking X, not 10. And he just said, nope, 10. He knew it. Somebody had told him. I was like, ah, shit. Why did I shoot my mouth off? I knew, so I knew before they even announced it with his certainty, just the way that he said it. But for years since then, he has not gotten invitations. And if he ever did again, they would just invite him and act as though there was no reason

19:16that he hadn't been invited. That's not why he's saying that. And there are, I don't know. I was told by people who were involved. I've met some people, I forget where, what countries. Or there's more people, it seems, from international countries that are invited to this event. This one in particular. WWDC, too, but this one in particular. And that some of them, or all of them, had been put up by Apple in a hotel, and maybe

19:47their flights were paid, some of them. Yes, that's normal. Yeah. In the industry. Or international, that's normal. It is. And German seems to have picked up on this, and others, too. And it's like a sensitive thing. For me, they don't pay for anything. They get, like I said, like I wrote, we get cookies and coffee, right? Or they had apple tarts this year. Yeah. And then there's some foods. It's very nice. The food over at the visitor center, where they have, they coordinate off for the press and

20:19have Wi-Fi. They give us free Wi-Fi, right? We get that, but it's, the idea, it does not, the domestic press does not get airfare or Uber fare or any fare. Or hotel. Right. Correct. You just don't. And that's just the way it is for international. I don't know. It seems very normal. And I guess if somebody wanted me to cover something halfway around the world, maybe I would take, I would disclose it if I took it, but I get it. I think it's just a sign though of the, I don't think it's related to coverage.

20:53And like you said, people don't walk out with free iPhones or even review unit iPhones. And Apple is very secretive about how many review units go out, but you can see on embargo lift day, how many there are that come out and it's not that many. It still isn't. And the other thing too is there's always been just, I don't know, celebrities. I mean, that's sort of what influencers are. Like influencers, it's definitely not you, right?

21:26But speed is more along the lines of a next generation self-made come up through where the modern mediums, mediums, plural for young people like him, 21 years old coming up are not TV, right? It's not broadcast TV. It's social media. It's YouTube. It's TikTok. It's whatever you can live stream on. It's these internet first things. But their fame and their audience is like for people of older generations.

22:02What you had to be on TV to be that famous before nobody in print is that famous, right? Walt Mossberg is probably the legend of legends, almost certainly in the field of what we do. And Walt Mossberg is not as famous as I show speed, whose name I forgot five minutes ago, but not at all. It's just the nature of print versus visual mediums and the new visual mediums are that. And so, of course, a company that is looking to stay at the forefront of attention has got

22:38to adapt to that in the same way. And I think I'm aging gracefully in this way. There was a time when I was the odd person in the green room in the media at Apple events because I was a blogger. You're blogging, yes. Right. And that was the word like influencer, like, well, you're just a blogger. For a site that I owned, it wasn't a site with any kind of roots in print. I didn't have colleagues. And it was unusual. And there were some people in the media who I, you know, nobody said anything shitty to me,

23:14but there were people who I could tell didn't kind of picked up on who I was, saw that I was younger and didn't want to talk to me. But I'll tell you who did. You know who did talk to me? Walt Mossberg. Who's that? Walt. The first time I was in, it was in Moscone. I don't know if it was a Macworld or if it was a WWDC, but it was the first time where in addition to a press pass, I had a briefing after the keynote and they're like, go over there and you wait. And it was over on the side of Moscone. And I felt a little out of place.

23:45I was like, I don't even know if I'm in the right place. And it's like, yeah, I know you're in the right place. And it's like, well, what do I do now? And they're like, you just wait and then it'll come get you. And I'm like, all right. And Walt Mossberg was, I was like, holy shit, Walt Mossberg's here. And Walt was probably waiting. In fact, I know he was. He was waiting to talk to Steve Jobs. I was not waiting to talk to Steve Jobs. Wow. But Walt was, I'm sure. And Walt came up to me and, or I introduced myself first, but he knew who I was. And he's just, oh, I love your work. I think you're doing a great job. And we talked for a bit and was just so gracious.

24:19He didn't have to be like that. And there were other people who definitely weren't, but I always remember that. It's just a, I don't know. It sounds like such a canard, but it's a change. The media landscape is always changing and it would be ridiculous if Apple didn't adapt to that. Well, I mean, it's, but it's also not, it's not supposed to be just a press conference. That's really the thing. Apple's not trying to put on a press conference. They're trying to put on a pop culture event that everybody, if you don't hear from it,

24:50or if you don't care, if you don't care about consumer electronics, you are going to hear about it from the red carpet when John Ternus is there. You're going to hear about it from celebrities who are there. They want to make sure everybody or as many people as possible know that something just happened today. Yeah. And that's the hard thing. And I would like to write about it some year. I don't know about this year already, but it's, it's so hard to keep up for me, at least at the pace that I'm able to write stuff. It's so hard to write about the actual announcements and to write about the event separately in a way that I would like to sort of describe what it's like.

25:31And that's why I'm glad to have a podcast where I can talk about it, but it is. And there is this whole other debate about, Hey, should Apple go back to live on stage keynotes? And Meta just had a very good one. I did watch at your suggestion, but I wanted to talk about it with Ben Thompson on dithering for what's going to be tomorrow's episode two. And it's what Meta did is exactly what people, some people are hope Apple would do, which is go back to a traditional, here's a stage.

26:03Here's the CEO of the company in live in front of a couple hundred people in the media and some employees who are going to do the clapping and talk about things and do demos with products in your hand or on your face. If they're glasses in front of the people mixed in with pre-recorded videos that you showed to people, which Steve Jobs always did. Right. And Steve always did a fun thing. And I was like, he always did it. He would be like, Hey, we shot a, we made a commercial about this, or we made a video about this.

26:34Would you like to see it? Remember that? He'd always say, would you like to see it? And everybody would. Yeah. And then, and then people would clap and he'd be like, Oh, okay. Well then play the video. Was there any chance that he was not going to play the video, but he would ask, he would always ask. And then they play a video, you know, and that's where we got to know Johnny Ive as outsiders, right? Cause Johnny Ive does not like, I think once or twice he did appear on stage or was in a stunt where he took a phone call from Steve or something. But for the most part, Johnny Ive wasn't comfortable.

27:05Didn't want to be on stage live and would do those often parodied voiceover things talking about the design and pronouncing aluminum. But the thing that gets lost though, is people say, I wish Apple would go back to that. These prerecorded things are boring and I get it. If you think they're boring, but Apple, I know what Apple, but I know, you know that Apple, and I know that YouTube changed the way they count the views, but a lot of fucking people watch their videos. Right. And I think it's who are the people saying is boring.

27:38It's probably people like us who would rather see demos, right? But the average person is what Apple is doing is giving you a show. They're giving you a, a, an entertaining commercial, right? But visually stimulating. Yep. And, but the thing that is so hard to get across, cause nobody really writes about it. And you can see it if you watch the day of and the hands on, but the whole thing isn't a live event, right? It is like the premiere of a movie and there's hundreds of people there and there's a buzz in the air and there's jostling and a crowd and it is a thing, right?

28:17It is electric. And that is partly the way it's always been, but it's also sort of different now and it's a bigger deal, right? I did not know who I show speed was before this happened. I really didn't. But now that I find out that there was a guy in the hands-on area doing backflips with a million people watching him as he did it at the same time, I'm like, that feels right. It feels like an area where, yes, I don't know who all these people are. I don't, some of them are speaking Chinese, obviously don't know who they are, but some of them, you can see sometimes see people who are live streaming.

28:54And again, they obviously have some kind of special dispensation from Apple to do that, right? I'm not allowed to live stream. You're not, I mean, I could do it, but then I, maybe I, then I don't stop getting invited. But some people are permitted to, and you can just kind of tell that whoever they are, if they're permitted to, there's a lot of people watching this live, right? It is a cultivated thing and it does, it gets the buzz generating, right? The live event aspect of it. And it's just, it's hard for people outside who aren't there to sort of understand what that's like.

29:30I did think we might see some sort of hybrid this time, just because we've got a new CEO, maybe he wants to do something a little different. And the, the guess I had was if they're going to introduce a foldable, you know how they always do all those, those cool transitions when they're doing their show unfolding into the theater, like on the screen, he's walking out and I can't, and he's holding it. Like the way Steve Jobs would hold it back in the day, holding it in his hand, everybody taking photos, and here we are, we're back live.

30:04It would have been interesting to see because I almost did feel like Ternus has an amazing personality, very different from Tim Cook. But it also felt like he's just playing, he's just playing Tim Cook's role in, in this video. That it didn't feel like his, it just felt like he stepped into someone else's place as opposed to having his own methodology of doing it. Yeah, and I don't know how much of that is just, well, they're part of the seamless, most seamless CEO transition ever is making every change one little click at a time and nothing's, I mean, this is what I think, is that there, Tim Cook was on board with this, John Ternus, now that he is the CEO, is on board with this.

30:56I do think it is definitely Ternus' call, like I know Cook is now chairman of the board and that's an unusual and unprecedented situation for a new CEO of Apple. But this whole, everything is unprecedented, right? The modern history of Apple starts with Steve Jobs coming back to the company, right? And I'm interested in that prehistoric period from the 80s and the 90s before that.

31:26And I do think that some of that DNA is still in the company. But in terms of, it's like an A, you know, B, C, A, D, like year zero of modern Apple is December 1996 when they made the deal to buy Next. Right, it's a little different company. Right. It's not, it just isn't worth trying to draw a line through that period, right? And so you've really just got Steve Jobs and then Steve Jobs got sick and he was going to be the chairman if he had been able to stay ahead of the cancer after he stepped down as CEO.

32:05But he didn't. He was gone. I think it was August when he said, I can't, that day has come, can't do this anymore. And by end of October, he was dead. So there hasn't been the opportunity for the ex-CEO to remain as chairman of the board before. But I do, I very much have the impression that Tim Cook knows that if you're the CEO, you've got to be left alone to be the CEO. You cannot have the chairman breathing down your neck. No. And I think Tim Cook has plenty of stuff to keep him busy, right? Somebody joked, somebody observed, I forget what country they were from.

32:37It was like Australia or something, but like somebody from like the prime minister of Australia or some other country was there and Tim Cook was showing them around campus like last Saturday. And they're like, the guy just got the job, but he's already working weekends. Oh, that's funny. Wow. I mean, good. Let him handle those things though. That's fine. But I could see that, like, did this current Apple keynote format evolve to fit Tim Cook's style? I think yes, right? And so is it going to evolve to fit Ternus's style?

33:07Yes, I think. So I do think it will change. But I don't think changing it significantly out of the get-go was ever considered. And especially for the iPhone event, right? This next month. Getting more measured. Right? Everybody anticipates an October event or announcements of some sort. You never know what they'll do for these October things. Will it be online only? Will they go to New York? Will it be split? Will there be something in Cupertino and something in their mysterious mansion in southern Manhattan in New York?

33:41Will it be in London? Yeah. Or like the Neo event in March, which was awesome. Really one of the best events they had, like a one-off event in a weird warehouse space that they just took over and built a thing. And Ternus spoke at that one, right? He did. Although I don't think they broadcast that, right? But something like that, but maybe broadcast his actual remarks, right? Right. Yeah. I would love to see them do something like that. Me too. And I kind of think they want to, too, right?

34:12And so the one they're least likely to screw with is going to be the September iPhone event, right? It's like their Oscars. Into the formula. Right. And it's, yeah, if you go back on YouTube and look at like the 1977 Oscars and, I don't know, Johnny Carson's hosting or Bob Hope or somebody like that, you're like, holy shit, this does. Like for me, I was like, I don't know, four years old at the time. And it's like it brings back some vibes because I remember like being a little kid and not even knowing what these award shows are, but my mom and dad would be watching them or whatever.

34:43And it's, oh, my God, this is amazing. And it is different. It's nothing like the modern day Oscars. But there was no year in between where it was like, oh, wow, they totally changed how they did the Oscars. It just evolved over time. Yeah. And I think the iPhone event will be like that. The other thing about the invitees is I've heard, and maybe I heard it from you. I don't know. But what I've heard is that they've made room to invite a broader range of influencers and media people by inviting fewer employees to sit in the theater for the keynote.

35:21That was me. Yeah, that was. So basically for this event in particular, for whatever reason, maybe just because it's their first foldable. I mean, again, I was talking about this to other people. Really, this is the only the second time in the history of the iPhone that we're really seeing a new way to use an iPhone, right? It was the home button era. And then it was the iPhone 10 with the gesture era. And this is only the second time. So the second change. So it was a bigger deal than typical. And they wanted to get more media slash influencers slash celebrities in there.

35:54So the only way to do that would be to lessen the number of Apple employees, right? Because you can't, they're not going to magically grow the size of the Steve Jobs Theater, which different from WWDC where they're doing it outside. And you can just throw some more chairs out there somewhere, right? You have a couple thousand people, it seems like. Thousands, right. This is, yeah. I don't know. What is the Steve Jobs Theater scene? I looked it back up. When they announced it, Apple newsroom said a thousand people.

36:24And I take it that's roughly. And they've rejiggered the seating slightly since it opened. But I'm going to say a thousand people, give or take. Okay. So if you typically would have 25% Apple employees and 75% media, maybe you lessened that to 15% Apple employees or something. Yeah. I don't know what. More attention. Yeah. But you can tell there was a lot of new people there, a lot of new faces. Yeah. And so that's my bigger takeaway and where I think Gurman is wrong is I don't think there's any decrease in the number of whatever your idea of who the right people are to be invited.

37:01People who, if they get time to talk to Apple executives on or off the record, will ask hard questions or interesting and probing questions. People who really are going to say more than, wow, a new iPhone. Right. People who are going to actually evaluate it with a critical eye. I don't think they've ever, I don't think they've turned the dial down on that type of invite teas in order to make room for cheerleaders or people who are just enthusiastic.

37:33I think they've added that without decreasing the other mix by taking away seats that previously went to Apple employees. Yes. I think that's, I think that's accurate. And I think the truth is, I think if they had it to do all over again, they would at least double the size of Steve Jobs Theater, right? A thousand seats seems big. And it's funny because I just linked yesterday as we record to that 14 or 16 year old recording of the Antenagate press conference, which was in Apple's old town hall.

38:08Town hall held, I think 125 people. Somebody told me that the seat count once, and I think it used to only hold a hundred. And it was like around that time, like when the iPhone, after the iPhone shipped and it's becoming a big hit and things was starting to head in this direction where it would be hard to, hard to make the cut for a thousand seat place. They redid the seats in the town hall and they made them like what, when airlines do, like when they're like, we're going to add two more rows, we're going to add two more rows to the cabin.

38:46And it's like, ah, Christ. And it's like, all of a sudden there's no room for your knees in your seat. And at that Antenagate press conference, it's part of it was that was so unusual and literally put together the day before. I wrote, it was on a Friday and it was a Thursday and somebody from Apple PR called me to see, say, hey, I think we're going to do an event tomorrow. I think they even told me what it was about, which is that just tells you how unusual it is.

39:17Yeah, I don't remember. About this antenna situation, could you make it? And I was like, oh, I'll try, you know, and I booked a flight and literally at like 1130 a.m. East Coast time, I had no idea. And by three, I'm at the airport getting on a flight to SFO. But the town hall, if you look at that video, it was only like maybe two thirds or three quarters full. There were like at least a quarter of the seats were empty. That would not happen today. No, not at all. Twenty, 22 days after the release of the iPhone 18 Pro or let's say the Duo, right?

39:49Because the Duo is the better compared, the one that everybody's excited. Let's say 22 days after the Duo comes out, they have to hold an emergency press conference because there are reports that if you hold it wrong, it loses cell reception. There would not be 75 people at that event. That would be full. I mean, that's the biggest story. And so I think coming from old Apple campus where the 100 to 125 seat theater is like, oh, that's too small.

40:21And they made the Johnny Ive and the architects are like, we'll make this grand Steve Jobs theater and it'll be a thousand seats. And I think they thought that'll be a lot. I think given the iPhone event, it's at least that event every year. If they could have a bigger room, they could they would take it, but they don't have a bigger room. So it's a thousand and that's it. And so I think conversely, I think the weird thing is as Apple's own headcount of employees has grown and continues to grow and there's more people who work at Apple than ever.

40:55It's easier, I think, for them to say we're going to have fewer employees there because it was already at the point where only a tiny sliver of Apple employees could possibly get in there. Oh, right. Yeah. Originally. Right. Of course. Right. If you're not one of the executives who's in the keynotes sometimes and gets to sit in the first few rows, you're probably not going to get to watch live. And you're just watching a video anyway, really. Right. And it's not to take anything away from them. But if the point is getting attention, like the point of this event is to get attention on things.

41:26Yeah. Doesn't help. As someone, maybe you worked on, you're one of the people who worked on moving the variable aperture. Right. You're one of the team that worked on the variable aperture. It's cool to be able to be there and see the reception of it. But you yourself are not accomplishing the ultimate goal of getting attention on the event on the devices. So you're kind of expendable in that sense. Yeah. The other thing that was weird. Have you ever been? I presume you have because it's been open for a bit. They have that weird, not weird, but unusual new building, the Observatory.

41:59Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right in there. It's close to the Steve Jobs Theater, by it's supposed to be. And they've had press things in there. And then I was wondering, I told you earlier in the show when I was talking about the place where they took us to in a shuttle over in Menlo Park, half an hour away. Why didn't they do this over in the Observatory? But it turns out the Observatory was where they, after the hands-on area, where they took all of the sort of celebrity types. They did use the Observatory, but it wasn't for the media.

42:31It was for social type things. And last year they used the Observatory as a hands-on area for 17. The camera. In particular, I remember. Yes. I think it was a mixture of, this is my guess, way more people this year being invited, so the Observatory would be more cramped. And secondly, they were setting up for an evening event which they've never done before, and maybe they didn't want us to see what was going on. Maybe let's just get these guys over there and leave them there all day.

43:04I know. But if it keeps going in this direction, by next year they're going to put hoods over our heads and blindfold us. Right. And we're going to wake up, and they're going to tell us, we can't tell you what state you're in. All right, let me take a break, and then we can talk about the actual stuff that they announced. And I'm going to talk to you about our good friends at Notion. Hey, are you worried, you listener of the show, has it occurred to you, do you have just a little bit of uneasiness about, hey, are companies making AI products trying to replace human beings?

43:38Some companies are talking like that. Notion definitely is not. Teamwork is something that is fundamental to what Notion is meant to work with. It's for actual people on teams. And yes, there's a lot of AI in Notion right now. But it is not about, like, helping a one-person company whose employees, quote-unquote, are an army of AI agents. That's not Notion.

44:09Now, if that's the way, that is an interesting area of AI, that's not Notion's game. Notion's game is companies and teams full of actual people who are trying to use software to collaborate. And Notion is a great tool for that. It is the AI workspace where your teams, knowledge, projects, and agents all come together in one place. Teams using Notion move faster, cut friction and costs by consolidating tools and stay aligned.

44:42And Notion, your documents, your meetings, your projects, all of that stuff lives in one place in a connected system where the people on your team have access to them and can query them and search for them and ask questions about them. And the AI that you're using can do stuff like that, too. But it really is about teamwork. Learn more about how Notion can support your business at Notion.com slash talkshow. That's all lowercase letters, Notion, N-O-T-I-O-N, Notion.com slash talkshow to try Notion to get today.

45:23And when you use that link, you are supporting our show, Notion.com slash talkshow.

AirPods and Apple Watch updates

45:30What do you think about the actual announcements? What's your takeaway two weeks later? Well, it's interesting because with the announcement of the iPhone Duo, that's where all the attention shifts to. So I think a lot of the other announcements that were made kind of got quickly overshadowed by that one. But I think everything was solid. We had the AirPods 5, which the one thing that confuses me is why do they even have the two different models that are only separated by $20?

46:10So they did that with the AirPods 4, and they did it again with AirPods 5. So, A, if they did it again, I guess the answer is people buy the cheaper one, too.

46:22And that they somehow are convinced that if they only offered the one with the charging case, that some of the people who buy the cheaper one wouldn't spend the extra $20? I tried to ask in my briefing, and I got one of those, like, I could see the look in their eyes that was like, we're not going to answer that one. And they had the words coming out of their mouth was different people have different needs and they're both great products, blah, blah, blah. But it really, this is something where I feel like I would like to be in the Apple store, and every time somebody tries to buy the AirPods 5 for $129, I want to shake them and say, here, I'll just give you $20.

47:03Here, take $20 and buy the other one, I swear to God. Pay it forward. Yeah. Because it's such a better product. Right. You're getting an hour more battery. You're getting the charging case that can go wireless. Yep. And you're getting the volume on the stems, right? You can squeeze the stems on the entry model, but you can't raise and lower the volume. And that's crazy to me. I mean, I forgot that there are AirPods that don't have volume on the stem. I mean, that's how long I've been using the AirPods Pro, and it's so great.

47:35But, like, how do you lower the volume otherwise? What do you need to talk to Siri? I mean, no matter how good Siri gets, I don't want to tell Siri to raise and lower the volume. That seems stupid. I just put my finger there. Yeah, take your phone like an animal. Yeah, so I don't get that. Press the volume button. But somebody must be buying it because they did it two generations in a row. I don't know. Right, right. But the best part of that announcement, I mean, obviously, they sound great, but noise cancellation came to the entry level. And so what we really saw there was a price drop, if you think about it, versus what you had to pay on AirPods 4 to get that feature versus AirPods 5, especially in the current day and age with the pricing of technology items.

48:17Like, this is a real price drop, right? You get this feature for much less than you did just the day before on the AirPods 4. So I thought that was great. Apple Watch. I'm just going in order of what I thought was exciting. I'm not trying to take over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Apple Watch, I didn't see, aside from the audio intelligence feature, which I think is the most controversial thing they did, I didn't really see much difference. Right, and it's not out yet, even in beta. So it's all we, you and I, with review units and access to the betas, we still can't talk about it.

48:53We don't have it, yes. I did. I was happy to see the return of the ceramic finish. I was a big fan of that. Yeah, that's nice. What was it? Series 3, 3 through 5, I think it was, back then, called the Apple Watch Edition, which they did not bring back that name. I forgot that. Weird name anyway. Yeah. But it almost felt like we have to do something unique and different this time because there's not much change to the hardware itself. So that's one thing that they did. I thought the finishes this year were really good. The gold looked really good. The bronze, I thought, was really nice on the aluminum.

49:23Putting Ceramic Shield 2 on the aluminum watches, to me, Ceramic Shield 2 was like the unsung hero of the iPhone 17 line. After, I don't know, a week or so of babying iPhones for years, I would always have these micro scratches on there. And the 17 Pro after a year today, it's as if it was just taken out of the box. So if you ever bang your Apple Watch on a door jam as you're walking by or whatever and get micro scratches on it, I think that problem is solved this year.

49:56So that's very nice. But I am interested to see how the audio intelligence is going to be received by the general public, especially with at least the online backlash of Meta's glasses and the whole feeling of surveillance that people are worried about. Yeah. Is that a general population worry or is that an online echo chamber worry? I'm just curious.

Watch audio intelligence privacy

50:27How do you feel about those features, though? I'm okay with them. And I just had a short piece on Daring Fireball that I could probably just summarize. But I think I'm glad to see Apple doing it. And it seems thoughtful. And they didn't spell this out. But then when I had the follow-up call with Apple, the product marketing people, for the review unit of the watch, I asked about it. And it was my formulation. But they said that that is a good point. And we do think of it that way, which is that my question to them was, well, how come these features you have to have the watch to do?

51:02Why can't my phone? Putting aside the larger question of are these good ideas and are people comfortable with them anyway, why can't the phone do this? The phone has microphones. The phone, if anything, probably has better microphones than the watch. Phone has a better processor, bigger battery. Why doesn't the phone listen for these things? And then I thought about it. And it's that the watch is a trusted device once it's on your wrist and unlocked. And it remains trusted until you take it off, right?

51:33You put it on in the morning. You either type in your code or you unlock it with your watch. And now the watch is unlocked until you take it off. Whereas your phone is only in a trusted state when the screen's on, right? And it's like you forget that with Face ID. And we'll talk about that with the Duo in a bit, but the lack of Face ID. But with the phone, it's all day, every day. It is going. You don't really think about it because I don't think about it, even though I'm talking about it right here.

52:07But it's like I forget about it. It's Face ID for me is so seamless that I don't think of my phone as being locked and unlocked and locked and unlocked and locked and unlocked. But it is dozens and dozens of times a day. It goes from locked and totally locked out of anybody who picks it up can't do anything to I look at it. And as soon as I look at it, it's unlocked. And now it will show me private information. And so the phone really isn't a good device to be listening to conversations.

52:37And my example, just not even being creepy, but like I leave my phone in our kitchen all the time. That's a place where I just I have a spot on the counter and there's chargers and conversations take place in the kitchen. When I'm not in the kitchen, my phone should not be recording and transcribing those conversations, right? They're almost certainly innocuous. It's just my wife and son here or whoever else might be a guest in the house. But I'm not there. So it shouldn't be listening. Definitely. I think everybody, I don't want it to be listening.

53:09Or what if I am a creeper, I shouldn't be able to kind of surreptitiously leave or hide my phone in a room and have it listen and transcribe or summarize conversations when I'm not there. And your watch won't do that either. Because for you to leave your watch in a room or put it in a desk drawer or whatever and try to do that, if the watch is off your wrist, it won't do any of these things. It's only when it's on your wrist.

53:40So I think that's a little bit more thoughtful than people whose knee-jerk reaction is, oh, this is creepy and perverted and whatever, are thinking. That's a good point. My comparison is to AirTags, right? Everybody, when Apple announced AirTags, it's like, oh, I don't know if anybody should make this device. That technology was coming one way or the other. And it was better for Apple to come out with a privacy-minded version than for some other company to come out with one that didn't have any of the privacy controls. And AI transcription listening devices, they're here already, but they're going to be everywhere soon.

54:19And whether that's good or bad, it's irrelevant. They are coming, whether Apple shipped them or not, and whether Apple could cancel the watch features and say, you know what? We heard. We listened. We're going to postpone these features for a year. And maybe they save for a year and it never comes back. They're still coming. They're just going to come from other companies. And I think that's going to be worse. That's my point. Yeah, yeah. This is Apple being able to kind of lead the way and set the example of here's the proper way to do this. And that was a good point you made because even if I can unlock my phone and I can hand it to you, unlocked, and then you can continue using it, I can't unlock my watch and then hand it to you.

55:00No. Even if I wanted to. Yeah. The second it comes off. Right. The second it comes off your wrist, it locks itself. So I have to unlock it for you and put it, there's no way to transfer it in the unlocked state from one person to another, which goes along with the point you just made that it really is the, when it comes to a trusted state of any device that you have, that, that would be the one that you would know it's on that person. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, people aren't thinking about this, but the watch has had the voice memos app for years.

55:34I don't even know how many years. Right. And you could like, if you have the ultra, you can just like set it to the action button. Right. And you could just have the action button start a recording. And so anybody, especially if they're wearing long sleeves and can cover the watch, their watch might be voice memoing right now. And the phone too. The phone is had it for, and it does a transcription of everything and you can put your phone face down. Right. So. Right. You're in the, you know, in the media, nobody carries dedicated voice recorders anymore. Whenever there's like an on the record briefing or a meeting or something like that, everybody just puts their phones out and points them towards the person who's being recorded.

56:12And it's just a tabletop full of reporters, phones, all recording. You have no idea if somebody's, if it's not on the tabletop or it's face down and you can't see the screen, you have no idea whose phone is recording. And that's not putting all of everybody's concerns to rest. Right. But I'm saying the idea that they've introduced the ability for the watch to record and transcribe is, that's the wrong way to think about it. That's been here for years. Yes. These new features. And they're parsing.

56:44Apple is parsing words a little, but I see the point. And I do think, and I think they could have done a better job explaining it technically. When they say with the live rewind, what's it, is that what it's called? Yeah. 15 second one. Right. And they say that it doesn't record, but it's like, well, if it doesn't record, how in the world does it go back 15 seconds to get a transcript? And I think that the tech, I think, I don't know this, nobody at Apple has confirmed it, but I think it's effectively in a buffer and it's never, it never touches permanent storage in the device.

57:17Correct. And that buffer is in the secure enclave. Exclave. Exclave. Yeah. Or whatever they call it. It's the, they're calling this a secure exclave because the secure enclave is on, is in an area that can be accessed. So the exclave is like, it's totally outside of everything. Yeah. Yeah. So it never touches permanent storage, even a bite of it. And it's only in what's effectively RAM. Like if the watch powers down, it's gone and there's only 15 seconds worth of buffer space for it in the secure exclave.

57:52And because it's a secure exclave, no app on the system, a rogue app could be like, if you figured out a way to, a super common way for these exploits is you send somebody an iMessage that's malformed. And it's got like an image that triggers a bug in the, the JPEG parser. And now you've overwritten memory. And I know that Apple has spent years sandboxing the image, but that has been a traditional path to a zero day. You send somebody a bad formatted iMessage corrupts memory.

58:26Nothing that could happen there can ever poke through the secure exclave. Yeah. So correct. It still can't get the last 15 seconds of audio, even though if it could get it, which it can't, it would only be 15 seconds anyway. So it really is kind of secure. It's that feature in particular to me, once you really think about it, I can't see any reason to object to it other than the fact that I feel like 15 seconds is probably too short. And so it's sort of not the people worried that it's a privacy invasion.

58:57It's that I'm not quite sure that the times when I might need that, because I'd have to add for me at least three or four seconds of remembering, oh, I could, I can double click this on my watch. I've already lost three or four seconds by remembering to go back. So I'm only getting 10 or 11 seconds. Right. And I asked him too, is it 15 seconds of, because it's meant for spoken word. So I was like, is it the last 15 seconds of spoken word that I heard, or is it 15 seconds of real time? So in other words, if you said something to me 14 seconds ago, will I only hear one second of that and then 15 seconds and then 14 seconds of dead air?

59:33And the answer was yes. It's just 15 seconds of time passing. So it really isn't just saving anything. Right. Right. Right. That is a good, that's a very good question. I didn't think about that. Somebody who's talking slowly and pausing between answers, you don't get 30 seconds of time for 15 seconds of text. You get 15 seconds, period. And the other thing with the other feature, the, what are they calling the one with the transcripts? I forget the name, but someone that summarizes, it listens and summarizes the portion of the day that you have it enabled.

1:00:05But it will also not summarize what it considers to be sensitive conversation, whatever that means. They didn't tell us. So, yeah. And it's like, I am, the Joanna Stern in me that's trying to think of the most absurd way to test features is already thinking, like, what kind of pretend conversation could I have to see if it'll summarize it? Right. That is completely inappropriate.

1:00:36Or will it record if I pretend to talk about a medical crisis? Is that what it considers to? But I don't know. If it's, wouldn't you want, if you're talking to a doctor? Like, the one thing I've heard from multiple people is they would love to have this for times that they go to talk to a doctor. And it's like, even if you're not having a crisis per se, it's like, what the hell was my doctor saying about the, it was like, they were talking about my blood work. And they said some number was not a problem and I don't need medication. But it was like, just above the point where maybe they would prescribe medication and I forget what the number was.

1:01:12And it's like, I would love to get a transcript of that so I could remember exactly what it was. And yes, you can just call your doctor and say it. But who does that, right? Right, right. So, I don't know. And what if you and I have a conversation where we pretend to be talking about robbing a bank? Right. Or if you and I are having an argument. Yeah. Like, what's sensitive? It's, we have to see it in action because I really do wonder, if you're meeting with your doctor, you want accurate, I don't know how much of a, I want a summary, but I want a transcript.

1:01:44And it's not giving you a transcript. Right. So, yeah, how detailed is that summary? Where does it, how, yeah, exactly, how useful is the summary when you can't refer to, well, let me see what exactly the doctor said when they were talking about this section. So, I'm curious. Yeah. And so, I think it's a great idea. I think Apple is in a good position to be the ones to sort of start introducing features like this into daily life and make people comfortable with it. And I, my, my concerns aren't that this is not private.

1:02:19I think it is, I think Apple is, it's, as far as I can tell, they have thought through all the actual privacy issues. So, I think it actually is private. But that doesn't mean most people will perceive it as private. Right. It's the perception that matters. And honestly, just going back to the antenna gate thing, that was honestly the whole thing with, in hindsight, clearly that was the problem with antenna. The iPhone 4 did not have a fundamental flaw with the antenna. It had a minor flaw with the antenna.

1:02:50And it really was only evident in a situation with low signal strength to begin with. Low signal strength plus, quote, unquote, holding it the wrong way. And it would drop from low but usable to the law signal. But it was the perception that had them call us, call me from across the country to hold a press conference to address it. Because the perception was they just released a fancy new phone and it can't make a phone call.

1:03:20And that perception matters. And if Apple released a new feature that transcribes meetings throughout your day or conversations throughout your day and gives you a useful AI summary of them at the end of the day, and it really is private and thoughtful. But the perception is anybody wearing an Apple Watch is listening to you and recording everything you say to them while they're wearing the watch. That's a problem. That is a problem. But again, you already kind of solved for that with the fact that voice recording has been something on the watch and the phone for years.

1:03:57And this is doing less than that. This is just summarizing. And so it's not recorded. It's weird, but there was no backlash when the voice recorder was added. But the backlash, is it because of AI? Right. You could have a five-year-old Apple Watch right now that is way more privacy invasive than the brand-new Series 12 with this feature once the feature comes out. But the other thing, too, is one of those things is every Apple Watch from more than three or four feet away looks the same, right? Or at least looks like the same generation.

1:04:28It looks like an Apple Watch. So if everybody starts thinking, I don't think it's going to happen. And I think cameras are different, and I think that's why Meta came out with the glasses that don't have cameras, period. I think as much as people stood up at attention with this whole feature when it was announced in the keynote, the fact that it's just recording audio doesn't trigger the same reaction in people that cameras do, right? Right, right. But I also think there's the—Apple has the—I don't want to say—I think it's well-earned.

1:05:01Their reputation of privacy is well-earned. But I think there's a sense within the company that they think everybody knows this. Yes. Whereas— Yes, Andrew. So if we just say, hey, we have this feature, and it's private, we don't have to say anything more than that. We just put the Apple logo with the little locking thing at the top, right? But I think a lot of people just don't believe big tech. And they think your iPhone listens to you all day and puts ads in front of you.

1:05:36And that's the perception. Whether it's true or not, that's perception. So you have to go in with, okay, here's what the average person thinks. We need to be more explanatory. Almost the way Steve Jobs said a long time ago about privacy. Tell people what you're doing. And then tell them again, and then tell them again, right? Be super clear about it versus we've earned this reputation. We don't have to say much about it. Yeah, and I think part of that—I don't think it's cockiness. But I do think it is the fact that people at Apple, some of the people in the product marketing who I talk to about the watch,

1:06:07I've been talking to since the first watch. It's not just that they've been at Apple that long. But I know people who've been working on Apple Watch now for 12 generations. And they get used to it. And they know the focus, the hypervigilant focus they have on privacy at the company. And they know that everybody else they work with at Apple has that same hypervigilant focus on privacy. And everybody knows that people at other companies have less of a focus on privacy, right?

1:06:40But I think what people at Apple, from being in Apple for so long and thinking and knowing in their bones that Apple is a different company with a different order of priorities compared to other companies, they completely lose track of what you were saying, which is that in the real world, regular people— They know the difference between Apple and Meta and Google and Amazon, but they think they're all in cahoots together. Yes. And that the same people who are at Google today are probably working at Apple next year, and then they're working at Meta the year after that, and then they're working at Amazon, and then they're back to Google, and they're just—they're all the same, and they all do the same things, and they're all listening.

1:07:22That is how people think. It really is. Because if they think your Facebook app or your Instagram app is showing you ads based on something you just talked about, your iPhone— Right. Right? It's your iPhone that's listening to you. Yes. And so they just see it as it's one big industry that's just slurping up all your data. Yeah. Yeah. It's the industry. Right. At the same time, Apple, probably better than any other company. It probably is part of what makes Apple Apple and makes Apple more worthy of attention in my book, is that they're more aware—they're not just aware in a scornful way, like, oh, you're a dummy, so we're going to make a product for you as a dummy.

1:08:10It's with respect that they're like, we're going to treat you as an intelligent person, but we know that you don't know anything about how computers work. And you shouldn't need to. You've got your own life and your own interests, and if you would like to learn about how computers work, that's great. Everybody here at Apple did. But if your interest is somewhere else, you shouldn't have to know how this works, but we're still going to make a product that respects your intelligence and will do all the hard work at their best with their best products, and they pull it off.

1:08:45But even with their worst products that don't pull it off, it's what they were trying for, is to present to the user an experience that doesn't make them understand how it works. But at the same time that Apple is aware of that, they don't really think about it from the other side, that if they don't understand how it works, that you cannot explain in technical detail how it's not possible for Instagram to listen to you because the secure—I think it's this time the secure enclave makes sure that the green light goes on if the microphone is on.

1:09:17Right, and also, your battery will be destroyed if everything that you— Yes, yes, destroyed. Yes. I've had this conversation with extended family members multiple times, and they enjoy it, and I think I explain it to them well, and it's the best sense they've ever gotten of what I do and maybe what has given me a career. But like I've said, the scariest part isn't—like when they talk—and again, it comes up at family gatherings. I'm guessing it's happened to you. Oh, for sure. Just about anybody who listens to this show or watches any of your videos is you know your family members think the phone's listened to you.

1:09:53And what I've said is as creepy as that would be if your phone was just listening to the conversations you were having about it and then using the transcription of those conversations to then serve you ads, that would be incredibly inefficient. And what they're actually doing is so complicated that it's actually creepier, but it's not listening to you. It isn't listening to you. It isn't listening to you. They don't need to. Right. By what you do when you go to the website where you buy root beer.

1:10:24You love some edgy little independent brand of root beer and you go there and you buy it. But they put pixels on the site from a thousand partners, including Facebook. And then Facebook picks it up from that and that they know that people who like root beer and who also watch this movie, there is a core of whatever reason people who are interested in rewatching the Matrix trilogy over and over again and who buy craft cane sugar root beer. They're also really, they have no idea why, but there is a very strong correlation to wanting to buy Japanese blue jeans and they're going to show you an ad for Japanese blue jeans.

1:11:07And sometimes something weird like that's going to happen. You're like, I don't know how this happened. I just told my wife that I was thinking about getting these goddamn Japanese blue jeans and the son of the thing must be listening to me. And it's not. It's actually creepier and more complex, but it's not listening to you. And you can explain to them that it is technically impossible to turn the microphone on without that light coming on. And that if even somebody who opened the phone and tried to disconnect the light, the microphone would stop working. It really is.

1:11:37It's cryptographically guaranteed. It's like the Farside cartoon where the guy's yelling at his dog saying that all the dog hears is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ginger, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ginger. All they hear when you explain it is blah, blah, blah, blah, iPhone, blah, blah, blah, blah, listening. That's it. Or what they hear is, oh, you are brainwashed by your own industry. We really not. They're obviously listening to us, right? So I think we're wrong. Oh, you're just gullible. So what I have found works in that regard is by saying that what they actually do is creepier, if you understood it, and that I barely understand it, but that it is creepier.

1:12:19That's what resonates because I'm not saying, hey, the whole tech industry is on your side and doesn't do creepy things. Right. You're saying it's worse than what you think. Right. And if you talk to people who work in the ad tech industry, they, honest to God, if they could have recordings of what you talk about all day, they wouldn't want it. They're like, we don't need that. Do you know how much work that would be? You know how much space that would take up? Why would we want that? We don't need that. It would be the least efficient way to serve you targeted ads.

1:12:50But that's the world Apple's up against. Apple doesn't do it, but that's the world people are in. The other thing I want to, before we move on from Apple Watch, the other thing that I'm wondering about with these features is I'm just honestly wondering how well they'll work at a technical level. Because I do think Siri AI is very good on the phone and on the Mac. And I do think that their plan they announced at WWDC totally works. I think it is a step change forward.

1:13:21They have caught up to baseline, modern, LLM. That's the bar, right? It's not anywhere close to the frontier. It is not going to blow anything away if you're used to the leading-edge models from ChatGPT and Claude. And they never said it was, right? It does what they said. And it is baseline competent and can answer amazingly interesting questions based on your email and your iMessages and your Apple Notes and whatever other apps publish their data in a way that can be indexed.

1:13:54And you can just ask questions like, hey, what was the serial number of my iPhone 16 that I bought two years ago? Because I want to get the refund from Apple's AI refund thing. And it will just tell you your serial number if it's in your email. That stuff works. I don't think just regular Siri works very well on Apple Watch. I still don't think it does. It is slow. I don't think you can have conversations. It does not seem to me to be a good AI device just for regular Siri.

1:14:26And yet now they're saying, so the watch still hasn't caught up to that in my experience. And they're saying it's going to give me daily summaries of every conversation I've had, but only the interesting ones? Right, so it puts your summaries into the Siri AI app. So you can open your phone and see. So I guess I'm, I didn't ask this question, but I'm curious. Is the phone doing any of this work or is it just the watch doing this work? I think the phone must be doing the transcription, but they don't want to talk about that.

1:14:59They don't want to explain it. I think they should. I think they should draw a diagram. Honest to God. Like the diagrams from WWDC, right? Like, yeah, like WWDC or the way that like, I remember Phil Schiller doing one with one of the iPhone cameras where they talked about the focus pixels on the sensor. And he was like, this might be a lot of detail for this type of event, but I love this stuff and I think you want to know it. And he spent like two minutes talking about a new sensor technology that let them get a sharper image. Give us some diagrams of how this works. But I don't know.

1:15:30I'm just, show me when it, I'll believe it when I see it that this works well. Right, right. That's a good point. I do agree. Siri is so much better, but I, have you not seen any regressions in any, any areas? Like in recent weeks? Yeah. Like, I guess for me, the two regressions is if you ask it something that old Siri was good at, turn this light on, right? Old Siri would turn it on within a second or half a second. And new Siri has to, it's almost like, are you sending this to the cloud?

1:16:02Like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. This doesn't mean private cloud compute. Yeah. And the other one was a specific use case that I would use often is if I know I have a password in my password manager app, say Google Password or Samsung, whatever. Old Siri, I can say, what's my Google Password? Because I want to copy and paste it into a website and try to log it. What's my Google Password? And it'll open the passwords app to the Google Password. So I can literally just tap and copy it instantly. And now it's like, oh, I don't know what that is. Why are you asking me? This is something that old Siri was an expert at.

1:16:35Right. Right. Because they probably put passwords on a list of, hey, don't touch this app. Right. It's sort of like the whole problem with the journal app. I'm fascinated by the journal app, even though every single step of the way and every single word I've ever typed into the Apple journal app, I've thought this is a bad idea to put anything I care about into this app because this is not a good app. But I like the idea of it and I like the presentation of your journal entries as sort of a personal social feed rather than a three-panel thing like the actual Notes app.

1:17:07But Apple Journal is not indexed by the new Siri AI thing because it's like, oh, that's because it's private. And I get it. Maybe that's what some people want. I would like everything I put in the app to be indexed by Siri. Right. Everything on my phone. There's nothing on my phone that I don't want Siri to index. I would like it. Yeah, it is strange. But I think they don't want to. I think it's because they don't want to spook people. They don't want to spook. They're like, oh, Siri never looks inside your journal. Maybe it will eventually. Right. And right now it doesn't really have access to health.

1:17:39Right. That's the big new thing coming out. And the health update that's in beta right now is re-architecting the health app. And maybe it's like they're double crossing the T's and double dotting the I's just to make sure that everything Siri does related to your information and health is by the book. When you say, hey, what's the door code for my garage? I forget. And it's going to say your blood pressure was 141 over. And it's like, what?

1:18:09What are you talking about? How are you supposed to say that out loud? I don't know. But it's. I just don't want to see new Siri not able to do stuff that old Siri could do. The bad Siri could do this. The slowness is a real thing. And I think it's because you say stuff and it's like, oh, I know you're talking to me. And it's like it does so much more process. So when you do ask it a complex thing and it does take a few seconds to chew on it and you're like, I'll give you a few seconds to find the serial number to a phone I bought two years ago. Sure. Right. But when you say turn the lights on in the kitchen, you don't.

1:18:43You shouldn't need that thing. What are we waiting for? And I think what's happening, I don't know. I'd have to guess. I don't know. I just feel like it doesn't even determine that it's a simple request until it's done something more complex to make sure it's not more complex. But then the truth is now it takes five seconds to turn the lights on and off. And that's always. I think old Siri was still slow compared to Alexa. We actually had an Alexa in our kitchen for years just because it was instant, right?

1:19:14And I put every year always had the I think I still do. Actually, I think I put the Alexa. I plug it back in when we have Christmas trees because my wife likes to have multiple Christmas trees throughout the house and plug them in with an Alexa power adapter. And you tell Alexa to turn them off and it is like hitting a light switch. It is before the word is out of your mouth, they're on or they're off. It's on. And which is exactly what you want. And with Siri, yeah, not so much. But overall, it's good. I think there I also I was wondering if this is what you're talking about.

1:19:45I also think that as the beta has turned into release and now the world is using it. It seems a little worse than it did over summer. But that could totally just be my own personal data. I asked a question. I forget what it was. It is so good to and I know people who have all their email and Gmail and ask Gemini have been getting this for years or a while. But asking Siri for something in my email, thousands and thousands of messages is so much better than any search of my email I've ever had.

1:20:21It's even better than the search in Gmail itself when you type just a query because you can say what it was about. Who's the person who told me the weird story about the whatever? I don't know. They told me a story that they saw somebody on the BART train with a weird color iPhone. And then they're like, oh, that was so and so who told you a story in 2014 about this. And it's like, there's the email. That's amazing. It really is. But, you know, it's weird. I don't hear.

1:20:52I feel like part of the hey, now it meets the bar for what people expect is the fact that in the real world, it doesn't seem like people are amazed. Right. It just feels like people aren't complaining. Which is, I think, the best that Apple could hope for. But I think I've also heard you talk about this, too, where it's like you've been so trained to not ask Siri to do certain things that you forget to try doing it again because now we'll actually do it.

1:21:23And we've been using this since, again, beta over the summer. Everyone else has only had access to this for, what, a few weeks? So they are where we were a few months back where you still have to get used to it. I really mean it. They need an ad campaign that is the gist of it is seriously try Siri again. They really do. And they can tie it in. Get the girl from The Last of Us again and this time she can actually do Siri commercials. They're not going to do that.

1:21:53They're definitely not going to bring her back. They don't want to remind people of that. But let's talk about the iPhone 18 Pro before moving on.

iPhone 18 Pro battery life

1:22:03All right. I saw one of the videos you had where you asked your audience what people want most in the next phone. And I was totally unsurprised by the clear number one answer, which was? Which was battery life. And I actually did this poll two separate times. I did a general poll just, I didn't say iPhone, I just said, your next phone. So whoever, whatever phone you use, what would convince you to upgrade? And it was 50, I think it was like 52% of the people said battery.

1:22:33And then the day before the iPhone event, I said, what would you want to hear Apple announce tomorrow that would make you want to upgrade? And again, it was over 50% battery. And I actually was surprised personally because I assumed if it's my audience, they were going to want some more whiz-bang, interesting, flashy feature. But no, it was like, just give me as much battery life as possible and I'm all in. And that's what Apple did. That's what Apple did this year. Yeah, and it is the simplest, more boring-est to talk about spec to improve.

1:23:12It's like, oh, now the battery lasts longer. And everybody, yeah, that's good, right? And it's like, but tell me about that variable aperture. How do the blades move? How are they not fragile, right? How is that? And we want to ask all these other questions about all these other things. And in some ways, I even want to talk about the colors more. Yeah. And what people care about is battery life. And that's what they did. If you look at their stats, it's weird because they came up with a new battery. I don't blame it. A typical use case number. Typical use case number.

1:23:43Yeah. But they just invented it this year. And it's good for the future because their typical use case test, whatever that involves, next year, we'll be able to compare year over year and two years from now. But this year, when you go to apple.com slash iPhone slash compare, that typical use case number doesn't show up because there's nothing to compare it against because there's no, they didn't have that. They didn't go back and run that test with old iPhones, including.

1:24:14It was only simple to do. Right. Including ones that they're still selling that are still current, like the iPhone 17 regular and the iPhone 17e and the iPhone Air. But they do, they have video and they call it video streaming or something, which I guess is, do you have the video already on the phone? Or are you watching a Netflix video that is network pulling the video and streaming it? Right. It's a slight hit to battery life. The iPhone 18 Pro is 15% longer.

1:24:47It's like, I forget the exact numbers, but it's like 40 versus 35 hours, something like that. But both of them work out to 15% longer. And then the iPhone 18, that's the Pro Max, 15% longer. And the Pro is 10% longer. But 10% longer on the 18, this is my favorite stat of the year, single favorite stat. But 18 Pro regular now has longer battery life than last year's 17 Pro Max.

1:25:1810% improvement. Which is huge. Right. Which is literally huge if you don't like the Pro Max phones. It was hard to kill a Pro Max battery 17 Pro Max last year. Yeah. Yep. And that's awesome. For my review, I spent most of my time with the 18 Pro Max, the burgundy. I named it Ron Burgundy in my pocket just to, I was like, oh, I haven't used one of these for a couple of years. I should spend a week with an 18 Pro Max. It is huge. I do not like it in my pocket.

1:25:48I do not like it in my hand. And the battery life never, ever. And this is while testing it and purposefully shooting more photos and videos and stuff than usual. And the battery never drops below 50%. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And for me, it's like, I'm out shooting videos with this thing like during the review period trying to, you know, test. And it's like, I didn't pay attention to the days where I was trying to keep it on the charger to get Siri to finish indexing everything. Right. Because it goes faster if you have it plugged in.

1:26:20Like, the days where I'm just using it normally, like, I'm shocked that I'm ending the day in the 30s, 30% area with battery life because I'm literally morning till night. I'm traveling. I don't have access to plugging it in. I'm not plugging it on purpose. I'm shooting 4K video. I'm shooting a bunch of pictures. And it's just not dying. So if that's the spec you were looking for, this is your year. I have my main iPhone profile, whatever you want to call it, you know, and then I can back it up to iCloud and set up a new phone and restore from the backup and get all the apps and everything set up the way it was on my other phone.

1:26:57I think it's several years now I've had shortcuts automation where when my battery life hits, I even forget the number if it's 30 or 35. I think it used to be 35 and now it's 30 because I was like, I don't even need this. But it hits 30% and then it turns on automatically low power mode. I do the same. Yellow thing in control center. And with my personal iPhone 17 Pro, most days, like watching TV right before bed, it's around 1130, midnight, I'm ready to go to bed.

1:27:32And I look and the battery is yellow because that's kicked in and turned on. But it's at 30%, 25, 30%. Almost never in a whole year, no matter what I do, does it go below 20%, no matter how busy I am in a day. And then ever since after I published my review with a week where I mostly use the 18 Pro Max, I've switched to the 18 Pro review unit. It doesn't even trigger the shortcut. It doesn't reach 30 or 35% any day.

1:28:05I don't think it clicked once. It's 10% by Apple specs, but it seems, I don't know, even better than that. And this is a thing that everybody cares about. Every single iPhone. There are very few things that everybody cares about. There are, oddly enough, people who do not care about the camera because they never take pictures. There were people who did not care about the retina screen. They're like, I don't really care. I don't see the difference. And it's like, maybe you should go to the eye doctor. But the one thing everybody cares about is if their iPhone dies and it doesn't work because

1:28:38the battery's at zero, they care. And it is a boring stat. And if you improve 10% to 15% every year, it compounds. And within four years, it's 50% more battery life. And that's huge. And if most people only upgrade every four years, they're getting a phone that starts with 50% longer battery life. And their old phone that they'd used for four or five years probably had a worn out battery anyway. And so if there's no other difference that they notice, what they notice is my phone was

1:29:12dying every day by the time I went to bed. And now my phone has tons of battery life every day. Yeah. It's a huge upgrade. And that's all they care about. Yeah, for them. Yeah, especially like you said, people hold them to their phones multiple years, which leaves me totally unrelated. But I always thought it was funny how people like us who would upgrade annually complain how lightning has been around for so long, 10 years, this lightning port isn't going away. Whereas the average person probably only owned two iPhones that had a lightning port because they, you know what I mean? So to them, it was like, because I remember the backlash.

1:29:43Why does Apple always change the port from everything? They always change the ports. Yeah, two iPhones ago, it was this, and now it's so funny. It's just the different echo chambers that were in. Right.

1:29:56The other thing that I do think that this battery life focus has shown, and it is kind of true, and I think it plays into the fact that the iPhone Air has not sold well by anybody's measure. There's apps that keep track of which phones people use, and they don't advertise it. I hope that with the iPhone Air 2 that's supposedly coming in spring, that they do advertise it, and that adding a second camera will give it, because I think it is an absolutely terrific

1:30:28device. And I do think in my testing with it, battery life is very good, and it lasts all day for me. Maybe not where 30% doesn't kick in, right? It's like, yeah, it's more like you kind of use the whole battery to get through the day with the air. But it's so nice. But I just think common people who don't know anything about technology know that the battery has to be smaller, right? It does. It's just common sense. Right? It's like if you pick up a flashlight, like just the basic run-of-the-mill drugstore flashlight,

1:31:00as soon as you pick it up, you know if it has the D-cell batteries in it or not, because it's too light. You pick up the Air, and you pick up an iPhone Pro, either size, and you just know there's a bigger battery in the Pro one. And that is what people think. They think, well, I want this. And for years, in that era when Johnny Ive was there, and they were making the iPhones thinner and thinner every year, leading up to, I think the thinnest ever was like iPhone 6, up until the Air, which is now the thinnest. And now the Duo, which will be the thinnest when it's unfolded.

1:31:34And there was the other gate, which I think was actually more of a significant gate scandal than the antenna gate, bend gate, right? Bend gate, oh God. Right? With, I think it was the iPhone 6, where if you put it in your butt pocket and sat on it, the whole phone would bend. And everybody was like, we've been screaming at you for years, just make the goddamn things thicker by putting a bigger battery in them, because we want a bigger battery anyway, and we'll take the hit to weight and thickness to have a better battery.

1:32:07And eventually Apple did listen. They started making the iPhones thicker instead of thinner, as they added cameras and camera bumps and other things. But I think that the basic evolution and the forking of the lines in the pro and non-pro have shown that it really is true, the people outside Apple who were yelling, just make it thicker and heavier and put a bigger battery in it. That's why so many people buy iPhone Pro models. It really is. Yeah.

1:32:38Right? It's even compared, not just talking iPhone Air, which is ridiculously thin and is sort of conspicuously lightweight. I mean, just compared to, hey, should I buy an iPhone 17 or a 17 Pro last year? I'm going to get the one that looks like it has a bigger battery. And if you look at the tech specs, it says it has more battery life. And I think there's a lot of people who don't really care too much. And they're like, oh, the camera's better and the screen's better and you get a pro motion display. And they're like, shut up. I just want the battery and I'll pay the ridiculous price for this.

1:33:10Right? Right. Battery, battery, battery. I would be talking about having my phone die. Yeah. That's it. That's all I'm going to do. They could have shut up. They absolutely could have just said the battery life is longer. And then John Turnus could have dropped the mic and walked off the stage. And all these people in the tech press would be like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. I can't believe this guy, you know, bring back Tim Cook. And out in the real world, people would be like, yeah, I'll buy that. Cheering. They'd be cheering. Yeah. But I mean, there are other things about this phone though.

Variable aperture and cameras

1:33:37Like the A20, which is sits between an M3 and an M4 in some benchmarks, which is just absurd to carry around in your pocket. Right. And then the variable aperture camera, which I don't know, maybe you have a different opinion. I don't know that the variable aperture is such a huge deal. I think it's more, the huger deal is that the main camera now takes in even more lights and they're okay with doing that because they can now adjust the amount of light that comes

1:34:10in because it would be too much. I don't think it would be appropriate for that to be the main camera if you couldn't reduce the amount of light that goes into it for the situations that require it. So I think really the main feature is when that thing is wide open, the amount of light that can get into the camera is such a big improvement versus last year, 50% more, which results in just better photography overall. Yeah. I remember at some point I learned how the F-stop numbers work and why they're on such

1:34:43a weird scale where going from F2.8 to F4.0 is one stop and then the next stop is F8 and it's like, what? And then you go from F1.8 to F1.4 and you're like, oh, well, that's almost nothing, right? And you're like, no, no, no. That's a full stop. And it's like, oh, that's double? Oh, F1.8 to F1.4? And then you're like, oh, what about the F1.2? Now, that's just a little. And you're like, no, no, that's a $5,000 lens from Canon, the F1.2.

1:35:17And I'm an idiot. I fucking bought it a long time ago. And I did love it. But the goddamn thing was as heavy as a brick, the 50 millimeter F1.2 lens. It wasn't, it was like, I don't know, $1,500, $2,000, but it was a full stop difference from F1.4, which is double the light. And it's like, oh, well, forget about the scale. 50% more light. I understand that. And I also understand why they never made a non-variable aperture lens that was F1.48

1:35:48because it's too much that's too open when you're out in the sunshine, right? Not that you couldn't get an image, but you wouldn't want to, right? And it's sharper. And everybody knows that lenses aren't at their sharpest most, well, photographers know. All the way opened up, yeah. They're not at their sharpest. So I think it's a win for low light. I think, I'm with you though. I don't think it's a huge deal. But I think it's one of those things that three, four years ago or from now, three, four

1:36:19years from now with the third, fourth generation of variable aperture, it will be more of a big deal where you'll be like, oh, it has a slightly bigger range from the most open to the most closed. There'll be sensor improvements in those intervening years. And then all of a sudden optically, you will get more of a bokeh effect when it's wide open and you'll get the advantages that photographers have always loved about having aperture control. You'll see them more visibly.

1:36:52You can already, depending on how you frame it in the lighting though, when you do use the manual aperture and open it up, you do get more of a blurred background. I know Austin Mann's video had a really nice section in his review. He had a video and he just used some trees wherever he was, wherever ranch he was on in Colorado. And it was such a perfect illustration because he went, and it was sort of like the Steve Jobs style, not just telling you once, but repeating it like open, closed, open, closed, blurry, focused, blurry, focused.

1:37:25It's already making me think that the end for portrait mode is ought to be coming soon, right? Because portrait mode in mobile photography was always using computational photography to completely simulate the optical effect of focal distance. And now we're actually getting real focal distance through the variable aperture. So why is there a mode that lets you do portrait mode? Well, there's the mode. I don't think they should have taken it out this year for these phones because what the effect

1:37:58you get from portrait mode is way stronger than what you get from the actual aperture because it's just not that noticeable this year. But you can notice it enough that I think three, four, five years from now, I think that what the iPhone will be capable of blurring the background for a nearby subject will be such that you probably shouldn't ever use portrait mode starting three or four years from now. I kind of disagree because one thing I really like, if portrait mode looks natural, which Apple really

1:38:38tries to make it do. And it's improved a lot in the 10 years since it came out. One thing I really like about that and photographic styles is that they're non-destructive. So I can go in and say, you know what, I actually wanted here, I mean, we're on an audio podcast, but I have a blurry photo behind me on the wall. But if this was a portrait mode photo, I could tap on that and then that would go into focus versus my face. And when you're doing the real version, right, you're just burning it in. You can't switch focus. And I feel, I think people like the fact that they can just decide later, oh, I took this photo.

1:39:13It wasn't exactly what I want, but I can just tap here or there and I can fix it in post. Yeah. And you would lose that if you didn't have portrait mode anymore. Yeah. Or maybe it changes from being a mode in the camera to something you only put in post, right? So you just shoot normally and then do it. And you're right because that is one of the things, photographic styles is the whole thing. It's why it's so it's a great system is that it's non-destructive and any style you've applied. And I always use black and white as my example because it's the most striking, right?

1:39:45Yeah. You could talk about the difference between, what's the difference between amber and gold? And it's like, you can kind of see it when you've, when you switch between the two, you can, I don't know why, you know, they both look kind of like different shades of gold to me. But you say stark black and white, everybody knows what that means. And if you shot in the old days on black and white film and you're like, God damn it, I wish, I kind of wish I, I love black and white, but I wish I had color for that. Well, tough shit. You shot on black and white film. Yeah. Right. Even if you have the name, it's black and white.

1:40:17And it's like with certain filters that you apply to a JPEG, if you apply a black and white filter and then you save it and you don't keep the original, it's destructive. And then you can't go back to color unless you had a copy. The way that photographic styles are only stored as effectively, I think the best way to think of it is they're like recipes and they're always applied dynamically to the original and the original is always there and you don't need to make copies to keep the original.

1:40:47You can always revert to the way it looked. So you could just set your iPhone camera app to shoot in black and white. So you see black and white as you're shooting. And then if you think, ah, these should have been in color, you just go into the photos afterwards and change them to a color photographic style. Aperture isn't like that, right? The actual aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro main camera is a real, you know, and they love to show it now, you know, and it is cool to look at. It is a real aperture. You can't, if you shot an image at F1.48, you can't suddenly go to F4 to get more of it in focus.

1:41:24It's out of focus. Right, right. Unless you're shooting in portrait mode as well. So that's a good point. I hear you there. Well, but no, because it's still, even in portrait mode, you still can't, portrait mode might put more fake out of focus in. Right. But there's still the. Simulated. Right, exactly. It's the beginning and I expect over the coming years, they'll add the aperture to the other lenses too. You know, I don't know which one first, probably telephoto and then ultra wide last, you know, and they're always working on the sensors.

1:41:58But I don't think, to me, this is the big, this is the last, and they might surprise me. I'll be happy to be surprised, but I can't think of anything else that they can add to the camera now that's been missing at a technical level. It's just incremental improvements to it going forward. Yeah. I guess how willing are they to, if you look at a lot of the Chinese smartphone cameras, they have one-inch sensors and they really are pretty good and striking. Like, is Apple willing to, I know a lot of people think the camera Mesa or whatever we call it, the plateau.

1:42:31The iconic plateau. Yeah, it's wildly large, but it can get bigger and you can get better natural photography without all of the post-processing tricks. Right. Right. I don't know how the, I don't know how those Chinese phones do it with the bigger sensors, but if there's something they can do to vastly increase the size of the sensor, that would be the single best optical thing that they could possibly do. But I think they're just going to increase the size incrementally, but, and there's stuff they could do with the, what do they call it, telescopic, where you can kind of put the sensors in sideways.

1:43:04I mean, there's stuff I'm sure they're working on to make just the pure optical part of the camera better before they do the computational magic, but it's great. What do you think of the new styles in the photographic styles, the film and the glow and the face, whatever? Yeah, I like them. I think for me, I don't like that one, but I can see, I know it's a popular thing. But I know why people want it and I don't judge them for it. Yeah. I think it's interesting.

1:43:35I like the different styles. I like the combos. I like being able to get the film look. For me personally, I always, I'm entertained by the notion of adding grain because I don't know if people liked grain before, I guess. It's almost like people like that sound of vinyl, like how vinyl has that crack, but it's that crack that wasn't in the studio when they were making it. It's just like a feeling, a nostalgic feeling. And so for me personally, I like, I don't need that, but I like everything they do with photographic styles this year, with the exception of announcing that it would also be on the older phones and then removing that announcement from the press release later.

1:44:11Because, are you telling me the A19 Pro can't do these new photographic styles? That was a weird thing. Yeah. And I don't know how much publicity it got. Maybe I missed it. And I thought that the people were crazy when they were saying this, that they were saying, no, they said it's coming to the 16 Pro and 17 Pro or all the 17s. And I'm like, no, that's never how they do it. Whenever they come out with a new generation of photographic styles, they always lock it to the new phones, whether that's technically necessary or just what I call marketing spite.

1:44:42Right. And then they're like, no, it's in a footnote. And I looked and it was in the footnote. And I was like, holy shit. I was like, I got to ask Apple about this. And then like the next day I went to ask Apple about it. And I went back to the newsroom post and I'm like, I want to make sure I get this right before I ask. And then I couldn't find it. And then I was like, yeah. And I was like, what the hell? Oh, you know what? Somebody else asked and somebody else realized, oh, that was a mistake. I don't know, though. Was it a mistake that they were going? Were they going to do it? Or did whoever just wrote the footnote hear it wrong?

1:45:15I don't think they were ever going to do it. And it certainly wasn't in any iOS 27 betas. So I don't think there was ever any code that did it. But is it, do I believe that the A19 Pro chip in the last year's phones is incapable of doing this? No. No. It is to some degree marketing spite. But it's, that's, they're in the business of selling phones. Of course. And you had an article about this, though. You were playing with the photographic styles. And it seemed like you really liked it.

1:45:46And you even liked grain. I do. I've always liked grain. I liked shooting film. When I did shoot film, for people who are old like me and did, I loved Kodak Tri-X black and white film. I think it was 400 ISO. Very grainy black and white film. I used to own the original Ricoh GR Digital, GRD, back around 2005 or 2006, that little pocket digital camera. And the whole claim to fame was that Ricoh got better low-light photography out of that little camera, not by having an amazing sensor that reduced noise,

1:46:24but by having a sensor that they programmed their JPEG interpolation off it to sort of embrace the noise. That's the one camera I've owned that I actually wore out. It actually, because it was a pocket camera, the motor that made the lens extend eventually just sort of, it didn't just break completely. It just started making a sad noise and then sort of stopped coming out. And I was like, well, I forget how many thousands of photos I took with that camera, but it was like, oh, I've gotten my money's worth out of this.

1:46:55So, yeah, I am a grain man. But even as somebody who enjoys film grain and simulated film grain and definitely does not like the over-processed noise reduction that modern... Smartphone looks. Yeah. I think that the default level of grain that they apply is way too much. And I kind of wish the grain in particular, not just... So there's the halation effect, that red glowiness that I think is too strong at 100, even though 100 is the default for film.

1:47:28The grain is just on or off. And I kind of wish the grain was... It doesn't have to be zero to 100. It could just be like small, medium, light. I don't know. But I kind of feel like, man, I'd like a little of this. You know, it's sort of like, I don't know. It's like, I'd like a little bit of salt on my fries. But all I can do, it's like somebody just comes in, some prankster has taken, unscrewed the cap from the salt shaker. Right? Right. I just wanted a little grain. I didn't want all of this. But I like it overall.

1:47:59And again, it's non-destructive. So if you're ever looking at a photo and you're like, Jesus, this just looks like noise to me, not attractive grain. You just turn it right off. I don't know. I like it. Yeah. And I do think that overall, the pictures I get off the phone using the built-in camera app look better than they ever have. And I think they really do. It's a lot. They're asking a lot of one app to embrace people who literally just tap camera, tap shutter. That's it. And to people who kind of want it to be a semi-pro camera app, I kind of still feel like they should have two apps, regular camera that is more point and shoot and an Apple pro camera that I love the halide guys.

1:48:42I love the not boring camera app, but I kind of feel like Apple should have something that's more in that range and hopefully wouldn't put them out of business, but would take some of the complexity out of the built-in camera app. I think they did it, though, because now you can decide how much pro controls you want in the camera. And it would be strange because they also have Final Cut camera, so that would actually be a third camera app. But Final Cut camera is just video. Just for video, yes. So then they need like a professional photo, a professional video, and then the regular.

1:49:12That's just not how they're going to do it. But the fact that you can choose which pro controls you want on the screen now. So if you don't want any, just remove them, or if you want everything, you can do that, too. I think that was the right call, the way to do it. Yeah, and I think for anybody listening who hasn't really played with it, I think the way to think about it is you really, if there's one or two that you use, pull them out of there and put them in the permanent list at the top or if you pivot the camera to the side. Don't keep opening that drawer and poking at them. That drawer is not something you should be going to a lot.

1:49:45And if you use a couple of them, drag a couple of them out. There's room for a bunch of them over there, but they should be one tap away and not in the drawer. And the reason they're not one tap away by default is that the default list of them is meant to be simple. It's just flash and format or something like that. No, it's good. It's a good year.

Cosmic orange and phone colors

1:50:07What about the colors of the iPhone 18 Pro? Last question. They were never going to do it, but I felt like Cosmic Orange should have just been a permanent addition to. When you went outside last year or the year of 17, it was orange phones everywhere. People really enjoyed having finally a bright, non-gray take on a pro iPhone. Because I felt like everything was just a shade of gray before. There was that deep purple that was almost black. There was the blues that were kind of gray and the wrong gloss.

1:50:38This was like a bold, and now we're back to dark. Did you take notice of how many people attending the event in Cupertino had the orange 17 Pro or Pro Max? The hands-on area, the new phones from Apple in the hands-on area were on the tables or on those sticks that they have for the ones on display. And all the other ones were in our hands, and I would say two-thirds of them were orange. It was unbelievable.

1:51:10There were more orange iPhone 17 Pros in the media and attendees' hands than there were in the hands-on area last year. Oh, for sure. It was all orange. It was unbelievable. And that's another one where the same way that I said that I think Apple was wrong about people's tolerance for thicker phones if it's to make the battery bigger. That, yeah, they really will buy a thicker phone, heavier phone, if it makes the battery last noticeably longer.

1:51:42Whatever idea Apple had that people didn't want to buy brightly colored Pro iPhones, I don't know what the hell, I don't know who that is or who won those arguments. It was clearly wrong, right? I'm willing to say, no, I don't have Tim Cook's number of every single iPhone that was sold in what colors and whatever else actual data is. But just the anecdotal data of seeing what people at the iPhone event last week had bought in the last year, and that's only the people in the press who had a one-year-old iPhone, right?

1:52:18There's plenty of people who go to these events, and hats off to them for being in the business and following the phones and still using a three- or four-year-old iPhone personally. But that's just the people who had a 17 Pro. But they were all orange. It was orange, orange, orange. And burgundy isn't doing it for me. And I know with their thinking, it is a way to signify that you have the new iPhone, and that only lasts a year.

1:52:49But they added a color this year, too, though. So it's like there's always the silver one, right? There's always silver. So I just felt like if you're going to do – if you're going to add a color in, have one of the four be just bold. And then make the others – the other three can be muted. So even if you wanted to do burgundy, the blue is just a very muted blue. Give me a bright feel. And I think they kind of painted themselves in a corner a little bit on blue because last year the dark one was like a very dark blue.

1:53:20That's the one I bought. And so what were they going to do, come up with the cosmic blue? That's what they should have done, what cosmic orange is to orange. But I feel like maybe they thought they couldn't because that's too close to last year's dark blue. I don't know what they were thinking. But I do not expect a year from now to see all that many burgundy phones in the press hands at the iPhone event. I don't think it's a bad color. I'm sure some people like it. But it's cosmic orange. Ten years from now, we'll still be talking about cosmic orange and the 17 Pro.

1:53:52Yeah, it's not an exciting color. That's what it was. It was an exciting color. So I don't know. I think they've got to look – and I'm sure they will look at the data. But I think – the orange seems so popular that I can't help but think that by next year, with a year of data under their belt, that maybe we'll see at least one truly exciting color every year, starting next year. I love that. And this year's the last year without an exciting color. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our other sponsor of the show. It is our good friends at Factor.

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The iPhone Duo form factor

1:57:29All right.

The iPhone Duo form factor

1:57:30Last but not least, we got the duo, right? And that's what Apple announced at last. We'll talk about at last. Now we're two weeks out, a week past the 18 reviews. Here's my story about the duo. We went to my wife's sister's little kid. We had a birthday party last weekend. A whole bunch of family, mostly from my wife's side. My dad was there. It was great. Three different people, and they know. I think my wife had said that John was out in California for the iPhone thing,

1:58:01and they know that every year around back-to-school time, I go out to California for the iPhone thing, and they kind of know what. Nobody reads my reviews, but they know what I do, and I don't bother with them. But like last year, they wanted to know. I remember they wanted to know, do you have the orange iPhone? And I did. One of my review units was the orange phone. They wanted to see it. This year, three different people said, do you have the new iPhone? And I said, I do. And I took out the Glacier Blue iPhone 18 Pro, and they're like, unfold it. And I'm like, oh, I don't have that one. I'm sorry.

1:58:32And then by the third person, I didn't take out the 18 Pro. I was like, oh, no, I don't have the folding one. And they're like, you don't? Oh. And that's all they wanted to see. Yeah. That's it. And in some ways, I feel that their don't pay attention to tech at all take was a more accurate summary of the overall news of the month than anything we could say. Right. They probably saw iShowSpeed, and they're like, hey, let me see if I saw that phone.

1:59:04I saw it, right? No. I should have told my nephews I saw iShowSpeed. I feel like I'm having withdrawals. I missed that phone already. So, like, I own every folding smartphone that's been released in the United States. Galaxy 1 through 7, Pixel, Original, and then Pro Fold 9, 10, 11, Motorola's OnePlus had one. I've owned them all.

1:59:36And you can just tell there's a difference between a mechanical function and a right? Don't get me wrong. It's very impressive that you can fold these glass phones in half and unfold them. It's unbelievable. But when you get to the Apple polish of how they do things, it's just different. It's just another level of the way that they consider how a user is going to interact with this, not just from the aspect ratio, which was, I think, very smartly considered, but also

2:00:15the software. Everybody talked about the animation opening and closing, right? You open it, and the way that it blurs and then comes back into frame is like, it's revealing. The thing that you're seeing on the outside is matched one for one as what you're going to see on the inside. No other, none. None of the other ones do this. You have a closed screen, and you open it, and things move around, or they're in a different area, or you can have your clothes. And you see it go from black to on. Correct. Yes.

2:00:45There were even some people like, hey, since Android is the open platform, people have already copied the animation that Apple made. And it's like, no, because as you're opening the phone, you just see a black screen on the inside until it decides to light up. That's not a copy of the feature. Obviously, there was a lot of expectation. Everybody thought this was the year they're going to do it. It was the worst kept secret in tech. Like, but the thing is, it was almost like the first iPad, where it was like, we all

2:01:15knew it's going to be an iPad. It's like, what are they going to do? The tablet. The tablet. The tablet. What are they going to show us? What's going to make it unique and different? And I felt like they knocked it out of the park. Obviously, there's things that, it's not an ultra, right? We all thought ultra, which never made sense to me. I didn't. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I predicted duo. Yes. If you're not going to have the best cameras, if you're not going to have the best, if you're not going to have the best everything, ultra makes no sense. You can't call it that, right?

2:01:45So you have to be willing to, it's almost as if this is the folding version of a standard iPhone, not an iPhone pro, if that makes sense. This is a folding iPhone standard. And there's room if by, for some reason, Apple decides later, you know what, now we're going to make the iPhone duo pro, right? With better cameras and better battery. So if you've been looking for, again, like I said earlier on near the beginning of the

2:02:18show, it's like, it's the second time we've had a different way to use an iPhone. The first time was when we went to iPhone 10 with the gestures, and this is number two. So it's really interesting that if you've been bored by smartphones, which a lot of people have said, like, I just feel like they're incremental. We don't really have much change. Nothing's happening. We've had foldables for several years. But if you use Apple's software, you're not going to be able to buy any other device and

2:02:49have all your apps there. If you're in the Apple ecosystem or use apps that are only available on the app store, you're just out of luck. So why would you? Now you get to join in and try something new, try something different, see how it is. And for all intents and purposes, like you get something that is right out of the box. It's just so, like I said, it's just so well-considered, especially like nanotexture display on the inside. Yeah. That was brilliant. It was brilliant. But I've been talking for a while. And they did keep that secret. No, they did keep it.

2:03:20And they did keep that nanotexture display secret. Jaws mentioned it in a couple of interviews that he did. I think that he was pretty happy that didn't leak, even though the aspect ratio did. And it's tricky because the nanotexture makes it hard to photograph. And I've seen a couple of, repeatedly on social media, where people have, from the hands-on area, there's pictures of people with it open. They're like, dude, that screen looks washed out. And it's like, oh, that's the way it photographs. That screen is not washed out. Trust me. When you look at it face on, it is gorgeous.

2:03:53I am a nanotexture fan. I talk about it all the time. I love my nanotexture studio display. I love the way the nanotexture iPads look. I keep saying I wish you could get a regular iPhone with a nanotexture display. And I even said that to someone at Apple. And they said, oh, that's an interesting idea. And they didn't say. And then as soon as I always forget, no, they can't do nanotexture on a regular phone. We were just talking about earlier in the show, the Ceramic Shield 2, and you don't get micro abrasions. If a regular iPhone had a nanotexture display, you'd get macro abrasions.

2:04:26I mean, that's the nature of the nanotexture. The Duo can do nanotexture on the interior display because when you put it in your pocket or you put it in your bag, you fold it. And so it shouldn't get scratched because it's folded. Don't put it in your bag unfolded, I would say, without ever having used one because it will get scratched to some degree. It looks amazing. It feels amazing to the fingers. It does kind of haunt me that I've only gotten brief hands-on time with it because it is

2:05:01intriguing. I do. I have serious questions about how much I will enjoy using it closed with the squat outer screen. I've just thought, I don't know how much time you spent with it closed. I spent more time with it closed than open because I opened it and I thought, well, it's like an iPad mini. And it's not. It is a different OS. Which I'll come back to in a second. But I kind of am familiar with the basic form factor and the dimensions.

2:05:31Whereas closed and using the outer display, that's where everything is weirder to me. Right? And it's like you've got all these controls on the side now. It's sort of other people. This is not an original observation. But basically, you get a content area that's the 16 to 9 widescreen area of most iPhones. And then the controls go over on the side, right? In the extra space. Yeah. You've got like an iPhone 6 or 7 shape in the left and then a control bar on the right

2:06:05with the toolbar buttons. And it's just weird. It's weird to have a back button that's... You know, I thought it was weird when they tried... I still have my Safari on the phone set with the location bar at the top. Oh, really? I don't know. Yeah. But that's just me being a fuddy-duddy. I think if it's a web browser, the address is at the top. And I could never get used to it at the bottom. Although I will say with the week I spent with the Pro Max review unit, I kept it at the bottom. Okay. I can live with it. I could live with it either way. Especially with the bigger Pro Max.

2:06:36You know, it's like, oh, I'll leave it there. Top, bottom, I can get used to. Having the back button on the right of a web browser, that's weird. It's weird. I'm sorry. I'm not saying it's wrong. You're MacDoc. On the right, always. You do put it on the right. Okay. I've had it on the right since before Mac OS X even came out because on classic Mac OS, I had a drag thing dock over on the right. So I'm a dock on the right person on the Mac. I was wondering, I just keep my dock on the bottom, but I like make it very small.

2:07:07And then I have it set to like almost to the largest magnification if I mouse open it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was wondering how you would like it because it seems to be the closest thing you're ever going to get to the iPhone mini.

2:07:23It doesn't feel like a mini though. It's a mini size area of the screen. It's just too different, right? And that's, I wish they made, I wish, what I wish they made is a mini pro, right? I just charged me more for it. I don't care if it's smaller. I would like an iPhone 19 pro mini, but they're not going to make that. So I don't know, but maybe, and I've been thinking about it. It may not be for me. It probably isn't for me. I think if I can't get used to moving my Safari location field from the top to the bottom,

2:07:54I'm probably not going to get used to a passport shaped iPhone. Do you plan to get it to try like setting it as your main device for, however long, how long would you give it a try to see if it would be your main thing? Cause it sounds like you haven't decided that a foldable is not for you. You're more curious if it is. Well, I, again, and it's just to get it over with. I, you know, I don't have one. I'm guessing you don't have one. And I know people don't think through how Apple does this the way you and I do.

2:08:28But in my experience, Apple has never given anybody I know a review unit more than a few days ahead of when they go on pre-order. And if you ask, Hey, am I going to get an iPhone duo review unit? They, they don't answer. They'll say, Oh, well that's, we'll talk. That's the, I forget what, I don't even know what the Apple answer to that is, but they wouldn't say yes or no. So there's, and when you do get review units, you sign an NDA or I don't know what they call

2:09:01it. It's like an NDA where it's like, I agree that I'm not going to post about this until the embargo date on the next week. And I'm not going to post pictures to social media that were taken with the camera until the embargo date. And I don't even read it anymore, but, and it's basically you're going to get this and you're going to keep it secret until the embargo. And in my experience, and they don't talk about it beforehand. So I am, I'm under no embargo regarding the iPhone duo right now. Cause I don't have one and they haven't offered me one and I haven't signed anything.

2:09:32But what I would expect is if it, they stick to the schedule, they have stick for every product that I've ever reviewed before the review units will come out around. If it goes on pre-order on October 16th, review units will go to the hands of selected reviewers on the 13th or the 14th, like Tuesday or Wednesday of that week. I think it'll be a little more than that. Like, I don't think so. Because this past, so the iPhone 18 pro that we just got, I left Apple with that on the

2:10:07Wednesday of, and then the embargo. Pre-orders for Saturday. The embargo wasn't following Tuesday though. Nope. It was Wednesday. Wasn't it? So, so we had a week. So we had a week with it though. Yeah. So we had one week. Which was, which is as generous as they get. Yes. Yes. Right. And that's the other thing is they do not let reviewers in my experience and the experience of people in the racket who I talked to, they never let us have more than a week with a device before customers, before the reviews come out.

2:10:41Right. And then the reviews come out like on a Wednesday or a Tuesday, it depends. They change the day of the week, but then customers get it on Friday. That's the day when the Apple executives go to fifth Avenue in New York and there's people waiting in line and there's on the news and all that happens. But there's, that's the cadence review units go out in the middle of one week at the end of that week, three or four days later, there's pre-orders. Then in the middle of the next week, after six or seven days, the people who have the

2:11:12review units are allowed to publish. Oh yeah. That's what you mean. Yep. And then three days, two or three days after that, everybody in the world can just go in an Apple store and buy it. Now you're not going to be able to buy the duo, but because it's going to be sold out. The people who got the pre-orders in within the first 10 seconds of them coming online on October 16th, we'll have them in their hands. So I would guess it'll be, if I look at the calendar, it'll be Tuesday, October 13th

2:11:42or Wednesday, October 14th, when people who get review units for the duo get them. And that the review embargo will be probably Wednesday, the 21st. And then on the 23rd, two days later, anybody who bought one and gets one on day one will get it. That's what I expect. And I can say that because I haven't agreed to anything and they didn't tell me anything. Right. And then if we record an episode, if I record an episode of the talk show that week, I won't be able to talk about it because it'll be under an embargo. My question for you is if we're expecting an event in October from Apple, which most people

2:12:19are, with things like the rumored HomePad type thing that Gurman has reported on for years, a HomePod with a screen of some sort that might be like a family screen device for the kitchen or whatever. I don't know. What else are we expecting? A new MacBook Pro or MacBook Ultra, whatever, that rumored touchscreen MacBook. Yeah. I wonder about that. I know Gurman says it's coming and I don't ever want to bet money against what he says, even though he is wrong quite a bit.

2:12:49But I still don't want to bet against him. Right. I don't know about that. So like one way they could do it would be, I guess, how will they give you the review units if you are lucky enough to get a review unit? And again, I don't know if I am. I kind of hope I am. I kind of would bet that I will be, but I never take it for granted. I wouldn't be shocked if I don't. I wouldn't be shocked because it's a weird device and maybe it'll only be three people who get it, like the original iPhone or four people. Oh, please, for the love of God, no. I don't know. You never know.

2:13:20But the other thing is they don't like shipping secret things by FedEx. They like to hand them to people and just here it's in Apple employees' hands and now it is in John Gruber's hands. And you've signed a thing and now it's your responsibility. They don't like taking secret things and handing it to a FedEx guy and then the FedEx guy puts it on an airplane. They might. Pre-embargo. Pre-embargo. They don't like to do that. Right. Pre-embargo. So it could be that they'll just ship them to reviewers, but if they hand them over,

2:13:54where would they do that? Would they request people fly back to California to get them or will they have an event in New York or something, which they often do? But if they have the event in New York, would it also double as the, hey, here's this HomePod with a screen thing? Yeah, I think. But then are they going to give us one of those to review too? One of the reasons I feel like it kind of had to work out this way is just supply chain. But in hindsight, they could not have given reviewers both phones two weeks ago because

2:14:24no one would have reviewed the iPhone 18 Pro. They would have said, oh, it's Burgundy. And then they would have spent the whole week with the Duo. And at places like The Verge with multiple staffers, they would have stabbed each other trying to get the Duo. That's funny. No, that's true.

2:14:40And so I don't know how they can't give me a HomePod with a screen and the Duo and expect me to review them in a week. I'm lucky if I can get one review out in a week. Right?

2:14:50And they don't want those reviews distracting from each other. Right? Right. I think the HomePod with screen, it's obviously a much, much less important. Low profile. Yeah. More of a low profile device compared to the iPhone Duo. Right? And so if I had to guess, if they want to hand these things to us, they would do an event.

2:15:15Then they could hand both things over or it's going to be, I mean, the HomePod with a screen seems kind of, I'm guessing New York because California is really only for DubDub and iPhone event. Yeah. And they don't like to stay in the same place twice in a row. I don't think, it seems like it's going to be a cumbersome kind of box for the HomePod. It has a HomePod. It has a screen. Maybe that's what they're going to ship to you because that is not as top secret, high level. We'll ship you this. Or, let me run this by, I think about these things.

2:15:48And again, I don't know why, I could just sit there and wait, not even worry about it and then just wait and have it happen. No, it's part of the fun. But here's what I've thought about. All right. What if it's another, here's the announcement, we're going to tell you all about it. We're going to have demos that you can do in the hands-on and try it. But this doesn't ship until November. And so we'll give you the review unit in another month where you'll get review units of the HomePod. Even though the event was in the middle of October, but then you do leave, some of the people will leave the thing in the middle of October with a duo review unit for the next

2:16:21week. Yes. That's my guess. Okay. And then. Either I'm all wet and nothing like this will happen and it will play out at a totally different schedule, or it's going to come out exactly like this and someone at Apple is going to say who leaked it to Gruber, but nobody leaked anything to me, including the duo name. I did not, nobody leaked that to me. Right. But that was, that was a good, good guess. Yeah. Well, I'm good. Sometimes I'm good at thinking how Apple thinks and the duo thing. I think that they like, I think someone like Jaws, who's been there for a long time, remembers

2:16:55the old PowerBook duos. They liked the name. I forgot. I even forgot. I keep forgetting. I should link to this on Daring Fireball. They use the name duo just a couple of years ago for the duo charging dock. Oh, right. It was the, it was a lightning, the MagSafe duo charging dock where it folded up into a nice little square and then you unfold it and you had a MagSafe for your phone and a watch charger. Uh, yeah. MagSafe duo charging. They just liked the name duo. I think duo sounds good next to Neo and, and it is, it's like two, it is pricing scheme

2:17:26though. It is. And Jaws said this in multiple interviews. Jaws said it multiple times in interviews that he gave after the announcement. It's two products. It is. It's like you open it up and it is like a small iPad mini tablet, but running iPhone OS, not iPad OS. And then you fold it up and it is a passport style closed phone that is actually not too thick and is lightweight and not too ridiculous or not ridiculous at all to just use in its closed form. Yeah. And if you wanted an iPad mini size device with a 120 Hertz pro motion display, here it

2:18:03is. Here it is. Right. And that's the way I would just go back to it. This, and again, I've only used it in the hands-on area and a little bit in briefing time. I have probably spent less time with it in my hand than you because you spent a lot of time in the content and creation area shooting extra videos in Utah. This is what I first got out of my head to invite you on to show Andrew is. I was, you're like, oh, are you leaving? I'm like, I'm out of here. I got to get the hell out of here. Again, you were just starting to work after a long day, but it was like you were going

2:18:34into the room where they had content areas for you guys to shoot footage. And then you said to me, well, you have a YouTube channel. You should make more than one video a year. And I'm looking at you after that. It was like, I don't know, like six o'clock at night. I mean, and the day started at 8 a.m. I was exhausted. And you're like going to work. I'm like, yeah, I'm signing up for that. No way. So I haven't used it that much. But the way I'm thinking about it two weeks later is I'm almost thinking of the Duo as

2:19:05more like an iPad mini that folds into a phone you can take with you than as a phone that you can unfold into an iPad mini like thing, that it's like a $2,000 iPad mini Pro. Yeah. Pro not with the best camera in the world, but pro because it can fold up and it has this amazing matte screen inside. And from what I saw, I have a lot of questions about how much I'm going to like the iOS on

2:19:35the outside screen when it's folded with that stuff I talked about with where it's moved over to the right. But opening it up, I loved it. I think I like it. And again, I've only used it for a couple of minutes. So I withhold my right to say, oh, no, never mind. It's not that good or it's not that different or whatever. But I think I like it better than iPadOS because I love the Mac and you might think, well, if you love the Mac so much, you probably love iPadOS since last year with the iPadOS 26 where

2:20:06it got more Mac-like with the red, yellow, green buttons and the windows you can drag around. I do think that's better than the iPadOS that came before it for multitasking.

Duo OS versus iPadOS

2:20:14But I don't want multitasking on an iPad. My favorite iPad era was like when it was brand new, when it really was more like a big iPhone. And I think that they added split screen to the iPad while it still had a home button. And I think that was the fundamental mistake where they went wrong. And it's not that they were wrong that people wanted to do split screen. It's that it was incompatible with the home button as the fundamental metaphor for getting

2:20:46around the system because there's only one home button. But now you have two apps on the screen. And like you said, the only other time they've had a big change like this with the iPhone was iPhone 10 where they got rid of the home button and you drag up from the bottom. With the Duo, when you do split screen, you just drag up from the bottom like a phone to get rid of one of the two sides. And now you have a home screen underneath and you can just open another app to fill the slide. But I think it is actually a better multitask.

2:21:17It's not more complex. It's not better for experts. But for just simple, I want to put two apps on the tablet at the same time. I think it's a better interface than iPadOS. And so I think the fact that it doesn't, they didn't say, and in fact, it definitely doesn't work this way. It's not iOS on the outside and iPadOS on the inside. It is Duo OS on both screens. It's different. And I think it's a better, for me, a better tablet interface than iPadOS.

2:21:50I think it's a better tablet. That's my anticipation. So would I spend $2,000 on an iPad? Maybe. Let me ask you this. This is my one fear.

2:22:02Obviously, what they showed us was apps that are optimized for this device. If you have downloaded a bunch of third-party apps and they're not updated yet for Duo, I don't know if you've seen how they look. They look almost like how apps used to look when you would launch them on the iPad back in the day and they have that compatibility mode. Are you going to buy a Duo and then most of your apps are looking, I mean, just look weird.

2:22:33You're hoping for this full-screen experience and all of a sudden, everything's cut off. And if that's the case, I think people are going to have a hard time accepting $2,000 for that. Yeah. And there's two ways of compatibility. Well, there's three. The right way is to recompile the app and adjust it with iOS 27.1, the weird 27.1 version number that's only for the Duo. And it's a race against time for developers working on it now to get it out within the

2:23:05next, what, four weeks. And I think a lot of the indie apps will get that done, right? Overcast from Marco Armit is going to have it. And Apple's apps are going to have it. Then there's apps that aren't adjusted for the Duo or OS 27.1, but have been recompiled with Xcode 27.0's SDK. Those look mostly okay. They don't get, it's like they fill the screen, but they don't fill the right side area.

2:23:35Okay. And there's, but you still get the system status bar, like with the new circular battery thing and the time. And then there's what apps look like if they're still on an older SDK than 27.0. And those are the ones where you get just huge black areas and a tiny little iPhone sized window in the middle that like spans the crease.

2:24:00I don't know, like is Slack already on, at least on 27.0? I don't know. Right. Google's apps, Google's apps notoriously back in the day, every time Apple would change the screen size of the new iPhone, it would be like 11 months before Google's apps didn't have black bars at the top and bottom. Right. And those are super popular apps, right? I don't know what people use the Google app for, just the app called Google. But every time I look at the top app store list, it's like number six or seven, right?

2:24:31It is a super popular app. But don't you think that, hey, isn't it interesting in hindsight that after all these years, Instagram finally came out with an iPad app this year? Mm-hmm. Don't you think that somebody at Apple, they're like, they got together with people at Instagram and they're like, look, you guys don't like us. We don't like you. But let's, you're a super popular app. We're not going to tell you what we're doing. But you're really going to want to have something like an iPad-like layout for the iPhone.

2:25:02Have a form factor. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Some kind of Apple-like way of not telling them, but telling them, even if you only care about the iPhone and you want to be spiteful about not having a native iPad app, the time for that spite is over. And that they were like, okay. And now this year, they've got it. So I think Instagram is going to be there on day one or very soon after. And I think Instagram, whatever they think of Apple and whatever Zuckerberg thinks about Apple and the competition there, they know.

2:25:35It just goes back to the type of people who Apple has invited, the influencers, the pure Instagram personality celebrities who got invited to the event. They know what people who use Instagram care about. And that's like new cool things. Yes. So I think like Instagram will be updated. But what about like your bank app and shit like that? Like there's, that's going to be a little iPhone posted stamp in the middle of the duo screen for two years. It is. I'm mad. I'm mad about that. I thought it was interesting though. They had Netflix because Netflix still has not put out a Vision Pro app and they have Apple

2:26:11TV and they did not choose to showcase Apple TV. They specifically chose Netflix. And I think that's such a great example. And maybe the Apple actually learned a lesson from Vision Pro and they're like, oh yeah, maybe we do need developer relations with some of these big companies. And yeah, maybe we should have gotten Netflix on board with our cinematic viewing experience, Vision Pro before we came out with it rather than assuming that they would just come and do this. So why don't we go and make nice with them and have them build the thing for the duo?

2:26:44And they were, I think I, nobody at Apple told me this, but I kind of think Apple was like, I can't believe we didn't think of that where with the duo folded like a laptop. Oh, with you're looking at the big screen, but it's folded like a laptop into an L shape to watch a horizontal Netflix video. It, it renders a reflection of the video on the flat part. And it's, it is live. And as you change the angle of the duo, it changes the reflection to reflect the angle.

2:27:17It is, it's like an Apple like thing to do. And the Netflix team built it in like a couple of days in secret at Apple park. So I think that's a great sign that Apple knows the most popular apps and is going to do the developer relations work to make it happen. So I don't think that's going to keep people from buying, you know, and I think people will just, I think it'll hopefully be the sort of thing where people will just yell at the apps that aren't updated to put pressure rather than not by the duo because of it by the duo and then yell at your bank for having a shitty app.

2:27:50Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hopefully we're not seeing a bunch of one star. I mean, cause a lot of the, the best apps out there are just teams of one or two people. Right. And it's like Apple didn't give them a lot of time to, to do this. Right. Um, but regardless as a purchaser, I want, I want to take advantage of those screens. I don't, especially the outer screen, which is so small anyway. Like I don't want an even smaller, weird app experience. So I don't know. Right. With a big black bar that doesn't have any content on this.

2:28:20Right. The top 20 or 30 apps paid free, et cetera. Games. These have to be day one, ready to go. Yeah. I do. What do you think about the theory? People keep bringing it up and now, I don't know. I thought, no, Apple doesn't do that. But what about the theory that the iPhone air was sort of not a test, but sort of a proof of concept for making a thinner iPhone to get some of the engineering challenges out of the way before making the duo? Because I have to say, having had the duo in hand, it does feel a lot like an iPhone

2:28:53air. Yeah. Like it really does. I don't know the psychology behind it, but Apple does use, like I guess one example would be the digital crown from the Apple Watch appearing on the Vision Pro, right? Like it's like they will make something and then figure out a cool way to reuse it elsewhere. And so they did titanium, 15 and 16. They continued titanium on the air and it was thin, right?

2:29:26It was the thinnest at the time until the duo, the thinnest iPhone ever made. It's titanium.

2:29:34I don't know. Again, I don't know if it's like we're just going to release this air as a trial for this other thing. I think it was more the evolution of the titanium technology and can they keep it cool? Can they have a battery that runs? Like just making sure and preparing for this. Yeah. All right. Last question. Given that you've used and bought, as you said, all of the Android. I didn't buy it, to be clear. Well, you just carried and reviewed. Yes.

2:30:04Do you think you're going to be a duo owner? Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Well, it sounds like. Because, I mean, a lot of people that do this job, you're different because you're independent, right? You do this because you have a passion for it and you love it. Same here. At the end of the day, the reason I started all of this on day one is because I'm so passionate about new technology and it excites me. And so here it is. Here is a, again, a genuinely brand new, different iPhone experience.

2:30:40Of course, I'm going to want to get in there and use it. I did think that, kind of speaking of a question that you just asked about the Air, the iPhone

eSIM transfer and switching phones

2:30:51eSIM transfer tool that they put in OS 27. The handoff thing. The handoff. The iPhone handoff. It allows you to very easily keep a pro phone in your bag when needed, right? And carry a duo with you. So if I need to, if I need better cameras or for whatever reason, need better battery, I can easily switch. I do not think it's a coincidence that feature is debuting alongside the duo. Exactly. Because I think with eSIMs, Apple employees, especially the ones who work on the new iPhones,

2:31:26are used to carrying multiple phones because they get the new phone while it's a prototype and they can't take it out. You know, or they have to put it in a case to make it look like the old one. But with the duo, they definitely couldn't, right? You couldn't even put that in a case and walk around. You could only use it at work when you're in areas where everybody around you is allowed to see it. And the eSIM thing has made it easier to switch between phones. Somebody, a friend who's never really, only ever switched eSIMs when he's bought a new

2:31:57iPhone. I got a new iPhone. Now I have to switch the eSIM. It was like, I don't even know how possible it is to do the, just the normal go through Verizon and move the eSIM from one phone to another. And I said, oh, I do it all the time because of what I do. It takes, I would say about two or three minutes. You have to have both phones. You have to start it on the phone that doesn't have the active eSIM and say, I want it. And it goes through iCloud. So it says, oh, John, your phone number 267, whatever. Do you want to transfer that?

2:32:28Yes. And then it says, okay, now go to your other phone and confirm it. And you have to do a face ID, double click on the side button to say, yes, I want to move my eSIM. And then the first, the phone that has it will spin for a bit. And then the other phone spins for a bit. And then it says, okay, your SIM is transferred. And then there's sometimes a couple of minutes where your iMessages are funny and somebody texts you and they go across as green because the phone didn't register, the new, the phone that just got, I don't know, one of the two phones hasn't completed whatever the handshake

2:33:02to the iMessage server and you get green, you get or send green messages for a bit. And then within half an hour, it's all worked out. And it's not bad. And if you have to use multiple phones for work or for reviews, it's not too bad. But you wouldn't want to switch like that all, all the time. No. What they're saying, the way they're describing iPhone handoff works, you just, whichever one you're using is the one that has the phone number. Yes. Whichever phone is unlocked, it instantly picks it up.

2:33:33That sounds exactly like what this, if you don't love it as your main phone, when you want the phone as a phone, or you want the longest battery life, or you really care about the camera. But other times, if you could just take your iPad mini with you, I'm on my iPad mini and I'm doing something or watching a video or something, and I just want to fold it up and put it in my pocket and leave to go get lunch and come back and not worry about the phone, the other phone I left on the chart. This sounds amazing.

2:34:04Yeah. And again, but it also sounds very much like, oh, you want to buy two expensive iPhones from Apple? Yes. You got $3,000 worth of iPhones in your pocket. Yeah. Tim Cook up in the chairman's office is nodding his head saying, yes, yes. And John Ternus is like, yes, numbers go up in my first year of the job. People are going to say I'm doing a very good job. But how many people already own an iPad and an iPhone? Lots of people, right? And it's like maybe instead of buying an iPad that says iPad, you buy an iPhone Duo.

2:34:39And maybe instead of buying a new iPhone Pro, you just keep the iPhone 15 Pro that you already have, right? And that's, sure, now it's three years old, but you just keep it. And instead of upgrading from the iPhone 15 Pro, you just keep it. And now you have an iPad Duo, but sometimes you still have your iPhone 15 Pro with you in your pocket. And thanks to iPhone handoff and the $5 a month or whatever these bastard carriers are going to charge us for it, it's still $5 a month is less than what they charge for

2:35:12an iPad with cellular, which is $20 a month. Absolutely. So, and what's wrong with AT&T that, yeah, well, and Verizon, it's said they're going to do it, but they haven't said when, and they haven't said what it's going to cost. But I've been on Verizon at least since 2011 or something like that. And if there's something they can charge you for, they do. I mean, so I'm hoping it's $5 a month instead of zero, even though I think it should be zero, but given how much I pay already. But I think that's the way to think about it. It's a $2,000 iPad mini that you can fold up and take with you.

2:35:45And it's by far and away the best and most fun iPad mini I've ever seen, even though it doesn't run iPadOS, but I actually think that might be better anyway. And you can even use a pencil. Yeah. We didn't get to try that, but. No, that was weird, right? That was kind of weird that they didn't let you try that. I was like, hey, is there one set up with a pencil anywhere? And they were like, no, no, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. We should have thought of that. Everything that they don't do for us in the media, it's always, oh, that's a good idea.

2:36:16But I don't know why. I don't know why they didn't have a pencil set up, but they didn't. I think maybe because it was buggy still. It seems to me like part of the whole thing with the SDK not coming out till now and everything is that this whole initial 27.1 release of iOS might be a little buggy. Yeah. I thought they learned their lesson from your article last year, though, which is don't announce things to us that we can't try. Right. And that would be the only thing this year that was like we announced it, but there was no way for us to actually see it in action, even in their hands.

2:36:47Yeah. But yeah, maybe. Yeah. I didn't see anybody use it with a pencil at all. That was now that I think about it. I didn't even see it because sometimes there's things that they'll show that but it never leaves an Apple employee's hands. They didn't even show it in the event. They just showed it as a still image of the pencil leaning against it. We never got to see someone actually writing. Yeah. Weirder and weirder. I think. Yeah. And then there's the German report that they intended to make a special little golf pencil for it. That would have been cool. That would have been duo sized, but that got canceled.

2:37:20So maybe that had something to do with it. I don't know. Yeah. Are you excited for the pencil support in it? I'm not really a big pencil person. I don't know. No, no, I always keep the pencil on top of the iPad and use it like twice a year or something. It's just there. Yeah. So. All right. One more question for you as somebody who has tested a bunch of these folding phones. Yeah. How do you find typing on them? That's the thing that I didn't really do in the hands-on area. And that's the one question, the most frequent question from my readers that I can't really answer because it turns out that the things I decided to try weren't typing.

2:37:53I don't love typing even on an iPad mini. Yeah. So I don't know what happened to this mode on, because I don't, unless I have to like send it back up again. The iPad used to allow you to have a little split screen keyboard when typing on it. Yep. And I don't remember seeing that in recent years, but most of the foldable phones have that and it makes it very easy to. And I think the duo does too, but I think only in the widescreen, right? I don't think you can do it. Yeah. When you have that, it's actually, it looks complicated, but your fingers just know what

2:38:25to do. So I'm not worried about typing. Because you can just use your thumbs. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All right. I think we've gone on long enough, but anything else you want to talk about from the keynote? I think that about wraps it up though. I think that's it. Yeah. All right. Exciting times. Thank you for taking it, especially given your incredibly busy travel schedule. You're probably coming back east soon too. Yes, I will. I'll be there next week. Yeah. And if there's an event in October, I do hope to see you there.

2:38:57People can find your YouTube channel at YouTube and it's just username at A-N-D-R-U. That's right. Right? That's the best place to find you. Anywhere else? What else do you want to promote? Same on threads, at Andrew on threads as well. Andrew. Oh, you got a good username there. Yep. A-N-D-R-U on both. And keep up the good work. Lots of more reviews to come. Thanks to our sponsors. We had Factor, where you can buy meals, and Notion, the AI for teams. So my thanks to them.

2:39:28My thanks to you, Andrew. Good to see you. Absolutely. Same here.