Did Apple Actually Duo It?

Welcome and Apple Event Week

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1:12Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And over at the producer desk, we have Adam and Ellis. Hello. We, video listeners, video viewers, you can already tell we're in a new place because it's Apple Event Week and the news of the week is the event that happened here in California. And we figured before we flew home, we might as well use one of their nicely loaned podcast studio spaces to tell you guys all about what happened. We have to because it's on a Wednesday and we have to get this out. It's Thursday right now.

1:43We are crushing this. This is going to be great. But we do have a lot to talk about, so we should just jump directly into it. Now, I see here that we have this nicely organized doc where we have some of the more chill announcements first, AirPods first, watch first. Don't say thank you because he's going to say, but I'm going to go off script and miss all of the stuff you guys wrote. Let's stick with it because retention is very important, I say. But just to make sure people know what's coming, we are talking about the AirPods. We're talking about the new watches. We are also talking about the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and the new folding iPhone Duo, which is all that we got.

2:19We did not get new base iPhone 18s. We did not get new iPhone Air or SE or anything like that. If you watch the impressions video, we know we kind of assume that's coming like early next year. So we kind of like they did the thing where they made room for the big important thing and we talked a lot about foldable and we will also talk a lot about foldable.

AirPods 5 Updates

2:36But let's do the other stuff first. Good. Great. OK. Well, I figured the way that I organized this document was sort of least updates to biggest updates. Nice. OK. Which is kind of how Apple usually presents this stuff. They're like, you guys love AirPods. Here's the same thing. Yeah. They actually started off by reminding us that iOS 27 exists and that Siri exists. So it's sort of re-announcement stuff for people who didn't watch Dub Dub. I forgot about that. That was a big deal because a lot of these people are buying new iPhones, but they didn't. They were not on the betas. They weren't on beta five.

3:06Yeah. I'd argue they started with a CEO pass off. That's true. Also very true. We did. I liked the little Tim Cook, like I'm not the main character. That's your guy. I thought that was a cute way to do it. You know, he had such main character energy. I mean, he always does. You know, he always does. He did nod it off to Ternus, who did the whole event, as we expected. Something we asked on our Man on the Street pod, which will actually come out after this, is do we think, what was it, hello and good morning? Do we think that's a catchphrase or no? It sounds like he did not say that.

3:38Hello and welcome. Hello and welcome. Yeah. Is that what he started with? Only on the stream. On the stream. In person, he said, wow. Okay. That's actually, I feel better about that because whenever you see the little like lowercase hello text, I think that's like when you first boot an iPhone, that's what it says or whatever. And then we all know Tim Cook's sort of trademarked opening line at every keynote was good morning, maybe five, six, seven, eight, nine times, which is great. But then I was like, Ternus can't say good morning. He has to say something else. So what will he say? And I figured it would be a lowercase hello.

4:09It kind of was. A lowercase hello? Specifically a lowercase hello. What does a lowercase hello sound like? Hello. Hello. Yeah. And I think he could do it. It's not like, you know, Tim Cook has this like radiating energy when he says good morning. It's good morning. It's a capital G and a capital M. Yeah, it was good. That was great. It was pretty low. He was practicing that all morning. You know? Ternus is very low key, low key. So they did the CEO handoff. Ternus leads the event, dives in. AirPods 5 is the first product we get. And as you said, probably the fewest amount of updates, but also pretty reasonably expected

4:43updates. It gets the $129 price tier has ANC. It's more powerful ANC. And it has a non-wireless charging case. And I think it has slightly thicker mesh. So it has a little bit better passive cancellation as well. But then there's a $149 version that adds a wireless charging case and the little volume control on the stems from the Pros, which I really like. At this point, you basically have the Pros without the rubber tips. Yeah. So nice.

5:14Yeah. That's good. And they sound pretty good. And yeah, it's interesting that if you pay $20 more to get the wireless charging case, and they just call it AirPods 5 with wireless charging case, you also get the volume thing on the stem. For some reason, that's not on the standard model. It also gets an extra hour of battery life over the version that doesn't have the wireless charging case. Yeah. And the total battery life is 20 hours on the non-wireless charging case and 22 on the wireless charging case. Apparently, it's a slightly bigger battery in the case too. That's strange. I don't get it. It's two SKUs, but they have two names.

5:44It is. I'm going to say it's worth the $20. I think so. You get the Find My Speaker too, right? Yeah. That's the other thing. You don't get a Find My Speaker on the... I don't even know why they're making the non-wireless charging version. As a non-AirPods user, this was already very confusing to me because I forgot that AirPods 4 had the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with ANC, correct? So the way they described things in comparison were like, this is 1.5x more powerful ANC over last year's model, but then the other one was just like, you actually get ANC.

6:15So I was just lost. Yeah. Last year, the AirPods 4, there was a version with ANC and a version without. Yeah. So now they both have ANC. But one has wireless charging and one doesn't. But one has wireless charging. I don't know why they made the cheaper version. I think just to keep it at that price point, I suppose. It is funny that it's with the wireless charging case, but the actual... Is actually different. Is actually different with the stem. Yeah. Yeah. Which is confusing, but... It's interesting. I think a lot of the software stuff is more interesting than the actual hardware. The live translate, I want to try. Obviously, the passive...

6:47The noise cancellation is always better for me in the silicon-tipped pros that actually stay in my ears. But for the people who allegedly are out there that just don't want that, that really, really want the hard-tipped earbuds and it stays in their ears because they have the perfect ear. Like Brandon. Brandon is... I'm jealous of them. We met someone yesterday that said that. I know these people exist. It's like, now you get the same headphone and you just get to pick which one fits your ear better, which I think is a good thing. I think most truly wireless headphones, the worst part about them is finding one that fits your ear. Now you have two options for it without losing much else.

7:19Yeah. So that was good. That was pretty basic.

Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4

7:22The next bigger thing that we'll shift to is the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, which actually are, in my opinion, bigger upgrades than we usually get from the Apple Watch Series upgrades because they completely redesigned the bottom of the Apple Watch. Yeah. So it's a bunch of different things. Yeah. I have two really big thoughts about them. I'm excited. And I think the review has to dive into these thoughts. Yeah. But we should first talk about the physical updates, which most of them are around like the cluster of sensors on the underside of the watch, which have been slowly evolving

7:55over the years. They've been adding a couple sensors here and there, but they completely redesigned them, add way more photodiodes, way more sensors, way more LEDs, more powerful and bigger LEDs. Yeah. And all of this is in the name of measuring your heart rate way more frequently and way more accurately. Mm-hmm. And then they published a paper, which I'm going to link below because I think it's really interesting, where they took a huge sample size of people and compared it to a whole bunch of other different wearables, including the Whoop, including wearable rings, and concluded with scientific rigor that it is the most accurate heart rate sensing wearable.

8:29Oh, so they did publish a paper. Yeah. That's what I was wondering yesterday during the event. I was like, where is this paper? It's a public paper. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. So that to me was, that's a direct shot at all of this. Like we've talked about all year, like the Whoops and then the Whoop competitors, which is like, okay, obviously Whoop has their subscription. So people are attacking that. You have Fitbit Air. You have the Garmin, the, what is it called? The Circa. Circa. Like all of these are trying to directly, essentially build Whoop, but for not as much money. Yeah. And along comes Apple, no subscription for an Apple Watch.

9:02You get the Apple Watch. Obviously it's in the ecosystem, but it's allegedly, well, now scientifically confirmed, just as accurate, if not more so than a Whoop. Yeah. And they redo the Health app, which is coming in an update later this year, that adds a lot of the interpretation of the data. Yeah. Because there's always been a ton of data, but it's, the Health app's been just like a, like a, like a doctor's office, just like tons of lists of stuff that it's been collecting. Yeah. And it's not really fun to poke through there, but AI is going to sort of, you know, unveil your sleep score and your health age and your readiness today and all that stuff.

9:35So that'll give you some recommendations. I wish you guys could have heard Andrew go off about health age yesterday when we were watching the event. I don't even remember what I said. I know you blacked out. It is, it is such a direct, I mean, cause Whoop, you know, Whoop does your Whoop age. A lot of things do. Garmin does a thing. Yeah. Everything does it now. Yeah. This is, it's, it's directly, it's not cloning, but it's giving you the exact same set of features. So if you were choosing between any of these, if you're cross shopping. It's great entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many small things about the updates to like the health app and the way that they're tracking data that I feel like are direct attacks at the things that we're trying to

10:10attack the Apple watch. Every year, the pixel watch is making a big deal about how many more times it tracks your heart rate over like compared to the Apple watch. And now Apple just came in and they're like, nope, we're doing it 60 times a minute now. 60 times more frequently. Yes. Every five seconds in the background pulling for heart rate. Yeah. All day, every day, all day during your sleep. 24 times more frequent heart rate variability readings compared to series 11. Yeah. Okay. So the readiness thing and like the new health app redesign, my hot take is that they are

10:42preparing to release a Fitbit Air competitor because yes, look, look, this is not confirmed. I'm into this. I'm into that idea. So a lot of the changes in the health app kind of bring all the stuff that you would normally look at on your watch into like this more visual design. Like they have this new pedal design inside the new health app that takes like all of these readings like you were talking about. And usually it was just like charts and lists and all these things you have to scroll, scroll, scroll. Now they have a whole tab that just has this pedal design that they call it, which is sort

11:13of looks like flower pedals with things like your sleep score and like your readiness score and all of these things. And it gives you sort of this barometer of how good you're doing in each thing. And if the more filled those bars are, the better you're doing. Yeah. And if you look at like the Fitbit Air or like the Whoop, this is the thing that they do really well is like when you actually look at your phone, that's the only surface you have to actually see your information. Yeah. On the Apple Watch, they designed most of that information to see on the Apple Watch screen.

11:43You're not opening the health app on your phone that often. So putting that display in the health app prepares them to have an equivalent with no displaying a wrist. I just don't think they would want to do anything to get an Apple Watch off your wrist. I think that there are a lot of people who just don't want to wear the Apple Watch that much. I mean, I think- I know you don't. I just don't think that's a big enough sample size of people. I think they want all of the extra Whoop competitor, Fitbit Air competitor, extra Garmin. I mean, Garmin's been doing this forever. Also, they want all those crazy metrics, especially with like an Apple Watch Ultra replicating

12:15Garmin kind of stuff. Yeah. Totally makes sense. I just think they also want the, especially because they announced all this stuff like the 15 second live rewind and listening all day kind of stuff. They want that on your wrist all the time. I have thoughts on that. And if a screenless one doesn't have that, they much prefer having the thing listening to you on your wrist. I agree. It's kind of like Apple would love to sell you an Apple Watch and if you, but I also think that the screenless fitness trackers are like a separate new growing category that if they don't offer anything, they're just going to leak Apple Watch users into that

12:48until they offer some equivalent. And so we've seen people, I'm an example. I have leaked out of Apple Watch into a screenless fitness tracker. And that's not everyone. That's obviously a small group of people. But Whoop is huge. Fitbit Air is huge. Lots of these screenless. It's eight in the morning. Lots of these fiendless screenless trackers. Yeah. Lots of these screenless fitness trackers are interesting products. And I think if Apple could find a way to make it ecosystem pull, they would. I think, do we think the screenless fitness tracker is only popular because Whoop had all

13:22these very specific metrics and calculations and we're so much better than everyone else? No, do you think it's a different type of person? Yeah. I don't know. You're wearing a watch right now that's not a smart watch. I know, but I'm not wearing a screenless fitness tracker. I think the screenless fitness tracker is a slightly more health focused, slightly more athletic type of like buyer versus the Apple Watch is, it's the most popular watch in the world. It's the definition of like the baseline casual, I'm going to maybe get into this a little bit. So if they could offer something for the people who are like, I want more than the Apple Watch

13:53will give me and I don't want the screen on my wrist and I want to run an ultra marathon and the ultra watch is not what I want, it's just a possible new thing to sell them. I think my reason for that is I think everyone likes the Whoop because the metrics were different. Now everyone's copying it. I think more people are going to keep screen on their wrist now because they get the benefits of that with notifications and everything and they get all the new metrics. And I also think an ultra marathon's the number one time you want a screen on your wrist because you want all that stuff up to date. That's why Garmin dominates ultra marathon runners because you have a huge battery life

14:26with constant information feeding to you and you do not carry a phone with you. You know what? I did think about that, which is last year it was so easy for me to leave the Apple Watch because there was no black one.

14:37There was only dark blue, which is, Series 11 is fine, it's a very nice watch and I didn't want to wear the ultra so it was like, they didn't have a black one, it's like, you know what, I could leave the Apple Watch. Now they have a Series 12 and it has all these new features and it has one more data and there's a black one. And so I do see her playing Android. Do you miss having a screen? I don't. I don't miss having a screen. Yeah, I think a lot of people are like, oh my God, I can get all this without the annoyance of having a screen on my wrist. I think you guys are in our bubble too much. No, man.

15:07No, I don't miss a screen. People ask me about the Fitbit Air all the time. Yeah, but I don't think people want to be in another one. I think because no one wants the Pixel Watch. I think you guys are all thinking of these watches that no one really wants, but the Apple Watch is the most popular watch in the world. I mean, yeah, because watch is one category and it's enormous and this smaller but growing category of not a watch, but a fitness tracker, the debate is how big is this category? Is it big enough to warrant Apple's attention to make something? All right, well, neither of us. So what's the bet? How many years until this comes out?

15:38Okay, Max 2. Max 2? But I do think it's going to come out in a year. I don't think this comes out in two years. I think the iPhone, Apple Watch, it's not coming out ever. What would a screenless Apple Watch even be? Like the whole thing about the Apple Watch is that. Well, it wouldn't be an Apple Watch. The amount of what they put into their bands is crazy. I know, but like. I'm not saying they wouldn't make a good one. I'm just saying I don't think they're making it. Imagine you could just wear an Apple Watch bracelet and it just has the tracking. But don't all the screenless ones already plug into Apple Health? Like genuinely, what would be the offering there? Apple would have to find a way to make theirs plug into the ecosystem better than everyone

16:13else's. And you're right. A lot of these do dump the data into Apple Health already, which is a great point. And I wonder what Apple, if they were to jump in, I don't think there's any way they do it without finding something to add to theirs that no one else can do. I would argue everything they launched at this event is they're like, cool, stop buying that with your Apple Watch. You have it all on your Apple Watch now. There's no point of you getting a screenless. That did feel like. I agree with that, but I do think those are more targeted at the AI wearables that are going to come out, which. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's get to that. Wait, wait, wait. What's the bet? Yeah, I just wanted the bet to end. Two years. What are we doing? A year from now.

16:44A year. They're going to launch it at the iPhone 19. Wow. All right, what's the stakes?

16:51I don't know. Embarrass me somehow. No, we have to print out a full-size picture of the other person's face and put it on your laptop for a year. A year? A year? I love that. I think you have to drive to work for a week with a full-size cardboard cutout of the other person in your car. That's just to get by. Are you buying the cutout? Yeah. Okay, deal. Look, if it makes the people who pass me on the highway think I have more friends than I do, then that's a win for me. All right, perfect. We'll do that. Lane is going to hate that. I'll do that or be very scared, but be prepared to have a full-size David in your car all the time.

Audio Intelligence and Privacy Features

17:21This is my other, and I'm not going to say it's a conspiracy theory, but the more I listen to Apple talk about this watch, these watches, and specifically the new features that they added, which are sort of tied into the AI and software, the more I couldn't stop thinking about what we're expecting to come in this standalone AI device race. So for those who don't know, the Series 12 watch and the Series, or the Ultra 4 have these new features where Siri taps into the S11 chip to essentially, and this is going

17:55to be an oversimplification, but constantly be listening for conversations or words to be said in the Apple Watch's microphone, and at any point to summarize that for you in the Siri app. There's two features. There's one that's called Live Rewind, which is something just happened, and I want a summary of the last 15 seconds. I hit a button on the watch, and because it's always processing data, it takes that raw 15 seconds of audio, processes it in the secure exclave, doesn't ever go to the cloud or leave your device unencrypted, but gives you a transcription or a summary of what you were just listening

18:30to. It's going to be hard to explain it to the public without saying your watch is constantly listening to you. They're going to try, but that's one of the features. I know you like the other one more, but that demo to me felt so much like the, what kind of dog is this, where you're taking the picture of the dog and the person standing right there. Like, please read me the specials again while the waiter's standing right here. That was exactly the way, Andrew, in our briefing about this, multiple people were like, why wouldn't you just say, can you say that again? And they were like, you know, I don't know. Five seconds just seems too short.

19:00Like you're, the person's still there. You can just clarify. Okay. Apple is clearly very, very, very nervous about these features. They are both put under the audio intelligence umbrella, which is a new thing they're doing because they already have visual intelligence, smart branding, but they are so nervous because this is the thing that public's going to freak out the most at. It's opt-on. It's opt-in. It's going to be in beta. It's like every question we would ask, they were like, we're not really sure. And so give us feedback when you use it and we'll see, we'll maybe adapt the way it works.

19:32So they are just, they are like, they're stepping on coals right now. They're being very, very careful. So I just want to say there's a giant blowback already with metaglasses. Having every watch in the world potentially recording people is going to make a lot of people, I think very nervous metaglasses are videos and used to people are wearing them in like bathrooms and stuff. That's way weirder than, than a private conversation with a person. Listen, I'm not saying this is fantastic. And I agree with David that this is a very Apple, it is knows privacy is their thing.

20:03They know they're trying to tiptoe on this and make it as safe as possible. But yes, I'm sorry, Andrew, can you say that one more time as you hold up your wrist? Just real quick. The other feature is that if you have it enabled during the day, uh, in a separate new tab in the Siri app, there is a recap button, which will show you all day, a sort of a summary of some transcriptions and important things you may want to remember from your day. And once again, these are very difficult features to market without essentially saying your watch is always listening to you for your convenience.

20:34Because it is. So that being said, I hear all of this. And then you think about what is, what are these rumors we've all been seeing about like, oh, open AI is going to come out with some piece of hardware and their angle is going to be something where essentially it's listening to you all the time to deliver some feedback or some value to you with AI processing that information. That is at least looming on the horizon. And I think Apple with all of these features in the watch has decided that this is their way of offering the equivalent of that before the open AI device comes out.

21:08And trying their best with the privacy angle of, okay, with the S11 chip and the secure exclave and the encryption and all of the way that we're processing it, I need to get like an exact explanation of how this feature actually works and how they explain it to the public just to see how it lines up. But that's the other theory, which is like the Apple watches are specifically like there are teams of people working on these products. And there's definitely a group in a room that's like, we kill whoop with this. And then there's definitely also a group in a room that's like, we get ahead of open AI

21:41is a new thing with this. We pass them away. Yeah. So it is fascinating to see them like nervously go, I guess we have to do this with the watch. And here it is. They made a big deal about the privacy stuff, but a lot of it is like very hard to explain to the public and even to me. Cause I still don't really understand. I got texts from people that were like, I don't like that feature. Wow. Yeah. Just straight up. That's the one thing they didn't like. They say Apple does not create or store audio recordings, which I guess, what is a recording?

22:13This is literally what is a photo because it is taking, when we asked them about this, we're like, how do you do that? They're like, oh, we're, we're looking for signals. And I was like, yeah, words are signals, bro. Like I don't, I don't really understand. And yeah, they're kind of reworking the way that this is explained. I almost want to try to explain it now, but I almost know I'm going to get part of it wrong, but it's like, there are always sounds happening and feeding into the microphone. Kind of the same way your Google home sits on your desk at home and isn't technically

22:45always recording or the way your pixel sits on your desk and isn't always listening all the time, but when either a song starts playing or you say, Hey, the magic, Hey G words, it, it, the technology is good enough to, without recording you all the time, understand that that is a trigger to start recording. No, but I, David is right though. Cause it is record. It is, it's unprocessed for being filled. So I think this is the, I think this is the technicality is it's the memory buffer. Yes. They're like, it's not stored, but it's put in a Ram and then we dump it out of Ram.

23:19And when you ask for it or when it identifies a signal in it, Ram is storage and storage is Ram basically. Which is true. That's why they have to explain it very carefully. So every example you just gave, no one believes everyone thinks my phone is listening to me all the time, but we do hear that a lot listening to me all the time. So we're just in the stage where we kind of assume if it has an on button, it's listening to us. I don't know. I'm thinking about this more cause we do know that a lot of those devices are like, there've been enough like leaks of data centers, like, Oh, recordings of people's homes have

23:51come out, but maybe there is a wacky, wacky world where none of this audio is getting written to a buffer. It's getting passed through an A to D converter and every bit is getting analyzed in real time and then, and then dumped. That's what they say is happening. My thought was just, it's not starting audio recordings. It's just transcribing every time it hears words. And now I have a transcription of things. Does that count as an audio storage? I don't think you can do a transcription without filling a buffer. I think that needs to go backwards and forwards. I mean, yeah, they have to process data in order to, yeah. It has to be processed if it's giving you a daily brief at the end of the day.

24:24They gave a lot of credit. They need to understand what you were saying. They gave a lot of credit to the S11 chip in their explanations of it, specifically in these watches, which is that there is this new part of the chip, which does a lot of this processing that doesn't touch the other parts of the chip or the other memory of the system, never goes to your phone, et cetera. So that's what I want to dig into and trying to understand how this all works. I will say if there's any company that the general public might trust to pull this off, it's maybe Apple. Which is why they can't mess it up. Which is, yeah, why it's important that they explain it clearly, et cetera.

24:57Yeah, which is why they call it a secure exclave, too. That's like the whole reason it's an exclave and not an enclave, because it's like separated from the rest of the chip. Yeah. And they have like an always-on processor going on. They also made a big deal about the fact that you can never access the raw data. Like there is no way to access like the sound data that is happening either from a third party, from Apple themselves, et cetera. There are no speaker labels. So like when you get those transcriptions and stuff, they don't want you to be able to be like, oh, Andrew said that or David said that. And that's, I think, a big deal because people like, again, it's not only the person that's

25:28wearing the watch that has to be nervous. It's everyone around you. Like when you see metaglasses and you're like, oh, God, Apple doesn't want a situation where people see an Apple watch and they're like, I can't say anything. That would be worst case. That would be worst case. Um, it's also ended and encrypted. The other thing is they said you can set it up so that it only goes during certain times of the day or during certain focus modes. That was the most confusing to me because if I remember correctly in the event, they said something like you control when it's on, which to me immediately says record, stop recording.

26:01Which there is a button. There is. Yeah. And that's, that's like a plod, a meeting notes kind of like AI device thing of like, let's do this conversation. Plod's the first one you went to probably because they've sponsored the podcast before disclosure. Um, but, uh, but then it was like, oh, or maybe you just don't want it running at night. I was like, hold on. That's a very different thing. Yeah. Does that. So this means it's running and now you, I mean, you set up when you don't want recording, running, it's like, yeah, I think there, this is good though. Cause now we can definitively know there's no ghosts.

26:33We're, we're right on the edge. It's running all night. Paranormal activity could have lived, never been made. Can you imagine waking up and seeing it like an AI summary? That's like ghosts were having conversations. That's what I'm saying. Now we'll know. Also quick, quick correction. I don't know. I sleep talk every night. The most Apple way possible. Um, the secure enclave was actually part of M4 and A18. But this is an exclave. Sorry. Exclave. I misspoke, but, um, I, I think they just, just declined to mention it until, uh, until this generation. I'm, I'm trying to do that. I know they have a new part of the processor that is separate from the rest of the chip.

27:06Totally. But I think they've been doing this processing on a separate part of the chip since M4 and A18. I'm like trying to find the exact confirmation, but when you Google around Apple exclave, there's articles a year and a half old about it. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Well, this is all under the audio intelligence umbrella. Yeah. So they are going to be walking very slowly, testing this stuff. It's opt-in. You can decide when to have it on. I do think that having it on in certain focus modes is kind of a cool idea. And again, this is a direct shot at all the dedicated AI hardware.

27:37And I think that there's a lot of things throughout this event and we'll get to more of it. The first 20 minutes. The first 20 minutes where it felt like John Ternus was just like, yeah, you guys could go do your fun little thing. Like he talked, okay. He talked about the phone. He said that the phone was something else. What did he call it? Your intelligent personal hub. That's what he called it. And I completely agree with that because I've always called my phone David's PDA because you know how you can name your phone because phones are not just phones. They're everything now. Right?

28:07So his point was like all the, we have a bunch of computers all over your body and they can do everything that this dedicated AI hardware can do. So why would you ever buy that? And I feel like to your point, Marquez, of getting ahead of open AI, he's just trying to plant that in people's heads. You don't need dedicated hardware. And I tend to think he's right. I do too. Like this is what happened when I reviewed the Humane pin, which is, and we talk about Humane all the time, but their fatal flaw slash decision they had to make was, do we want this product to live alone without ever having to talk to your phone?

28:41Because one, we know we're not Apple and we cannot talk to the phone the same way Apple accessories can. And two, if we want this product to be used all the time and to collect all the information and whatever, we want the user to wear it all day and have it actually be useful. We need it to be with them even when their phone's not with them and useful even when their phone's not with them. And so it has to live separate from the phone. As soon as it lives separate from the phone, it loses all the context of the phone. It doesn't know any of your contacts. It doesn't know any of your history. It doesn't know any of your information and it has to do all of that.

29:12And that was where it was doomed. And that's why my conclusion and a lot of other people were like, oh yeah, smartphones are still pretty great and they can, they are a better starting point for whatever AI assistance you want in your life. Two things. One, I think Humane had like 17 fatal flaws. Let's not just say it's one thing. But I do think that was like one of the fundamental ones. And yeah, it's, everyone keeps talking about dedicated, we're going to get this dedicated AI thing. Apple's like, we're on every single person in the US pretty much already. We can just add this stuff to it and you're wearing it already.

29:44You don't need an extra thing. The only thing that makes all of this new wave of AI stuff work is context. And every single piece of digital context that goes through your life goes through your freaking phone. It's already on your phone. You can't just do that with a new piece of hardware. Like you'd have to fully commit every single service in your life to going through this new piece of hardware, which no one can do. And carry it with you all the time. Carry it with you all the time. Like OpenAI is supposedly, allegedly making a speaker that you're supposed to carry around with you. Like, come on guys. It's a Bluetooth speaker that you carry around with you?

30:15Yeah. Anyway. Wi-Fi speaker, David.

30:19Wi-Fi speaker. Okay, I want to just really quickly mention the actual physical new changes to the watches before we move on. Ceramic. So, Cirrus 12, there's new ceramic, which Brandon is super happy about. So is Rich. So is Rich, yeah. Sort of. Which is very happy about. They have a pearl white version and a night blue version. They're much more expensive. They're $8.99. Yep. As opposed to the $3.99 of the aluminum.

30:45There's also two new natural options for the aluminum, which is like a natural gold and a one that's just called natural. It's radiant gold and one's just called natural. Those are $300 more than the regular one, which is, they're all kind of expensive. Wait, the ceramic's more expensive than the Ultra 4? Yeah. No, it's the same. Oh, yeah, it is. It's $100 more than the base, yeah. So that's kind of crazy. I don't know. Whatever. They're doing the thing where they offer a whole bunch of prices, a whole bunch of colors and finishes, and you just kind of pick which one you like. We saw a band for the watch Ultra that was titanium.

31:16I mean, we always saw that, yeah. It's an Hermes titanium band. It was $2,200 for the band. That happens every year. That's it. You can get in there deep with those watch bands, man. Okay, Ultra 4. Wait, real quick, just on Series 12. Yes. Rich noticed very specifically that it seems like the crown is almost like offset in all the stuff they showed on it. Did you guys notice that at all? Offset in what way? It's like, it's always like sitting flush right across the, I'm doing hand gestures on a podcast. But like offset. You could almost see the gap in between it.

31:47It was in the bottom of the crown and the wall of the watch in the, in the renders that they had in the, on the, we'll have to look at that when we get, it was not a large gap, but it was the, the crown was not flush against the body of the watch. It's one of those things where you see this for 12 generations. You're like, wait a minute, that looks different. I also need to take a look at something I noticed during the hands on time is it seemed like the bezels were slightly bigger, but I think what I was doing research on this and what it actually seemed like was that they made the body slightly larger of the, of the, and so the bezels feel bigger compared to the display.

32:18But I do think it's notable that the new Apple watch wallpaper that like built in wallpaper is just a black OLED screen with like a few pieces of information. And it seems like every time they do that, it's to hide the bezel size. So we'll check that out when we actually get it, but, um, you know, I'm not too worried. I'm not too worried, but okay. Ultra four, uh, same $800 price. It has a larger battery. Now they say over two days of battery life, which I think is a big deal for them. And, uh, specifically aimed at Garmin and a couple of these other companies, they now have

32:50a max extended workout mode, which gives you 45 hours of battery life, which they said is enough for ultra marathons. They hit us with a hundred mile run. Yeah. They're like, this is good enough for running a hundred miles, which I think is the final boss. I don't think you get any more intense of a long workout than this will last you a hundred mile run. Yeah. So I think we've done it. Yeah. I think we've gotten there. And I think this is funny because when they first ultra came out, if you remember, we interviewed, um, what's Hela? Hela. Yeah. And he specifically was like, yeah, I have to pass my Apple watch off to my team to charge

33:21while I'm running because it won't last a hundred miles. So I feel like this is like directly targeted at those people who have to buy other devices specifically for one task, which is just, you know, funny and whatever. You can hot swap Apple watches. You can? Yeah. Did you know that? Marcus is the only person who knows that in the whole world. Uh, I don't. Oh, that's a good point. Probably not during the exercise. You have to probably end the exercise. Yeah. You probably lose like 10 seconds of data. Yeah. Well, yeah. But then you start a new workout and it's like, why is your heart rate 300 BPM?

33:53Yeah. Are you dying? Okay. We have so much left to get to, um, but we really have to take an ad break. So let's take a quick break, which means we didn't forget. It's time for trivia. This is crazy. You guys don't know, but for some reason, the audio for us is like two bit. There's like a loose cable somewhere. Yeah. That's like the only explanation. And it's hilarious. It sounds like there's someone in the next room playing the sound. Should I just let you leave it? We'll see. We'll see. I was so scared of, were you paying attention?

34:24Um, you guys, here's the thing. I'm not going to get it. You guys were paying attention. I've rewritten this question like three times because my question was just discussed. So, oh, way to go. But I do have one. Okay. Uh, early on in their event, Apple noted how many Siri requests they get per day. Oh, they did. Did they? Prices. Yes. I do. And I remember when they said it, I was like, are all of those intentional requests? I was doing. Oh, that's a good point. That's such a good point. I was trying to do the math. I was like, is this only like averaging two people, two requests a day?

34:56Whoa. Anyway. How many? Prices right rules. How many times do people query Siri? Is that like the amount of total Siri requests they get? Yes. Not individual people, total requests they get in a day. They did say it. They did say it. I was, I just want to tell you, I was paying attention. Clearly. You can prove it. I just don't remember this number at all. You can prove it. I've written this question so many times because you guys were actually paying amazing attention. My, my, uh, my knowledge of the Apple keynote is like in these chunks of like hyper focus

35:27and then taking a quick 12 second break to live tweet and write things down and then hyper focusing. That's where I'm as scared of the question being. Cause then I'm hyper focusing and I'm like, I know I just heard something interesting 12 seconds ago. I don't have the feature on my watch. I have no idea what they said. When I was re when I was writing the podcast last night, the notes, I went back and like watched the different segments of the keynote and I was like, I don't remember this. Yeah, because we're just, yeah. We're like taking quick photos, tweeting, we're like taking notes and like you, you're not paying as much attention. Our TV turned off halfway through and wouldn't turn back on.

36:00Yeah. That weird, like emergency switch to a laptop. Also the TV, we, we were so confused because the TV had really bad color accuracy. And so it looked like John Ternus was wearing all black. Uh, and then we kept seeing like screenshots or like we'd flip on speed stream and he was wearing a red shirt and we were like, is there an outfit change that we have yet to get to? Well, that's wild. Anyway, I know we have to go to, I wish they called it oxblood. I think that was, I, I, it's for sure.

36:32That would be amazing. Okay. Anyway, we'll think about that. Answers will be at the end. Like usual. We'll be right back. Oxblood.

36:40This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. You know, you don't need an excuse to travel. Travel is a joy in and of itself, and it should be immersive, not just about the tourist landmarks. It's about getting to know the people and the culture. It's about seeing the world through fresh eyes. Airbnb really is the perfect way to do that. I've used Airbnb actually to book a lot of stays all over the world. I've used it for tech events, also for ultimate Frisbee tournaments and for vacations around the U.S., and it's just a comfortable way to get to get that unique experience wherever

37:13you travel. Like, for example, right here in sunny California, where I've experienced Phenomenal Cuisine, my favorite. Like what? In-N-Out. But for real, booking a place with Airbnb makes traveling so much easier and so much more unique. Whether I'm traveling by myself or with my Frisbee team, I always look for places to stay through Airbnb. When you explore new cultures and meet new people, you discover new things about yourself, and Airbnb is the best way to book your perfect stay for your next adventure. Support for the show comes from Shopify. Starting a new business is so daunting that most people quit before they even start, but

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iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max Design

39:27All right, welcome back. You've made it this far into the podcast. You deserve iPhone chalk talk. Chalk. I'm going to start that over. I like that. Why? I'll take chalk. All right, chalk. We're talking. Now, you deserve the iPhone talk. iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max, and iPhone Duo. I guess since we're doing an order of most changes, we should save the fold for last. So, the 18 Pros. 18 Pros. There's only a few really significant changes, and if you won't even call them significant, like, new colors, they always do that. They have the obvious new one, which is oxblood, is what we're calling them.

40:02Yeah, it's like the color of leather, like you stain leather oxblood. I think it's a good visual for people, but it's also burgundy. It's like deep red. It's the color of wine. Wine red. It's one, yeah. So, I think that feels like the flagship new color. There's also a Glacier, which is like David's pants, maybe lighter than, it's like light blue, sky blue. Yeah. Sky blue. Silver. It's your Kelvin value is the same as ours, thanks. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Silver and. And silver is a little different. The silver is better. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Ellis disagrees with you, but the silver is better. It's more uniform, because the last silver one had, like, the glass cut out for wireless

40:36charging, and everything was white. Yeah. Now, it's just more uniform. Closer color match. I liked my two-tone iPhone. I thought that was cool. Ellis called it the Panda yesterday, and I was like, you don't. You don't understand. You cannot. My sweet summer child. No, yeah. There have been Panda phones in the past. There's a Panda phone. Yeah. And it's a Pixel. I had a Panda iPhone 4S when my fingerprint reader went bad, and I replaced it with a white. See, you keep saying Panda, but, like, that's some contrast. We used to have Panda phones. That's true. Like, the Pixel 2 was. Back when you guys were crossing the Oregon Trail. I mean, Pixel 2 days, we were crossing the Oregon Trail, bro.

41:09Yeah, I felt like it. There was a lot going on back then. You could squeeze your phone back then. That's true. We had a few years before that. Anyway, yeah. New gray, silver. You could squeeze your phone. But there's also an all matte black phone, and I just got to say, that's the one that's calling my name. A lot of people have been asking me. I'm just spoiling it now. Are you going to get a Fold, Marques? I think I'm going to get a matte black pro. Damn. So there's new colors. That's the second time he's mentioned the only thing he cares about. I just want to make it clear. That's what's selling me. What is it about phone manufacturers this year and making matte black? Because Google did it, too. They are finally listening to me. It only took a long history of life time.

41:41They tuned in. They're tuned in. Fair enough.

A20 Pro Chip and Thermal Management

41:44New chip inside. So A20 Pro chip. So again, we're just getting the pro phones, no baseline phones. So A20 Pro chip. It's a two nanometer chip now. Speed's favorite feature. I just want to really quick. We didn't mention that Speed was here. Speed was here. The couple clips we saw from the stream were very funny. I appreciate how much effort he put into it. He's a great example of free will, man. He's so good. He went up to John Ternus, took the phone out of his hand, and did a backflip. In the hands-on area. That was amazing. I just want to say.

42:14What Adam's referencing is he's looking at the Fold in the hands-on thing, and he just goes, it's so thin. It's so thin. It's because of the A20 and all the compatible components and C2. And I was like, you are the greatest entertainer ever alive. That's the equivalent of Jimmy Fallon going, Tendus. It's actually exactly the equivalent. It was even greater because the C2 is a modem, right? No one has ever made a modem entertaining. I can see that he probably got brief. Anyway, he was doing his best.

42:46He watched the whole event. He was doing his best, yeah. It's like based on the M6 because the M6 was two nanometers, so they're using that technology, that process. Yeah. Six core CPUs, two super cores, and four efficiency cores. What is a super core? Okay. It's just a high performance core. They just renamed a high performance core. Oh, this is the cores they renamed. Super core. Yeah, super core. Seven core GPU, which they say has up to a 40% performance increase. That is sort of a nebulous idea, like a 40% GPU performance increase.

43:17Do you get more frame rates on games? Do you get higher fidelity? A lot of these kind of feel like unlabeled graphs. We'll talk about the vapor chamber in a second, and one of the claims was like 50% more sustained performance. Yeah. Compared to what? What? Like what does that actually mean? Yeah, right. We will find out. Is that longer? Is that higher threshold? Whatever. We'll find that out. They added a separate neural, a second neural engine, so now they have 32 cores in their neural engine as opposed to 16. They're clearly trying to get in early with the AI stuff.

43:48They're trying to, like we said, they're trying to cut off the knees of everyone at the AI company or shoot an arrow in their knee or something. Where is this metaphor going? It's about Skyrim. Is that a Skyrim? I'm sorry. I got that. I was on Facebook yesterday, and I saw a really cringe Facebook post I made when I was like 14. That's all of them. And it was about taking an arrow. Do you care to share with the class? It was definitely an arrow in the knee. It was an arrow in the knee joke. Nice.