606: A Decade of Half-Presses

42:36Like, it's such a vague system that you as the customer feel all the time like, have I been lost? And even when you haven't been. Yep, yep, yep. And oftentimes you have been. But even when you haven't been, you can't see that. Like, you have no feedback as the customer of like, is the system working as intended? Am I still in the queue? And neither do the employees, by the way. Last time I was in the store, which was not a busy day, I was sent to a table. and then eventually someone came to help me and they disappeared for a little bit and when they were gone two other employees came up to me and said are you being helped like don't you know if i'm being helped shouldn't you know i'm being like the whole system is you send us off to these little tables to distribute this visible line so we can't see the actual line but then we get serviced in order and people are assigned to us you should know that somebody already is already handling it if you don't know then what is the system do you just let we look wander the store looking for people who look lonely and say, that person looks like they're not being helped.

43:31Let me help them. I mean, and obviously the biggest problem, I mean, you're both dancing around this. It was lunch day for the iPhone, right? It's surely one of the busiest days in the Apple store or involving iPhones. Anything on lunch day of the iPhone is going to be fraud. And it exposes the weaknesses of their systems because this is going to be the most people coming to the store in the shortest period of time who want phones. I will say, however, that as I think I've talked about in years past, I apparently, one of my many superpowers is utterly ruining iPhone screens. And I don't mean like shattering them, although that's happened for sure.

44:04Have you scratched it already? Well, no. Oh, no. No, no, no. I didn't. No, no, no. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. I decided after much chatter from the internet in my direction, and I think I'd solicited requests about what do you do about screen protectors the internet came through. And a lot of them said, just do the Belkin one that Apple installs. Do it right then and there. They'll install it for you. They know exactly what they're doing. There won't be any bumps or anything like that. There won't be any dust. And you can get free replacements. I don't know if it's for life. Apparently, you have to register the screen protector.

44:39I guess you at least get a series of free replacements that apparently Apple is happy to reinstall for you if need be. Do you know what the nature of the Belkin protector is? Is it glass? Is it plastic? I believe it is glass. I don't think I, do I have the bag? I don't, I don't think I have the bags in here so I can look it up. I apologize. When one of you starts talking, I'll look around the office, make sure the bag isn't in here. I believe it's glass. I'm not a hundred percent sure. I didn't look closely at it, but I did have them install it. And do you want the good news or the bad news? Oh no.

45:11The good news is no, there's no real bad news. The good news is it feels pretty good. Like it's a little tackier. That's maybe not the best word, but like there's a little more friction on it than I think a regular piece of glass was. Is it not as oleophobic as the screen? No, I wouldn't say I think it is. I think it, I think it is, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Um, however, you know how I always thought you were nuts, John, and kind of still do for insisting on a bottomless iPhone case, a case without a bottom. So you can swipe up no problem. And I always thought you were kind of nuts because what is the big deal?

45:45It's fine. I'm not going to tell you tried it. I've tried it. It is, no, no, Now, it is unquestionably better. Gosh, I've been talking a lot for having said I had no opinions about this. Here we are. Welcome to the show. Right, exactly. Welcome. We've been here 10 years. It is definitely better to have a bottomless iPhone case. Full stop. Not arguing that. I just don't think it's as big a deal to me as it is to you. Let me tell you what is not fun, though. When you take a phone that you do not intend to have a case on it, and you put an extra two to three millimeters of screen on it. so now i have a ledge every time i swipe up which is the screen protector sitting here now i hate it so much like i think i'll get used to it but i hate it so much they should round over that edge i know i don't know like ultimately i think it's worth it to me because again i don't well i was gonna say i don't mistreat my phones i mean clearly i'm doing something to scratch these screens every year for the last like four years so i i don't think running without a screen protector is the right choice for me, but I kind of hate the way it feels right now.

46:50Why don't you put a case on it? Put a case that doesn't have a bare bottom, and then you'll be hitting the gigantic bottom lip of the case, and you won't even feel the screen protector. And I think that may be what I end up doing, but I really don't love any of the case options right now. And so we'll see what happens. But I did very much like, however, the application process, because they basically, they asked me if they could unbox the phone. I said, of course, thank you for asking. They immediately put it in their fancy little machine that lines everything up just right. And then foop, foop, foop.

47:16And all of a sudden the screen protector is on. And to my eyes, leaving aside that there's an additional ledge that I wasn't really considering, to my eyes, it did an absolutely perfect job. So in that sense, I'm very satisfied. But yeah, I mean, I think that's, with regard to the purchase experience, that's all I've really got. I did go back down. Oh, that's the other thing. I went from Pro Max to Pro. Gentlemen, having a human-sized phone in my hand feels so great. It's so much better. I mean, for me, I shouldn't say that like the Max is bad. I do a little teeny bit miss the screen real estate of the Max, but oh my word, it's so much nicer in the hand.

47:53It is so much nicer in the hand. I can use my phone without a pop socket. Imagine that. You can use a phone. Did you know this gentleman? You can actually hold a phone in one hand. You can operate the entire keyboard with one hand. You don't even need to have a little thing poking out the back. You can just hold the phone. I stand by having gone the Macs last year for the 5X lens or, you know, camera system or what have you. And I actually am very glad that I tried it. I think I could do it again if we're in a situation for like the 17 or something like that, where, um, you know, only the good cameras on the 17 pro max or, you know, you know what I mean, something along those lines, but I stand by and I have now reaffirmed my commitment to, oh my i am not a big phone person i can do it if i have to but it's not for me because the thing is like even even the now quote small phone is a big phone like and it got bigger like it got even bigger like and this is just gonna keep happening like obviously that's that's the pattern of the market it's like the market pushes phone sizes up people buy them you know and you know it drives the small people the small phone people nuts because they're like you're going further away from our needs which is true um but also the problem is the market just keeps buying bigger and bigger phones also so you know they're they're kind of you know the small phone people are kind of being outvoted by most of the buyers in the market and so this is going to keep happening like even a lot of max people are like switching back with this one because like they just keep because the max got bigger too yes they keep making it bigger it's like eventually you're like okay this is actually beyond what i actually want and i actually have a i have a story with this for a little bit for later.

49:38We'll get to that. All right. But so far, I think I'll wrap up even though, like I said, I'm already going longer than I intended. Immediate impressions, the phone transfer, I did use a full bore like$90 Apple bespoke Thunderbolt cable, and it took roughly an hour. And my vague recollection of last year was that it took like two and a half, three hours. So I do think that gets an A plus thumbs up for me. this is very not that i did not do a lot of science here to be clear but it did the vibe i got is that it was definitely better um i failed to transfer my sim on the first shot i mean not for my fault it just didn't work and then i tried it again this is a verizon e sim tried it again and it worked no problem um other than that i mean everything seems nice i like the camera control um we i don't want to go too far into it because i think you guys are gonna have many more thoughts about it.

50:28It does not currently feel intuitive to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad by any means. I think I will absolutely get used to it, but I have to think through, like, is this a half press? Is it a half double press? Is it a full press? Is it a full double press? It hasn't clicked, and typically Apple stuff, you don't have to think about it. It just does, or it works exactly the way you expect it to work, and in this case, I don't think it's successful, but again, I want to repeat, I don't think that that's necessarily an indictment of the camera control. It's just, I got to get used to it.

51:01That's all. We'll talk about it more in a little bit. I want to talk about my setup process and Mark can talk about his setup process. We'll just do these piecemeal, piecewise, old setup, and then, you know, anyway. So the setup process, you would think this is such a non-issue. Yours sounded like mostly a non-issue. Yeah, it was annoying picking up from the store, but you used the cable to connect them because you had a 15 Pro to a 16 Pro and it seemed to work out. And, you know, I would grade your setup experience as pretty much went okay. The software setup experience, I would say is a solid A minus.

51:34You know, it took a long time. I don't love that you still have to download all the apps even when you're doing a phone to phone transfer. But in the grand scheme of things, it was fine. There were no major issues. So I get a new phone every two years and there are two reasons that I dread getting a new phone. one of them is the setup process the other one is cases which we'll talk about later right uh and it really does deter me from getting a new phone you think i'd be excited to get a phone and i am but then every time i actually am getting one i'm like oh no my world has been thrown into turmoil because the computing device that i use probably the most that's with me all the time now is going to not be satisfactory for some period of time first i have to deal with the setup process where i just hope everything transfers over and i deal with all that or whatever and then the cases which we'll talk about later right so i think last year if we go back to or not last year two years ago when i got the 14 pro i think i said that my setup process went smoothly for once my usual experience is i get a new phone and the way i order it is through the apple store app i order it on my old phone and when you order on your old phone you can say hey are you going to get a new phone that's going to replace the one that you're currently ordering on and i say yes it's like the most automatic smoothest default path which is like new phone will replace this phone don't change anything don't get an unlocked phone don't do anything weird don't change carriers don't it's like just the default straightforward thing and yet pretty much every year with the possible exception of last year i don't recall exactly i end up on the phone with verizon on iphone which is not the time you want to be on the phone with no well Well, guess what?

53:12I ordered my new phone using that same old default method. I took it out of the box. I couldn't use the wired. Well, I decided not to use the wired thing because the 14 Pro has USB 2 speeds and Wi-Fi can beat that, I think. So I'm just using plain old, you know, phone to phone, wireless transfer with both phones plugged in. And it starts doing the thing. You know, I see a new phone. Do you want to do this? Connect to the other phone. Type in the passcode of this phone and that phone. Scan the fuzzy dot ball. you know the whole the whole process right all right can i interrupt you right there does that actually do like is that like a qr code does that actually transmit data yeah there's there's actual data in there okay i i can't fathom how i believe you okay yeah it's just it's just artfully done but yeah it's it's like sort of an obscured artful kind of like qr code type thing anyway um and then they start doing their thing uh one thing that's always annoyed me is the phone you are transferring from has like a white sheet up that says you know finish on other phone or whatever but you if you try to dismiss that sheet it's like oh do you want to exit the setup process it's like no i just don't want to be staring at this white thing and sometimes the screen won't even go to sleep but just fine the phone is plugged in but it just seems stupid but anyway whatever on the new phone it's doing stuff and it gets to a thing that says you know whatever screens are like activating blah blah blah this may take a few minutes well i was on that phone for a solid hour the first time and i'm like i just because i was afraid to abort it and screw something up and then i tried again and try it again and try it and it would be like activating this will take a few minutes and then i resign myself i'm like look i just it's never going to get past the screen like there was no skip no thing i like i'm assuming it was trying to transfer you know my phone number e-sim whatever thing from my 14 pro to my 16 pro it just wouldn't and couldn't do it and i'm i'm going all over like i have i have five bars in my house these days like they must have upgraded the the coverage right here it's not even like i have bad signal anymore i'm like and it's on they're both on wi-fi like i don't know what the problem is time to contact Verizon, which is just the most terrible sort of resigned feeling of dread.

55:10Like you're getting an exciting new thing. And instead of setting up your exciting new thing, you're going to be calling your phone carrier on day one of iPhone. Why is this my life? May I offer a suggestion? You make merciless fun of me for trying the same thing more than once or twice expecting i think it worked last year i'm gonna let it go because i don't want to get any of us angry at each other but i think maybe trying a different approach for next year might be a good idea well but what would you suggest like what's i mean next year i'll use the wired one but that wasn't the problem it was the it's the carrier activation like that's where i'm getting maybe maybe i'm the idiot here which wouldn't be the first time but i always or for the last several years anyway i just buy an unlocked phone i don't want verizon to know what's coming i don't want them to think that because a lot of times in the past, I don't know if this is true anymore, but in the past, if you bought a phone to replace your existing one, like you're describing, you know, I want this one to be my new phone.

56:07And I tell Apple that ahead of time. A lot of times like AT &T and Verizon would ding you like 50 bucks for the activation for reasons unknown. And so I would just buy an unlocked one. And then typically, again, not always, but typically neither Verizon or AT &T would ding you the$50 activation fee because you're just bringing something new to them. It's like, you know, how do they know if you're just John Gruber or Jason Snell and you're just activating somebody else's, you know, or activating a... Well, I mean, but I wanted to take over my other number, obviously. Well, yeah, but mine does that every time.

56:35It's just, oh, you know, do you want to take over the old phone's number? But I'm assuming they'd still charge you the fee. If they're going to charge you the fee, they're going to charge you the fee. I don't think... We'll see what happens. I might be wrong, but in the last couple of years, I don't believe that's been the case. Or the last several years. Anyway, yeah, I could potentially try and unlock one, but I just feel like that's been trading a bunch of known problems for unknown ones so anyway i have advanced in my ability to deal with this because i was like i can't do it i can't i can't dial that because remember i can't call them on my cell phone either so i'd be calling on like my quote-unquote landline phone still wireless whatever on my landline phone it would be on speakerphone i have to hear that music over the i just i can't do it so i'm like you know what this year i'm gonna try the chat thing they always heard you towards anyway like in the in web page verizon you know text chat and so i did that and the world's friendliest person uh telling me oh i hope you're having such a wonderful day congratulations on your new phone blah blah blah i'm like please just i've got all the data i've got all the data ready to go i tell i tell him the situation i say i'm on the activating screen uh he says could you please give me your ime id which i already have on the clipboard i just paste it you know i'm going which by the way i had to transcribe manually because when your phone is in this terrible state you can just you just use a little i in a circle in the upper right to get the ime id but you can't copy and paste it because your phone isn't even set up so i'm transcribing that carefully like anyway i do all this information and you know what it takes like three seconds when someone at verizon is doing it they're like okay this is your thing confirm this do that boop boop boop boop boop and all of a sudden my phone screen says instead of saying activating wait a few minutes it says oh transferring cellular service whatever blue blue blue and it's done been...

58:11and i was like okay well that was you know maybe like a half an hour on web chat in the grand scheme of things you know it's better to not have to contact them but it wasn't that bad the only weird wrinkle was um they're like okay now call like pound or you know 832 or whatever there's something they want you to do to confirm that everything worked what year is this i'm pretty sure it worked because the phone is saying that it did all the things and it's you know whatever but they're like okay well and i said to him i i can't dial anything right now because it's doing the phone to phone transfer i won't have access to the dialer until it finishes the phone to phone transfer and he says that's okay i'll wait i'm like it's going to take hours it's like no problem i'll just wait uh and then he tried to sell me insurance and i said no thanks and then i walked away from the computer and i came back uh you know an hour or two later and the transfer had finished and the web page had timed out so successful customer service interaction but chalk this up to another year where i had to contact verizon at least i didn't have to go on the phone with them but i had to contact verizon to get my phone set up after that i had gotten over that hurdle the phone to phone transfer worked the way it normally does where it forgets the test flight exists and rearranges all my icons until i go back to test flight and figure out where they all have to belong and rearrange them manually yes i tried to use iphone mirroring to rearrange them with the mouse it's probably a little bit better but boy you can really see the insanity of that system when you have pixel precise control with a mouse cursor because it's such a cruel game it's like oh i i went over the one pixel boundary you know switch to the other screen like it's just your meat fingers aren't in the way but now i know precisely how insane the activation readings are and precisely how broken it is where you will drag an icon and other icons will skitter out of the way and leave an empty spot for your icon and you will release and springboard will say nope and it'll just close that spot back up and you'll do it 50 times drag an icon put it right where you want it to go it's nothing else is there it is dead center on the spot release disappears like it never existed the system's just broken so the mouse helps a little bit but anyway uh setup work fine i i managed to get through it all uh and there you go marco mine was perfectly fine i mean what did did you buy unlocked or did you buy as a replacement i did the thing in the apple store app on the phone where i say replace this phone on my plan and it was simple now granted i use at &t so everything is you know mediocre but it worked better than yours yeah i don't know what it is i mean i'm assuming there's some carrier servers that are involved in this process and like the worst part is there's no way to say forget about that i'll deal with it later just do the rest of the setup like you are stuck on that screen this is activating this may take a few minutes and as far as i know there's no way to get past it which argues for casey's thing of like hey why don't you just buy it unlock because then at least you can do the phone the like the data transfer part of the setup and then when you have a functioning working phone that just doesn't have a phone number then try to do the e-same like transfer or whatever however you initiate that process but i mean i will say for for whatever it's worth my apple watch cellular transfers never work the only way i ever get the watch to work is to cancel the plan from 18t's website for the old watch and then have the new watch start over again and even then usually it's like it tries to activate it fails a couple times the plan shows up in the apple watch cellular section as not in use i gotta like reboot sometimes a couple times like i gotta do some dances to get that to work and you gotta google to be like wait do i unpair from the old one first or do not like this is whole i've done it successfully so my wife's watched several times and every time i do it i have no confidence that i'm going to be successful i have no recollection of how i did it last time or why it worked and i just like cross my fingers and just dive in and and by the way everything on the watch takes forever i guess it's probably getting better as the watches get faster it doesn't know it takes so long to do anything no it's not getting better but but but if the phone transfer by the way the foot just before we leave this the phone transfer for me was perfectly fine like the e-sim moved over like it activated just fine in a reasonable amount of time you use a cable uh yeah i i used a cable and i use both i use two of my like fan peltier element fans that are the active cooling mag safe i did use ice packs just in honor of marco i used them briefly but then i got worried about conversation and stopped uh very quickly with regard to the watch i i had heard a story and i think this was accurate at the time that the best way to move a watch is to unpair on the old phone if i remember correctly i think it's the only way no it'll offer to to move it for you it just doesn't usually work with cellular for some reason well so that's the thing so i the way it used to be years and years ago is you would unpair the watch then do your phone transfer then repair the watch on the new phone.

1:02:50This time, I didn't do any of that. I just waited for the phone to say, hey, would you like to move the watch over? And I said, yes. And it worked. Now, I do not have cellular. I do not have cellular, and I do think that makes a big difference. Oh, yeah. It does. But, you know, it moved no problem. And then when I unboxed my Apple Watch Series 10, which we'll get to later, I said, hey, can you make it, or I think it asked or whatever, do you want this to effectively replace the old one? And I said, yes. And it said, sure. And that worked pretty much no problem. So my Apple Watch transfer experience was A++.

1:03:24It was pretty much flawless. I was stunned. We are sponsored this episode by Trade Coffee. Now, if you make coffee at home, get ready to discover how much better it can be with Trade. As America's number one specialty coffee marketplace, Trade doesn't actually make any of its own coffees. Instead, they bring together top independent roasters from small towns across the USA. places you'd love if you live near them and they curate the best of the best for you to enjoy at home it's better coffee because they send high quality freshly roasted beans that are perfectly matched to your taste this is the secret to all good coffee freshly roasted beans that are kind of bean that you like so no matter how else you brew it what equipment you have what how what your ritual is whatever getting coffee from trade is the easiest way to instantly improve your at home coffee experience so you subscribe to trade and that lets you support all these small business roasters they partner with all these roasters across the country and they have made over 435 000 perfect coffee matches to date and if you're not satisfied with your first one they'll replace it for free so it is a great service i've used it myself for a long time because it's just you know not only are the recommendations great but you just get such a variety with trade like i would never have found all these different roasters individually and it's you know it can be different every week if you want or if you want to you know kind of repeat some stuff you can tell them what you like you'll get more of that but like i just love letting them go off and find good stuff for me and they always do a great job so it is a wonderful service check it out today you can get your coffee at home made better with trade head to drinktrade.com slash atp and you'll receive your first bag of coffee for free and it's super easy to control this you know if you got to go away for a while or you want to pause or cancel or suspend or resume or increase or decrease it's all super easy don't worry about that check it out today make your coffee at home better go to drinktrade.com slash atp once again you get your first bag free with that link thank you so much to trade for sponsoring our show all right camera control i've used it a decent amount um i i think it's a good idea the actual usage of it i think they're going to need to tweak a little bit here and there with some of the some of the like you know timings and settings and tolerances and things like that but i think overall i like it it is extremely useful for me just as a camera launch button i know a lot of people have been using the action button for that uh over the past year yeah that's what i was doing and that's totally fine and there are some benefits and drawbacks to that um i as i mentioned in previous episodes i use the action button for flashlight which i actually use a decent amount although i actually i i am happy to report that as i progress through my denial of that i really should be wearing progressive reading glasses all the time because my close-up reading distance is not great anymore and so but my my distance distance viewing is fine um and so what i really should be doing is wearing progressive reading glasses that have no correction on top and reading correction on the bottom um i have yet to find any that i don't hate So instead, what I'm doing is mostly not wearing reading glasses and just holding stuff out really far to see it.

1:06:44But occasionally, this system is not sufficient for something. And the phone has a magnifier feature built in. It has for a very long time where it just basically is like a quick little view that uses the camera to show you a magnified view of whatever you're looking at. It's great, especially when you have the modern ultrawide lenses that have autofocus, and so they can actually get very close with macro distances to view things like that tiny little print on Apple's power adapters and stuff. One of the things I tried to view recently was they have the new MagSafe pucks that charge at 25 watts, and they look almost identical to the old ones.

1:07:20apparently i i heard from john gruber actually that apparently they are slightly uh narrower like which is going to be really annoying when i try to fit it into anything that's made to like you bring your magsafe adapter into this 3d mount or whatever like that's going to be annoying i gotta verify that the the radius is smaller yeah like apparently the actual size of the circle is slightly smaller so it's not going to fit in you know docks and stuff that are made to you know build in apple's magsafe pucks but i gotta verify there's some tiny light gray text on a slightly darker gray background that you could also right so what i was trying to do is like okay how do how do i tell if i'm holding one of these in my hand how do i tell which one it is because they now you know the the modern mag safe pucks now with the you know the faster charging i believe they're 10 bucks more they're 40 bucks instead of 30 bucks and they have a different entire model number but if you're just looking at it it's not obvious like and they do have a tiny little bit of text printed on the metal right next to where the cable goes into the metal ring and i could not see this for the life of me so anyway all this is to say the magnifiers you could feature and what i've actually done since i have the action button as the flashlight now with ios 18 you can replace the two circular 3d touch buttons on the bottom of the lock screen the ones that used to be flashlight and camera so i've actually replaced the flashlight one with the magnifier i'm happy to announce i have reached that point in aging where i'm going to be using the magnifier frequently enough on my phone i've already i just did this like the other day and i've already i've already used it like three times you can change it to a triple tap too that's the one that that's the real old person move you change magnifier to triple tap with accessibility you just tap the back of the phone three times i don't need that yet um but certainly uh having on the lock screen on a button i was not using anymore is very useful and then you know and so similarly like you can have the camera uh you know if you if you don't want to use apple's camera app anymore or if you only want to launch it from the camera control then you can reassign the camera circle button on the lock screen too to something else like this is a whole new area of customization that i actually find quite quite nice but anyway all that is to say uh the camera control therefore being my camera launch button will free up one of those spots for me and so using it as that so far over the last couple days i have enjoyed it it has proven useful to me the only thing is that But so far, I had a very hard time figuring out how to navigate the little tools menu inside of it.

1:09:46Yep, same. I said this before any of us had ever tried it. Remember by using the demos, I'm like, that's modal. How are you going to get out of that mode? And I'm trying it for real life. I experienced the exact same thing, the exact problem I predicted. I'm like, I'm having that problem. I eventually figured it out, but it's not great. Yeah, I think there's going to be quite a learning curve there. and I think maybe Apple could tweak some of the like, you know, timings and gestures and things on that to make that a little bit easier over time. Because I have found that like the actual, like the pushing of the button to open the camera and to take pictures, that works great.

1:10:16But I keep finding myself like accidentally in some of the little menu modes to the point where I might just turn them off. And the second thing is that as soon as you start using those menu modes, it, or even, even, I think even just using it for capture, like just pushing the button to take the picture, it dims or hides all of the camera ui on screen yeah i noticed that too which surprised me yeah and it keeps it hidden for like a few seconds after you hit the picture and so like even if you want to just review the picture you just took it you have to like wait two or three seconds for it to like fade those controls back in like it's kind of annoying like i i see what they're going for it just becomes a camera with this control that okay that's that's a nice idea that's very precious in real life i want those controls back immediately so like as soon as i'm done taking the picture i want those controls or even even if i'm just stuck in the weird you know camera control menu thingy and i can't figure out how to zoom back out or whatever just keep the controls on screen at all times because yeah it's great to have them in the camera control it's also great to have them on the screen and a lot of times you're going to want to switch back and forth between them so that that's something that like i think until apple makes better balances and and more usable defaults with or more usable behaviors with the camera control i don't see myself using it for any of those little menu features other than just launching the camera and taking a picture like i think for those it's great it's convenient the actual implementation of all those little menus and things and the way it hides all the controls in the main screen that i think needs some iteration to really be useful all right so here's my experience with the camera control the very first thing that i discovered with my new phone with the camera control is that the camera control is placed exactly where i apparently grabbed my phone exactly i've done this a couple times like with it taking it out of the box i kid you not it's the phone is not even on i've just taken it out of the box i accidentally hit the camera control button three times in under 20 seconds it's not even on like the phone's not even on i'm hitting the button and by the way what part of your hand are you hitting it with like you're like you're like that's apparently where i grab the phone i apparently grab it at the bottom with one you know my thumb on like the left side of where the camera control is and my other fingers exactly on the camera control and and it's a flush button it doesn't even stick out i was hitting that button like crazy i'm like okay well i mean i can retrain myself but that's an unfortunate personal habit apparently i grabbed the phone by the camera control and so i have signed up for hitting that button accidentally a lot i'm getting better and unfortunately i think part of the way i'm getting better is learning not to press as hard which is good in that i won't activate the flush button but bad in that now i'm not gripping the phone as hard when i pick it up which i feel like is just an increased drop risk but that's a thing so setting that aside get that apple care yeah i do have it using using the actual camera control button i would not have predicted this based on their previews in our discussion of this but because we talked about like the whole idea of them modeling it after like half press on a real camera shutter button and even though that feature for half press focus isn't even shipping yet the way you get into those menus that marco was talking about these these little things is you essentially half press right to get to the thing where you can change the zoom and the focal depth that involve that whole menu system and yes that is modal and the only way i've discovered to get out of it is to touch anywhere on the screen which is a reasonable way to get out of it but i kind of wish there was a way to get out of it by without taking a picture by hitting the camera control but i think you have to actually touch the screen to say i want to get out of this mode where i'm adjusting things with the camera control right but here's the kicker this is the thing i wouldn't have predicted the half press on the camera control button to activate the menus is unlike any half press and any any big camera that i've ever used in my entire life in that it is way way more difficult to get to it like it is it is a thing that you have to train your fingers to do because if you just do what you would do to half press a real camera button you've pressed it all the way that's too far so it's like how do i how do i half press this button and you have to press so much lighter than you think i know there's this preference to adjust this or whatever but it's such a strange sensation you're like am i even pressing it or am i just thinking hard about pressing it and it activates you can do it you can learn to do it but it is so much more of a precise delicate gesture than i expected it to be i fully expected i've been half pressing shutter buttons for you know years and years like decades right i fully expected it would just be completely natural for me to half press it absolutely not it is so much more delicate than i thought it would be which i don't personally mind because i think i'm never going to use those menus now that i've experienced them i don't think i'm ever going to use them to adjust anything maybe i'll do the zoom one because it has the advantage i hate pinching to zoom it has the advantage that i can zoom while you know having the phone in like camera taking position right in landscape mode or whatever without me having to like take one of my hands off of the phone and use it to pinch the screen i think zoom is the one that's most likely for me to use but in practice i've never actually used it other than when i was experimenting with it just because i hate going into that mode i can't even decide which one to keep it on i think i settled on keeping it on zoom because it's the one i'm most likely to use but i would just much rather adjust those things on the screen and i'm with marco like i understand how the ui goes away when you do that or whatever i would just rather always see it like again that should probably be a setting or whatever but you know for taking a photo and for having it as a shutter button i've heard a lot of people complaining that the positioning is bad that it should be closer to the corner and maybe that would have gotten out of my accidental activation area but i'm mostly happy with the position i take pretty much all my pictures in landscape mode but occasionally in portrait and i find it works for both of them i have it launching the camera i have it launching the camera on a single press the reason i can get away with it is that when i accidentally activate it it's because i'm picking up a locked phone off the table or whatever and when you when you hit it on a locked phone it doesn't launch the camera app it just like wakes it up first and you have to hit it again to launch the camera app which is a nice defense against me accidentally launching the camera i'm still accidentally hitting the button a lot but the consequences are not significant because when i'm doing that it's almost always when i'm picking up a locked phone so i don't actually find myself landing in the camera app within i think maybe less than a minute of my wife picking up my phone she had accidentally taken a picture with the camera control i should have saved it it's like iphone unboxing day here's our first picture of the floor it is it's a thing right again there's a setting to make the camera control require a double click to get into the camera app i don't think i need to use that yet i think i'm building my habits around it but like i i think the camera control was maybe a little bit overly ambitious as a button it feels good it clicks good i like the fact that it's touch sensitive the half press i'm not sold on the menu interface i'm not sold on and the upcoming feature that we don't even have yet the half press for like focus or whatever they're going to do i don't think that's going to make this better they're piling so much stuff onto this button like this is not like a version 1.0 button this is like the the version 4.5 of this button already it does so much stuff it is so overloaded has so many capabilities and like i said maybe it's just me but like when you find one of these phones try like you can learn how to get into the menus pretty easily but it's such a strange feeling it's like press but don't press it is it's such a delicate operation it reminds me of like some of the finesse moves i would have to do with a thumbstick and super monkey ball on the game cube like where you just really have to learn how to like what the difference between you know you know 18 and 17 degrees on the stick is as opposed to just being like you know like jam the stick to the left right up down right so sort of delicate like just think about pressing it and you'll get into the menus and again it's not bad because i don't think i want to get into the menus a lot and i do know how to do it now but it is it is so much i don't know what it's so much more like i don't want to say sophisticated it's it's so much less uh straightforward to do like it requires more mechanical finesse than i would have expected way more mechanical finesse than half pressing a shutter button and having handed my very large cameras to many people over the years for them to take pictures i can tell you that the average person has difficulty half pressing even a gigantic shutter button that is very easy in my opinion to half press because it has like miles of travel and you literally push it halfway down you cannot push this button halfway down like the travel is so short if you try to push it halfway halfway down you will completely depress it you have to think about pressing it and then you just have pressed it yeah and and i think like it almost gives me the the feeling of like when i when i've designed an interface in xcode for for my for my iphone app and i've been using the simulator you know for most of the design and then i run it on the device for the first time and i pick it up and i try to use it and i instantly feel like oh this is all wrong like this this is either too small too big it doesn't feel right it doesn't work right like you can tell as soon as you try to use it on the device oh this is wrong that's kind of how I feel with the camera control like you know what I was expecting based on how they were describing it um it I was kind of expecting this to work a certain way and then as soon as I get it and I try it I'm like oh this is this is wrong like I would I would actually call it maybe fiddly um or or like you know oversensitive and like it's not I don't think I'm you know lacking appropriate dexterity in my index finger to be able to use it um and there are there are some case considerations which we'll get to in a moment um but I I think like it's it's just very finicky to get that right and what you don't want with your camera controls is imprecision like when you're using a camera usually you are adjusting if you're fumbling for it like real quick you want to get the camera out it's not the time for like now i'm going to apply the most controlled pressure i've ever applied using the tendons in my fingers right and like and you don't want to like accidentally switch switch modes or overshoot the setting that you were trying to adjust or whatever like it's very sensitive and finicky in in the way it operates and so again i think it's a good idea i like how it launches the camera and then takes pictures everything else about it i really don't like yeah let me let me fast forward this for apple apple uh the solution to this the real version 4.5 of this i mean i don't know how many years in the future is it going to be is to solve all these problems basically that entire side of the phone needs to be a giant touch sensitive pressure sensitive clicky button because like for example zooming and swiping uh the little interface that appears is maybe a little small but the the essentially trackpad area it's a small button that area of like swipe swipe swipe it's barely enough to cycle through to satisfactorily cycle through the menus while alone being satisfactory for zoom i feel like that whole like side of the phone needs to be just one complete featureless thing that like you can squeeze and it haptically clicks and the whole thing is touch sensitive like and it needs to like go in more i don't know how they solve this problem but it needs it's strange to say but i feel like the camera control is too small like for what they want it to do if you just want it to be a shutter button and you can use it that way and by the way i will say that is the big benefit of the camera control if all these things we're complaining about you can just ignore them and just say this button is just a binary button and i press it all the way or not at all and it works that way i don't think you'll accidentally half press it a lot especially if you're just always saying press press right but if they want to go whole hog and have this be like a touch sensitive thing to swipe through uis and stuff like that they need a bigger touch area and they need a way bigger button they need just that whole side to just be one giant button that also happens to click and i don't know how they do that but that would be that would be better than this tiny little thing i'll tell you what so there there are settings for camera control they're not that not many of them there is right now there are three settings.

1:22:14There's what app does it open? Launch camera with a single click or double click, which you actually might want, John, if you're having a lot of accidental input. I don't think I need to go to the double click. And I also don't think I need to adjust the sensitivity. Like, I've tried the different settings, and I feel like that's not the problem. So the third setting is called, for some reason, it's called clean preview. Clean preview on or off. And it says light press camera control to quickly make adjustments. Oh, that leaves the menus up when you activate it. Yeah, you're right, it does. Okay, well, honestly, that solves one of my problems but not okay yeah that's true actually i agree with you that i do like that it it leaves all the camera controls up so yes we have live solved one problem we made it slightly better all right i like it better this mode we'll see if i can actually stick with the other controls but um that is good anyway so let's move on to talk about cases and the camera control poor peak design oh no and every other third-party case manufacturer i love this case i've been using it now for I think three phones in a row now I don't use it all year but I use it some of the year as mentioned um it's it is my like kind of summer case it's great for you know if like if I don't want to use leather because it might get wet you know in the summer or anyway so I love the Peak Design case they had drama last year with the action button where like they didn't really know it was coming but they knew something was coming so they left a cutout and it turns out the cutout was it was just it made it too hard to use it because it was like a deep hole and the action button's small and so it made it too hard to use so they had this whole thing where they gave free they like you know over a few months they remade the case they gave free replacements to people who bought the first one like it was a whole thing you know i'm sure they lost a ton of money on it but they're a good company and they wanted to serve their customers well i like peak design a lot um anyway so this year i i got their case and it has a cutout not of the entire case edge but just like a camera control shaped valley with sloped sides going into it from the other edges of the phone.

1:24:17You can see it. They have a 360 view on their page. And I tried this on my phone immediately. And within two hours I was like, this isn't going to work. No. There's two problems. Number one, the deep valley it creates does indeed make it difficult to use the camera control like that's it just it makes it much harder to use because it is not a cover but they can't just do a simple cover because you know you can see like the way apple did theirs with like the sapphire cover with the conductive layer like you got to make it work with all those the camera control sensors um so you know instead of doing some kind of complicated button that they probably didn't even know was possible until apple released their cases they just made a hole with like you know ramps going into it basically from all sides Well, those ramps also hurt my finger.

1:25:04They form kind of a sharp edge. I'm a left-hand phone user, and so one of my fingers is basically resting right there all the time. And it's just sharp. It just feels bad. So I feel terrible. I've got to say, Peak Design, this is also not good. And I feel so bad for them because I know they're going to have other people saying the same thing. and again like this i mean two years in a row to to really screw case makers by apple because that's got it's got to be rough uh for the case makers because you know they got they got to design cases with a bunch of guesses and speculation and you know they got to like basically like you know follow the rumor mill and get whatever info they can get and just make a bunch and take a big risk like oh well we think the dimensions on the phone will be this and we think it's going to have a button here and we think the button will work like other buttons but we don't know like and so it's it's a big risk risky business to be in um and and i gotta say i'm i'm again i'm not a fan of the p design case this year and maybe maybe they'll do another one sometime that has like you know a proper cover over it that works with the weird sensors of the button and maybe that'll be better so i'll keep that in mind but what i did was uh so as soon as i use this case i thought well i have to go to the apple store okay this this is not going to do like i'm going to get one of apple's cases today just very briefly why why not go caseless i'm not saying that's the right choice for anyone but that is what i plan to do with this one why not just go caseless number one i didn't buy apple care and i don't really want to because i keep saying apple care is my case and then i just buy cases anyway and so and i'm spending like that's totally hundreds of dollars on apple care over the years never to use it um so i figure okay you know if i just stop buying it now you know i'll maybe if i if i end up having to have an expensive repair then I'll weigh that against all the savings that I'll have with AppleCare over the years and decide then whether to start changing my policy or not.

1:27:01But anyway, so that's the reason. And so I'm like, all right, I got to go to the Apple Store. I got to try their cases. So I went to the Apple Store, and there was another reason I'll mention in a little bit. But I went to the Apple Store, and I immediately went over to the case wall. They told me, oh, go stand over by so-and-so. And I'm like, okay. And I directly walked to the opposite direction to go over to the case wall because I'm like, there's a huge cluster of people waiting over there. I know I'm not going to be first in line. I have some time, and I did. So anyway, everyone's seen these new Beats cases that they have, which are basically just shiny plastic cases.

1:27:42They are decent. I would say they come in zero good colors. They do feel very cheap. The outside has not much grip because it's not like a TPU kind of plastic. It's like a shiny shell kind of plastic. So there's no grip to it whatsoever. And I was like, oh, that's kind of not great. I almost bought one because the Beats cases are very light and very thin, which is nice. But it's just like, I think it's like a peel case. You can get that for cheaper in better colors from other manufacturers very easily. Let me offer a differing opinion considering the Beats case is now on my phone right now. Okay.

1:28:21um which which mediocre color did you get uh gray dark gray whatever yeah the color's not great uh and it's got lines on the back for no reason um i think the beats case i think the shape is nice i think it does feel more expensive than your average plastic case simply because the shape is very like precise and consistent like the buttons which are just plastic or whatever the buttons are precise the edges of the case are precise it is rounded over in all the right places it feels kind of like a giant iphone 5c which i liked um it is shiny plastic uh it is not as grippy as a leather case not by far although it is grippier than i thought it would be it is probably about as grippy as apple's clear cases are which is again it's not as grippy as rubber definitely not as grippy as silicone but it's grippier than i thought it would be just because of the tackiness it shows fingerprints disgustingly like it just no i noticed that in the store actually that's one of the reasons i didn't buy because i noticed that when i was just handling the sample ones yeah like that leather one of the great things about leather is absorb all the oils from my fingers this plastic will not it is covered with oils but i do have to say for this case and by the way the reason i got it of course is because it has a bare bottom and it does even the edges of the bare bottom i think this case is beautifully precisely shaped and formed i like everything about it except for the material that it is made out of which is a big thing for a case right but um i'm not going to say i'm happy with my purchase because i am looking forward to finding a suitable leather case that i can replace it with but i am i'll say this i am happier with this case than i was with the apple clear case which also has a bare bottom that i bought for my 14 pro right so i i've tried the clear cases they're not for me this if i had to live with this i could tolerate it but it is nowhere near as nice as my leather one so i you know go to the store and check it out marco looked at it he thought it felt cheap i think it feels very nice and solid and precise and good and grippier than i thought it would it's just not that you know the the oil situation is a problem it's not as grippy even even the the ridge around the camera i've used a lot of cases first party and third party that have like a a vertical wall around the camera mesa and the beats case it's almost vertical but not quite it's got just enough of a slant to it that it feels less cheap to me than just like a big vertical wall stuck into the back of the case uh like i said does have a circle and a line for magicef on the back for reasons that escape me because it's not a clear case why do you need to do that it does have a beats logo on the side uh but i i actually give a pretty good rating to the beats case if you can tolerate the material that's made out of which i can almost tolerate yeah my my plan if i bought it which i didn't but my plan was to take a magic eraser to the beats logo on the side and see if i can get rid of it yeah you don't want to scuff it up although but actually by the way one tiny bit a real-time follow-up we mentioned already the the camera control which we'll get to in a second on the beats case i'm assuming um the camera control has the settings for like how hard you want it to be that's the reason i always forget what these things are that was an accessibility you know what else is an accessibility it's you know settings accessibility camera control and inaccessibility under camera control there is a toggle to just turn off the camera control if you just don't want to deal with it so that's great um there's also a toggle to turn off the whole light press to show adjustments if you don't want that feature at all period you can just turn that off and there's also finally a toggle for how quickly you have to double press it if you want to use the double press feature uh it's just got default slow and slower if you can't double press it that quickly right so kudos to apple for giving enough adjustability to say hey the massive overreach that we've done with this camera control you can just turn most of that off to until you get it to the point where you think it is uh you know suitable i'm gonna leave everything on but like i said i probably just don't use the uh the adjustment feature that's interesting we'll play with that but again it's not in camera control it's in accessibility so these these settings are always in weird places and if you search for camera control you won't find it so settings accessibility camera control anyway so i ended up for at least the moment i ended up with the apple silicone case um which is funny i got it in lake green which is not at all green like it is blue it is absolutely blue there is nothing about that Did you take that website test?

1:32:34Of course I did. But there's nothing about this that is green. But anyway, it's a nice weird middle blue. It's not green. But it's a nice color. Anyway, I ended up with silicone case for now. This looks green on screen. I do not deny that it may look blue. See one in person. Trust me. When you see it in person, you're like, oh, that's that color? I had to pull out the little drawer in the Apple store that it was on and read the boxes to see, is this really that color? anyway just to very quickly interject here i typically do not like apple silicon cases i feel like they're way too tacky i i just i really just viscerally do not like them and i can't other than the tackiness i can't really put my finger on why and i did go and look at a bunch of the ones at the apple store today while i was waiting for the um for the back room to bring me my or backstage to bring me my stuff and i gotta say i feel like if i if i do end up wanting a case that might be the direction i go because it's a lot less tacky than it used to be and it feels nice like granted i didn't have one in hand i was just you know petting it on the wall of of cases but it is it is definitely worth looking into again if you're like if you like me wrote it off many many years ago yeah i mean i'll tell you like the what the reason i always shied away from it in the past was i didn't like that it was so tacky that it was actually difficult to get in and out of pants pockets that is still the case i don't i think it might be a little bit less annoying but maybe i'm just giving up um but it is still annoying to get in and out of pants pockets so that's it's not like it's not terrible but it's not graceful in that way also it does have a bottom lip and it's fairly thick so like to do edge gestures you are running into the silicone a lot so it is a very protective case in the sense that like you know for if you're worried about a case like for actually protecting your phone against drops and stuff it's probably a pretty good choice for that um and the camera control implementation on all of apple's cases is just great like it just feels like the button got extended it is still flush with the case just like it is flush with the phone the button feels well it feels right it works right like it it It feels and works pretty much exactly the way it does on the bare phone.

1:34:56Yeah, I tested the camera control with no case in the beginning just to make sure I was getting the full experience. And then when I put the Beats case on it, same deal. They did a great job. It doesn't feel any less precise or any more difficult or anything like that. And it's nice and flush. They did a good job. It would be great if third parties could have done the same thing. Although I did see one. Now, as you would imagine, my Instagram ads are 98 % ads for iPhone cases and 2 % ads for Marco's car. But anyway, yeah, there is one third party case manufacturer. I forget what the name is. It's like SU case or something or whatever, advertising the fact that they presumably will have like the quartz pass through thing or whatever.

1:35:36Everyone else is just has holes or they leave out that section of the case. But I feel like this is totally possible for third parties to do. Technologically speaking, they just didn't have enough information to implement it in time for launch. So I'm hoping there will be third party cases that implement this. but Apple's implementation is, it's really good. Yeah, and I mean, geez, I would have loved to have some kind of like Apple premium fabric of some kind a case this year. Like something that is not plastic and not silicone. Something that doesn't have a bottom lip, Apple. Yeah, and so the clear case, I might go with that in the future, I don't know yet.

1:36:12I mean, I'm gonna try the silicone case for a while, but it is jeans season, and it does suck to get it in and out of jeans pockets, and I do that many times a day. So it's a little annoying. If you're going to try the clear one, try the Beats one. They are very similar in feel. And I think the Beats one feels a little bit nicer. The Beats one, though. I noticed those fingerprints when I was playing with them in the store. And I'm like, if I made it look that bad in two minutes. They're on the clear one, too. They're just a little bit harder to see. Well, yeah. But the silicone, you don't see it at all.

1:36:40Yeah. So I don't know. I probably stick with silicone for a while until. I mean, maybe the bull strap one would be really good. I don't know. But I don't think so. You got that, but you haven't opened it yet? it's it's i'm on i'm at the beach and it's over there in the mainland so all right well my case is coming on wednesday so next episode i will be able to tell you about the bull strap case but marco's tale of the uh the sloped pit on the peak design one does not fill me with hope because that's exactly the design that pull strap is using we'll see how it goes yeah i think i think this is going to be you know similar to last year with the action button i think this is going to be like a lot of people realizing oh no i've made the wrong case decision and a lot of case makers realizing, oh no, we've made the wrong cases.

1:37:17And I think this is going to be a big shake-up year for that and another good year for Apple cases. Cynically, you can maybe think maybe that's why they're doing it, but no, I don't think that's the reason. But I do wish that... And, you know, got to give Apple credit. The Beats cases are new. That's something that kind of came out of nowhere. The way Apple uses the Beats brand, to me, is sometimes a little bit puzzling, especially in recent years. But hey, some good stuff comes out of it. And so the you know they did add more cases than before you know they took away the final woven okay um they they added the the beats ones okay which has no bottom which shows they still know that's a thing yeah it's it's fine um i i do wonder like you know are they ever going to try some kind of premium fabric again i i don't i hope they do because like honestly like apple's work with fabrics and textiles in general on on the watch side has been great they do amazing things over there and part of the reason i like the peak design cases is that they have like the the the rim the edge around the sides is some kind of like plasticky rubbery thing but then the back of the case is really nice fabric and it just it makes a very good feeling in fact when i was at the apple store checking out um the the apple store uh employee who was who was ringing me up i i was showing because she was asking about the cases and i was showing her the peak design one and i i let her handle it and she's like oh this feels really nice like the back like because they just had p-design does very very good fabric work so does apple they just don't make fabric cases right now i i hope that they revisit that you know obviously fine woven wasn't it um but they make lots of other great fabrics they have over time with the watch bands and everything so i know they can do it uh so i hopefully over time their case lineup continues to evolve and expand because even you know before before the fine woven thing it was usually the case that like apple's if you wanted like a nice leather case for your iphone apple's leather case was usually either the nicest one you could get or one of the nicest ones you can get yeah um and that's why everyone bought them because like oh well we know they're going to do a good job we you know we knew it was consistent we knew like you know the buttons would line up it would be good quality it would it would not have weird branding or anything like it would be it would be just a good basic leather case and yeah you know sometimes the corners wouldn't wear as well as you wanted them to or whatever, but you get the black one and it's pretty safe.

1:39:40You kind of knew how to do it. It was always a good safe bet if you wanted a guaranteed pretty good case that you could buy on day one and be pretty sure it would be the right choice. It was the Apple leather case. I feel like right now we don't have that unless you love silicone, in which case it's the Apple silicone case. Then I don't know what else to say after that. Just go caseless. That's what the cool kids do. Then the phone just slides off the flat surfaces. it's not that terrible but then your fingerprints are all over your actual phone and so are all the nicks and scrapes yeah i mean the physical condition of my pro max leaving aside my freaking ruined screen like the back of it sides but that's all fine and i did use a case occasionally but for the most part i didn't and it physically it's it's in really really good shape it's just the screen that's bad news bears yeah speaking of a final thing on cases um this is a good time to uh refresh people who haven't been listening to the show for years and years i always make reference to the naked robotic core uh idea and for people who don't know what that is uh it is the uh idea that i think i talked about back in the hypercritical days originally that you will make a product that omits as much stuff as possible because someone who buys your product can always add things to it but they can't take things away so for example in the case of the iPhone.

1:40:58You can imagine making a smartphone that has a grippy rubber back on it that is not as slippery as the phones that Apple makes. But if you don't want a grippy rubber back and the phone comes with one and that is literally the back of the phone, you can't remove that. So the naked robotic core theory is ship the smallest, most minimal thing possible and then anybody who wants something can add it to it. But people who want nothing get the smallest, minimal product possible and it is if i don't know if apple espouses this theory is a thing that i came up with to explain apple's apparent design decisions on their phone and i think they continue along those lines and the specific instance with the iphone 16 is uh i think marco talked about this uh maybe in the past episode um they're shrinking the bezels around the screen just year after year millimeter after millimeter it's not like there was a big giant one inch border like that was in the original ipad like the border around the screen uh on the iphone has always been pretty small but apple's like no we need to make it smaller because that border is a thing that if you don't want it you can't remove it from the phone you can always add a border by putting a case on it but if you get a phone and you want no border you can't have that unless we ship you the naked robotic core and then it's up to you to decide we we ship you if they could ship it with zero border they would like a samsung phone with the screen goes over the edge or rounded over whatever right they're getting real close to essentially having zero border and you can decide is zero border what you want if not add a case and now the screen is so close to the edge that i've heard from so many people with iphone 16s that they're accidentally activating things on the screen simply by the act of holding the phone because the the meat of their fingers wraps around and ends up touching the screen part and yes the iphone and ios has all sorts of like um what we would call on the ipad palm rejection but essentially touch rejection rejecting what the os thinks is an inadvertent touch but it's not enough for some people there's still some of their touches are getting through and by the way i think there's a fun one where like if you if you touch the screen where right by the camera control where like the little camera control controls would appear on the screen if you touch the screen there and then try to do anything else anywhere on the screen all your touches are ignored which i think is probably like a feature having to do with people trying to swipe the camera control or something or maybe it's a bug i don't know but anyway they've gotten so naked robotic core with the 16 line that people are now having to make the choice to get a case simply because they cannot avoid accidental input because now the screen is so close to the edge they just can't avoid it entirely so that is a possible thing to think about of like am i going to go caseless yeah they're giving you the most minimal you know they're trying to get closer to that naked robotic core ideal that they don't know about but it's just a thing that i made up but i'm that's what they're doing like this is me explaining what they're actually doing and if you don't like it your choice is to put a case on it because that's the only way to get your fingers farther away from that screen surface yeah that's part of the reason i use a case now because as i mentioned a couple episodes ago like i tried without a case i'm on the 15 pro at the end there and i kept causing accidental input on the screen and i'm actually honestly i'm finding that problem a little bit with the new watch too i'll get to that and when we get to talk about that but like you know as the screens get pushed out further and further the edges that's what happens you have less space to hold the phone with your fingers without causing input and it's it it's something that you can get used to but like i don't know like i i feel like i wasn't really asking for the bezels to get to get narrower it's naked robotic core it's like hey some people want the most minimal phone and they can't get that unless we ship it you can always add a case and there your problem is solved with the people who want the most minimal now you can argue okay no one wants it this minimal like human fingers are squishy like people's fingers are going to overlap and i also agree kind of on the on the 14 pro which had pretty big bezels right but the 14 pro that i was using previously i was constantly finding that somehow some fleshy part of my hand was touching the right edge of the screen when i was in landscape mode and causing youtube to fast forward because they added that thing where if you like hold on the right edge of the video like fast forwards or whatever and i'm like oh here's some accidental input that i hadn't thought about before or like just it's they're getting close to like you know is this is this robotic core too naked will everyone who buys this phone need a case like because again the idea of naked robotic core is provide the phone that is you know naked for the people who want it because they can't remove stuff from them but like at a certain point it's like okay but who wants this who wants the bezels to be this small and if the bezels are going to be that small maybe the uh stainless steel titanium whatever the hell aluminum aluminum and titanium maybe that band should be thicker at which point like why did you even remove the bezels and now you're just adding them back by making the band thicker or whatever but it's a thing for apple to think about and i know they're probably going to try to solve this software like oh we just need to tweak the touch rejection around the edges which ios has had for ages and apparently is slightly buggy with ios 18.0 but like i'm not sure that's the solution so they may be approaching kind of like a asymptotically approaching the ideal bezel size again setting aside the old like phones i think samsung made a few of these and so did other people where the the screen was like a waterfall and it curved over the edge so you could actually look at the side of the phone and see a portion of the screen i don't think that was a great idea either and i think apple agrees there uh but their current screen and the current bezels are really really pushing the limit well i mean i might argue that like since as since most people seem appear to use cases including yes we all saw the johnny ive picture where the new york times where there there was some article in New York Times that had a picture of Johnny Ive at some dinner and it showed him holding up an iPhone in an Apple silicone case and everyone's like oh my god look even Johnny Ive uses a case on his iPhone now that's notable because I think it I think maybe Grubber even asked this at some thing where they he asked a bunch of Apple executives to do you use a case on your phone that was at the AntennaGate press conference it was it was Johnny Ive wasn't on stage for that though was it no I believe it was Jobs uh Tim Cook and Eddie Q I think yeah and they were all like no they took out their phones they were all naked well guess what uh i've uses a case apparently now in his old age anyway yeah anyway um but yeah like i i would argue that you know since since so many people like i would assume it's probably a a pretty sizable majority of the iphone user base uses a case then that is what you should be designing for like if if people are going to use cases anyway why design for the fraction of the audience who's not going to use them you actually should optimize the phone for the much more common case of case usage so it does actually make sense well they kind of they kind of are like no the no bezel case is designed for a case because if we just assume everyone is going to put a case on this then we don't want to waste any space inside the case that doesn't have the screen we'll let the case be the border and then people can decide how thick a border they want by picking how thick a case they want like they're arguably doing that but the fact that so many apple executives and so many people in real life continue to use the phone without a case shows that the caseless scenario is not zeroed out right i mean at the very least if apple executives continue to insist that they don't use cases on their phones at the very least they're living the no case and so is casey the no case the caseless sorry uh lifestyle yep right so it's not it's not like nobody right i mean maybe we should talk to about what are the percentages is it more people than want an iphone mini huh anyway uh real time follow-up from like 20 minutes ago because i forgot to go look uh belkin ultra glass 2 screen protector for iphone 16 pro uh so it is glass as far as i can tell not only because of the name but from what i can tell based on the packaging um but yeah i'll put a link in the show notes i'll put it in slack for you two to look at if you care but i believe it is honest to goodness glass And it is not rounded over.

1:48:45No, it is not. So, but the good news is, like I believe I had said earlier, allegedly, if you screw something up, then you can get a new one for free and have the Apple Store put back on for you. Anyway, yeah, the case situation, not great, which is part of the reason why I am going caseless, caseless again. All right. Do we want to talk Apple Watch or do we want to talk AirPods first? Can we talk photo styles briefly? Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I completely skipped that. But this, I've only played with this very briefly, but I'm really digging this. One of the things that I didn't talk too much about during the ATP Insider special is I just don't really edit my pictures other than doing color correction.

1:49:30The most basic, like silly, well not silly, but like simple color correction that I can possibly do. So if I take a photo inside and everything looks blue, I'll try to do color correction to make it look, you know, the color it's supposed to be. with these photo styles, and especially since they're like a side card, maybe that's not the right term, but it's, you know, additional information that's kind of, you know, attached to the photo. So you can go in and revisit it later. I'm really liking this. And this, for me, for my simple brain, this is the right amount of editing for a photo. I don't want to have 85 different sliders to tweak.

1:50:06I just want to mouse around in that like track pad of dots that they present to you. So you get this like grid of dots and you can like kind of swirl around in there and it'll, you know, live update the photo and show the results of that change. And I forget exactly what you're editing. I think it's tone and contrast or something like that. I maybe one of you know, but, um, but that's, that to me is the correct amount of editing. And I've only done this like once or twice because I've only had the phone for a few hours, but I'm really digging this so far. I haven't gotten to the point of setting a new default, but I really, really like having this as a means and mechanism to edit pictures that i that i think just need that little extra like spoilers for an upcoming episode but there is an ask atp that somewhere buried down in our giant queue of ask atp that asks about photo editing and i will say that um this camera control that the uh the photographic styles control that he's talking about that grid of dots that lets you change things after the fact is an interesting sort of entry into the photo editing ui spectrum obviously the one end is like i never edit my photos and the other end is like lightroom right or whatever and somewhere in the middle is this grid thing which is nice in that like casey doesn't even know what the axes stand for but it doesn't matter because the whole point is you put your thumb on that thing you move it around and you move it around until you like how the picture looks right i mean that's that like there's not that's not so many places you can move it it's like up down left right i don't even know how many rows and columns there are but there's not a million of right and you move it until the picture looks good to you now i will say that one of the problems with systems like this is people who don't have a lot of experience in editing photos often aren't the best judge of what looks good to them and that may sound ridiculous like of course everyone knows what looks good to them it's their opinion in the moment when you're editing you will stop when it looks good to you but then a year from now when you look back at the picture you may find yourself saying why does this picture look weird well it looked good to you when you were using that control at the time you did it but now looking back it actually looks kind of odd it does help to have some understanding of what you're doing to know what goals that you want to get to it's kind of like you know going to the tv store as we talked about before and saying that tv looks amazing yeah because it's on vivid mode where every color is oversaturated and it's the brightness is cranked up and it looks very striking but that's not how you want your tv to look experience editing photos will help you avoid sort of the vivid the vivid valley i guess of like oh no i move my thumb on this control until it looked good to me but i didn't realize that i'm making all my pictures look like samsung photographs or everything old old style samsung photographs where everything's all blown out and every color is oversaturated and everything is too contrasty or whatever anyway you you do you but the beauty of the photographic styles is if you find out you've made a terrible mistake and you your your taste in thumb placement on that four-way controller bad you can always go change it later and you can even just turn it off and go back to one of the preset modes marco thoughts have you played with this any only a little bit i i need more time with it so i i have played with it and i i decided even before i got this phone that my plan was i'm going to change my default photographic style because i know it's non-destructive and if i end up not liking it like the default one that comes to is like called standard right that's just like hey it's gonna look like iphone pictures this year's iphone pictures with this os and this hardware standard right and that's what all my previous pictures have been like obviously and I mostly like them but I know what iPhone pictures look like the processing they do or whatever and it's not exactly to my taste I decided that my default photographic style is going to be natural what is the difference between standard and natural I think they don't over boost the saturation as much maybe there's less sharpening all I know is that it looks closer to how I think i want them to look maybe i'm wrong maybe i'll take a year's worth of pictures in natural and i'll look back at them and i'll say you know what i wish these were all in standard well guess what i can go change them back to standard if i feel that way um but i don't plan on using that big four-way control because i like to edit it in photos which is maybe one step up from the four way control it's not all the way to light room but it is i'm familiar with the controls and photos and i know how to tweak them to look the way i currently like them to look although that changes over the years see our photos episode that we talked about this um but i'm gonna go with natural I'm going to go with natural by default, and I'm never going to touch it, and I'm going to see how I like it.

1:54:22You know, did you go into settings for the camera and do the photographic style setting? I did. I used the camera control to do it. I set it to natural, and it just stays on natural. Well, because the reason I ask is when you drill into settings, camera, photographic styles, it brings up a screen, and it says photographic styles. To begin, select four of your favorite photos captured with this iPhone. Photographic styles lets you personalize how you appear in photos with incredible nuance to get the look you want. Now, I haven't taken enough photos to do this yet, so I haven't proceeded to the, you know, there's a button that says get started.

1:54:55But after I take, you know, maybe a bunch of photos of the kids and maybe, you know, a photo or two of Penny and maybe like a landscape or something, I don't know. I plan to go back in there and do whatever that wizard is to see. I presume it will suggest to me, okay, well, based on these photos, or perhaps it'll give me some editing options and say, okay, or maybe it'll like blindly show me here's like four of the different styles. Which one do you like the most? And my hope having not tried it yet is that maybe it'll point me in a direction. Although as you were talking, I looked, I did take a picture of Penny staring down a ball that she really wanted me to throw to it for a natural.

1:55:36Oh, The natural for this does look very good. I don't know if it's my favorite, but it definitely does look very, very good. Yeah, I'd never even seen that screen until you mentioned I just looked at it. One thing I did do, by the way, just to bring it up for the preserve settings screen, you know, settings, camera, preserve settings. You have to go to that and turn on the toggle switch for photographic styles if you want the camera app to preserve it. That's what I did. I turn on the preserve setting for photographic styles. Then back in the camera app, I use the camera control to swipe over to the natural style and it just stays on natural now.

1:56:06Wait, I'm sorry. So where's preserve settings? It's in that same. I don't see it here. It's in settings, camera, preserve settings. And then scroll until you see photographic styles. Turn that toggle switch on. And now whatever setting you set in the camera app for your photographic style, if you don't touch that setting again, it will just stay on whatever you set it to. All right. AirPods? Yeah, I don't have any new ones. So I think this is the John show. Well, the only new ones that exist are the AirPods 4. And you two are AirPods Pro users because you like things in your ear holes. But I don't.

1:56:35uh i don't like things in my ear holes so i got the airpods 4 with with anc uh on the box it says airpods 4 it says airpods 4 and then it says active noise cancellation and then like the sticker on the box says airpods 4 with anc and parentheses or something anyway um these are a different shape than the airpods 3 which is a different shape than their predecessor airpods so it is a new shape for my ears they don't fall out of my ears they don't feel as big in my ears as the airpods 3 like they don't feel like they're pushing it out like they are physically smaller so that makes sense they do feel like they go farther into my ears for what i think are obvious reasons because to get the noise cancellation to work a little bit better they want to be a little bit farther into your ears overall i think it's an upgrade in comfort over the previous one but really it is just mildly like i it feels mildly uncomfortable in a different way not uncomfortable but like i the the parts that i feel because again i wore the airpods i've been using airpods 3 i wear them every single day like they're not uncomfortable they don't hurt my ears but i can feel which part of my ear are they pressing and these press a different part and they go in my ear farther and for someone who doesn't like things to go inside their ears that's not great but it's still better than the ones that actually go inside your ears i do really appreciate the fact that the case is so much smaller i'm not sure it's back to the original airpods one case size but it is so much smaller than its predecessor case massively smaller than the pro case i wonder if the AirPods Pro 3 will do a case shrink too.

1:58:01They did a case shrink in the straightforward way. They just make there be less case around the AirPods. Like it is essentially thinner around it. So kudos to them to making the case smaller. One of the consequences of having a new case is you have to learn a new way to get the AirPods out of the case. With every new shape of AirPods, we all have to learn, when I open this case lid, how the hell do I get these things out of here? and the move has been different for every single kind of airpod the pros the the originals the the twos the threes like it's all the twos were the same as one nice things anyway it's a bit different for all of them this one is is same deal i you i could not get them out this the way i get the other ones out instead i have to come from like the side on an angle and that's how they come up it's fine you just learn it and do it but it's weird that that's always different um the sound here's the thing about airpods my my uh daughter in particular but both my kids have you know the people who have the fingers that wear the the letters off the keyboards right my kids have ears that destroy airpods wow and and the way they destroy them well my daughter somehow is able to destroy the microphones i don't know how she does this but it's a thing that happens right we've gone through so many under apple care we just keep getting new ones and she just destroyed anyway but both my kids the failure mode of their airpods and they're using i think now they're using threes they all have the the previous like non-pro models is that the airpods just lose all bass i don't know if it's like a tiny speaker cone tearing so it's only like the middle part of the driver that's vibrating is basically becomes all treble because the part that would be bass is gone because like the paper has torn or something but i think they've had like three or four pairs sometimes under warranty sometimes not that like you know i put them in my ears i'm like how are you listening to this it's all treble like the bass is gone don't you realize these are essentially broken and sure enough you've taken to the apple store they put them in some little test rig and they test them like oh yep these are totally bad like they're not producing sound the way they're supposed to be right i don't know what causes that you can't see inside the airpods but it's a thing uh i don't know if my airpods 3 that i had before have this problem or we're starting to have this problem but what i do know is that the airpods 4 have so much more bass than my previous airpods so much more bass that i went immediately to try to find setting is like is there a way i could turn the bass down because this is too much bass for me because like i'm listening to like podcasts and like everybody sounds like you know a newscaster with a super deep voice so much bass and now i know people who have airpods pro is like yeah that's the right amount of bass dummy and you've just been listening to crappy airpods it should sound like that i wasn't used to it but listening to music i appreciate it listening to vocals even with voice boost on and overcast i'm like could you turn the bass down a little bit so i wish there was an adjustment for that but i would say this is the result of the airpods 4 having superior sound quality to my own personal airpods 3 which may or may not be in the process of losing bass so there is definitely that um the second thing is with the noise cancellation uh you know apple said that their pros are twice as good that may be underestimating it uh the noise cancellation doesn't cancel noise so much as tamps it like it it changes the nature of the noise so to give an example i'm very often listening to my airpods when doing dishes and there's the running water sound right it's kind of like white noise kind of running water sound if i put up my gigantic sony airplane headphones i could just cancel out that running water sound where it's just basically gone right with the airpods 4 the running water sound is still there and it is lower volume and it is also of a different nature it is less loud and sort of less shrill if that makes sense but you can still absolutely hear it to the point where i was trying to figure out am i in noise canceling and it's got i don't know if the pros have this too but like it cycles through the different modes and you can there's like tones that they play have you memorized all the tones yeah i don't remember which ones are which until they're presented then oftentimes i can mostly figure it out but i couldn't like demonstrate them now bling yeah because there's four settings and there's four tones there's off which is just like don't do anything just be whatever there is transparency which is take sounds from the outside and play them into my ears through the speakers that's the bling yeah there is adaptive which i have no idea i'm gonna ask you about in a second uh and then there is noise canceling which is cancel as much noise as possible and very often i was like am i in noise canceling and then i would change the mode and it would like go to off and i'm like oh yeah i was in noise canceling because now everything is much louder and of a different nature but it is nothing like putting on like a big pair of over your headphones that i'm sure nothing like having airpods pro shoved into your hole so i appreciate the noise cancellation it is doing something don't expect it to do with like a real noise canceling headphones like in other words i would say these are not a replacement for airpods pro or over your noise canceling on a plane they will probably help a little bit but it's it's like a night and day difference so i would still recommend these i still think they're worth the extra 50 bucks maybe for the case with the speaker alone and i like that it's there but as you would expect from something that doesn't seal your ears in any possible way there's only so much they can do like the bottom line is sound is getting in the sound can get around the airpods there's no seal around the thing and what i want to ask you guys is i have no idea which one of these four modes i should ever be in with the exception of being in noise cancelling mode when i'm home alone in the kitchen doing dishes which i feel like is safe every other context i'm like should i be in transparency should i be in off should i be an adaptive what the hell is adaptive so please give me some guidance of the four modes that these things can go into when do you use each mode and why so what i suggest is you can in the in the settings you can actually remove some of those modes from the rotation um so i oh i i remove off and i remove adaptive so my only two modes the reason you the sounds are transparency or noise cancellation.

2:04:02Adaptive, that's the one where it tries to use conversational awareness to try to cancel noise sometimes, but bring in things and I have found, I haven't tried it recently, so maybe it's better now. When it first came out, I tried it for like a day and just hated the choices it was making. And so I instantly after one day, I'm like, alright, I'm out. So I went back to manually controlling noise cancellation versus transparency. I can't tell what Adaptive is trying to do because there's no like indicator that i found in like the ui and saying is it noise cancelling now is it not doing is it adding transparency like i turned off the conversation awareness features that are like oh do you want me to lower the volume when you when you start talking or someone talks to you like that was just it's not what i want anyway like if someone like if you're listening to a podcast i don't want it to duck the volume i'm on a pause it myself which is what i'll do yeah um i i guess that adaptive is trying to be smart but that's cannot tell what it's doing it doesn't like especially because the noise canceling is not so dramatic i'm like is it doing noise canceling or has it decided not to and then i have to switch modes to go to like either the off mode or the noise canceling mode and compare it to what it was in adapted to tell if it had decided it's just it's too much guesswork so i'm not an adaptive fan right off the bat but i keep giving it a try in indoor context where i think i'm not going to be hit by a car but anyway you so you're using you don't even use do you use off you just use transparency or noise that's it yeah i'm in transparency the vast majority of the time unless i happen to be either on a plane or on uh you know a subway platform where it's super loud then i'll turn on transit uh noise cancellation so walking the dog is transparency then always yeah see what i mean i've been walking the dog with essentially off because i haven't had air pods with noise canceling before and if you're listening to a podcast especially with ones that don't seal your ears you can hear the outside world like i don't feel like i need transparency to replay the outside world because again you can just hear it with these airpods in so maybe i'll use off for dog walks but no use transparency just use transparency you can hear better trust me it's better just but i don't want the outside world being played at louder volume into my ears when i'm trying to listen to the podcast it's not louder john pump the brakes you're you're thinking way too hard about this just do transparency you're you're you're so wrapped around the axle about it i promise it'll be fine i mean i've tried it like i know what it's like and it does make the outside world more prominent than when it's in off mode well yeah because it's but so typically like like back like back when i was using aftershocks for my dog walks before i just go before airpods pro existed um the the big benefit of the of the of the bone conduction style of headphones is your ears are just unblocked like you have no you know obstruction whatsoever for noise coming in.

2:06:50You're just using the bone conduction headphones to add your music or podcast to it. That's what transparency mode does on the AirPods Pro. Now, granted, I haven't tried these AirPods yet, so I don't know if transparency is as good. They don't actually block your ear holes like the Pros do. But I assume it's probably close or as good, and the AirPods Pro transparency is just incredible. As I said, it's way better than even the AirPods Max transparency. i don't know why but for whatever reason it is because the airpods max don't have the h2 maybe um but anyway so whatever the reason the uh transparency the airpods pro is is it's perfect like it it really is like you're wearing nothing like if you have the ear the airpods in and you're not playing anything and you take them out it's the outside world is the same loudness as it was when you had them in like it it's as if you're wearing nothing and then you're adding selectively to it with your podcast like so it is great well i mean for these things that don't seal the ear holes off is not the same as transparency to my ears fair but i i would i would experiment with it uh give i would give transparency as much of a shot as you can i will i will try to get adaptive out of it out of the uh the rotation do you happen to know where in settings that is bearing i find it by going into the bluetooth menu and and like go go to bluetooth go to the airpods hit their little i button it's in there yeah that's that's annoying thing that you can't do unless they're currently pair yeah if they're not in your ears like when i go to bluetooth it just has like model number serial number apple care and forget this device yeah i think they have to be connected yeah all right i'll i'll take it that yeah i think i think i've basically decided that adaptive is not working for me but i'll still have to try the other ones yeah one final thing on the case um there is no magnetic connection between the airpods 4 case and the magsafe puck at least the original magsafe puck which is what i have i have an original magsafe bottom of a nightstand and that's because the new case is too small to hit the magnets right because the new the case curves right it's if you put it on the circle like oh it fills the circle what's the problem but the problem is the parts that are over the magnets are the curved parts not the flat part so it does not magnetically align like the old case did simply because it's smaller it'll charge is fine and it even makes a nice little chime you know when you know you've done it okay so it does charge yeah you just put a dead center in the thing it just doesn't like magnetically align itself with the mags i think because it can't but it does magnetically align itself with the apple watch charger and like in an offset like if you put on an apple watch charger it snaps right to where it's supposed to go and and it's not centered like where it wants to be in the apple watch charger is like in the lower portion of it but it will snap right to it so that's just something to keep in mind i don't think it's a problem again i love the small case i totally endorse it but apple has uh sort of outrun themselves maybe maybe with the new because you mentioned the new one is narrower maybe the new one does magnetically align it because it's that much smaller but i haven't tried it all right apple watch series 10 do you have one you have one casey what do you think of it yes uh so i did get one i went from the wee lad version to the manly man version uh which is to say oh my god small to large i'm just kidding uh i went from the small size large side was it now it's 42 and it's 42 and 46 46 thank you um this thing compared to my series eight little guy, it's chonky.

2:10:09It's big. Actually, I shouldn't say it's chonky because it's actually very, very thin, but it's big. Now, that being said, it looks like a billboard on my wrist right now, but I think you were right the whole time. And it only lightly pains me to admit that publicly, but I think I will quickly adjust to it. And I don't think it's absurd. Seeing it on my wrist right now, I do wonder if an Ultra would have been a bridge too far. I'm not sure. Maybe it wouldn't be. But looking at the way this is sitting on my wrist right now, I feel like the Ultra might have been too much. If you look at it, it doesn't look that much thinner to me, but it sits and feels much thinner to my eyes.

2:10:54And I was talking to Jason about this when we were in Memphis together and he pointed out to me, and I think he's exactly right, the like sensor plateau or Mesa or whatever that's on the bottom, the stuff that sits against your wrist with like the with the little LEDs that flash for, you know, all the different things that it's sensing, except blood ox, apparently. in many ways. That is quite a bit thinner than it used to be. And I think that makes a big difference as well. I really like it so far. I also liked, speaking of old men with old men problems, I like that the font appears to be noticeably bigger because the screen is so much bigger, which is also nice.

2:11:33In terms of the off-axis viewing, it's definitely better, but I can't say that I'm like, oh, you know what I mean? It's just one of those things where i think in the past i would have had to twist my wrist more or you know just wouldn't be able to see my my watch or the watch face and now i can see it at more angles but it but it's not the sort of thing that's striking it's just oh that's nice it works better now well if you if you had your uh if you had the large size of the previous watch i think you would have noticed both the angle and the thickness because i watched the youtube video of them comparing it was the max tech channel they were comparing the the series 10 with the series 9 of the same sort of size class and the series 10 look dramatically thinner just setting aside the little blister on the bottom for the sensors just the body of it look thinner and the same thing with the viewing angle if you take your old and your new and put them on the same surface and just tilt your head to go at an angle i think you'll notice a difference i have been looking for youtube videos of someone taking like a magnifier to this to see if it's mla uh seems like the consensus is no no one has taken a magnifier to it but a lot of people have said first of all a lot of people are saying that mla doesn't actually improve viewing angles because it mostly just makes it brighter from the front it does make it brighter from the front but i think it also helps viewing angles if only because they're getting rid of like the the color tint and sending light off in other directions but i'm gonna guess i mean i'm still looking for evidence there'll be follow-up next week if i find some but i'm gonna guess that it's actually not mla but simply just a better ltpo3 whatever oled but still inconclusive uh no one on youtube cares about this enough to take a magnifier to it so one thing i haven't tried um oh there we go what's coming from the watch so i can play music i like the speaker holes in the series 10 i like how instead of being a speaker slot there's these tiny little holes it looks much nicer and hopefully less likely to clog with dust yeah i mean uh for what it's worth i was trying to play music maybe it's not coming through because of zoom or whatever but um it plays actually surprisingly loud.

2:13:32I mean, this is definitely audible from, you know, from waist level. I don't know. Again, I don't know how much that's coming through. Again, testing on YouTube, it seems to be about the same volume as the Ultra, which was the previous Speaker King. And the Ultra has gigantic speaker holes because it's a big chunky watch, but this one has very tiny, elegant, and numerous speaker holes. And apparently it gets just as loud as the Ultra. Yeah, I just tried it for the first time just now. And I don't know if, like I said, I don't know if it'll come through in the recording. It certainly doesn't sound like it's coming through on Zoom.

2:14:00But it's sufficient. I wouldn't want to listen to music this way, generally speaking, but in a pinch, especially as someone who really hates silence, and that's me. Yeah, that's kind of nice. Yeah, I mean, I like it. I like it a lot so far. Way too early to tell because I did this after I did my phone upgrade. And so really, really early to tell, but so far so good. Did Tina get a new watch this year or no? So she didn't want one on day one. I wonder if she'll change her mind when she sees them in real life. I did tell her that the new ones don't have blood oxygen and her current one does. I don't know if she cares about that, but bottom line is no, she didn't order one.

2:14:34We'll see how long this lasts. Yeah. Yeah. So, so far so good. Um, I think it'll be worth revisiting this next week, both this and the phones. Once Aaron has a chance with hers, um, because she is much, not, I was going to say much more blase. That's that has a negative connotation. I don't mean that at all, but she's kind of like, yeah, whatever about all this. Um, like, Oh, that's nice. it's new and it has new things cool you know what i mean like it doesn't really rev her engine like it does us uh and so i'm curious to hear her thoughts and by you know next wednesday when we record next uh hopefully i'll be able to have her uh relay some of the some of her opinions for me and i'll see what see what she thinks so i took out my series 10 and i i had the um the natural titanium and i had a number of initial impressions number one the titanium feels great it is so light it feels amazing like when you because not only did they reduce the weight of the watch in in general like in all of the watches this year all the series 10s are lighter in all the metals compared to their their their previous version metal counterparts but so so you have the weight savings there and then they also have replaced steel with titanium so the titanium models are almost as light as the aluminum models they're very very light they feel fantastic um they did get bigger and i and i i got the big one and i put it on my wrist and i thought like casey just said it looks like a billboard on my wrist um i also it seemed and i don't i don't know I don't have my old one here to measure, but it seemed almost like it looked like a more, a closer to square aspect ratio than the outgoing one.

2:16:26Yeah, they did make it wider. They widened it more than they tallened it. Right. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think that actually, I don't honestly like that look. I think it looks even more like a billboard on your wrist. Oh, really? I think I disagree. I think I like it a little more squared. But I mean, this is, again, initial impressions. I might change my mind on that. I also found – I find that the natural color on the titanium, I expect it to be a little bit brighter. It actually is like a pretty medium gray to the point where I think it loses a bit of contrast. Like part of the reason why I haven't bought the black watches in the past or all the various forms of black that they've been is that I actually like seeing some contrast between the watch body case and the black crystal above it.

2:17:12and when you have a black or dark gray watch you lose a lot of that contrast and so if you're going for like kind of like a unified blob look then that's that's what you want what i want is the contrast between the case metal and the top and so i actually find i i don't like the natural color as much um and the reason i went to the apple store was like i thought after a half day of wearing it i think i made a mistake with the size oh interesting really they made it you know one millimeter bigger or whatever like they made it a little bit bigger and kind of like the way some people have switched from the max phone down to the pro phone casey you're gonna kill me i switched to the smaller one really you let me out you let me have to convince casey to get the big watch and they're like but for me small watch i yeah like i i wore it for a few hours and i'm and i'm like i can't like it's it looked too big on me i'm here i'll send you comparison photos and in the slack you have an ultra marco um not with me i i had an ultra i wore it for a little while like the when the first one came out because this is very similarly size and width and height not obviously thickness because the ultra is way thicker but in width and height this the large is actually pretty close to the ultra if you can pull off the ultra why not this one i can pull it off i just don't like it like they like the ultra no that's why i don't wear the ultra all right um no i bought the ultra mostly as like a test device because the screen felt and looked so different from the previous ones because it didn't have the curvature and it was so big that i i felt like as a developer of an app for the wash i needed one to test and and that that did prove useful um but yeah so when i when i got this one i'm like at the big one they made it too big it does not fit me well like if again i can pull it off but like what i was thinking was like first of all how much of a role do i want this to play in my life like part of the reason to get the ultra before is if you really want a computer on your wrist and you want to use it like a computer like that's then you you want the biggest screen you want the one that can show the most text you want you know the most interface elements on screen at once like you want that i don't want it to play quite that big of a role in my like in my person like on my actual person i'm happy to take the phone out to do computing tasks i i hardly ever read or write anything on the watch itself it is mostly a sensor and a and a brief display for me so i actually realized like i i think i actually want the smaller one um and also i've started doing sleep tracking with this one i decided i wanted to start doing that and the the smaller the better honestly when you're doing that um and so the small one i i have i actually tried the gold one too um so i have the the the 42 millimeter uh gold titanium which honestly is not that gold it's it's a very it's the same way apple does like their pro phone colors like it's a little gold um it's it's it's gold enough to look a little bit different in certain lighting most of the time it just looks like the steel like the polished state the polished silver steel um but that's fine i have it on the on the on the black sports or the black yeah sport band and that gold and black i think is a very nice look and i'm very pleased with it right now um and it also works well on white you gotta be a little careful with some of the colors if you try color straps to see if they go with the gold but black and white look great with it um so i think i'm pretty well covered even you know by going with the smaller watch it is even lighter than the bigger one so it is like it feels like i'm wearing nothing like i think the band weighs more than the watch at this point um so it's a it's a very very good overall uh fit for me surprisingly so like i really did not think i'd go back to the smaller one but they just they pushed the big one a little bit too far and if you and i actually did measure the two of them if you if you measure the um the aspect ratios of them the bigger one is more square than the smaller one like it actually has a different aspect ratio and so the smaller one i think looks better on me in part because it is a little bit smaller and in part because it has more rectangular shape so overall i like the small one a lot it is not as much screen space as my big series 8 like they didn't make that or my big series 9 they didn't make that big of a jump but it is more and i i bumped the font size up a couple of notches on it uh so to accommodate my reading glasses need that i'm not satisfying um and so far i'm liking it uh i like the gold for a nice change of pace even though again it's not that gold but it's subtle enough it's it's a nice change of pace um the again titanium is so nice to be back and uh yeah so i'm gonna rock this look for the year and see how it goes but it's been honestly very comfortable on me it's been great you let me down uh i just put a link in the show notes i i'll see if i can maybe get a better picture of it um if or i put a link in slack excuse me i'll see if i can get a better picture for the show notes it looks a little chunkier there than i feel like it's sitting when i just looked down so this again this picture ain't great but i mean i i don't think it looks bad on me and we'll see what happens i don't personally sitting here now i don't have any particular desire to return this and get the smaller one.

2:22:35And I think maybe part of that is driven by me having kind of mentally prepped myself for going ultra this year and just expecting to have, you know, it just absolutely mammoth watch on my wrist. And so while this is surface area mammoth or slightly mammoth, at least it's not depth mammoth. And I think that helps make it feel a lot more svelte than perhaps it actually is. Plus you get the bigger battery, which has been a concern for you. Yeah, exactly. exactly like i would say that looks big but doesn't look bad it does look big yeah yeah that's a good way to put it yeah yeah and again like smartwatch fashion is big as in like people like big watches big smart watches these days that's why the ultra has been so popular it's not because all those people are going diving it's because they like big watches that's what's in fashion and big screens are very useful and big batteries are very useful and so there's lots of reasons why people choose bigger watches even if they do look big on their wrists um for me like most of those things were like and for me it's less about it's less about like you know the superficial look it's more about like just the way it fits like it even just like that little bit extra like one of the things i mentioned in the past is like if a watch is too big on my wrist i don't like what if like if i flex my wrist up if i'm like you know in certain exercises or something like if you're So, like, you know, picture yourself doing a push-up.

2:23:56If you're doing a push-up, like, your hand is bent upwards compared to your wrist. And, like, you know, you kind of just have to, like, when your skin, like, crushes into the watch, like, it's less comfortable. So, for me, like, in my general lifestyle, having a slightly smaller watch is more comfortable. And the outgoing models, the big one was, yeah, it was bigger, but it was not that big. It was like, I think this is a noticeable jump in a way that I didn't expect it to be. Like when I took a picture of it like sitting on top of my Series 9 and like you see the size gain. It is not subtle. Like you absolutely see it.

2:24:37Like it is like the big one, the big Series 10 compared to the big Series 9 is like it's not just like imperceptibly bigger. You can clearly see which one is which. it is obvious like oh that's the bigger one it's because it's a decent amount bigger the big series 10 is basically a curved ultra like i think it might even be wider than the ultra like it is yeah because they learn that you know people like the big screen on the ultra but this is not as nearly as thick as the ultra that is the big difference in this and by the way another change on the series 10 that i saw in some videos is that whatever they call the button on the side not the crown but like the button that you press that button is way bigger now to compare it like to a series 9 of the same sime class and look how big that button is on a 10 versus the 9 which i mean i think is a good improvement because like why make it so small i don't feel like because i'm looking at my series 8 with small one and then the series 10 is bigger for sure but that's it appears to me to be more about the upgrade and size class than it is the fact that the button you're maybe not comparing like to like there but anyway put a picture from one youtube videos but yeah they made the button bigger which i think they should like there's no reason to keep it as small it's you know make the whole area where you're going to press be easier to press i you know i don't have an apple watch my wife has many many apple watches that she's handed down to the kids that she's gotten new ones but i did the other day take out for curiosity and just to see if it would still work my series zero my uh series zero apple watch the only apple watch i ever purchased for myself it is a stainless steel uh silver stainless steel one and I wanted to know if it was dead and good news, it's not dead and I charged it up and it still looks great as long as you don't look at the screen they were so small back on the Series 0 but up until I think maybe now I think the Series 0 was the thinnest Apple Watch that they had ever sold I think the 10 is probably thinner but yeah, it still looks real good, it's too bad I don't like watches Alright, thanks to our sponsors this episode 1Password Extended Access Management and Trade Coffee Thanks to our members who support us directly you can join us atp.fm slash join one of the perks of membership is our atp overtime segment every week this is a bonus topic that we do after every episode this week's atp overtime is meta kicking apple when it's down it's uh the way meta has recently been engaging with apple and changing some of their own plans around uh their mixed reality efforts and uh kind of how that interacts with apple and the vision pro line that's going to be in overtime this episode join to listen atp.fm slash join thanks everybody and we'll talk to you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental or who is accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm and if you're into Mastodon you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S so that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M and T-Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C usa syracuse it's accidental they didn't mean to accidental tech podcast so long john i hear you have some complaints about volvo's i was gonna say forthcoming but it's sorta kinda here uh electric version of aaron's car which is called her car is the xc90 but the all-electric is the EX90, and I hear you have complaints.

2:28:35I know why car makers keep doing this. We've talked about it before, especially in the context of Tesla early on, that when car makers make an electric vehicle, they feel compelled to do things to make it seem futuristic. And I was hoping that would be something that car makers would get over after a few years or a decade or whatever, but they just can't stop doing it. Door handles are the obvious victim here. can we just have normal door handers no it's an ev they have to be annoying hard to use problematic door handles it's been just an epidemic everyone keeps copying it no one has figured out hey just make normal door handles going back to normal but no they can't they can't stop doing it they make all sorts of excuses or whatever anyway uh that extends to many other parts of the car on the volvo ex90 and i like these cars i like you know as far as suv goes i think they're they're nice looking they have good features or whatever but volvo like you said decided to make an electric version of casey's car all electric battery powered ev right uh and for the most part it looks like the regular one right it doesn't they didn't do anything weird with the styling i forget if they have messed up door handles but who cares at this point i just you know it's invisible to me what drove me insane was that they said you know what is there some other part of the car that we can screw up because it's an ev we have the the xc90 and it's a perfectly nice car could we just make that an ev no wait is there some part of the car that previously had no problems with it that we can screw up because it's an ev and they said yes yes we can and you know what they screwed up i don't if you haven't seen reviews of this car maybe you don't know because if you look at a picture of it you're like oh it seems fine it looks like kind of like my uh xc90 they decided that they're going to screw up the headlights headlights oh stop it's fun no no let me tell you all right so headlights they're things on the front of your car that light up right uh and over the years we've done lots of different things with headlights i mean we talked about a previous episode that mercedes used to have little windshield wipers and little sprayers to go on them because what if not just mercedes others yeah bmw probably did as well although the german car makers had a little windshield because like hey if you're going on the road and dirt flies up on your on your headlights not as much light will get out so we'll try to clean them off and modern cars tend not to do that it's kind of out of fashion but they're more aerodynamic shaped and we have led lights which of course can be smaller but just as bright and we have matrix leds all sorts of advances trying to make lights better to serve you better and volvo said but this is an ev let's screw them up in some way and so what they decided to do was for their headlights they have you know you have to have daytime running lights which uh for laws in various places, which are just lights that are on when you're just driving around.

2:31:15But then you have the headlight parts of it. And they said, what we can do is we'll have a daytime running lights where the headlights normally are in the little Thor's hammer Volvo design. We're going to have a little matrix LED daytime running lights, but they'll be where the headlights are. And you may be asking, but then where do you put the headlights? If you put the daytime running lights right where the headlights were going to be for a little bit of historical context here. So you are right. It is called the Thor's hammer like headlight motif. And the way this is, is imagine an uppercase letter T and then pitch it so that the horizontal crossbar on the T, twist it 90 degrees in either way.

2:31:50So now that horizontal crossbar is vertical, right? And that's on the outsides of the car. So it looks kind of like a hammer. And on Erin's car and on her prior one, may God rest its soul, I don't recall what specifically was daytime running lights and what was headlight headlights. I believe it was additional lenses or LEDs or whatever that LEDs, I guess, that came on when you turned on the headlight proper. And the Thor's hammer stuff did still stay on, but the headlights were quite a bit brighter. And so at a glance, this looks the same. But as you were about to say before I interrupted you, it is quite a bit different now.

2:32:27Right. So they have the daytime running lights where the headlights normally are. And how do you get to the headlights? You know, if you're in the car and you turn on the headlights or you're probably don't because it's just auto mode or whatever. It gets too dark and you need the headlights to be turned on. what happens is that the the thor's hammer daytime running lights open like a mouth mechanical shutters move vertically up and down to open a cavity that contains the actual headlights what they have reinvented pop-up headlights from the 80s but 10 times worse because they have mechanical things that need to open for your headlights to work at all because your headlights are 100 % blocked when this mouth is closed in front of each things.

2:33:09So they have to have a little thing that slides up and a little thing that slides down to reveal your headlights. And then what that opens is a cavity in the front of your car that presumably can fill with snow and ice and slush and whatever and screw up the mechanism that has to constantly open and close for the headlights. John, if you're going to whine, at least get your facts straight. All right. It doesn't open a cavity. it's still behind the plexi or the glass or what have you that is in front of the headlights. It's all internal to the car. There is no cavity for snow to get into. Now, what you're saying is true that, let's go back to a vertical T.

2:33:44Instead of the crossbar, the horizontal crossbar, now we're talking about the vertical bar, which once you twist it 90 degrees, now it's a horizontal bar. There are, well, there's two rows of lights and they do part. That is correct. that is a physical thing that happens. That part you're correct about, but there's no opening to the outside world. This is all in the headlight housing. No, no, no. Where the mouth parts used to be is now a cavity because they used to be filling that spot. So there is another two inches. If you take a stick and you poke it in this car and it hits daytime running lights and you open the mouth, you can push that stick in two more inches.

2:34:20No, it looks like John. That's where the little things used to be. There's glass in front of it. Yes, there is, but the thickness of the shutters is now gone right that's the cavity and why is that cavity important because when the mouth has to close if there's anything in that one or two inches now they're squishing it and now you're getting crap in between the little shutters how is something getting in there here here's the thing nothing is not a problem right that needed to be solved they have made it an overly complicated thing on a safety feature of the car which is the headlights this was not a problem anyone had they didn't say we have no place to put the headlights what are we going to do?

2:34:54We have to make up these shutters. It's just a mechanical thing. It's a moving part that can possibly fail and have things stuck into the crevices or whatever for no reason. It's like the door handles that are like, you know, rise out to reach you. Like there was nothing wrong with a door handle that you could just grab. You just made an additional failure point for no benefit. This was, there is no problem being solved here except for someone thinking this was cool. And for Volvo, a brand that is not known for this, especially again for a safety feature to decide they want a mechanical moving part.

2:35:23Again, have we learned nothing from pop-up headlights of seeing the, whatever the game used to play when you see a car with one headlight and you punch somebody or whatever, because pop-up headlights would get stuck down or stuck up, which was again, a safety issue. Mechanical things that move when they don't have to is just asking for an additional failure. This is one of the most shockingly bad ideas from a company that I expect better of. Tesla, by all means, I would expect them to do this or worse, right but volvo what are you doing volvo the xc90 has i think a more attractive headlights than the ex90 i think they just look nicer in both modes but especially in the open modes and b guess what no moving parts it's just a headlight it just sits there on the car and it just shines light and that's all it needs to do when it does everything you've got the daytime running lights you've got the headlights you got everything everything was fine this didn't need to be changed i'm just unreasonably angry about this.

2:36:15You are. And it makes me, it crosses this whole car off my list. I will never recommend this to anybody until they fix these headlights because it's insanity. You are losing your marbles, sir. Okay, I need to be completely clear one more time. There is a lens in the front of this whole assembly, just like on your beloved Hondas, just like on my Volkswagen, just like on the BMW that Marco just bought that he'll have for another 10 minutes. There is a lens in the front. so unless that lens somehow disintegrates there is no poking with the stick there's nothing to poke i see i see what you're saying in the thing it's hard to see in the video that i'm going to link in the show notes but i see what you're saying if that's the case and things won't get in there you can redact that part of my complaint but every other part of it in terms of the moving parts that can fail still stands because have you ever gotten condensation inside a headlight or a taillight those things are supposed to be sealed but even on very expensive cars they aren't always no like you are right that this is needlessly mechanically complicated correct your risk profile assessment is wrong because it does appear to be sealed but here's the thing about the risk this is an unnecessary this is a choice to have any additional risk over what was previously there you know what i'm saying like the other one does not have any doors that have to move open at all so like any additional risk even if it's tiny is just foolish and and by the way do you think it makes these headlights cheaper to replace i don't think it does oh that's gotta be a thousand dollar assembly right oh more than are you kidding have you not you have not priced a headlight recently no i guess not do not look up how much your headlights cost on your new car yeah please do not do it so here's the thing i concur with reservations that yes this is needlessly complex and yes it can break and yes that could be a very bad and do you agree that the xc90 has more attractive headlights five thousand dollars i looked it up i told you don't look it up oh my For your car or the Volvo?

2:38:05I told you not to look it up. Don't hit a stump. Oh my God. You should see what the headlights cost on like a Lamborghini. Each headlight, it costs as much as my car. That's not true because the Diablo used 300ZX headlights. No, not the Diablo. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Lamborghinis that you two don't know the names of because they're too new. Yeah, fair enough. No, I agree with you with reservations that it is needlessly complex. And yes, it could potentially be a safety issue. But I mean, no more so than a headlight going out. Like bulbs used to go out on the regular. That's why we use LEDs.

2:38:38We make advances to make headlights better. And they've decided to voluntarily make them worse and more expensive. By the way, real-time follow-up. It's only$5 ,000 per headlight if I get the laser lights option, which I do not have. So the non-laser BMW iX headlight. $4 ,800. It's only$2 ,100 per light. For each one. And that's on sale. That's 20 % off the official price of$2 ,600. Gracious. The thing I will say, though, about these headlights is, yes, it could be a safety issue. But my retort to that is, where's your sense of adventure? These things look so freaking cool. I'm in. I don't even think they look cool.

2:39:15That's the thing. And by the way, I just Googled this one just to give you the number. The Bugatti Chiron. You may have heard of this. It is the Veyron successor. It is not the latest Bugatti because they have a new one that's coming out soon. But it is Chiron. The Bugatti Chiron. Are you familiar with this car? Google for Bugatti Chiron. I've heard of it. Yes. Would you like to guess how much a headlight costs for that car? Well, weren't the mufflers like$40 ,000 in the Veyron or something like that? Go ahead. Make a guess. For the headlights,$10 ,000. Yeah, I'll say$15 ,000. I'm going to say you're both low.

2:39:43Do you want to make a second guess? Oh, my God. Really? $30 ,000. I'm going to say$30 ,000 per headlight. $164 ,000. What? For one headlight? I think that might be for both of them, but you can double check the story. How much is the whole car? like a million bucks? I think it's like three million. Oh my God. Let me see if it's per, let's see. What kind of light? I think it's for both of them. So it's a bargain. You're getting two for 164. Oh, that's, that's very, very nice of them. So again, don't do the stump with your Bugatti Chiron.