iPhone 15: the good, the bad, and the titanium

25:31I think Apple held out. I think the Europeans made them do it. I will say, I was thinking about this because last week on the show, I said, I really don't plug in my phone for anything. This is not going to impact me much at all. I use YOS charging. But the one time I do plug my phone in is when I'm in the car and I use CarPlay. And I'm going to upgrade my phone and have a USB-C port. My wife is not going to upgrade her phone. And she's going to have a lightning port. and now I'm going to have to deal with the fact that one... You're going to buy the dongle. You're going to buy the dongle. Buy the dongle.

26:00We have dueling cables in our car and anytime, because I'm usually on an Android phone and when I switch back to iPhone, my husband's like, thank God. Put this away. We can use one cable like God intended. My wife will get in the car and it's set up for Android Auto and she'll be like... I'm going to have to go through the settings menu to turn on CarPlay. It's very obvious who's going to have to buy the dongle and it's you. That's how that goes. Look, I think it's great. They didn't lock it down. They didn't do any weird made-for-iPhone stuff. They're not nerfing the cables at slower speed. Well, they nerfed the entire phone to run a USB 2.

26:36But charging speed should be fine over USB-C, 15 watts, we think, no matter what the cable, assuming you have a good cable that doesn't light itself on fire, a real part of the USB-C experience. Transfer speeds on the pros, USB-C, it's a standard they can do. Like, they did it right. They did the thing they should have done. They could have put actual faster USB in it, and they could have done more video out or whatever. For what? 15? Yeah, why not? It's an$800 phone. They couldn't put USB 3 in there? How long has USB 3 been around? You could say it a different way. It's an$800 phone. Yeah. That's how Apple would prefer you to say it.

27:16This is a garbage phone for 800 people with$800. Yeah, USB 2. Yeah. But you're right. It does mean that you can now travel with one charging cable, which I know a lot of people are excited about. I was on my way here, and I was packing my bag full of cables, the one that routinely gets me stopped at the airport as a brown man. You ever fly on September 11th as a brown man? The bag full of wires and batteries. It was great. I loved every minute of it. But I was packing my wires, you know, USB-C for everything, and then my one sad little lightning cable. And I was like, oh, buddy. Which now you'll just need for your AirPods Max.

27:51I was like, this is your last trip, little guy. You're coming with me. And then you're never going to be seen again. It's interesting they didn't upgrade the AirPods Max. They did not. They don't even talk about those things anymore. No. The rumors were, as of last week, according to Mark Ehrman, that we will see upgrades for them next year with the USB-C port on it. But, yeah, no. No word of the USB, the AirPods Max. We talked about this last week as well, but the other Lightning products in Apple's lineup will remain. Though today they did quietly take off their store, the MagSafe Duo charger, which had a Lightning port on it, and the MagSafe battery, which also had a Lightning port, which were taken off the store.

28:33Not to be spoken of. They did not talk about upgrading those to USB-C or anything. Because they suck. But you can still buy AirPods Max for$549. You can still buy a 9th Gen iPad for$329. Yeah, which is the iPad most people should buy. Yeah. I bought it. Yeah. We just were like, children, you have this iPad. You cannot hurt it in any meaningful way. It's encased in rubber. I think on the 15, the port is there for charging. Yeah. It is not – no one who buys an iPhone 15 is worried about their data transfer speeds. Yeah. No. It just doesn't seem like a thing that's happening. Oh, they also came out with USB-C ear pods.

29:10Oh, the wired ear pods. Yeah, which I think people would more likely use on a 15 than a 15 Pro. Here's a question. Are they going to work on your Mac? Because that would be great. I mean, your Mac has a headphone jack, but sure. If you want to use crappy ear pods. That's true. Well, just like a lot of people carry their rent for their phones. Yeah. It would be nice. It's unclear if that would happen. I bet it doesn't. And if it does work, like next year's Macs don't have headphone jacks. Oh, man. It's just coming. So that's the 15. Solid upgrade. Nothing spectacular. Comes in five colors. They all have normal names.

29:49There's no dumb marking names on them. It's just pink, yellow, green, blue, and black. I love it. What? You didn't want it to be like Barbie, lemon, grass, sky. You did. You can go black. Black. Yeah. You got it. Obsidian. It's not space black. It's not obsidian. It's black. Before we break, we should talk about the prices real quick. Yeah. iPhone prices are... So most of them are the same. The iPhone 15, the 15 Plus are the same as the 14 and 14 Plus from last year. So we're talking$799 to start,$899 to start on those. $100 more if you upgrade the storage. The 15 Pro comes with 128 gigs of storage.

30:27Starts at$999, same price as before. Where it gets weird is with the 15 Pro Max, which is now$1199. $100 more than starting price of last year. but it comes with 256 gigs of storage, which is twice as much as last year and the same price if you got this 256 gig model last year. So it's like kind of a sneaky price increase. Like, yes, you are getting a little more. One can argue that$100 is a lot of money to charge for 128 gigs of storage in this 2023rd year of our Lord, but it is more expensive. So like if you want the Pro Max with the 5X telephoto lens, you are going to pay more for it this year than last year amortized over your phone plan you're already getting scammed yes like you've signed up with a major and apple loves to talk about the trade-ins they love to talk about how your iphone holds value and that you can recoup a lot of value and things like that it's they put it on a slide now the carrier promotions yeah like that's how much they want to talk about because they want to deflect the fact that they are now charging a 1200 starting price for a phone yeah that's what i'm saying you're you're signed up to an American wireless carrier.

31:35Like, you know what you're in for. They're just coming to your house. They're just, one of your kids, keys to your car,$1 ,200 out the window. All right, so that's the 15. We should take a break. I need to emotionally prepare myself for the mystery of the iPhone 15 Pro. There's a lot. I'm dying to know. We'll be right back.

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33:11When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free. share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants.

33:46At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

34:23All right, we're back. Apple event. We talked about the 15. Obviously, the interesting phone is the 15 Pro in this lineup. They made it out of titanium this time. It's a very, I like it. It's very nice. It's some titanium. Some titanium. There's a titanium frame, but that also connects to an aluminum frame on the inside. So it's like the part you touch is titanium, but then inside of it is an aluminum frame. Thermomechanically bonded. Yes. Doesn't that just mean melted? Like burned? Pushed. It sounds cooler if you say thermo. Have you ever bumped into anyone in a sauna? You've been thermomechanically.

34:59Gross. I don't. But that's how metals work, is my understanding. It's the lightest one ever. Same size as before, 6.1, 6.7 inches. They're very proud of titanium. Apple, by the way, famously used titanium in another product. Not the Apple Watch Ultra. The titanium powerbook, the single coolest powerbook ever made. Which lasted about six months before it looked like garbage because they painted the titanium and it all flaked off. And also the hinges broke. Let's not talk about it at this time. They said it's more repairable, which is really a big deal for Apple. That's carrying on from the iPhone 14 from last year, so now it's with the Pro line as well.

35:30But they're saying this word out loud. They're saying repairable out loud. They're basically giving in to regulators, right? California regulators want things to be repairable. This is the big capitulation show for Apple. They gave in on USB-C to the Europeans. They gave in to California on repair. Big A17 Pro processor. It's three nanomators, which is the industry first. that's a TSMC extreme ultraviolet chip. That's a big deal. And rumors are that Apple bought out TSMC's entire capacity for the 3 nanometer chip. So I would not expect to see 3 nanometer chips from anybody else anytime soon. And then they said it's a breakthrough new GPU design for Apple.

36:06Their first new one. And it's like, guys, you're on the M2 chip. So. But they're very proud of this new GPU. What, it's a 20 % faster, new shader architecture, new neural engine that's supposed to be faster. It does hardware ray tracing? They talked a lot about games. They talked a lot about games with this thing. Listen, my phone is specially made for stupid games. If I want to play good games, it's not going to be on my phone. There are a lot of stupid games on consoles too. Fancy stupid games get to be on the console. I am not playing Resident Evil on my phone because, as I said, the phone is going to get chucked the second there's a jump scare.

36:52And then my expensive phone is going to be in pieces. And Apple Care Plus or whatever the thingy is is not going to cover. Oh, you were scared by Resident Evil and you chucked your phone at the wall? Yeah. Well, their whole big claim is that this is the first time a full console game experience is available on mobile device. What was the name of the other game? It began with a D. Division. I just remember, oh yeah, Division. It's like the full console experience of Division. Assassin's Creed is there because there's not a console in the world that Ubisoft won't put Assassin's Creed on. Like, if you can play a game on it, Assassin's Creed will be there.

37:25You will be doing stabs on, just, Itzo will be there and he'll be stabbing. But this was like a really weird dichotomy in how they were talking about the Pro. First, they said it's the most Pro phone ever, which is an incredible phrase. just a deeply incredible phrase that means whatever apple wants it to mean like their answer to us was we think pro features are aspirational it's the camera it's the display and we just want this to be the and it's the best that we can do and by definition that means every new pro iphone is the most pro phone ever made well every new iphone is the best iphone ever right because they don't make worse iphones like it's amazing how that works it's just it's really something to make the most pro phone ever.

38:08And we've defined pro in a way that we will never not make the most pro phone ever. And then right next to it, they're like, and I believe they actually said out loud, this is the best mobile gaming device ever made. And you can also spend 14 hours in a row playing Genshin Impact on it. Yeah, and it's like, well, one, the Nintendo Switch exists. A deeply important mobile gaming device with maybe two of the best games ever made in the Zelda games on there. I don't think they're coming to the iPhone at this time. No. I'm confident the iPhone is more powerful than the Nintendo Switch. It's got a nicer screen, too.

38:45Yeah, like everything on the iPhone is nicer than my Switch. And I have like an original Switch. But it's like that's the best one because it has the best games on it. Mobile games are not those games. I mean, that said, you know, I'm not a mobile gamer, but I know that there's an enormous market of mobile gamers out there. Candy Crush whales. Candy Crush whales. It's me. I spend too much. She's a Candy Crush whale. There's the Genshin Impact players, and there's a lot of MOBAs played on mobile and stuff like that. So, like, there's definitely a market here, and, like, Apple is speaking to that market, and this market will also pay more for better performance, which is what they are trying to, like, make the case for with the 15 Pro.

39:27I just don't need ray tracing for my bejeweled knockoff. You don't? Yeah, the one that, like, gets your phone super hot and destroys your battery. This is why your battery health is down to, like, 87%. Like you're running a Bitcoin botnet in the background of a bejeweled clone. Listen, you know, do I need ray tracing on Sudoku? Sudoku is a mobile game. No, I don't. Although I would like to see what ray tracing on Sudoku looks like. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This is like ultra-realistic Minecraft. Those videos come out and blow your mind. Look, there's something you said for the fact, it's weird that they did a ray tracing explanation in 2023.

40:04Like, on the other side of the house, PC gamers had ray tracing for a long time. That cost curve is all the way down. And then you're like, oh, this is a phone. This is actually bonkers that they're, like, doing it on a phone at this scale. But I have asked people who use Android gaming phones to email us on the show for years. Well, I mean. We have never gotten one email. We've gotten emails from people who think they might know someone who plays games on an Android phone and needs a gaming Android phone. Because they're all playing them on iPhones. So I say to you, audience, I look at you directly and say, if you are a hardcore iPhone gamer who's going to buy a pro iPhone to play games, because this is how you want to play Assassin's Creed.

40:51So let me know. I'm just dying to hear from you. I just want to know what it's like in your life, in your brain. You're like, you know what? Genshin Impact. That's a popular game. That's$1 ,500 for me. That's a popular game. I don't know what to say, man. I know it's a popular game, but it's just like, the Steam Deck exists. Genshin Impact is one of those things where it's very clear that their gaming audience is on the iPhone because it runs so much better on iOS devices than on Android, and they put so much more development work into Android. Allison can speak to how annoying it is to test Genshin Impact on new phones and devices because it's like a 30-gigabyte download on a mobile phone.

41:27Like four hours before I want to play it, I'm like, I better start downloading Genshin Impact now. We stress test devices with it all the time because it is such an intensive thing. And the iPhones and the iPads just run circles around it. And they have better silicon, but it's a lot of the fact that the developers put all their work into it because that's where their audience is. And because in-app purchases are the money for all of these games. And 30 % of those in-app purchases are the money for Apple. like Apple's entire services revenue chunk, that the thing that's growing while iPhone sales are going down, the line of business that's growing for Apple's services and the biggest chunk of services is in-app purchases and games.

42:09Of course they want the iPhone to be an incredible gaming device because if they can sell you more Genshin Impact stuff. Yeah. I mean, there's that outside of it. But I think that like part of the reason that they spent so much time explaining ray tracing and showing off all these capabilities and stuff is like this is where you can see the most impact of a three nanometer cutting edge processor there it's not like you know if they didn't talk about that they would be like what your email opens faster or like the browser you can switch between the browser like we've hit the point where like i can use a phone from five years ago and be just fine for my daily day-to-day work because i'm doing those kinds of tasks whereas gaming is one area where they can push the envelope they can continue to show development and like we've made this huge investment on this three nanometer a17 pro processor i think they dropped bionic bionic's gone am i right yeah it's a17 pro but you know and like the they they talked about its ability to shoot pro as video and decode av1 video and all this kind of stuff but really it's the games that's where you're going to see the notice notice the difference people can buy an iphone 15 that has the a16 from last year and not skip a beat because it's just fine.

43:18But if you want the best gaming things, which as we know, PC gamers will literally spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get the best ultimate maximum performance for their games. If you are a mobile gamer, best maximum performance, I guess, is going to be spending big on the iPhone. Yeah, I'm just saying, Candy Crush whales. Candy Crush whales. Like they are, I understand what you mean. The demos are good and they do have a giant new spatial computing platform coming out. There's a lot of graphic stuff. With an M1 chip in it?

43:50Very confusing all the way around. We skipped the most important part of the new iPhone Pro's thinnest borders ever. That's true. They're a little bit thinner. It makes the screen look a little bit bigger. Yes. It looks a little – like I put it next to my 13 Pro and like I don't think it's any smaller, but it looks smaller. It looks a little smaller. That screen, by the way, ProMotion up to 120 hertz, that's pretty normal. can get brighter, can go up to 2 ,000 nits of brightness, which is pretty cool in bright sunlight. In bright sunlight, we'll see how long it'll hold that brightness. Lots of phones will juice their brightness, and then 15 seconds later, dim to unreadable.

44:25My 13 Pro does that all the time. So we'll see. But, you know, brighter is better. So that's moving forward, I guess. And then, obviously, USB-C3 with camera tether mode, USB 3 speeds up to 10 gigabits. Yeah, which is actually – they're very proud of this thing. They talked a lot about the things you can do with that, which we saw some very comical studio setups of people using iPhones to tether to much more powerful computers. But the rumor mill was expecting Thunderbolt here, which is four times the bandwidth of what it actually gets. So it's USB 3 at 10 gigabits. If you know your USB, there's also USB 3 at 20 gigabits, which this is not.

45:08And then there's USB 4, which does 20 or 40 gigabits. And then also today, Intel announced Thunderbolt 5, which does 120 gigabits. So this is like, this is USB C, but it's like, or USB 3, but it's like one of the slowest tiers of USB 3, where they could have, or there's potential for much faster ones. I don't know if they're just setting themselves up to upgrade it later in the future, or if this is a limitation of the chip. It's kind of weird that, you know, we have Thunderbolt on the iPads and all the Macs and things like that, but it's not on the iPhone for whatever reason. I think they're just managing battery life and heat, right?

45:42It's a much smaller chassis. All that stuff requires power, generates heat, and they don't know if anyone's going to actually use this shit. Well, they aren't going to use it out of the box because it doesn't come with a USB 3 cable in the box. But a USB 3 USB-C cable is relatively inexpensive. They're relatively inexpensive, but this is the problem with USB-C is that you do not know looking at a cable unless it specifically says on there or you've tested it yourself what its capabilities are. Thunderbolt is annoying in a lot of ways, mostly because it's expensive. The cables are thicker. They have larger ends and stuff.

46:15But if it has the Thunderbolt logo on there, you know what that cable is capable of. I have a bag full of USB-C cables right now that I do not know if it charges at 60 watts, 100 watts, 240 watts. I don't know. I don't know if the data supported is 480 megabits per second, which is USB 2, or is it 40 gigabits a second, which is Thunderbolt. You take them all back to Apple so they can recycle them into watches or whatever they're going to do. And then you just buy good cables. Yeah. I mean, you could do that. But you will inevitably end up with cables that you do not like. So many things come with a charging cable.

46:49You don't know what it's capable of. Yeah. And you just drive those directly to the Apple store. You increase your carbon emissions and then you offset them by recycling the garbage cable. That's how you do it. Look, I think it's weird that when you plug a cable into an iPhone, it doesn't tell you anything about the cable. Yep. With a Mac, you can go and assess some profile and at least suss out what's going on. This is like you're going to plug a cable to an iPhone. It's going to tell you nothing. Just stuff is going to start happening. Or not happening. The dynamic island should just be like garbage cable.

47:17Get out of here. It would be really useful. They can do it. They have that layer of information on the screen. I think Apple is just waiting to see what people do with these USB-C ports. but uh with capture one you can shoot 48 megabixel raw photos and tether immediately which is cool you can shoot video directly to external storage which is cool those are their big ideas basically camera stuff yeah because i mean what else are you gonna do with it charge your phone charge your phone at 15 yeah i mean like in a perfect world you would plug your usbc iphone into a studio display and get like a desktop interface with your a17 pro with an a17 pro and the a13 this is why i need to tell everyone that dan actually uses samsung dex i love dex he's like he's serious about this we're talking about the action button and the camera sex let's do the action button quickly i think okay it's there you don't like it no i like the action button on the ultra i think it's one of the cooler things about the ultra but what i'm gonna say is is that i use the action button to do exactly one thing on my ultra, which is to launch my runs.

48:23And what I've noticed is that even though you can program the action button on the ultra using shortcuts, ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time to think about it. Some people do that stuff. Some people have that time. Pro user. Most people ain't nobody got time for thinking about how they're going to do that. So for me, the problem with the action button on the ultra is that it has so much potential, but it's really for the average person kind of hemmed in by what the presets are. So if the presets for this action button on the phone aren't great, you're just going to be like, well, I miss my old.

48:56Well, I think I hear you. I feel the same way about the button on the watch. I think it's neutered by the fact that it's on the watch and the platform of the watch. The phone, I think it is more practical to use it to launch a shortcut, which is one of the preset options. The others are by default, it will just control your ringer and it's always a long press. So you long press it to switch between silent and ringing modes. You can also launch the camera with it. You could launch the flashlight with it. You can launch an accessibility shortcut. So if you use the back tap thing to pull down your notification sheet, you can program that to the action button, which seems pretty neat.

49:32And you can run shortcuts with it. And I think there's one more that I'm not remembering right now. But I could see like really quickly, easily making a shortcut to launch Halide and then using the action button to launch Halide as my camera. The other thing you can do with it is you can take photos with it in the camera app. So I think the camera app launching is going to be the thing that most people use because like – Well, to be clear, most people will use the default and they will not change it. Yes. But if you do change the default, you are probably launching the camera. You are going to change the default.

50:04I know that you can just go from the lock screen and go into your camera, but by the time I've done that, my cat has moved. The cute picture is gone. I think the amount of time between that flow versus holding the button down. No, I think it's smoother to use a button. Allison knows this with Android phones. For years, you double press the power button to launch the camera and you're in it. And it's one motion. You pull your phone up. You're double clicking. And you can do that same thing with the action button. With the current system of you have to wake the screen up, you have to put your finger on the screen, which is almost always your other hand, and you have to hold it there for a few seconds as it launches.

50:41That's kind of cumbersome and clumsy. I have so much trouble with it. I don't know what is wrong with me, but swiping that camera icon is like, I'll miss it. I don't know. I'm jazzed about that. I always open the camera when I'm trying to swipe a notification away. Yeah, that's nice too. Yeah, and the action button, the camera, the shortcut, you can customize it to go into a certain mode. So if you want to get in a portrait mode really quickly or a video, I think that's nice. Yeah, I think it just has more potential on the phone than the watch. And the UI for customizing this button is the funnest UI that Apple has shipped in a million years.

51:20You go into the settings app, like just any other thing you might change on your iPhone, and then you're taken into this like completely different UI that we've never seen before. It turns and you see a different side of the phone. It's wild. I'm kind of mad as a watch user. We're having more fun over here. Let's boo. Yeah, big ass screens, huge battery, Genshin impact, action button that's good. Okay, the day they bring ray tracing a Genshin impact to the app track. You've got an iPhone X strapped to your wrist. Why? I mean, I have the exact same watch. but the UI for this settings menu is so cool.

51:59Like, yeah, go look at our pictures, go look at the videos. It's so cool. It's so just, it's cool, but it's also just like, so weird to go into. I love it. Like normal iOS. Yeah. And more, it does not look like Apple's other iOS should be wacky. Yeah, sure. Like if they, they could do all of settings and all of settings would be fun. Instead of right now, the sort of impenetrable list of radio buttons and toggles. The nightmare of the settings app. Yeah. Yeah, this is just like cool as hell. And it's like fun to use and it makes you want to use it, which is neat. I just don't know that long press – I think they should have had double tap and long press.

52:35So this is the same argument that you made with the Dynamic Island last year, right? Like they have a long press and they have like a short press and they – They should be backwards. They should be backwards, right? No, here I'm saying there's only long press. Right. So you tap it once. It will just tell you what a long press will do. Yeah, it will give you the status. It'll pop up a thing that says, like if it's in the default, you tap it once, it says hold down for silent. And then you tap it when it's in silent, it says hold on for ring. And it's like, okay, that's great. But so everything by default is a long press on this button.

53:04I think they're doing that because you could accidentally hit it. Oh, sure. That makes sense to me. You don't want to turn your ring around. But I'm saying they should have left ring at two clicks. So you double click it to switch ring modes and then you long press it and that's your custom action. That would be cool, yeah. And I hope that comes. It just seems very obvious they could do lots of things with this button beyond just long pressing it. And I think the long press is going to throw a lot of people off. Because you click it and it's like hold for ring and then your natural instinct is to push it again and it just sends it again.

53:35Yeah, it gives you haptic feedback though. Like it vibrates and it like buzzes as you're holding it and stuff to kind of give you an indication of what it's doing. I think they did that because they wanted to head off people being like, well, how am I supposed to know if my phone's on mute? I can just like reach into my pocket and mess with the mute switch or whatever. Or the people that insist they can feel when it's in mute without looking. Yeah. What? Yeah. There's people that can insist they can feel the mute switch. Yeah. Which position it's in. So you push it once and you're like, aha, bullshit.

54:04Sorry. Yeah. Well, it also just occurs to me that if anybody with an Apple Watch does not need the mute switch anymore, because unless you're a sociopath, your phone should always be mute because your watch is buzzing you and you're fine. Right? you're probably fine. So we'll see. I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the camera stuff. I think the shortcuts people are going to make for this are going to be bananas. I hope somebody does an iPhone action button shortcuts website with all the best ones. There are already some cool shortcuts out there. But yeah, it's a good change. Along with USB-C, I think the action button is a good change to the phone.

54:41Okay, then there's the camera, which seems all new, kind of bananas. How else can go through it? Yeah, so they're saying that the main camera is 48 megapixels again, but they're saying it's a bigger sensor. And then you have the ultra wide, which had some like new coatings or something. But the big story is the five times telephoto lens, which they would not they did not say periscope. They have a word for tetraprism. I don't know. So there's some mirrors and things happening inside there, but you don't get the three times, you get the five times instead. It's got some kind of sensor shift stabilization along with the optical stabilization, which is a good thing, you know, assuming it works.

55:27But yeah, and they're all about these like seven different lenses that you get with it. And that's counting, you know, macro and the ultra wide and the crop modes you can do. but there's like a new thing where you can push the like main camera icon and it'll switch between like equivalent focal legs like 24mm 35mm. Yeah which I think is great I'm excited for that because I just think that the main camera is too wide I've long felt like the main camera is like equivalent to like 24 or 26mm for a few years now and it's too wide like I don't like it that wide. I like to shoot at like 30 or 35 and now I can just like tell it Conceded by default which is cool It is going to crop in the sensor.

56:10It's really unclear how this is working. Is it cropping the sensor? I think it's using the same technology as the 2X. It's just cutting into the sensor to approximate that field of view. And then it will produce a 24 or 12 megapixel image. The exact word that we were told was there's some other voodoo going on. Yes. Oh, voodoo. Because the claim is that it will foreshorten the way that those different focal lengths will. Yeah. Which is, again, impossible to see. on an iPhone in that environment, which is a totally crazy environment, with perfect light. So I'm very curious as we review this thing to see if those modes actually foreshorten the way that a proper focal length would.

56:50I suspect that they do not. But you should be able to tell the difference between 24 to 35. Yes, it's very obvious. As you go down the numbers of equivalent focal lengths, the smaller they are, the more you notice each millimeter's difference. So when you are going from 24 to 28, it's actually a visible noticeable difference if you're going from 100 to 104 you don't notice that difference it's too too minute but when you you you can see it punching in 24 28 35 and then i think the ultra wide is like a 13 or something like that yeah and so the range is 13 to 120 now yes it's cool again impossible to tell you what these cameras are actually like like it's just a bonkers environment they were they took photos and they didn't explode That's as much as I got right now.

57:36But I think that stuff is cool. Dan, you have some qualms about the telephoto. I'm not confident that the telephoto is going to be all that great. I think it's great that it gives a longer reach. Like that was needed. The 3X telephoto and prior Pro models existed. Never was really that great. I know a lot of people never use it because they don't like the quality out of it. And it also doesn't bring you that much closer. 5X does bring you noticeably closer. that 120 millimeter focal length is noticeably closer, but it's not super long. Like today for the live blog, I was shooting with an 18 to 300 millimeter lens on my camera.

58:12So like there's a lot further to go. Samsung's 10X zoom is much further than the 5X that you get on the Pro now. But in order to make this work and because of physics, they have to put a small sensor in there. And Samsung has the same problem with its cameras. The other manufacturers that have done Periscope or not Periscope cameras in the past have the same problem where they have to put a small sensor in there in order to get the physics to work right, to get the light exposed. And you can tell like pretty easily the quality difference, even in the demo area, perfect lighting, all this stuff.

58:44I took a photo of some folks across the table and I zoom in and like I look at the details in the hair. It's all kind of blurred and mushed together. It's noisy, stuff like that. Allison's going to do a ton more testing. We'll get a more formal verdict on it. I'm just skeptical. Yeah. You know, I don't, I think the 5X is going to be there and it'll be useful to some people, especially the folks, like I said earlier, who are standing there, pinch zooming on their phone to get as close as they possibly can. It's better to have a 5X optical starting point than a 3X, but I don't think it's going to be like, I think a lot of people are still going to fall back to the main camera if they care about the image quality.

59:20Yeah. I shoot a 2X a lot with my 14 Pro. Like I never go to 3X. And I think that the 5X existence, Allison, you were saying earlier, didn't really make sense to have that 2x punch in when you have a 3x it's not enough difference now i think it gives more of a reason for that 2x punch in to exist because 5x is like if i if i'm sitting across from a small table from uni life i use 5x i'm like taking pictures of your eyeballs and your nose but like 2x i can frame you nicely so i think that gives more of that punch in the reason to exist yeah awesome what do you think i am interested to try it out i like the 5x like is sort of when i I use like the Pixel 7 Pro has one and I find it useful in these like fringe cases where I'm on a hike and I'm trying to frame something and like 3x just gets you nothing.

1:00:05You're in the far away section of the Taylor Swift concert. Yeah, right. You're in the back row. But 5x is like that much closer and it is an actual meaningful difference. So I'm interested to see what it looks like. The question is, is this good enough to get the Pro Max? because I don't think we've actually stated that this is only on the Pro Max. That's true. It's not on the Pro. The Pro gets the same 3X as last year. So, like, is this 5X a meaningful enough jump to get the bigger, more expensive phone, which we can talk about is also more expensive than last year. But for me, based on what I saw so far, I would say no.

1:00:39I'm not going to make use of that camera often enough, and I'd rather have a smaller, lighter phone. Yeah, but I love a big screen and a big battery. You love a big screen. And a big battery. We're different people. Yeah, the camera is not the thing. It's the bigger screen and the bigger battery. I don't think anybody is going to buy this thing for the zoom lens. I think if it was good enough, people would. I mean, this is not the first time we've seen Apple segregate the camera to the Pro, the biggest phone. They did it with the 12 Pro, right? The 12 Pro and Pro Max. The 12 Pro had the first time it had the really bigger sensor for the main one, and the regular Pro 1 did not.

1:01:12And there was a noticeable difference between the two if you cared enough about that. We'll see. I don't know. There's some video stuff here. They now support 4K60, log encoding when you shoot in ProRes. They support Aces, which is an industry standard for color grading. All very good. Cool. It's the stuff. It's the most pro phone ever, Dan. And then this is, I think, fascinating. They support spatial video capture. If you turn the phone sideways and you use the main and the ultrawide, it'll do spatial. Great. It's for the Vision Pro. You're the divorced dad. watching a birthday party. No. This is what it's for.

1:01:51It's happening. It's notable that in the demo clip that they showed on stage, it was not a divorced dad watching it. They did not show the dad interacting with his kids through the face mask. It was another person reliving a memory on their couch. Yeah. Alone. In a headset. Alone. There's no way to avoid it. You're wearing this headset. You only experience it alone. Here's what I'll say. Philosophically, this is fascinating to me. We have been writing about this for a long time. James Barham, our old creative director, has a piece on our site from ages ago. He's like, the power of the iPhone. It is the first device where the people consuming the photos are using the same device as the people making the photos.

1:02:34And so your relationship with photography has changed. And we published this eight years ago, this piece. And James is a pro photographer before you. Big thank you. We'll link it. It's a great piece. I've been thinking about the piece a lot. every time we do an iPhone review. Like this is the dynamic. I cannot think of another creative tool actually where it is both the thing that makes the content and the thing that consumes the content. Then you have a relationship with the person on the other end of the platform, right? This is the first time Apple's broken that relationship where you can shoot spatial video on your iPhone.

1:03:11and you cannot watch it. See, they could have put a 3D screen on it. It went great. We're going to old school one of those with the lines. It went great for the wrist phone. We've got Lytro. We've got 3D. Yeah, it's all coming back. It's all the greatest hits. Red and blue glasses. I don't think they should have put a 3D screen on this. They should have done it like the Fire Phone with like 500 cameras around the screen. There's just something fascinating about that. Yeah. That for the first time ever, the iPhone is a capture device for another system that nobody has yet. that's super expensive, that no one knows what it's for.

1:03:45And sure, they should do it. It's cool that they're doing it. Well, they have to do it because otherwise the only way to capture the spatial video is through the headset, which is like we just kind of talked about how awkward that can be. So, I mean, we'll see what it's like to actually view spatial video on the iPhone. I'm sure it's just going to be the main camera. It just falls back to the main camera. It's going to be the main camera and then you've got a depth map. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, and that's what the second camera is doing is creating the depth map. It's got the distance between the lenses to do so.

1:04:12Notable that you have to turn it in landscape mode to do so. It makes sense. Which makes sense from a technical level. It does not make sense for how 99 % of people shoot video on their phone. Portrait headset video is not a good idea. I'm just saying this is how people shoot video on their phones. Yeah. Right? And so, like, they can switch to that mode. Maybe the phone will have a UI telling them, turn the phone to the side to do this. But if it doesn't, they're going to have a lot of, like, weird videos. But, like, they had to do it in order to get any content for the headset down the road. We'll see.

1:04:42I'm just saying it's the first time Apple's broken the sort of power of the iPhone as a camera in that way. Okay. We'll see how it goes. Kind of what they're assuming is that people will shoot spatial video without a headset. Yeah. Because they will be buying an iPhone in a week and a half. Right. And not have a headset for six plus months. They did say it's coming later. But even then, the iPhone Pro installed base, the iPhone 15 Pro installed base, necessarily will dwarf the headset installed base for a long time. So I'm just wondering, like, there's just something in there. There's something important about this camera and what it represents to people that is broken by the ability to shoot spatial video.

1:05:24And it's not a technical thing. It's not a quality thing. It is like a philosophical relationship between the camera and the screen on the iPhone. that Apple has for the first time divorced. It's the aspirational thing. They're like, you could buy a Vision Pro. You can record this video. You'll be ready for it. But you probably won't. Yeah, but it's like, what's a good analog analogy? It's like if you bought a VHS camcorder, but you didn't have a VHS player in your house. Right? It's just like a totally weird thing. I think it's fascinating. Like, I just like thinking about it. like what that represents for this device because i think a lot of it's the thing about the tiktoks how to get how to take better videos and camp photos on your iphone like everybody has an idea about it and there's a cottage industry of content creators who are like here's what you do you turn your phone upside down you count to 20 throw it in the ocean and it's like whatever right and it's because they're like you you look at this photo i will teach you how to make it using the tool that you're holding in your hand and this i'm just telling you this breaks it in a way that i think is utterly fascinating and I I'm just like waiting for the day when someone realized they've shot like oceans of spatial video and they're and they're like what is this for you know I mean I think the people that will use it and know what it is are the people that are going to be the first ones to buy a Vision Pro when it comes out yeah like most people were not going to touch it they're not going to go into the mode they're not going to enable it just walk through that you're like walking down the street beautiful San Francisco like taking a photo of the bay the bridge the whole thing and like I can't wait to go put on my headset and like relive it's like there's just something I promise you there's something weird there.

1:07:13Divorced dads are gonna love it. Yeah we'll link that piece by James I was thinking about it during this entire demo of just how important it is that a lot of times when you look at a photo on your iPhone you're holding the same thing that someone was holding to take that photo and there's just something very important about that and the spatial computing tangent that Apple's going down is about to make all that way weirder alright I think that's enough the whole reason the whole thing the only thing I want to talk about ok the iPhone has Wi-Fi 6E which is cool because I just bought the wrong Eros but now they're the right Eros I should have bought the Pro 6's should you have?

1:07:56that's a whole other podcast Whatever. But I actually bought the 6Es, which have the 6E radios in them, but I have no 6E devices. Because they use the 6E radio to talk to each other. Yeah, but the 6 gigahertz sucks for that. So whatever. It doesn't matter. Now I'm going to get an iPhone with 6E. I'm going to get the full gigabit. Let me tell you. You will never know when it's on 6E. Because it's not going to tell you, and it's impossible to force it. I'm going to be downloading movies so fast the phone explodes. This will be great. But then they also, tucked into this press release, tucked into the feature bento box, says plus thread.

1:08:27It's a thread radio. Now, if you have been following Jen Toohey at The Verge, you know that thread is an important part of the future of the smart home, which Jen has a British accent and she always goes to the smart home, which is great. Thread and matter coexist. Yeah, well, so thread is one of the technologies that matter runs on. Right, matter can run anything. But the idea is that you will have the secondary wireless network in your smart home that is thread. And it's a mesh network between all your devices, you have a border router that connects them to the Wi-Fi and the internet, whatever.

1:08:58Why is there a thread radio in the iPhone? By the way, none of that works yet. It is just a mess, just a disaster mess. None of it quite works. None of it quite interoperates. If you buy like one Nanoleaf light bulb and connect it to a HomePod mini with a series of incantations and like crystals, it's a little bit faster than doing it for Wi-Fi. And that's about as good as it gets. But the iPhone 15 Pro has a thread radio in it. Yeah. And the press release is like, it's there for future ideas in the home app. And you're like, what are those ideas? And everyone's like, we don't know yet. And that's the whole answer.

1:09:34They're like, yeah, some stuff is going to happen with matter. And it's like, what stuff? I got it. Who knows? Yeah. I've been trying to think about like what you would do with a thread radio on a phone that I can't do with a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth radio. You're going to light up that nanoleaf light bulb so fast. You're going to think it. It's going to light up. So let's think this through. you have thread radio on your iphone and no step one the connectivity standards alliance finishes the matter specification matter accepted you uh have thread on your iphone and you have a thread device and it uses thread to talk to that device to communicate to it yeah what happens when you leave your house and someone else wants to control that device do they need thread on their no because they you'll have some border router in your house so why do i need thread on my phone This is why I started with the Connectivity Standards Alliance, finishes the matter specification, which includes thread radio interoperability.

1:10:29Yeah. Well, technically thread network interoperability. It gets so much wonky. Right. So right now, my new Eros have thread radios in them. Yeah. And they should make a mesh network. With your HomePods. But they do not. They do not. They do not talk. So now I have two thread networks in my house. Yes. And if you introduce a Google Hub Max, which I think you have. Yeah. No, I don't. We have the baby ones. Okay. So those. I don't think they do. No. But a Hub Max would introduce yet another thread network in your house. And all of those are supposed to make one giant happy thread mesh network. And then you bring the iPhone into it and it sees that happy thread mesh network and it can connect directly to devices on it.

1:11:09This is the dream. I just don't know why it needs thread for that. Now what is really going to happen is that HomeKit is also insanity and something on your HomeKit thread network will break. And the solution to fixing it will be restarting your iPhone, which is often a solution. Yeah. I mean, that is the default HomeKit fix because you never – because HomeKit does not tell you what breaks or how it broke or why. The answer is reboot your iPhone and it weirdly fixes. I've run a thread network in my home for a couple of years now. And frequently if like say I move a HomePod to a different room or I decide we don't need to use it anymore, devices will just stop working.

1:11:48And so light bulbs will just no longer connect. And they're supposed to be self-healing and all that? It doesn't do that. This is the first time. I've been just taking them out when they stop working and replacing them with things that work. Dan's got three kids and he's just like, they'll never know what's going on. I'm away from home this week and I'm convinced nothing in the house works. They're just sitting in the dark. They're sitting in the dark or they're sleeping with all the lights on. They're cutting the main power to the house. I just think this is the first time the ultra-wideband chip, the first time they shipped it in a Pro, was I think the first time they put in a thing that they hadn't quite enabled all the use cases for.

1:12:24But they had some use cases for that. Not yet. Didn't they? Not yet. They announced it with car keys. They were hoping car keys would happen. And it never happened. But then they came out with the AirTag. But that was next. First they did the chip. That was the only time I can really think of this. By the way, these have new ultra-wideband chips. that enable precision finding with more we could call them U2 chips Apple doesn't like it when you do that no but I'm gonna do it they kept saying second generation ultra-radband chips they called it the U1 it wasn't me that called it the U1 but that's the only time I think this this time they're putting a thread radio I'm assuming it's coming for the ride with the Wi-Fi 6E chip that they're using that's probably a safe bet right and so they just have it they might as well do it and they don't know what it's for and like something good will happen I just – someone who has an idea of what to use the thread radio on an iPhone 4.

1:13:17It has to be that – Write into the show and tell me. Again, it has to be that what you want is a direct connection to that Nanoleaf bulb or whatever other thread device. You're laughing. This is all people want to do. I'm trying to – We're gone from red to blue. Switch it. I'm just thinking of the Nanoleaf bulb talking to the little iPhone radio. It's just a cute little thing in my head. That's all it is. I just don't see a scenario where that would ever happen. because for the Nanoleaf bulb to be running. On thread. It's connected to a thread network in your house that you're on the same Wi-Fi with.

1:13:48Exactly. I have so much respect for Jen because my head hurts. It's not great. Jen wrote an entire piece that's basically like, what is this? Why is this here? And it just like runs through the options. She's written this multiple times. We have what is matter, what is thread, what is all. No, but with this one in particular, it's like this phone has this chip in it. Why? And she just like runs down the options. And by the end of the piece, she's like, none of these are good ideas. like none this none of this makes any sense uh i'm just dying to know what what apple obviously has a plan right they wouldn't they just don't want to tell us apple often put stuff in their devices and doesn't even mention it even when the teardowns reveal that it's there whatever until they're ready to light it up and here they put it on the slide and in the press release there has to be some plan i just cannot figure out what it is like not even a hypothesis that begins to make sense outside of Dan's kids need to light up their nano leaf bulbs even faster than they were doing before.

1:14:46That's it. That's what I got. We're doing an entire hour with Jen on the thread radio and the 15. I am so bewildered by all of that. My head hurts. So we just moved. So like I'm buying all this stuff and it's like this is the worst time to buy smart home stuff. Like all of it is inherently obsolete right now. No. So the move is you buy stuff that is supported by a hub because the hub will get upgraded and then all the devices that connect to that hub will carry along with it. It's the individual devices that are a nightmare. This explains why I have like five Hue bulbs just sitting in a box. But Hue works on a hub and it's also bulletproof reliable.

1:15:21The hub does not work in my house because the router is in a closet. So I was like, you know, I will eventually move and then I will unpack these five bulbs for some future time. I'm saying if we end up with door locks or acquire an external hub. Like that something bad has happened in my life, right? Like that's a real issue. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm just saying basically you're ready for the next two years of the Vergecast to be nightmare smart home integration stories. You know I'm complaining about the smart home, yes. Because it's just, it's so not ready. Yeah, and it feels like it's gotten worse.

1:15:54But the iPhone 15 Pro is mysteriously ready because it has a thread radio in it. And I don't know why. It's matter ready. If you know why, let me know. Something will happen. If you've got an interesting idea, let us know. All right, we got to take a break. And BS to complain about the watches. We'll be right back.

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1:18:44All right, we're back. Where do you want to start, V? I know you got feelings. You've been pent up over there. Yeah. So I think a lot of my problems this year is that the smartwatch updates across the board have been so iterative. So the one I'm actually looking most forward to is the Pixel Watch 2 because it has the most room to grow. But everything else is like, I think I wrote a blog and it was buckle up, buckos. We're going to have some iterative smartwatch updates. And this is the definition of iterative. By the way, our internal analytics suggests that if you put buckle up in a headline, it bonkers overperforms.

1:19:20Like I've heard Andy Hawkins say the phrase, people love buckling up before. Well, that explains it because that blog did do well. So, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, I was there and people were like, what's new about this watch? And I was like, well, not much. Like, on the surface, at least. Like, on the inside, after kind of checking it out and thinking about what the new features are there, it feels like there is stuff happening, but none of it is apparent on the surface level. So if you look at the Apple Watch Series 9, the most I can say is that it now comes in Barbie pink, which I love. But looking at it, it looks like the Series 8.

1:19:58Which looked like the Series 7. Which looked like the Series 7. No, no, no. There's a slightly thinner bezel. Ignoring thinner bezels, looked like the Series 6, which looked like the Series 5, which looked like the Series 4. It hasn't really changed in terms of looks. It gets incrementally larger when they're like, ah, screens, let's make them slightly larger. And then, you know, the Ultra 2, I actually got told to put my original Ultra away because they were afraid I was going to lose it. That's how similar it looks like to the Ultra 2. Wow. So they were like, we just want to make sure you don't lose your watch.

1:20:31And it was like, well, I have this Nomad glow-in-the-dark band on, so there's no way I'm losing this watch. And they're like, man, there's pickpockets here. Yeah. On the demo floor. Yeah. I get where they were coming from, though, because I was holding the Ultra in my hand, and I was like, I think this Ultra is lighter. The Ultra 2 is lighter. And this woman's looking at me, she's like, I think it's your strap. Which is their way of telling me that it's not. It's the same. It's basically the same body. So I was like, okay, cool. And, you know, with the Ultra 2, there was at least the rumor that it was going to come in a darker color.

1:21:03That is not the case. It is the same titanium color because titanium is hard to make different colors. So I just don't think they were really going to do that with this one. But, you know, it basically comes down to there's a new chip. There's a new chip. And it's been a while since there was a new chip. And the new chip will enable more things. What more things? Well, it's all going to be in the background, so you probably won't notice how much more convenient everything is going to be for you. But it will be. It's like Siri will understand you more, and it'll do everything. They were like, Siri is now using an on-device transformer model, which is as close as they got to saying AI.

1:21:44They said machine learning a lot, but no AI, except for one mention of transformer model in the Siri section. So yeah, so Siri is supposed to do things on device, meaning so like right now, if you are in your laundry room and it's in the basement and you don't have your phone with you and you say, Siri, set my timer for five minutes from my laundry or whatever, it's not going to work. Siri will be just like, sorry, can't do that for you. And it's happened to me a lot of times, but now supposedly Siri will be able to do that for you, even if you have no connection, which, you know, if you think about it, that's actually kind of convenient.

1:22:16And you think about it in a way as like, well, didn't it always do that? No, no, it's not something that they've always done. But then at the same time, you're like, okay, well, they're saying Siri will have 25 % better diction. I am going to conduct the longest sentence to test this with, with so many multi-syllables and probably an ethnic or international word thrown in there just to, like, throw it off. Because there was a point in time where I said Mahershala Ali a lot, just to see whether Siri would understand it. Yeah, she did not. It did not. Don't gender the remarks. I'm not gendering Siri.

1:22:48It did not understand that. Now it does. So I can tell you it has improved over time. So, you know, I'm going to, you know, I will take suggestions for what ridiculous words I can try and make Siri understand me with. But, you know, there's supposedly that's what's going to happen. And later on in the year, Siri is going to be able to answer your health data, which I don't know how I feel about. Do you see on the, you know, the flying things you could say to Siri about health data? and one of them was like, Siri, I weigh this much today. And it's like, sociopath. That's sociopath stuff. If you're just announcing to your watch how much you weigh every day, again, something has gone wrong.

1:23:26Some of that is like, they're thinking, can we do this? Not whether we should. I don't think you should necessarily be like, Siri, log my weight as X pounds or kilograms today. I didn't purchase a connected scale. I bought a new Apple Watch to which I announced my weight every day. But that stuff is interesting, right? It's all background. The processor is more powerful. They're doing more local processing of stuff. It also enables some other things. It does enable some other things, like double tap. Or as I like to call it, pinchy pinch. Pinchy pinch. It's the pinchy pinch. They rejected that one.

1:24:02That was on a whiteboard at Apple Park. They didn't like that one, but I like it. Yeah, no, pinchy pinch. That's actually, like they're saying it's new. It's not really new because they introduced assistive touch a couple years ago, which is an accessibility feature which lets you control the watch one-handed. And now they're just kind of bringing it to the masses, which in my view proves that accessible design benefits everybody. But, you know, so you can do a little pinchy pinch motion and you'll be able to do all the primary actions of your watch single-handed. So someone calls you, you're washing your dishes, you can pinchy pinch, official term, you can pinchy pinch and answer the phone call.

1:24:40or, you know, you, let's say, set up your camera and you want to take a photo, you can now pinchy pinch and control the shutter. Cool. If you, you know, watchOS 10 has the new widget stacks because it's all about widgets, so you can scroll through your widgets by pinching. So it essentially becomes a one-handed device because, you know, you wear it on one wrist, you have to use your other hand to use it, but now you don't have to do that. Incredible moment of the keynote when Jeff Liam said, this is great for those moments when your other hand is occupied. no further details no examples of what it can be you just said it out loud and it's like you're just waving your watch hand around and this hand's busy and I was like okay incredible thing to say out loud you're the CO again of the richest COO of the richest company in the world and you're like you know a problem I have a lot one hand's busy it's like weird it's weird all the way around and I was like you know what that's better than using my nose which is what I have been doing this whole time it is better than that Because we have all gone like, oh, crap, someone's calling me.

1:25:42Stick your nose into the watch. So it is better. I do have some questions about how intuitive it'll be for everyone. Because with assistive touch, you're basically being very specific about what these actions are doing. This is meant to be more contextual. So they're kind of making assumptions as to what you are going to think when it comes time to pinchy pinch. And I don't know that everyone has the same thoughts. They did tell me that some aspects will be customizable. So when you are going to do your music, not everyone has the same thought about whether it's going to play, pause, or skip forward.

1:26:17Because these are different assumptions we have from other devices. So that at least will be customizable. There's another one that I forget what will be customizable. But, you know, so that's cool. On a very nerd level, I find it cool that it does not have to be your index finger. You can use your middle finger or your ring finger. Oh, that's important. It's very important because I was like, what if you don't have an index finger? Which is, you know, some people don't have index fingers. So that at least is neat. And I think it will be kind of cool once you get used to using it. But you do have to get used to using it.

1:26:53I did the demo like six different times on the demo floor. And for the first few times, I was just aggressively pinching. The thing that makes it hard initially is the watch has to be awake. So you have to do the gesture to wake it up. Then you pinchy pinch. And then it works more reliably. But if the watch isn't awake, you'll just be pinching. Yeah, that was me. I was just pinching. And I was like, why isn't it working? And they're like, oh, you have to do the gesture to wake it up. And then you can pinch. But then I was only pinching once and not double pinching. So it has to be a double pinch.

1:27:24It's not a pinch. It's a pinchy pinch. It's a pinchy pinch. Are they going to add like a double pinch? We're just like brute forcing this into reality. Making it happen. I don't want you to. I mean, I'm just thinking of myself. Eventually, I will be double-wristing because I'm always double-wristing, except for right now. And I'm just going to be sitting here just thinking about it. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait. So this is not, you know, their whole thing is this is because of the S9 chip. We're doing sensor fusion. We're measuring your blood flow. I don't know about that. Well, so, I mean, that is how it's working.

1:27:56It's monitoring the muscles in your forearm that react when you do these gestures with your fingers. So that is why it works with your other fingers. And like they said, you know, you could do it with a pinky, but depending on certain people, the way their arms are, it may not work as reliably. And that most people works reliably with the index finger or the middle finger. But that's what it's monitoring. It's monitoring the blood flow through your wrist in your forearm. So is the heart rate sensor on all the time? Yes. Yes. Well, when it's awake. They light up the heart rate sensor. Yeah. It lights up the heart rate sensor and then it's ready to.

1:28:29I think this is probably why it doesn't work when it's not awake. One, probably to stop false triggers. But also it does have to light up a bunch of sensors in order to detect. But this is the argument of the S9, right? We need the gyroscope. We need the heart rate sensor, which they hadn't mentioned specifically. It's really cool to know. And then we're doing sensor fusion and machine learning, and we're detecting a pinch. That's what the S9 enables, and that's what all the extra cores. It's got a four-core neural coprocessor or whatever. They call it a SIP as opposed to instead of an SOC that we're used to hearing from other devices.

1:29:01SOC is everything is on the same chip die. The SIP is a package. So you have multiple chips stacked and assembled into a package. So they keep referring to the S9 as a SIP. But it's got all those. And this is why you have a neural processor on your wrist to figure out these kinds of features. Also, more power efficient. but you know Apple has this tendency of like with power efficiency to be like and so we will do more things with the power efficiency that we have instead of giving what some people want which is longer battery life so you know the screen gets brighter the screen goes up to 2000 nits on the S9 now on the on the series 9 we saw a demo compared to the S8 and it was noticeably different it's noticeable when it's at peak prices so like the original ultra goes up to 2000 nits And when you're outside, that's quite bright.

1:29:50And now the Ultra 2 goes up to 3 ,000. So I'm just like, wow. Could you see that? Was that, that seems like a difficult thing to see. Unless you're outside. Yeah. You need the older model right next to it at max brightness to really understand it. Because when I was looking at the S9 in the perfect lighting in Heaven's Steve Jobs Theater, I was like, I can't tell the difference. But when they put the two next to each other, then you can see the difference. Yeah, they demoed an S8 that had been tricked into full brightness and an S9 that had been tricked into full brightness next to each other.

1:30:23And that's when you could see it. And the idea being that if you are in an environment where you need this brightness, that's where it'll come help you. But ultimately, it just looked nicer when it's brighter. Yeah, it does. Yeah, but that's brighter screens. And, you know, they always say the same battery life. It's never the same. Like with smartwatches, your individual usage really does kind of impact how much mileage you're going to get. But when Apple says 18-hour battery life, like the Series 4, that was maybe like 24 hours. Series 5, that was maybe 20 hours. Like you can get more. Apple is very conservative with their battery life estimates.

1:31:02So when they say 18 hours, I'm really going to see how far you can push that 18 hours for the original. Not the original, for the regular one. But for the Ultra 2, they said it was 36. And I just, you know, I have gotten as far as 60 hours on the Ultra without doing anything, going on runs. Like I did a half marathon, a slow half marathon. I was not fast that day. And I think I only lost 15 % battery with no low power mode enabled. So I'm really curious to see whether the extra power efficiency will push the Ultra into the 72-hour territory. Which is what they're claiming for low power mode. Which is what they claim for low power mode.

1:31:44But I think depending on how you use it, because let's be real, not everyone buying an Ultra is the weather-beaten explorer athlete. No, they said this. So you wrote a piece that was like, who is an Ultra for? And I think Jeff Williams read it. because in his presentation he was like here's who the apple watch ultra is for he said do you catch this he said it out loud and his answer was it's for people who want a big display and the best battery life and he was not like an ocean explorer it's like it was like the biggest display in the best battery life because i'm gonna be real like i go to i am not the most athletic person on the planet i would consider myself a weekend warrior a reformed couch potato Like, I do do a lot of exercise.

1:32:29I exercise probably like six out of seven days of the week. But I'm not athletically gifted, and I never will be. But I do go to, like, run groups. I have friends who are athletically gifted, and absolutely none of them are interested in the Ultra. They're just not. They're just like, I've got my Garmin, and my Garmin has 40 ,000 metrics that the Apple Watch will never have. And they're very, like, happy with that or a regular Apple Watch. So thinking about that, I was just like, I don't think that the ultra is really for those extreme athletes until you can be like, oh, yeah, the ultra marathon or you can run 60 hours.

1:33:07I don't know why you would want to, but I know these people do run 60 hours and you won't need to carry your charger on you until until it can legitimately do that. I don't think that the ultra is really for that extreme explorer. explorer so that was a question i did have like who is this watch for and the facetious answer that i get is is for people who want to flex it's for people who have eight hundred dollars and yes and no right because and on the iphone side if you have eight hundred dollars you get last year's garbage here's some shit we had in the parts bin usb2 yeah exactly this is a this This is an 80s Pontiac made of leftover Cadillac parts.

1:33:48Like, that's what we're doing here. Yeah. The other thing that they did demo for us on the Ultra 2 was this automatic night mode. And I was like, ooh. This was like a parlor trick that I should not have been as excited to see as I was. But if you turn off the light, it'll automatically switch into that mode. This is because of the changes with watchOS 10. So you used to, on WatchOS 9 with the first Ultra, you used the digital crown to switch between the special watch face, between its night mode, reds, which you can't do on that watch face, Neelai. You need to use a special watch face. But with WatchOS 10, if you spin the crown, you go into the widgets.

1:34:23So you couldn't do that anymore. So basically, they are using the light sensor to know when the lights are out and switch into the dark mode. But that actually is something that I'm like, ah, there we go. And to be clear, this is coming to the first Ultra as well. Yes, it is. So it's not exclusive. I'm just going to complain about smartwatches for a hot second. Remembering what comes on watchOS 10 to which watches and which is exclusive to what, on what SKUs is just like I need a whole other coprocessor brain to remember that. You need a sip. I need a sip. I need a sip to memorize all that stuff.

1:34:56A sip of something. There's a new watch face. You can watch faces. Modular Ultra. Is that coming to this Ultra? Yes, it is coming to your brain. It's watchOS 10. Yep. There's no real reason for anyone to upgrade from the first ultra to the second. Well, it's the flex, Dan. Other than the flex, you get the pinchy pinch and you get the 3000 nits. And that's really it. And the new U2 chip for precision finding, which my fellow ADHD can't remember where you put anything. Hell yes. But you have to get an iPhone 15 for that to actually work. Yeah. But, you know, they showed it to us. It was like, oh, it'll tell you exactly which direction to go, how far to go to find your phone, which I'm super excited about because I have lost my phone in a fridge before.

1:35:41It's basically the same experience you get tracking an AirTag with an iPhone. Yes. Except you're tracking an iPhone with your Apple Watch. It's a little slower. I did notice that because when you do it with the AirTag, it's like pretty quick. You can only track your iPhone 15. You can't track like an AirTag. that's going to be there. So it does need to have that. But I was like, yes, for me specifically. I use the find my phone function at least 20 to 30 times a day. So, yeah. That's it with the watch. They upgraded a chip. They made things a little bit brighter. They did not make a titanium series nine.

1:36:18They did not make a titanium series nine. It's interesting that the double tap is hardware locked to these new ones. Do we think that the old phones, the old watches can't do them? That is their line, right? Their line is that the S9 enables this feature because of its neural engine and because it's able to take all the data from the sensors and spit out something smart. And yet if you turn on the assistive touch. So I think the part of that is the contextualizing of it so that it's built into the system, whereas assistive touch is something that you have to go in and enable. And there is kind of a learning curve with assistive touch.

1:36:52So there's that. There's also more customizability with assistive touch. So I don't know. But yeah, like I could see an argument for that just because your wrist is a very noisy place in terms of sensors. It's actually not great for heart rate accuracy. I think the most accurate place is the underside of your finger or your ear. So on that front, if you want it to be accurate, if you want it to be something that a lot of people can use reliably with multiple fingers, I could see an argument for needing a more powerful sip for that. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm going to say. That's good.

1:37:30Yeah. Well remembered. I think that's the watches. We didn't say the prices. The Apple Watch Series 9,$399. The Ultra,$799. You know, if you want to flex. Yeah. If you want to flex. They did not drop the price of the SE. Some folks were hypothesizing that they might drop the SE price. I think they dropped it last year. It went from$299 to$29. But, you know, I think there's an argument that there's room to drop it now that the Series 3 is dead and gone. There's nothing at that$199 price point. All this stuff hits September 22nd. Yep. All of it is pre-orders on Friday. Yeah. iOS 17 comes out September 18th.

1:38:03MacOS Sonoma is September 26th. And then also on the 22nd are the USB-C AirPods Pro, which have mysterious, another mystery, they have a new mysterious lossless audio feature that only works with the Vision Pro. It is a, quote, groundbreaking new wireless audio protocol and, quote, revolutionary new format that allows 20-bit, 48 kilohertz audio transmission from the Vision Pro to the AirPods Pro. So goodbye, Bluetooth. Get out of here, you old pirate. I wonder if it is a modification or a form of Bluetooth. I think if I had to, like, hypothesize as to, like, why it's only on the Vision Pro, I wonder if it's a distance thing.

1:38:49If you're wearing the AirPods and the Vision Pro in your head, there's a maximum of six inches of distance between the devices. Whereas if it's on your phone and the AirPods, you've got a few feet between them and it can't maintain that fidelity. Who knows, man? Who knows? The phone's got a thread radio, man. There's just a lot of mysteries that Apple did not address today. It obviously doesn't work with the iPhone. No lossless audio from the AirPods Pro. The old AirPods Pro don't get it. and you cannot buy the usb c case for your old airpods pro we were told that it might be a quote service part which is fascinating yeah the precedence for it being sold separately was when they moved i think it was the airpods 2 uh came out initially did not have wireless charging and then they updated it to a wireless charging case you could just buy the case if you wanted but it doesn't look like that's happening with the usb c airpods pro 2 also notable the regular AirPods 3, not getting USB-C.

1:39:44We mentioned earlier the AirPods Max, not getting USB-C, at least not today. Yeah, but the AirPods Pro, also the 22nd with USB-C. If you have an AirPods Pro 2 today, you can buy new AirPods Pro 2. And I don't know, they've been out for a while. Maybe your battery's not lasting. I think that's it. We've really bled this one dry. We've talked about every Bento on the bento box. It was, I mean, it was a good event. It was, it was fun to be there and like do our thing. When I say that bento boxes don't have a lot of stuff on them, the iPhone 15 bento box has 5G on it. Oh no. And it's like, you guys, what are we doing here?

1:40:26But yeah, iterative updates all around, but I think solid, I think USB-C stuff is going to go over well, but that's it. This is the beginning of just a bonkers two months in tech, basically. September, October are going to be nuts. We'll be back on Friday to talk about the Google antitrust case and everything else that's happening, and then it is just a sprint to the finish line of fall from here on out. We're going to be so dead at the end of this. It's going to be good, though. This is what we're here for. This is what you signed up for. It is true. It's why we wake up every morning. It's nuts this year.

1:40:55It's like brunch this year. It's very busy. I feel like there was at least a day you could breathe in September last year. Amazon Devices and Services event. Let's do it. Get in there. Microsoft Service event. Yeah. MetaConnect. Pixel Watch 2. Let's not forget about code. I'm excited for that. Thread radio's everywhere for no apparent reason. All right, that's it. That's The Verge Cast. Rock and roll.

1:41:21And that's a wrap for Verge Cast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. that's it we'll see you next week

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