iPhone and watches and wallpapers, oh my

29:55And I think that there's probably a lot of people who, A, never realized that they could switch to portrait mode because it was an entirely different setting. Or B, didn't remember how or didn't remember to do it in the moment when they're trying to capture the image, which is happening quickly in front of them. Because like Allison, they couldn't figure out how to get the button to work. Yeah, just stuck on that home screen. Lock screen, yeah. Yeah. Okay, and then Allison, for you, the Pro versus the Pro Max. Again, screen and battery differences. Am I right in thinking that the 5X telephoto zoom is only on the Pro Max?

30:28That's right. Okay, so that's a big difference too. How would you rank between the two? How should people choose which one to buy? Yeah, it kind of throws all my usual buying a new phone thinking out the window because I think there is kind of a different customer for the Pro and the Pro Max. And whether or not your current phone is working well is less part of the equation. but I think yeah the five-time zoom is nice I I get why it's only on the bigger phone Google only puts it on its bigger phone it's something I would consider going up to the bigger phone for especially since it's a little bit lighter weight this year and it doesn't feel like such a burden carrying it around but there's a lot to consider and I think some people are just going to jump on, you know, the new pro iPhone.

31:20And I think like as silly as the word pro is and kind of meaningless now, I think there is a certain kind of person who like if if your phone is kind of a big part of like how you work when you travel, you've got chargers for other things, or if you if you're a video creator and you can see yourself really, you know, using it more in your workflow. I think it does make sense for, I don't think Pro is the word I would use, but it makes sense for a certain kind of person. Yeah, it's like the iPhone 15 videographer. It's like, if you shoot a lot of big files, this might work extra pretty good. I like that.

32:05We kind of have these discussions every year. Who is a person to buy a Pro over a standard iPhone? and like ultimately at the end of the day apple sells a ton of pro phones i think the reports from the 14 generation was like the iphone 14 was like single digit percentage more than the iphone 14 pro in terms of like numbers of people that bought it so like people will buy the more expensive phone i think because it's more expensive but also because it's nicer i think a lot of people see the three lenses on the back whether it's 3x or 5x and they see that like hey this does more and their carrier is willing to subsidize half the price anyways.

32:39So, you know, I think we'll see a lot of people buying the Pro models this year. And then the 15 and the 15 plus will be, you know, a much slower ramp up in terms of like interest and buying and people will buy them as their old phones break. But like the early adopter, the person who's upgrading every single year, they're going to gravitate to the Pro always. It's the exciting one. That's what I wrote in my review is like the regular 15 is never going to be exciting. it's never going to be like the platform for new ideas or technologies the pro is always going to be that so if you want that if you want to experience that you're always going to go with the pro yeah i i totally agree i think that's right um all right i'm gonna let you guys go here in a minute but before i do will you guys hang out and do a hotline question with me really fast just i think you're the right two people to help me answer this question as a reminder the hotline number is 866 verge 11 call ask us all your tech questions uh and you can email vergecast at the verge.com if you don't want to call but frankly it's super fun when you call it's nice to hear your voices uh okay let's hear dan i have been pestering you about this all day so i expect good things from you but here we go let me just play the question we have for you right now hey there guys my name is jordan i had a question about the uh new iphone 15 specifically how you could charge other iPhones by plugging in a USB-C cable.

33:57I know that if you do a USB-C to lightning, it will always charge the lightning phone. And if you do the iPhone, it will kind of do like a handshake action and charge the lesser charged of the two. My question is, you know, it'll do like a 51 % versus 50%, and then the 51 % will start charging that one or whatever. But what if you take like an iPhone Plus and you plug in, say, a USB-C cable to another like standard iPhone 15 and they're both at like, you know, let's say the iPhone Plus is at like 45%, whereas the other one is at like 50%, right? So like the plus technically has less battery percentage, but it has a bigger battery.

34:39What happens? Who wins that exchange? Does the plus charge because it technically has more battery with which to charge? Or does the phone with the higher percentage win every time? Thanks. And I love the show. Okay. So this is maybe the most VergeCast-y hotline question we have ever received. I was going to say. I love it so much. I have an answer. Dan, I have been making you plug things into other things all day. I've been also running down batteries to try and get the levels right or whatever. So tell me what you know so far. So what I know so far is he's correct that if you plug in a lightning iPhone to a USB-C iPhone, the USB-C one will always send power to the lightning iPhone.

35:20The lightning does not work the other direction. And also AirPods and watches, which is like the thing it's ostensibly meant for, is to charge your small devices. Yeah, AirPods and watches, it will charge those devices. They will not reverse charge the phone. But right now I've got the iPhone 15 plus, which is at 75 % battery. And I've got the iPhone 15, which is at 96 % battery. And I plug them in together with my USB-C cable. And the iPhone 15 is charging the 15 plus. So the theory is, which everyone has the lowest amount of battery percentage on its meter, Even if the real life capacity is still more than the 15, it seems to be the way that the power goes.

35:59USB-C is kind of weird. You can kind of like sometimes unplug them and replug them and it will do its handshake again and like switch roles with other USB-C devices. But with the iPhones, at least, it seems to be consistently happening that the one with the larger battery percentage charges the one with the lower battery percentage. So if you wanted to be a real mensch with your iPhone 15 and you've got a buddy who's got an iPhone 15 plus or Pro Max or whatever, and you want to give them your battery and give them some juice and they will just suck all the life out of your phone to power up their big battery cells, you could do that.

36:35But it does do this at a pretty slow wattage. It's 4.5 watch, which is slower than slow wireless charging. So you're not going to be charging all that quickly. But I guess if you, you know, really are in a pinch, you can do it. I tried some other devices. The MacBook will always charge the phone. The MacBook could have like no power and it will still try to charge the phone. I plugged the iPhone 15 plus into a lightning iPad. And what happened was the lightning iPad would start charging for a second. And then it would say not charging because I think it's just not enough wattage. I plugged the 15 plus into a Windows tablet thing.

37:13and it would give enough juice to wake the Windows tablet up and then it would try to charge your iPhone. So for the most part, you're not really charging larger devices with this aside from the fact that you can charge the bigger iPhone with the smaller iPhone, which is kind of hilarious. If your friend with a 15 plus asks you to charge up their phone, that's not a good friend. Yeah, I mean, where did they go wrong in their life management where they didn't charge their phone that gets massive battery life? Yeah. Real friends charge their own phone. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's their problem.

37:48I don't know. Good friends charge their own phone, but best friends charge everybody's phone. That's what I always say. The other weird thing you can do while we're on the topic is let me just see if this actually works. I've got a MagSafe charger here. I'm going to put the phone on the MagSafe charger and watch it start charging. And then I'm going to plug it into another phone through a USB-C cable. and everybody charges. So you can daisy chain. Oh, that's it. That's kind of rad. Yeah. I mean, I assume this is going to stop charging when it like overheats, but yeah. All of these things are like use cases that don't exist, but I think it's delightful.

38:27Nonetheless. This is the potential of USB-C, the power of USB-C that we've been missing with the iPhone for however many years. It's here. I love it. All right. Well, listen, I hope that helps. USB-C is very confusing. and if we figure out the actual logic behind all of this, we'll be sure and let you know. But for now, go charge your friends iPhones. Be a good friend. All right, thank you both. We got to take a break and then we're going to come back and talk about the Apple Watch.

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41:18Welcome back. The iPhones aren't the only new Apple devices coming out this week. There's also the new Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. The Verge's Victoria Song, our resident wearer of many fitness watches simultaneously, reviewed them both, and she's been using the new watchOS 10 software for a while as well. V and I haven't talked about this yet, but I have a feeling the software is actually the real story of the Apple Watch this year, but let's see if I'm right or not. V is with me here now. Hi, V. Hello. Dan Siefert's still here. Hi, Dan. How you doing? Just can't get rid of you this week.

41:51No, I'm a cockroach. Okay, so my overarching thesis, VA, about these new watches, and I am curious to hear if I'm right, is that the software this year is significantly more interesting than the hardware this year. 100 ,000%. Well, okay, maybe like 999 ,000. That 1 % is that. So if we're talking about hardware, the one little tiny stumble in your theory is the S9 SIP that enables all the interesting software updates. So it's still software. Explain what that actually means in practice. So the S9 SIP is the first, let's say, major, in scare quotes, major processor update that the Apple Watch has had in a very long time.

42:42Because so far, the last few years, it's been a rebadged version of the processor from the year before. No real meaningful changes in terms of features that it enables. But this year, it's actually got a 30 % faster CPU and a four-core neural engine that enables It enables the double tap feature. It enables a smarter Siri, smarter in the sense that it works offline now and is supposedly 25 % more accurate at dictation. And the screens are brighter, yay, because better power efficiency, but they're not going to give you better battery life for that power efficiency. They're going to reinvest it into brighter screens.

43:24Yeah, this is the thing I wish Apple would stop doing. I actually think on most of Apple's devices, it's the right call especially with the macbooks i think we've reached a point where like the battery life is terrific sacrificing a bunch of stuff to get me like a few more hours i'm not sure it's all that meaningful i think especially with the entry-level watch in this case the series nine i would take small trade-offs to get like six more hours of battery life out of the thing it's the only device of mine that reliably consistently dies at this point oh god david you just opened the can of worms, which is to say that there are two camps with regards to the Apple watch and their battery life.

44:02There's the camp that's like, don't even look at me in the face until this Apple watch can last a week. How dare you come back to me after yet another year with 18 hours of battery life. I spit, I spit on your grave patooey. There's that crowd. Uh, and then there's the other crowd, which I think Dan belongs to this crowd, which is like, I have my little charging routine. My Apple Watch is never out of battery. You charge your phone every night. It's not that hard to just plop your Apple Watch on a charger at a time when you're not using it, like the shower or 10 minutes before bed. Why are you complaining so hard?

44:42I will just state in my own defense, I would love to not have to have the routine. I just happen to have the routine out of necessity. Can I tell you my problem with this routine? The correct time you just said it V to charge your watch is while you're in the shower. And there's something about having a charger in the bathroom that I just can't, I can't do it. Maybe it's the specifics of my bathroom. I don't, we don't have to talk a lot about what my bathroom looks like, but the idea of just like having a cable dangling in my bathroom, waiting for my Apple watch is just like a bridge too far for me.

45:14I can't do it. You could just put it in your bedroom and just go back to your bedroom after you david david is in a mansion his bedroom and his bathroom are like four football fields they're in separate he's gonna miss all those steps who has the time i know no my real problem is i forget to take it off until i'm already in the shower and then i just kind of like huck it over to the sink and that's my charging strategy but the actual features here you basically named the three things i want to talk about and it seems like from a pure hardware perspective they're so similar that you couldn't tell which watch was which right like you had the ultra and the ultra too.

45:49And they're the same damn thing as far as like what the actual thing looks and feels like, right? Yeah. And I like I've told this story before, but when I was at Apple Park and I had my ultra out and I was, you know, taking comparison photos like this representative, very well-meaning comes up to me. She's like, can you put your ultra away? We wouldn't want you to lose it. And that's because it looks exactly the same. I've actually had to have a code this week when I'm switching straps, I'm where I say out loud, the ultra is the one with the gray strap. The ultra two is the one with the pink strap.

46:26And like, I've basically been keeping the new ones in pink because pink is what's new. And I had to do that because even the back crystal doesn't say ultra two, it says ultra. So there's really no way to tell unless I like, I have terrible eyesight. If you read my reviews, you know, I complain about readability all the time, but I basically have to take the original Ultra straight up to my face and go, which one has that minuscule nick that I got one time that only I know where it is. And that's how I tell the Ultra and the Ultra 2 apart as far as my review units go. Okay, good. So we can just leave the hardware aside because it is what it is.

47:04The double tap seems like the thing, right? Like it's the thing Apple talked the most about. This feature has like been around for a while in some accessibility ways? Like, just walk me through kind of how this thing like fits into your life as a watch wearer. So I actually think this is potentially one of the most significant updates just that Apple's ever put out, but it's just not flashy, right? First of all, in some capacity, it's been around since watchOS 8 and assistive touch. Right now, that tech is just being repurposed in a more general use capacity. It's supposedly it's built into the system.

47:40So it's more contextual. You don't have to do anything. Whereas with assistive touch, you have to go into the accessibility settings, you have to enable it and you have to program it. Because for some people with limb differences, this is the only possible way for them to control the watch. It's how they're going to navigate menus. It's how they're going to operate the digital crown. If they have an ultra, it's how they're going to press the action button. So it's much more comprehensive and there's more gestures involved. There's a clench gesture. There's a single tap gesture. There's four actual gestures that you do with assistive touch.

48:15But double tap is just the double tap, or more accurately, the pinchy pinch. The pinchy pinch. The pinching motion. And you basically use it to control the primary function of an app. And what that means is, say you get a phone call, you pinchy pinch, it's going to answer the phone call. When you're like, I'm done with you. I'm going to hang up in a rage. Then you pinchy pinch again, and then it hangs out. Can you rage pinchy pinch? I'm not sure you can rage pinchy pinch. You can rage pinchy pinch. You just do it really aggressively like you're an angry lobster. You just go. I like it. And that's how it works.

48:49I can't wait to see the Wall Street bros out on the street just screaming at their assistant and then really violently pinching to hang up at them. I feel like you need to wear like castanets so that it like makes a loud noise when you pinchy pinch. That's how you really get your feelings across. Yeah. So that that thing you just described actually is one of the questions I have about watch OS X because that that idea that it's like the primary thing makes obvious sense to me in some ways. Right. Like it's a it should pause my music if my music is playing. But there are other ways where what is the primary thing I'm supposed to do with the tap here is substantially less obvious.

49:26And you're nodding like that has been true in practice. Has that been true in practice? Yes. Yes, it absolutely has. And, you know, Apple acknowledges this to an extent because there are two circumstances where you can customize what the pinch does. So that first is, as you mentioned, music playback. So you can do it and it can pause or it can play your music. But I actually that's not intuitively what I would want it to do. What I would want it to do is skip a track and you can, you know, edit it so that it skips a track. So I was just in the car the other day driving and I was like, no, not this.

50:01No, not this. Nope, not this. I'm just pinching while I'm driving. And that's kind of actually safer than me reaching over to the car infotainment and just trying to flip through that way. So that's one way you can customize it. The other way you can customize it, and it has to do with Apple intuiting, what you want is the smart stack. So the smart stack is new with watchOS 10 because it's widgets just everywhere in watchOS 10. And the smart stack, you can either double pinch to scroll through your smart stack, or you can double pinch to select the first stack and only the first stack. And, you know, Apple's like, if they do their job right, and if they anticipate which widget you need at the right time of day, so that whenever you bring up your widgets, you just want to pick the first one there, you can pinch and select it.

50:54Which to me, I'm like, wow, that's almost never going to happen. But in order to bring up the widgets, you have to scroll the digital crown or swipe up on the screen. So you're already... You can pinch. So you just wake it up, pinch, brings up the widgets. And then the second pinch will either scroll through or select that first top one. So for me, testing, that's been a nightmare because the first one that pops up has been the tips thing that I just can't get to go away, which goes away after a while, but it's like, I don't need these tips. So I can't actually use that particular function. But those are the only two ways you can customize it.

51:31And for me, with messages, like say I get a text, you pinchy pinch and it'll bring up the voice message reply. Makes sense. That makes total sense if you're just trying to keep things hands free or single handed. For me, though, I want to scroll through my quick replies and select one. I would love to do that, but that's kind of hard because pinching to scroll through your quick replies and then pausing and then pinching again to select it kind of is something that has to be a lot more intuitive. You can do that in assistive touch, but you can't really do that with the double tap. But that is what I wish I could do with it.

52:07Dan, you and I are both sickos for customization, I would say, as a general rule. This strikes me as the kind of thing I would want tons of control over. I should be able to decide in every single app what the double tap does. Well, I think we should clarify that it does nothing in third-party apps. Wait, is that true? Oh, okay. So developers can do it. They just haven't yet. No, they actually can't. What? V, correct me if I get this wrong. Developers can interact with DoubleTap through notifications. So basically, if you get a notification in and you DoubleTap, it will do what is like the default action on that notification.

52:44And developers can define that default action. So if you've got a notification that's like an email and the default action is a delete, you can DoubleTap to delete it. Or you can double tap to reply to a message if it's in WhatsApp or something outside of Apple's messages. But if you are in a third party app, double tap doesn't do anything. Is that correct, V? Well, so far, I think you're right. I haven't been able to use it with any third party app right now. But this is also just like the first implementation of it. I imagine there's going to be a lot of trial and error as people use this for the first time.

53:14I could see ways, ways down that third-party apps will eventually get some ability to do it. But the problem really is that this is supposed to be contextual and intuitive. So you're having people, you're basically trying to mind read what people are going to try and pinch for. And it's funny because, you know, I have a beta version with this enabled. There's no explanation on my version. I imagine there will be some short walkthrough in like the tips app when Apple releases this to the public. But there's no real explanation of what apps this works with and what it'll do within those apps. You just kind of have to go into the app and start like pinching like a weirdo and seeing what it does.

54:01And there's a little glyph or an icon that appears that shows you that you've just done it. And when you can't have any double tap gesture, it'll just like do a little shake. That's like, no, can't do it. So I've just been like this past few days just sitting there just going like, oh, does this, does this work? Pinch, pinch. Oh, no. OK, I can't do that. Does this work? Pinch, pinch. Oh, no, can't do that. So it can be really intuitive and also weirdly frustrating because you don't know when you're going to run up against the wall of the pinch not working. like timers is the other example I'm going to use.

54:37If you have talked to Siri and you have a timer going and that timer app is front and center, when you do the double tap, it'll pause the timer. And then you can restart the timer. And when it ends, you can close the timer. What if I want a timer to restart? I have several like Pomodoro method nonsense where I just want to restart a timer as soon as it's done. I can't do that. I actually have to go and figure out whether I'm going to ask Siri to set another timer or whether I'm going to go in manually and set that timer. So that's annoying. And then also, if the timer app goes away, it's not front and center, then no amount of pinching you're going to do is really going to change anything until it goes off.

55:19So if you want to pause the timer while the timer app is not front and center, you can't do anything. So it's sort of like, that's weirdly annoying for me. I don't know if it'll be weirdly annoying for everyone it just strikes me as a classic apple kind of being too clever by half thing uh and like the thing it got really right with the action button was it was just like just do just do whatever you want like here's some options we have some ideas just do just action action button on the phone let's clarify no you're that's absolutely right but the action button in the iphone 15 which we were talking about that you have some control over and there's a cool interface for it and they're like this will work this is the equivalent of if they had taken the action button on the phone and been like in every app, it will do the thing we think it should do.

56:01It's like Apple, like sometimes that thing is obvious. If I open the camera app on my iPhone, it should be the shutter button and it is in that kicks ass. Sometimes I want it to do something and I should be able to make it do that thing. And I feel like so many times with the watch, Apple is like, this is a small screen. People don't want to spend too much time on it. We have to do all the work magically for them. And sometimes it works and way too often. I feel like it doesn't. And speaking of things that way too often don't work siri is the other thing i was curious about because apple made a bunch of noise about siri being offline and working on device which if it is successful is a huge deal for the watch right like it opens up all kinds of things you can do if you don't have a cellular device if you're out in the world doing stuff like potentially a big deal what have you seen so far yeah it works it just works like okay hold on hold on do you want to be on the record saying siri works i just like i just want to be so clear about what you just i'm getting into caveats.

56:57Just give me a second to get into the butt of this here. So, you know, it does now work if you don't have your phone and you're not in any kind of internet connection. So like your laundry room is in your basement, you left your phone upstairs, your hands are tied up, and you want to set the stupid laundry timer so that you know when to go get your laundry. Now you can say like, hey, set this timer and it'll do it, which feels like a thing that it should have been able to do already. This happened to me, by the way, literally this morning. I was doing daycare drop off with my kid, needed to remind myself to do something.

57:35I had left my phone at home and my watch just was useless to me. Yeah. Like this very simple, basic thing that it ought to be able to do. It couldn't do. It can do that now. That's pretty reliably. I turned airplane mode on my phone and the watch on. and made sure that there was no Wi-Fi connection still. And it was able to do stuff. It was even able to pull weather updates because it had pulled that already. It may not have been the most accurate weather update at that point in time, but it was able to give me an update, which I had not been expecting because as I understand it, if it needs to pull some sort of data from the internet, it still needs the internet connection.

58:12It's more so that you can do tasks like, oh, set a timer, or I guess in my case, set a workout. Like, I don't know if you're in the trails of like Missouri somewhere where there's no any kind of internet connection and your phone doesn't even have an internet connection. Well, now you can hands-free set a workout, which there is a use case for that. But I think for most people, that's not a thing that they've necessarily thought to do, but it can do it now. So yay, huzzah. I've had the opportunity to test the new Siri as well. I haven't, my demo unit doesn't have the double tap, but I do have the new Siri.

58:46And I think the thing that is actually impactful is, for me at least, when I'm outside on the grill, I set timers for how long to leave the burgers on before I need to flip them or whatever. And because I'm on the edge of my Wi-Fi network, I will do the command and watch the watch figure itself out. But with the Series 9, I was able to just set a timer for five minutes and it just did it. And so I think those are more practical use cases for where this better improved on-device Siri is going to make an impact. I will add that this new Siri doesn't do anything that the old Siri couldn't do. So it's not like Siri gets smarter or more capable.

59:24It's just it works better at the things that it could already do because it doesn't have to send your voice command out to the Internet, transcribe it and bring it back down to the watch. My biggest issue with Siri on the watch has always been that it seems to just fail completely a lot more often than Siri elsewhere. With really basic things like trying to set a reminder or add something to my calendar or set a timer even, it much more often does the thing where it thinks and then it still thinks and then nothing happens. And my assumption has always been that's because of this sort of like daisy chain of connections it's having to do in order to get the information back to the watch.

1:00:00Have you noticed that being any better on the watch because it's able to run locally? I would think it would just be able to do more things more reliably. Yeah, it has been more reliable for me, except with understanding me. That is just the same level of, you know, like it's better. Like it can finally understand Mahershala Ali's name, which I've been using for years as a litmus test. Progress. Okay. Understand me. And, you know, it's gotten better over the years, like four or five years ago. It was just like Herschel Walker. And it's like, no, that's that's not what I said. It's a different guy.

1:00:34Completely different name. But, you know, I live in a community where it's mixed language. I have to communicate with people with names that are not English. And with that respect, it is still not great. Like I was I was messaging my friend. I was like, oh, new K-pop album come out. Do Kyung Soo. We love him. And it's like Joe Fang Fu or something like that. And it was like, no, that's not his name. That's not how it works. Okay, we still have to do the thing where when I'm messaging my friends and with like Korean loan words, we have to go like bulgogi for it to understand me and for it to be clear and not to be ridiculous.

1:01:16And we had a lot of fun testing the dictation. Our video producer had me rap alphabet aerobics. And that was certainly a time. I did a bunch of tongue twisters. about Betty Botter and her bitter butter and her better butter and buying them. And for the most part, I want to say both my S8 powered Ultra and the S9 powered Series 9 kind of overall, it's about the same in terms of accuracy. So I don't know if that's just me and the way I pronounce. And as Owen says, wow, you talk fast. So I'm not sure if I'm like having issues because because I'm in an edge case of people who talk at the speed of New York, but it's better, just not so much better that if you upgraded now, you'd be like, oh my God, they finally fixed Siri, that kind of thing.

1:02:09Yeah, that tracks. So full takeaway here, it seems to me that if you bought a watch in the last couple of years, you're going to get watchOS 10. Is DoubleTap coming to these other devices, or is that only in the new stuff? That is only on the new watches, along with the precision finding. Those are only on the new watches. And as far as I understand it, it's because, you know, some people have been like, why? Assistive touch works on the older watches. Why won't double touch work on those watches? And it's because assistive touch is powered on the CPU directly. It's very power intensive. Double tap is powered by the neural engine.

1:02:44So it can be offloaded a bit and is a lot more power efficient and can run in the background. That's the line they're giving all of us. So my interpretation is if they were to put Double Tap on the older watches, your battery life would be even more in the toilet than it currently is. So basically, in my review, I say if you have a Series 7, 8, or an original Ultra, cool your jets. Contribute to Apple's carbon-neutral plans and don't buy yourself a new watch. Yeah, it seems like even if Double Tap is really meaningful to you, waiting a year for developers to figure it out and the feature will get better seems like the move.

1:03:22Dan, you're nodding. You agree with me. Yeah, I think in a year, Double Tap will be more useful. Maybe Apple will have opened it up to third-party developers in a more meaningful way. Maybe we'll have other gestures arriving that use the same kind of concept and logic that allows you to do this thing. for now if you have the new watches you get the new watches it's neat but i think v would agree that it's not a like absolute must-have feature no and you can you can experiment if you have a seven or eight with assistive touch to see whether gesture control is something you even like because if you're like oh this whatever i'm not passionate about this then you really don't need you have like empirical evidence that you don't need to update just for double tap i will say that going forward, I think the combination of rearranging the watch to be very widget centric and double tap kind of is like a fundamental groundwork that they're laying to change the way that we interact with the device.

1:04:19So it's weird because on that one hand, I'm seeing that and I'm like, I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing. You are changing how we fundamentally interact with these devices, but you're doing it in a way where it's like, oh, what if I left this book of secrets out on this table? Who is curious enough to come and read this book of secrets? And let's see what they do with that. And they're in the bushes somewhere in the back with their little binoculars going, what are they doing? That's kind of what this is. They're laying some very important groundwork to change the Apple Watch to be a single-handed device, much in the way that Dan pointed this out to be more like the iPhone, which is a, you know, if you get it in the right size.

1:05:02Everyone will agree that it is a single-handed device. And you're making it so that it's much more different. It's not just a mini phone on your wrist because the way that these new apps have been redesigned and that the way the widget stack works on the Apple Watch, you don't need quite as much of your phone because there is a lot of information that's glanceable and a lot of information that you can operate with one hand now. And that's not something that you've really been able to do before. So I think once this gets refined going forward, maybe, I don't want to say for the 10, but maybe the 11 or the 12, I don't think we'll be using these watches in the same way that we currently do.

1:05:42I like it. All right. Thank you both. We got to take one more break and then we're going to switch things up a little bit and talk about how we take these devices, which millions or tens of millions or billions of people buy and make them feel a lot more like ours. We'll be right back.

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1:08:42Welcome back. One of the things I like about this time of year is that it ends up being phone cleaning time. It's like spring cleaning in the spring, phone cleaning in the fall. Particularly if you're an iPhone user, this is the time of year you probably get some new software with some new features, some new widgets, a bunch of weird new gestures and interaction ideas. and it's just a fun moment to kind of take stock of how you use your phone, which apps get a spot on your home screen, all that good stuff. This year's iOS, iOS 17, brings one of the biggest changes in a while, which is one we've already been talking about in this episode.

1:09:19Interactive widgets. Instead of widgets just being things you look at, they're now things you can do. And widgets are actually a big feature of pretty much all of Apple's new software this year. The Apple Watch got a redesign with watchOS 10, so it's basically now just a clock and a bunch of widgets. macOS is getting widgets with Sonoma. The iPad got widgets on the lock screen. It's just widgets all the way down, y 'all. It's great. Oh, and I should say, before we get too far into this, if you're yelling at your podcast player right now, Android did it first, please know that I know, and I'm with you.

1:09:52And Android widgets have been way better than iOS widgets for years. That is absolutely true. But this is new for the iPhone users. So, you know, let them have this one. Anyway, as all of this has been coming out, I've been trying to figure out not just which widgets I want to use, but how to think about widgets and how widgets work across all of these devices. Just on the iPhone, you have home screen widgets and lock screen widgets. There's the dynamic island. There's live activities. There's just a lot of different ways that information moves around the iPhone, and it can be kind of confusing.

1:10:25So to figure it out, I decided to call up the expert, David Smith. Apple added widgets, and it was great. And they worked and it didn't have any negative impacts. It was only positive ones. David makes an app called WidgetSmith that is probably the most powerful and most successful widget making app on the planet. It was a massive hit when it first came out in 2020, which you might remember was iOS 14, which was when home screen widgets came to the iPhone for the first time. This year for iOS 17, he's got a big update to WidgetSmith with a bunch of really cool interactive widgets. You can now scroll the weather on your home screen.

1:11:00There's a way to flip through your music, like the cover flow thing that used to be in the iPod. It's just delightful. David knows how widgets work better than just about anybody. And I think he understands how Apple thinks about them too, which is really helpful. So I called him up and asked him all of my questions, starting with the most burning one, oddly enough. Is it as surprising to you as it is to me that people love widgets this much? Yes. I mean, I think, I mean, I don't know if I really expected widgets to be as big as they were when I started getting into the widget business. Like WidgetSmith was not something that I expected to ever be this massive app that kind of had a viral moment and like took over the world for a few weeks.

1:11:39And like, it was like, I did not expect that at all. I think I was excited about widgets when they first came out, but it was, that definitely had no expectation for just how much like pent up demand there is for that kind of thing, that people really want that kind of interaction and that kind of experience. And so, yeah, I mean, it definitely feels like, oh, and it just keeps coming. Like this year, I think other than Apple TV, widgets are everywhere on Apple's platforms now. It's really true. So it was definitely like, okay, well, I guess next year I know what to expect. You know, somehow it's going to be widgets on Apple TV because they just, you know, complete the set.

1:12:09But yeah, it's a little wild. Yeah, I have to say I did not expect Widgetsmith to get as big as it did either. I sort of put it in the like shortcuts bucket at first where it's like, this is a cool thing. It's a little, you know, fiddly and finicky. And there's a lot of people who like that. But this is not necessarily going to be sort of a mainstream thing. But the number of people who, even in the early days, were willing to do the work to make a photo widget that looked nice on their home screen was just orders of magnitude bigger than I would have expected. It was wild. The customization people started doing, the minute they were able to do it, and the amount of work that they would put in to do it just kind of blew my mind from the very beginning.

1:12:49And I've not really forgotten that lesson since then. I mean, it certainly helped that it launched in 2020, when I think there was a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands. to work on that level. But yeah, the amount that people care about what their home screen looks like is dramatic. There's a meaningful thing that people really care about exactly what their home screen looks like, what colors it is, what fonts it is, the layout of it, and they're willing to put in the effort to make that happen. And so, yeah, I definitely, when I launched WidgetSmith, I think very much Shortcuts is a great analogy that I was like, oh, this is a cool niche feature for sort of power usery kind of people who enjoy really, you know, sort of tweaking and fiddling with things.

1:13:27And it turned out, actually, no, it's everyone. And, you know, it's like middle school kids through like, you know, retirees who are all just, they just want to have, you know, this device that they spend so much of their day looking at, they just want it to be exactly the way they want it. And you know, Widget Smith was like, it turned out to be the tool that helps them accomplish that. I am curious how you've like, over the last three years, I've even had trouble thinking about where information kind of lives on your phone. First, it was just widgets, and then it was lock screen widgets, and then it was live activities, and then it was the dynamic island.

1:13:59And we've gotten to this point where it's like, how I define a widget gets more complicated over time. And you've kind of tentacled out into some of those things too. Like, do you have a really good sort of mental picture of how all of that stuff works and fits together and makes sense? Sure. I mean, I think at its core, Widgets are about taking little bits of an app and exporting them outside of the app itself. And I think depending on what kind of experience you're trying to pull out of the app, those different locations, whether it's a home screen widget, a lock screen widget, whether it's a live activity or a live activity in the dynamic island.

1:14:39But what makes sense in each of those places is going to be very different. If it's something that is like just showing the temperature, for example, is a great lock screen widget. It's something that's small, concise, useful, and very glanceable. It's not something that you need. You just want to know how hot it is outside. In the same way that we put the time on our lock screen and we all got rid of our watches. And so that kind of data was great on the lock screen. But I think home screen gets into this, you start to get into a place where it's like, well, do I want a bit more? I have a lot more space.

1:15:09I can have a bit more there. And is it allowing me to get the data that I want out of an app without having to go into that app? And then live activities and the dynamic island, it tends to be much more of the sense of, is there data that is that is changing in a very real time way, which doesn't really lend itself to the other forms because of the performance limitations that Apple puts on the other types of widget? Those widgets, the home screen and lock screen widgets are static, essentially. I mean, there's interactivity we have this year, but fundamentally they are showing a snapshot of data.

1:15:44And so if it's updating in real time, they are not the right place for that. And so instead, Apple made this other place where you have these temporary experiences that are widgets that are given special permission to update very regularly. You know, you're updating a few times, you know, every few seconds rather than every few minutes. And that, I think, is sort of generally the way that I think about these sort of this hierarchy of different widget experiences we have now, that they sort of go from the small to the large and then from the kind of real time to the just sort of static. and where you are on those axes determines which one of those widget types you're going to be in.

1:16:18But there's definitely more and more places that our widgets are being put because they're catering to different needs or to different user desires. That's a really helpful perspective, actually, because I will say as a user who does not understand the sort of performance capabilities of each one, the distinction between what's allowed to refresh constantly and what isn't never really made a lot of sense to me. And I think the thing that has been the hardest for me is to figure out the difference between like a very good home screen widget and let's say a live activity. Because to me, those should those should just be the same thing.

1:16:52And I get that they're not. And I get that there are sort of artificial reasons that they can't be. But the idea of having something that is like, why can't I run a, I don't know, FaceTime call from a widget on my home screen? Like that seems like a thing that maybe should exist in the world. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. But it's just interesting that there are those kind of artificial limitations put on each one to make that hierarchy. And when you understand it like that, that hierarchy does kind of make sense. Even though as a user, I'm kind of like, just let me, I just want to be able to hit a thing and just say, update this.

1:17:23Like the thing you can do with your email inbox where you decide how often it pulls or just have it push whenever there's new stuff. Like I kind of want that in all my widgets too, even if it crushes my battery life. I mean, I think this is an area that I think is very it's been a fascinating sort of timeline with Apple because widgets originally the first version of widgets was the TodayView screen that they added back. And I can remember much older versions of iOS. And that was actually something more akin to a fully running app that was running. Like when you looked at your TodayView, that app was running and it could do all kinds of real time things and could be much more lively and interactive and you could have buttons and you could do all these things.

1:18:02But in order to do that, Apple had to put it somewhere to the side so that it wasn't running all the time, that it was only running if you swiped over to the left of your home screen. But that also meant that it wasn't nearly as useful because you had to go and find it in order to do it. And the reason they did that is, of course, it's performance in battery. If you allow an app to run all the time, inevitably bad things are going to happen. So there's security issues. There's battery life issues. Is it interacting with other apps that are running on your phone issues? And so I think very wisely in many ways, what Apple instead did is they built the standard widgets that you see are just a, they're a very clever snapshot, but almost just like a picture that my app will generate and send over to iOS.

1:18:49And then iOS can show that picture and it doesn't cost them anything. There's no performance hit. I can display a widget on your home screen all day and it isn't costing you any more battery life than if you just had a collection of apps, app icons there. And I think that sort of is the cleverness that behind what they did, they've done by doing that. But yeah, it creates this weird tension between like, well, why isn't it an app? Well, it's like, if we gave you what you want and let you run a full app inside of a widget, then your overall experience of your phone will be worse because inevitably it's going to be draining on your device in a way that isn't actually getting you, you know, you're not getting enough utility to justify the battery drain and performance hit that you're getting.

1:19:30And so instead, they're taking this very incremental approach and saying, it's like, well, we're going to do the snapshot approach. We're going to do live activities where it's like they're special and time bound and they live in a special place. And even there, the technology that they're using to do those is similarly based on snapshots and clever things. A live activity isn't a live app that's running all the time. It's just an app that's given permission to refresh itself very regularly. I see. Okay. Rather than something that is actually like a window into the application itself. And then similarly with interactivity, they did the same exact thing where instead they're just saying, if a user pushes on a particular part of a widget, you get a guaranteed refresh instantly.

1:20:09So you can respond to the user's interaction and it feels like you're interacting with an app, but actually it's just a very special way to say, give me the next snapshot, give me the next snapshot. And as a result, it's super performant because the last time you hit that button, the last time it generates that snapshot, it's done. And all the work is done and it'll be go back to immediately using zero battery and impacting your device at all from that point on goes immediately to zero. And so I think it's a very clever approach in that regard, technically. And it's just a very, it means that there's these weird distinctions users have to sort of navigate.

1:20:43But overall, it means that I think widgets can be used everywhere. And the story wasn't Apple added widgets. And then my battery was toast. It's like Apple added widgets and it was great and they worked and it didn't have any negative impacts it was only positive ones that makes sense so yeah is you've been goofing around with interactivity i've been using some of the stuff you found in wichesmith what do you make of it so far like did they does that balance feel right yeah i mean i think the the balance that's struck right now with interactivity i think is very is very strong in the sense of it's it's amazing what you can get done with just getting a guaranteed refresh based on a user action.

1:21:20It is surprisingly powerful for what the interactions and the experiences that you can build with that. The WRC keynote was just like checking an item off a to-do list, which seems a bit basic. And it's like, you can totally do that. Or you can scroll through your calendar dynamically or look at a weather forecast and say, it's an hourly forecast and you want to see the next six hours after that. Well, you can tap and it'll slide over. And they can do things there where they can make these rich, it makes the experience that much richer and creates that many fewer places and reasons why you have to actually get into the app in the first place.

1:21:55And I think that's what interactivity mostly is allowing at this point is it reminds me a lot of watchOS apps where like a really good watchOS app is an app that typically is something that you're only going to experience for a few seconds. That it's, you're going in to get something and then coming out. And it's not an app that you're expecting to just like be sitting, tapping on your wrist for five minutes. It's something that you're going to be in in seconds. And similarly, I think interactive widgets allow you to have those same kinds of interactions on your home screen, where rather than having to open the app to do something, maybe you can just, you know, tap two or three times on the widget to get to the exact data view that you're interested in or the exact behavior you want, and then you're done.

1:22:36and you never actually had to launch the app to do that. And so I think they've struck a really interesting balance. I think, I doubt this is the final form of it. Like my suspicion is that there will be more things that will come over time as they've kind of explore how users respond to interactivity. But it feels like they've been taking this incrementally growing out the widget story over the last, you know, since 2020. And I doubt they're done at this point. I think this seems like a very meaningful step forward to make them not just static things, but to have the user expectation of being able to interact with them in the first place.

1:23:09Got it. Okay. So yeah, I guess part of me is trying to figure out how far I want that to go because it's like the checkoff to do this example is a good one, right? That's an easy, obvious thing that it's always been sort of ridiculous. You have to open an app for, but then it's like, okay, I want to edit a task. Should it open up a text box on top of the widget? That seems like probably not. I don't know. There's finding out where that middle ground sort of eventually ought to be with all of this is really interesting. And I think that like refresh the snapshot thing makes me think that if that's the paradigm, it's always going to be just kind of you can do one thing at a time.

1:23:46And this is not meant to be like a multi-step tool. It's a look at this thing and then look at this thing. Yes. And that maybe that's enough. Yeah. And I think if we got further things, I think they would be in that same model. And it reminds me a bit of how in notifications, when you get a notification and it's like You can respond to the, like someone sends you a text. You can respond to that text without opening the messages app in terms of you can respond inside the notification is a thing that they've allowed you to do for a while now. And I think I could imagine a similar thing in widgets where it's like you have the ability to, you know, prompt the user for text.

1:24:24And so if you wanted to have a to-do list app where you are able to add items directly from your home screen, it would be through some kind of system managed process where you would tap a button and then the keyboard would pop up with a little text view. You're typing whatever it is you want. You hit return. That gets sent to the app and then it refreshes the widget. So you're not launching like the app is only ever getting the text. It's not I'm not responsible for the keyboard. It's not an interactive experience in the same way, but it's a way of kind of pushing that next step forward. because I think anything they do is going to be through this kind of very regimented approach where your widgets are locked down in a way that is very performant and clever.

1:25:06But it's like if they added text entry in iOS 18, like that would seem like a very logical next step to do. And there's expands the range of activities that would be potentially useful that, you know, you could imagine a notes app or to do app or any kind of thing that you're regularly collecting little bits of information. That seems great to not have to open an app in order to do that. has interactivity opened up your brain on stuff you want to put into widgetsmith i think most of the stuff i've seen so far is kind of extensions on the things you've already been doing the one i've been using constantly is being able to scroll the hourly forecast i love that sure like it's it's one of those little things i didn't expect to like really care about but it loves it's it's delightful but are there things you've been either building or looking at that are sort of totally new and different because of interactivity sure i mean i think i mean the most like uh silly example of that.

1:25:54It's like being able to put games into your widgets, which doesn't, it's like, it's a completely silly thing in many ways, but like sometimes the silly things are the best things. And like, that's an example of something that just wasn't possible before. And now you can, and obviously there's limitations on a game because it has to be a game that you can play only by sort of intermittent tapping that is not in a timely way. So like tic-tac-toe in a widget would totally work. Yes, exactly. Like something in any kind of game where there's, you're taking turns or that kind of behavior is definitely something that's possible.

1:26:24But you're not going to be able to make Flappy Bird for the widget because there's no sense of timeliness when you tap and how it responds. But I think that's a kind of thing that's... I don't think the game itself necessarily is the end state of that, but I think that's an example of the kind of thing that you can start to do where just having the ability to respond to a button tap opens up a variety of things that you could come up with and you could think of that allow you to do. And like, I mean, so I've done a bunch of things with related to music. It was actually a widget that I found super helpful for me is I've made a little like a cover flow widget.

1:27:00So, you know, so you can put your albums into a medium widget and you can, you know, sort of you tap on the edges and you can scroll through them and then you can tap on the one in the middle and it'll start to play. And because it's interactive, you don't have to launch the app for it to play. You know, it's not needing you to even do an app launch. It can just start. And then because the now playing experience goes up into the dynamic island, you just see that the album started playing and you can move on. And I think that kind of thing is just really just different. It feels very interesting to not even have to duck in and out of an app.

1:27:34Like previously, if I'd done Music Widgets, it's like, well, you have to launch Widgetsmith. It'll start to play and then you have to quit it because you always had to have this weird round trip to the app, even if the app was doing hardly anything. You know, or similarly, you can start workouts is another thing with interactivity where you could, you know, you can say you're going for a run and you tap it and your phone just starts tracking your run without having to open an app necessarily. And you can just jump into the live activity or the dynamic island and you can tap the widget and then you can lock your phone and then off you go.

1:28:04And it's your progress would show up on your home, you know, on your lock screen in the live activity. And it's not like that one step is huge, but I feel like taking the number of times that you can take out that one step will add up over time in terms of its value and utility.

1:28:22After David and I talked, naturally I put a thousand new widgets on my iPhone. But while I'm in the middle of this personalization craze, I started thinking about changing my wallpaper and my app icons too. Both of which are also really good ways to personalize your phone and make it work the way that you want it to. I ended up buying a wallpaper from a guy named Isaac Mazna, who you might know as Canoopsie from YouTube and elsewhere on the internet. Today, I'll be showing you how I've set up my phone, some of the apps I use, and generally how I've customized it to match my style and how I use my device.

1:28:54I like the wallpaper. It looks great. But it kind of made me wonder, what is it like being in the iPhone personalization business? There are countless free iPhone wallpapers online. So how do you make some that people will pay for? What makes them pay for it? And what makes a great wallpaper great anyway? So I called up Isaac and asked him, and I asked him just to start at the very beginning. How do you become a person who makes wallpapers? It was kind of for myself originally, because I'm making YouTube videos. I can never find the wallpaper I wanted to showcase in a YouTube video. Because you don't want to just have the same stock wallpapers everybody has, right?

1:29:32No, no, I couldn't do that. I used to do that, but then making videos, everybody has a really nice, vibrant, eye-catching wallpaper in the thumbnail. and uh i used like a lot of them and then i just kind of got sick of hunting and searching and being like okay this is okay but like i wish it was a bit more orange or a bit more blue because the thumbnail idea i have doesn't really work or you know in the video it doesn't really match the the scheme of like my set design so i'm like what if i just made them and it was during covid so i had so much time like i was home and i'm like i'm gonna get my ipad out i'm gonna start drawing i'm going to start making some wallpapers.

1:30:08And I thought I was pretty happy with my original designs. And I thought that they looked great and matched my style of minimal designs and matched my thumbnail style and my video style. It was all a nice, cohesive experience. Being a YouTube video, people would ask immediately, where did you get your wallpaper from? It's the most common question in any tech video on a phone or a tablet or a laptop. It's like, where's the wallpaper from? For me, I just made them all. So eventually, I was able to launch a Shopify store with my zero knowledge of web design. I was able to figure it out. And Shopify makes it really easy to do all that stuff.

1:30:45And Shopify makes the whole sales process very easy too. It lets me sell to whoever I want. There's apps to have digital downloads, all that fun stuff. And next thing you know, I'm dropping a wallpaper pack every few weeks. And wallpaper packs, for me just consists of different designs that kind of go together in a specific theme. I like to have fun with it. I like to like think of really cool names for all the wallpaper names for all the different wallpapers in a pack, have like a very themed design for like the mock-up photos. Pretty much every pack would have like new photos with little quirks and little fun things here and there.

1:31:21And I didn't really know how well it would do, but then it just started blowing up. Like it was just nonstop. It almost became a full business. I almost had to hire somebody to manage like customer service and manage hosting the website. I'm thankful that I had just finished university. So I was like ready to go. I was ready to work. And my whole focus was dedicated to YouTube, Instagram, other content production, and now my website with these wallpapers. Why do you think it worked so well? I mean, wallpapers are a funny thing in that there are a billion of them out there, right? Like if you just Google like iPhone wallpaper, like you can you can look through the options until the day you die and you'll never run out.

1:32:02Like, I wonder if there is something to just like you have a style that fits and people just like understand your style and like your style. And that goes a long way. I don't know. Like, why do you think it took off the way it did? It's a mix of different things. It's a mix of people seeing the wallpaper in action on my channel. People who know my style. They know I like these sort of designs. People seeing it in use, it's great. I think also Apple's customization push was also a good thing. It came at the right time. People like to make their phone personal, and they like to make it something that is uniquely them.

1:32:35Because one thing that I also envisioned too, or I at least thought of when designing these is like, we don't really hang that many things up in our homes anymore, like art or designs. But our phone is like a canvas that we see every single day. It's like we turn it on, we see a wallpaper or a new wallpaper that cycles. And to be able to see like a little bit of art or a nice design, it has the same effect as art in your home. When you come home and you see it, you have like this nice feeling of this is familiar or this makes me feel a certain way. If something is dynamic and bold and bright, it kind of like wakes you up a little bit.

1:33:10It makes you feel a bit more energetic. And obviously, I'm just talking about an image or a JPEG. But it's like it does have that feeling. Whenever I turn my phone on, like I get hit with like a bold, textured, vibrant piece and makes me happy. So it's a mix of different things. No, I think I think you're totally right. So take me through the process a little bit. Like you sit down and you're like, OK, I want to I want to do a new pack, a new collection. Where do you start? So pretty much I like to start with colors. I think colors are the best place to start for me personally in the way I work.

1:33:43Let's say I want to do like a very cool toned palette. Maybe it's like a purple and a pink and a blue. I start to just mess with things. I usually use Procreate. I've done some stuff in Illustrator, some stuff in Photoshop, but usually Procreate is the most consistent, best way I work. I know how it works to a T now. I know how all the brushes work, how everything kind of flows. I think Procreate is so great because it's very natural and organic versus a computer. You're like typing and you're clicking things. It's not as natural as like a pen or your finger. so i'll start by like mixing around different colors and trying different gradients or trying different shapes and then usually i'm able to just think of the pack right there like let's say it's like a 2d shape based pack i start drawing some flowing shapes i start adding different colors you know things aren't really in the right place i tweak them a little bit maybe i'll warp a shape a little bit until i really get that exact shape and form i want if it's a more abstract like gradient based or like a really flowing designed pack.

1:34:43I'll just mess with it until I think it looks right. And I think it has like the feeling I want. Then I do things like add a little bit of noise, add a bit of sharpness to things, tweak the colors a little bit, and then I throw them onto most of my devices to test them out. So I have it on my phone. Looks good. Okay. That's, that's solid. Put it on the desktop. I don't really know how that looks in the desktop. Maybe I have to tweak this one area a little bit. Maybe I have to blow this part up a little bit, pull it back on the iPad, tweak that, send it to the desktop, try it on the iPad as well.

1:35:11And then once it's all shit, once it's all like in a state that I like, I'm ready to ship it onto my website. I do all the mock-up photos. I shoot everything, name everything as well based on how I feel, what the pack conveys in terms of the overall collection name and all the different names of all the different pieces. And then load it all up, write a nice little description, and then that's it. So talk to me about the Icon Pack before I forget to ask about the icon pack. I find icons so fascinating because you only have one wallpaper. There are a million apps out there in the world. So I would think trying to make an icon pack that is both sort of cohesive and looks nice, but also exists in a world where everybody has a mountain of different apps on their phone strikes me as very hard.

1:35:58So what made you want to do this in the first place? You just saw everybody customizing and you're like, I want to see how I can be part of this too? in some regards but also like when i started designing the wallpapers i felt like from my phone personally the icons like icons are all over the place these days you know there's like so many different colors some of them are all black some of them are all white and i just couldn't really think of a way to make it look cohesive so i'll have the wallpaper that i'm really happy with but then i'm like okay but the icons are just they kind of mess with the color scheme and you know i like to keep things simple usually i like to keep things pretty minimal with design so i just wanted to have like a set that is you can either choose just you can choose all black or all white and uh that's it so with the with my icon pack like it's obviously a very specific taste like i hand drew every single icon i don't remember exactly all icons how many icons there are at this point that's so many icons i know i just it was all like stock apps and then also a bunch of the popular apps that people use every single day and i just wanted to make something that was very different than what everybody else did because i think a lot of people just shipped literally the same icons and like different different packs like everybody was dropping icon packs and a lot of them were just the same icons and i just thought like what there was so much like very basic like clip art looking stuff in all those icon packs yeah and the reason why is because it was the easiest way to make a lot of money like there was all these stories about some developer making a hundred thousand in a month off of a minimal icon pack and everybody wants to make a hundred thousand in a month but it's like i can't do stuff like that like i just couldn't just ship out a random pack and then use my channels to promote it because i would feel bad and also like i probably wouldn't have designed all those icons like where are they coming from but obviously i don't mean to trash talk that designer i think he was one of the first people to see the potential of custom icons and i think he did it all by himself which is great i love that i love seeing successes like that yeah so for my collection i wanted to have things that would fit my style be a little bit unique be a little bit different it's not obviously for everyone but the people who do like it are always sharing uh screenshots on twitter or instagram tell me how much they like it and uh request icons that they want to add and obviously i can't do every single icon i'm not physically capable of doing that but uh i like to be able to have icons for most of the popular apps and all the stock apps and now with um the new iphones that have dynamic islands it hides that really annoying shortcut notification that drops down every single time you open a shortcut as i'm sure you're familiar with that's one of the biggest things that prevented me from even doing this in the first place like even wanting to use icons because when you know this ability first came out it was okay like it was like you know that drop down you forget it's there you get used to it either decide do i want to see that notification every single time or do i have a nice beautiful custom home screen and obviously a lot of people have chosen the latter because it's worth the trade-off to sometimes have that customization in place but now with the new dynamic island functionality you don't see that notification at all it hides it in the island it's very very subtle and now even with things like the camera before if you used a shortcut uh with a custom icon to open up the camera app it would take an extra full second for the camera to like be ready to go.

1:39:19Cancel, deal break. I can't deal with that. But now you can do it. And if you're willing to go through the process, which isn't super terrible these days and there are very cohesive guides and I think even shortcuts you can download, it's pretty easy to do. But for me personally, my home screen is very clean and I like to have just a couple icons. Everything else is in the app library and that's how I like it. So I like that. Are you just a one home screen guy? Yeah. Yeah. I admire that. I aspire to be that. It's all that works for me at this point. I like to have four apps in the dock and then four apps on my home screen, a little square arrangement using the Clear Spaces app.

1:39:57Because I don't really want to see too much. When I turn my phone on, I want to see...

1:40:16After I talked to Isaac, I blew up my whole phone again. Again, I got rid of a bunch of the widgets. I changed my wallpaper again, and I changed a few icons. I didn't change all of my icons, just the four in my dock, which tend to be the ones that never really move around. And they're all a single style now. I really like how it looks. Plus, I now have just two home screens. One is apps and one is widgets. And I think Isaac's right that less is more there. The app library or the app drawer on Android do the job great. After all this, suffice to say my phone looks really different than it did a few weeks ago.

1:40:50And it was a really fun exercise, actually. I wound up not just changing the look of my phone, but really thinking about where I want things to be, and what I want to have easy access to, and maybe just as important, what I don't want to have easy access to. Plus, what my home screen and wallpaper and icons and widgets should not just do, but make me feel every time I turn my phone on. not everyone is going to want to go down this unbelievable rabbit hole of personalization and shortcuts and widgets and all kinds of different stuff and that's okay but i think it's worth at least spending a few minutes to make sure that when you turn your phone on as we all do a million times a day it feels the way you want it to because i think that's important

1:41:33all right that's enough apple talk that is it for the verge cast today thanks to everybody who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more from everything we talked about on the verge.com. We'll put some links to all our reviews in the show notes, but also, you know, read the verge.com. There's so much gadget news this week. There's Xbox leaks. There's a Microsoft event. There's an Amazon event. There's a ton happening. All of it is on the verge.com. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other phones you think people should buy instead of the iPhone 15. You can always email us at vergecast at the verge.com or keep calling the hotline 866 verge 11.

1:42:08Send us all of your thoughts and questions. And again, this is probably the last call for this. If you have questions about the verge or the verge cast, send them in the meta episode is coming really soon. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The verge cast is a verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. Milai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about Amazon, Microsoft, why Amazon and Microsoft are suddenly kind of at odds about gadgets, Xbox, and all the other stuff going on this week. See you then. Rock and roll.

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