Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) iPhone Event Debrief With John Voorhees of MacStories

Episode Date: September 14, 2019

We had the big iPhone announcement this week, so to break it down, our good friend at MacStories, John Voorhees is here to dive into… why so much backlash to this event? Was it boring? What did we actually get from Santa Tim? And why we might look back at this as the pivot point where Apple events changed into something new... Sponsors: Tinycapital.com WeWorkRemotely.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the tech meme ride home. I'm Brian McCullough. Of course, we had the big iPhone announcement this week. So to break that all down, our good friend at MacStories, John Voorhees, is here to dive into why so much backlash to this event? Was it boring? What did we actually get from Santa Tim? And why we might actually look back at this event as the pivot point where Apple events changed into something new? Please enjoy. joy. But I think, because I think I can tie a bow on the whole idea of, this, this blowback on like, it's so boring now. Apple should never do another one. Let's start with that. Right. Okay. Actually, if you're ready,

let's consider us recording. Okay. Yes, we are recording. Okay, good. So let's do start with that. First of all, you didn't happen to attend the event, did you? I did not. I was stayed at home and cover it from home. So let's do meta first. And before we even get into the backlash, let's just do meta in the sense of comparing it to past events as a metric. So what was your take more exciting, more competent, more whatever than previous Apple or a previous iPhone launches? I'd say it was on the average side. I mean, it's, you know, every single, Apple's in kind of a TikTok cycle where every couple of years they do something new with design or features or sensors or something that's a little more exciting. And then the next year, it's kind of an off year.

Things don't change much with the hardware or anything, but there are new features, new software or whatnot. And this is more one of those years, those in-between years where, you know, the phones are going to look basically, other than the camera stuff, the phones look basically like they did in past year. So there's not a lot of things to get excited about in terms of design. And a lot of of the software changes are fairly incremental, although there are still some big things in there. Let's do The Tempest and the Teapot. I don't even know that I will have mentioned this on the show. So Charlie Roselle wrote a piece that's like basically, these are so boring now. Apple should never do another one. And there's been a lot of pushback on that, obviously. But then there is sort of, you know, to play devil's advocate.

it. Like, I was in therapy yesterday, and my therapist was like, oh, so what's the, what's the big news on the new iPhones? And I wrote however many hundred words about it, and I kind of couldn't tell him. So, first of all, what do you think of the Tempice and the teapot? Obviously, Apple's never going to not do one, because whatever, even if they're only preaching to the converted, it's still, you know, it's free advertising anyway. Sure, exactly. I mean, it serves a purpose, and it serves a purpose for Apple, which is getting a word out there about their products. I mean, I know one of the things Charlie said in his piece was that he'd like to see it return to a more nerdy kind of presentation more along the lines of WWDC. But I just don't see that working because that's why we have the fall event. People aren't looking to a developer conference to learn about what's coming in six months. The attention spans just aren't that long. And that

really is designed for people who are making the software, even though the keynote even there, has more of a broader appeal. I mean, there really needs to be something separate and a part for Apple to use to just get the word out to the mainstream press, if nothing else, about what's coming. And that's really the purpose of the thing in September. And, you know, I don't know. I don't agree with his piece. I don't feel as though it's entirely preaching to the choir. I mean, there are people there who are in the press. There are people there who are from Apple. And yes, there is a lot of clapping and that sort of thing. I do think that that is, part of that is coming from the Apple people in the crowd because there are a lot of people

invited by Apple. There are a lot of Apple employees. But I don't know. I also don't feel like as someone who's covering that, and I, you know, I wasn't in the room. So I can't really speak to exactly what happened this time around. But I really don't have that big a problem with people getting excited about things. I mean, just because you're covering something and reporting about it doesn't mean you can't be enthusiastic about it, but also be critical and also have, you know, an objectivity about you. You don't have to sit there like a robot and not react. And I know there was a whole thing there as well with some tweets that were circulating post-Charlie's piece. Yeah, and the counterpoint would be, I saw a tweet this morning that was, you know, rolling off the numbers of

the YouTube views already. You know, some of the videos have already got 12 million views and things like that. And also, I mean, listen, if you tuned in to TV at all yesterday, it got mentioned everywhere that, or not yesterday, but on Tuesday, that, you know, it was big news. And so, I guess the argument would be, it's still big news, and yet, boy, nothing really groundbreaking was announced. So why do we, why does it get so much attention? But then, I mean, so what? Again, this is a tempas in a teapot. If people still are excited about it and people are concerned, oh, all these sheeple are turning in for nothing, but who cares? Right. I mean, there's obviously a lot of interest in anything that Apple does and, you know,

other companies as well, Google for that matter. And the thing is, we didn't know going in what they were going to announce. There are a lot of rumors of bigger things that might be coming. A lot of those things didn't pan out. But nobody knows walking into that room, whether it's going to be a big keynote or more of an average one. It turns out this one happened to be average. Yeah, let me, I'm going to do one more devil's advocate, and this is Mark German, who, you know, obviously is not, he's not known for throwing cold water on Apple stuff. But his tweet was, nothing shown today really qualifies as meeting high innovation-only expectations.

Apple delivered the smallest watch update ever, an iPad with a slightly bigger screen and nothing more, and iPhones with cameras equal to or less than many other devices. prices. Apple needs a big 2020. So I read that and I think, well, yeah, we kind of all know that next year is going to be big. If for nothing else, it's going to be 5G, but we're probably expecting a full-on redesign and all sorts of stuff next year. Yeah, I agree. I mean, and I think Mark is basically right, I think. I mean, this all was incremental. I do think there are a lot of nice hardware additions and features that we can get into, but there's going to be more next year, I suspect, especially with the 5G.

All right, let's get into what we actually saw, and I do want to start with the phone. We're kind of doing reverse chronological a little bit. So if your therapist asked you the question, what was new? What would your just, you know, elevator take on the 11 lineup B for a non-clued into this nerd? Yeah, it's interesting because for your average consumer, I think the news, is, as it always is, really, is the camera, that there are going to be, there's going to be the ability to take low-light photos. Apple's playing catch-up with Google and others in that area. There's going to be the ability to do even better HDR-type photography with the

deep fusion feature that's coming later in the year. I mean, I think that that's the kind of thing that people can latch onto and understand when they're looking at getting a new phone. I think, though, the bigger story in a lot of ways, though, is the marketing, positioning and the pricing, because the 11 is now the 11. It's not some variant of the 10. And I think it makes a big difference that this is being called the 11 and that it's effectively the successor to, you know, the 7 and 8 and all the other ones that came before it, as opposed to being in its own category being a 10 or a 10R or whatever it happens to be. I think that makes a big difference. I think dropping the price makes a big difference. because the 10R did fantastic. And this, I think, is going to help a lot both from the messaging and understanding it as part of the family of all the phones that have come before it and not something special for, you know, that's extra fancier for professionals. It's the phone you start with and can aspire to if you want to, if you're turning in an old

phone, say, oh, yeah, I'll get the 11. That's just the succession from what I've already had. So I think that makes a big deal. And the fact that it's cheaper is going to help as well. Yeah, and a lot of the chatter last year was about that, about how people were arguing that Apple had a confused product lineup at this point. So do you think that they, it's seemingly more simple now. There's an 11, a pro and a pro max. So maybe this was necessary too to sort of like reset a little bit.

I think it really is. And I think the pro moniker makes a lot of sense. I understand that if you look at this, if you're a pro, if you're like someone who is into filmmaking or something like that, you're going to look at it and you're going to think, well, there are features that aren't here that I need as a pro. But I don't think that's really how Apple uses pro. Pro is just the fancier camera. It's the one that has all the bells and whistles that you might decide to trade up to if you want to. It's not entirely pro in the sense of getting professional work done.

Although, you know, with these cameras, it's going to be interesting to see what people do with it because I was really impressed. by the demo of the Filmic Pro app that they did during the keynote, where you can take simultaneous video from multiple cameras and switch seamlessly between them. I think that people are going to do a lot of interesting things with that. This is not even a question. This is just sort of me interjecting a little personal thing here. So the phones look identical, basically, except for the fact that you've got the colors and you've got this sort of matte finish. And I know that that seems like a small thing, but again, just to interject a personal thing here, for the first time, I'm not going to pre-order because I want to go to the store first and feel it in my hands and look at

the color and stuff like that, which is the first time that that's happened in a few years for me, you know? So, and it's funny because I did attend the Galaxy Note event last month, and I got to say that my iPhone kind of was feeling a little toy-ish, a little Mattel looking to me. And so... It says something to me that all of a sudden I've got a little bit of gadget lust back with this new version. So just any thoughts on the mat finish, on the colors, all that good stuff? Yeah, I know. I think that makes a lot of sense to be expanding the different options for colors.

And the matte finish also allows Apple to find another way to differentiate a phone that, you know, the pro, most of the insides of the pro are not any different than the 11. It's got certain things about it, the screen, the cameras, and other things that are premium. But being able to convey that is hard when, you know, if you have a phone sitting on a table turned off, you're not going to really see the difference. But if it's got a matte finish, if it's green or one of these other colors that you can't get in the 11, it's going to differentiate it. And I think that that is important when you're trying to sell something that's premium. And when it comes to the 11, I'm not as big a fan of the colors this year as last year. I kind of like the brighter colors last year, but it does make sense. I mean, Apple's learned this from having the watches and having the bands.

It makes sense to use colors to kind of differentiate things and add a certain amount of fashion to the lineup. So one thing that we did not see, and you're obviously way more plugged into the rumor mill than I am, We didn't see the tile-like tracking tags that the rumors were swirling about. But those U-1 chips, they're all in all those phones. So what are you hearing about that? I think we're going to see it, and I think we're going to see it relatively soon. I think a lot of things – what was interesting to me about this keynote is it seemed just a little off to me. It seemed very strange to end with retail.

And I felt like maybe things got moved around a little bit. maybe something got pulled from some segment and then they tacked on retail to kind of get to the time limit they wanted or something. Because it just felt a little disjointed. And I expect that as a result, we will see an October event that we'll see things like the tile. And there will see probably things about the Mac, the Mac Pro and the rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro. So there's definitely room for another event. I think the fact that we've got a U-1 chip, that is not going to be just for air-dropping things to your friends. I mean, yes, it'll make it more accurate, more fast, but there's more to that story,

and I think the story is going to be the tile eventually. 3D touch, seemingly gone for good, I guess? I think so. I mean, I've been a fan of 3D touch, but I kind of get why they took it out. I mean, it seemed as though there was a technical hurdle to getting it on the iPads, and having features like that, physical features that don't translate well from one touch, device to another is difficult. And so I think the solution that come up with with the long pressing is a good substitute for that and it'll make it easier for people to move from a tablet to a phone

that way. And again, this is a personal one, but the 18 watt chargers, thank God, finally. I know, finally. You use a 5 watt charger and you'll be charging your phone all day. You won't be able to use it. Yeah, I've moved on to using iPad chargers and things with my phone for a long time now. Yeah, me too. Right. It's nice that there's nice that there's. finally putting that in the box because I always felt that especially the last few years it looked a little cheap. Apple Watch Series 5, speaking of finally, I guess the obvious big news there is just the watch faces on all the time story.

Right. And, you know, in some respects, I suppose it sounds a little silly, but I think it's one of those quality of life changes to the watch that will make it a lot more useful when you're just your arms at your side or sitting on a desk and you can. kind of glance and see what the time is or the weather or something without having to raise your arm. Can I help? Something that occurred to me that has never been an issue before. Because all of this whole time, it's, it's just been a black square on your arm most of the time.

So then when I saw the pictures and I saw like, oh, so you can have a pretty watch face now. And so then I'm like, well, that's what I would want to present. Like I'd want, if people are looking at my arm, I'd want it to have like a nice, you know, analog watch face. But then I love the, like I would, if I'm not going to upgrade, but if I were getting one, it would be a tough thing for me to set up the watch face to look pretty like I want to present, but then also, you know, I basically, my watch face is utilitarian for giving me data. So for the first time, I would be thinking of, I guess, fashion and style. Yeah, I think that's right. It did occur to me too. It's like, well, now it's just not, it's not just me

holding this in front of my face, you can see it. Other people are going to be seeing it out all throughout the day. So I think that that is going to be a factor now. And I still think it's too bad that we don't have third-party watch faces, especially now that these kind of considerations are going to be real. What was the news with the iPad? I can't even remember. There was almost none.

I mean, it's the baseline iPad with a slightly bigger screen. So it's going from 9.7 inches to 10.2. And it also has a smart connector so you can connect a keyboard to it. And that's everything else is the same. It's still the A10 processor and everything else pretty much works the same. It's what's interesting to me, I guess, is it's still $329. The keyboard is $159. So if you want a keyboard with this base model, you're going to be spending roughly 40% of the price on a keyboard,

which seems like an awful lot to me. It's an easier purchase if you're looking at something like an iPad, Pro, which might cost over $1,000, but with this lower-end model, that's a lot to pay. It also brings the screen awfully close to the iPad Air, which is 10.5 inches. But with the air, you do get better internals, better chip, thinner device, laminated screen, those kind of things. So it is still a higher-end iPad. It's just that it might be a little bit hard to differentiate side-by-side in the store without, you know, really walking someone through the paces and understanding what the differences are.

Well, let's end with the services going in the reverse of the actual event. The, and here we can get back into this whole idea that Apple is getting really aggressive with, with lowering prices and low prices and things like that. The Apple Arcade is completely reasonable pricing to me. And, you know, everyone with Disney Plus, everyone's talking about, well, it's a no-brainer for people with kids. But I'm going to tell you what, as someone with a five-year-old and a three-year-old, it's a no-brainer for me, for them, for these sorts of iPad games, which they tend to prefer, even though even the three-year-old can do Spider-Man on the PS4, but they prefer the games on their iPads.

Sure. So, you know, five bucks a month, complete no-brainer for me. Yeah, I think it is going to be for a lot of people, especially since it's a curated selection of games. So I think like you as a parent won't have to worry nearly as much about what they're getting into. It's been called and created. It's not only, you know, is it violent games or things like that? I mean, you couldn't intuit this even if you don't have kids. The amount of times that they come to you trying to buy in-game stuff, you know.

So in theory, if it's all subscription and that's not there, I mean, that's a huge headache taken out of the equation for me. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I'm optimistic about Arcade. I've never felt like Apple has really understood gaming, although there have been some signs that that's turning around. I mean, I think the fact that they are now going to be supporting game controllers from Microsoft and Sony is a good sign. I know that the editorial team and the App Store has a lot of people who really understand gaming and are doing a great job. I was a little concerned after seeing the keynote because I don't think, I think Apple did itself a disservice by doing those devsoriness. most at the beginning because it did not give people a sense of the depth and breadth of what's

going to be offered because I've been kind of combing through announcements from game studios and we've got over 60 games now that have been announced either by Apple or by third-party game studios and there are some really good games in there there's some that you know maybe not so great too but there's a lot there and what they you know just earlier this week Apple Arcade put out a YouTube video that did a much better job because it was a montage of gameplay. It showed off like, I don't know, five or six different games with gameplay and then it also showed a bunch of screenshots from other games. So it gave me a much better sense of what was coming as a consumer than they were able to convey at the keynote. Yeah, Apple, if you're listening,

this is my Charlie Wurzel rant. I'm tired of seeing the same stupid guy with a sword game demo. Because to be honest with you, I know that every year it's like, well, but look at the shading. It's so much improved and stuff like that. It looks, the game that they demoed, the guy with the sword, looks identical to the same guy with a sword game that was demoed eight years ago. You know, like, they always look impressive, but it's a doll. Right. And really, no one cares about the shaders, really, except for the developers.

I mean, I guess maybe more hardcore gamers do, too. But for the most part, they should be focusing on what they're offering and not what people can do if they're building games. And that is where I think the disconnect was at the keynote. So Apple TV Plus, we finally got the word on the pricing. And, you know, it's insanely good pricing as well, especially if you get it for free for a year, if you buy a new device. But at the same time, they basically needed to do that, right? The only way that that would have been a headline would have been had they tried. try to go for $9.99 a month for, what is it, nine shows? And everyone would have been like,

you crazy, Apple. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they had to come in something lower than Disney Plus, and they did. So that didn't become a headline. And I think it's smart to tie it to the hardware, because after all, Apple's been doing that for decades. The software is what sells the hardware. That's been kind of their MO for years and years and years. And now everybody who, during the holiday season is getting a new iPhone or Apple Watch is going to have a year free of this. So the $5 doesn't even really come into play for another 12 months for an awful lot of the people who will be using it. So I think that's a good move.

And I think it also shows that Apple is in this for the long haul and understands that because they don't have the deep catalog that Disney has or Netflix or whomever, that they're going to have to spend some time to really convince people that it's worth staying on Apple on TV Plus because, you know, I do wonder if two months into TV Plus, am I going to be done? Am I going to have watched all the shows that I want to see? And then where do we go from there? I mean, they're going to have to keep coming out with new shows on a regular basis to really keep people engaged.

To wrap it up and bring it back to where we started, another reason that I think that maybe this event disappointed people is that it occurs to me that the eye-firm. phone events are going to evolve. Like, it's not just, we're used to, okay, there's this new paradigm that, uh, with a new phone that Apple has introduced, like, you know, the, the event that Siri got introduced and things like that. Right. And it's not going to be that anymore because it can't be.

Like, you don't, you don't check out every new car model of car announcement. You, when you need a new car, you look around at what's out there at that point, right? Um, so in a way Apple's playing into that. In a way, it's playing into them, they're being a services company. So it occurred to me that, you know, one of these events, they're going to introduce that Apple Prime or whatever they're going to call it. You know, one subscription for everything. Or, you know, events going forward, it will be, well, here's the new slate of shows coming up. So that the reason it feels odd right now is because, yes, it's not just this new G-WIS feature that has never appeared on a phone before.

Because those don't exist, at least they're few and far between going forward. But what the events are going to evolve into, they're just not there yet. And so they are going to be completely different things that aren't just going to be, oh, yeah. In fact, the phones, like the updates to the phones might become sort of background noise. Like, yeah, faster chip, better battery light, blah, blah, blah. Moving on to we've got this new show from the Game of Thrones guys or whatever, you know. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

I mean, the iPhone at this point is it's a mature product. And so we're not going to see the whizbang new stuff in the same way. that we have maybe five or six years ago. And Apple's evolving into a services company. They're offering more and different types of products. And we're going to see the iPhone, I think, play a smaller role in some of these things. I mean, we did yesterday. Not yesterday.

We did earlier this week because, you know, it didn't lead off the event. There was a whole lot of other stuff that came first. Services was right up front and then the watch and then the iPad for that matter. I mean, it's a different world, and I think we will see this evolve further. So what's your betting line? We are going to see at least some small little event next month? I do think we will. Especially, I was going to say, especially because of the way the dates have been so scrambled around.

Apple's had a real hard time getting the OS's out the door this year. And Catalina, the Mac OS isn't going to be until sometime in October. iOS 13.1 will be at the end of September. I do think that we'll see something in October that will bring a lot of these features that have gotten kicked into a feature date in the fall that hasn't actually even been specified and also to show off some Mac hardware and that sort of thing. So what would be the headline announces that you'd be looking for? I'd be looking for the MacBook Pro 16 inch, an update on the Mac Pro and when that's actually going to ship because it's supposed to ship this year. and I think we'll also get a little bit more of a preview on TV Plus at that point because it'll be, I'm expecting we'll see an event probably in the last couple of weeks of October and at that point we'll just be days away from TV Plus debuting on November 1st. Thank you, John.

You're welcome. Great to be here.