The Vergecast - Apple announces iPhone 12, MagSafe charger, HomePod mini

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Stories from this week: Apple’s iPhone 12 event: the 7 biggest announcements Apple announces iPhone 12 with OLED screen and 5G speeds iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max announced with larger displays, updated design, and 5G Apple announces iPhone 12 mini, the ‘smallest and lightest 5G phone in the world’ Apple’s new iPhone 12 line-up comes with a ceramic-hardened display Apple’s new iPhones won’t ship with earbuds or wall chargers Apple cuts EarPods and iPhone charger prices by $10 after it stops bundling them Apple’s iPhone 12 can wirelessly charge twice as fast, but only with a MagSafe charger Apple’s revived MagSafe charging standard opens the door for a portless iPhone The iPhone 12 Pro Max could be Apple’s biggest camera jump in years Breaking down Apple’s three new iPhone 12 camera systems Here’s how you’ll know when you’re on Verizon’s fast or slow 5G on an iPhone 12 The iPhone 12’s mysterious groove is a 5G mmWave antenna window — and it’s exclusive to the US Apple’s iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini cost $30 extra for anyone who’s not an AT&T or Verizon customer Apple announces smaller HomePod mini for $99 Apple’s HomePod will soon support Dolby Atmos with the Apple TV 4K Beats announces $50 Beats Flex earbuds with USB-C and 12-hour battery life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Dan Sefer joins me and Deeter to talk about Apple's new iPhones, all four of them, the new home pod. And I promise you, we talk a lot about Dolby Vision cameras. That's coming up on the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog.

That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.

And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for me. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, a flagship podcast with extended dynamic range. It's like a trade pub, you know, like XDR weekly. Yeah.

You come out. More nits than you could possibly imagine. That was like a Control Walt delete intro. Although, if we're going to complain. we'd be picking it, wouldn't we? Oh, stop it. Okay. I'm Neilie Patel.

Deerbone is here. I'm also here. Dan Seaford is here. I am here as well. Hello. So it was iPhone week. It happened to us. It occurred.

Finally. Yeah, it took a little bit longer than usual because of COVID. So that's where I'm going to start because that's where I start every week. 31 weeks since the president said there would be a national testing plan with website, built by four to five million Google engineers, I believe it was. Go to website. the website is small. It's related to verily. There's no national testing plan. And this is true. This is a true thing that happened this week. Nancy Pelosi's, I believe, was her press secretary, chief of staff for press secretary tweeted. Congress is working with the president. The big sticking point is the White House does not understand the need for a comprehensive national testing plan. Okay. I just remember there was supposed to be a website. There was a flow chart and everything. Anyway, it's been 31 weeks since that happened. Just going to keep counting. Just some other quick COVID up to. States, again, remains the biggest story in the world. This week, mostly kind of like a platform

content moderation zone. But Johnson & Johnson paused COVID-19 vaccine trials due to unexpected illnesses. We're tracking that very closely. Mary Beth Gregg's is writing a newsletter called anti-virus every week. You can just check in on the status of it so you don't have to be flooded with it. I find it very useful. And then what I was saying about content moderation, Facebook announced a ban on anti-vaccination ads, because that will be. be a problem when this vaccine hits and whatever form it hits. And YouTube said it will remove videos with COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. So platforms are being a little preemptive here in terms of how they're moderating vaccine-related content because it feels like we're going to get closer

this vaccine over time and actually getting people to comply and take it is important once it is actually here. I mentioned the platform moderation stuff because as we are recording right now, there is a massive platform content moderation controversy unfolding the United States of America, which we are basically not going to talk about at all. I just want to comment on it and say we know it's here. Our policy desk, Addy McKenna Russell, all covering it furiously, but Twitter and Facebook preemptively took down or are limiting the reach of news reports about Hunter Biden. It's a whole thing. Andy wrote a great piece about it. Just 15 things we know and takeaways from the situation. Go read that. And right as we sat down to start recording,

chairman of the FCC EGIPI, he tweeted that the FCC has decided has the authority to interpret Section 230, which is wild because he doesn't. And we don't know why he thinks he does, but that's what he announced. I think that power is vested into the FCC by the power of a giant Reese's coffee cup. Yeah. It's like a sceptor, right? If you hold it, then you're in charge at 2.30. Anyway, that's going on. It's literally happening as we're recording, so I don't have a lot to say about it. Next week, we'll be busy. All these weeks are going to be busy. A major theme of the next few weeks in the lead-up of the election is pressure placed on platforms from both sides to moderate in different ways into the election and then the aftermath of election, which promises to be

chaotic. So Addie, McKenna, Russell, all doing a great job. Read that Addy post 15 things to know about the Hunter Biden scandal. It just lays it out really well. I thought it was really well done. And then McKenna is tracking this FCC 230 thing very closely. So check out the site on that. We need to mention it. It's important. It is huge breaking news as we were recording. But because it's unformed, I just don't have a lot to say about it. Right at the second, and by the time you hear about it tomorrow, everything will have changed anyway. So that's the nature of 2020. Okay. All that said, there's an iPhone. There's four of them. Data Walk, this was a weird event.

Verizon got a branded content segment. At one point, can I just say my favorite moment from this whole event? Like, they've all been infomercials we've talked about this whole time. The moment when Tim Cook was standing in this empty Steve Jobs theater and the screen behind him had a giant 5G logo. Just like broadcasting to no one. That's like, yeah, that's, it's a visual metaphor for the entire 5G situation. Someone tweeted a supercut of every time somebody said 5G during the event, and it is, you will break your brain. Oh, my God.

All right. Tell us for the phones. Well, you want to look. So the phones were second after the HomePod Mini, so we'll come back to that later. But they introduced that. We get to the phones. There are four. There are two pros, the Pro and the Pro Max, iPhone 12.

And then there is a regular iPhone 12, and then there is the iPhone 12. and much to my chagrin, I have a chagrin, and much to it, 5G was the headline feature. Yeah. They all have 5G. They really want you to know that they have 5G. They care deeply about the importance of 5G, and it's going to revolutionize everything and approve that to you. Verizon is going to come on and get its own special segment. They're going to light up their nationwide sub-6 network, so it's not just a millimeter wave anymore.

and then we'll talk about the phones now, which have you heard, did you know that they have 5G? We got all 5Gs. Yep. So we need to talk about the phones, but you just said some like code words there, sub 6 millimeter wave. There's no way to talk about the phones in 5G without unpacking that a little. Can you just do a little bit on that? So sub six is it's the spectrum that gets used to deliver the wireless signal. to you. And the sub-6 is very close to what you're used to with LTE and 3G and whatever.

And it travels far, penetrates buildings and isn't like insanely fast, but it can be faster. Then there's a millimeter wave, which is the thing that up to now Verizon has been using as it's 5G. And it is the, it's just the Vergecast. We're just friends here. Don't tell anybody. It is the biggest scam in the history of phones. It only works on like certain street corners. if you go look at Verizon's 5G map, you just like see dark lines on streets in a few major cities, and that was their 5G network.

And you had to go stand on that street, look and get a line of sight with the tower, and then you would get insane, wicked fast 5G speeds. So the U.S. has, especially with Verizon, they've been putting a lot more effort into millimeter waves, everybody else. Everybody else is like, oh, yeah, phones. They should use, you know, spectrum and radios

that are optimized for, phone things. And so everybody else just made good 5G networks. We are somewhere in the middle or waiting to reallocate spectrum, et cetera. The reason all this matters is Verizon had only had those millimeter wave. We've been waiting for them to launch their nationwide regular 5G network that actually is useful for phones. And they decided to take the opportunity of the launch of the iPhone 12s to do it, which meant that both Tim Cook and Hans Vesterberg, CEO of Verizon, both said 5G is real now. It didn't, like, implying that it didn't matter before when, you know, Android phones has it.

Now that the iPhone has it, now it matters, which is... Or that it didn't matter before when T-Mobile had a gigantic, well, comparatively gigantic, sub-6-5G network. Right. Rockin. They both have their own reasons for wanting to say it wasn't real until now. They also both have reasons for wanting to say it is real now because they want to sell phones. and it's okay.

You will sometimes get slower speeds in 5G than you will on 4G. You will have a hard time finding a millimeter wave signal no matter what network you're on. And it's just not going to be life-changing. All of the hypey promises from the 5G hype industrial complex are not coming true right now. They may be true in two years. And so if you need to buy a new phone and you think you're going to have your phone for more than a couple of years, It makes sense to maybe get a 5G phone, but you shouldn't buy it just because it has 5G. The thing is, even if they become true in two years, and I don't think Apple nailed this either,

nobody has really given the use case for having one gigabit, two gigabit speeds on your phone other than download movies fast and download big games fast. So even if it comes true in two years and millimeter wave is somehow magically everywhere, what do you do with it? You download games fast and you download movies fast. movies fast. Yeah, I don't want to discount. Like, faster is always a compelling upgrade, right? But faster, you got to get a new phone plan, which may or may not be more expensive. Faster, you got to get a new phone. Faster, you're going to do all those things and still not even get it.

It's a little, it's a tougher sell. And I do think the 5G hype industrial complex, I mean, I think Greg Jawsriak, he's, you know, he's the new SVP of marketing at Apple, your place, Phil Schiller. He's a good dude. Like, yeah, I like talking to him a lot. but he had this moment in the keynote where he was like, here's what 5G can do. And he showed like a doctor looking at some medical imaging on a street corner. And he was like not being able to download that file fast enough

is the difference between life or death. And I'm like, I think the stakes are just not that high. Like if that's the situation you're in with your medical professionals, like maybe you have a different set of problems. Right? Like there's no other radiologist available in the world to look at your imaging. file. Like, and that has just been, and I don't mean to put that on Apple or Jaws or anybody, like,

that has just been how the carriers have talked about 5G the whole time, right? It's going to enable telemedicine and remote learning in rural areas and all, like, it will, the joke I keep making is it will feed and clothe your family. And it is just faster wireless networking, which is great. But it, it would be like if the Wi-Fi six people were like, you got to, you got to, you got to at this Wi-Fi 6. Like, can you, can't wait to download stuff faster. And like, they can't support it because everyone already,

anyway, the point of all this is, it was the highlight feature of the iPhone event. The 5G is finally real now is deeply funny for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that 5G in the rest of the world is more widespread and faster than 5G in the United States right now. So we were like on our meeting after the event talking about all the stuff we're to cover and Tom Warren was like you guys keep complaining 5G in the UK is great. I was like crap.

Like that's true. And so, you know, the question I have is most people are going to buy this phone. They're just going to get it. They're going to be inundated with 5G hype and then I can pull it out the box and it's not going to be 5G. The thing is like even if it's great though, like I mean, we talked about millimeter wave. Other parts of the world are not using millimeter wave. But like they're also not like 5G on like sub six or other. frequencies is like Dieter said slightly faster, but we're not, we're not talking about like two, three, four times faster. We're talking like 20% faster. Like that's not like a dramatic increase. Is that worth the cost of the phone? And we'll talk about the costs, I'm sure,

about the iPhone 12 is significantly more expensive than the iPhone 11. Is it worth that cost for 25 megabits faster download speeds? For 25 bag? I would take it for 25 megabits. Let's talk about The phones. We should come back to 5G. I didn't mean to fall down the rabbit hole quite so fast. Well, we needed to start there because that's where Apple started. That was like the central conceit of what they were pitching here. Right.

Yeah. Okay. So, okay, so there's four phones. Yep. Okay. So again, 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max. The interesting thing, though, is you would think, okay, so the 12 and the 12 mini are the same.

One is big, one is small. The 12 is obviously the successor to the iPhone 11. And then the pro and pro max are the same. one is, you know, kind of big and one is very big. But actually, the split between them gets way more complicated because the ProMax has different camera hardware. It has a telephoto lens. So does the Pro, but it also has a larger sensor.

So you really start getting in these weird divisions between the capabilities of these different phones. The main one and the one that I suspect most people will buy, and that I think it's probably, once we get through the review, is going to be the answer for most people, is the standard iPhone 12. And the big changes there, there's 5G, there's now a new design. They all have and shared the new design with flat rails that are on the side, either aluminum or steel, depending on the model.

It looks, people are saying it's designed to look like the iPad Pro. It's a little bit reminiscent of the iPhone 4, but it's just, they're very, very flat. Not exactly sharp edges, but it just, it looks very modern to me. And then you also on the iPhone 12 switch over from an LCD panel to a O-led panel. And, of course, you use face ID to unlock the phone.

There's no fingerprint sensor. The cameras have an upgrade on the 12, but the main thing is Apple is saying that's moved the ball forward on computational photography, and they also have a slightly better aperture on the main sensor, so it should be slightly better in low light. Dan, do you want to do your aperture math? You've done it so loudly in every meeting we've had so far. So ready for some specs. So last year's iPhone 11, it had an F1.8 lens.

This year on the iPhone 12, it's an F1.6 lens. It is about, I think Apple quotes, 27% more light. When you're talking about that in terms of like pictures that you take, that is one third of one stop brighter. So that means that if you had to use one 60th of a second shutter speed with the iPhone 11, you can now use one 80th of a second with the iPhone 12. It's a pretty marginal, not very significant difference in terms of brightness. It may make a difference in some edge cases,

and I think Apple really loves to show off the edge cases that it does make a difference in. But in everyday use, you're really unlikely to see a difference between the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 12 in terms of brightness or image quality due to the lens. Now, the processing might be different, and the processing is different. that can change a story significantly. That's what we know from phone cameras, processing matters all. But with the lenses,

it looks like a lot on paper in real life. It's not that much. Oh, I should mention that there's also, there's two lenses. It's regular and an ultra-wide on the base models, the 12 and the 12 mini. And they did say with the ultra-wide in particular, they've reduced the distortion at the edges,

which is great. Dan, you mentioned edge cases on the camera. All the photos they showed us are extreme edge cases. Yeah. So night mode on the front camera in a bar only lit by neon. Oh, so that's, they went to your house. Yeah, exactly. They're in my basement.

Not just like you're in a brightly lit desert, but you're inside of a tent. Right. And like there's like crazy like a major edge case. You're using portrait mode at night. Like they did not, if you just look at the photos are showing off, they're not showing, you took a photo outside of your kid. Right. And I, my belief here is that the.

improvements on the camera, it's the SmartHTR3, which is what they have now in sort of normal situations. They're very minor, but their ability to capture and create photos in a wider range of situations has been increased. That's just what I got from the photos they were showing us, is that these are all, these are all edge cases or not you're just at your house taking a photo. At the end of the day, I think the, the leap from the iPhone 10S to the iPhone 11 was much more significant than what we're seeing from the iPhone 11 to the iPhone 12 in terms of camera. Now, that may be different with the 12 Macs and its new camera system. Maybe that's giving that big leap.

But in terms of the iPhone 12 and the 12 Pro, that have essentially very similar camera systems to last year, we're not seeing the same kind of generational leap. So the story of smartphone cameras for 2020 is Samsung comes out, says, all right, we are going to be the ones to move it forward this time. We're not going to let Google do it. We're not going to wait for Apple. We're going to be the ones. We're doing it with 108-machypixel sensor.

that does pixel binning. And we're like, cool, but it can't focus. So they had to fix out the laser later. Google and the pixel, you know, we're actually not going to get into the pixel reviews. We've got a whole other episode that's coming out on that Tuesday with that. So stay tuned for that. But it made pretty minor updates to its cameras.

So the big question for the iPhone is, is this more tweaking or does their new computational photography move to the state of the art significantly forward? Or is it basically in the same way that Samsung and Google did? Is it like tweaks around the edges? Is it, you know, year-over-year improvements that feel iterative instead of like, oh, man, this is a reason to go get this phone? Yeah, I mean, we're going to have to see it, right? Like, what did we learn from the 10S?

It took pretty medium pictures. It didn't make a dent, right? Like, whatever. It's like, this is this year's iPhone and it takes worse pictures than the pixel. maybe one person and God bless you, you're probably a Vurchcast listener, decided to switch to a pixel because of it, right? Like,

I think it was James Barron. I think it was our former creative director, James Barron. I think that's the person. And so, you know, like, we have to see the Pro Max with this bigger sensor. We have to see what it's capable of. They're obviously very proud of it. It's just not out yet. And that kind of leads me to, you know, the jump from the 11 to the 12 is very big.

Right? Like, OLED, display, new design, 5G. Smaller size. Smaller size. We should talk about the processor, too, a little bit because it seems like it's, you know, every you're like, oh, my God, the processor seems fast. But they're putting a lot of work into this thing that does a lot more with photo processing.

And so it may be that it may feel faster than the last time. We never really see directly the speed improvements except in certain things like photo processing or editing video or something. But it may be that it will enable. future things to happen, you know, more easily because it's got on the new 5-9mm process than it is so much faster. Yeah, and, you know, I always think of, the iPhone processor claims to me are never about now. They're always about three years from now you didn't upgrade, and your iPhone still feels

pretty fast because it was always so fast to begin with. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's great. But, like, the year-to-year jump, new design, OLED display, like, what was the big knock on the 11 was that it had a fairly low-resolution LCD? and you know I'm the one who's the most display nerd and I'm like yeah it's like unless you're a huge display nerd like this is going to be fine but now it's got the oled at high-res it looks seems to be the spec wise seems to be right on par with the pro yeah I mean it's just a huge jump from the 11 to the 12 but then if you look at the 12 line

the difference between the 12 and the 12 pro is utterly time it's like one more camera yeah and the ability to shoot Dolby vision video at 60 frames for second and at a 30, which kind of hints that the pro has more RAM. And then it's, yeah, there's, the case is different. Like trying to like, to say, I was, I was talking about this with, with Hime yesterday for like an hour because both of us are trying to figure out which one do you choose. I know he was working on some comparison posts and things like that between the 12 and the 12 pro.

And I think one of the biggest, like, things that the 12 pro has going in its favor is that it starts at twice the storage. So once you, like, upgrade the 12 to that 12, to that 12. gig storage, you start getting into like spitting distance of the 12 pro price where it's like, okay, I can justify 100 bucks for that third lens and that stainless steel body and maybe that like ever so slightly brighter screen in extreme sunlight. Like they really like made this really hard to choose in a clear, concise way. If you want more storage, you maybe should just go with the pro.

They didn't make that hard to choose at all. They made it easy to spend 100 extra dollars. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. The other thing about pricing we should actually mention is carriers, especially Verizon and AT&T, are being remarkably aggressive at offering, you know, subsidy plans and deals and tradens and whatever to move these phones. Especially the 12. Yeah, to the point where, like, the initial pricing that got listed was, like, the discounted price you get from these carriers,

not the actual unlocked price, which was like 30 bucks more. Can we just take a just a pause? I want to talk about the phones. this was the most weirdly carrier-driven iPhone event ever. Yeah. Like in an icky way, like in a straight up icky way, Verizon on stage being like, it's finally here. The hype waves are coursing through your body as you speak, right?

And then the price of the phone is that they're showing on screen is a carrier subsidized price. and in all the other conversations we're having, we're hearing about AT&T and Verizon being aggressive with the phone. Like, there's more carrier shenanigans with this iPhone than any other that I can ever think of. The last on the carrier was this much part of the conversation. I think there was two instances when it was. And it was 2011 in February or whatever it was when the iPhone finally lost it.

The exclusivity with AT&T was over and it came to Verizon. Like Verizon was a big. part of that announcement for obvious reasons. And then the original announcement in 2007, when like 18T or singular at the time was like very excited to be the carrier that had the iPhone, like they were very much part of the conversation. But since then, it doesn't matter. But if you remember that original one, 2007, right?

They like, Steve Jobs is like, and this asshole let me put it on his network. And like, Stan Stigman shows up. And he's like, we're so proud of you. And Steve's like, I didn't let them do shit. Right? And then he's like, here's the plan we invented. The iPhone data plan, 30 bucks a month unlimited edge.

That's what you get. It's the only plan available for the iPhone. Get the fuck off my stage. Like, it was still, it was Apple's event. We remember this event a little differently, but okay. It was a glorious moment in unbending the carrier control of America.

It's like mythic status. I never want to watch it again. That's how I remember it, and that's fine. But like the entire, the attitude there was very much like, this is Apple's phone. Thank you, AT&T. But Apple had a custom data plan.

It was unlimited. They were like, we're going to make the plan simple. This time it's more like, even to know how much the phone costs, you have to navigate carrier pricing shenanigans. Yeah. Right? You're only going to get that price if you sign a two-year contract. Like, whatever Verizon thinks unlimited means is part of the iPhone story now.

The thing that is like the most striking about this is, that carrier discounted pricing is what is on Apple's website and what was Apple was showing on stage. Like normally, like, Apple will show the price and then, like, the carriers will say, like, they'll advertise their trade-in deals, they'll advertise their discounts, what have you. This is why it's so hard to know how much Samsung phones cost, by the way. Exactly, yeah. If you go to Samsung.com, this is seriously, if you go to Samsung.com and you look at a fold two, which is a $1,980 phone, it is average.

to you at like $1,100 because it says in fine print after trade-in and then or it might be advertised to you at like $40 a month for 48 months. So like this is like just a very odd thing to see Apple doing Apple who is always like staunchly kind of like spat in the face of the carriers and done away with their shenanigans or whatever. And now they are like literally obfuscating the real price on their own website until you get to the checkout and you're like, oh, I'm not a Verizon or AT&T customer. Or I just want to buy the unlocked thing and now I have to pay more. And yeah, it's only $30.

Sure, you're already spending $800 on the thing. $30 is not a huge difference. But like, that's not the point. The point is you're paying more at the end of it than you were when you started the process. It's weird, by the way, that T-Mobile is not doing this discounting, right? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe John Ledger is just a jerk. No, he's gone.

Well, no, but like a year ago when they were negotiating the deals, maybe John Ledger was just like, look, I'm out of here. I don't care. He blew it off to go do barbecue on Sunday, and they just didn't get the deal done. Yeah. Maybe they'll have some by the time. I mean, by the time you listen to this, the pre-orders will be live and who knows what deals will be live. But yeah, it is odd that it is literally

only AT&T and Verizon, at least at the time of recording this. But again, that's like the oddest part is the fact that, like, Apple's showing the carrier price. It's not showing the real price, and that's so weird. My concern is that this is a symptom of the real reason that the 5G hype industrial complex is

exists and has everybody so excited is that the technology, the technological architecture of the network and the way that it's being launched and run and the way that necessarily might have to be in order to work as 5G seeds a little bit more control to the carriers than they had before at like some very basement fundamental level. And that this moment here isn't a direct symptom necessarily, but it's part of a trend of carriers resting back. more control over what happens with our phones. Yeah, look, if you're Apple and you are facing effectively flat iPhone sales every year and you're trying to, you know, get more services revenue and all this stuff,

and Verizon decides this is the year they're going to sell more Samsung phones. And they just turn that lever by three or four percent. I think Apple has to play ball now because they can't just count on ever-increasing iPhone sales. Now they can count on iMessage lock-in. So maybe that's fine. But that the numbers that these companies play with, hundreds of millions of phones, like two or three percent of marketing budget and like those are those become real numbers really fast. So we'll see.

I don't, I feel like we're just constantly, we've spent 30 minutes just yelling about 5G and carriers. We haven't. We're like we should talk about the phones. We've said it like 10 times. We got to talk about the mini. Everyone, everyone's hype about the mini. They come in blue. The mini is super interesting to me.

How come? It's small and it's good. It doesn't lose anything from the big one, the 12. I think that's very interesting. That doesn't exist in the market. Right. So they've got, because they have a 5-nometer chip, because they have the ability, I think we have to figure out what the battery life is with 5G, but it seems like they have the

ability to save some battery so they can use a smaller battery. OLED screen draws less power, doesn't have LCD backlighting. So they were able to basically make the full phone smaller, necessarily make the battery smaller. Yeah. It's not like there's wasted space inside the 12. And like, ship it finally and finally be like, it's here. And that to me is like great. I have no idea this seems to be the biggest hit in the world or just medium, but all signs point in the biggest hit in the world.

They also, they can do a thing that no Android manufacturer can do, which is they can say, this is the same chip, but we're going to spend a little bit more time tuning it for low power for the smaller phone. And, like, they actually don't need to tell anybody, right? Like, they could just be like, it'll use the small cores a little bit more often. Nobody will feel it because iPhones always feel fast in the first place. So where Google and Samsung need to go to Qualcomm and get the chip that's got the lower number on it so that it can be cheaper and everybody feels bad about it because it's not the flagship chip, Apple can just put its flag chip in. I'm not saying that it is slower. I'm sure it's not. But if they could, they have, they control the complete stack.

They're getting whatever customization are getting on their 5G modems. And that ability makes it possible for them to say this is like the full, you know, full fat iPhone in the smaller size. You know, if you look at Apple's comparison charts and stuff like that, the mini does have less stated battery life. So I think it's something like 20% less if you look at like their video playback because they don't really express battery life in a sensible way. But the point is like, yes, it's a.

smaller phone, you should expect less battery life that only makes sense. It's logical. But is it so much less battery life that actually, like, matters? Like, we learned with the 11s last year. The 11 has exceptional battery life. It's, you know, it's, it will last all day for the vast majority of people, even though Apple still rates it at like whatever X hours a day. The point is, I mean, if you're able to get nearly that with a smaller phone that's more comfortable in your pocket, if you've got, you know, smaller hands, you've just been tired of the surfboard. phones and you're still getting all the other features of the 12. Same cameras, same display, same processor like Dieter mentioned, same build quality, same design,

same colors. Like, that's a significant thing that we have not seen. What we've seen in the past, especially from Apple, is they built the SE, which is technically a smaller phone, but that's built for a price point. That's built to hit $399. It's built to hit that sub-500 crowd. This is a phone that's not built for a price point. It's built for a size.

and it's built for somebody who is looking for a smaller device and doesn't want to compromise on that smaller device. And I think that's pretty interesting and pretty exciting. It's built for a price point. It's built to say that what the iPhone started. It is. The existence of the mini allows a regular iPhone 12 to cost more. Yes, which it does, yes. But it's not so aggressively priced down that it becomes like a budget phone. You're still getting a high mid-range, almost premium phone just in a smaller package.

Yeah, and the 11 is still there if you want the bigger screen. If you look at their pricing chart, it's like every price from $399 to $1,100. It's wild. Dieter just made a video about like Samsung pricing. Apple has hit Samsung pricing. Other little notes about the phone. This was particularly interesting to me. So the front is covered in what they're calling ceramic shield, which is not a coating.

The actual material is, as we have learned, glass ceramic hybrid. It actually has ceramic in the, the strength. of the material, and they're not allowed to call it glass, because glass is not supposed to have crystals in it in this way. So we have to see, but they're very proud of this material, this hybrid glass ceramic material that developed with Corning. The back is still just the same glasses before. Yep. Well, just, but it's a pretty good glass. But so the point of this ceramic glass hybrid material.

See, we got to, it's like we're being baited into calling it ceramic shield. Like, we need to come with our own name. It's for drop durability. It's not necessarily for scratch durability. Scratch durability would probably be the same, but it's a thing to like maybe wait for because we've seen courting increased drop and then decrease scratch and vice versa. It's hard to do both at the same time. In theory, what the ceramic shield allows them to do is not have to reduce scratch resistance in order to improve drop resistance. That's why it's very interesting and why I'm really excited to see it. how it performs. And their claim is it's 4x more resistant to shattering on drops. 4x drop

resistant. And they're saying that's not just because of the new material, but because the edges are flat. So they're like, yeah, when you drop it, like, you're more like, and it's like, it's crazy that you've quantified that. I appreciate you. I was like my only reaction to that is there was like some engineer had to do that math on that reason and like come up with the answer. And I appreciate the effort. We should take a break. We got to talk about MagS if we got to talk about the charger not being in the box, we've got to talk about these cameras. But we got to take a break.

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With Gramerly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. Okay, do you want to start with MagSafe, or do you want to talk about the charger coming out the box? I mean, it's part of the same story, question, Mark? So the charger's not in the box anymore. Neither are headphones, which, I don't know if first cast listeners,

remember it like two years ago now, I interviewed the Sea of Anker, like, right when they were on their meteoric rise. And he was like, eventually there will be no charters in the box. Like, we got to stop making these chargers. That's why we make power banks. And like, he was, remember we talked about GAN a lot? Yeah, like, he's like, this is the future. And I was like, you are a crazy dreamer.

But I love a hustler, right? Like, this is great. I mean, it's good for anchor if there's no charger in the box. That's, that's really what it is. It's, there's no charger in the phone box is a good thing for anchor. Can I address this right now? Because I know we're going to yell at each other about it. I know, right, there's no charger in the box, but there is still a lightning cable in the box.

And everyone's all up in arms because lightning cable is USBC now. Yep. Which is great. It is great because you already have a USBA lightning cable. The chances that there is a USBA lightning cable just floating around you is very high if you buy an iPhone, right? But then like so, okay. If you are switching from Android to an iPhone, the chances that you have a USBC charger is very high. Ah, no.

That's only if you're switching from an extremely recent Android phone. Like Samsung switched to USBC adapters in the box this year. If you have an S-10 or an S-9 and you buy an iPhone this year, your charger from Samsung has a USB A port on it. So if you wanted to get conspiratorial about it, why did they get rid of the... The essential reason for getting rid of the AC adapter in the box is it's a wasteful because you're making a bunch of things that end up in landfill. Everyone has one anyway. And let's get the box smaller and lighter so they can fit more of them on a palette, which saves on all sorts of carbon emissions and so on. Okay.

So smaller and lighter fit on a palette, yes, better for the environment for sure. But the question of does everybody already have an AC adapter is a tougher one because I think fewer people have. USBC AC adapters than people have USBA AC adapters. They've got drawers full of the USBA ones. I personally wish that everything would just move to USBC. I personally think that asking someone to like, you buy an AC adapter and that's like your AC adapter for life, you know, for however long it lasts.

You buy one, you can choose the one you want that's got one or two or three ports on it or whatever. That's great. I wish it meant that the price of the iPhone went down a commensurate amount to the, to the, you know, whatever the cost of the AC adapter is, that was, you know, that was a real, real optimistic of me to think that there would be like a choice between a discount or getting an AC adapter. They made the accessories cheaper. Yeah. Chargers are $10 cheaper. The earpods are $10.

Do you think a pair of earpods honestly cost them money to make? They probably cost more to ship than to make. I'm just saying what we, like a couple hundred thousand people listen to show. I'm at the point where I could probably ship an $8.000. AC adapter to every listener of this show. Like, there's just a room full of them over there. I mean, I would say, Nilai, you're not representative of the typical smartphone buyer. Like, I think we can all agree.

None of us in this show are representative of the smartphone buyer. Like, I've got a drawer behind me as well. The point is... Between you and me, everyone gets two. This is a great service to America, except for the shipping costs and fuel. I'm just saying I... And the boxes and the package. I am the cynical, snarky one, and I actually buy the environmental argument here.

Oh, so do I. I don't buy it for a second. Oh, come on. I don't buy it for a second. I think what it does is it really is great for Apple. It shrinks Apple's carbon footprint because it allows Apple to use the smaller boxes and to ship fewer things and all that stuff. But all it does is it offsets that carbon footprint to the company that you eventually buy the brick and the headphones from. So you're going to need a different cable or you're going to need a different cable or you're going to need.

a different charging brick or head, or you're going to need replacement headphones. You don't need it. It's a lightning cable. Yeah, but you've already got that cable or you're going to buy that brick less often. And you know what? Let's assume that Apple is being a thousand percent cynical and Machiavellian about this. They're only doing it because they can shave that money off the cost of the building materials and they can charge, you know, the same money that costs them less. They're only doing it so they can sell more of their accessories because, ha, ha, ha, They left a USBC cable in there instead of a USBA cable. So some people are going to have to go out and buy the charger from Apple.

Ha, ha, ha. Like, go every single step down the line, take the worst possible interpretation of Apple's decisions here. It's still good because it's still good for the environment. I don't care. But my take is it's not as good for the environment as Apple is claiming because it's just offsetting that carbon cost to someone else. And it offsets that device cost to you. You're not saving money when you buy an iPhone without a charger. You are having to spend money more on top of the iPhone if you want a charger with it.

So like people aren't going to buy a charger with every single phone purchase. That's right. It's the attach rate, right? Yeah. Last year you were guaranteed to manufacture one brick per iPhone. If they bring that number down at all, that's a win, it's not like Anker sales or Belkin sales are going to skyrocket for 5 watt USBC bricks. Don't tell that to the CEO, Onker. He'll feel that.

I think that's what Hunker wants. I mean, maybe. I don't know. Like, we'll see how it plays out. I just think it's, I'm the one who gets mad at Apple when they take things out of the box or remove things from the phone. Yeah. And I'm totally like, I am so happy. I don't have to throw this thing in a drawer and never think about it again.

We haven't gotten to the ultimate point of this, which we'll get to. There's no USBC on the phone itself. That's not the ultimate point. But like, the MagSafe conversation is like the ultimate point. And the ultimate end game of the. this is you're not going to have a lightning port or an USBC port on the phone in a year or two or whatever. Right.

And there won't be any cable in the box. Like, that's the end game here, right? So MagSafe, by the way, what a troll of a name. Yep. Everybody misses this port from their MacBook so much. And you're like in dongle hell watching this event. And Apple's like, we're bringing MagSafe back. And you get this warm flicker of a glow.

And they're like, it's a giant circle for your phone. What's safe about it? The point of MagSafe is that. would detach from your laptop when you tripped on it so the laptop wouldn't go flying. Do you think that your phone is going to attach from this circular magnet when you trip on the cable and it won't go flying? There's nothing safe about it. Yeah, but it's, I'm saying, they're trading on the goodwill we had towards rational ports

and laptops. And instead, it's a circle. So it looks very much like the Apple Watch charger. It's Chi. So the phones can still charge using your old Chi chargers, a lot of it. of confusion about this yesterday. So you can still just charge your phone on any old wireless charging pad you have.

If you buy Apple's mag safe one, it will use magnets to click on the back of the phone, align itself, and charge it 15 watts, which is faster than most, not as fast as a cable, but the magnets are strong enough to hold the thing on the back of the phone. And I swear to God, the point of this

is so that when you get in a bed at night, your phone's almost dead, and you still want to screw around on your phone while plugged in. Yep. You can. That's what it, that's 100% why they made this happen. Only if they made it like a six foot cable though. You but I'm sure that so it's an open standard. They've published the spec. There's not there's like some MFI stuff floating around, but anybody can just, it's magnets.

They can't they, they DRM the magnets as far as I can tell? The question is can they can they MFI made for iPhone DRM the 15 watt charging speed? They definitely MFI Apple Watch chargers. So yeah. So they're there they're definitely there's little NFC tags in the case. and the official stuff. So I'm sure they can software rate limit the charger. But anybody can make a mount. Belkin's already making car mounts. Scotia is already making car.

Like, it's happening. This is the accessory ecosystem for the iPhone. Yep. And it is all happening. So that is built out so that when they take the port off the phone, everyone's already used to click in little circles on the back. Yeah. It is that, by the way, that we've had this whole environmental conversation.

The MagSafe Circle looks. very big. Yeah. Like compared to how tiny a lightning cable is. Like, it's a giant, like, it's like a coaster that you're, like, thrown around. Wireless chargers waste electricity compared to a cable. They're radically less efficient. And so it's not good for the environment to use a wireless charger.

Apple buys Tesla. That's confirmed. You thought the conspiracy theory was taking the port off the phone. I'm saying they're buying Tesla. Everyone gets a Tesla power wall, a solar roof. It's all happening. I think MagSafe is exciting. I, for one, like, I have a wireless car charger amount in my car, and it's the best.

And so being able to just, like, throw your phone on there and take it off is really awesome. There are already all kinds of magnetic cases for that. I keep thinking about my little Osmo gimbal. Yeah. And so the new one has a magnet, but you also, like, fiddle with a clip to get on your phone. If that thing just becomes a MagSafe attachment, that's all. Awesome. Like, there's a million things you are taking your phone in and out of. Yeah. Plus, they're going to sell more pants because people will have to buy special pants with an extra pocket with a protective liner on it to keep it from demagnetizing credit cards.

Like, battery packs that just magnet on the back that solves your iPhone mini problem. Yeah. Like, there's just like a bunch of cool ideas that happen when you have, you can attach things to a phone. Yeah. I guess the question is, how strong are these magnets? Can they hold the weight of a battery pack? can they keep your gimbal mounted while you're, I don't know, doing extreme sports? You're like, whatever gimbal people do. Yeah, you know, what do you do with those stuff? When you're bombing down the snowboard mountain.

Will those magnets mess with the compass? Because that was a problem on the first phone that had magnets in a wireless charger, the Palm Prix. Just pointing that out. I'm just going to say, I'm pretty sure, like, Palm rushing the phone out the door. And they're like, crap, the compass doesn't work on their, like, on their, like, can be. bandboard of problems, like was far below, like, sprint exclusive. Yeah. Hopefully Apple is like, did anybody check the magnets?

And like 5,000 Apple engineers were assigned to that problem. I think it's really neat. I do think that it's obvious that the march to taking the port off the phone is underway. I have very mixed feelings about this. Deeply mixed feelings about this. But for now, it's got a port. I know we were cracking jokes about it. But if they really wanted to do the right thing for the environment and they really wanted to have courage, they would switch from lightning to USBC.

It is the same cable that's used to charge every other consumer electronic that's, you know, modern, other than stuff that's trying to save a penny here to go to micro USB. It's the same cable for the Mac. It's the same cable for the iPad Air. It's better for the environment because it's more efficient than a wireless charger. What do you get out of dropping the lightning port and going portless other than you get to say you were portless? We've seen portless phones that are dumb. I don't... You can't fat...

Unless they've got a wireless charging standard that is radically better than MagSafe, which is only 15 watts. Like, you can't fast charge. You just can't. So I know it's funny. Ha ha. They'll never switch to it. Why are you obsessed with this. But these are just choices Apple decided to make.

And they could have chosen to switch to... to USBC, move the standard forward, improve the USB ecosystem for everybody, and have fewer cables in addition to fewer AC adapters out in the world. It was a mistake. I fully agree with you, Deeter, but I'm going to play the advocate and say, removing the port removes a failure point on the phone, so that's one less thing to break. And breaking ports is a thing that happens when you drop it when it's plug-in or whatever. and it obviously will make construction or manufacturer less costly because there's less component

to be putting it in there. I've said the advocate piece that all said, I fully agree with you, Deter. I'd rather see an USBC port on it. Well, we did an entire segment just on USBC, which is the most Vergecast thing we could do, to be honest, was talking about connector standards for 30 minutes. We've got to take a break. We've got to talk about these cameras. I have so many thoughts about Dolby Vision.

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Claude.a.ai slash birchcast. All right. Nil, how many lights are there? When you play a video that shot with an iPhone 12. So a thing we know, this is a real thing we know. Dieter and I live blog the events. We did.

And Apple reads them. And now because the events are just videos, they're like reading them in real time. Yeah, they've got nothing else to do. They're not like sitting watching it. They're not literally. on stage. So like we're live, we're live logging away. You know, everyone's doing their infomercials now. We're like live blogging. And they get to Dolby Vision camera, which is very

exciting, extremely in my wheelhouse. And it's great that they're doing it. 10,000 questions about how this work. So I start live logging on the questions. And then like a little later, like here's the answers to your question. So here's what I know about this camera so far. We got to get it. We got to use it. We got to see how it works in practice. So before we get too far down the Dolby Vision rabbit hole. Just as a reminder, the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 have two cameras, a wide and an

ultra-wide with slightly better aperture. The iPhone 12 Pro adds a telephoto camera, but otherwise seems like it's pretty much the same, except it can do 4K-60 in Dolby Vision. And then the iPhone 12 Pro Max has a larger sensor

for the main wide camera, which is very interesting. And it also has a LiDAR sensor, which gets used for mapping the room or whatever, but also for certain camera effects that require depth or fast-foil. So they can use for focusing in low light. The little pro has LiDAR, too. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry, the little pro has LiDar too. So they use it for focusing in low light, which everybody does with laser autofocus, but they're also using it for like depth. Yeah, which seems very cool. Yeah. And we've gotten a little taste of what

LiDAR and these camera systems can do with the iPad. Got to test it. I do thing being able to do portrait mode at night. Like I said, it's all edge cases, right? And they're making those better. I think that's great. Yep. So presented with the idea of LiDAR being used to revolutionize camera photography, Neli wants to talk about how HDR standards work. Yes, that is correct. Okay. Great. Here we go.

I mean, we'll see. I think it's going to be an incremental year for the iPhone camera. I really do. Okay. Interesting. We'll see. Maybe a lot, you know, maybe portrait at night is great. I think the LiDAR sensors are there because they are building an AR ecosystem for their eventual glasses, which is very clever. But shipping a LiDar sensor on hundreds of millions of phones, which they're moving towards very smart. But much like 5G, I think LiDAR is there as a, well, eventually someone will figure out what to do with this. But that's how I feel what the 5G mode of. Dolby Vision. So they say it can shoot Dolby Vision. It can shoot HDR. It is right now

very difficult for the average person to make an HDR video. Very easy for the average person to watch an HDR video. You just get your HDTV, you download Netflix or Disney Plus or Apple TV Plus, hit play. The lights come on, the Dolby Vision light comes on or comes on the screen, and you're watching HDR. Why is HDR good? You get higher peak brightness, so you get more luminance, and usually bundled with HDR, not as part of the same standard, but they usually come as a package pair.

You get a wider color gamut, so you get more colors. Right. Those are a good thing. And that increased luminance at the peaks makes things look just a little bit more realistic in a way that no other real TV standard had done since basically HD.

Like, you will actually, it actually looks natural when there's a sun in a dark room or whatever. I would rather have HDR in a wider color gamut than 4K. Yeah. Like there's something about it that I think looks great. Other people feel very much different. Anyway, great. Very easy to watch, very hard to make.

You could make HDR content, Dolby Vision, HDR10, with any number of cameras that already exist. So, like, I have an RX-105. You can set it to shoot in S-Log2, which is like an ungraded raw format, and then you can, like, grade it in it to HR. Because the sensor is capturing all the data. It's really what format are you putting it out into the world in. What format are you creating? So kind of saying, we made a Dolby Vision camera. I keep saying this, is basically like saying we made a JPEG camera.

Right? Like, it's just, what they're talking about is the output format of the camera, of the video. So you're saying that it's easy to watch, and it's technically easy for the hardware of a camera to shoot. But the difficult part is making sure that the data that the hardware of the camera shoots turns into that HDR format. Yeah, I can't think, given how fast these phones are now, the fact that, like, three-year-old Sony effectively, point-in shoots. I know the RX100 isn't really point-in shoot, but you get what I'm saying. Like, several-year-old Sony handheld cameras can capture a video that can be turned into H-DR. I'm confident that last year's iPhone could shoot S-Log2 and export this. It might be slower.

Right. Okay. So the iPhone 12 Pro can shoot H-TR video and export at Dolby Vision at 4K-60, and then the regular 12 can do it at 4K-30. I'm guessing this is like a RAM. limitation. It seems obvious the pro-dap or lame. Okay, here's the real part. Because Dolby Vision is an output format. They're not actually shooting in Dolby Vision. They're shooting in a different HDR format called HLG. Okay. And that is the thing that's actually on your phone until you tell the phone to send it somewhere. And so you can send it to an Apple TV over Airplay. If you have TVOS 14 on your Apple TV, it'll play Dolby Vision, which means there's a conversion happening somewhere in there that we don't know about. And then this is the

crazy one. If Iirdrop you or message, you use iMessages send you a video, the system will say, oh, you've got an iPhone 8 or later or a newer iPad or a Mac running Big Sur, you can handle this. We'll send you a Dolby Vision file. If not, it'll send you a regular file. So a regular file, what is a regular file? A standard 4K, rec 709. standard brightness, standard color space file. So my question here is, why does Apple hate files? I don't know how many files are on the phone. I've been puzzling this out.

When you hit record, it makes a file. That file, necessarily, because that file is so incompatible with other things, like if you play a Dolby Vision file on a non-Dolby Vision TV, it will look crazy. Right. It'll just look nuts. The colors are all out of whack. It'll look washed out and crazy. Yeah, yeah.

So they need to have... Do you remember we had the story earlier this year about people taking the AP test? Yes. Yeah. And Monica Chin wrote it. And the college board's website was not configured to take H-E-I-C photos from iPhones. So kids were, like, bombing out of their AP test. They all had to retake it.

Imagine that, but for every video you take on your iPhone. Yeah. Right. Nothing is compatible with the videos that the iPhone makes as it shoots Sylvie Vision. Yeah. The solution would be to, like, save two files, which seems like a pain in the ass. Doesn't seem like they're doing. They told us it's only like 10 or 15% bigger.

I think they're actually, we'll see. I just think what they're actually doing is they're keeping the HLG. So HLG stands for hybrid log gamma, more acronyms on the Vergecast. HLG was created by NHK, a Japanese broadcaster in the BBC for live events. It's the broadcast standard. So last year, remember we covered Fox doing NFL games in HDR. They were broadcasting in HLG. And at some point, you had to convert it to Dolby Visionary Shirton.

So it's like the Sony calls it instant HDR. You can shoot an HLG even though it's not really made for it, but you can. And the thing that is good about HLG is that if you play back that file in an SDR TV, it looks fine. Okay. So it's a more compatible file or more compatible standard for video. It's kind of like the JPEG of HDR standards. Yeah. So my question is if it's capturing HLG, which we know, that's the file on your phone.

when do they turn it into Dolby Vision? I don't know the answer. Like, and the reason I keep saying it's like a JPEG camera is like, JPEGs don't magically turn into PNGs just because you want to or you say it did. It has to do it sometime. Right. And I don't know when that happens and I'm dying to find out.

And I like, Apple does not want to talk to me about its file system. It does not want to talk to me about on the fly re-rendering a video. Like, right? Like these are just at the DNA level, Apple is not like, well, there's a directory on your iPhone. Like, they just, that's not how they want you to think about it.

It took them to, like, iOS 12 to admit that there was a file system there in the first place. They don't want to do that. So a million questions about Dolby Vision video capture on the iPhone. Like, all related to the wonkiest file format details you can imagine. Yeah. Coupled with having basically to explain what HDR is and why you'd want it in the first place. That said, you can play, like, the iPhone 11 has Adobe Vision compatible screen. And so you go to Netflix or you go play an Adobe Vision video from iTunes.

Yeah. You play Adobe Vision movie from iTunes. The screen will get brighter and it does look good. And the iPhone 11, like, you could see it look good in a way the iPhone 10 did not. That's pretty exciting for, like, the videos you shoot. I am probably the only person who really cares about the file formats, but, I mean, who am I? What is this show? Why are you here?

We just spent 30 minutes yelling by magnets. So we'll see. I mean, to me, it's like one of the most interesting bits and bobs of this phone is they made a big deal out of it. All of them can do it, by the way. The iPhone 12 mini can shoot WVision, the iPhone 12, the, you know, the two pros. So we'll see. I just, where, even if it's on your phone, you can only send it right now to other iPhones and to Max running Big Sur. Maybe to some Apple TVs.

We, you know, like, where is that conversion happening? but you can send it, you can play it on Apple TV. Can you send it to YouTube? Is Instagram going to support Dolby Vision HD? Like, is TikTok? Like, will it make your TikToks look better? I mean, I'll be wild. I mean, someone's got to do it.

I should point out, by the way, Apple's not the first to this in the way that, right, they made a big deal out of it. I'm sure it will cause the ecosystem to move. You can shoot HDR 10 plus on a Samsung Galaxy S10. No one does it. No one. But you can flip that switch and do it. reasons no one does it is because HDR 10 plus is like Samsung's riff on HDR 10. And so like it only works if you are playing it back on a Samsung TV in HDR 10 plus, which maybe I'm sure there's some people who live in that ecosystem. And when you when you turn on that toggle on a Samsung phone, it like warns you, it says may not be compatible with other devices. So like it's and it's also buried in like a lab setting and stuff like it. It's fully capable of it. But you're right. Nobody does it for these compatibility reasons that we've been talking about for the past.

15 minutes. There's like a Reddit forum. It's like Bixby Stans. It's like, we're in the Samsung ecosystem. We've been doing it. Come at me, Bixby Stans. Dogs wearing shoes. All right. That's enough of me ranting the file systems. Dan, it's time for you to rant about the HomePod mini. Yeah, so they did it. They made a less expensive home pod. I mean, like, this is like the thing that, I don't know, when did the whole bond come out? 2017, 2018. And it was $300. And everyone was like, I can buy an Echo Dot for a quarter, like a literal quarter. Why would I buy this? And so, like, now Apple has a smart speaker that's priced at $99.

It's priced head to head with the new Nest audio from Google, the new Echo from Amazon, which are both new things for this fall. So it's like they are right in the mix. It is physically smaller. It's about Apple said 3.3 inches tall. We don't really know the size of the actual speaker inside of it. But the thing itself is about 3.3 inches tall, which is, I don't know, size of a Yankee candle. What is it in regard to the size of a magic eight ball?

because that's my reference for a severe shaped. I think it's a little smaller than a magic eight ball. I want to... Than the standard magic eight ball or the magic eight ball pro max. Ooh, yeah, yeah. You know, there's like the 12-inch magic eight ball. What happens when you shake the HomePod mini? Does Siri...

Siri just yells you. Stop shaking me. So it has it like top display that's not a display that shows little glowy lights or whatever. Yeah, and so, yeah, it's got a lot of design elements from the original home pod. in that it's got that kind of multicolor LED display on top that doesn't display like information, but it just lights up when Siri is listening to you and series speaking.

It's got some volume controls on there. And then it's got that same fabric mesh surrounding it. But instead of being a cylinder shape like the home pod, it is a ball because spheres are so hot right now. So it's a, it's less expensive. It's obviously not going to be as impressive on the audio side of things. as the home pod. It only has one driver in there, and then it's got like two passive radiators,

they call it bass radiers for bass. So it doesn't have all the tweeters. And then it has like a cone underneath that they say is doing some other kind of audio shaping. Yeah. So the speaker faces down and like it projects down, which is actually the same way that the old echoes worked. The old tennis ball tube echoes,

there are speakers fired down onto what looks like a rounded cone and that cone then bounces the sound out and projects it out into the room. So that's the way that this is working. And what that does is it allows 360 degree audio. So if you can put this in the middle of your room, Apple's demos during its event, they were all like putting the thing in the middle of the room and then strategically shooting the camera so you couldn't see the power cord. Like the thing that nobody ever actually does, it puts out 360 audio, which is kind

of interesting because as we saw, and I think as we talked about maybe a week or two ago, Google Nest and Amazon have both shifted. their designs this year to more directional audio because nobody puts smart speakers in the middle of their room. So that said, it does 360 audio. You can also put two of them in the same room and they'll automatically become stereo, which is pretty cool. You can do that with the Nest audio and you can do that with echoes, but it's a setup process. Apple's saying this is like basically they just know they're in the same room and they become stereo. Well, so they have you, they have ultra wideband in some way. Yeah. So and then they also have ultra wide bands. So they can like,

interact with your phone. If you've got an iPhone 11 or newer, they can tell when your phone is nearby. You can throw music or podcasts or whatever from your phone to the speaker. Apple says there's like this kind of like haptic interaction that makes it feel like you're physically transferring the audio to the speaker. We'll have to see how real that is. And then there's a big rumble when you just throw Spotify out. You're just like, get out of here, Spotify. Anybody that comes to your house with an iPhone can like walk up to the speaker and hold their phone next to it and get the song information. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a bunch of little tricks in there. And it's great to see that like Apple's actually using the

ultra wide band radio that's been in the iPhone for a year for something practical other than like a car key for a car you don't own. But there's there's that. And then of course, there's the always listening microphones. It's got Siri in there. So you can control home kit devices. You can ask Siri to play music and things like that. Not Spotify. You can spay. play music from like a handful of services, but not yet, Spotify. Spotify, apparently, would have to build support for it,

which they haven't done yet, yada, and, you know, manage your calendar and things like that. And then I think one of the most interesting things to me, as someone who lives in a home with a family and other people, is that depending on who's speaking to Siri on the HomePod Mini, it will personalize answers to them. So it can tell who it's your voice is

or it's using your proximity of your personal iPhone to customize responses so you can get your own calendar as opposed to like a shared calendar or your own to-do list as opposed to a shared one. So I think that's really interesting. We've seen Amazon and Google try to do that with voice matching, and they both kind of, yeah, not so great. So we'll be interesting to see if Apple's able to pull that off. But the point of this is there's now an accessible smart speaker in the Apple HomeKit ecosystem.

That'll be out there and will actually maybe compete with Amazon and Google on a more footing than it has been in the past. This thing is going to compete on sound quality, right? If you're already got smart speakers, you're going to stay in that ecosystem. They have to convince you to switch. Siri, it all really, I think, comes down to sound quality. I mean, Apple really can't compromise on it. That was the whole point of the first home pod. What interesting thing, though, it doesn't do proper full-on room tuning where it detects the shape of the room.

It just, it does customize music to the acoustic signature of the home pod itself. I'm sorry, I rolled my eyes so hard during this thing. Apple's like, we're doing computational audio. And I was expecting room tuning. Room tuning. I was expecting HomePod stuff, right? The HomePod has like multiple microphones. It measures the excursion of the woofer to get more bass.

If you move it, it'll do it again within, I mean, we did it. But my whole review was like, how does this thing work? Yeah. Beam forming. This thing is like just some speakers. And what they're saying computational audio is this was their diagram was they had a sound wave and there was a line. and the soundway was one color and then it passed through the line

and it got a little bit smaller and turned into a different color. That doesn't just happen by magic, Neal. I mean, you need a computer. I mean, they might have been like, they might as well have been like, yo, it's got megabase. Like, they're just doing like SRS wow.

Google does the same thing with the NEST audio. Google Ness audio does not do room tuning even though the NEST max or the whatever their big speaker is called does do room tuning. The Ness audio does not. What Google says is like they've got an algorithm that's got 2,500

different room placements baked in and it automatically looks at the content you're playing and adjust the audio based on that. And so like it seems like Apple's doing a similar thing to that. And yes, maybe maybe it's a little bit of super extra base on like in terms of like the technical level. But this is a podcast so you can't see it. But I'm genuinely worried for Neely's health for how he's rolling his eyes right now. I've seen nothing but white for the past two minutes. I just, I don't know what it is about tech company. that when they make speakers, they're just like, yeah, well, just tell lies. That'll be fine.

It's crazy. Every one of them is like, it sounds good. And you play it. You're like, it sounds like a small speaker. Like, you can't AI your way out of physics. You just cannot do it. I'll be very interested to compare these. And like, so like at this price point, 100 bucks, you've got the Nest audio.

That's got two drivers in it. It's got a small tweeter and a larger woofer. Yeah. You've got. It's a big bread loaf. It's a big, it's a big chabada bread. Uh, taste good. And then you've got the echo at $99, which we haven't heard yet, but it's got a speaker and then two tweeters as well. So it's multiple drivers. They're competing on multiple drivers at this price point. And Apple only has one. And those passive bass radiators are like kind of nonsense. So like can one speaker sound as good as these others that have multiple units? They are all going to sound bad. Like I don't it's like the fact that they've even convinced us that what we're talking about is audio quality is insane. I disagree. They're all going to sound like three-inch speakers.

The Nest audio sounds good. Like it sounds like the average person listening to the Nest audio is going to be like, yeah, that sounds great. I'm going to drive to your house with like a set of good speakers from like 1972 and you're going to be like, oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't disagree, but those are also enormous and heavy and expensive and they require a receiver and a player and all this other stuff. I know. I understand that convenience trumps all. I'm just saying they have managed to negate the, negotiate us down to being like, this doesn't sound like a potato. And we're like, the AI is working. And it's like, all right.

We'll see. Maybe they're going to blow me away. Maybe. I have hope. I'm an optimist. This is the, this is the Vergecast where I'm optimistic. I'm way more excited about the HomePod mini than I was ever about the original

home pod. So I'm very curious to try it up. I think that is really like the HomePod just from the jump seemed way overpriced. Although they are regularly disresed. Apparently when they get discounted by like a hundred dollars they're selling okay, but Actually that's the other thing the big home pod when I did the review the number one question I got about the home pod at the time of the original review is can I use it my Apple TV and because the home pod does have beam forming microphones and can do all kinds of crazy audio processing It's actually doing it. You will be able some time to pair two home pods with an Apple TV 4k and they will in some way delay liver Dolby Atmos audio issue or 5.1.

To be fair, it is what Amazon's been doing with the Echo Studio and the Fire TV 4K since last year. Like, they have the exact same setup. It's wirelessly talking to the fire TV and it sends an Atmos signal. And if you have two of those, I mean, you could do it with one, but it's obviously better with two of those Echo Studios, you can blast Atmos into the room because it's got beam forming and speakers all over it, just like the HomePod. So, I mean, I haven't heard those.

I mean, the thing with the HomePod is, like, it's very much designed. you're talking directional audio. The HomePot is very much designed. Apple knows you're going to put it near a wall mostly. So like it sends audio out in the front and then it bounces much audio off the wall. Like that's a thing that it wants to do.

And I feel like for a surround application, that might work. You might get that height effect. We'll see how it goes. Both Amazon and Apple have the exact same problem though, which is you pair this stuff with their box and it generates audio from their box. And then when you go to play your game console,

you're like, my TV speakers sound amazing because it won't work with any of that stuff. And I just, you know, like maybe Apple Arcade is going to blow away the PS5 and the Series X. And like this is moot. I just, I don't think so. So like, it's cool.

It's like overdue. They should have always had it. But if you're going to spend the money on two home pods, do not do it for that. Just buy a soundbar. Because you'll get way more use of it. I think Apple knows it. They're not acting like this is a huge deal

that's going to change everything and blow home pods off the shelf, right? It's a little bonus if you have a certain kind of setup. Owners of the home pod have been asking for this, so they're adding it. Like, that's what it feels like. And we'll try it out. I will say when I did the Sino's arc review, I was very skeptical that you could get height-based surround and the sense of sound above and behind you from just bouncing audio from a soundbar.

And it did really well. So long as you're in a rectangular box room. Yeah, you've got to be in the box. If you're not in the box. I mostly spend my time in the basement now. Like, that's where I spend most of my days. So, yeah, it was great for me. That's a lot of Apple stuff.

Do we miss? Is there anything we have not been angry about? This isn't something to be angry about, but Beetz also announced new headphones. They're $50. They're wireless. And, Deter, you could say it. I'm going to let you say it. They switched from lightning to USBC.

Yeah. Do you know why? It's because no one at Apple is paying it. attention to beats. Like, this is their like, are they paying attention? No, they are not. We split USBC in it. I think beats is supposed to be their like, it's their mass market brand now. Ooh. Yeah. I mean, like, beats has always been expensive, though. For ever long knock against beats was that they were expensive, pretty headphones that weren't actually that good. They've changed that. Like, beats headphones are actually quite good now and we recommend them all the time. But they

were still on the expensive side. The fact that these are $50. and they're wireless, and they charge with USBC, which is a great perk. I love these. I bought them already. $50, $12 hours of battery life, charges via USBC, pauses the music when they click together with magnets, what they should have done in the first place, and they finally added that. Working from home, they're just always around your neck. You have to fiddle, put in the headphones in and out, no cable, which is great. And like, when somebody in your house walks by and wants to talk to you, they don't have to, like,

scope out your ear to see if you've got an earbud in there before they can tell if they can hear you. They could just see the wire from the neck bud. Love him. Very excited. They also help take the sting a little bit out of the fact that the iPhone doesn't come with a headphone now because you can buy what appear to be decent wireless ones from Apple for $50. With a completely different charging standard. And you have to be a whole other cable.

Sting got a little weirder. That's a little weird. No, I just spent beats as the mass market brand in that, like, they are clearly positioning AirPods to be their halo, right? There's all the rumors of the actual AirPods headphones. I don't know. I thought hard to see AirPods as not being the mass market brand. They are so immensely popular.

They are like as mainstream as it gets for headphones are AirPods, right? And maybe AirPods Pro are the premium and maybe the over ears that we've been rumored forever and haven't yet come out will be along the pro line and up there. But like I don't know. It's hard to see what they're doing with beats. Like you said, like nobody, it feels like nobody at Apple cares about beat. anymore because the AirPods are the new baby. But like, yeah, I'm telling you, there's USBC on these headphones.

It's just a test. Like they all came into the office yesterday. It's like the rogue Android users that are still working at beats. Yeah, exactly. They're just doing it. Like, they literally, they came in the office yesterday and like, did anybody call? Anyone got an email from 10? Anybody?

No, all right. Three months from now, Tim Cook calls him off. It was like, hey, my cousin told me, we make, what the hell? I don't know. Like, like, Steve Beats. I don't know who runs beats. Steve Beats. That's not Johnny Ivy. No, that's the guy from Amazon, right? No, that's Steve Boom.

Steve Boom is at Amazon. Steve Boom is at Amazon. All right. That's it. A lot of stuff to review coming out. I know we've dissected in minute detail every feature of these phones. These phones look great. They do look great.

I'm excited to review them. I'm excited to play with him. I like the blue. The blue looks great. Wow. Green. The green was great. I love the green last year.

Just an exciting set of announcements. Two phones, the 12 and the 12 Pro are coming first. The mini and the Pro Max are coming later. And I will say this. We are due by the end of the year from Apple, one arm MacBook, which seems like it will be a big event unto itself. So it feels like there's one more Apple event to come this year, which is very exciting. Also, like the actual iPad air with the A14 is supposed to be around at some point.

So just a lot of stuff. Apple will allow it to be released now that the phones are. Now that you can benchmark the A14. It's going to be a busy month of reviews and gadgets. It's good. It'll take our mind off the other chaos in the world. Which is the FCC directly regulating tweets. Oh, hey, if you're wondering why we didn't talk about the pixels at all,

we are going to do the Tuesday episode on the pixel reviews. and our guests are going to be David Ruddock from Android Police and Daniel Bader from Android Central. I'm very excited to talk to like two hardcore Android bloggers that run Android sites about this Android phone. It's going to be super fun. All right, that's it. I want to say we went over. It's just like a tradition that I don't know how long this show is anymore. We went over your head talking about Dolby Vision.

What format is it? So many acronyms. Tell me, just tell me what it's. Okay. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Steve Beats. I await your call. Deeter's at Backline. Dan is at DCC. Like Dieter said, he's hosting Tuesday

show. I'm launching Decoder next month. We're working hard at work on it. I'm very excited. We got some guest book. I'm very excited about that. That's coming. That's it. Rock and roll. Vote.