The Vergecast - Apple’s iPhone 13 event: the biggest announcements

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Alex Cranz discuss all the products announced at Apple's hardware event this week: iPhones, iPads, the Apple Watch, and more. Keep listening for some gadget news, including Nintendo finally adding Bluetooth audio to the Switch. Further reading: ​​Apple’s iPhone 13 event: the 8 biggest announcements The iPhone 13 may finally get features Android has had for years The iPhone 13 event was a case study in Tim Cook-era product refinement iPhone 13 and 13 Mini announced with redesigned camera array and smaller notch iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max announced with high refresh rate 120Hz displays The iPhone 13 is a pitch-perfect iPhone 12S Goodbye and good riddance to Apple’s 64GB iPhones Apple announces new entry-level iPad with A13 Bionic chip The iPhone 13’s new camera tricks include cinematic video and macro photography Apple says it every year, but the iPhone 13 cameras do seem much improved Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro is the first iPhone with 1TB of storage Apple drops the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone XR from its lineup Apple’s updated leather MagSafe wallet supports Find My location tracking How the iPhone 13, Mini, Pro and Max compare to Android rivals — and vs. iPhone 12 All-new iPad Mini announced with 5G, USB-C, and larger 8.3-inch display Apple is releasing iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 on September 20th Apple announces new entry-level iPad with A13 Bionic chip The Apple Watch Series 7 has a brand-new look Apple is releasing watchOS 8 on September 20th Should you wait for the Apple Watch Series 7? Apple Fitness Plus is getting Group Workouts and Pilates The Apple rumors were wrong Where are Apple’s new Macs? Here’s what we’re still expecting Apple to announce this year Nintendo finally adds Bluetooth audio to the Switch in new software update Google’s rumored Pixel 6 Tensor processor sounds extremely weird Razer made gamer thimbles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Verchast, Alex Cranz joins the show. We go through the entire Apple event. New iPhones, new iPhones, pro carrier discounts, the new iPad Mini, the new Apple Watch, some services updates, and a little bit of secret Nintendo news. It's all coming up on the Verchcast 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.

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And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and 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 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, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Microns. Micron computer, that is, legendary DRAM vendor of the 90s. God, this is the worst branded content you've ever heard

in your life. I'm your friend Nilai. Deer Bone is here. I'm your favorite computer brand from the mid-90s, apparently. So, Compact? Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. All right. What was the cow one? Gateway. Gateway, yeah, yeah, I'm Gateway. My, uh, my uncle had an Apple two clone called a legend. Hmm. Which is just a great name for it because now it is. The prophecy. Alex Kranz is here. I'm the Tandy. Ooh. Go on way back. The Radio Shack store brand. Heck yeah. Can I just tell you that me and my friends, we all agreed to get different video game consoles so that we have access to all of them. And we did the same thing with computers. So I got the Apple 2, my friend Les got to Commodore 64, and my friend Chris got stuck with the Tandy. I just felt

super bad for him. Tandy was based in my hometown. So I had to go to my second grade birthday party was at the Tandy Ice Skating Rink. If you are under 40, we apologize. None of you know what we're talking about. It was great. I just want to correct. to myself. It wasn't the legend. It was the Laser 128. That's even better. It's a much better name for it. Sounds a little like a printer. Yeah. It would also be a great name for a band. I'm just putting it out there. If you are starting a band, you're listening to this and you've been thinking about starting a band,

welcome to the right podcast for you. Are you a 40-year-old starting a band? We're here for you. No, the teens love us. The teens. Sorry, teens. Laser 128. Someone started a band called Laser 128. Anyway, it's Apple Event Week. Apple had an event. did. Another infomercial event. We were all sad. They're sad. I loved the drone shots. There were a lot of drone shots again. There was a weird song. There was a super weird song at the beginning about California, how great it is. And at the end. Yeah. You get to the place where they were like, you know, they've had a lot of virtual events now. The pandemics have gone on for a long time.

They had the list of ideas for things that could do at a virtual event. You know, and they like crossed them all off. And finally they're like, all right, Eric, you get to do this. band thing. It's like a bunch of Apple engineers wrote a song about California. So it was very strange. It was subdued in its way. For being an hour and a half long infomercial, it was subdued because it was not bombastic at all in the way that some of their stuff has been super bombastic.

This was like this was an S event. Here's a bunch of stuff that we've got. They didn't claim to have reinvented interaction models with the digital crown, for example. Right. You two did not make an appearance. Instead of you two, they had a band that they just, like, found. Like, the Apple Music Slush File was like... Are they even on Apple Music?

Like, where do I get this band? I'm surprised that everybody hasn't had to listen to this on logging into Apple Music. But they announced the stuff we expect them to announce in September. A new iPhone, both regular and pro, both Mini and Macs. A new iPad Mini, which is very exciting. A new watch, which is very interesting. because the rumors about it were very wrong and some tiny service updates. We should start with the phone, obviously, but we should also, I mentioned that some of the

rumors were wrong, a lot of the rumors were wrong, I would say. Yeah. Good amount of rumors. The one that hurts me the most is there's no always on lock screen, which is, I mean, I wrote a whole damn article saying, if we're finally getting this thing for years and years of waiting, there's no reason they wouldn't have done it. And then they still don't feel the need to do it. Yeah, I don't know what they're.

what they're doing. I guess that, you know, they're always on lock screen is your watch. Yeah. That's kind of what they're getting at, right? Like, you shouldn't be looking at your phone because we've strapped a phone to your wrist. I think that's just the argument they would make. So that wasn't there. The Apple Watch Series 7, there's all these rumors of flat sides. It does not have flat sides. Larger screen that we'll get to it. And then there was this delightful rumor, which I loved, that started way out literally in space that the iPhone would have satellite connectivity. It got walked back to it might support some bands that might through repeater stations potentially connect to satellites only in an emergency. Yeah.

Which is like a pretty over the past few weeks. Like the rumor walk back was like great. You know, like it started out with it will directly connect to satellites, carriers be damned. And it ended up at like, if you're dying and you're within range of a relay station, it might help you maybe. In four years. And then it ended with not being announced at all. the bands aren't in the phone. So that rumor also wrong.

I just want to put that in context. We've gotten pretty used to the rumors being correct. When Dieter called it an S event, actually we ended up with much more an S event. No AirPods either was the other rumor that didn't happen. I suppose there's still time. Yeah, we're anticipating another event. There's Macs and stuff. We'll talk about what we're anticipating for the next event.

Let's start with this one. Deider, walk us through the phones. So we call it the S phones. What they've done for the iPhone 13, the Mini and the Roeux, regular is they put a way bigger camera sensor in there so big that they had to like rearrange the lenses and actually make the bump bigger so your cases might not work. And they also put in a larger battery and they also made the battery somehow more power efficient, possibly through this new A15 processor, which there was some rumbling that they

didn't announce their usual, like the processor is TK faster than last year in terms of CPU speeds. They did some GPU stuff, but they didn't really pound their fist. and say this thing is way faster. It seems like instead what they did is they made it more power efficient to increase battery life. But they also put in a bigger battery.

But they also put in a bigger battery. So just so you've got the rundown, in terms of Apple's test, which is a mixed media, Wi-Fi, 5G, browser rev, do all the stuff. It's unclear exactly what their test is, but it's doing the stuff.

Well, no, so what they've told me their test is in the past, which appears to still be the case, is Apple has, you know, it's Apple. you still hit agree, you still send them telematics from your phone. Right. So they have data about how people use their phones.

Right. Like a huge data set about how people use their phones because you've hit agree and you've agreed to send it. What happens on your phone gets aggregated and sent to Apple. And they take that data set and they construct an average use model and then they model it against the battery capacity and the power efficiency of the processor. So they're not running battery tests in the way that we would. run a battery test. This is my understanding. And I've, okay. I've asked them about it

a thousand times. I know Joanna Stern has asked him about it a thousand times. Joanne and I mostly text about bubble guns and battery testing. What's the battery life on a bubble gun these days? Bad. The lithium ion battery and our latest bubble gun is very bad. They don't do any

modeling of that battery from what we can tell. But yeah, so Apple has this huge data set of phone usage, like telematics from your phone. Then they model it against obviously what they know, the power efficiency and battery capacity of like a 12 is, they know how long those batteries are lasting. Then they got a new chip. They've got a new battery capacity. They've got a new power envelope situation. And they model it. But they're not running tests the way that we would want

to run a test, which is like, you know, one of those like big fake thumbs swiping on a screen and clicking on stuff. That's the dream right there. Or even collecting telematics from people beta testing the phones internally. Like theoretically, they could be like, oh, well, from the, you know, however many hundreds of people allowed to use the phones, you know, in whatever context they're allowed to use a phone, they could figure it out. I don't know. And their argument for this, by the way, is you have to buy it. But they're like, look, we can't predict what your cell signal is going to be

or how much power your radios and antennas are going to use. Or if you're on Wi-Fi all that. Like, we could run that test, but we would run it in like a pretty good radio environment. Yeah. So it's better for us to this modeling because it's more reflective of this average from this huge iPhone dataset. That means we can basically never verify their claims. Their claims are that the regular plain-all iPhone 13 will get two and a half hours longer,

and that the iPhone 13 Mini will get one and a half hours more, which will take the mini from you need to watch the battery life like a goddamn hawk all day to you need to watch the battery life like a, I don't know, a sparrow, a less aggressive bird. A bird with crappier vision. Yeah, I mean, those are all good claims. I think that the processor stuff is interesting. Like, they did a lot of meaningless numbers.

It's 50% faster than the nearest smartphone competitor. Yeah, sure. What is that? Is it the Samsung A-series, the most popular smartphone on the market? I think they may have said high-end. I don't know. It's probably the 888. Maybe it's the one before.

Who knows? My point is that if they don't say, it doesn't matter. I would agree. Yeah. That feels right. Speaking of the A15 Bionic, there is one interesting thing. The regular iPhone 13s get four core CPUs, whereas the pros get a five-core CPU. Yeah, they're doing the spinning constantly now with these chips, right?

Which is fine. I don't know. I have a hard time thinking that the extra GPU is doing a ton of work. But fundamentally, if you were to stop somebody on the street and say, hey, there's a new iPhone, what do you want it to do? What would they tell you? I want one more core. Alex walks very specific streets. Alex is in like the back alleys of Shenzhen.

She's like, what do you want? She lives right next to Nvidia. It's very weird. Crazy, man. They bought more battery life and better cameras. That's it. That's what they did. And maybe more drop-proof?

Yeah, okay, that's fair. But I think we've all given up on that one, probably. Yeah, I think Apple knows, I feel like we had this conversation with the camera bump. The camera bump has gotten bigger yet again. soon the camera bump will be the back of the phone. Let's just get there. Like, why are we pretending that Pixel 6 is like cruising in that direction? Yeah.

Any number of Chinese phones are cruising that direction. All these companies know that people just put cases on their phone. The camera bump is like irrelevant to that problem. Like very few people are not immediately buying a case for these phones. Right. So I think the drop proof is like connected to that as much as anything. They know that you're going to put a case on the phone. That said, I, you know, I've got a 12th.

Chrome Max. I've never once thought it was slow. Yeah. My old iPad Pro, which has a processor two generations old now, still extremely fast. Yeah. Like, I think the processor element to this is like, the phones last a long time and Apple should be committed for it. And every year we're like, yep, they've got a lot of headroom for it to last a long time. What you're down to with these in particular is like the cameras are better in ways that we're going to have to test and the battery life is longer. And the Pro Max has a fancier screen. So we've got that. through the regular 13s, we should go through the pros real quick, and then we can really start

digging in. So the pro and the pro max both get high refresh rate screens. We assume it's LTP. They can go from 10 hertz to 120 hertz, and there's lots of details about how that works inside apps. They also get a whole new camera system, but they share the camera system this time. The Pro Max doesn't get a better camera this time, which is great. We can get into all the details of all the different specs, but sort of the long and the short of it is they've all been improved, they all take in more light. And when I say they all, like they actually like put a lot more effort into the ultra wide and critically the telephoto lens seems to be much improved, which I'm really excited about. Same deal. More battery life for both of these phones as well. And across the pro

phones and the regular phones, it does not appear they've made any changes to the selfie camera other than making the notch smaller, which. I mean, it's a step. It's like a, it's like a scoge. It's like very important to to clarify what smaller means here. Okay. It's smaller. Yeah. It's not thinner. Right.

You're not getting like what is important about the notch is it eats into the vertical real estate of the screen. Right. And it looks doofy. I don't even see it anymore. But yes, what is important about the notch is like from top to bottom, that whole area of the notch is like kind of useless, right? You get the clock and you get maybe some status indicators. What most people think. intuitively, the notch got smaller, I'm sure you believe it got thinner and you get vertical

real estate back. That is not, it's still the same height. Yep. You get more horizontal real estate and guess what they do with it. Is it nothing? It seems to be nothing. It's nothing. That's where the satellite connectivity is going to go.

Yeah, there's just a big empty part of the screen waiting for a satellite indicator to show up. But yeah, just to be clear, it's less. horizontal. It's less wide. Yeah. Okay. I want to just round out like the new new stuff. Both the regular 13s and the pros get two new camera tricks. There are profiles

in photos and there is a new cinematic mode in video. And that kind of I mean there's like, other than that like they're slightly thicker. The screens get slightly brighter in both all four of the phones. But that's kind of it.

batteries, cameras, and some stuff around the edges, and determining whether this is, well, they made the phones faster and the cameras better, or, oh, man, they made the battery better and they made the cameras better. Like, it's hard to know. Apple is, despite us saying that this was not a bombastic event, talking very big game about these cameras. Yes. They keep saying it's the biggest improvement to the iPhone camera ever, which is, for Apple alone,

is a heady claim. like Apple has made massive jumps in camera performance before the iPhone 4 for example massive jump over the 3GS like so much so that that was when people started saying the iPhone can replace a camera right nobody said that about the iPhone 3GS you were like it continues to have a camera the iPhone 4 people like really started saying it when they added 4k video people let's a huge jump I would say the jump from the iPhone 10S to the iPhone 11. Yeah. I thought the iPhone 10S had a bad camera. I thought the iPhone 11 had a great camera. Like, that's a huge jump. So the iPhone 12 has a spectacular camera.

So if you're going to tell me it's the biggest jump you've ever made, like, oh, boy, you've got a, the camera has to perform at an, like, almost impossible level to meet that claim compared to Apple's own claims. Which means I'm very excited to, like, play with this camera. It's got Lytro now or whatever, right? It's got. It doesn't have Lyotro, but. So, Lytra, if you're not the deepest possible verge nerd.

I like that Alex is like new and she's like already in it with like the deep verge nerd stuff or tech nerd stuff. But Lyra was a startup. They made a camera that had like 400 lenses on the back. They had a custom file format. And then you would take a picture and then you could refocus anywhere you wanted in real time on a picture. After capture. Cinematic video.

We still have to test it and see it works. But it appears like it is used. using multiple cameras in its portrait mode for video. Yep. Right. And so the other cameras, presumably the LiDAR sensor on the pro phones, is creating a depth map. So when you're capturing video, it's doing some AI stuff. It can see your face or another face.

You turn away from the camera. It'll focus on the other face. It'll do like a rack focus. Apple made a really cute Knives Out clone video. It's like very cute. It's just like endless rack focuses of people looking, like, remember dramatic chipmunk? It's that video over and over again. And then you can obviously tap to focus and you get blur.

You don't get the, from what I can tell anyway, you don't get the Boca selector that you do in portrait mode. It's just like focusing and refocusing. But speaking of rumors that maybe turned out wrong, I'm saying that portrait mode and video counts as a right because I think that's what this is. Yeah, that's what it appears to me. And then when you export the video, this is the truly important part. When you export the video, you can refocus it in Apple's apps and none of it. others. So clips will be able to read,

Deeter's favorite clips. Yes. Yes. We'll be able to refocus a video. I movie will be able to do it. Final Cut is getting an update all those apps on the Mac 2. I asked, did you talk to Adobe or the LumaFusion folks? And they're like, no.

Hmm. So like, and then they kept saying, well, you know, people kept asking on API. There's an interesting way to think about it. Because on the phone, it makes sense. Like your app is running the thing. phone, you have access to the system. On a Mac, that's like not the right way to think about it. On a Mac, you just get a file. And a file is just like a MP4 with a depth map. Yeah, but isn't that what you have on the phone anyway? Neil? I mean, what is a file?

So on the iPhone, a file is an abstract concept that Apple would prefer to go away entirely. It's a stream of fits. And, you know, where does one stream end and another begin? Where does a drop of water go when it falls in the ocean, Nilai? Well, it goes into a proprietary application sandbox. which Apple controls entirely. On a Mac, it's just another video file. It just has this metadata. So I don't think there's any reason that other apps, especially in the Mac,

couldn't figure out how to read this file. I promise you that on the iPhone, Apple will find ways to control it. So it's just a very interesting moment for Apple. Yep. Where, like, the key feature of the iPhone is very, they're not even whispering about other people being able to do this. Whereas, like, last year when they added HDR,

people figured it out. They needed that workflow to exist because the videos themselves are HTR. Whereas here they're like, nope, this is art trick. Yeah. And we also have to see how it works. Like, Portrait mode isn't perfect. This thing is computationally blurring out the background.

Yeah. Portrait mode needs a lot of light. We'll see. So many questions, but it does look cool. Yeah. And that, again, applies across the board for all the phones. Oh, I forgot. There is one thing the pros get,

which the regulars don't get, which is a macro mode, because we actually talk about, like, the ancillary sensors here. The ultra-wide angle lens on the pros has focus pixels now, which means that it can do autofocus, which means that it is able to focus

when you are up to, or down to two centimeters away, and so you should be able to do macro photography with the ultra-wide. Doing macro with an ultra-wide is not a new trick, but I would say that it is a better way to think about doing macro on your phone, than what a million Android phone manufacturers did in the last couple of years. It was just like, sure, throw a macro camera in there.

We don't know, which is like what we've seen on every budget Android phone for like a year. And I never understood it. I'm as a longtime macro photography fanboy. Okay. Like, I mean, I own dedicated macro lenses for my DSLRs. Right, right. They're super rad. They're fun.

I hope all of you are ready for me to, when events happen again, like the close-up photos of ports that I used to take and like, they're coming back. You know you can do the macro lens, you get real close to a screen and show people whether it's pentile or not. So here's, there have to be ports to take photos of in the first place. Damn it.

The world has passed me by. I was walking around my DSLR looking for ports. Like a zombie. Dieter, actually go through the specs of, because the camera specs here are kind of interesting, right? Yeah.

Last year there were effectively three camera systems on the 12, the 12 Pro, and the 12 pro max, they were different. This year we're down to two camera systems, the pro one and the non-pro one. Correct. So we'll start with the non-pro, the regular. We are pretty sure

that the main wide lens on the regular ones are last year's pro-max lenses, or lenses sensor and so on, right? So it's 47% bigger. They're sticking with 12 megapixels basically across the board. This is F-1.6,

and it has sensor shifts, so it moves the sensor around. instead of the lens around for OIS, it moves the sensor around. And so, and it should theoretically be basically equivalent to the 12 Pro Max, which is really interesting, which is if they could have put this thing in this body the whole time, why did the pro not have it last year? Why did only the Pro Max have it last year? But whatever.

Then for the ultra-wide, that now supports night mode, and it's F2.4. Okay, so a little bit faster. Yeah. Apple continues to go with ultra-wide on the regular phones instead of a teleph-o, which I think is the right decision. Yeah, 100%. But that's still just a fixed-focus ultra-wide, just a little bit faster. Correct. So it cannot do macro mode because it's just a fixed-focus ultra-wide.

Okay. And then the pro system is like very different. Yeah. Okay. So the wide angle is bigger. It may be as much as twice as big as the regular pro was last year. The pixel side is is 1.9 microns, which is very large. Very, very large.

The only way other camera systems get that big is by binning their like 48 or 100 megapixel sensors into multiple pixels. And we can talk about Bayesian filtering and all that if you want, but I don't want to. They're again sticking with 12 megapixels. And so that is, that's a dramatic increase in the amount of light that it can bring in. It has the sensor shifts stuff and so on and so on. The ultra-wide also gets night mode. This is, as we were saying before, a better ultra-wide, so it's F-1.8, and it has those focus pixels so it can do the close-up stuff. And then finally, to me, maybe the most exciting one, is a telephoto

goes from 2.5 to 3. Apple says it's now equivalent to a 77-millimeter lens, and it also gets night mode, which should imply that it also is picking in more light than the last one. Or they're just doing a better job computationally, we'll have to see. But what's interesting about the telephoto to me is Apple said it's great for portraits. They did not say it's great for zooming 100x. So they're opting out completely of the periscope folding lens in a phone, get 50 times zoom optically stuff. They're like, nope, we're just going to make a really good 3x telephoto. I think Apple's perspective there, and this is just kind of like after ambiently talking about cameras for years and years and years,

they want every photo that comes out on an iPhone to be pretty good. And like you look at some of the ultra-zoom stuff. You're never going to get a good ultra-zoom photo. Well, they're always just kind of, they're like impressive and scary. They're cool. Like, they're cool, but they're not like good photos. Yeah, they're often like, they're often pretty fringy. Like they're chromatically kind of wonky or they're like super processed.

Right. I would say that having used a bunch of Samsung stuff, when they're in like the 8x zoom range, it's actually pretty good. And they deserve more credit than I think they usually get at making that a pretty good photo. I'm talking about the 100X.

Oh yeah. Once you get above like 12 or 15 or 30 or whatever, yeah, none of that ever looks good. Yeah, but I don't think you can get 8X unless you build the lens it can get to 100. You know what I mean? Like, sure. And I think doesn't, and that kind of requires the periscope lens and the crazy sensor.

Like I think Apple's like, we I'm confident they will get there. Two years from now, I'll be like, they did it. Samsung had it 10 years ago, and they finally did, like, Apple. But their deal is basically like every photo that comes out of the box should be pretty good. They won't give you the option to make the bad photo if they can help it. Yeah. I mean, they'll let you do digital Zoom.

But then it's like, you're on, you did this to yourself. They have a little warning now. They should just pop up like a disappointed face when you go past. Just like, really? Okay. I mean, we're going to let you, you know, if you want to drive off. the road you can. It's just not good for you or the car. Actually, I think that leads directly into this new photographic styles thing, which is

very confusing. Yeah. But here's how I would put it. The simplest way to think about it. And I might have some, like, direct insight that this is true, is that every year we review the iPhone cameras. And we're like, Apple looks like this. And the pixel looks like this.

and Samsung looks crazy, and we prefer the way the pixel looks. And they're just looks, right? They're totally subjective decisions about how they look. And every year, Apple reads reviews, and every year they like curse my name. Because I'm the one who like points out over and over again

that these are totally subjective looks and that the contrasty pixel look is like pleasing. It's like a lot of people would like actively choose that look or filter their pictures into the... You turn up the contrast in a photo. A lot of people like it. I think that is, like, started to go away. Like, all...

I think all these funds are starting to look like each other more than not. But I just know that this is their pattern. Well, this year, with these photo styles, you can kind of just, like, tell it to look like a pixel, which is cool. Like, really cool. You can also... They've got a vibrant mode, which you know that they're just like,

okay, well, just... You can pick Apple, you can pick pixel, you can pick Samsung. Yeah. So we should explain what these are. They are basically presets for the camera. And you know, you pick the whatever the things. They don't call it pixel, but it's called contrast or whatever. They don't call it Samsung, but it's called vibrant or whatever. And then once you've picked that mode, it's sticky and the camera takes photos in that mode. And Apple insists that it is not a filter that picking this style does something to the process of taking a photo that is better than just a filter, and they will, while insisting on this, they will tell you that, you know, there's, there's, like, semantic rendering involved. If they, if you pick the, the warm filter, if you pick the warm profile, then it will, you know, make things, make colors warmer, but it knows not to make a face warmer.

Yeah. So it's using, you know, it's looking at, well, there's a sky here, so we want to make sure we don't make it look, you know, tote or whatever. We don't want to make it look crazy. so they apply filters to the colors that they think are appropriate when you apply this profile? So I'll just make the direct comparison to Google, which has been much more transparent about this over time. Mark Levoy, who is the head of the pixel camera team, who's now at Adobe, Mark would tell us, he's been on this show and said to us, when we sat down to decide how the pixel looked, we looked at various kinds of painting and artists and said it should look like this. And that is a totally subjective decision we made about what the pixel should look like.

And then we would go to Apple and be like, well, what do you want it to look like? Because ultimately, these are totally subjective decisions about what the photos should look like. And they'd be like, the truth. Yeah. And then like Deeter and I would like fall into like existential despair and be like, what is truth? Also, you're, have you met us? Also, you're taking seven photos and stacking them. Yeah.

You're not actually capturing the truth. What is a photo? Again, have you met us? And now they're like, screw it. You can pick our truth or you can pick these other things that you like. And that's all just tuning the processing. The big question for me, and we're just going to find out, is it appears to be destructive. You can pick it before you hit the shutter button, but you can't change it afterwards.

Okay. So that's just what it appears. Like, I haven't seen any example or any press materials that say you can change it. And then, like, iPhones have a raw mode. Right. you shoot in raw with photo style? Like, what would it mean to shoot in raw

with photo style? I don't know. I always think of, do you, have you guys, I mean, you guys have shot with like Canon cameras, right?

Like the Canon DSLR was always put out, even a raw, a noticeably warmer raw than Nikon or Sony. And you'd ask them to be like, it is noticeably warmer. And they would do the same thing. They'd be like, oh,

it just, it just looks better. And I'm like, I'm having to like correct the temperature every day, at time I shoot with this thing. It's not, but they're like, No, it just looks better.

It's kind of like, is it the same thing, basically? Like, it sounds like it is. I think this is like one of those things that's super interesting. I kind of get, like, one, if there's another pixel coming out, and they have undercut the immediate thing that we will say, which is the iPhone is a great camera, but we prefer the look of the pixel. Right. Well, now you can just change it, and it stays.

Yeah, because if there's anything you think when you think of iOS is that, you know, you get more options and you can change the settings yourself. and not just do the defaults out of the box. That world is completely gone, by the way. Like, settingsitis afflux iOS and Apple as much as it does Android or Windows. Especially here, because the photo styles have inside of them two additional settings that remain.

So you pick vibrant or whatever, and then you can tweak vibrant to your particular look. But here's what I think it really buys them. Apple sells his phone around the world. They sell the phone in China. They sell the phone in South Korea. We have always known,

that those cultures in those countries are much more amenable to photo editing and photographic trickery than like we are. So Asian phone makers do a lot of face smoothing. They do all the color punchups. Like that is the look that that market wants. Apple doesn't want to do it, but now you can just swipe twice and get it if you want it. And I think that is a huge win for them because they don't have to chase Samsung down that rabbit hole. they don't have to chase Google done it. They get to still say it by default, you know, normal or whatever.

It's like the truth. Yeah. A lot of complicated ideas in that phrase. But they, that's what they, that's what they're really getting. Also, I think they get to not deal with me, which I think we're happy. But that is really interesting. How it plays with raw. Like, if, um, anyone is familiar with the lightroom.

So, like, you take a raw. Like, Alex takes a raw offer, offer Canon camera. the raw is just the data off the sensor. Right. Right. So, like, you, every camera ships different data off the sensor. Adobe to make Lightroom work has to first know how to read all those, all that, those sensor files. Then your step one is like it, quote, unquote, develops the raw.

And when it does that in Lightroom, you can do it in different styles. Yeah. Like, lots of different styles. Then you can, like, play with lights and shadows and all that stuff. Then you can add a filter, right? So, like, and then you ship off a JPEC. Yeah. So, like, at what point, if you just think of that as, like, pretty much the normal chain of, like, you get data off the sensor, the data gets developed into something that you can edit, you can apply a filter over the top of that entire edit, and then you can, like, ship a J-Pet.

Like, where is it happening? I don't know the answer. It feels like it's happening in that development stage. Because even, like, how Lightroom develops, I went very deep on this in, like, 2016. With, like, Capture One actually has a slightly different development process in Lightroom. And so people will be like, oh, you can't use lightroom. It has a crummy development process for Canon. You've got to go get capture one.

And it's got the better one. And so I think that sounds kind of like what's almost happening here with the iPhone is saying, okay, now you can choose one of three like development processes of the raw itself. Like the flat Apple way that is truth. The vibrant Samsung way or the really like contrasty, good looking pixel way. Yeah, I mean. And then add a filter, even though they're all really just filters. You can definitely have a filter at the end.

And then you put it on Instagram and let it get compressed to hell, which is all that really matters. I don't know. Like, I think as we do reviews, we're just going to find out. And I think that's like, it is the big question to me is like, where does this fit into the process and how should you think about it? What does it mean for app to Luppers like, hey, lied, right? Like, I don't know. I think there's a lot there. But overall, you're looking at Apple finding a way to more directly compete with.

the other two dominant looks in smartphone cameras without having to leave what it thinks is real. That said, I still don't know what a photo is. Speaking of looks and color science, we should just talk about the basics of like the colors you can get and the prices. So the pros come in graphite, gold, which looks slightly different than the gold they've done before, silver and a new Sierra Blue, which is not really baby blue. I don't know. I think it looks okay.

And then the regular 13 has got product red, starlight, which replaces the white, midnight, a darker blue, and pink, which of all of the colors that I have seen on their pictures, I think, looks the best. I think that Sierra blue is the one I want to. That's where my eyes going. And I believe pricing is saying pretty much the same with, like, one exception. And when I say pretty much the same, I mean they're doing, I think. think the shenanigans where it's $6.99 for a mini, but like that assumes you're getting a little bit of a carrier bump. And so actually it's like 30 bucks more. Is that correct? Yeah. They charge you 30 bucks more if you don't like activate with a carrier for the regular

iPhones, which is just like, come on. But that that story plays into both the regular and the pro because Apple was incapable of saying, you know, you can buy this thing without also in the same breath saying, and there are some amazing carrier deals out there. Yeah, we should talk about this. I, Dieter, I know you're deep in it, but, you know, after the event, we're talking to folks. Apple is not shying away from the idea that it survived the pandemic slowdown in phone sales that had everybody else by just getting the carriers to discount the phone. Like, you know, iPhone 12 sales have been amazing, like through the roof. The reason for that is not people wanted 5G or they love the design. I think that played into it, obviously. I think that maybe not 5G.

There's a whole debate about whether 5G is actually part of a purchase decision. Every phone company in the world will tell you that it is. If you would like to see how good you are at detecting a lie, go up to a carrier executive or a phone maker and say, do regular people care about 5G? And then they will tell you they do. And then you just have to decide whether you are good at sensing a lie or not. Yeah. Because it's not. But they all say it's more important than you think.

But I mean, so look, look, they did change a shape that always drives a sales cycle. But we saw the iPhone 12 do gangbusters, and we saw every other phone not. And like a change in shape doesn't drive that huge difference that we saw. Yeah. And so Apple is kind of, like I said, they're not shying away from it. They did a lot of discounting with carriers. They did a lot of partnerships. They did a lot of free trade-ins.

You know, the argument is very much the carriers need people to get on the 5G networks so they can reform the LTE spectrum of 5G and finally do the thing. These phones support, for example, Verizon's C-band, Verizon just spent billions of dollars in the spectrum, et cetera, et cetera. So there's like a big incentive for the carriers to get people on 5G. And Apple, I think, was very happy to be like, discount the phones all you want. Like, just pay us the money. Like, here you go. We don't care.

They don't care. And I think that, I don't know how you feel about this phrase, but like we are all the way back to phones being subsidized by carriers. Yep. Uh, greetings, children. if you don't remember, in the bad old days, you couldn't just buy a phone. You had to buy a phone on contract, and the price that would be listed would be like, $200, $300, $300, you're like, oh, my God, such a deal. But you had to stay with your carrier for two years, and part of the monthly cost of the service from the carrier was the extra cost of the phone.

And sometimes it was even hard to buy it unsubsidized. And T-Mobile, John Ledger, bless your hearts, led. the fight to give us what we wanted, which was just let us pay you for the data, the cellular service you provide, and we'll pay the manufacturer for the phone at the price that it actually costs. And we can leave if we want to. And that was great. Everybody had to switch over to that model.

That model still theoretically is the world we live in now, but I kind of think it maybe, I don't know, where is there isn't? We might be paying a little bit extra because they're giving such deep discounts up front. but they're just, they're not discounting it and calling it a subsidy. They're discounting it by saying that they'll give you like a thousand dollars for your trade-in. Like an ungodly amount of money for a trade-in. Like if you walk into AT&T and like, I want to buy an iPhone, they're like, cool, we'll make a down payment on your house. And that's the value of your phone.

It's like, okay, sure. I don't get it. There's no bargain here happening. Well, it's also going to be interesting because the trade ends you usually have to mail, like you have to either go into the store and to try, physically traded in or most people are going to buy it at home and then you have to mail it in you just like with the Verizon you've to mail it in before you get traded how many last time I totally forgot to do it and it ended up like having to pay a bunch of extra money but like I traded my wife's fun and I not AT&T this time to get a 12 pro they just never sent me the label for her old

phone and they never charged me like I don't think they care they were just like you got a new phone and I don't have like a healthy relationship with AT&T I don't think there's anyone's doing me any favor. Nobody was being nice. Yeah, we're just paying them out the nose. I think they were like, fine. You know what? We've made it up from you over the past 15 years.

But I think they just want people to get the new phones. I think more importantly, they want you on two years of payments. Because the worst thing that can happen to a carrier, even in our time of low competition, is that you churn off and go to another carrier. Like that's the, they're saturated. There are no more people in America for them to. sell wireless service too. So they are totally saturated and they're trying to lock you in.

That's why all the prices are kind of the same, except for T-Mobile, which is creeping up there. And I think Apple managed to boost sales by doing aggressive carrier deals, not just in this country, but around the world. And I think they're just going to continue doing that forever until another Challenger brand comes along and says, hey, we're not going to price phone discounts or phone rebates or trade-in rebates into the price. of our service because there's no way they're losing money on these deals. Right. So, Neely, what you're saying is that the solution to this problem is a challenger brand, which would be competition, so we should not expect a solution? I mean, there's Project Gena 5Sys, baby.

Yeah, it's coming. It's coming any day now. But your point about Ledger is correct. What he correctly deduced was that if he could make the pricing clearer and more transparent, unbundle the phone from the service plan, people would realize, oh, T-Mobile has cheaper service and the price of the phone because they were doing aggressive trade-ins on phones

because they were trying to make up that share. So he lowered the margin of T-Mobile, sold the service for cheaper, and just dealt with the phone churn. He was, of course, doing this while the transition LTE was happening. So a lot of people were interested in trading their phones. And then very quickly, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon.

all unbundled the price of the phone from the service, so they could compete on service prices, which were people like appeared to really care about. We're down to three carriers. The price of the phone is getting bundled back into something. I don't know what it is. Yeah, that's the problem. You don't know what it is.

Like, is it getting bundled into your monthly service plan with the carrier? Is it getting bundled into, I don't know, your Apple One subscription? Is there money changing hands? Because, like, you go to Verizon or AT&T, And you sign up and all of a sudden you accidentally have subscriptions to like three streaming video services without even like trying. It just like they just throw it at you. I haven't paid for Hulu in years. Yeah.

Whoa. Who do you have? Verizon. It's great. Disney Plus and Hulu. And also I think a bunch of Apple services. All I get is HBO Max. It's no good.

Missing out. I set my TV on fire every time I open. But yeah, like there's still a price on the phone. And we still can use that to sort of judge how much the phone costs. But after that, the amount of money that you get back from your trade in or what your monthly service cost is or if you decide to like do a yearly, you know, get your phone replaced cycle plan or whatever, the transparency on all of that stuff after that main sticker price that we look at is like gone away. I have no idea how much anything costs anymore except that if you decide to buy something flat out unlocked. Can I say one more thing about T-Mobile, which is very funny, and then we should take a break and talk about the other stuff. So we mentioned that Apple is outselling everybody.

They appear to not only survive but thrive in the pandemic with these aggressive discount programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. T-Mobile CFO was at an event this week. And he was like, Samsung has really fallen behind the eight-ball relative to other OEMs on global supply chain. And then he was like, a majority of T-Mobile customers are, quote, very significant Samsung lovers. Mm. Oh. And all they want is the Galaxy Note and Samsung discontinued it. Well, or whatever they did with it.

Yeah. They hiatist it forever. And now, like, T-Mobile sales are down because there's a lot of unhappy, like, Samsung fans who wanted a new note and they're not going to get one from T-Mobile because of Samsung. What were you talking about earlier about talking to certain execs and being able to tell? He's a good lie detector? Yeah, look, this is only reported. I couldn't, you know, I wasn't reading his cadence of his voice or his body language. I'm just saying, you roll up to an executive.

Like, do regular people care about 5G? And they all get that look in their eyes. And you can see the punch cards of their brain find the talking point about 5G. And then like, chichink. And then they're like, you know, our data shows that people are very interested in 5G. And there's also, they've got a card in there now for the Samsung note. It's like we have not discontinued the note. Okay, we'll see.

Well, next year it'll fold. All right, we should take a break. We come back, but we've got to review the phones. Deeter, you know, you've got some work to do to verify all the stuff that's happening. But we'll get them and we'll talk about them soon. All right, we're going to take a break. We got an iPad and a watch to talk about it. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. All right, we're back. Do you want to start with the iPad? I mean, do you already have it? You ordered it within seconds of this event closing. Well, that's seconds. I waited a minute. I waited a little bit. It's still seconds. Technically seconds.

Technically, yeah. So there's two iPads. There's a new iPad iPad, which has an A-13 now. Yes, A-13 Bionic, and they put a good 12 megapixel front camera on it so it can do center stage and the camera can follow you around.

And that's it. They left the form factor. They left the lightning plug. They left the fact that only certain classrooms can have multi-users on it. They left the old stylus, the Apple pencil that plugs into the side of it, like a weird, I have no idea how to refer to it.

It's still 329, which is super awesome, $2.99 for schools. But yeah, they just like, that part's been is, deep and they are not going to change us until it runs out. I mean, I don't think there's, like, a bin. They're good at managing their supply chain. I think that part's bin is cheap.

Yeah, okay. Like, they can make as many, was it, 10.2 inch screens? Yeah. There's an infinite capacity to make 10.2 inch LCDs in the world for no money. Right, right. Whereas, like, the screen, the new OLED screen and the iPhone Pro Max is, like, expensive to produce. Right. And it doesn't have to have curved edges or, like, you.

You know, whatever. Like, this is a dirt cheap thing for them to make. And again, it's an incredibly good deal. Like, you can do everything with this iPad that 90% of people do when they buy a, you know, $1,200 iPad Pro. Like, you can do the same things. Yeah. It's just that I have emotions about USBC. To me, this one is like, the comparisons they made to it were directly to Chromebooks, directly to cheap Windows PCs.

This is in that center stage for Zoom, right? They made a point of saying center stage works. Zoom and they said WebEx, which is very funny. Like, imagining schoolchildren using WebEx is like the funniest situation you can be. Poor kids. It's like, why would you traumatize them so early? But they made a point of saying we're so less something. This is a definitely an educationally focused product.

And by that, I mean, like, widely people buy it for the kid. We have a $3.229 I've had from two years ago, the cheapest one. It fundamentally runs Paw Patrol. That is the killer app for that iPad, is it? Yeah. I've blocked the YouTube Kids app because I don't know if you've ever. I'm certain you two haven't. The parents don't, like YouTube Kids, you think is like a curated environment and then you get

to the weird part of it. No. It goes on journeys. Where people are like playing with action figures and like acting out their own shows. And like, I don't know you, man. Like, why are you drawn to this? Like, anyway. My daughter refers to it as the good app.

It's very terrifying. He's like, I don't want to use the bad app. I'm like, that's Netflix. Like, use that one. Anyway, Paw Patrol. That's what's for. But then when you're in school, like, you can run your classroom apps. And that's what Apple wants it for.

Okay, that's that one. Yeah. iPad Mini. Ooh, boy. I am convinced Apple makes this product because Tim Cook thinks it's cool that pilots use it. They talked about pilots four times. You know, the crew that went up at the civilian crew that went up in the SpaceX capsule last night? Did they use it?

One of the crew members had, I've had Mini. old model, of course, draft your leg. Like, you know they're just like, that's the shit. Like, we should just make it so we can show people that all the time. Yeah. And so now they've made a cooler one. So it has the same design as the iPad Air and the iPad Pros with the rounded edges. It has a very good screen, but I don't believe it does the pro motion stuff.

It's just high liquid, laminated, you know, stuff. It's an LCD. It's an LCD, yeah. But, you know, presumably it's very good. It has cameras, which I don't care about. It has them. Someone wants it. I'm excited.

It's got a bigger screen in about the same size body. I think it's 8.3. And it, yeah, it's like, it's an iPad mini. And so, like, if what you do with an iPad is, like, play some games and read a ton, read a ton of books and, you know, watch a movie or two. And you're not trying to, like, do work. Here is a thing that is much easier to carry around and much easier to hold in one hand. And that is very exciting. Or you could, like, just get an iPhone Max and an e-reader.

What is a difference between an iPhone 13 Pro Max and an iPad Mini? Fundamentally, I would say that it's a speaker for your ear. I don't know. There's a part of me that, like, wants to buy an iPhone 12 Mini. Yeah. iPad Mini. And then the iPad Mini is the one that I just use. and then the 12 is there just because I have to have a traditional phone around,

but I would just use this as my phone. That is an interesting world. But in addition to doing all this cool stuff and making this very nice screen and so on and so forth, putting USBC on it, which is the way that an iPad should be plugged in, they put the price, the base price, I believe, at $500, which is not cheap. Really? Yeah, it's not that cheap. I forget the storage on the $500.

And actually, we didn't mention this in the iPhone section, but they increased base storage across the board there. And, like, good on you. We should have given you credit for it earlier, but I'm really happy about that. Yeah. No more 64-gig iPhones. It's funny how long they stuck with 8 and 16,

like stubbornly stuck with 8 and 16. Yeah. And now they're just, like, every year they're doubling. It's because they got a store 4K Ted Lasson on the phone. 64 gigs for the base $500 iPad Mini. I think they know that a lot of people use iPad minis as like single-purpose devices, right? For their airplanes. Yeah, they're using their navigation apps on airplanes, or they're doing a lot of e-books,

or they're doing their electronic medical records out. They talk a lot about doctors and nurses using these things. And, you know, Tim Cook opened up the entire iPad section by saying, you know, his usual line. It's a magical piece of glass that can turn into anything that you want. And I think they know, particularly with the mini, tends to turn into one thing for folks. Not like, you know, with the iPad Pro, they're like, it's a laptop. It's all singing, all dancing, blah, blah, blah. One thing that's not on the iPad mini, speaking of single use, is a smart connector.

Right, no keyboard, which is really weird. Yeah. That doesn't feel weird to me. That's a netbook-sized keyboard. That's just an unpleasant-sized keyboard, right? It's probably too small to be pleasant to type, yeah. Unless they did, I mean, I guess if they did like a cool folding or a keyboard, Gami keyboard.

That would be neat. When I went through the purchase process, they put Logitex little, you know, super thin fabric keyboard on the splurge checkout process, whatever. Treat yourself. Oh, you think you're checking out? No, what if you bought this stuff? That part of that process? Yeah.

I did not buy that Logitech keyboard. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It would be cool. Like, Alex, what you're saying, like the old think bad keyboards that folded out. Yeah. Which, by the way, they used to be called Butterfly keyboards, and then Apple completely ruined that term. Destroyed the butterfly.

But it'd be cool. Like you open it up, the keyboard folds out. I think this thing is rad. I think a lot of people are going to like it. Deider, I agree with you. Like, the fact that it has cameras, like, sure. Yeah. I mean, they went with touch ID instead of face ID.

I'm totally fine with that. Is this their first button-based touch ID? No, the iPad Air. Oh, the iPad Air has one. Okay. And they also added support for the new good Apple Pencil, not the old bad Apple Pencil. And actually, this thing with an Apple Pencil,

Like if there's, I don't know, doctors or people that really do want that in their workflow, I think this will be pretty compelling. I'm just thinking of Creighton, D. Simone, producer here, who back in the day had that HTC flyer. That thing was cool. You know, it's funny when you look at the end, the specs and Paris and Apple's website, it's like, the last line is keyboards in, like, the iPad Pro is like, Magic Keyboard, iPad is Smart Keyboard. iPad is like Bluetooth Keyboards. You know, actually, we didn't, you mentioned a smart connector. It's interesting, yeah, this is like the same Apple stuff. They have this ostensibly open connector that nobody uses on the iPads.

We didn't talk about MagSafe at all with the phones. They're like, MagSafe is a hit. And we were like, no, it's not. Then like a little bit later, like, we were like, they're like, we think it's a hit. They have a new version of the wallet that has an NFC chip in it so that if you, when you take it off your phone, find my locates where you took it off, and so you can find it later. It doesn't actually beep or anything, doesn't have all that stuff. But it seems like you have to have the new version that has a chip in it.

They can't just do it with like the one you've got, which okay. I guess they want to identify each one of them uniquely. But then two, there's an a there's an asterisk that it doesn't work with the clear case that Apple sells, which means that like it can't read the NFC chip through the clear case, apparently. Oh, my God. Yeah. amazing.

That's very good. I don't know about that. I always say that we were in a meeting with Joanna, and she's like, do you make the magnets stronger? Because these old magnets suck. And then there was just like, silence. God bless you, Mr. Stern. Okay, that's the iPad Mini. I think we're excited about it, but fundamentally not all.

I mean, it has USBC. Yeah. So the iPad USBC story continues to get weirder and weirder, especially up against the iPhone. The poor little iPad's just sitting over there. That's lightning cable. Yeah, I mean, but again, like, they should just put USBC and everything. It's like the end of this conversation. I think that they want to continue taxing the lightning connector on the phone.

It lets them control the ecosystem. It's Apple. They like doing it. Whatever. They're making all these schools buy lightning cables to power their educational iPads. Oh, that is like the darkest. Yeah, I buy that completely. I'm actually surprised a little bit that the iPad Mini had USBC.

and not lightning. If they had done lightning on that new shape, I would have died. But like, I'm a tiny little bit surprised given the, you know, the size and where it sits in the lineup, that they didn't think about it. You know, it's because the 737 Max as a USBC connector. Oh my God. This is the only, I don't know. I'm assuming it does. Apple Watch. This is like another, almost like an S update. Like it's got a bigger screen. Like less than an S update. It doesn't have a new chip. as far as we know. Right. It sounds like it has the same chip as last year.

The case is a millimeter bigger. The bezels are 1.7 millimeters smaller. So your screen is technically bigger, but we don't know the resolution. We don't know the actual size of it. But it's just a little bigger. I think it'll be neat. You know, it's nice that it's got dust protection now. I thought it did before.

So this was a pleasant, well, actually not a pleasant surprise as somebody who, like, gets her Apple Watch really messy as I go. I've just been playing with fire for years now. Yeah, I mean, that's cool. It charges with a USBC cable. Yeah, it charges via USBC. They added a new dongle. It's brighter when it's in its always on display.

Like, when you're not using it, it's brighter, which I think is actually one of the more interesting things about it, but for very weird reasons. Because now it's a much more noticeable thing on your wrist. Yeah. I mean, as watches have been for years. But it's like it's bigger, it's brighter, like it's going to catch your eye faster than just like, okay, yeah, the black square. Now you're going to be like, oh, wow, Mickey Mouse is flying by my face as you move your hands.

Is it literally is brighter all the time or it has the potential to be brighter in, for example, sunlight when you're outside? They're saying 70% brighter in the always on when it's not, when it's not activated. So just those times, which but which is kind of cool because also same amount of battery life. So I personally would have taken a dimmer screen for better battery life there. Yeah. But and it's not out for until sometime in the fall. Yeah. That's like you can't even, you can't even like go get in line to pre-order it right now.

It's just like, yep, it'll be there. The phone pre-orders are hilarious. By the time people are listening to this, the pre-orders will be up and running. But what they've been doing for the past two days is you can go to the Apple online store. You can select the phone. You can select your price, you know, whatever price. chanagan's appeal to you. You can, like, lay all that out.

And you can get all the way up to checkout. And then when pre-orders go live, you can hit checkout. And it's like... And then you can hit it again and again and again until it actually goes through. But no, we just like deconstructed what it means to pre-order or something. Like, what is the difference? Why can't I just hit checkout now? Like, who cares?

Like, I'm so close to hitting checkout. Like, weird... 3 a.m. Gotta earn it. What is the point? of this. Gotta work for that pre-order. Yeah.

You get all the way there. But the Apple Watch comes in new colors, you know? Yeah. We've got the Midnight, which is basically black, and the starlight, which is basically gold, silver. Yeah. Then the red and the blue. And then the new green, which, you know, we heard a lot of rumors beforehand that there was going to be a rugged Apple Watch.

And then, like, this Army green watch came out with the dust protection. And I guess that was what that rumor. meant? Maybe. No, maybe. There are the rumors of the flat sides. This is rumors is right.

I think this is a product that got caught up in component and manufacturing chaos because of the pandemic. Yeah. And also when they, you know, when they change the design,

they've got to, like, do features and they've got a bunch of health features. They've been working on forever. Right. You get the feeling this is like an interstitial. Yeah. They made the screen bigger,

which is great. I think a lot of people are going to like it. I'm considering, like, I'm a sucker for a bigger screen. I'm almost certainly going to buy this thing. Yeah, exactly. I'm on the series four, like... Oh, from a four to this will be a huge jump.

Yeah, like, I'll probably get it. And then next year, they're going to announce a completely redesign Series 8, you know, totally different, tons of sensors, and I'll be really annoyed with myself. They got you. And then be pre-ordering it while trying to sell this one to my brother. It's going to be great. One option is they're keeping the series three around because it's the super cheap one, that $199. Don't buy it. I don't think you should buy it either.

But the watchse is still sticking around for 279. You know, they're of course getting rid of the Series 6 and the other stuff there. So, I don't know, if you really feel like you need a holdover watch, maybe the SE, but that's like only, you know. Yeah, the SE is like if you're just really, you just saw Fitness Plus and you're very excited about Pilates, but you don't want to invest in the rest of this ecosystem. Okay, get the SC, like hold over until next year when we get all the really cool. Maybe next year when you maybe get all the really cool new sensors. Yeah. I still think it's dumb that it requires an Apple Watch, Fitness Plus.

Like, what if I want to use a service and not have to, like, have it connected to telemetrics? Yeah. I also think it's dumb that it doesn't work with a Mac still. Yeah, I don't, like, just put the iPad app on the Mac. You make M1 Macs. You can just do it. You make catalyst. Yeah.

I think it's because of the experience. They don't want you, like, like, the iPad in the phone, they keep talking about, like, oh, well, you can, like, plug it into your rower or you can put it on your, your, your, stationary bike. And I think part of it is, like, they don't want you opening your phone, your computer. and, like, getting all your notifications from Slack and going through it. They want you like... Have they seen how people use iPads with keyboards attached to them? Like, I'm on my bike, on its little trainer, and I'm, like, balancing it on my handlebars.

Just like, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely silly that they haven't done it yet, but, like, it's goofy. Yeah. But we're getting Pilates. It's coming. Yeah, Deeter, you got the two things you want. You got bike modes for the watch, and you got Pilates and Fitness Plus. These are like your...

These are like Dieter stuff. I didn't get the bike mode I want. Like, it can detect Falls. better on a bike, and it can do automatic tracking for when a bike ride starts. It can also make sure that it has an electronic bike mode, e-bike mode, so you don't get as much credit for your calories as you otherwise would, which is great. Fine. Go for it. Although, e-bikes still kind of exercise, but it's still talking to a bike computer is going to require a Bluetooth dongle. So, yeah. Which is fine. I didn't expect it, but I was hoping against hope.

That's like the event, like very low-key for Apple. Yeah, they updated some stuff. A lot of S updates, a lot of carrier shenanigans. I love monkeying with cameras, excited to monkey with these cameras. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. I think we're still waiting for M1X MacBook pros. That's a big deal, right? I think we're still waiting for a redesign watch.

We're still waiting for AirPods. Like there's a couple of categories where the big changes are we're still waiting for an AR headset. Hey, you know what they didn't talk about at all in this? AR. AR or the LiDAR sensor on the. the pros. Yeah. Here's a sensor. We put it on last year. It continues to do very little. Are the, the AirPods just going to get, like, tossed out one day? Are we just going to be scrambling one morning to write up the AirPods because they just were suddenly announced overnight?

Maybe. Or, like, the beats team will be like, we are here. Yeah. We made some more headphones again. Hi, guys. They charge via micro-uspy for some reason. I don't know. We'll see. There's a bunch of Apple stuff coming, we assume, later this year. And particularly the MacBooks, I think it would be a big deal. That said, we got to get the stuff. We got to review it. I think there's a lot of questions. There's always stuff in the details that's interesting.

Yeah. We'll get there. I mean, the big challenge for Apple here is we're ending this. Like, yep, there it is. Like, these might actually be genuinely like, they might be right about the cameras being the best ever update. Like, maybe that's the truth. And if so, how will Apple actually communicate it?

Because from everything I've seen our reaction here, reaction elsewhere on the web, was like, oh, yeah, it's an S update. And that historically S phones were the phones to get. They were like the ones where they figured it out. And that might be the case here. But I don't know if Apple's going to be able to communicate that to people. I mean, they're just going to get AT&T to give you $45,000 to get any phone. They won't need to communicate it. You've got an iPhone 4S.

That's worth $2,000. You heard about our... Ineffective 5G network. Okay, let's take a break. There's other other gadget that you talk about, actually, including a secret Nintendo update. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn.

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Alex, walk us through the Verge team's reaction to Nintendo. And I'll say this. Just tweeting it out. Just like the chaos. They just tweeted it out. Like it was like shock and everybody's like, is this a thing? This can't be a thing because it wouldn't be tweeted out, but it's a thing. And then just screaming and then hi him somewhere.

softly weeping. Heim was not even near a computer, and he just, like, felt it, like a disturbance in the force. Just a sixth. All right. For years. We should say what it. Say what it is.

For years, for years, for years. So the switch has been out. We've all been begging for Bluetooth audio on the switch because many of us fly and do other things where we want to listen to use our headphones and nobody owns wired headphones anymore. So everybody's been asking for it. Heim Gartenberg has been like trying to figure out. why Bluetooth doesn't exist on,

Bluetooth audio doesn't exist on the switch, because it has Bluetooth. So theoretically it should. And it's been this big, long theory of why doesn't it have it? And now it has it. So instead it's like what the theory is, the question is,

why did it take so long? Right. And we still don't really know. There are some clues, because you can only attach two controllers at a time to the switch when you're using Bluetooth audio. Okay. And Bluetooth is like, I think maximizes like eight connections. Okay. I think the theory is like the joycons themselves use more than one Bluetooth connection.

Okay. So then, yeah, so that's one, two, three, four, and then you headphones are five, six. So they're like, you can't add another one. And I think it took so long is because the reason it never happened before this, it was always going to be kind of a friction. There's going to be a lot of friction there. There was going to be like, okay, how many controllers can I use? Okay, how do I set up the audio? And even now, we're still seeing like issues with the Bluetooth. audio that people are using. And I know Sean Hollister is having some issues with it. So like, it's always, we don't fully know what's happened, but we have a good idea that there was like limitation. This is a game, a toy company, not a hardware company. And they were just trying to

make the best toy that like my seven year old godson could use to roast me and Mario Kart. Destroy me. But it is incredible. They released an entire new model of the switch. Yeah. And they still didn't do it then. Yeah. And then they were just like, I don't know, there was an Apple event today. Let's just tweet it out at 7.30 p.m. Easter.

We're all like logging off, enjoying our hard day's work. The entire Verge staff like arrived in Slack to be like, did you see it? Did you see the tweet? Like this story has like eight bylines on it. I ever heard one sentence of the story. just wanted to feel included, man. It's very good, but they did it finally. Sean is having weirdo problems.

The switch doesn't wake up as fast as it used to. Yeah. We don't know if these are widespread, but good news. We'll learn more as time goes on about why it took so long. It just says here Razor made gamer thimbles. I have to admit, I didn't read this story and I don't want to know more. They're little, this was upsetting to me because I was editing this story. and I was like, but this is so stupid.

Nobody would ever use this. And so, like, Cameron and I were Googling gaming finger thimbles, trying to think of what it was. And it was like, they're called cots. And people do, you know, there's a very robust business on Amazon.com of people getting little fabric thumb cots and playing, you know, Fortnite and stuff on, well, not Fortnite. But playing games on their phone. and then they break down, the cots do, and then they buy new ones. And now, razors in on the business with a hefty markup. I mean, are these just the equivalent of the, like, when you need to go through a lot of paper,

or so you get the little sleeve that goes on your finger, so it's grippier? Yeah, it's, well, it's less about that. It's more about catching the sweat from your fingers, so it doesn't make it more. I've never had that issue. Maybe I just don't play games on my phone enough that my phone is sleeping. leaping out of my hand and flying across the room for my sweaty thumbs. But that's kind of the thought process theoretically behind this. And it's really upsetting that, like, it exists.

Oh, my God. For me personally. It's a great, great story for us to have on our website. Dieter, what's going on in this Pixel 6 thing, this new tensor processor? So, a known place for Android leaks to happen are GeekBench scores, because people will, GeekBench by default, if you get the free version, it uploads your results. And so people can look at the public geekbench results and see stuff. So a processor that looked like it was probably the Pixel 6 appeared on GeekBench with a terrible score.

And everyone's like, what's going on here? And then over at XDA developers, they talked to somebody who says that they have it, have a Pixel 6 in hand, and they were able to provide information about the processor and some other details, like camera specs and so on, that seems to corroborate that it was, in fact, a genuine pixel-6 that got uploaded to GeekBatch. So, okay, fine. But in this process, we have learned apparently

what the different cores are inside the tensor system on a chip. And our headline, which I recommend it, and I'm fully agreed with, is Google's rumored pixel-6 tensor processor sounds extremely weird. So what we have is two X-1 cores, CortexX-1 performance cores that clocked at 2.8, and two cortex A-76 performance cores, clocked at 2.25, and then four A-55 efficiency cores. So the way that Android tends to work is there's a, you know, big little, like there's the cores you use for, like, high-intensity stuff, and then there's the efficiency cores

for low-intensity stuff. Yeah. So Android has basically moved up to three. There's like the super-bursty fast, powerful core. Then there's a couple of high-performance cores, and then there's the efficiency cores, right? You wait for me so far? The way that most of these have gone,

in the Snap 888 in particular, it's got one super bursty performance core. The two regular performance cores are the newer A, I believe, 78s, and then, you know, whatever you've got for efficiency. So Google went for two. of the super high bursty cores. And then for the regular, you know, performance cores, which are kind of the workhorses in some ways,

they went for some super old processors that... They're from like 2018 or something. Yeah. And like there's no good reason to have gone with these that anyone can imagine. Unless they started working on these in 20. They could have started working out a long time. I mean, that's like the Surface Duo had an ancient processor when it came out. So that's a possibility.

but the fact that they've got the X1 in there is like, well, that's weird. And the fact that they went with two, what are they going to do with two? Is that going to rail battery life? Well, no, you can have the other ones, but then the other ones are super old and maybe not as efficient. So it's like the geek bench scores were probably off because, you know, reasons, pre-production reasons, right? Not tune, something, something, who knows. So far as anybody can tell from the best evidence available to very smart Android nerds who know way more about this shit than I do, these seem to be what the processor cores are,

and no one knows how or why. And we will find out at some point, but the relative performance of this CPU, this whole system on a chip, is going to be very, very fascinating. Because, like, the story was always Android can't keep up with Apple, right? No one expected the pixel to catch up to the A14 or A15.

Not really. Not in our heart. We know. But maybe they're just trying to do it through brute force by putting two X-1s in there, which should be wild. And running them all the time. Well, there's no way that, I mean, this thing, it's only got a 5,000-million-a-amp battery. I say only.

That's a pretty big battery. But still, like, there's no way that they could run those two X-1s all the time and have anything that wouldn't just light on fire instantly. Look, Android phones lighting on fire. It's a thing. It happens. People miss the note, you know, I'm told reliably. But, hey, you know, it's mid-September.

Google is selling Google branded potato chips in Japan because Google Chip, get it? That's pretty good. They look like the pixel. They have a They have a googly, salty flavor.

Ooh. They're running pixel six acts during football. Yep, they've got pixel six billboards around San Francisco. So it's coming. How much does it cost? When is it coming out?

What are the megapixels on the camera? I get building hype, but it's like it's pretty wild to be building hype when there's literally no way that anybody will act on that hype for what a month? Is it just like trying to get us familiar with the name?

So like we'll almost think it's a brand new phone when it comes out and be like, oh, this must be the new pixel. We keep seeing that other one on TV. I think they've just they've done so little with the pixel over the past two and a half, three years that they just like were too excited and they had to just start. They've made so much stuff for this. They're like,

well, we've got to start it now because we've got too much. Put it out there. Yeah, we'll see. I'm curious about this one. I mean, again, comes camera stuff. We're going to find out. We'll see. We'll just see how it goes.

But it's, this ship is real weird. And I think that if it's slower than other Android phones, it's a real weird look for them. It can't be where they're going. Well, it might not be because it's got two of the super high performance and everybody else has one, right? Yeah, but like Dieter saying, you can't run them all the time. So, like, and it's sort of like day-to-day doing stuff. Maybe that's how they're going to get battery life on it. They're like, you know what?

You actually don't need. this much performance day today. Yeah. Who knows? They basically got away with it, the Pixel 5, basically. That's true. Hey, that's it. Are we out?

Do there other stuff? I think that's enough. That's how we're ending this one. I mean, look, there's a lot of stuff going on. The Elizabeth Holmes trial is happening. Liz Lepado is covering it. She's at the courthouse. She's listening to them talk about spreadsheets.

Yeah, if you've heard Liz on this show before, She's having the time of her life. Straight up. Amazing situation at the Holmes trial. There was just a guy hanging out with the press. And he was like, I'm just making sure. I'm just hanging out. I'm just a concern.

I'm a watchdog. It turned out that it was her, her, like, fiance's dad in disguise. Amazing. But you hear how they knew, how people, like, were recognizing him? No. Because he was wearing Faragamo loafers. His shoes were too expensive. Like, a reporter from, like, the NPR was like, whoa, those are too nice for

just some guy. That's great. Yeah, he turns out it's like a hotel, like, magnet in San Francisco. Yeah. Becca has the GoPro Hero 10 review up on YouTube on the site. It is really fun. Classic Becca video.

There's a bunch of, like, Facebook nonsense going on, but we've done Facebook nonsense enough. We'll come back to that another time. There's just, like, a lot going on. Oh, and the Surface event is next week. Yes. If you download this right away, We've got an article of what to expect, and it's a lot.

Like, Surface Pro 8, maybe they'll actually redesign the Surface Pro. Be still my heart. Come on, do it. Surface Book 4, Surface Pro X, maybe they'll do something with Arm. Just kidding. Surface Go 3. They are going to do the little guy again. And then finally, Surface Duo 2.

All right. You asked for it. I mean, they put a big old camera bump on it if the rumors are true, which I don't know. I guess. Maybe it'll have a newer version of Android. The original service is still hanging out on 10. We're about to get Android 12s coming out in a matter of weeks. Maybe it'll have a newer processor.

That's real good. Yeah. So we'll see what that does. There's a lot going on. We've got Apple stuff talking about. So we did that. I will say, by the way, they've been protest at Apple stores about the photo scanning.

People are obviously still mad about antitrust stuff. But, you know, doing one episode of the show just on the actual phones, you know, peaks and valleys. They delayed it. They delayed it. So we can, we can delay talking about it for just a little bit. Yeah, I think so. All right. You can tweet at us. Deeter is at Backlon. I'm at Reckless. Alex is Alex H. Kranz. We love hearing from you. Decoder this week. We had Charlie Harding from Switch on Pop. We did an episode about music copyright and Olivia Rodrigo. It was just, we played Stairway to Heaven on Decoder. We also played I'm Too Sexy by Wright said Fred. A really choice

episode. Highs and lows. Highs and lows. Also, BTS fans have picked up on this episode of Decoder. To carry forward a theory about why BTS doesn't get a U.S. radio airplay, except for the song Butter, which has a co-writing credit by the head of Columbia Records. You are, like, our friend David Pierce got wrongly tagged in a tweet by Nikki Minaj. Nikki Minaj has had a week on Twitter. David Pierce also had a week on Twitter because she, Nikki Minaj wanted to yell at Pierce, excellently tweeted David Pierce.

Yeah. A lot of Nicki Minaj fans first started yelling at David Pierce and then apologizing to David Pierce. And then they started yelling at Casey. It was just like a whole thing. Yeah. I'm watching this. And then like out of the corner of my I'm like, oh, BTS has picked up Decoder.

Oh no. Very entertaining. That was last week on Decoder. Next week on Decoder, we have the CEO of an app called Fuck You Pay Me, which is she was a former model. She has an NBA. She's built this app to help influencers get paid more money. Very cool.

Excite about that one. And then Ashley Carman is running. You may have already heard it if you're listening to this show. Our AI series in the Vergecast feed. This week was voice synthesis. She cloned her voice and talked with James Vennepa how all that would work. Next week is AI video. She's going to deep fake some video.

It's a very cool series. Very excited about it. That's in the Vergecast feed. Just a lot going on. Yeah. Here at the Verge. It's busy time. We're over.

Yeah. We went over. However long this show. show as we went over it. That's it. That's a rich cast rock and roll. Get the shot.