Upgrade - 1: Fly Casual

Episode Date: September 16, 2014

After a brief introduction to Upgrade, Jason and Myke dive into what everyone wants to hear about--the new iPhones! Jason has been using the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus for the last week, and he's got a full report. We also discuss the ins and outs of going to Apple events as a journalist, Apple product embargoes, and Myke's obsession with the iPhone 6 Plus.

Hello and welcome to episode one of Upgrade, a show that looks at how technology shapes us over time and drives us into the future. This is episode one. Today is September 16th, 2014. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you'll actually like, and TextExpander from Smile. Type more with less effort. My name is Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure of introducing your host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike, and hello to everybody out there. It's great to be here. It's great to have you on RelayFM, Jason. It's, yeah. Well, I've been on RelayFM, Jason. It's, yeah, I've been, well, I've been on RelayFM

several times, but this is episode one of Upgrade, which is exciting because I was just a guest in other people's houses before. And this is the home we share, Mike. I know, it's very nice, isn't it? It's cozy. It's very cozy in here. So, I mean, should we talk a little bit about Upgrade before we, like, get into the main topic? I think we should. I mean, should we talk a little bit about Upgrade before we get into the main topic? I think we should. I mean, it is episode one. And it is, yeah, we should talk about it at least a little bit before we talk about the stuff that's going on in the new iPhones, which I have and I can talk about now, which is exciting. about now which is exciting so we've been like basically this show is the way that i look at it is with you we have someone who has a vast amount of experience um right that means i'm old for a

man of your young age okay well done and you know you you are a man of great insight as well and you know now that you are a free agent it would be a travesty if you did not have a place every week where you could wax lyrical about what's happening in a technology industry and you know one of the things that i wanted us to focus on was not just apple i mean we're talking about apple today but i think that your sort of knowledge, it goes across different types of companies. So across like to Google and Microsoft and to maybe other different software and hardware vendors and stuff like that. Because I think that there's definitely more than just the Apple news cycle. And I think it would be really interesting for us to take a look at how things are changing over time, look at how things are going to change into the future, but across the entire industry rather than just one company or one type of thing.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, when we were talking about companies, I kept mentioning Amazon too, which I'm fascinated by. I'm a big Amazon. I mean, other than Apple, I think my number two company whose services and products I consume, it's probably Amazon and then Google below that. And there's a lot going on that's interesting. Obviously, as somebody who has written about primarily Apple stuff

and related for the last 20 years since I was a baby, obviously Apple is near and dear to my heart. And what's that saying? If you cut me, I bleed six colors. You know, that is true. But, you know, I always take a skeptical view toward Apple, and I'm always taking an open view toward the other stuff that's going on. And I think it's worth talking about that. And you can view that through a perspective of people as Apple

product users and as a perspective of people who are or are not, and how it affects Apple and how it affects the rest of technology. We're all using the web, web publishing, and the evolution of the web continues. And Amazon is, like I said, a fascinating company, too. So we have lots to talk about. And then if we want to horn in on Casey Liz's territory, we'll talk about feels a little bit, too. So we can do that. We can do anything as possible it's episode one there's a blank canvas before us mike nothing's holding us back anymore that's

right well and and i mean you you mentioned it uh one of the i love podcasting people who uh who know me may know that i have been doing a podcast called the the incomparable for about four years now that i started in my spare time, mostly because I thought podcasting was really cool and I wanted to do more of it. And I also wanted to do something that wasn't in the auspices of my employer, something that I could make and control and have it be exactly what I wanted it to be. And it has been that and continues to be that and now has a bunch of spinoffs. And at Macworld, you know, I could have forced things and said, look, I decree that the Macworld podcast will be my podcast and it will only be me and I will, you know, I could do that. But the fact is Macworld had a fantastic collection of people who wrote for it.

And I wanted them to all have a chance. And so since our feeling was that everybody who worked there, their technology parts of their brain were really being taken up by their employer, that limited my outlet in terms of tech podcasts. I guessed it on a lot of them, but I didn't feel like I could do one, and I didn't really want to start another one inside IDG. So having left IDG last week, when I knew that was happening, we started talking about it. Because I definitely do want to do podcasts about technology. And rather than put them at The Incomparable, which is really about pop culture, I decided I didn't want to muddy those waters with technology. I really love what you guys have been doing with Relay. And so here we are. So here we go. what you guys have been doing with Relay. And so here we are. So here we go. I mean, I feel like right now people are just clamoring to hear what we're about to talk about. So we should probably

give it to them. I think you're probably right. So as we stand today, my order is in, and I'll talk about what phone I've ordered. But you are one of the lucky chosen few, and you have an or multiple iPhones in your possession right now? I do. So I was one of the people that was fortunate enough to be given advanced access to the iPhone 6, which comes after they announce it,

but before they release it. And I've gone on and off that list over the years, but I got on at this time, which was kind of awkward as I was exiting Macworld. And so we sort of agreed that I would do one last review for Macworld of the new model. So I have both. I have the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. I've had them since last week. My review should be, if it's not up now, shortly on Macworld and maybe some other places too.

And then I'm talking about it with you here. But yeah, so I've been able to play with them for the last little while. And that's been fun. Before we talk about the products, I think something that interests so many people that are outside of this chosen few, of which there are many people that would like to be in it. I've always been very curious about what happens after the event is over. So the event's over, you get led into this ominous cube this time, right? Which is maybe a little bit different. We won't tell what the cube is for from from the ground level it wasn't ominous at all it looked like a really big apple store and it was just it was exactly what we all thought it was was going to be what we who who go to these

events not the like uh criminologists thought it was going to be which is a spaceship that would it was combined with some sort of surgery practice that would implant things in your head. It's a hands-on area. And at Yerba Buena, where they often do these events, but that's a much smaller venue, there is another building across the way from the main theater that was always set up as the hands-on area. But it was very small. And so even with a smaller theater, there'd be a long wait. There was actually, strangely enough, still a long wait to get into this thing. It wasn't that huge. But they had a big area with Apple Watches on little stands.

And then they had areas where they had iPhones laid out on the tables and Apple employees next to each station to show you how they work and also make sure that you didn't steal them. And then also some iWatches or Apple Watches I gotta stop saying that Apple watches I know I know Apple watches why just watches it could be I could be you it could be me uh and they had those with people too and that was funny because they had um the Apple employee would have one that they would put on your wrist and it was running in a demo loop so it wasn't actually functional in any way it would show you things and it would vibrate so demo loop. So it wasn't actually functional in any way. It would show you things and it would vibrate. So you could get the feel of like the weight of it and you could see what the screen looked like and you could feel what the haptic stuff felt like, but you couldn't actually use it. And then separately, while you had it on your wrist,

then they would demo on their wrist a very limited set, basically a script of what they could show you with the Apple Watch. So that was what that cube was. It's clearly not ready. No, it's just like the original iPhone. When I, at Macworld Expo back in 2007, I mean, I was one of the people who got brought in to see that thing.

They brought in, I don't know, 20 or 30 members of the press to touch the iPhone and use it. And there wasn't even a script. They're like, here, have this. And I remember it was like warm and that display was, which it wasn't even retina, but it was so high resolution compared to what we were used to. And it was such a weird feeling to do it. But also I remember from that, that I tapped on like the contacts app and what came up was obviously a fairly low resolution compressed jpeg of a screenshot of what the contacts app might look like and i thought okay you know i'll just back away from this one touch any of the app any of

the 11 apps that are here uh or however many there were and you you found that like four of them actually were there and the rest of them were sort of representations because they just weren't working right yet. And the Apple Watch felt like that. It's not done. We usually see Apple products when they're already being manufactured

and they're going to be shipping. And the iWatch, Apple Watch, I'm just going to keep saying it, Apple Watch, Apple Watch, Apple Watch. I'll say it. It'll appear. It's months away. It's months away. The software isn't done. People are talking sort of conspiratorially about the battery life. And all Apple will say is, at the end of the day, you will charge it, which implies it will still be functional at the end of the day.

But you know what? They don't know. I'm sure they are trying very hard to shoot for a goal, but they don't know what that battery life is really going to be because the software is not done. The hardware might not wait. But you can pre-announce and build interest one time, the first time, and that's what they did with the Apple Watch. So yeah, it's totally not ready. It's funny how not ready it was. In fact, I tapped on one and the guy was like, oh, you're not supposed to tap on that. I tapped on one of the apps and it opened and it kind of looked weird. And he's like, no, button, button, get us out of there. Because I think I got off the script a little bit. They didn't want us touching it. You just reached in anyway.

Well, I wanted to see about the tap targets because I was worried that the tap targets are so small that if you want to launch an app, are you really going to be able to get it? And it did a good job. I mean, it launched the app and then the app was kind of funny but um it worked uh pretty much like you would expect i mean it it didn't i didn't miss it and launch another app but by doing this i launched an app that wasn't supposed to launch apparently so does everybody that gets invited to the event get to go into the press area and see the devices? I think so. I mean, most of the people there are press or they're VIPs and they all get to be allowed in.

And then there are Apple employees that probably don't because the Apple employees are – some Apple employees were there to see the unveiling of it. But it is – there was a fire marshal there. It's a very limited space. They were letting people in as people left because they were at full capacity. So the press is all allowed to go and we all have our little colored badges that indicate that we're press.

And then the Apple employees, I think, if they're supposed to be there, they can walk right in. And if they're not supposed to be there, then they're told to go away, go home, go back to work. They probably show it to them another day or something. Probably so. So then how do you know if you're going to be given one of these units?

Do they come and find you? Like, how does that process work for as much as you're able to say i don't yeah i don't i don't know if it's secret or not um it's it's i mean john gruber famously wrote about one of these and uh and it works like that it it you get you get a heads up in advance from apple pr saying like hang around or we'll meet you over here or here's a time come over here and it can vary based on what they're doing are they just handing you a product to walk away with are they setting you up for a briefing um so you know there's a there's a heads up a high sign a little

secret handshake that says yeah stick around and when you don't get that then you're like oh okay i guess i'm not uh i guess i'm leaving with nothing but i've been there you just kind of like drag your feet around a little bit and like look at people be like me do you want me today but generally traditionally certainly in the katie cotton era of apple pr uh they wanted you to really keep it on the down low like like don't don't mention this to anybody else and don't just be, you know, fly casual. Come over here and we'll take you back into this other area where you'll wait for your briefing. Don't show off that you got a briefing and, you know, I gotta go. I got my secret product briefing, right? They always sort of frowned on that. That said, I did, as I was leaving the hands-on area, I ran into a writer of some note who was carrying an Apple logo, you know, Apple store bag with a couple of boxes in it.

And I thought, well, those are your review units. It was pretty funny. It was like not quite a secret. But then again, you know, what was that person going to do? Were they going to hide it in a bag somewhere and deny all knowledge it doesn't seem strange to me though to give to give you an apple store bag because like i know people are getting the phones that day and everyone in the world knows where the event is like so if you see somebody walking away with with uh an apple bag with a couple of boxes in it, you know what's in the bag.

Right, and everybody knows. And I think Apple is not really as concerned about that. They don't want people kind of like flaunting their access. But ultimately what Apple really doesn't want is public displays of the new devices. So if that person had gone over to a TV crew and said, let me show you this new thing, they would be in trouble. But it's not quite – it seems to me not as severe as it used to be. It used to be really like you can't admit that this thing exists. You can't admit that you've been using it.

You can't show it to anybody. And now it's a little bit different. Now it seems to be more like no public exhibitions. But if I'm reading the rules right, I know, I'm within my rights to use it, and even for people to see it. But I can't, you know, write about it publicly. I can't go on somebody's TV show and show it, anything like that. It's meant to be kind of, you know, people can nod and say, oh, there's Jason, he's got the new iPhone. If they ask to look at it, I probably, I might shake my head and say, I can't

really, or I might show it to them briefly, but it's a private conversation. And then I walk away, but you gotta, you know, the idea is, um, you've got this for some extra time so that you can work on your review, um, and have it and then take your time with it. Um, you know, don't turn this into a media opportunity for you to be the first one to break, you know, the personal demo of this new device. So, you know, it's the rules are shifting, I think, because Apple PR's approach may be shifting, but generally it's kind of common sense. So let's talk about the devices. So how have you been using them? Have you been just distributing your time between both?

Because this is different, right? Having two phones to look at at once. Yeah, it is different. I mean, I've done that before when I reviewed the iPads, when there's an iPad Air and an iPad Mini, right? I end up with two and I think, okay, well, here we go, right? You got to do a little bit of both. This is, so it's a little different i put

my sim card from my 5s in the six um and they they come with sample you know temporary sim cards so they've got cell access anyway so i put that in my six uh review unit so that i could get my phone number on it and i could actually use it um you know you know, I set up, put in passwords and stuff on that on the bigger one. I, I, you know, I can't have them both be my phone. Um, so that one, that one was still using the, the demo SIM, uh, you know, the, the two week life, one month life, uh, SIM card. And, uh, and, uh, yeah. And so I I've used that some, but I probably used the smaller one more just because I feel like it's a better match for how I use my current iPhone. And I wanted to see that experience where the other one seems a little further away from my current frame of reference.

So, yeah, I try to use both of them. to Portland for XOXO this past weekend and tried to use them there and on the train and just get a sense of what it's like to live with these things in your pocket. Because that's the most important thing is to pull it out of your pocket and use it and see what's different and how it feels different. But you had some attention to XO.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you try to, like I said, fly casual. You're just like, you're not trying to walk around going, hey, anybody want to see the iPhone 6? You don't want to do that. You don't want people taking pictures of you with it. You just don't want to do that. How big are these phones?

Like, I know people have shown, you know, they've been printing off PDFs. I've seen people carving them out of wood to make them on 3D printers. But you actually have the thing that you use and you've been using it. So it may be a certain size, but you know from use how big it feels when you're tapping buttons and turning the volume up and down. Is there a way that you can try and describe, compared to the 5S, what the 6 and the 6 Plus feel like to use from how big they are? Yeah, I'm still trying to process it.

The 6 doesn't feel as shocking as you might think. Part of that is the curved edges. It's got a much more curved feel like the iPads a little bit. bit i mean it really is sort of like taking on this this other design language that's been coming back with apple devices the ipod touch has a very curvy edge the ipads have a curvy edge and the iphone since iphone 4 has had the straight edge that you know 90 degree it's got the metal ring around it and these don't. And so when you hold it in your hand, the smaller one, especially, it actually doesn't feel that much bigger because it's thinner and because it's curved on the edges. And so I was expecting it to feel more kind of like dramatically oversized and you get used to that pretty quickly. So in that sense, I don't think it's a big deal.

So in that sense, I don't think it's a big deal. In another sense, though, I think once you start using it, you realize that it is bigger because every now and then I try to reach my finger or my thumb to a faraway point and it doesn't go like it used to. And I realize some of my body language has to change because it is bigger. And when you're trying to reach for something far away on the other side of the screen is when you really notice it. Compared to the Plus? Well, the Plus, there's no comparison. I mean, I can hold it in my hand and it feels fine. But it is huge.

I mean, it's huge. I have tried to have an open mind to it. The but it is huge. I mean, it's huge. I have tried to have an open mind to it. The big screen is nice. It's like half an iPad. I have an iPad mini, and it's not an iPad mini, but it is pushing upward toward an iPad mini from an iPhone. It's still an iPhone, but it is really big. Typing in landscape on the iPhone 6 Plus, I actually felt like I was stretching my thumbs to reach the letters in the center of the screen for thumb typing. It actually felt like not – I'm used to sort of having my thumbs not stick straight. I could do it, but I didn't feel – it was kind of a long way.

I was surprised. I'm like, wow, this is a really large, really wide, held in that orientation, really wide keyboard that I'm typing on now. And I thumb type on my iPad mini too, so it's not like I'm not used to stretching my thumbs, but it struck me that this is a large device. It really is. You're going to notice how large it is. I think iPhone 5 users will get used to the 6 pretty quickly. After a few days, your frame of reference will change a little bit, and I think it'll probably be fine. The 6 Plus is just a different beast. It's totally different.

In the keynote, Fushila mentioned about the devices being curved. Did he mean—I haven't seen anybody really clarify this. Did he mean that the screens being curved. Did he mean, I haven't seen anybody really clarify this. Did he mean that the screens are curved or just the edges? No, just the edges. It's instead of having that chamfered edge, we all learned that word

and now it's useless because it's not there anymore. Instead of having that chamfered edge where you've got the sort of 90 degree angle and then there's the little edge part that's at the 45 degree angle that's all shiny. um instead it just uh there are glasses on the front and then the there's a curved metal back plate so it curves around to the back and and as a result when you hold it in

your hand you don't have those you don't feel those uh you know 90 degree angles as much instead what you get is this this uh sort of smooth curve. So I actually think it's got a more pleasant hand feel. Is that a thing? Well, more pleasant feel when you hold it in your hand. I don't know. Is it like mouth feel except it's hand feel and suddenly we're cooking. And it also reminds me of the original iPhone. I think this is the, that had a curvy side thing and this has got the same thing so it's uh it reminds me of that another thing that struck me about it is that the um this is the first time on the iphone that the camera has stuck out yeah that seemed like a really i'm surprised to have not seen more

criticism of this because apple didn't mention it i wonder why yeah this is something that you see lots of criticism that people levy towards android phones like it has some like a lens or something that sticks out of the back right because so my the way that i've had devices like this i've used devices like this and then when you lay it down on a desk and you press it it rocks i assume that the iphone does that it it does a little bit depending on where you press if you press right at the top it's going to rock a little bit more as you get further down it's it's it's really stable it right the the camera lens pushes out it doesn't push out very far it pushes just at the lens there's not like a big bulge but it is definitely a departure because it's not

a completely flat back. Now, I never use my iPhone while it's laying on a flat surface. I don't do that. It's in my hand. But if you do, you might notice a little bit of rocking. It's true. It's not as severe as if the whole back was curved like on the iPhone 3G, but it is real because it is sticking out. It doesn't stick out very far either, but I think this is one of those cases where Apple just, they wanted the product to be thin. They are obsessed with the product being as thin as possible, and it is thinner than any previous iPhone. But the laws of physics require that you have some space for the optics in a camera. And they know how important having a good camera is. And they've spent a lot of time in the event talking about how great this new camera is.

And those two things fight against each other. And so they finally decided to just kind of hold their breath and have it stick out and just deal with it did they need to shave those millimeters off do you think i don't know i mean i don't know about the way they i mean the way it feels good and i wonder if it was thicker um would would it feel as comfortable in my hand if it was thicker and would it it weigh more because presumably if they made it thicker they'd add more battery or something like that to it yeah um which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing by the way but they they have a lot of variables that they're solving for they're solving for battery life and they're solving for lightness and they're solving for thinness and they're also solving for camera quality and you make some tough

choices and you know they they seem to be comfortable with their battery life that they have on iPhones, which a lot of people aren't, but Apple seems to be comfortable with it. And they want it to be thin and they sacrifice that completely flat back to also have the camera be good. Let's talk about the Retina HD screens.

Does Retina HD mean anything or is it just a marketing term? Can you see a difference in these screens and how they look, like the color reproduction, things like that? I wear glasses. I can't see much of a difference. can't see much of a difference. We're talking about resolutions that are so high that they are the retina, whole idea of the retina thing is that it's beyond our ability to perceive. I mean, if you zoom in or you have great vision and can look really closely, you could probably tell some difference. I think, I mean, it's a marketing term. In fact, I think it's sort of a redundant marketing term, right? I mean, retina is already HD, In fact, I think it's sort of a redundant marketing term, right? I mean, I already, Retina was already HD, I think.

Although this is capable of, you know, 1080, beyond 1080. But, you know, it's, I don't know, they just wanted a marketing term that it's better than Retina. And so rather than say better than Retina, they say Retina HD. it's what they're doing that's interesting is that they're um technically what they're doing is very much what happened with the retina macbook pro which is your prediction by the way bravo nailed it yeah completely well this seems to be so apple at some point decided high resolution screens don't need to be pixel perfect apple was a one-to-one pixel perfect company for a long time. And when the Retina MacBook Pro came out,

and I remember we actually, at WWDC, we got one at Macworld and we did a party that day or the next day and Marco Arment took the Retina MacBook Pro and like was doing all this crazy stuff to it, like during the party. And one of the things we found out is that if you take a screenshot on the Retina MacBook Pro pro it's larger than the physical resolution of the screen it's like what is happening and the answer is how is this possible apple decided that the scaling

and the gpu is so powerful and the screens are so high resolution that you're actually better off rendering your display at a larger resolution and then just scaling it to fit the screen. And back, anybody who was trained in the days of, of, of, uh, lower resolution flat panels, the idea that you would do anything but one-to-one, it's like you get a fuzzy screen because then it has to anti-alias everything on the screen and everything looks bad. Everything looks fuzzy. But what Apple found out when they were building the Retina MacBook Pro is that above a certain DPI, you can't tell that it's scaled because the anti-aliasing, the pixels that are fuzzy because they're actually between pixels, are so small as to be imperceptible to the human eye. And when you step back,

it looks fine. And that was the premise of the Retina MacBook Pro. That's what that machine does. And that's why you can change the size of what goes on the screen to a whole, there's like a slider. In the iPhone 6, that's what they're doing. Certainly on the 6 Plus. I'm not sure whether they're doing it on the regular 6, but on the 6 Plus for sure, that's what they're doing is they're scaling it at a large resolution and then, uh, and then scaling it down there. So they're drawing it big, scaling it down. Uh, you can't tell really. Um, but this is, it's going to make difference for developers because the rules have changed, have really changed. They're not one-to-one anymore.

But for users, you're not going to be able to tell. And it actually enables them to do some other interesting things. There's essentially a large print mode in, I forget what it's called, in the iPhone 6 Plus, where you can make just everything bigger. So you can opt to either have more information on this giant screen or just have it be like a regular iPhone screen big. Like all the words are big, all the icons are big. And that's all because now they're sort of free scaling it. They're happy to scale the screen to any number of, you know, ways you might do it. And so that's an interesting approach. So they're very much kind of like they've gone off the, there's one X and then there was like, there's two X, but it's all pixel perfect.

There's just four pixels there instead of one. Now we are living in a scaled display world for the iPhone. And so, yeah, it's going to be different. But the screens, the Retina HD, which is where we started with this, are so high resolution that it lets them get away with it. Do you see any difference between the two? I mean, obviously, the Plus has like a million more pixels. Can you see any of those million? Like, when you put those phones next to each other, can you see that there is a more dense screen on the Plus than there is on the 6?

I can't. But like I said, I wear glasses. I think what you see is that there are more pixels because the thing is huge. In terms – I mean if I hold them right up to my face, this is what I'm doing right now. I mean, I can't see the pixels on the smaller one. So I certainly can't see them on the bigger one. But this is the, so the question is, why would you add pixel density when you can't see it?

And this is the answer. The answer is you do it so that you can scale the screen in different ways and nobody can know, nobody knows that you're scaling it because it's so high resolution. In fact, the other place where there's scaling is when you're running an app that hasn't been modified to support the new screen sizes. This is what happens is it just gets scaled. And you can kind of tell that it's scaled if it's a bitmap resource, it's a graphic or something versus text, but, um, you know, it looks pretty good. And the reason it looks good is that that high resolution screen is so high resolution that a lot of the artifacts that you would notice for scaling are too small to see, and it all just kind of comes out in the wash. So I guess that's the rationale for having a super high res or let's say Retina HD screen is for scaling stuff and not because you're actually seeing those pixels.

Because if you've got even normal eyesight, you'd take a look and you can't see the dots. You still can't see the dots. So that's not any different. Should we stop and talk about something, as Casey would say, something cool? Of course we should. Thank you so much for doing that. It's episode one. We got to, you know, we're learning here, but we do have sponsors. I don't want to forget our wonderful sponsors. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Igloo, the intranet that you'll actually like.

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It's one more. Another A. It's one bigger. Yep. Is there any perceptible difference between the models? Oh, perceptible. Why did you have to say perceptible? Testably, yeah. Testably, they are different.

But testably, they are different. It's actually exactly what we saw last year with the iPad Air and the iPad Mini Retina, where at the event, we all thought, oh, they're essentially the same specs. It isn't like an older chip or anything in the Mini. They're the same except that the A7 running in the mini was running at a lower clock speed, probably to save on battery. This is the case now, too. The iPhone 6 Plus is running at like 1.4 gigahertz, and the six is running at 1.2 gigahertz so the six plus is faster uh a bit than the six because it's running at a higher clock speed so it's it perceptible i don't know i mean it's really hard to tell they they are um they're really similar. They're really close. They're both faster than the 5S, but not, I would say, not hugely so. I'm sure there are ways where we're going to notice.

But this is actually, there was a really interesting chart at the event last week where they showed the incredible march of processor performance from from the original iphone and what we all noticed watching it was that used to be a chart that just kept accelerating and uh it didn't accelerate this time it no it kind of seemed to the curve started to bend the other way well the last the A7 was so much faster than the A6. It was like twice as fast. It was dramatically faster. And it's hard to keep that up. It's going from 32 to 64, right?

Yeah. That was the main reason for the A7. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there's some other stuff too, but I mean, it was a huge leap for them. And this time they didn't... The A8 doesn't make a huge leap. As far as we can tell, it is just faster.

It is... I mean, they said it's like 20% faster. It is faster than the A8 doesn't make a huge leap. As far as we can tell, it is just faster. I mean, they said it's like 20% faster. It is faster than the A7, but it looks to me like the performance gains that they've been able to eke out as they've been growing the A processor line are slowing down now. It's not like the processors are slower. The processors are still faster, but they're only, whatever, 20% or 30% faster instead of twice as fast. And so, yeah, that's a sign of something that Apple – maybe just that Apple couldn't keep up those speed increases because they were really crazy for a while. I think that team was eking out every possible last bit of performance. that team was eking out every possible last bit of performance. What I thought was interesting is that they compared themselves to the competition and talked about how they can run at those faster rates for longer. And that is a way when you're comparing it to other devices that it can win.

But, you know, and it is totally faster than the iPhone 5S with the A7. There's no doubt about it. But it's only 20% faster. It's good, but it's also interesting to note that it's not like they doubled it again. The last time was a huge leap, and this is a more incremental push forward. You can't keep doubling it. Like eventually it becomes too powerful. Probably not every year.

And yeah, well, that's the other thing is that they might be able to make it more powerful, but they also have to balance it with the fact that they've got a battery. And battery technology doesn't necessarily evolve as fast as chip technology does. technology doesn't necessarily evolve as fast as chip technology does. And they power management is a huge part of what they're designing here, because some of this is using less power or, or, or ramping up to those high speeds more efficiently so that they don't kill the battery. Because if you kill the battery, it doesn't matter how fast you go. So it's a tough balancing act. This is, this is some serious science. Um, but, uh, but it is faster. They are continuing their march. It looks like maybe it's going to go at a little bit of a slower pace now because they've made up so much ground over the last few years. I mean, it is dramatic how much faster these devices have been than the ones

four years ago even. But now it looks like it'll be a little bit, little bit shorter March, a little bit slower March than before. On the graphic side, by the way, that's an interesting case where, you know, these screens have a lot of pixels. And so you would actually, you would actually expect that they would be, it would be hard for them to keep up with a smaller display, and that actually is not the case. The graphics abilities on these is pretty impressive because they're able to eke out really great benchmark scores with, I don't know if there's some scaling going on, or if it's a full resolution or what, but the graphics power in these things is amazing. They have definitely cranked up the graphics power. And that's something that's hard to pick up because

they have a bigger screen. It's not like a Mac where you can plug it into the same screen and run all the tests. They have a bigger screen, so they have more pixels to draw or scale or whatever. And every time you make a bigger screen, you have to pixels to draw or, or scale or whatever. And every time you make a bigger screen, you have to improve the graphics performance, or it's going to slow down because it has to draw all those extra pixels. And, um, Apple's not kidding when they said that the graphics performance is, is, is up because it is, I, I, you know, I ran some tests and it's, uh, yeah, they, they, they put in the horsepower to draw these on these giant displays and scale and all of those things. And the result for a regular person is they still work like an iPhone.

They don't feel slower. They probably feel faster if you really paid attention. Is there any indication that there's more RAM in these devices? How much RAM? I think not. I mean, I need to do some more investigating there. But when I ran Geekbench on them all, they all reported basically a gig. All right, because I think that's what the 5S had. So, and yeah, when I ran that number on the 6, the 6 Plus and the 5S, they all gave me essentially the same response.

So I think not. I could be wrong because one of the challenges of using benchmark apps when a product isn't out yet is there may be bugs. Because the benchmark people need to look at the new product and find ways that they can make sure it's testing things appropriately where i have to sort of do some tests on my own but yeah they seemed they seem to have the same amount of memory as the 5s does like you didn't notice that you could have more safari tabs open or there wasn't anything really noticeable that you've seen that would suggest this i didn't try to open a billion safari tabs which i probably should do but uh it seemed to be pretty much pretty much the same can we talk about the interface additions a little bit sure so there's obviously there is a few more of these on the plus um and i'm i'm personally

really interested in the keyboard yes keyboard that is one of the big changes with these models that they're picking up some features that are it turns out, are iOS 8 features that we didn't know about because there wasn't a device that could use them, and now here they are. So is it just the Plus that has these additional keyboard features? No, in fact, so on both of these, when you're in portrait mode, what you get is a keyboard. It is the keyboard you would expect. However, one of the nice things about it, I'm opening them on both of them right now. One of the nice things about it is that the keyboard is bigger. Like the keys are bigger in portrait mode. So even though it's just the same old keyboard, the keys are larger.

And having more room to hit those keys, it really does help. On the Plus especially, that is a pretty big keyboard. It's not quite iPad size. But you've got more room to hit those letters and not hit the one next to them. But it's the familiar keyboard. And obviously, in iOS 8, you're going to be able to swap that out for a different keyboard. But in landscape is where the situation totally changes. They are taking advantage of the extra width on these displays to add extra keys on the sides. So basically, the 6 gets an extra column of keys on either side of the

keyboard. And the 6 Plus gets two extra columns of keys on either side of the keyboard. So with a default keyboard, and again, you can switch it out for something else. So on the 6, what happens is the microphone, an undo button, a comma, and emojis are on the left side. I imagine that for other people who don't speak in emoji, that would be the international button. I speak in emoji. And on the right side, you get a back and previous cursor button and a period. And then also the expand and and hide keyboard uh button is over there so that those are back that that back and previous that moves the cursor because they didn't mention it in the keynote and i have been dying to know yeah that's it moves the cursor back and

forth moves the cursor yep so a little cursor action just one one, you know, it literally moves the cursor back or forward for editing purposes. Now on the Plus, it gets even crazier. On the Plus, you get a, there's a cut, copy, and paste button. So there's each, there are three buttons. So there are three buttons. There's little scissors, a little sort of like box with an A with another one behind it, and a bottle of paste, I guess. It's kind of funny, kind of literal. But you've got to do something. So there are those.

So you can literally select some text, copy, move somewhere else, press paste, and it does all of that. There's a bold button, um which will bold bold your text like you think uh somebody at apple hates italics because there is not an italics button uh undo microphone emoji and then on the right side you've got left and right and now it's got exclamation point question mark period and comma over there. So it's trying, obviously, I mean, they've been thinking about what common uses are when you're in the keyboard mode. And these are the things that they think are most common to float to the top level. And you can still, you know, flick over to symbols and numbers and things like that, but they brought a lot of this stuff up to the top. So,

so yeah, there's a lot there on the plus but even on the uh even on the regular six you've got you know undo period comma and some cursor movement happening you mentioned earlier about the the it hurting to kind of use to thumb type on the six plus right it doesn't hurt but you can feel that you're reaching further and that it's it's further out of sort of what you're used to when you're typing a lot my thumbs are lazy they they they don't like to travel far so two two questions um is it is it still too small to kind of do any hunt and peck typing like if you put it down on the table is is the keys there too small to do that kind of typing with? I don't know how you type. I wouldn't.

My iPad method for typing with two hands would not work on these. It's too small for that. I think, yeah, I think thumb typing or holding it in one hand and poking with the other finger on the other hand are probably better input methods. But who knows? I think you could. I think you'd need to not use your thumbs because that's what always what I want to do with the iPad keyboard is space with my thumb. And there's just no room on this i you just hit whatever is below the phone it's just you can't it's just it's a little too compact because it still needs to show the upper part of the screen so you can see the content so it's it's wide but it's not super tall it's just wide and is it possible to get a split keyboard that is a great question i don't think so i'm actually trying that right now try pinching

apart so the way that you can do this on the ipad i didn't know if you just put like two fingers in the middle of the keyboard and just pull it apart it will split on the ipad doesn't work okay that's interesting to me that they have not done that. Nice try. Well, this is the thing. They made some very interesting choices about how iPad-y, especially the Plus is, and how iPhone-y it is. And every time I think

it's going to behave like an iPad, it basically doesn't. It has a layout that is sort of like... It reminisces on the iPad in the sense that you can... You can have a column on the left for your mail and show the mail on the right, which we've only reminiscing the iPad in the sense that you can, um, you can, uh, have a column on the left for your mail and show the mail on the right, which we've only seen on the iPad up to now.

But below that, uh, you know, it's still not the iPad. And there are lots of other changes that don't there, there, you know, it's an iPhone. It reminds you like, no, this is an iPhone. I'm not going to let you do these crazy iPad things that you think the iPad should do because I'm not an iPhone or I'm not an iPad. I'm an iPhone. So it's funny. It's just enough to make you start thinking, oh, this is like the iPad. And then you realize, nope, it's not. Let's talk about that then, because I'm super interested in this. So they showed on stage some of the Apple apps taking advantage of the additional screen real estate and showing some more iPad-like assets.

Is this just on the Plus or is this on both? So like showing messages with the split pane view and things like that. That is, so apparently there's a concept in the UI now that's something like a large-sized display for phones. And it's like responsive design on the web where below a certain size it uses A and above it it uses B. And the plus is above it in landscape. And the six is above it in landscape and the six is not and so almost nothing um there's a whole class of features that only exist on the plus so the in in the notes or settings or mail app if you on the plus if you put uh the phone on its side you will get that extra column on the left.

That doesn't happen on the phone. The regular iPhone 6 doesn't happen. It's just like your iPhone today. It doesn't. And that's so the breakpoint is in there somewhere between the little. I keep saying it's a little phone and it's not because it's bigger than the iPhone now. The smaller of the two. And the larger of the two has all of this. So not only does it do things like putting the column there, it's got a landscape

springboard, the home screen, which no iPhone has had before. And what's even wackier about that is that because this is a 16 by 9 device instead of a 4 by 3 device like the ipads the dock rotates the dock is on the right side of your screen with the items in the dock stacked it's crazy so uh that's very interesting and the animation for that is actually really funny just on the plus um where when you rotate it, it's like the dock goes away. And then obviously it's run behind your phone, and it goes all the way back to the other side, and then it pops in on the other side. It's very strange. Hey, buddy.

Yeah, yeah. Here I am. What? Did something happen? I'm right here. But so, yeah, so a lot of these tricks are only on the Plus. The Plus is a weird new device that is between what we think of as an iPhone today and the iPad. But it's not either. It's following some rules that are in between.

And for developers, especially, that's going to be a challenge because they're going to need to think, you know, what is my – and Apple has provided the tools for them to do this, but they've got to think, what am I going to do in these different device sizes? What do I want the behavior to be? And I think Apple has obviously given them some guidance by making some decisions on its apps, but it'll be interesting to see how other developers use it because it's not – you know, it a really really tiny ipad and sometimes that will be good enough and other times you'll be like you know it's too cramped and you should just use your iphone layout because uh it's just there's too much stuff on that screen even though it's a big screen it's not the size of an ipad so i'm gonna assume but i want to ask the question anyway to make sure that current universal apps do not show you this iPad view. I'm assuming that they have to be like iOS 8 developed with the new sort of layout stuff. iPad apps are iPad apps, and so they don't run on an iPhone.

They don't run on an iPhone. If it's an iPad-only app, that's not the point't run on an iPhone. They don't run on an iPhone. If it's an iPad only app, that's not the point. This is an iPhone. And so it will run in iPhone mode if it's a universal app. And if it hasn't been updated, they will scale it up. And like I said before, and the scaling up looks okay. They don't letterbox it or anything. These are all 16 by nine devices, even the 5S, or anything. These are all 16 by 9 devices, even the 5S, right? And the 5. So they will all just scale until they get updated to support the larger screen sizes. And, you know, that's it. And for iPad app developers, they're going to have to make the decision. Do I want to make an iPhone version? I don't think they have the ability to make a version that only runs on the Plus. I think they

have to commit to doing an iPhone version of their app and then decide what shows up in these various places. So it's going to be a challenge for people who've really segregated the iPhone and the iPad. If they've got both versions, they can just make their iPhone version, maybe inherit some of the features. If they've only done iPad, but they want to be on the iPhone six plus, they're going to need to do an iPhone version of their app because that's how they're going to get it. So it's funny. It's the biggest wrinkle in being an iOS user and especially for developers since the iPad came out because this is a totally different class of device that's in between the

other two so my my concern is that excuse me my concern is that there's going to be an issue with the with this i i feel like many developers will choose the six um as i think many people i think in our little bubble will choose the 6 and not the 6 plus yeah so my concern would be that there won't be as as there won't be enough dedicated development to take advantage of that screen size like in the way that especially since iOS 7 it seems really that the iPad development has slowed down. Right. My concern is that there won't be enough advantage taken of this larger display. I mean, I know it's so early, but do you have any sort of feel for that?

You know, I think obviously good developers, developers who really care about this stuff, they're going to buy one of these just because they're going to want to have it for reference. And yes, you can also develop in the simulator. The simulator will simulate this device and you can see this is how it looks on this device versus this other device. But in reality, let's be honest, the thing that you carry around with you in your pocket every day is going to be the most influential device. It's going to be. If you're a developer, it's going to be the most influential device. So you might even have a 6 Plus around, but if the 6 is the one that's in your pocket all the time, it can't, even the most conscientious developer has to fight against the idea that it's an afterthought because it's not their daily use. That said, I do think a lot of developers are going to say, oh, this is great. I can take these decisions that I made for my iPad layouts

and apply them. And in addition to that, I also will do all the other things you need to do to support these other sizes and have have uh some scalable layouts instead of pixel perfect layouts uh you know they probably want to do that anyway right because they don't want to have a scaled up uh iphone app on the six and if they're doing that and they've got some previous ipad work they could probably put it together but that is an extra direction to go and depending on how well this sells um they might not choose to do it especially i mean you talk about the context that you live in i mean not only it's not just the phone in your pocket it's the country that you live in um and uh i live in the united states of america by

the way mike yeehaw no comment okay actually i'm. I live in the state of California, Mike. It's where we're our own. The independent state. It's the U.S. out of California. Anyway, yeah. So, like, this phone's going to sell really well in Asia. The Galaxy Note has shown, and it's ilk, has shown that in Asia there's a huge market for giant phones. Not so much in the West, but in, there's a huge market for giant phones. Not so much in the West, but in Asia, there's a huge market for giant phones. And there are a few reasons for that. I

actually talked to some people at Apple about this, and they acknowledge that this is true. And there's some reasons. Some people in Asia are single device people. They don't have a computer. They don't have a tablet. They have a phone. And if the phone is their only computing device, they want it to be big because they want to do everything on it. And having a bigger device is better than having a little tiny device if it's your only device. And there was also, it also is a status symbol in a lot of Asian countries and cultures. Apparently, this is what I hear, you know, bigger is better. This is probably also true in Texas. I don't know. But the idea like, my phone is the big phone, right? I got the big, look at me, I got the hugest phone. And other cultures are like, whoa, I'm just going to get a tablet if I want that. I don't want a huge phone. So my point is, developers who are serving those markets where this device is going to sell really well, those are the ones who are going to need to pay the most attention to it.

So you may see apps that sell really well in Asia going crazy over this and taking full advantage of it. And apps that really sell best in the United States and Europe, not. We'll have to see. But that might be something interesting to watch where the really Asia savvy apps rush in to support the iPhone 6 Plus. Because I think it will, you know, I imagine it will follow the pattern of phone sales up to now, which is that in areas where big phones are popular, this will be popular. anecdotal in the uk where you don't see someone with an iphone they tend to have a large samsung phone like a note or one of the the new s5s which is approaching that sort of five inch size well it makes sense right i mean that's an option that apple doesn't offer so if you want a big phone you need to buy a a giant samsung phone and also i see especially the note uh far more in use by women than men i've heard i've heard i mean everybody's got everybody's their own thing but

that that scenario is a scenario that sort of makes sense um i've heard some women say look i want a small phone because i i you because I want to hold it in my hand and I have small hands and I can't hold that giant phone in my hands. But I've also heard women say, look, I don't have pockets. I carry it in my bag. I'm fine using it two-handed when I pull it out of my purse or whatever. So why would I not want a big phone? Because, you know, so I can see both scenarios, right? I mean, some women want it to be a small phone that they can have in their pockets or they can have with them and hold it in one hand. And that's how they work. That's how they use the device. And other women are freed by the fact that they've got a bag already so they don't have to worry about the size of the phone.

And the way they use their device is conducive to having it be very large so there are a few different use cases here but you know both of them make sense to me it totally makes sense that if you don't have to worry about having something gigantic in your pocket because you're you have small pockets or no pockets then you know why not so i want to talk about reachability. I want to get your idea on the name. But we'll come to that in a moment. But first off, I just want to take a quick moment to thank our second sponsor for this week's episode.

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Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show. Well done. Reachability. Reachability. Why did they call it this? You got reachability, Mike? I wish I did. So it works by double tapping the home button, right?

Like tapping, not clicking or pressing. Right. So the home button, you know not clicking or pressing right so the home button you know it's touch id which means it can tell when you're touching it so it's like a little like a trackpad where you don't have to depress it for it to know that you're touching it and therefore they've turned that into a gesture where if you on on either phone if you double tap on the home button, everything slides down like toward your thumb, basically. So in the springboard, it slides the – it's funny. It just scrolls the apps down. They just all kind of slide down. The whole screen doesn't come down.

Just the apps slide down. But in most apps, what happens is it's like somebody took your screen and just like pulled like a like a um like a roll-up uh window shade they just kind of pull it pull it down toward your thumb halfway and the idea there is then you can touch something that's on the top part of the screen and and when it registers that touch then it all slides back up and it goes on its merry way how quickly does this animation occur uh like does it like all the way go down does it like have some animation where the phone like it brings everything down to you like a shade or something well yeah it slides down it doesn't it doesn't like pop down it slides down it's

pretty fast but it's definitely an animation and then what's left above it is sort of this void it's not it's not black i think maybe it is it but it's a it's a mysterious void it's not your backdrop it's not your lock screen thing i think i think it's a uh just a mysterious void it surprised me to see that because that black background seems to go against some of the work they set out with iOS 7, like the layers. Yeah. It feels like there should be at least, I mean, it probably doesn't look great,

which is probably why I didn't do it, but like the transparent layer of your home screen back there. You know? Right, right. There's the logic question of what's behind there. And they've decided to just keep it simple and have it be nothing. Nothing's behind there. But you're right just keep it simple and have it be nothing nothing's behind there but you're right if we can see translucency perhaps the home screen should be back there all

grayed out you know all all blurred out like we're watching it through a layer of glass well like when you go into multitasking and the way it looks there you know you see you see your background sort of blurred out like behind the frosted glass look. I just expected it to look like that as opposed to just a black emptiness. I have one very specific question. When you're in an application and you tap the status bar, in most good apps, it will jump to the top of the content. Does this work with reachability oh man that's a great question you know you can like open tweet bot now or something that's why i like

that's why i like you so much is that you ask these great questions well that was actually something that federico asked on unconnected so i'm pulling i'm just pulling that question in so it does work it brings it to the top and then i assume it snaps back up uh yeah actually let me let me see i i think it doesn't snap back it generally when you interact with this it snaps back up no in fact uh well it snaps back up after a moment's pause so i wonder i think maybe it's waiting um to see if you want to do something else at the top. Yes, indeed. That's good.

That's the right interaction. And if after a second or so you do new interaction, it just slides the whole thing back up. But yeah, you have to, I think, get it right. I think if it's down a little bit too much, I think it won't work. But this is one of the funny things about the reachability is it does, if you tap in the black void, it goes away.

But if you tap right at the top, it does like you tap the menu bar. And, yes, you can do full interaction anywhere on that screen, that portion of the screen that's there using reachability. And while you're interacting, it seems to keep the reachability mode, except when it doesn't. And this is one of the things that actually I think they're going to need to work out over time, is sometimes I tap something and right away reachability is over. And other times it waits to see if I want to do more, and then it finishes and slides everything back up. And I cannot figure out why it does one and not the other.

That is true. and slides everything back up and i cannot figure out why it does one and not the other and i i suspect it's i suspect it's just the software is inconsistent about that because really when i press a back button it should stay in reachability mode and let me keep on you know press it a couple more times and do whatever and and it doesn't seem to do that it seems sometimes it's like okay you press something i'm done right, instead of, do you want to scroll now? Do you want to press this button again? So it's a brand new feature, right? And hasn't gone through the broad developer beta testing that the rest of iOS 8 has. So it's a clever way to approach this, but it's not entirely consistent, I think.

Yeah, I think I called it something strange. Like I kind of coined this really weird phrase, which some people found peculiar, an elegant solution to an inelegant problem. an elegant solution to an inelegant problem huh so like you i think you know really you'd usually say like an elegant solution to an impractical problem or something like that but it to me just feels like it's it's a nice way of doing something that is otherwise really awkward like it doesn't feel like it's it's that there is no perfect thing here but what they've done is create something that gets over what is an actual problem with these display sizes but it's not perfect i talked to gruber about this a little bit on the talk show when i was on with him right before the event and we were both kind of

scratching our heads like how do you it's exactly how you described it this is a problem because human hands unless you're craig hoberry, human hands cannot reach across this giant phone. They can't. Unless you are a basketball player, unless you are somebody with enormous hands, it's just, it's too far. You gotta, if you want to use it one-handed, which oftentimes we do. People, not always, but a lot of people use iPhones with one hand a lot of times. And so how do you solve that? And, and do you have like a virtual finger or, I mean, there's, and so yeah, reachability is weird, but it's, it's interesting to think about, um, you know, it's either that, or you create gestures or you just make sure that

there's nothing tabbable at the top of the screen. And one of the things I like about iOS 7 is that they added that swipe back gesture. If you swipe from the left side of the screen, it just goes back. You don't need to tap the back button. And it's a gesture, so not everybody even knows that it's there. But once you learn it, it's really convenient. And so I think that's good. You don't have to use reachability to get back to the previous screen. But yeah, I think you nailed it. It is not a particularly great solution, but it's better than not having one and saying like, literally, uh, sorry, you're going to need to use your other hand for this one. I mean, that's a Gruber was talking about, like, maybe they scale it down. Because

that was the Brian Chen in the New York Times had this story about this feature, essentially, but it was kind of vague. It was like, does everything scale down? They could do that. We know that they can scale the UI really well. That would be the other way to go is to literally just shrink everything down. And they probably tested that and decided that that was maybe problematic or favored left-handers over right-handers, although with a gyroscope, you could probably tell what way the phone was tilting and where the thumb was going to come from. I don't know. So, yeah, it's – I don't know if I'm going to use it. I mean, every now and then I think like, oh, yeah, reachability. and then I think like, oh yeah, reachability.

And Apple seems to think, the people who I talk to at Apple seem to think that this is something you just get used to, that it becomes second nature, like that swipe backward, that you tap a couple of times and tap it and go on with your life. And it's like, to put it in Futurama terms, it's the thing-longener. It's the, this makes my finger longer. It's a stupid invention, but in this case, having it is better than not having it. I don't know.

Did you watch Futurama? Yeah. Do you remember the thing longener? No, I don't remember that. Okay. It's one of the, like the smelloscope, it was one of Professor Farnsworth's lesser inventions.

Kind of pointless to have, it makes your finger longer. But that's totally what's happening here is you got to do something right yeah people use phones one-handed and the thing is too huge even the six regular six is kind of too big and that's why it's on that that phone too even the five and the 5s are a little bit large if you've got small hands so do you have any any specific opinions about the camera? Because this sort of thing, for me, the camera features are fantastic,

but most of the time I don't use them or I can't really tell. Right. Do you have any feeling on it? My feeling is that they're better, and Apple is not kidding. Apple knows that that's an important feature, that they're better. The optical stabilization in the bigger one is a great idea. You know, the cameras have come so far. I wonder how far they can go without some serious changes to the hardware. We're already seeing it with the camera sticking out a little bit.

At some point, the size of the camera is going to be the issue. And I start to wonder if the next phase for Apple is going to be some mechanics to like literally pop the camera out when you're taking a picture and then draw it back in. Because at some point, that's going to be the problem is that they literally they need more depth than the phone has. And we're already there, but it could get worse. But I like that Apple really puts an effort into cameras. I no longer reluctantly take a picture with my iPhone camera. Even with the 5S, I don't avoid it because I know how good the pictures are going to look. the pictures are going to look and they might not look as great as an SLR, but it isn't worth it to go get the SLR because the phone is great. So yeah, I mean, every time they do this, the cameras

are better. And what I've really been impressed by is the way that they've handled focusing. I'd say even more for video than for stills. They made a big deal in the event of these focus pixels and the idea that they're able to, through the hardware working with the software, very Apple, do something that generally was available on things like SLRs before, which is use the focus of the light to determine where the focus point of the image should be. And that's great because focusing better and faster is good. What really has impressed me, especially with the samples they showed at the keynote, is the ability to move through a bunch of focus areas and have it feel natural. And some of that is using that technology and some of that is the software. A lot of video focus is instantaneous. It's like, you know, we can go from A to B, so we just jump there. And as somebody who's used to

watching TV and movies, they don't do that. They move physically, even if there's no physical focus ring, they move from one focus point to another. And what impressed me about the video samples, from one focus point to another. And what impressed me about the video samples, especially at the event, is they actually have, I mean, they're demos, right? But they're very impressive demos that somebody puts something close to the camera

and pulls it away and the focus follows them. And it doesn't wait and then snap back. It actually follows them. And that's impressive because video focusing, it's actually one of the reasons why I'm always reluctant to use my iPhone 5 to shoot videos, especially like that I'm going to show professionally, is because the focusing is crappy. Battery life. Please tell me that we have good battery life on these devices so one of the problems uh with testing a new iphone is that battery testing takes forever and you can't use

the phone when you're doing it essentially because it's got to run so i don't have quantified lab-based battery life answers for this. Apple's claims, which I think, you know, one of the things I said on Gruber's show also was the idea that Apple solves for a certain battery life. There's a certain amount of battery life that Apple thinks is appropriate for an iPhone. And with the 6, they did that again. I mean, they're claiming slightly better battery life than the 5S, but they're not claiming dramatically better battery life. Apple seems to think that's how much, however much that is, that's how much battery life a phone should have. And if you're somebody who runs out of battery all the time on your iPhone, that's frustrating.

Apple's just decided that for most people it's enough and that for the people it's not enough, they can get a case or they can have a little backup battery ready to plug into the charger when they need to, which is what I do. I mostly don't need it. And when I do, I have a little Kensington battery with a USB port and I just plug my iPhone charger into it. And in about 20 minutes, it sucks all the power out of the battery and the phone's back at charge. And that's what I use when I'm traveling and things like that. So obviously Apple has decided that's what they want to do. And I know that frustrates some people, but they think that's okay. And as far as I can tell, that's the truth of the six is it's got battery life like an iPhone because Apple makes them all roughly have the same battery life. The amount of power they consume changes, makes them all roughly have the same battery life.

The amount of power they consume changes, the amounts of battery capacity change. But in the end, Apple does the math to get them to work, to meet that goal of essentially 10 or 11 hours of usage time. And then the Plus has a bigger battery. And even though it uses more power because it's got a bigger screen, it's got a bigger enough battery that Apple seemed confident in giving it a few more hours of time. So it will last longer. It's not like you're – it's not a Razer Max or a Droid Max or whatever it is, those with two Xs, those giant Android phones with huge batteries.

It's not that. But it's got more life than the smaller device because they're able to lay that much more battery in there. So it'll last a little bit longer. But people who are dreaming of Apple making a 25-hour life phone, I don't think it's going to happen for a long time unless there's a huge breakthrough in either low-powered chips or amazing battery technology. Because Apple is not willing to make the size tradeoff to load a giant battery in there. Because Apple is not willing to make the size tradeoff to load a giant battery in there. And they think better that you make the tradeoff by sticking a case on it or that you do what I do, which is just carry an emergency battery to charge it up when you need it. I'm just going to keep waiting for those graphene batteries, right?

Oh, yeah. It's like fusion power. Fusion power and amazing battery technology are always just 30 years away, and they never get any closer. This is a kind of random question, and this is served just because it's something that I care about, but I don't know if a lot of people do. You might, actually.

The speaker quality, like the loudspeaker, I use it sometimes to listen to podcasts. I have a jam box, but sometimes in a pinch I will listen to it. I will listen to like Total Party Kill whilst I'm cooking pasta on Thursdays, right? It's a very common thing. People cook pasta while listening to people playing Dungeons and Dragons. It happens to be quite a lot, actually, which is kind of peculiar. Well, I always listen to John Syracuse's Hypercritical podcast while I mowed the lawn.

And now I mow the lawn and I feel the absence of Hypercritical. Whatever podcast I listen to, it's just not the same. That was our special time. And he ruined it. We mowed the lawn together, me and John and Dan. We mowed the lawn together. I did most of the work. They did most of the talking. And it's funny. I mean, that's one of the things I love about podcasting is you kind of fit it into your life in certain ways. And I don't know about the speaker quality of these things. I need to test that more. I think it's better. I think that the Plus has a nice, loud speaker. I know Apple talked about that at one point, that this is a fairly good, I mean, it's never going to be the same as having a big speaker, but that, that they've got a little

more room in the plus especially, but I got to say, I, I, I'm not ready to make a call or a judgment on that quite yet. I need to, I need to spend some time annoying people with loud sounds on my phones first before I do. My last question. I'll get back to you. Yeah, please do. Fortunately, we have episode two for follow-up. I've never done a podcast where I've been able to do follow-up before. Oh, we're going to do so much follow-up.

You won't even be able to contain yourself, Jason. It's just be all follow-up. Where do people go to leave us feedback, by the way, since we're talking about follow-up? Oh, so there's a few different places, actually. You can go where we have our show notes, which is relay.fm slash upgrade slash one. And you can click the little button and send us an email, which reminds me I need to ask if you want to receive that email. And also – I do.

Excellent. I volunteer as one of those hosts who will receive it in email, yes. Oh, that's so good. I love getting follow-up. We can't do follow-up on The Incomparable because the panel changes all the time. So I'll have, like, no John Syracuse on, and all the follow-up will be, what did John Syracuse say? Why did he say that?

And he's not there to defend himself. And this is exciting because we can actually, like, week to week, answer people's questions. It's not that, like, I don't love the feedback. It's just that on my other shows, I can't do anything with with it so like you're not going to do the doctor who follow up and the guardians of the galaxy episode like it doesn't make exactly it doesn't make any sense and the people who talked about the one thing aren't there for the other thing and you know but we'll be here for episode two so it's fine also twitter is a great place. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

And I'm I-Mike, I-M-Y-K-E. Someone needs to make us a fancy song that speaks those names. That's nice. I do love on Analog how you always describe Casey's Twitter account using the song from I can't help it. Cannot help it. So yes, please send in your follow-up feedback questions we would love to receive them so my last question for you um is which phone are you gonna buy i feel like i

know the answer but which phone are you gonna buy the six yeah um and and yeah the six i i i toyed with the idea of the six plus because i am an ipad mini. I have an iPad mini with Retina and I love it. And I have an 11-inch MacBook Air. So I like small things. And so this is the question of, do I want the smallest phone then? Or do I want a phone so big that I don't even need the iPad mini anymore? I can get an even smaller iPad. And the 6 Plus is not a smaller iPad. It is a bigger iPhone. It is, compared to my mini, I would prefer, in all those scenarios where I have to choose between using my phone or my iPad, the 6 Plus doesn't change the equation. It still, if I'm in that scenario, I want to use my iPad. So I could see, if you literally only have one device it makes sense um but I have I have an iPad and I really like it and it doesn't fill it fill that need for me so so the 6 makes more sense to

me the 6 feels a lot like the 5 although albeit a little bit bigger and um and uh yeah it's the next iPhone it's a nice it's the next iPhone. It's a nice jump in a bunch of different areas. We haven't talked about things like Apple Pay, which doesn't exist yet because it's coming in October, they say. I have a Whole Foods very near my house. I'm looking forward to going over there

with nothing but my phone and paying for something just because I can, but I can't yet. We have time to talk about those things. I mean, and I can reiterate why Apple chose the wrong country to put Apple Pay in, but they saved that for another day. Or perhaps the right country, but that is a great topic for a future episode. And we have those now because this is a podcast that we share together. That's lovely. I'm going for the plus, by the way. us by the way so really yeah so i have i have a few reasons so uh-huh i am a very very heavy iphone user very heavy and we've spoken about this before um i use my iphone constantly throughout the day

and it lives in a mofi juice pack like the is it the juice pack? One of the Mophie cases. I keep it in the Mophie case all the time. I will sometimes during the day, I will charge my phone by plugging it in at work. But then most likely throughout the day, I've also run down the battery of the Mophie case as well as that. I use my phone very, very heavily. There is an argument that I should clean my phone like restore

my phone it's an ongoing thing i'm thinking about doing it for the plus um and just starting fresh i'm thinking i'm seriously thinking about it and to try and give it the best start in life um but Um, but both of these phones are too big to live in a phone battery case. They're both too big. So yeah, I measured, I was going to say for now, you know, there will be, but they'll make it even more huge. They'll make them, but both of them will be too large at that point because it will, it changes the dimensions in every angle. And I think if you made the phone fatter

and bigger both of them would be unusable I think I mean I measured out my iPhone 5S with the Mophie case on it and it basically comes in just slightly under the 6 with the case on it

so but a lot thicker like twice the thickness so I've been thinking with the case on it. So, but a lot thicker, like twice the thickness. So, you know, I've been thinking of battery life. So I want to have the best battery life possible. So take number one, the plus.

And I have one of those Mophie packs like the little brick things. And I'll just see if I can keep that in my bag and just try and work through life like a regular human. I'm really, really interested in the bigger screen for it for additional content they both have bigger screens but i'm also really interested about the kind of pseudo ipad like layout that i think that's super cool and i'm very very excited about that because i am also an ipad mini owner um and Maybe I won't need an iPad mini anymore.

I don't know. I'll see how that goes over time. I don't like the larger iPads. So it would either be iPad mini and iPhone Plus, which kind of seems redundant anyway, or just iPhone Plus. They're kind of my main things, to be honest. Yeah, I think my – I mean it depends on how you want to use these different devices. If you are out and about and using your iPhone all the time, then it sort of makes sense. Although, again, it's going to – that size is going to need to work for you.

That's a challenge. And it's not going to be like double the battery life. It's just going to be a little bit larger battery life. Is that the scenario? I'm not to be doctor, you know, iOS diagnosing guy, but, you know, would having a mini with a data plan work for you? Or are you just, you're just moving around and have the phone in your pocket is the important part? The phone in my pocket is the important part. I've had data on iPads. How big are your pockets?

Let's find out. I mean, to buy it, I have to be very deep, I can tell you that. Because I'm buying off contract. Right. Oh, man. I'd been preparing for this, though. I'd been preparing. So my feeling is I'm going with the 6 Plus,

but I have two weeks to decide. So if after a week I cannot cope, I will return it and get a 6. But I feel like I need to. I want to try it. I'm interested in it. I would like to be able to use the larger device for a bunch of reasons. I think I could live with it. I have relatively big hands.

My fingers are – this is a very strange fact about me. For my hand size, my fingers are over average. There you go. A doctor told me that once, and it's true. I have very long fingers. So you have normal hands but long fingers? Yeah. Or large hands with even larger fingers?

I'm going to say maybe the latter. I'm glad we've gotten this all out in episode one. I'm glad we know. So you've got large hands and even longer fingers. Uh-huh. I'm like, all right. I have long fingers too. I have long fingers too.

I don't think my hands are large, but my fingers are large. My toes are long too. Does that help? I don't know. Depends how many phones you want to use. Interesting. So let's see. I mean, that's going to be the interesting follow-up, I think, for episode two is can Mike cope with a 6+.

I'm hoping that it will arrive in time for the next episode. So we'll see. I mean, I'm very interested in it. I mean, I'm very interested in it. And there's also a part of me, Jason, and I seem to have assumed this role we've connected as well, is to be the different one. And there's this part of me that's being drawn to,

this is the phone that not many other people are going to get. And I feel like that there should be some opinions about it. And boy, do I have opinions. You could be that guy. Yeah, I'd I have opinions. You could be that guy. Yeah, I'd be that guy. You could be that guy. And on every podcast, they'll be like, well, of course, I'm not like Mike Hurley. I just got the 6. And you'll become famous as that guy who got the big phone.

The only guy. Could be. I'll go from being the British guy to the guy who has the plus. We'll say they're very popular in Asia and with Mike Hurley. It's good demographics. So we'll see. I mean popular in asia and with mike hurley it's good demographics so we'll see i mean it's exciting right two phones is very exciting like uh the fact that we knew it kind of diminishes from it a bit but but two phones is very exciting to me i think so let me let me blow your mind here please because it's right it's four phones because they're still selling the 5C and the 5S.

And here's the question. Maybe I won't blow your mind, but here's what I wonder for next year, which is I wonder if the 5 or they create a new 6 or whatever that is a mini that's essentially what we think of now as the iPhone. I wonder if Apple really wants to give up that traditional iPhone size. This year, it's easy. This year, they can just keep the 5S around and lower the price, keep the 5C, which I think is actually done despite everybody kind of rolling their eyes at it. My daughter told me today she sees the 5C, which I think is actually done despite everybody kind of rolling their eyes at it. My daughter told me today, she sees the 5C everywhere. You know, it's not for super tech nerds.

I think it's for kids and regular people who want a new phone. So now that's free with contract in the US. So this year is a kind of a gimme for them. But next year, that's my question is, do they abandon at some point the smaller phone size or do they keep it and just make it another so that you have three? Right now, we've got two new ones and then the old ones are still around. But that would be my question.

Something I'm interested to see is perhaps in a year or two, the iPhone line will be three and it will be small, medium and large. Right now, it's medium and large. And then last year's great one is the small. I don't know. Yeah, what happens to that? We'll see. Does the small phone eventually fall off the end, or do they just keep one around forever?

Or do you, you know, yeah, do they just keep upgrading the specs and still call it the 5S? Or do at some point, do they call it iPhone Mini or iPhone 6, you know iPhone 6 Mini or something like that and change its look and change its internals but keep it a small one? Or are they just completely out of that market? The tail will be in the numbers. The tail is in the numbers. Right. We have no idea right now if these phones are going to sell.

No. I mean, what we know is that there is a market for larger phones because android has exploited it that that the the the only real major segment of the high-end phone market which is where apple plays that isn't controlled by apple is the large screen size because they don't have a phone there and they've left their competition to have that space what we don't know is if the people who currently have an iPhone will go to that extra size or not. And how many of them, how many of them will the six be good enough? Uh, you know, not too big, uh, versus people being repelled by it. I think most people will just go to the six and be fine

but it's going to be interesting to see if they feel that there's a market for a smaller phone because i think there is um i think some people don't really want want a big phone just for their lives and uh who's to say that apple i mean now that now that we have two brand new iphones why couldn't they just do three they're selling four models now in three sizes. They could keep doing that if there's a market for the smaller and presumably cheaper device. I don't know. My mom would never use a phone bigger than her iPhone 5C. She just would not. And she will upgrade her phone every couple of years. So when it comes to that point, she will not want to use one of those bigger phones. So then what do they do?

There are lots of my mums in the world, you know, and I'm sure that Apple doesn't want to stop serving that market, but I don't think we're going to know the answer to that question for a couple of years yet. Right. Because we need to see what happens when the 5S moves that far down

the line. Right. If they eliminate all of those phones when the 5S moves that far down the line. Right. If they eliminate all of those phones, because in the next year or two, those phones will still be available. Right. So, you know, if you don't want the larger phone, you'll just get the 5C or the 5S. And so it will take some time, although I am sure that Apple is doing some serious product research on this thing. Because, you know, and they probably know the answer already to whether this is really going to be a consumer need or not. But that's what I keep wondering is, I think maybe it is. Maybe this is a three-product product line. And this year, the only new ones are the two bigger ones.

But at some point, is it a three-product line, small, medium, large? Or are those old phones just kicked to the curb and it's old news and everybody's got a big phone now and you know eat it old man right i mean that could be but uh but i don't know i don't know it is great to see the 4s fall off that that lineup though yeah that's good. That stuck around for a year longer than it needed to. Yeah. And the 5, you know, the 5 was a really good model.

So the 5C for free with contract in the U.S., that's a pretty good deal because that's actually a pretty good phone. Even now I would say that's a pretty darn good phone. I love the way that phone looks. Yeah. Yeah, it looks neat. And like I said, my daughter would love one. I think she's going to get my old five instead. No color, just black.

But I won't feel bad about it. Exactly. She can color it up with a case. So there's still so much to talk about over the next couple of weeks that came out of this event because, you know, we have months worth of things happening

because we've got the watch and all that sort of stuff. So there's still a lot more to unpack, but I think for today, for the phones, we are done. Jason, thank you for sharing your thoughts on these. It's been fascinating. And if I may say, a great start to Upgrade. I think it went really well, and I hope people will keep listening.

We'll be back next week with Episode 2. How about that? Sounds fantastic. Until then, as we said before, our show notes are relay.fm slash upgrade slash one. And that's about it for this week. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody. Goodbye.