Upgrade - 321: It's the Hope That Kills You

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Jason and Myke break down Apple's iPhone 12 and HomePod mini launch event. Having four new iPhones with different pricing structures and camera options is a bit overwhelming, but they do their best to process it all and provide initial reactions.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 321 today's show is brought to you by team mystery bomb us a mail route my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley big episode today we just basically finished watching watching the Apple October event, the iPhone and HomePod mini event. It ended about an hour ago. And we are going to do our level best to break it down for you. But we will start this episode the same way that we start every episode of Upgrade, where, Jason, we ask you a question. And this one has come from me. Jason, I would like to know, having watched the Apple event

today, would you stand on the roof of Apple Park? I mean, are you offering? Yeah. If I could make that happen for you, would you do it? First off, I've never been anywhere at Apple Park other than the Steve Jobs Theater. So I'd love to be at apple park in general and would i stand on the roof sure it looks beautiful up there amid the solar panels i could stand there and i could explain why that thing you want is bad for the environment and the earth and you should feel bad for wanting it i cannot believe that Lisa Jackson stood...

It looked like... I mean, I'm sure it wasn't, but it looked like she was completely unsupported or secured. Yeah. You know how big Apple Park is? She was nowhere near falling anywhere. It's like slanted. If there was a big gust of wind

or one of those drones came over... No, it's fine. It's perfectly safe. You just grab onto one of those solar panels. You're fine. All I'll say is, I wouldn't do it. I am a person who has a fear of heights, and that would do me in.

I could not handle it. I would absolutely, absolutely do it. So, of course, we're going to be talking about everything that Apple announced today. But before every episode, when there is going to be event discussion we have a draft where jason and myself make our predictions we turn it into a game jason always wins jason's one again i can't i can't handle this anymore jason i said to you earlier i don't know why i

get so excited for the drafts considering i just keep losing them well you win one every now and then it gives you hope. You're so mean. And what did Ted Lasso teach us about hope? It's the hope that kills you. As is usual. Well, actually, the way that these drafts tend to go

is that one of us doubles down on something and that thing doesn't happen. So for me, this time, is I doubled down on Apple TV. So I had two Apple TV related picks. Neither of them happened. That was what did me in. If Apple TV would have been shown off,

you know, it could have been closer or it could have been a tie. But we scored it at 9-7 to you. I'll include in the show notes the scorecard if you want to peruse the picks yourself. Yeah, we got all of the iPhone picks right because we all, you know, we knew what we were picking and all those things happened. And so it ends up coming down to other things that are going to be in the event. And we had five picks of those.

And I, you know, I mentioned the HomePod, so I got two points off of that. You picked that Jaws would appear, and he did. An A14 boast segment down in the chip lab absolutely happened we got that again um i i had uh details of a not yet seen feature in ios there were actually two because there's the apple pro raw as well as the uh the little walkie talkie esque intercom feature i was thinking uh there were like there's a lot there were a lot of new features in the camera app right so like there was there was new there were like there's a lot there were a lot of new features in the camera app right so like there was there was new video recording modes there's new enhancements

to portrait and stuff i think i said last time that um if it was just a new you know thing in the photo app it wouldn't count but there were two other features including one that they literally intercom is the is the is the thing that cinches it here because i think we could still discuss pro raw like a little bit but and if it was going to be the decider i would have said you know he is the thing that cinches it here. Because I think we could still discuss ProRAW like a little bit. And if it was going to be the decider, I would have said, you know, he literally stands on stage or in the video

and says, this is a new feature. So I think I would call that a new feature since they said it was a new feature. But yeah, it doesn't matter. And then the last one, my big gamble that totally paid off is Mac not mentioned. Yeah.

Is Apple a company that makes a computer called the Mac? Well, they wouldn't stop showing them, which was so annoying to me. That's right. They were everywhere. You've never seen more Mac Pros in a presentation. I think we saw more Mac Pros in this presentation than we saw when they introduced the Mac Pro. There were Mac Pros littered all over the place. They've been rolling around inside of Apple Park

and bouncing into tables. They just get stuck. So the thing was, this could have gone one of two ways, right? If they didn't do the HomePod, but they did the TV, I would have won because you had two HomePod picks.

I had two TV picks, and that's just the way I ended up. The one that made me laugh the most, though, is that I had that pick that was the Emmy Awards are mentioned. Yeah. The Academy Awards were mentioned. Were they?

I missed that. Yes, because they had that short film from the Oscar-winning cinematographer. He hasn't won an Emmy, but he won an Oscar. And that made me laugh. It's like, oh, wrong award show. Wrong award show. And for the record, the tiebreaker,breaker which we didn't need was set at 80 minutes and it was about 68 minutes so i'm feeling like the next time we do this that tiebreaker that

over under is going to be down oh yeah because it's going to be down at 60 minutes or 70 if there's another event it's not running longer than the iphone no i feel like we've we've discovered apple's secret plan for when they do three events in, uh, when they do monthly video product release events, which is an hour shoot for an hour. Yeah. So I am frustrated to have lost again because now I can't even tie the year. Um, but I will say compared to previous drafts,

I was more happy with my, uh, my overall success in this draft. And it just ended up being really like, I feel like the craig fiderigi one was a stupid one to pick um but it was just unfortunate really to me i don't know if you felt this way but i was pretty convinced that they would have an apple tv at this event um or especially show or even i should say show off some content um but i think they ended up kind

of uh pushing it down because they've pushed it down the line a bit that that renewal to february maybe that's why they're not doing anything here now i think that's it all right we should get into it we should start actually by talking about the brand new home pod mini which i don't know about you jason but i actually think was the most surprising uh of all all of the features and all the things shown off today. But well, you can answer that question and we can get to it in a little more detail after our first break. This episode is brought to you by MailRoute. Bad actors threaten your business with spam and viruses, and they're even more sophisticated in 2020. Email traffic

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Yeah, he is a good actor in bad movies. It's different. They're not protecting you from Nicolas Cage. No. So, Jason, let's talk about the HomePod Mini, presented by a friend of the show, Bob Borges. I was very excited to see Bob come out on the stage. I was like, hey, Bob, I know you. But he's been shrunken down into a little tiny man who lives in a dollhouse.

Yeah, that was an interesting-looking set. But it's a small dollhouse for the small HomePod. So, straight up, we should just talk about the price. $99 for the HomePod Mini. So the HomePod Mini is a much smaller HomePod. It straight up, we should just talk about the price. $99 for the HomePod Mini. So the HomePod Mini is a much smaller HomePod. It's a little orb. Funnily enough, very similar to the new design of the Amazon Echo, which is also

circular. I love when this stuff happens. You know, like, first they were all cylinders, now they're all balls. And that's where we're at at this point. We're into smart home balls. This looks like one of those candles that you light to drive mosquitoes away or something. Exactly. Or like a little coconut.

It looks a little coconut. Maybe that's what I'll call it, the Coconut Mini. I think that it is clear at this point, at that price point, when our draft pick was under $200 because we thought maybe $199? $149 at best? I was skeptical of $99 as the price. I was surprised. Now, as I've had

some people point out to me, Google's is $49. Apple's still offering this at a premium price, but for Apple and the HomePod, they've come a long way, is what I'm saying. The $99 Apple connected home product is pretty

pretty big for them like look it's prime day today you can get an echo dot for 30 dollars right like right but this isn't happy prime day by the way happy prime day one and all to you and everyone out there listening happy prime day but i think the point here that we are making is they are selling this product at a better much better price point than we would expect half of what we would expect which does mean that they're at least attempting to be competitive in the way that apple does you know this wasn't when the home pod the original home pod was always significantly overpriced right compared to what it was going up against and i think it could be fair to say that you know

and also the echo dots that you can get for like 20 they're the old ones right amazon have new ones coming um and yes they will be cheaper than the home pod but again this is apple right is this what the home pod should have always been should the original homePod ever should have existed? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the questions. This is Apple learning a lesson. The existence of this product is Apple learning a lesson from what happened with the relative failure of the HomePod, which I think we've all known for a while now

was kind of over-engineered and really overpriced so they are they seem to have learned a lesson which i think is interesting that they've done that um i'm also interested by the way that this is the homepod mini and the homepod appears to continue to exist and that makes me wonder if perhaps there is still going to be a HomePod. Like, are they going to take another crack at that of like a higher, or is this going to be a product range, or is in the end a mini going to be the only one that's out there? I'm curious what they are thinking about this and where they go from here. I mean, I could imagine now having the opportunity

to actually push the HomePod higher, like they can push it further at the price points. Like they could keep it like $299 or whatever it is and give it more, right? So like they're able to keep that price point separated. I mean, the thing that I'm going to be intrigued about and the thing that I'm looking forward to testing is what are we talking about in the sense of how loud this thing gets how good it sounds it surely is going to sound great it surely isn't going to sound as good as the original

would be my expectation oh yeah it's not it's not going to of course it's not yeah they they engineered the original home pod to be this kind of like the ipod hi-fi actually a little bit they kind of engineered it to be this amazing sounding thing for a high price and it bit them. And so the real question with the HomePod Mini is exactly how good or bad does it sound? What did they sacrifice for a $99 smart speaker? Well, one phrase I didn't hear, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but this was something they spoke about constantly with the original. There was no reference to room filling sound right all right and that was the thing that they were always very very um very focused on right was that you could get a home pod and it will fill the room and i i did not catch them saying that this time um so i think

that this thing oh actually i'm looking at the web page jason and it says room filling sound on the web page i thought i would go check it i just did command f on the web page and they're saying the rooms are smaller maybe i don't i'm just gonna say like i mean i don't think that anyone's gonna be surprised with this this thought it's not going to be as loud or as good sounding as the big one but i bet is going to be really good for its price i love enough the sound quality that i get from my home pods i have two in a stereo pair that's how we watch tv and i think it sounds so imagine because that's what i was going to say is that it's not just that it's 99 but it's that's that for $200, you can get a stereo pair.

Yeah. And I think that is the ideal for HomePod. I really recommend that to people. If you are somebody who watches Apple TV a lot and you're watching Apple TV through your TV speakers, get two of these things and your TV viewing experience will be vastly better. and your tv viewing experience will be vastly better because there's really smart stuff that it does with all of like the stereo um and working out you know like it does all the sound analysis and stuff really i love it like we don't have the ability to set up a surround sound in our home where we watch tv like in our living room but i think we get a lot of the way there with a product like this because it will be very frequently that like we're watching a show and something will happen on the left

hand side and it comes from the left hand side speak, right? Like it sounds really good and it immerses us in their audio. So I think people are going to are going to really get a kick out of that. You know, I noticed, Jason, I went to the to the web page to look at the pricing in the UK because it's like 99 pounds, of course because uh conversion rates don't exist anymore and one of the things on the order page says want to put one in every room for multi-room audio you can just change the quantity of items in your bag and i just thought that was really funny it's like all right apple just how can you chill out i can just buy more of them great buy one for all of your friends you know what i want to see i want to see some

youtuber like fill a ball pit with one of these or something you know and jump in it um i'm really excited for this product uh i'm gonna i'm definitely gonna pick one up for my studio um because i've been struggling with some of the home uh related like i have some hue lights and stuff there and they've been causing me some problems with my Echo devices. So I want to see if HomeKit will do a better job with that. I have actually found recently, like registering stuff like lights and things with HomeKit has been much nicer than Echo's. The Amazon Echo really struggles if you have two Hue bridges, which I do. I have one home and one in the studio studio and it really gets upset

so i'm hoping that maybe the home pod will do a better job with that um but yeah i like it i think that this is a super cool little product um and it's priced really well uh there was a couple of interesting software features um oh we should say the s5 chip is inside of this thing it's powering what apple's calling computational audio which is a clever thing where it's analyzing the music and it's tweaking uh the output to suit it which i think is is quite clever um oh it has a use for the u1 chip finally yeah it's uh what something that i like amazingly you know have been beating the drum of like, U1, ultra wide band, it's the future. Get ready. Any day now.

We wait in a year. 2025 cars will have it as a feature so you can unlock your car. Well, anyway, there's a U1 chip in the HomePod mini and it does a new version of handoff where it basically is, it's going to be able to precisely detect when you bring a device with the U1 chip so an iphone basically up to it and then do handoff which um i think is interesting and it's it's i will say i tried to use handoff with my homepod

the old version of that and it never worked right so maybe they fixed that or maybe it's better or not but like i was laughing when i saw the demo because like it sounds great except i never got it to work right with my home pod so we'll see we'll see what they do with that and i really liked the intercom feature that they're working on, which I thought was kind of cool. What I liked about it is, you know, I've seen other products do this, right? Like, I think all of the smart devices have some kind of intercom mode, you know, like you can do it with the Google stuff and the Amazon stuff,

where you can basically announce your voice in other rooms. But what I liked about this more was that you could actually integrate some other products so you could be out of the home and use intercom on your iphone and it will play to all of the home pods at home as well as send notifications to people on their devices exactly right it's not gonna it's not gonna make your phone go beep and then play an annoying thing from someone. It's just going to send you a push notification saying, here's an audio message that you can play if you want to. And I assume that in CarPlay, it will say, you just got a message. Do you want to play it? That kind of thing, like it does for other messages. We have to back up.

There's a place on Apple's website that says comparing the HomePod models and does not have Home Theater with Apple TV 4K listed for the HomePod Mini, but does for the HomePod. I don't know what that means. I'm going to guess that a stereo paired HomePod set is looking at 5.1 audio and doing some Home theater-y kind of effects with it. And my guess would be that maybe a stereo pair of HomePod minis would just get stereo out, but I don't, that's just a guess. But that's, that's weird. That's weird. And also that it doesn't have spatial awareness in the HomePod does, which I think is all those things where it was sending out like test tones and automatically adjusting its sound. And they just you know they just play they play in 360 degrees or whatever but they're not like testing your environment and adjusting automatically those seem to be things that are not available on the uh on the mini that are still

available on the 299 home pod okay huh well. Huh. Well, I guess, you know, even stereo pairing them together would still sound good. But you're not going to get the same features, I guess, if you had a big pair. It's $99. They're not going to put every feature of the $299 speakers in there.

It's not going to happen. That's a shame, though. They're also getting support for Pandora and amazon music which was i seem weird like why isn't spotify there like i'm sure that there's something going on with the two companies but it kind of just feels a bit like what are they doing you know i don't know it seems weird to me like why are these two i mean it also may be that that they just chose not to promote spotify although you know spotify is a better story right like and it'll work with spotify but obviously

there's some i don't know they don't get along they don't get along they don't get along but i find that you know i'm i'm an apple music customer and yes it's cool for me but i it's i can imagine that that that slide i'm sure caused more frustration than it did make people feel happy about their choices, right? Like, I can imagine more people there being like, well, that's annoying than people going, yay, Amazon Music. Yeah, I know. I know that Spotify is the question there.

But again, that relationship is kind of fraught. And even if Spotify is working on something, perhaps sometimes Apple rewards companies by putting them for doing things that Apple wants by putting them in media events. But it may also be that they don't have everything signed and they're debating things or, you know, that happens too. Like Amazon for a long time was noticeably absent from Apple mentions because they were at odds over something and then they you know made up and book signed a deal and now they talk about amazon all the time i want to come back one last time to the um the kind of setting them up with a tv thing uh i still think that a stereo pair for 200 is pretty good because it's not all you'd use them for right like there are people in the chat who are saying,

why don't you just get speakers and plug them in? And it's like, that is a good point, but the speakers don't do anything else, right? Like if you just buy two bookshelf speakers and use those, like I still think that for $200, a great feature of these is you could stereo pair them and watch something,

uh, on, on Apple TV, right? Like, I guess, I guess it because it i'm assuming that it means you could airplay the apple tv to them right yes it says yeah the site says that you can do that so i i think that it's just going to be a stereo pair uh taking the stereo signal

out of the uh out of the the apple tv rather than it being a uh you know some sort of integrated home theater uh kind of thing. But I don't know. Like, none of us knows for sure until we try this stuff out what the differences are. You know, I've said for a long time that I think that they should make a HomePod that's a soundbar, right? And maybe even integrate Apple TV into that as well, where you basically, it's an Apple TV and it's a soundbar and it's a home pod.

And, you know, and then that's going to provide you a real kind of home theater experience. Plus it's got all of Apple's AirPlay and stuff built into it. But, you know, suffice it to say that Apple's home strategy is mysterious and inconsistent and that they've missed a lot of opportunities and inconsistent and that they've missed a lot of opportunities and they've had some misfires and it remains to be seen you know it remains to be seen whether they've got their act together i i think i this this is a an encouraging product in that it seems to understand things about what people want from these products that the original home pod did not. But there are so many other aspects of the connected home world that Apple doesn't play in or the way they play is weird. And it's one of those areas where I look at it and I think, I don't understand what they're doing. And I get the distinct

impression that they don't know what they're doing wouldn't it be cool if the next home pod was a was a sound bar why not just go for it right that's that'll be the next one I would like to see that product that would be really cool all right should we get into talking about the iPhone I think we need to all right this episode is brought to you by Teamistry, a podcast that tells the stories of teams who work together in new and unexpected ways to achieve remarkable things. Every episode of Teamistry

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or you can find a link in the show notes. So thanks to Team History for their support of this show and RelayFM. Jason, let's talk about the iPhone 12 line. Now, we're going to say this up front. There's a lot of information about these phones a lot of points and oh boy there is it's difficult to get our head around some of it right now we're going to do our level best especially the camera stuff which honestly i always struggle with a little bit because there's lots of numbers around the cameras, but we have four phones. They all have flat sides. They all have OLED screens. They all have the A14. They all have

the new ceramic shield glass, which is this is the first thing to come out of Apple's partnership with Corning. If you remember, Apple put a ton of money into Corning recently. They're the people that created Gorilla Glass. And now they have this thing called Ceramic Shield Glass, which I wouldn't be surprised would be exclusive to Apple for a little bit. It's nano ceramic crystals that are infused within the glass and it gets four times better drop performance. So basically, the phone is really durable or more durable now than it's ever been one thing i didn't catch jason i don't know if you did is it the same on the back and the front

or is it just the screen that gets this ceramic glass i don't know they showed it on the front yeah i wouldn't be surprised if it was just there um but they they invested an absolute ton of money it was called a strategic investment, I think, was what Apple called it. And this was, I'm sure, one of the first things to come from that. There are new colors across the line. The iPhone 12 and 12 mini get black, white,

product red, green, and blue. And the pro phones get silver, graphite, we say goodbye to space gray now, I suppose, gold, and Pacific blue. Frankly, I'm happy to say goodbye to space gray now i suppose gold and pacific blue frankly i'm happy to get rid of space gray it never made sense to me space isn't gray and it was never the same color on any product um so i think graphite makes more sense i was convinced i would want blue but the stainless steel gold like frame looks amazing in apple's photos so i might be going back to gold we'll see i haven't made my mind up yet but considering the phone i'm sure that i will want to get i do have a little bit longer to look at pictures something

else that all of these four phones have is magsafe jason snell mag MagSafe is back. It's back. This is magnets around the Qi charger. The Qi charger now does 15-watt fast charging. And as well as new charging products for the iPhone, there's basically a big silver Apple Watch charger, which is like $39. It's just a disc. You plonk it on the back.

That's how you charge the phone. I guess you can either use it for travel you could pick it up or you could maybe uh just stick one on your nightstand which is what uh it did for you know for her apple watch it's just got a bit of blue tack on the back and sticks on um they also have a duo product for the iphone and the watch which isn't available yet or on apple's website in the for sale section let's hope that they haven't done another air power on this, Jason. It's like, here's this charger. But you can't like, yeah. It's pretty straightforward.

It's very similar to other chargers we've seen. It is, yeah. This one is not exciting by any stretch of the imagination. But it's like a collapsible travel charger. But as well as everything we expected something like MagSafe would do, which is help for better Qi charging,

they have a bunch of new accessories. Yeah. Yeah. I think they mentioned Belkin. Mm-hmm. And so I like that there's a third-party story here. Yeah. And obviously there's something about just the fact that there are

Apple's doing something that is going to help enable a lot of third-party things. And they mentioned it, you know, the ecosystem of iPhone accessories. It's a real thing. But, of course, Apple has picked its spots where it wants to be, you know, taking a lot of money off the table. And so we've seen them in the charger and then the MagSafe stuff that's integrated into their cases. And then things, you know, so the cases have the magnet attachment now where you can, you know, attach them magnetically to the back of the phone, which is really interesting. And I wonder how much the magnet is holding them on versus some other means. No leather cases, by the way.

Not yet, at least. The leather cases have vanished. At least not yet. At the moment, it's all silicone. And I thought, oh, they must have gotten rid of leather. But one of the products that's not on the Apple website right now is that sleeve pouch thing that they had. So maybe there are more cases still to come

because that looked like it was made out of leather. Yeah, I feel like John Syracuse might might return to the the pouch lifestyle with that oh my god can you imagine him with that little pouch i'll be so yeah because you the way it works is it slides in and then and then it knows it's got a magnetic attachment it knows that it's in there and apparently it's got a special you know basically it will display the the time through the little window. I don't even know what they're doing with that one. Clearcase. What is going on with the clearcase?

But has magnets in it. This is horrific. In a circle with a little line below it, which looks very much like an old school floppy disk. It looks like a magnifying glass. Yeah, or a magnifying glass, sure. You should only buy the clearcase if you're going to also get the little wallet attachment. Like, I don't know why you would buy this clear case and then have that big white magnifying glass

on the back of your phone. So the wallet is a great example of not only Apple being smart and recognizing what people are using the iPhone for, but also then taking some money off of the top and away from other people. Because it's a leather, I mean, here's your leather. It's a leather magnet wallet that you attach rather than all these things.

So when Jamie went off to school last year, I got her an iPhone 11. I texted her this morning, by the way, and I said, your phone is now obsolete. She said, what? I said, it's an iPhone 12 now. She's like, oh, right. But we bought her a leather card wallet for the back and it's you know you just stick it on and then after you know 10 weeks it falls off like if it falls off and you don't really want your cards and stuff to fall off your phone and i look at this and i think oh this is

really smart like this is if i were buying that iphone for jamie today this is what we would do and i like that it's a first party has thought of the fact that people carry their cards attached to the back of their phone and they built it in and because it's all magnetic they all go together theoretically which i think is also really interesting and they said apple says on their website it's shielded so you know you're not going to wipe the stripe off the back of your credit card or something like that, but that you can do that and you can attach it to the back of the phone or to the back of one of the cases. I like that. That's, that's a really smart. And again, Apple's making all these calculations of sort of like, what do they want to leave? And what do they, where do they want to play? And

they know that not everybody's going to buy a case from Apple, but a certain percentage of people, if Apple offers a case, we'll buy the case. And now they's going to buy a case from Apple, but a certain percentage of people, if Apple offers a case, will buy the case. And now they're going to take that iPhone wallet and they're going to take a certain percentage of those people are never going to look at the third parties when they're in the Apple store or when they're on the Apple online store. They're just going to buy the Apple wallet. What I want is a magnetic pop socket. It's going to happen, right? I mean, it seems inevitable. You would like to think so.

It seems inevitable as long as that that magnet is strong enough that's it depends on the strength because if i'm trying to pull the pop socket out from the phone and it comes off every time like that's that's not what that's no good so i you know because i'm looking at that and i'm like oh that looks really like for as far as wireless charging stuff that that looks really clever like i you know this is a better way to do the chi charging stuff it needs to be powerful enough to hold a wallet on it too right like i mean you need to have some degree of certainty that the that the magnet's gonna hold strength there you know i just i was basically thinking like i i have come to really rely on a pop socket it is something that i do genuinely really rely on and at this point i don't think i

could use a large phone without it so you know i it's it's the reason i have one of the reasons i've resisted any wireless charging because i can't use a wireless charger with a pop socket on the back of the phone uh very reliably if at all but if they were able if somebody was able to develop a product which is basically like a pop socket but integrates with this uh with this magnet i'd be all over that and then i could actually start to use um some of these products because you know a pop socket actually make a uh a wallet of their own like a pop wallet and so who knows maybe that would be a thing that i would want but i like this i i genuinely am very pleased that this is something which i mean obviously third parties

would make products for this anyway uh i like that there is a an official way to make it happen uh in such a way that it could then change what's going on on the phone like the phone is aware of the fact that it has that thing attached to it, right? So I'm excited about that. We knew it was going to happen. Charger and headphones are gone from the box. We had a segment of Lisa Jackson.

We mentioned it earlier. She's standing on the roof of Apple Park. Basically, enough carbon savings will be gained here that are equivalent to taking 450 000 cars off the road every year but still i this is a cost-saving measure as well as it is an environmental one in my opinion we said this before um even if apple care about it uh from the environmental perspective which i'm sure they really do. I have no doubt about that. There is nothing for the customer in terms of cost savings

or gaining any ability to get a charger if they need one. So Apple are trying to take two wins here, and that's not how this works. Yeah, I was going back and forth somebody on twitter about this this week that it's like but you know it can be both and it's like well yeah it can be both but the point is that it feels it is awkward and you need to question it when it's like look at what we're doing for the earth and the environment but we know they're also saving money by doing this right right? They're saving

money and Apple's saving money, not just, you know, carbon output, but saving money in a lot of ways because they said the box is going to be smaller, which means more fit on a pallet. Well, yeah, that means that there are going to be fewer flights with boxes of iPhones coming from China to everywhere else in the world, but it also means that Apple's not paying for any of that. So Apple's saving money and keeping things away from customers who might actually need them, at which point they then need to go out and buy them themselves. Does that mean that it's a net win for the environment? I do believe it is. Do I think that Apple should make it easier for a new iPhone buyer to say, I actually need a pair of headphones or I actually do need a charger. I think they should.

I think that would be a consumer friendly thing to do. But this is not what they're doing. So here we are. And I understand that at this point, I'm sure lots of people can use it. But at the same time, this year year they're including a usbc charger in the box so if you want to be able to charge with the new cable you will need to buy a new power brick in most cases right so you know it this isn't i would have liked to have seen this story told a little bit better from them having a more full approach.

Apparently, Apple is selling a 20-watt USB-C power adapter for $19 now, which feels like a better price than what they've done in the past. But still, that $19, you know, let people choose to include this in their package, right? Like, why not? Not everyone's going to do it, but some will do it. But yeah, nevertheless, this is where we are with that. What else is going on here? So there were three sizes of iPhone across the four phones. So the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro have a 6.1 inch screen, which is a bigger screen than what they replace with slightly larger physical dimensions the iphone 12 pro max has a larger screen at 6.7 inches which is the biggest

screen ever in an iphone of course indeed also slightly larger than the phone that it replaces these are all in like the couple of millimeters in size right yeah i i got um i got this pic in the draft and i actually laughed when they mentioned it because they said almost the almost the same size as the one i thought well almost means it's not uh and it is slightly larger but it's very very very slightly larger i think it's one tenth of an inch or maybe it's one tenth of a millimeter i don't know it's it's it's slightly taller and very very very very slightly wider but it's also thinner and lighter than the pro max of the 11 so um and a bigger screen so basically you get a bigger screen with with a

phone that's not essentially not bigger and the iphone 12 mini has a 5.4 inch screen so it's smaller than any of the 11 line right so don't forget that like it's worth just keeping this all in your mind in size it is comparable to the iphone 8 right or the se essentially sure i need to double check that but i guess well iphone 8 and iphone se are the same size you are correct yes uh but the se has got the top and the bottom because it's got the you know it's it's old style whereas this is iphone 10 style device it's it's small jason is smaller than the se yeah so uh 5.1 5.18 inches in height versus 5.4 on the se two and a half inches wide versus 2.6 inches, right? So

it's actually smaller than the iPhone SE with a 5.4 inch display rather than a 4.7 inch display that you would find on the SE. And the iPhone 11 had a 6.1 inch screen. So yeah, this is an interesting product lineup. I think, really, I think there are two types of customers that win here, and then you have a lot of people in the middle. So I, as a big phone person, are getting a bigger phone, and I'm super pleased about it. are getting a bigger phone, and I'm super pleased about it.

The people that want a smaller phone now have a much smaller, modern, powerful phone than they've had in years. But then there are everybody in the middle where they're facing, I think, a bit more of a question about what phone they might want to go for, right? Like, it's quite an interesting lineup overall yeah i think and i've mentioned this before but i think one of the big questions is going to be the uh people who like smaller phones or who have come to accept the existing iphone size of the 10 class phones, that phone doesn't exist

in this product line, right? The 12 was the big phone and is still a big phone. The 12 Pro is bigger and the 12 Pro Max is about the same size. And then you've got the 12 mini, which is so much smaller. And that is going to be a really interesting buying dynamic to see who goes for the 12 pro or the 12 and who says, you know what? I usually buy the top of the line model, but I'm not going to this time because I want, because I don't want a larger phone. In fact, I miss when it was a smaller phone. And that mini is awfully interesting,

like awfully interesting. I'm not in the market for an iPhone this year because I bought an iPhone 11 last year, 11 Pro. But if I were to buy one this year, it would absolutely be the 12 mini. It would be. I mean, we'll talk about it later. Talk about later on in this episode what we would buy. But certainly, I i mean i want to get my hands on them i want to see and feel what they really feel like but it's hard for me to imagine having a bigger phone i feel like the 10 class size is already pushing my limits and the idea that they're making a um a modern iphone that's that small. I'm intrigued by that. And I know so many people who held out with the original SE for so long because they just didn't want to be pushed up even to an iPhone

678 class phone, let alone the 10 class phone that are going to look at that mini. That mini is a really interesting and compelling product. We have a little bit of follow-up I want to throw in there, by the way. It looks like, according to Apple's webpage, the Qi charging is still rated at 7.5 watts. It's MagSafe that's up to 15. So I wonder, Apple, they piggybacked on top of Qi and made their own magic sauce, their MagSafe sauce that they're putting in there. So that's interesting. Can we try and talk about the cameras? And I really say try. Yes. Because this is very confusing. I had Apple's comparison page up now. I also want to point out something that Apple has

maybe needs to rethink, which is that their comparison page for iPhone only has three slots and they have four brand new iPhones. Work on that. Work on that, Apple. But I've got it up here now. So if we want to talk about the cameras, let me see if I can explain this. So they all have a 12 megapixel

camera system, but oh. Okay, the ultra wide is a 2.4 aperture. Good stuff. Great stuff.-wide is a 2.4 aperture. Good start. Great start. The wide is a 1.6 aperture. There's only telephoto on the Pro models.

The telephoto on the Pro is 2.0 aperture. But the telephoto on the Pro Max is a 2.2 aperture. But let's just say, I don't really know what that means for me. This is my thing with the cameras always. Let's have light we can talk about the f's we can talk you know like and like and again like we could talk about the focal length like we can talk about all of that and i understand that things get better at different elements i understand all of that but for me as somebody who just takes pictures with my phone i don't really know how any of that translates the pro max 2.5 x optical zoom as opposed to the 2x optical zoom on the pro so the the larger phone gets a little bit more

better telephoto camera so there is actually and i know you love this because you love being hashtag mike was right yeah hashtag plus club, whatever hashtag you get this time, Max Club. You like lording it over the little people with their little phones, with your enormous phone that has better features than any other iPhone. Congratulations, you got it. Yeah, see, there was a rumor

about four times and five times optical zoom, right? But this was someone who saw apple's product pages and thought that that meant there's going to be a four times telephoto and five times telephoto uh zoom but that's not the case it is the overall from like range that they have from all the way out on ultra wide to all the way in on telephoto yeah when they say it's 5x range they mean in the iphone interface in the camera app you've got three choices right you've got 1x 2.5x on the promax and 0.5x which is the the pullback widescreen and that is a range of 5x right if you if you consider 0.5 to be one which is not because it's 0.5 then the 2.5 would be five it's algebra people but um the way they the way they describe this is so weird because

they're trying to be camera e like zoom as our discord chat just pointed out like it's not like it really zooms it's three different fixed things and then you can up you can digital zoom in between them and it chooses which camera it uses for those but like it's not really zooming but but it's the effect of zooming which is that you've got a a wide and a middle and a zoom in a telephoto kind of thing but yes it is very strange but suffice it to say that that extra space in the promax and the extra price of the promax you if you really love your telephoto you will get a better telephoto experience on the pro max yeah and i've always loved it if i abandon the pro line for the 12 mini i will lose that which

will make me sad but we'll get into that so the pro max gets not just a better zoom, the telephoto lens is better. The wide-angle lens is better than even the improvements in the other phones. So every phone has got a better regular camera, the wide-angle camera, but the Pro Max has 87% better low-light performance on the wide. And a brand new optical image stabilization system which is called sensor shift where essentially if i've understood it correctly instead of the camera being what is

stabilized they stabilize the camera sensor and this enables optical image stabilization on every camera in the phone rather than just the ones that they optically image stabilize. Very smart. Super cool. So I'm pleased about this because when the Plus was introduced, you know, like you paid more,

it was a bigger screen, but you also got additional features because the phone was bigger, right? They could do more with it. And that was a really great thing. I loved that. And then over time, it just became, I'll just choose the screen size.

And I was kind of found out a little bit frustrating. You know, maybe you've got a little bit more battery life, but I always felt like there could be more. So I am very pleased to see that the Pro Max is getting that attention again. In the additional money that I'm paying for it, I'm also getting vastly better camera performance across all of the cameras.

I'm very excited about that. Right. It looks like the sensor shift is specifically on the wide on the Pro Max. Oh, this is so confusing. Right? Well, okay, but the other cameras say like optical dual optical sensor shift optical so what is it only stabilizing the wide angle on the on the pro max with sensor shift the rest of them are the other more traditional optical image stabilization it's very confusing so there is

optical image stabilization across the cameras but just the wide angle camera is the one that's getting the sensor shift yes and only on the pro max yes clear as mud clear nice and clear like this is one of those things where it's like just understand from what we said at the start all the cameras are better no matter what phone you're buying but the more money you spend the cameras get better right like yes that does seem to be the case and they seem to have not i think what is fascinating here is that they've made a choice to not care about having everything be exactly the same and do a little bit more uh feature differentiation among the models beyond size which you said you liked and i think that this is an interesting choice on their part because it ruins simplicity,

but it provides more value to the, you know, possibilities of the entire iPhone line, because yes, there's at least one iPhone that does this thing and it's the most expensive one. And, you know, you may, um, I, I am fascinated by the entire concept. We're going to talk about video in a minute, but like very clearly Apple is trying to make some, it's not concessions, some, some choices that prove why they're calling it pro. And a lot of these things,

I think most buyers of the pro can't pro phone. I don't care about, but some people will care a lot. And those people are going to be motivated to buy the higher end phones. And it lets Apple say, we've got a range. Our range matters. It's not just about size. And the highest end phone does get some special tech that we couldn't fit in the next one down. I I get what they're doing there. And they made that as a conscious decision, right? Because they could have capped it and said, no, if we can't do it in both of the pro phones, we should only, we should keep them the same. And they chose not to do that because they do want that to be a different differentiator. And they have to realize that it does make things a little more confusing.

But it's a choice that they made and that's interesting apple pro raw was the feature which is a sneak peek for coming later in the year every year for the last few years apple have had something to do with a camera that doesn't come at launch but they talk about sweater mode last year yep and i think it was portrait mode one year as well yes this is effectively allowing for you to have a new option where you still get images in raw so you shoot in raw which means that you can then have a lot more control over the image in your own kind of post-processing for color and exposure and that kind of stuff but they are including Apple's image processing in the whole bundle,

which basically means that you still benefit from all of the work that Apple is doing of image processing while still getting a lot of the typical control that you would have with RAW, which would allow people using these phones, I'm sure, to get very, very good images out of these sensors. So again, this is a little bit over my pay grade when it comes to like dealing with raw images like i can't imagine ever uh using this myself but it's a again it's a pro feature yeah and it means that you can take those things off of the iphone and into uh i'm gonna assume pretty any, yeah, any pro photo app will actually support this. Except Apocheth, I guess.

But Lightroom is a good example. And you'll have access to all of that Apple image processing raw data to make your edits. And yeah, pro photographers are going to love it. And again, another example of a pro feature in the pro phone, even though most people aren't going to use the pro features or aren't going to care. How do you justify calling it pro? One way you do is you do load in features for the pros. Like Apple, again, most iPhone pros are not used to shoot feature films or commercials right but some value accuse some value accrues to them in the fact that somebody does right like oh this is so good that you can make a movie with it i'm not going to do it but isn't it awesome and like that that is part of the kind of the halo that surrounds the and also building to that level building to you could make professional grade video and photo with this camera means that the person who is using their phone to create the YouTube videos that they want to make will benefit, right? Like you will get some benefit. including being the first camera that can shoot in Dolby Vision HDR at 4K 60 frames per second with live previewing as well.

So yeah, I can imagine the HDR video stuff will be something that a lot more people will benefit from than the ProRAW. I saw a funny comment on Twitter scroll by during the event, which was like, you know, Apple is very good at pointing out the features that it doesn't include and saying, oh, well, we didn't think people would, you know, would care. And then they include features and make a big deal out of them that literally nobody is going to care. And it's sort of like 120 hertz scrolling.

Yeah. You know, do people really want that? Oh, but Dolby Vision HDR. We have that it's like you know but it's like because sometimes the choices are about what you're capable of doing and what you're capable of doing at a certain price point and all that and apple's again like i said before this is a pro feature it lets them say look how amazingly capable our cameras are most people aren't going to care i don't think people are going to care about hdr video recording too much although i suppose you know if you're taking pictures of your newborn and the TVs of

the future are all HDR then you've got more dynamic range and colors for those pictures of your of your kid the Dolby Vision thing I'm waiting for the pro to say all this really is doing is tagging every you know every video with Dolby Vision stuff on the fly in order to claim that it's Dolby Vision. It doesn't really make it any better, but you know, it's a, it's a thing that they can check the box about. Again, it's for most people, this is a little bit silly other than to say, wow, like Apple keeps on dumping even more high level features and buzzwords and things. And it feels good that I've, I'm using the best camera to shoot my random video that I'm shooting. The LiDAR sensor, which is only included on the pro phones. It finally has a feature which is of

use rather than just AR. It helps with focusing in low light, including a new night mode portrait. But it also does better autofocusing and stuff like that, which I think is a great use. You know, for me, like, great. I don't really care too much about AR at the moment, especially with everything that I've seen. But I'm super into using this sensor for better autofocusing and stuff like that. Yeah, we talked about how people were skeptical of the use of LIDAR for photography, but they found a way to use it to augment their stuff. Now, I have a little bit of skepticism about how much of this is super helpful and how much of this is something that helps them explain why LIDAR is cool because AR maybe isn't enough.

Right. Like I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent that this is in the end going to be that the LIDAR as a use in certain camera situations is worth having the LiDAR sensor there. But I think it maybe broadens the appeal of adding that sensor to say, oh, it also helps with your photos instead of the pitch for the iPad Pro, which was literally, it's great for AR. And that was it.

Now, the thing we haven't spoken about yet, which is the thing apple couldn't stop talking about throughout this entire presentation and that was 5g now i knew 5g was going to happen on this phone it seemed obvious to me from the beginning um and we have it. But the level at which Apple spoke about 5G during this presentation was far more than I expected. For a company that poo-pooed 5G and didn't come out with a 5G phone last year, because 5G, whatever, what is it good for? This year was like… Absolutely everything, apparently. They had been…

Apple had been in a program where they had, you know, there had been an intervention and they'd been sat down and they said, you know, you got to understand 5G is very important. And they're like, oh, oh yes, I've got it now. I've got it now. Let's bring Mr. Verizon out on stage to talk about 5G. That was ridiculous. That was too much.

They went too far with that in my opinion. Honestly, I felt really nostalgic because it's been a while since i've been to a live apple event no it's ridiculous and i felt super nostalgic to have tim cook introduce a an executive from some other company some other company who is going to stand there and talk about how great their product is for a way too long it's like that's old it was like oh it's like i'm back in the steve jobs theater also i went and got myself a drink during that part because which you can't do if you're at the steve jobs theater but um yeah it's too much and i wonder about the verizon thing like some interesting

carrier stuff going on in the background here and this is one of them which is like what is the backstory about letting the ceo of verizon on stage for an apple event like what was what did they give apple in exchange for that because that has to be right like i i feel like that's not apple saying well we really need verizon to play ball here like that's not but i don't understand what they could have done because no matter what they did apple don't just sell the phone on verizon They don't. So like if Verizon did a bunch of stuff to make the iPhone run better on 5G on Verizon, that's awesome. But Apple sell on four networks in America

and then on many, many, many more across the globe. So me sitting here in the UK, I'm like, can I even get 5G with this iPhone? And I'll tell you, Jason, I have been looking and I cannot find the answer to that question right now. Well, yeah, this is part of the challenge here.

And I even wonder in the US, like AT&T has got to be feeling sad. And they apparently put out a press release like right afterwards saying, yes, we have it. And also here's a deal we'll give you. I think literally AT&T is trying to do a deal where if you

trade in a phone um and are on their unlimited plan or whatever they'll just like give you an iphone 12 like they're like please please please don't leave us but um something i don't know verizon made an announcement they said that they were turning on their nationwide 5g as opposed to just i i wonder if there's some of the deal here was like, we want you to hold this and tie it to the Apple event so that the launch of the iPhone coincides with the launch of your. I don't know how that helps anyone. I don't know either. I was baffled by it. And I'd like to know the behind the scenes of why this happened.

But it was super boring. 5G is overhyped. 5G is important in the long run, but in the short run, it's actually not that important. But if you're Apple, you've got 5G phones, you kind of want to flog it. And if you're a carrier, you want to flog your 5G networks and so you know hans is out there from verizon doing just that but i found it uh yes extremely uninteresting i think the 5g features are the least interesting thing about these phones and we spent an awful lot of time doing it so whether apple believes that there's just been so much 5g marketing um that they they need to counter it that's why they had to do it was because the networks are saying that it's here i don't know that they had to go as far as they did mentioning 5g as

because it wasn't just in that excruciatingly long beginning segment 5g came up throughout the entire iphone presentation just kept on flying back hitting us in the head every time like you nope no it's back so this in my opinion uh 5g on the iphone is the thing that we're going to be talking about over the next couple of months because we need to understand across the globe as people are getting these phones if they can even get 5g so that's going to be a set of stories and then we'll have the stories of like whether it actually works for people or not and if we could end up getting to the end of this year and we could all be going you know what they were right this is amazing right but i don't know if anyone is at that point, especially when everyone's at home more.

Right. So the other interesting quirk here is we've talked a lot in the past about special versions of the iPhone for China, especially, but for other countries that have different wireless standards. These iPhones have a different version for the u.s because there is the millimeter wave tech that that verizon is using um in the u.s and so they support that but apparently only in the u.s models as far as i can tell a lot of weird stuff going on here that we're gonna have to have to learn about um fortunately and this is a little tidbit that i also thought was kind of funny um if you're not needing 5g speed the iphone software automatically takes you back down to lte it's good save battery yeah that's good it's good it's also kind of funny of like oh yeah we can't stay up there no yeah but when we needed he launched there was like you know you could turn it on and off we turned you had to manually turn it on and off to save battery right but this is like no no we did it in the software which i like i like but

um i don't know i don't know the verizon thing went on too long that was the part that just i don't know why that happened i don't think we really needed that much time what did Verizon do for Apple to get that slot I don't know so anyway 5G it looks like you know

the millimeter wave stuff is coming to other countries so like that's the other thing that's weird to me is like other countries will get millimeter wave so why thing that's weird to me is like other countries will get millimeter wave so why does the was the us the only iphone 12 that will ever have millimeter wave i don't and i don't know that maybe it has something to do with the qualcomm modems and what's available and in what volumes weird i don't know it's all very strange this is what i'm saying like the 5g part i think is something that we're gonna keep checking in on as time goes because we will get more information about it people will

start to use it they'll be able to talk about their experiences a bit more um but i really do think we're gonna look back at that presentation like we are now in the future and be like they were way too excited about 5g like 5g is gonna be, but it ain't great yet. It's not there. I really don't understand the whole Verizon thing. Anyway, the iPhone 12 Mini is going to be $699, and it starts at, and the iPhone 12 starts at

$799. In America, the store is article 9 to 5 Mac. These prices are available as special offers from Verizon and AT&T. This is the thing. These prices are available as special offers from verizon and at&t so this is the thing these prices are are not real yeah another another interesting quirk in iphone pricing that has been so quirky over time when apple says it's 6.99 or 7.99 or we'll get to 9.99 and 10.99 it's not it's actually 30 more and they have special deals in the US anyway,

special deals with Verizon and AT&T, but not the other carriers, soon to be carrier. So there's a $30 discount you get as an AT&T customer or a Verizon customer that makes it $699 or $799. But if you're a T-Mobile customer, guess what? It's $729, which is bananas. It's basically a promo price that Apple is selling you, but depending on your carrier, you don't get it. And of course, if you want to buy a SIM-free model, completely free and clear, you don't get the special deal. It doesn't seem like there are any strings attached. As an AT&T customer, I believe I can just say, yes, I have AT&T and I get it for $699. But I find it really weird that they've got these special deals that, will they continue? Will they not continue? Is this effectively a price raise that's just going to be slow acting for some but not for others?

But the bottom line is, you know, I don't think we can call this a $699 iPhone 12 mini or a $799 iPhone 12. I think we have to call them $729 and $829, right? I guess. The 12 Pro starts at quote $999, but now starts at 128 gigabytes, so they've up the storage on the minimum, which is great. 12 Pro Max at $1099. Now, follow along with me here.

The iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro are available in October. The 12 Pro Mini and the 12 Pro Max will be available in November. So the smallest and largest, November. The two phones in the middle, October. That's how it's working so we're gonna be talking about iphones for a long time right because these phones will be coming out so that's the iphone 12 line let me just say i know that i have expressed frustration right yeah and the frustration for me mostly comes at like there being a lot to to try and digest there are things that i want on uh these phones that i don't have but i think for the phone this phone in general i'm very excited about it i think it looks fantastic i'm really excited for the new physical

design the flat side design I'm really excited about. I'm excited to get an even larger screen because why not? Let's just go for it and see what that's like. And I am super excited to try out these new cameras on the Pro Max. So I would say like I am I am eagerly awaiting a 12 Pro Max, but I have question marks uh especially around 5g um and its usefulness to us at the moment um i think that we're like a couple of years away and 5g is going to be unbelievably great right like if we can get all of the technology in place but we're not there yet and the fact that we're not there yet is what's made Apple's 110% on this kind of strange for them at least

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bombas.com slash upgrade. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash upgrade for 20% of your first purchase. Go now, bombas.com slash upgrade that's b-o-m-b-a-s.com slash upgrade for 20 of your first purchase go now bombas.com slash upgrade our thanks to bombas for their support of this show and relay fm a little real-time follow-up by the way i was i going on about the hidden 30 charge in the 799 and 699 iphone 12s the Pros don't have the hidden charge. The Pros are actually $999 and $1099. So they've stuck at price and that's that. But on the cheaper models,

they are cheaper by $30 only in certain promotions, apparently. Which means they are more expensive then. Means they're more expensive. So it really is sort of $729 829 999 and 1099 so you mentioned that you uh would buy the you would buy the 12 mini if you were buying right yeah and and i want to get my hands on it because it's possible that if i try the 12 mini, I would even trade in my phone and upgrade because I like the 10 class phone and I've gotten used to it. And I have the 11 pro now, but so here are the things. One,

it is a little bit too big and two, it's slippery. So it requires a case. it's slippery so it requires a case and back in the iphone 5 era i didn't use a case on my iphone i didn't need to it felt comfortable in my hand and we've gone back to a design with these flat sides where i'm hopeful that this is not going to be a bar a bar of soap right a slippery bar of soap that like whoa there, there goes my iPhone. I hope that new ceramic thing works because it's flying through the air and it's about to hit the ground, right? So if it feels really good in my hand, like the screen is big enough, everything looks good, and I don't feel like I'm going to drop it, It's possible that I would do a trade-in either of my 11 Pro or of my

old 10 that Lauren has, and then roll that one down to her, one of those. I might. I'm a little bit tempted, but that would be what it would be. It would have to be something where if I tried it out, I felt like it was going to be, I could go caseless and that it was, it just felt better to have that size because it's been years since I used a phone of that size. And it's possible that the iPhone 10 class phone design has ruined me and I can't go back. But also my priorities in a phone, like even before the pandemic, I spent a lot of time on my iPad and at my desk, you know, on my Mac. iPhone is not the most important device in my life. I use it when I'm out. I'm not out very much now, but I do use it when I'm out. But like, it's not my primary device.

I have other devices for that. So it doesn't really need to be big. Um, and so I don't know, that's what I'm all kind of turning around in my mind. But I think the real, the real question is going to be when in November, we get a chance to hold these things and actually have that experience because there's a huge range in the iPhone line right now. Like this, imagine that 12 pro max and the, and the 12 mini, like those are the, it's like that picture of, uh, sorry, this is a baseball reference, but there's that picture of Aaron judge. Who's like the almost seven foot tall Yankee standing at second base. And, um, and, uh, little, uh, Jose Altuve, who is a very small second baseman. And there's this picture and it's like, baseball players come in all sizes, right? This

is like that with these phones. They are so dramatically different in size. So that's exciting. And I hope that it works for you and me because I imagine that that's what you're thinking is give me the largest iPhone possible while I'm thinking maybe give me the smallest iPhone possible. So what's your first read as a, as the founding member of the, of the, uh, plus slash max club. I remain hesitant at the increased size, right? Um, at a certain point these phones are going to be too big for me right uh i don't know if we've hit it yet but we're certainly close because even though the physical size is only a little bit more the additional screen size is still size screen i have to reach across and you know uh i'm blessed with being a relatively tall guy,

so I have big hands, and my hands have been fine for these phones, but I don't know what this one's going to be like, right? Like, maybe the iPhone 12 Pro Max has passed what I am willing to be happy to use, right? But I just don't know it yet. But what Apple have done, which was, was like best case scenario they've made it an easy decision because they've given me additional functionality again which is something that I really wanted so like giving me an even better camera might mean that if I get it and I'm like oh this might be a little bit too big for certain circumstances I can at least say well but I've

got that really great camera that I want so the the only thing for me, I'm going pro max for sure. My only thing is I don't know what color to get because I loved the green, right? Uh, did of the midnight green of the iPhone 11 pro really happy with that color. And at the time thought i also would love a blue right and they've given me blue and blue looks great but the gold the gold so shiny gold is getting you good yeah like that it was it they're showing it a lot on the pages they made a specific point of showing it during the presentation though what they've done to the stainless steel sides that looks superb so i'm not sure between the two of them i'm leaning towards gold right now i really hope that i get to see some pictures of this before oh i will won't i because the 12s will come out and people will

have reviews about them before i have to order the 12 pro max right you'll be able to see some pictures of the gold or even go to an apple store i mean i could i guess i could try bundle up where put on your space i might i might do that actually. I might do that. The big decision here is that Indy is due for an upgrade and she's going to have to really think. She watched the event with me and was not sure about

what she would do. She has an 11 Pro right now, but as a lot of people like you, the Mini is tempting to her because she's a tiny person. And especially now that the gap is way closer between those phones.

But the thing that she would have to give up is the telephoto lens. I think that's one of the things that people will give up. Everything else seems better even in the mini than it was in the 12 Pro by a lot of instances.

But you do lose a camera. So you have to be willing to lose that camera. And if you use the telephoto lens a lot, like I genuinely do, like I wouldn't want to give it up. But, you know, it's about trade-offs, right? Do you want a much much much smaller phone i mean this is an interest this is a very interesting year it's a very interesting year

apple have gone very bold with this lineup i think um in having the smallest phone get smaller and the biggest phone get bigger uh i think you know we've been hearing about this as i said for a couple of years and it was intriguing, and it's really intriguing now. But the thing is, a lot of people are in the positions that me and you are in right now, where it's like, do I do what I've always done, or do I change? This is a moment where the line has changed appreciably, and I think it's going to cause cause people unless you're buying a 12 coming from the 11 or the 10r or you're buying a 12 pro coming from the 10 10s or 11 pro um those the ones that are coming first i think are like straight down the line but the ones the outliers are interesting enough to make you have a rethink. Yes, I think so.

But there is the question, though, that I think that people need to think about. If you had an 11 Pro, the 12 Pro is bigger. The screen is bigger. And so if you were already feeling like that screen was too big for you you'll be going from 5.8 to 6.1 inches no you're right and that's where i am right so so no that you're right you're right i think that if there's a decision point if you've got a 10 10s or 11 pro where you have to decide if you want a bigger phone or not or if you've reached your limit and and that's where i am and and like i said earlier i'm fascinated to see if apple will ever give us any color on this or based on anecdotes that we hear how many people get off

the pro train because while they like a nice phone what they really liked was that it was the smallest current iPhone, and it's not anymore. I'm sad because I do like that telephoto lens and would prefer it to a wide-angle lens, to be honest. But that may not be enough, right? Given the size issues. And this has always been an issue since Apple went up to the 6 from the 5 that some people don't want a bigger phone. six uh from the five that uh some people don't want a bigger phone most people do turns out some people don't and will they get off the the pro

line and go to the mini instead i i think there's a lot of people will but that's going to be a decision point right away the comparison page the battery life seems like it might be worse on the new phones. So the iPhone 11 Pro is listed to 18 hours video playback. The iPhone 12 Pro is 17 hours video playback. Hmm. That's weird.

Right? Well, that's not something that Apple would talk about. No, but it's also not something that we usually talk about no but it's also not something we usually see either how peculiar yeah I wonder if 5G factors into that

the Pro Max phones the same 11 Pro Max to 12 Pro Max same battery huh but the 11 Pro to 12 pro less battery yeah it's the video playback up to 17 hours versus 18 hours video playback streamed the same audio playback the same i don't know I don't know hmm

why do they use video playback as the battery well because it's taxing you know because otherwise you've got to create like a virtual like a little fake hand that taps on things and okay yeah you gotta find something to keep the phone active

and emulating actual real world use and they can do that and they have in the past but it's hard and it's easier to just play a video until it dies oh jason the 12 mini is 15 hours but you know wow i know it's a small phone but if you're used to that battery life that's a big difference it's a difference but i think that the people who want that phone are going to that's not going to be their priority right but what that what this does though is it makes that decision more difficult for the people that are in the i

have an iphone 11 pro or i have an iphone uh tenant and i want to decide so again like bringing indiana back into the conversation again because we were talking about it earlier one thing that she wants is more battery on her phone again because she's at that point where she's had her phone for long enough and the battery's starting to go so if i now say to her well the phone the 12 mini has a worse battery than the one you currently have, she's probably not going to want to go for that phone. So the people that are in those middle areas that are trying to decide, where do I want to go next?

Something like the battery life is significantly lower, significantly lower, as in you're going to lose the gain that you got from the XS to the 11, might make people think again on it. I mean, I know Apple didn't mention it, but I'm surprised that it's taken me this long to see that in the comparison charts that there is quite significant battery life changes. Just to be clear, it's actually more battery life than the XS.

But it loses that gain of the 11, where they had a huge gain in battery life. So it sort of reverts. So basically, if you're coming from a X or a XS, it's not going to be less battery life. What about everything we didn't see? There was a lot that we didn't see, right, at this event. There was.

Apple Silicon, it's very clear, it's very clear that there's going to be another event, right? I can't see them releasing the first Apple Silicon Macs with no fanfare. And they've gotten good at doing one-hour-ish long video events. So why would they just not do a Mac event? Like in the past, they might have had that debate of like, well, why don't we just do some briefings and a press release and an embargo time and we'll do it that way.

But I feel like they probably won't do that this time because why not do an hour on this and brag all that you can about how amazing Apple Silicon is? Oh, um, by the way, we didn't even talk about it. Let me take us a little,

little sidebar here, Mike, little sidebar about the new processor. Oh, the A14. Yeah. Not a lot of detail, not a lot of comparisons to the A13.

Instead, comparisons to other smartphones. What did that mean? Did iPhones not count as other smartphones? I think they're burying A14 performance. Still. And I wonder if it's because it's not as impressive as they had hoped. If it is as impressive as they had hoped. If it is as impressive as they had hoped, I'm a little bit baffled why they compared the iPad to the previous iPad Air,

and they compared this iPhone, in most cases, to other smartphones, and not to the previous generation iPhone, as far as I can tell. And that's weird. It's not what I expected. And they either are playing a different game than I thought they were playing, or there's some reason why they're reluctant to quote direct A13 to A14 numbers. Right, right. Okay. And if they really want to see a big number, just compare it to the competition.

Yeah. Well, you're going to get a bigger number that way. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that because we, we didn't, we, we passed that aside, but I was expecting more bragging. Yeah, well, you're going to get a bigger number that way. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that because we passed that aside. But I was expecting more bragging. I know they did have some bragging about the A14. But every time they brought up the A14, I kept waiting for them to sort of like dig in a little bit more than they did last month. And they didn't really.

Like they didn't really. So take this with a grain of salt then. But I feel like if they're going to do the Apple Silicon Macs thing, they really do want to brag on how much better those are than the intel max right and then and other intel pcs so i think it needs to be an event and that it sounds to me like that's going to be you know next month or early december and you know those max may very well ship uh early early to late december but i feel like that there's probably almost certainly has to be another one of these uh apple events to come for us with apple silicon because they said by the end of the year they put they didn't need to put that stake in the ground but

they did and i don't think they're gonna let it go by and say oh yeah here's a macbook air with apple silicon anyway uh happy new year i don't think they're going to let it go by and say, oh, yeah, here's a MacBook Air with Apple Silicon. Anyway, Happy New Year. I don't think they're going to do that. Especially because there's so much other stuff which could still come this year, like AirPods of some kind, right? The Overear ones, especially, and Apple TV hardware, maybe more about Apple TV content. I do think that we are in for one more event. I don't think there's going to be a press release kind of situation. I think we have November one more.

Given that we're going to be, that you ideally want to get your lineup set before the holiday buying season begins and November, you know, doing a late November event is late for that, although you could do it. Apple TV, I start to look at and think, I wonder if they're going to do a spring services something that has an Apple TV announcement in it and do it that way. If that product isn't ready to go, it would allow them to talk about their shows and all those other things. I wonder if there's another venue for that that is early next year. And honestly, I'm starting to wonder, is this going to be the model going forward for Apple, which is every month or two,

they're just going to do an hour. They'll drop an hour with a bunch of products that are all related to each other and not mention any of the other products that Apple makes because they want to keep the focus. Maybe, maybe. The question of how you roll out something like Apple AirPods studio headphones or something like that still, still out. I kind of thought that they might pair that with a HomePod. And that seems like a great holiday product. Maybe it's not ready. I don't know.

I can only imagine that that's the case, right? It's just maybe not ready. Or maybe it's just not for now. I don't know. But it feels like there's still enough stuff that could come this year that we haven't yet gotten to. And it seems like maybe there'll be one more event in the offing to allow them to get those things out,

because I'm sure that any headphone stuff they're really going to want for the holidays right yeah um you know all those rumors about apple clearing out other headphones stuff from there and saying oh well there's definitely gonna be a headphones announcement because they've cleared all that stuff out um i keep thinking that that's one of those examples where you're overthinking it. And it's probably Apple. Apple dumps third-party products from the Apple Store all the time. And if they're thinking about the holidays and thinking about Apple Stores where they're going to have limited space for people, it's possible that they just decided they're going

to clear out that stuff and clear out that space and use it for something else or use it for more space so we'll see but like well i was obviously they didn't announce it here they could be doing this because they're doing that and they made that decision to happen a while ago and these headphones are coming a little bit later than expected but it was multiple decisions so they're just doing them all we should talk about what the iphone didn't get specifically right like missing features on the iphone there was all of the rumors that there might be promotion which i feel like makes the most sense when you've got apple pencil support but it also has its advantages just from you know smooth scrolling smooth scrolling on the ipad pro is real nice and there's a reason it's nice on the iphone. Every top-tier Android phone has this feature. There are genuine benefits

that you can feel on a daily basis. Also gaming. You can get high refresh rate gaming. There are lots of reasons for it. Apple chose the pixels per inch on these phones is very impressive. These are super high resolution displays. That's great. But the 120 hertz refresh that we had talked about being a possibility didn't happen. The one that's the big one is there is no emergency touch ID sensor like on the iPad Air on these iPhones to supplement face ID. I really hoped. It was a long shot to hope it, but I did hope that they could have done.

I hope all of these journalists who are getting briefings with apple uh press them on that question i want to hear what the stock apple answer is for did you not consider why did you not do something to try and deal with the fact that we're all wearing masks yeah and i'm sure they have a dumb answer that doesn't satisfy anyone i have just realized now but i want to hear it talk about face id at all no no it's just on the slide no it definitely was not something that they brought up because it's a weakness for them and they didn't have an answer for it because they didn't build a touch id sensor into these iphones i would lay money at this point that the next iphone will have a touch id sensor but um i'm a little disappointed that with the heads up that they did get and i ranted about

this on a previous show so i don't need to do it again but like this you got the tech there i i would like that i would like that explanation even you know what would satisfy me if they said you know we looked at it because we do think that's something that might be possible in the future they'll never say that but but um there it wasn't possible like i would love a senior apple executive authority to say to say that to say that like you know we we we think that we we see that point maybe it'll happen in an analyst call like we see that point but um you know we we didn't have that tech on the iphone i know it's on the iPad, but that was years into the planning. I would love for a real, truthful answer

where Apple said, we get it that you want it. And maybe even, and we tried, but it wasn't possible. But, you know, I don't think they're going to admit to not having superhuman abilities to create iPhone features either.

And obviously no usbc that people wanted it but that never felt like something that was coming this year i would love it if it happened but doesn't the existence of the magsafe on the back suggest that the direction that they're going to go ultimately is to add some um to add some data to the magnetic connector and that's how they get to um the so-called portless iphone yeah i mean i don't know how that would work but i guess it could right like like a smart connector basically yeah yeah because i guess it's not on the aluminium so they don't need to do. Because I guess it's not on the aluminium, so they don't need to do a little cutout. It's going through the glass. I assume you could transfer data that way.

I don't know, though. I don't know. But, yeah, I think that is something that is continuing to prove that. I don't think we're ever getting USB-C on the iPhone of any kind. I think that they will want to push MagSafe further until that can be the only thing they need.

Could be. Who knows? But I would love to see it, but it didn't happen, and probably won't, but you never know. Big event. I am genuinely very excited about the products announced today. I can't wait to get my orders in, but I'm going to be waiting now until mid to late November

for all of the stuff that I want to be getting. So I want to try out one of the HomePods, and I'm going to be getting a Pro Max. I think gold, Jason. I think I'm leaning towards gold. Sure sounds like it. So that's it for this episode. We'll be back as normal next

week where I'm sure we'll have more to talk about when it comes to everything announced at the Apple event as more information comes out. If you come by anything that's interesting that you think you want to hear us talk about in regards to these phones, you can send it to us on Twitter. I am iMike, I am YKE. Jason is at jsnell,

J-S-N-E-L-L. Toss it in a hashtag AskUpgrade, maybe. That's a great thing to do as well. Hashtag AskUpgrade or question mark AskUpgrade

in the RelayFM members' Discord will go to help us plan out some topics for and questions for the future episodes of the show as we lead up to new iPhone season again.

We're in the thick of it much later than we expected and now I guess we can start to try and guess when that next event is gonna be sometime in november i suppose if you want to get more of upgrade with no ads you can go to getupgradeplus.com and that is where you can sign up become a member five dollars a month or $50 a year. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you will get Upgrade Plus,

which includes more content from every episode and no ads as well. Thanks to Bombas and Team History and MailRoute for their support of this show. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Upgrade. You can find Jason over at sixcolors.com if you want some more analysis about what's going on over the next few days. We'll be back next time. Until then,

say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.