Upgrade - 322: Aux In, Cows Out

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

This week we're picking up the pieces on last week's October Apple event. What have we learned about the HomePod and iPhone 12? There's a lot to unpack here. And in other news, Apple has decided that 2020 is the right time to become MTV.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 322 today's show is brought to you by text expander from smile express vpn and pingdom my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell And I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. This is my, I don't know why the vocal embodiment of this is an episode full of follow-up and catch-up came out that way, but that was what I was going for when I said that. I think it's because you've been watching Taskmaster,

because that was a very Alex Warren kind of intro, was it? Little Jason Snell! Yeah, that's it. We'll talk about that at some point and if you have no idea what i'm doing go and watch taskmaster yeah if you're in the u.s it's on youtube if you're in uk you can get it in uk tv play for free uh super awesome it's one of my favorite finds of the entire year but through jason snow of course and jason's recommendation it's just a wonderful wonderful fun TV show.

I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you from Hunter. Jason, is there an iPhone color that you wish Apple would have announced last week? Well, blue is my favorite. And so I'm very happy that there are blues. Blues and iPhones makes me very happy. So what's left? Orange. Orange. I love that coral iPhone XR.

An orange iPhone would be, I guess, the one that they could have added to the lineup that would have made me happy. I actually agree. I knew you were going to say orange, and orange was also what I wanted too. I would love a nice orange phone. But like a good orange, you know, like just a really good orange. Yeah.

I mean, this is the thing of like actually i wouldn't mind it if if apple stopped using all the materials that they use and and like you know don't give me good colors in the in the pro line they like that that we get in the regular line like they don't have to look like they're made of metal or whatever it is you do right like let's shake it up a bit but nevertheless so today is an episode full of catch-up because i think unlike oh yeah this feels like unlike most um iphone events there was a lot of information that came out in the days after um and i wanted to go through it i think this is akin to one of our post uh like the week after wwdc kind of episodes where so much happened like during the event and so much was learned afterward that we we spend the next week kind of like following up all the things that happened the previous week and that that feels like that's i mean and i think this

came out in the last episode especially from me i was very confused and found it all very frustrating that there was a bunch of information that i knew was out there but i couldn't disseminate quick enough for the show but now we've been able to do that and we will provide a service to you the listener to give you all of the information but even in an episode full of follow-up, we still have a distinct follow-up section, which we will now begin. PopSockets will be making MagSafe-compatible PopSockets in the future. This was something that came out very quickly. This is obviously taking advantage of the new MagSafe system.

I'm very intrigued to see what they do here. I can't imagine a PopSocket like how PopSockets currently work working on this but I have yet myself to be able to understand how strong that magnet is but I'm just pleased that they are exploring it for some time in the future because that's something that I

want. T-Mobile and Sprint now have equal iPhone pricing with Verizon and AT&T. So you may remember we were talking about it was a $30 difference, I think. Yeah, $30. And it was just Verizon and AT&T when they posted the page. But on Friday when iPhone pre-orders began, they equalized.

This is for the 12 and the 12 mini. They equalized with AT&T and Verizon, meaning that if you're in the US and on one of the four major carriers, you get that price that ends in a 99. However, if you want an unlocked SIM-free phone, or for example, if you're using an alternate carrier, guess what? You have to pay a price that ends in a 29 if you're buying a 12 or 12 mini so because this is the we'll talk about iphone pricing a lot more later but um this is just the the recognition that uh sometimes a 699 phone is actually a 729 phone yeah and i don't know why there was ever a disparity it doesn't make sense to me like i don't know what why these net like i can't imagine that these networks would say no we don't want to do like it's just weird to me like i don't get it um but nevertheless ipad air pre-orders are finally

open so when the iphone 12 and 12 pro went on pre-order on Friday, the iPad Air also mysteriously went to pre-order as well. This was the device announced in the September event, and I believe it comes out on Friday this week. Yep, that's it. This is the product that was unveiled at its own event in, I mean, shared, but its own event in September. The pre-orders were taken and the shipping will take place. Same time as the October event products, the 12 and 12 Pro. Weird. But that's 2020. that's 2020.

Um, Apple announced the iPad air last month, but wants it to ship alongside its fellow a 14 bearing products, the 12 and the 12 pro. So we'll see that iPad air on Friday. So my expectation would be that we will see two rounds of reviews drop this week. If Apple keep to the usual schedules, I don't know if,

if, uh uh anything will change here i mean obviously this is the first time that apple have i guess seeded review units of iphones uh without there ever being in-person briefings so i'm intrigued to see if and how it changes but that's happened with other products i mean Yeah, but the iPhone is a different beast. Like I could imagine, I don't know, like I really do not know the answer to this question, but I could imagine two embargoes this week, like one for unboxing and first looks

and one for reviews, I don't know. Well, they've done that before and they could do that again. I think I've seen Apple adapt this year and I've had multiple examples of Apple shipping me a product, a piece of hardware for review. In the old days,

they probably would have insisted on an in-person briefing, but not always. Sometimes that doesn't happen. You're right, not for the iPhone, but the iPhone is different. But anyway, it's not that far off the playbook. That iMac that came out, I mean, I literally was told, we have a hardware announcement. You will be receiving the hardware.

Essentially, don't open the box until we talk to you. So they have been changing their thing. will have had phones since last week sometime and will be writing about them and doing their videos and all of those things later on this week. Okay. I mean, that would make sense based on the way that things have gone in the past. But it's just, you know, and I think it's not wild to wonder

if things will be the same this time around. You know, the one that made me laugh was um becky worley who used to work at at tech tv i remember her from back when she was a producer on me too on call for help she is uh she is the tech correspondent for good morning america on the abc network here in the u.s and uh she had iphone 12 and 12 pro units to show on tv last week i saw that which i think is really interesting right because it's like well nobody who's got that stuff can admit that they have it but for for tv they're like yeah you can you know you can show them don't talk about using them but just you can show them we'll let you show them very specifically to her. And that makes me laugh.

But they're trying stuff. They're trying different stuff. Good for them. Yeah, that was definitely different. I noticed she had the wallet. There's a little video. I'll put a link in the show. She had the wallet.

And it was funny because she didn't attach it properly. So like, because she's like doing, like she's like presenting. And it was like kind of like skew whiff. This is kind of like a funny thing where it's like, you know, someone at Apple's like, ah, God, no, right? Like it's the first time

anyone's ever seen the wallet attached to the phone. And she just like, she ended up moving it and doing it correctly. But it was just like one of those funny little things. And also I want to give a shout out,

follow out to Federico Vatici's iOS 14 review. It is now out. I'm multiple chapters in and I'm already still learning things and getting just as much value out of Federico's incredible work as always. If you have not checked it out

and you have even a passing interest in iOS and iPadOS, it's worth going and perusing. Even if you just jump around to your favorite chapters, Federico has done a fantastic job as always. So I urge the Upgradians to go check it out. So good.

Some upstream headlines. Jason, this is all Apple TV related today. Lots of stuff happening, yeah. Bruce Springsteen has a documentary coming to Apple TV Plus in October. It is a behind the scenes of the first performance of

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 35 years. It was a live performance that they did and they made a documentary about it. And that's going to be on Apple TV+. Yeah, I think that's later this week because they're dropping an album and then there's this Apple TV Plus thing that goes along with it. It's all part of the rollout. thing that goes along with it is all part of the rollout and it actually ties in because now apple are doing a kind of a celebration of this on the brand new apple music tv which was announced today yeah why didn't they shorten that to apple mtv oh they can't but it is it is tv but i grew up in the 80s it's mtv like they the classic mtv it they are um streaming a live video channel

that is um music videos and other stuff like that live just streaming not on-demand music videos this is think of that beats beats one or whatever it's called now apple radio one uh this is that for tv except it's just music videos i don't get the interviews and stuff i don't get it it's an interesting idea us only at the moment um it's available in apple music on the on the app and on the apple tv uh a quote to variety apple gave this exclusive to variety it says exclusive new music videos and premieres special curated music video blocks and live shows shows and events, as well as chart countdowns and guests. So there's some stuff in there that makes sense to me.

Live shows, events, chart countdowns even. But you've got to assume that this kind of content is more focused towards a youth audience, right? Like that's new music tends to be consumed by the young why would anybody put this on to see what music videos are on when they can just go to youtube and watch whatever they want i don't know i don't get this this is like the beats one model again why would anybody do beats one right why would anybody do Beats 1, right? Why would anybody do that when they can just choose what music they want to play on demand and play it? I don't know.

But I'm still not convinced that the let's listen to music part of Beats 1 has worked. What worked with Beats 1 is the radio style shows that they have done with notable individuals. Well, Mike, you've just described the evolution of mtv yeah which is that mtv started as a random assortment of music videos and very quickly became shows shows uh that were shows of music videos and then it was sort of shows about musical genres and then it was shows that appeal to the same people who like music videos. And ultimately, after about 15 years, literally just shows, just reality shows. But that was the evolution is I could turn on MTV.

And here's an admission. When I was a kid, I didn't have cable. So until I was a freshman in high school, I only saw MTV as recorded on videotape by friends. So you wanted your MTV. I totally wanted my MTV and I didn't get it. And there were alternate ways to watch music videos, but they were so sad. Like like NBC had an hour on a Friday night called Friday Night Videos where they just played music videos. And somebody like me who only had an antenna that was like, I could see the music videos now. And I distinctly remember what videos they played actually, like

amazing. So MTV, like you'd flip it on and you know, it might be Michael Jackson. It might be Madonna. It might be Chicago. It might be Rush. It could be van halen it could be anybody uh and then you if you didn't like that one well you just sit there and wait and see what happened next and that was novel but again i think people very rapidly discovered that oh you know what if we what if we made appointment television where we had a show that ran on saturday that was just heavy metal and we put that on and and that people gravitated toward that so i don't know i i this is fascinating to me and maybe if there's an audience for it that's great i'm not the audience for it but that that's great i i think it's interesting that apple is dabbling in live you know in streaming channels that are 24 7 i think that's a cool idea um i i think um

i mentioned this about peacock peacock has a bunch of channels and the channels are are literally just stuff that's on peacock but they just play continually i think there is something in that right i think there is something in and this is i think netflix has tried to do this with like the idea of can you do a random play or something it's like is there a 30 rock channel you could watch just random episodes of 30 rock and see what comes up i think maybe there's something to that you could do stuff like that but this isn't that right this is just all music that exists and you know i clicked play on it today before the show and the music video came up and i was like not interested and then i closed it and that was my entire experience with apple i think what i like about this announcement the thing that i do like

about it i think is it it highlights that there is autonomy of some description inside of the Apple Music Group. Because I don't think Apple Music TV aligns with Apple's current streaming services direction. It feels like an offshoot. Like, you know, you can definitely draw some lines, some red string to how it makes sense but it really is kind of out of left field even the way they announced it just like randomly on a monday to variety and like it you know it feels very much like a something that that group wanted

to do and they've been able to go and do it and i think i kind of like that because that's how good things are found, I think. I would also say this feels a little bit like an industry deal a little bit, where I think some of the entertainment products that Apple comes out with are not necessarily motivated by what we would consider classic apple let's create a product knowing what people want this smells to me like a product that was created because of some deal or relationship or something that is being negotiated by Apple with music companies, maybe even a condition of them getting access to certain video content for Apple Music, that this was either invented by Apple

as a vehicle for that stuff or suggested to Apple by the music industry as something they wanted. I don't know. That's just my... I could be wrong. And it could be that somebody inside Apple can say, oh no, there's an audience for this and it's going to be successful and I'll tell you why.

And I'd love to hear that. But my gut feeling is that this is probably more about a larger deal, a larger relationship between entertainment companies and Apple. And by having this this apple unlocks things that it actually wants and that it thinks its customers want and this is just an adjunct where it needs to exist because you know they want it they want it to exist so we will give it to them but what we really want is something else i don't know the morning show was resumed filming uh even though two episodes were mostly complete the show has undergone

significant rewrites to reflect covid we mentioned this before when they said they'd stopped shooting but they went i believe the report that i read suggests that they start shooting today today again on season two yeah and and just uh for people who are wondering about for all mankind my understanding there is that they shot almost everything but they had a couple episodes left to go or something like that and i i'm not sure if they've come back yet i think they have yeah i think that that happened uh already where they they picked that stuff up but we're going to see some interesting talk about a challenge for the continuity people it's like what was your hair like like trying to get it exactly right so that it doesn't

seem strange from scene to scene like this was shot in march and this was shot in october especially his hair and makeup stuff was a little bit more restricted on film yeah so there's there are some challenges there but they're they're putting it all together season two of dickinson premieres on january 8th this will be the first show from the original set uh to well it's the first to actually have an official launch date for a second season could be the first one that actually broadcasts of a second season and season three is now in development after consume uh i wanted to mention that i am watching uh long way up which we talked about here which is the ewan mcgregor charlie boorman ride electric motorcycles from the tip of south america to los angeles um so this is a documentary series what's funny and we talked about this what last

week two weeks ago that um time has no meaning anymore, but that they picked up the catalog content. So this has got the two previous series that they did, like 15 years ago, Long Way Round and Long Way Down, were picked up and put on Apple TV. And then this series was there. And I watched both of those series and I liked them. And I thought they got better as they went because I thought the Long Way Down series had a much, much more of a travelogue feel. Whereas the first one, Long Way Round, was very much like two guys deal with bad roads and mechanical problems on their motorcycles. And the fact that they happened to be in Mongolia was not as important as that their motorcycle broke or that there was a river they had to get across. But they were shot in 2004 and 2007 and so this is my comment this is why i wanted to bring it up um to go from 2007 production values to 2020 production values they shot this in 2019 but the idea that like they're not the first series the the cameras

mounted mounted on their um motorcycle helmets and the the microphones that on their motorcycle helmets and the, the microphones that were in their helmets and stuff and all the stuff that they use for shooting. Like, first off, it's all standard death and it's big and cameras are so much better now. If you think about 2006, 2007 to now,

this show long way up is 4K HDR and looks amazing. And it looks amazing. The fact that it follows for me, like, literally the next day from watching the episode that they shot in South Africa in 2007. Wow. I just wanted to say, like, I've only watched the first episode of Long Way Up, but from that, I just took away from it just how much technology and camera technology in particular has advanced. Also, in Long Way Down, they're using, they're very excited to have this Nokia phone that has GPS in it because it's 2006. And they're like, a GPS with a map on it. Let's check the map because Nokia is a sponsor.

Let's check the map. And we're just laughing at it because, you know, a couple years later, it's all gone, the iPhone. And suffice it to say, the Apple TV Plus show, they have iPhones on their motorcycles. Shocker. I know. Shocker. I know. Shocker. But I just love how much the tech has improved in terms of cameras. That we went from standard

death on their previous show to 4K HDR. And not just like the big cameras that they shoot from the vans and stuff, but like the helmet mounted stuff is tiny and spectacularly better in terms of quality. It's amazing to see.

So that's been fun to watch. And lastly today, Apple announced that they have done a new deal with Peanuts, the Charlie Brown people. Yeah. Peanuts Worldwide. They're going to be bringing some classic Charlie Brown specials to TV Plus, along with new originals and another new season of Snoopy in Space.

Yeah, and it sounds like they're doing some new holiday-themed ones because they were always holiday specials. And they've run out of holidays for peanut specials, but they found some. They've unearthed or created some new ones. But one aspect of this press release, at least the way I read it it is that even if you're not an apple tv plus subscriber on you know basically a day or two around the holiday they are going to make them available for free so like the it's a great pumpkin it's the great pumpkin charlie brown will be available october 30th through november 1st for free on apple tv plus so everybody will be able to watch it, it sounds like.

That's the way I read that. Yeah, I think so. And then likewise for Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Charlie Brown Christmas that they will... We'll see. We will see how they do it, but it sounds like they're trying to... They want to be the home of peanuts, basically.

So we'll see how that goes. This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from our friends at Smile. Take your time back with the power of TextExpander. Repetitive typing, little mistakes, searching for answers. These are things that take precious time away from you and your team. With TextExpander, you can take it back. You can reduce that time, reduce that frustration. The latest version of TextExpander even has new and improved statistics reporting for organizations, including the ability to build

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listeners get 20% off their first year. Just go to textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander today. That's textexpander.com slash podcast. Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. So one week later, we have a bunch of things that we have learned. One of the things that we were confused about so much last time was about the way that the HomePod and HomePod mini would work with TV because we thought it would be one thing then we read the website which made it seem like it was another thing and then we changed our minds but here's what it is so we were super confused about

if you could use the HomePod mini in a stereo pair with the TV and how that would work so it turns out that two HomePod minis in a stereo pair will do almost exactly what the original HomePod can currently do. So what I was talking about, the setup that I really love at home with my two HomePods, the HomePod mini will do that. So you can connect a stereo pair to your TV and you get this like immersive stereo experience.

But we were talking about something that said, what was it like Apple TV for, it was like Apple TV HD or something like TV audio or something was on the website. Yeah, it was a home theater or something like that. That was it. So we thought it was a feature that existed, but it turns out it's a new feature that was only announced in the bullet points of the HomePod and it's HomePod only, not HomePod It doesn't exist. Pro, which is it's taking a surround signal and decoding it to create spatial audio out of two HomePods, but that only works on the big HomePods. It's basically 5.1 and 7.1 surround and Dolby Atmos content will be now played in what is

called an immersive home theater experience when paired with an Apple TV 4K. And this is coming at some point. Presumably, this is probably all going to be of iOS 14.2, was my expectation. I haven't seen it anywhere. This will be especially useful because with tvOS and iOS 14.2, you'll be able to finally set the home pod as the default speaker so you no longer have to like change it from no i want it not to be on the tv i want it to be the home pod you can just set it up and be like for this apple tv 4k these home pods are the speakers when anything ever plays it comes to here no matter what has happened on the home pod because it's always annoying to me that if i listen to music on my home pod the next time i go to the tv i then have to set the output again

so you'll be able to actually set it as no this is where the tv plays audio too so i am extra excited about this for two reasons one i can now restate what i said last time which was if you pay two hundred dollars and get two home pod minis my expectation is you're going to have a great home theater setup if you're wanting to use an Apple TV of it. I really recommend this for people that live in small spaces, in apartments and stuff like that. I guarantee you will get, even though I have not used a HomePod mini, I can still, I think, guarantee that you will get a better experience

than using your television speakers. So that's really great. Because then you can also put them wherever you want. You can put them closer to you. Super awesome. And then when the new HomePod comes, I'm really excited to try out how this sounds. So, well, not the new HomePod, the new update for the HomePod. Really excited about excited about that yeah I expect that you will download a beta update your HomePods to a version that supports this

and add this to your tvOS review ah the connected tvOS review yeah this is yes and in fact in fact I would say Mike this is such an exciting feature you might want to hold off on your tvOS review

until this feature ships yeah unfortunately Apple keeps pushing back my tvOS review on Connected, and this is just another reason why they've done it. Yeah. The HomePod mini supports Thread networking. This is the first Apple product to do so. I'll give you a quote here from a MacRumors article, but I can explain it in a little more detail.

Thread is a low-power IP ip based networking technology for connecting internet of things devices offering a secure mesh based system that makes it easy to build an ecosystem of devices so this is basically like i think it's a separate chip in some devices but maybe some like system on a chip support it but it effectively allows for internet, like smart devices, to talk to each other in a low power way and is supported across lots of different device types. Yeah, this is an emerging, I think that it's in here, makes me suspect that the connected home working group is perhaps going to standardize on Thread as their choice for this. It feels likely, doesn't it? But this is, in fact, I learned about Thread from when Eero sponsored our podcast. Me too, I was going to say that.

The first devices that I knew about was Eero's because they're not a sponsor today, but they are a sponsor in general. They're beacons, little extenders. They work with Thread networking. Yeah, so this is an interesting thing that I think like the U1 chip is kind of you raise an eyebrow and you say, what does this mean for the future? And maybe nothing, but probably something. I doubt they would have put it in here if they didn't have some sort of intent of using it down the road.

Yeah, I expect all of Apple's home products will get Thread chips going into the future. It is a standard. Apple is on the standards body for Thread. So, yeah, this is one of them. Like its bigger sibling, the HomePod Mini has a non-detachable cable. But this time it ends in a USB-C connector. Ah. And there is a 20-watt adapter in the box. That's nice.

So the two things about this story is, like, one, the thing that upset a lot of people, and I understand why at first, is that, like, the HomePod had no way of bringing AUX in, right? Basically, you could only play audio that it would allow. You couldn't plug anything into it. Right. And then the cable, right? Basically, you could only play audio that it would allow. You couldn't plug anything into it. Right. And then the cable, the power cable,

was just physically attached to it. But now with the HomePod mini, it ends in a USB-C, which I think is actually a better choice for this product. I don't know if I would necessarily assume that Apple should do this for the main HomePod, but this device seems small enough that you might want to plug it into an outlet that has a USB-C connection on it, rather than a socket. And I've also seen some people suggest that maybe you could power this thing through other means, like a battery pack, right? Or something like that, that has a USB-C

attachment to it. So I'm intrigued to try that out if it's only a 20 watt power adapter i would expect lots of things would be able to power this thing and then that could become more useful to you uh as a little speaker you could take around to different places because it's got usbc on the end yeah you said ox in and it sounded like orcs and you let the orcs in like it's a little one does not simply let the orcs in yeah but when you say it it's like you're allowing cows or like bull into it right you're just letting the orcs in here comes the orcs uh-huh so ox in ox in cow out ox in orcs out there you go that's that's our fantasy bar we let the orcs, but the orcs need to leave.

Oh, I would prefer the bar that lets the orcs in, but not the ox. Oxen in. AirPods and iPhone price, the charger prices, the power adapter prices have been cut by $10. So that's the, you know, now that we have to buy them if we want them, they've cut the price a little bit, $10 is the amount that Apple's

brought them down by Apple have also removed earpods and chargers from all phones the SE and the XR no longer have them in the boxes they have not amended prices so

basically the story now is if you can buy a new phone from Apple, you will no longer get AirPods or the power adapters in the box. So I had an upgrader actually send in a picture. They just bought a XR for a family member, and it's already gone. So that's how I knew about the 10r because i i saw mark german reporting about the se no longer having it but it's also the 10r it's all sold separately now so this is all i mean it's very clear now that um that worldwide apple has said we're not gonna put power power plugs in and we're also going to start not putting headphones in. So it's all settling down clear as crystal.

Right, Mike? Yes, Jason. Except in France. Oh, yes, except in France. This is hilarious. Sorry, I didn't know we were moving on. If you live in France, you still get earpods in the box.

Vive la France! Vive la Revolution. Okay. There is a law in France. I would just say, France, I love all of our French

listeners. I love how you started this story I love all of our French listeners. I love how you started this story, though. Yep. There is a law in France. Sorry, I apologize greatly for what I just said. The French have lots of laws that are interesting. They have lots of laws around content, stuff that we've spoken about before right like certain amounts of music tv uh all have to be in french language and i understand they are

trying to protect french yeah they don't want to our our awful language ruining their language like how like how their language ruined our language oh well um anyway uh one of the one of these interesting laws is that there is a law in france that every phone must be included with a hands-free kit in the box so that you know that was back when we used to call them hands-free kits this this is from the era where it was expected that when you bought a phone you would hold it up to your head all the time which i feel like we have left that era behind but the law remains when you hear me say that law i know that everyone that's listening to this says to themselves oh yeah because of driving right that's what you assume the law is about that you include a hands-free kit so people won't hold

the phone up to their ears when they're driving right no wrong this is this law protects children from the risks of electromagnetic waves the uh this is the kind of law that was written when what you did is you took your nokia candy bar phone and you plugged a weird kind of wide clicky thing with a bunch of pins into it. Click. And then you had a single little earpiece with that foam on it. And you stuck that in your ear. And a little clip on the microphone. That's right. And then you said, I'm hands free. Look at me.

That was the finest technology of 2005. So there we go. So I am intrigued. So I'm intrigued and I would like to know, listeners out there, if we have any French listeners that are continuing to listen to the show, they haven't rage quit.

I would like pictures of these boxes because I want to know how Apple are handling this. Is it like tucked in like a secret compartment down at the bottom that like, or is there a special? Do they bundle it up

like they do the watch? Like what do they do? I'm very intrigued about this. Send us your pictures like one of your French iPhones. Oh, look at that. Sort of a reference. I hope you're proud of yourself.

I am unduly proud. iPhone 12 Pro features six gigabytes of RAM. The 12 and 12 mini have four gigabytes of RAM. So if you're wondering why some features, especially in the photography department for photo and video, are exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro, this could be the technical reason that's doing that

if it's not just a, we want to differentiate the line reason i think personally i think both are acceptable um but this could be the reason like there are some like the the pro raw is on these phones only and that you know maybe ram helps with that and i believe that there is a different frame rate for the hdr video um i i believe this goes up to 60 frames per second on the pro phones and 30 frames per second on the non-pro phones. Is that right, Jason?

It's either 30 and 60 or 60 and 120, but basically this could be one of the things that produced that reason. I think it's 30 and 60. I think it's 30 and 60. So this could be it. Who knows? But there is a difference.

That is one of the differences that exists for these devices. 30 and 60. So this could be it. Who knows? But there is a difference. That is one of the differences that exists for these devices. 30 and 60, David is confirming in the Discord. All leather cases for the new phones will not be available until November 6th. So this was an interesting thing. It was just the plastic and silicone cases that were available

in the Apple Store. I did find this interesting that Otterbox have cases in the Apple Store already, so obviously Apple have done some kind of deal with them to allow them to have the actual specifications in advance.

So I think that's kind of interesting. Those Otterbox cases look really nice too. They're like an almost tie-dye Jason I think you would like them I know you like tie-dye Apple have not yet announced a date for the MagSafe Duo charger which is funny right

because it's like any charger-based solution that Apple introduces that even looks like it could be air power now. Maybe they want to not talk about when it's coming out in case it can't. But that device has not yet been announced with a date, but it's just coming at some point. But all of the leather cases will be available for purchase on or around the time that you can get the other round of pre-order phones. And cases and MagSafe chargers have begun arriving with customers. So people started receiving them. There's been lots of photos of them online. I'm really intrigued to see

exactly how these cases sit on the new phones. Obviously, that's not a thing that we've been able to see yet because it doesn't look like there's much of a lip on the case, but like a little bit. And I'm really intrigued to see how far up the phone do these cases go. You know, like, do they sit flush with the screens? Do they overhang the screens a little bit? I'm interested to see that. Plus, just when you look at that MagSafe charger,

it looks really weird because it looks like it's an Apple Watch charger, but then you see it next to the Apple Watch charger, and then it looks weird in proportion. It's just like a funny little thing. Yeah. Well, I'll be used to it, though. That's the funny thing is in a year it'll be like old hat but i love this this is one of the quirks about apple product releases that i really

love which is that apple is happy to send you all of these accessories in advance of you actually having the product get them out of here we don't even want them you know yeah this isn't nobody's nobody's waiting anticipating this we can just uh shoot these out now and not worry about it i uh discovered when pre-ordering a phone i'll talk about it later um the apple would only let you order two magsafe chargers at once and i tried to order three i think just like what two for home one for the studio just like kitting out everywhere with these things, right? And it meant that the store kept erroring out on me, which means that we have to wait a little bit longer for ours. But it was just an interesting thing.

Apple would only let you order two of them at one time. Don't want to run out. I guess. People are going to want them. I guess. This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. Today's internet users expect a fast web experience. No matter how good your content is or how effective your marketing,

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RelayFM. Okay. Benchmarks for the iPhone 12 Pro have been surfacing. Geekbench scores have been popping up around the web, as they tend to do. And it's exactly what we thought, right? There's about a 20-25% speed

improvement over the A13 Bionic. Yeah, it's faster. It's faster in line with previous updates. Yeah, I really think that the story here is the neural engine, which obviously doesn't show up at the benchmarks. You know, the increasements to the neural engine, which obviously doesn't show up in the benchmarks.

The increasements to the neural engine, when we spoke to Tim Millay, it really seemed like that was what he was seen to be focused on. And then when I look at all of the stuff that they're doing with camera processing, that's where it really feels like a lot of that time has been spent. It's making the neural stuff and the machine learning stuff stronger. And when you look at how the chip's broken up and how Apple showed it on the slides,

it really feels like that's where they're putting a lot of the emphasis. That was definitely something that came up talking to Tim Millay, right, a couple episodes ago, that neural engine is a focus for them right now. And it won't be forever, right? But there is definitely a feeling now that a lot of features get better when you apply machine learning to them and that they can gain a lot of extra...

Like, they make these incremental speed boosts with cpu and uh with you know multi-core performance and things like that and then they can add cores and their their gpu performance continues to improve which is great and it's not like they stopped but i definitely get the sense that they've looked at the neural engine stuff and said well the place where we can make enormous speed boosts is machine learning which is increasingly a part of the the bigger picture and so that seems to be where they're they're putting a lot of their effort right now in terms of you know it's a little like talking about apple's finances where the cpu speed is the iphone sales or cpu and gpo it's the iphone sales like it's the most important thing and you need to have it but the machine learning stuff is like services revenue

or wearables revenue where it's small but that's where the the big action is right now because that's where there's opportunity for growth. And who knows what the next big thing will be, but I'd imagine that the software side of Apple is looking at everything they do and saying, how could this be done better with machine learning? Could we do this better now that we have access to the neural engine on modern A-series chips? I was thinking about machine learning the other day and neural engines and all that kind of stuff. I know that this is potentially a pie in the sky like thought, but there is so much that can be done in these areas

because our computers are so stupid. And if companies really find ways to make them smarter, if that is an actual future that companies like Apple can move to, that really does seem like an interesting thing. When I say stupid, it's like, really, Siri can only provide me with answers to basic things, right? Yeah. And just the way that it does them is great but if i want to

explain something to my computer it doesn't want that right like it can't accept that and if we are able to continue to move towards a future where i can have an actual conversation like as simple as hey a hoi telephone what is my next event today and it says you have a doctor's appointment at four and then i say can you change that to three o'clock and they're like okay let me just check with the like you know like actually have a backwards and forwards conversation with a computer like it's an assistant like that is the future that these companies try to pretend like they have given us now, but it's not even nearly it, right?

But like if that's something that we can move towards, like I want that. And that I guess is why companies like Apple are investing so much of their time and effort into these neural engines, because the headroom there from where we are now to where we could be is maybe higher in in this form of computing than any other type of computing that we currently work at in the consumer space right if we're looking at speed of chips whatever like they're faster than we need them to be now like no one's bumping up against the top end of a lot of this stuff in consumer technology anymore right like graphics engines seriously, like come on. The best graphics that you will find in games today

typically tends to be in games consoles. Well, Apple's chips are as fast as Sony's, right? Like all of this stuff is pretty standardized and we can see these big jumps, right? Like there are big jumps in computer gaming hardware at the moment and great but like it doesn't really feel like there's much more we can go like much more further we can go especially when you compare it to the smarts of computing and how much room there still is left in that so it's just a random thought i had no i think i think it it's interesting to think of what the empty space is i mean talking about

chip design and neural engine i mean let's talk about software in general one of the open fields where there it feels like there's enormous room for growth is in these intelligent assistants and you know you got to do them anybody who lived through the early days of the pc industry like computers were really bad for a really long time and they eventually got to be pretty good this is the case we where our assistants right now are varying degrees of bad but i would say they're all bad in the sense that none of them really can do what we want them to do which is like you imagine google are the best right and google do all of these things that are interesting but they're just gimmicks they're tricks right like this one that they've they've

just shown which i think is clever is you can have the google assistant wait on hold for you on a call and it's detecting when there's music playing. And then when a human comes in, you get notified and you can pick up the call. That's really clever, but that's not like smart. That's a thing that someone made. It's not like, right, it got smarter so it could do that. You know what I mean? Like somebody was like, we want to build this feature. Let's take the steps to build that feature. they're like little fun tricks and gimmicks that you can do with the powers of computers but it's not smart it didn't do that and i understand that the people that people get concerned about stuff like this but

the computer didn't learn to do that and that's what we want to be moving towards. Something in Federico's review, actually, to go back to that, is about him getting frustrated that there are all of these Siri intelligence offered things for like shortcuts and they're never anything he wants to do. And I was excited about the Siri widget that basically is going to put apps on your home screen, but it's

going to, it's eight apps, but it's eight apps that it's, it thinks you might want to see right now. And that, that lasted like an hour on my home screen because it was never apps I wanted to see. And, and so this is, this is a case where, um, smarter, so machine learning has proven to be really effective in certain areas, right? Like it is really effective at scanning all your photos and identifying and tagging objects and stuff like that. You can train it for stuff like that. Can my device be better at intuiting what I want and what I'm trying to do? And can our voice assistants be better? And all of these other aspects of it. And that seems to be where it's kind of empty. And whether ultimately it's the neural engine that helps make that better or whether it's just they need to do a better job in the cloud of programming smart assistants, I don't know. But it feels like an

empty hole. And yes, I will grant you that Siri is deeper in that hole that's empty. I don't know what that means. Siri is further down, but they're all bad. I was arguing with my Amazon Echo-based product the other day. They're all bad, it's a place that they i would like for them to get better and that's not just for voice assistants but it's also for like on device like i would really like like you know apple has this feature in the apple watch that they introduced a couple uh years ago that is automatically sensing when you um you stop and start a workout without actually choosing the workout start and stop and it

still doesn't work right for me. I'll walk up a steep hill for a long time and nothing and then it will suddenly 25 minutes in and it'll be like, oh, are you walking? Yeah, I've been walking for quite a while now and I've also had it where

I've stopped to talk. This happened yesterday. I stopped on a trail while we were hiking to talk to a friend who was running the other way. And we stopped there and chatted for five minutes, just standing there. And at no point did my watch tap me and say, do you want to pause now? Are you done with your workout so then we continue walking and five minutes later while we're walking it says oh do you want to pause now like what what are you seeing now and and it's just one of those things that like that's a feature apple thought was good enough to put in the device and it still can't intuit

based on uh what its various sensors are telling it that I'm doing as a human being. And like, I want all my devices to be way better at that, like way better at intuiting my behavior based on their sensors. And this is, you know, it goes way beyond telling me whether I've stood or not. And this is a place where we could do some amazing things,

especially with wearables, but with all the sensors we got in our phones, there's a lot of really intelligent deduction that could be done, but it's just not there yet. So, moving on, John Gruber wrote a great article, which I saw you linking to as well. I know that it was full of lots

of little interesting details. Yeah, Gruber does a good job, but this is like, I think he outdid himself. I think this is a very good useful clear article about what is up with the iphones in terms of price and in terms of um the especially the camera functionality yeah and it's worth reading for those two things and we're not going to go to actually really into detail all about the confounding camera stuff because I know I'm just going to tie myself up in knots again. So it's worth reading this article. But there are a couple of

things I wanted to pull out. One is first comparing like to like models year over year the regular iPhone 12 is $130 more expensive than the iPhone 11. So something that didn't really dawn on me until I read this. The iPhone starts at the same price that it started at before,

but that's the mini now. Yeah, this is one of those things that I think we got swept up in the details of the products last week and missed. And I really appreciated Gruber breaking it down. And he also broke it down with the $30 rolled in because he thinks that the $30 discount thing is bogus. And I think he's right, even though most customers in the US will get it with the $30 rolled in because he thinks that the $30 discount thing is bogus. And I think he's right, even though most customers in the US will get it with the $30 discount. And his point is it's a price increase, whether you want to say it's $100 or $130. This is actually a lot like what happened with the iPhone 10, which is they brought a product line to OLED and the price went up. And it's not necessarily surprising if you think about it that way. But if you were shopping for an iPhone 11 last year,

and then you look at the 12 this year, it's $100 more, $130 more, depending. And the mini is the price of what the 11 was last year. And that's just, those products are more expensive. So the price to buy into the flagship line only went up $30. And if you're on a major carrier, it really didn't go up. But that's the Mini. And if you want the larger phone, it's $100 more.

So this is a creeping up. Apple went a couple of years without necessarily doing the the creeping up in price thing but here we are they they did it this year yeah what they but what they did do which was they tried to do everything they could to make it look like the price hadn't changed which is fine like fine i'm not i'm not this isn't a big complaint from me but that is what they've done here like the prices had to go up clearly for what they were putting in it. We know this from OLED. OLED is more expensive.

Okay. But they tried their best to maintain the price that they had. And they did a couple of things to do that. They got rid of chargers. They got rid of AirPods. They made it cheaper to ship these phones because they can ship more of them in the same containers. There is so many things that went into keeping the prices even relatively consistent right so like the phone still starts

the line still starts at 699 which is with the mini and it also included asking carriers to help them right like they did everything they could to get it to that price right and another quote not including a power adapter in the box also clearly nudges people towards spending the $39 for the new MagSafe charger in the same way that removing the headphone jack nudged people towards buying AirPods. I thought this

was really insightful. Not that it's the reason, but it helps, right? And it was similar. They got rid of the headphone jack for a bunch of reasons i'm sure but one of them was definitely because they could push people towards um initially beats and then airpods and it's probably a similar thing here where now they have this new uh charging technology that they're happy with and they want to push people towards that. So by getting rid of the power adapters,

people go to the store to buy a power adapter maybe, and they maybe pick up this one instead. Right. Even though the MagSafe charger doesn't come with a power brick either, but nevertheless. I wanted to ask if you had any more thoughts yourself on the iPhone line.

I know that you've been writing a bunch of stuff about it this week. Have any more kind of considerations solidified for you? Well, I think the big thing, so I wrote a piece at Macworld that was about a dilemma that I think a lot of people are going to have. And I feel it, but I think that there are a bunch of people who feel it more acutely than me. And it's the people who have been frustrated at the size of Apple's phones creeping up, getting bigger over time. From the 5 line to the 6 line, and then from the 6 family, 6, 7, 8, to the 10. And the screen on the 12 Pro is larger than the screen on the 11 Pro, right?

So it's this feeling of like it continues to creep and my macbook column i said it's that you know it's the frog in the in the pot of water like you you it just keeps getting warmer and warmer but if you don't like a larger phone and you prefer a smaller phone um how far will apple push you and so I think with the existence of the mini, you now have a flagship phone that is noticeably smaller, smaller in hand, especially because these screens are now pushed so close to the edges that it's mostly about, what you really need to do is think about the size of it, holding it in your hand. And because that's usually what people feel it's in their hand or in their pocket right and and so i've been thinking about that what i didn't really think about that i think is also

worth noting here is so first the 12 pro from the 11 pro although the screen is larger the 12 pro is actually not physically that much larger it's about a tenth of an inch taller and 0.01 inches wider. So it's essentially in your hand the same. It's just slightly taller and the screen is bigger because you measure on the diagonal. And so a small change can end up being a larger change on the diagonal. can end up being a larger change on the diagonal what i neglected to consider is the fact that the iphone 12 is the same physical size as the 12 pro whereas the 11 was like the 10r it's bigger a bigger phone and so you had if you did small medium large it was it was 11 pro and then 11 and then 11 pro max it's not the case this time they're basically the same phone so

the truth is if you're somebody who has a 10 uh class phone and you're looking to upgrade your phone you have a bunch of choices because you could, you have two phones that are essentially the same size as the phone that you've got, the 12 and the 12 pro, and they have different features and the screens aren't exactly identical, I think, but they're, but they are in the hand. They're the same. Um, and then you've got the mini, is way smaller so i just i think that's really interesting that that um i kept in my mind kind of aligning the 12 with the 11 as a larger cheaper phone and in truth it is no it is neither right it's what's cheaper but it's more expensive than the 11 the 12 is and it's smaller than the 11 which i think is, and it's smaller than the 11, which I think the price

makes it complicated, but the size thing, I feel like maybe makes it a little bit more of a mainstream phone that it's about the same size. It's not this kind of inexplicably larger yet cheaper phone because that's a little bit of a variation for Apple. But, um, but the mini then is the obvious small one. So I think, I think there's a real question here in that there's some people who are going to leap for the Mini. Because it's like, the 10 size is already too large. The 8 size is too large. I want to go down. The Mini lets me do that.

Great. Then there's everybody else who's like either on a, you know, 6, 7, 8, or went to the 10, 10S, 11, somewhere in there. 11 Pro, I mean. 10 S 11, somewhere in there, 11 pro. I mean, and they look at the 12 and the 12 pro and say, these are essentially the same size. So which one do I want? And that's an interesting buying question too, which is 12 or 12 pro because the 12 is cheaper. Um, not as cheap as you might think, like at 128 gigs, the 12, thank you, John Gruber for your chart, think like at 128 gigs the 12 thank you john gruber for your chart uh at 128 gigs of storage the 12 is only 120 i guess 150 if you've got the good carrier cheaper than the 12 pro they're closer it's just that you can cut it back to 64 and get it for even

cheaper so i think it's really i think those are the things that I find the most fascinating. Now you big phone people are just like, well, Pro Max, it's just Pro Max. And like, I get it. That's actually kind of the easiest decision. But otherwise you've got this very interesting two almost identical phones in terms of size, but one has pro features and one doesn't.

And then you've got the mini and the question, do you go down in size? How much has the ever increasing flagship iPhone size bothered you? Do you want to go all the way back? Or do you pick up that mini and think, oh, I guess I got used to the big phone. I'll just stick with the 12 or 12 Pro. One of the things that I think we are yet to see, and I'm really intrigued to see how this feels and shakes out of most people is yes,

the physical sizes haven't changed that much, but the screens have gotten bigger. And what does that feel like? Right. You know, like I get, I totally get, I'm completely on board with what you're saying,

right? That like these phones are bigger, but they're not bigger. But the screens are bigger and the screens are proportionally much larger than the physical size changes have been right um and also the idea of like well the screens are stretching out right because the sides are flat they're not rounded anymore and so i think it is a thing that's worth considering because once your phone might not be physically larger it will be more tricky potentially for you to reach across the screen.

So I'm intrigued to see how these screen size changes actually feel in use. A lot of ergonomic issues that we're going to have to explore. And having kind of batted down the concern about it getting taller, the 12 and 12 Pro, getting taller than the 11 Pro, and saying, well, it's really about how it fits in your hand. That's true to a point, right? But one of the, my biggest problem, honestly, with iPhone ergonomics right now on the 11 Pro that I have is not the width of the phone at all. It's the fact that I can't comfortably reach anything that's up at the top of the screen. Yeah.

Um, and I, when I think about the mini, I think it's not just going to be narrower. It's also going to be shorter. And that is, uh, interesting to me.

I wonder how that's gonna, that's gonna feel. So I don't know. Ergonomics are important. And we talk a lot about prices and 5G radios and processors and neural engines and all of that sort of techie stuff. But one of the very important things when it comes to a lot of these products, especially a phone, is the ergonomics. It's like like how does it feel in your hand uh and how does it feel tapping on the screen and is it also out there that we don't really know yet is is it slippery like a bar of soap or does it feel more uh stable in your hand which i i have high hopes that it will i am happy to report that my favorite

fact about iphone about ios and ipads and and iPhone product sizing is still in effect, that the 2018-2020 iPad Pro is still the thinnest device Apple has ever made. All of the phones are 7.4mm thick, all of them, all four, which is interesting to me. are 7.4 millimeters thick, all of them, all four, which is interesting to me. Even the mini is as thick as the Pro. I just find that intriguing. It's weird to me that they've decided to keep that thickness so consistent. And the iPad Pro is 5.9 millimeters thick. The new iPad Air is 6.1.

So even the iPad Air is a little bit thicker than the iPad Pro. It's one of my favorite facts. It's one that I say every now and then, and people never believe it, and then they have to go check it themselves, because it does seem so surprising, really. The iPad Pro is thinner than the iPod Touch ever was, even, so really peculiar. So really, really peculiar. For me, I've been doing some reflecting on last week. I feel like the presentation last week itself left me frustrated. But that was just in the presentation. On reflecting about the devices themselves,

I am actually really excited about the iPhone 12 line. I think that overall, this is a very good upgrade because the design looks great. And I'm very excited to see what that looks like to hold it and to see what the new colors are like. I like that there's more choice, you know, like the inclusion of the mini really is fantastic because Apple finally have created a phone which is of top tier quality and a size that people thought was gone. When the SE came out and it was the new SE and it was just an iPhone 8, I think we all just thought that that small phone could have been gone forever. So I'm really pleased to see that Apple have made a small, modern phone. The leaps in camera performance, both in software and hardware,

are very intriguing to me, especially on the Pro Max. I'm really looking forward to and intrigued about what images look like from that phone, right? Like, what is it actually going to look like and feel like in daily use? And also just the MagSafe stuff is really exciting to me, like new options for accessories, people can be creative again. I'm excited about that. You know, like, coming back from the beginning of the show, I'm excited about the possibility of having a pop socket that i could just take off and then

put my phone on a wireless charger which is just not something that i've been able to do before so i just wanted to say that like i felt like i was frustrated after the event because it was short and confusing in some places and some of the way that apple decided to talk about 5g and stuff was quite frustrating to me um especially because you know not being in the uk like it so not being in the us it like really irked me um like how american focused the presentation was so yeah the presentation annoyed me, but I'm super excited about the devices themselves.

And speaking of which, I referenced earlier ordering, so we ordered a DNR 12 Pro. So I will have a new phone to play around with. I will be kind of stealing it every now and then

to see how it feels, and we'll be doing some camera tests and stuff so on next week's episode I will at least just I have will have some experience of a 12 pro so I'm excited about that we're actually picking it up at a store Jason so I'll talk about what that process is like to go to one of the biggest Apple stores in the world on iPhone launch day in 2020 to pick up a phone. I'm expecting that to be somewhat of an experience in and of itself. So there we go. I'm excited for next week.

You get to brave the Apple store and see what that process is like. And I'm curious because I went through it for my thing, but my thing was buying a watch band. So it didn't really matter so much. I haven't ordered anything, just to be matter so much. I haven't ordered anything, just to be clear, again. I haven't ordered anything, but I'm hopeful that I'm going to get to try all this stuff

for review. Yeah, that'd be cool. Hopefully both of us will have had some experience with the 12 or 12 Pro by our next episode. I hope so. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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Shall we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions, Jason Snell? Sure, that sounds great. All right, our first question this time comes from Brent. Oh, nice. Brent says, if you had to replace your 11-inch iPad Pro today, or I know you have a 12-inch, but let's just imagine a situation in which you have an 11-inch. I do.

Would you buy another iPad Pro i do would you buy uh another ipad pro or would you get the new ipad air now i want to answer this question in two different ways jason if i can okay yes if i was replacing my ipad pro i would get another ipad Pro because I am used to Face ID. If I did not have an iPad Pro, I would get the iPad Air most likely. Like I would be more willing to look at that because I wouldn't be used to something. I think I would get annoyed with, like when i use my ipad mini that i

have here at the studio i always forget that i need to use touch id on it and it frustrates me a little bit compared to my ipad pro so that would be that would be difficult for me imagine tapping on the space bar on the keyboard and then realizing you have to reach up and and yeah put your finger on the touch id that see this is the thing is like that's just one of those things that i think once you're used to it it would get it would be too frustrating but if i wasn't used to it then i maybe more would more consider it because the ipad pro is a super cool device right um and and you're um you're uh losing promotion you're losing ProMotion. You're losing some camera stuff.

It's real close, right? But the price also, again, is not as wide a gap as you might expect if you're not looking at the base model with the smallest amount of storage. So I think most people who have an iPad Pro, if they had to replace it, would probably be better off replacing it with an iPad Pro and not missing those features. But, you know, we're all waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? And for there to be a new iPad Pro. Yeah. But if you're coming from nothing, like from none of these types of iPads, the iPad Air is a very, very intriguing prospect. Yeah. The iPad Air is a very, very intriguing prospect.

Yeah. Tony asks, do you think that we will have S model phones in the future? Or is that gone now? Right? Because we went from 11 to 12. What do you think? Yeah. It's a great question because we've always said, I don't believe that there iPhone's going to be, there's going to be an iPhone 19, right?

And yet here we are at the iPhone 12. So that has kept happening. Also next time is 13, which some people have superstitions about, although there was an iOS 13 and it was- Yeah, and look how that went. It was a disaster. I made this exact same joke about three weeks ago.

I don't know. I feel like the future of Apple product names is mysterious. And so perhaps they will. I doubt it. I wouldn't bet on it. I feel like it's clearer to just increment the numbers. But who knows? Because Apple has its its number game a lot and it still does feel like an iphone 19 is unlikely but at the same time what else are they going to do

like they've got they now have product name slots and the number is essentially just instead of a year they give it a number so that you know which version it is for which year. But it feels like they're settling into a place where there's going to be number, number pro, number pro max, and number mini now. And then you just keep incrementing the number in a way that kind of doesn't matter. It's just the new iPhone, but you've got to call it something.

So if I had to bet money on i mean ever is a is a tough one especially but i think because it's so bananas right because they keep changing it but right now i think that apple probably is is uh happy to just keep has removed the ability for them to include S. Because iPhone 12S Pro Max is too much. Oh, my God. It's too much. There's too many syllables in there. So I think that you're right.

They now have names. And they just did it. They just did it. This could easily be the 11S, and it's not. It's the 12. And why would you not increment the number and make it seem like a bigger update to get people more excited? The S is almost like a half-hearted upgrade in terms of naming. So I wouldn't do it. And you're right, the Pro Max makes it even worse. napoli asks do you know if the new ceramic glass is more scratch resistant apple just mentions break resistance and durability do you think we could end up with more scratches this is an interesting question i i'm unclear on that because that that definitely is something that has come up before that if you if you try to prevent shattering you may end up being more

scratchy I don't know what I'll say is I don't know the properties of ceramic very much but I've been wearing a ceramic Apple Watch on and off for over a year and I cannot see a scratch on it

anywhere so I don't know I don't know. I don't know. But I am intrigued. I'm also intrigued for the people that try to break their phones. I do not condone the destruction of devices. No. But for scientific purposes, I am interested to know, right?

Like if people do side-by-side drop tests um they're difficult to conduct as well because it's like you can't do it scientifically but i am intrigued to see teardowns and and durability tests and stuff of this new glass like how much more um resistant is it actually we'll find out so uh winterm in the chat says that it's actually more, they're claiming more scratch and break resistant. So I don't know. We'll see. Where did they claim that?

Like in the thing itself, they just said it was more durable. So I don't know. All right. I hope so. Chris asks, if Apple had added a fingerprint sensor in the power button to the iPhone,

how would they manage it given that most people use cases? They have a cutout for the button? Mm-hmm. I don't think... How do they manage it with a home button before? With Touch ID? Like you have a cutout for the Touch ID sensor.

My thought was they could just end up with a folio case for the iPhone, like a folio case style, like they do with the iPad. And it actually leaves the sides exposed to a degree. Yeah, I don't know. But I think the easiest situation is you should just do a cutout. the easiest situation is you should just do a cutout. Like, this is how other phones... Phones do exist in the world with fingerprint sensors in the lock buttons, right?

This is a very normal thing on Android phones, and there's just a cutout in that part of the case. Simple. Like, it's done. Last question today comes from Zach I am very tempted by the 12 mini being a person who enjoys smaller phones

but the switch from Touch ID to Face ID is giving me some pause I'm currently on the newer SE overall what are your experiences with the speed, convenience and usefulness of Face ID versus Touch ID especially during COVID so I love Face ID versus Touch ID, especially during COVID? So I love Face ID.

I do. I prefer it. I love having it on my iPads, especially. With wearing a mask outside in public, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible. And so I don't really know what to say here

other than if you're out and about a lot wearing a mask, it's not a good experience. And you probably need to go to a low security password because you're going to be endlessly locking and unlocking your phone. I don't go out a lot, so it doesn't really bother me that much. And it's super convenient when I'm unlocking it in the house and not wearing a mask. And it's super convenient when I'm unlocking it in the house and not wearing a mask. But when I'm out and I'm trying to shop and check my shopping list on my iPhone and I'm wearing a mask, every single, suddenly these invisible interactions that Face ID enables that are so great are all gone.

And I'm inputting my password every and it turns out i lock and unlock my phone all the time when i'm at the store and i don't notice it because it's face id and then you wear a mask and suddenly you see all those interactions and yeah you can change to a simple password you could turn off uh screen lock and try not to turn off your phone while you're in the store i've done that it's not great so i i honestly don't know what to say about this um you are gonna have to adapt if you live in a cold climate you're gonna be wearing gloves in the winter anyway, which is bad for touch ID. So I don't know. It all depends on your circumstance and how you use your device.

But there is no doubt that if you're out and about in a public location where masks are being worn, you are going to have to adapt how you use your iPhone versus using a more easily available biometric like Touch ID or Face ID without a mask. Yeah. I like Face ID in most instances. It is faster. So basically before COVID, was like easy for me like and the only thing that i had an issue with was when uh it was like more frustrating for me to

touch in in public transport but then apple added the express card thing where you can set a card to your phone and you don't have to use any authentication for it you just touch it by the reader and it goes it's super easy because it used to be before you wouldn't even need to bring the the phone up to your face it's just done but with me wearing face masks now it is more annoying but i guess you kind of just have to make that decision right like it's, it's as you said, if you do wear gloves in the winter and realize that that doesn't work for you, then you're used to this idea. Just clothing in some way restricts the biometrics.

This is not a new thing, but we're focusing on it more now because there's a new way for most people that this is happening. So this isn't a clear answer because really this has to be your own decision but if you are asking for our experiences these are those i think we both prefer face id to touch id in most situations but would still like touch id to come back and have both if apple said to me you can replace touch id with face id i wouldn't do it because when i'm at home or when i'm somewhere where I'm not wearing a mask or whatever, Face ID is superior to Touch ID. So I wouldn't want to change.

So that's where I am a bit. If you would like to send in a question to help us close out the show, you can always send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or in the Real AFM members Discord, use question mark AskUpgrade to send me a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or in the RelayFM members Discord, use question mark AskUpgrade to send me a question that way. You can also help us open the show with a hashtag SnellTalkQuestion. I'm sure you can understand how you need to do that given what I've just told you.

If you'd like to find Jason online, go to SixColors.com and he is at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you to Smile, Pingdom, and ExpressVPN for their support of this show. And thank you to the people that support us directly, our Upgradian members, people that subscribe to Upgrade Plus.

If you would like to get upgraded with no ads and with additional content, just go to getupgradeplus.com where you can sign up today. And thank you so much if you do that. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.