Upgrade - 424: Das Pro Plus Max Ultra

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Five days later, we take stock of last week's Apple announcements, disclose our pre-orders, ponder future changes to the iPhone product line, and discuss our favorite features of iOS 16.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 424 today's show is brought to you by text expander fitbod memberful and uni pizza ovens my name is Mike Hurley. I'm back at home. Not at Apple Park. Not this time. And you're not at home. I'm not at home. I'm in Memphis, Tennessee. We'll talk about why in a little bit.

I have a hashtag Snell talk question to kick the show off for you. It comes from Aaron. Aaron wants to know, Jason, how do you feel about the movie Prometheus? Well, we know Scott Forstall didn't like it. Yeah. We spoke about this on Upgrade Plus last week. Yeah, at the California theater.

I overheard Scott Forstall right before he got fired. I think he actually knew he was leaving at that point and was just kind of there on an obligatory level. But anyway, i saw prometheus in the theater and i thought it was okay i don't i don't love love love it and i think that i have problems with it but i feel like this is one of those examples where like the the the prevailing wisdom like the internet wisdom has turned into this thing where they they savage that movie and i i don't think it's that bad i actually think it's okay i i think it's very ambitious and i think it's disappointing as an alien movie right which is what it actually is uh and it's yeah it's got some dumb stuff in it but i think it's got a lot

of cool stuff in it too it's got some perplexing things but like again i thought i i enjoyed it in the moment and i don't really understand the negativity toward it because I think it's okay. But I think lots of people hate it. Anyway, I disagreed in my own mind as I walked past Scott Forstall, and he said it sucked because I thought to myself, hey, Apple executive, disagree. But then he wasn't an Apple executive. He became a Broadway producer shortly thereafter. It always surprises me that he never went back to tech. I don't know.

Maybe he got enough money that they paid him off to just go away. Yeah. Maybe so. I don't know. Second Acts, this is a topic for another time, but Second Acts of Apple execs are not... Apple execs don't generally do well after they leave Apple. I think Apple is such a unique place. Including Steve Jobs.

And if you try to import second acts somewhere else, you have a hard time. Right, yeah. I mean, Steve Jobs had a hard time. And then he had to come back to Apple. Yep. Ron Johnson had a really hard time at jc penny um the rubenstein went to palm ruben rubenstein did okay right because then he did the android thing at google like rubenstein did fine yeah well no i mean he did okay but like it was never i don't know i feel like it was never

the same um and that that's that that is i think the wise thing to do is to either do the forestall where you take your money and you go away, or you do the Phil Schiller thing where you ascend to a higher level and fade away. Oh, Johnny. Although my understanding is that Phil is still heavily involved in Apple event planning. Yeah. That's my understanding that's what he does now understanding if you would like to send in a hashtag snow talk question of your own you can just send one out with a tweet with a hashtag snow talk use question marks no talk in the relay fm members discord oh i'm gonna before we get into it i'm gonna say uh you know

what tony fidel might be your best example thanks Thanks to Chris in the Discord for mentioning that. Tony Fidel did a pretty good job, went out and did Nest after doing the iPod. So, all right. That's the exception that proves the rule, though. Stop sending me exceptions, though. I don't need to hear them. I'm just saying it's hard to adapt. And I think they make enough money, a lot of these executives make enough money at Apple that maybe the best move is to just uh finance a broadway show instead so i am in memphis tennessee right now and there is a very good reason for that because this coming friday so it's friday september 16th from 12 to 8 p.m eastern time over at twitch.tv slash relay fm we are going to be streaming live the fourth annual podcast-a-thon for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital as we continue to try and raise money and successfully raise money for St. Jude throughout this entire month. Let me take a look at our current total, Jason. We've just passed $180,000 raised for the kids of St. Jude. We have a goal of $494,840.18 this year. The reason that goal is so specific is because when we reach it as a community over the last four years, we will have

raised $2 million for the life-saving mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is finding cures and saving children for kids that are suffering with various forms of cancer and other life-threatening diseases. St. Jude not only treats these kids, but it learns from the treatments that they create, shares that information with the world. It is a research hospital. And treatments that have been created and found at St. Jude have lowered the childhood cancer survival rate massively in the time that they've been around. So St. Jude is celebrating its 60th year this year. And in that time, we've seen the childhood cancer survival rate in the U.S.

go from 1 in 5 to 4 in 5. So it flipped around, which is just an incredible thing to see. And it's because of the donations and the attention of people like our RelayFM listeners who continue to donate every year. But we need your donations to meet our goal. And we have a goal

because it all goes to an incredible place doing incredible things. So we really want you to tune in for the podcast-a-thon. Jason's put together a wonderful game again this year, which we'll be talking about. Jason's going to come on and talk about what he put together. How did it go, by the way? I know you recorded this weekend. Went great. We have a game show in the can. There were winners, there were losers, laughs were had, some surprising questions with some surprising answers as was you know i think

intended as is the way things tend to be yes uh so yeah we've got tons of fun stuff it's going to be eight hours long we have all of our kind of the favorite things that we've had over the last couple of years that me and steven have gotten to experience when we've been apart from each other and we're bringing it back we've got tons hijinks. It's really going to be a fantastic time. I really hope that you'll be able to tune in. So it's at twitch.tv slash RelayFM from 12 to 8pm US Eastern Time. It would really mean a lot to me

if our RelayFM listeners could come together, spend some time with us on the stream, donate some money to our incredible cause here at St. Jude. So if you want to find out more about all of this, find out more about how to donate and fundraise, please go to stjude.org slash relay,

and we can work on this together. Let's cure childhood cancer, right? Isn't that the thing to do? Doesn't everybody want to do that? Sounds good to me. Maybe if you tuned in. We do have some items of follow-up that i wanted to talk about because obviously you know we spoke it feels like forever ago to me now uh but we spoke after the event last week i really

can't believe it's just been a week less than a week five days but i wanted to see did you order anything in the meantime because obviously pre-orders have gone up and stuff like that since nothing for me personally but yes i did do the pre-order thing loaded up in the apple app apple store app and then set my alarm for 5 a.m and get up and order uh my son's iphone because he's going off to college and so he gets to not have a hand-me-down for the first time in his life. He gets to not have a hand-me-down iPhone. He is getting a iPhone 14 Midnight 128 gig with the Storm Blue silicone case, which of course will arrive today because I told him this is a very important Apple tradition

that you get your case before you get your phone. And that's it. I've been toying with the idea of buying uh the new airpods pro but i haven't pulled the trigger on that one yet oh i did i also did the because they have a new thing which i didn't know existed maybe i missed it but i went through the ordering process for the airpods pro uh memoji engraving obviously i did that so my So my AirPods Pro that I've ordered will have my Memoji

on them. Which is just like that seems fun. I really like the engraving on the AirTags. Like that little emoji. I just say it's kind of fascinating to me that they can engrave Memoji which are infinitely almost customizable

characters, right? The permutations of engraving them emoji is huge. But yet they still have a limited emoji set that you can choose from. And I don't know, why can't I just engrave any emoji, you know? If they can get the memoji part right. Anyway, but I have a little mic memoji on my uh on my airpods i i would say i ordered steven ordered for me an iphone because we're picking up here in memphis um so i got uh iphone 14 pro max in gold uh five total gigabyte again so i'm very excited about that picking it up on

friday morning so i'll have it we can maybe talk we'll probably touch on it talk about it a little bit during the podcast on itself on friday because I will have picked it up in the morning I'm intrigued to see how the eSIM process may work for me we'll find out if I'll be able to actually transfer my phone to it but you got the you got the Pro Max so it's got a SIM slot. The Pro Max has a SIM slot? I think the Pros have SIM slots, don't they? No, I think none of them do. I thought it was just the 14s. No, I was checking that for me, but I think they, for what I could see,

they, it's all eSIM. They mentioned it during the 14 segment, but... Oh, so they're just all in the US, no eSIM, no SIM slot at all. No SIM cards at all for anyone. Because they didn't mention it during the Pro Max part of the keynote. But you're right, it's their Pro and Pro Max,

also not compatible with physical SIM cards. Well, good luck, Mike. Yeah. My network supports eSIMs. Thank you for calling AT&T, I guess, or something. Well, okay, so this is like a thing that um i will recommend people check out apple have a support article about e-sims and something i didn't know you could do during these quick setup process or during the setup process

you can transfer your current physical sim card in your old phone to become an e-sim i don't know how it works technically but there's like a path of like oh hey you got your old phone to become an eSIM. I don't know how it works technically, but there's like a path of like, oh, hey, you got your old phone. You're now just going to move everything, including your SIM, to the new phone and some carriers support this. So I'll try that. My carrier apparently supports this process in the UK. So I guess I'll give it a go.

I'll follow up next week. Let you know how that went, you know? Yeah. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm, I'm very excited about the camera.

I'll say as well as obviously dynamic Island. Yeah. And, and see how dynamic Island works in prop and practice. Although that's going to be a process, right? Because the dynamic island stuff will start small and then at some point will grow and so it's actually a little bit like how we deal with

beta features in the summertime where you kind of have to wait for the apps to appear to judge it and that's the same case with dynamic island is like the apis and all that like that's all gonna happen but it's gonna kind of happen slowly so even what we get at launch is not going to be quite what it'll be like a few months later presumably so we'll have to we'll have to keep an eye and yeah i'm interested in looking at the camera stuff i've got all that on my list my you know review checklist for when i get phones to to give them all a spin but that that, comparing the camera to the previous model cameras is going to be really interesting. This week's episode is brought to you in part by our friends

over at TextExpander. When you work in a small team, every moment counts. You don't want to have to be wasting time finding video conferencing details to send to a new client. You don't want to have to track down the same FAQs from the company's website. I do this so much with TextExpander. I have all of my Zoom details just saved in TextExpander in a little snippet. So I can just hit ZZOM and it just fills them in. So if somebody needs to join a video call with me, I could just fire off that shortcut. I don't need to go and hunt down a URL anywhere. It's just at my fingertips all the time. These are the kind of things you want right there so you can get your work done faster. It's just at my fingertips all the time. These are the kind of things you want right there so you can get your work done faster.

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features so we're able to share a bunch of snippets across RelayFM so we always make sure that we are benefiting from the work of each other. If repetitive typing is getting you down you need TextExpander. Check out TextExpander today at textexpander.com slash upgrade and you can get 20% off your first year. That's textexpander.com slash upgrade, and you can get 20% off your first year. That's textexpander.com slash upgrade to say goodbye to repetitive typing. Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. I actually have some rumor roundup for you, Jason. Oh, really?

I really do. There's been some stuff flowing around, and I thought, you know, it'd be good to touch on. I've got a couple of things from Ming-Chi Kuo and something from Mark Gurman too today Ming-Chi Kuo is suggesting that Apple will continue

to further separate their various models of iPhone going forward so now we have 14, 14 Plus 14 Pro, 14 Pro Max so you've got these kind of four brands but there is 14, 14+, 14 Pro, 14 Pro Max, right? So you've got these kind of four brands. But there is a suggestion that Mark Gurman also makes

that Apple may bring the Ultra name to the iPhone in the future, maybe for, you would naturally assume, replacing the Pro Max. So we would have iPhone, iPhone Plus, iPhonehone pro iphone ultra yeah i i mean first off pro max is a terrible name yes ultra is a better name than pro way better just fundamentally and um i do think that it implies feature disparity between the pro and what is now the pro max which i think is fine right they've done that occasionally where it's like, oh, this is a bigger zoom or whatever. But I think having a much larger phone and embracing the fact that it can get some features that don't go in the Pro and that they can have it be that, you know, it's bigger and better on top of the Pro. I like that idea.

And I actually think it's less confusing believe it or not to have the pro max i think the names pro and pro max not only do i not like pro max but like pro and pro max there's almost an implication that they're the same phone right just like the the the iphone and iphone plus and they're not always right occasionally the big phone is different this was true back in the in the plus phone days too. So if you look at the Apple Watch and you see Ultra Apple Watch, I feel like it maybe makes it a little clearer that this is not the same feature set as the Pro. It's got some other stuff going on. And if they want to go there, I mean, obviously, it's going to push some people up to buy that phone because it's got the best features.

I think that's already been the case. But to make it clearer and to get rid of the name Pro Max, like, well, I'll sign off on the elimination of the name Pro Max pretty much regardless. They could call it the iPhone cupcake, and I would be like, great, love it. Let's do it. Yeah, it's not a good name. It doesn't sound good to say, and it's, like, confusing. And, yeah, it's not a good name. It doesn't sound good to say. And it's confusing. And yeah, it's not something that I enjoy. And this will obviously as well, to mention, this is what Samsung did.

So Samsung, they split up their product line a little bit more and introduced the Ultra, which is effectively just like, here is a really expensive phone that has a bunch of high-end and or niche features. And at some point, these will come to the other phones. And they continue to do this now. So they have the Ultra line of the S20 or the S line, and then they have an Ultra. And I could imagine, you remember we spoke about that Periscope camera? Yeah. I could imagine that in its first iteration potentially being just on the max phone, on the biggest phone. Because the more space you have, the better.

That's it. Right? And I think that that is, I mean, it allows them to not just have it be about space. It allows them to say, like, we put the finest whatever. Maybe that's the, you know, titanium ring. And it has different look. And it allows them to build something that is um aspirational and is uh is like well i must have the best so i must have the ultra and it drives up their selling price yeah um but also

it has some good like you know it lets them okay look at it this way um if if the pro max is always a hundred dollars above the pro right like we've got a feature that we want to put in our iphones but it costs too much and it cuts our margins and so we don't want to do it so we're going to leave it out well having the ultra phone makes it a lot easier for apple to say yeah we'll put it in the ultra and it'll cost more because the ultra costs more but the people who get it will love it and we'll figure out how to make it cheaper and it'll move down through the price categories. And, you know, I'm, I'm probably never going to be the person who buys an iPhone ultra, but I like the idea of them starting there because I do think that there are features that Apple holds a year or more because they just can't make them fit inside the price line. You know,

they've got their prices and they've got their margins. And you could say, well, they could cut their margins. They do a little bit at the start and then it picks up, but Apple's game is the margins are part of it. And they've got some rules that they've laid down saying,

here's the prices, here's the margins, what can we make? And if you make an ultra phone, you've got more room to put more expensive components in there. Plus you've got more space. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Oh, Mike, room to put more expensive components in there plus you've got more space yeah oh interesting oh mike you're seeing the money fly out of your wallet aren't you i don't even want to think about

i mean like i'm already in you know like i'm in i'm always going to get the big one because i like it yeah and to me i would like i always would like the biggest phone to have more stuff because i'm paying more money for it you know like i feel like this is how it has been in the past uh i think it makes sense and i will and i know it's going to bug people who don't want the big phone but you know this is i think it makes sense the one you can charge the most for put the edge case features into and eventually they're filtered down to the rest of the line plus just as we talk about and as we spoke about at the beginning of this conversation i just like the cleanness of the branding that each of the four phones has its own name i just find that to be

so clean or lack of name in the case of the base model but yeah but that's the name the name is iphone right and like i'm fine with that because it'd be like iphone 15 so it's iphone 15 iphone 15 plus iphone 15 pro iphone 15 ultra and it's just like then we can just call them the 15 the plus the pro and the ultra and i just as as a professional technology communicator i like it when it's easy yes you know iphone 14 pro max is way too many things right yeah too many things, right? Yeah. Too many things. They could just get rid of, they just call it Max if they want to. You know what I mean?

But there's no point in needing two names. It doesn't need two names. It never did. It's never made sense. They could call it Max, but Ultra is a cool, they obviously like Ultra for the watch. So I think, they don't always do it this way, but I think it's always useful to look at all of Apple's products and say, what names of in favor, not in fashion, in favor. And what's in the lexicon?

What are the words that they've used before? And Ultra is not a new name, right? Because they used it for the M1 Ultra. Yeah. So Ultra is obviously in their vocabulary and is a recent addition, which means it's in favor. Yeah. And they liked it enough to then use it on the apple watch so i think it's logical that they might go there and yeah i i just it's sim it's simpler like they it and and gives them the ability to say here's a

spread of of products in a way so uh you know i'm fine. Yeah. They have a lot of names in the hopper right now, right? They do. Maybe a little too many. They have Studio. They have Ultra. They have Pro. We have, what else have we got? Max.

Max. And probably Extreme, right? That was the... Or something. I've made that joke once. Mark Gurman's called it that too, so who knows, right? But, like, there is going to be some kind of name for the biggest chip that goes in the Mac Pro.

I have a theory about that. One of the things that they might do, it's a half-formed theory, but one of the things they might do is redefine that as the high-end and not have as many variations in chips. Have it be basically M basically m2 m2 pro m2 max m2 ultra and that's it and that one becomes the ultra and then everything else

and that one down a little bit that one is the ultra and it could even be that that's the ultra and and and the rumors for the we're not going to get deep down into max stuff today but the rumors for that are that that's that's like an m1 ultra except there's two of them so you could you could even offer m1 ultra or two m1 ultras or whatever like you could call it the same thing yeah but you could simplify that a little bit by not adding another item in there if you didn't want to yeah i think it would be also a lot to have five mac chips that's five you know like we're good with four four is how many max even are there to have all those chips i mean you could get rid of the name max too get get rid of the name max in a chip for max yeah please please i mean especially too right

when there's also we're gonna we're gonna keep making products that have different model number years simultaneously, which they're going to keep doing, right? So you've got, if you add five M2 chips and five M1 chips, this is like, this is a lot of chips that we're potentially selling here. Mark Gurman says that Apple is still working on their iPhone subscription service. It could still come later this year or early next year. Mark Gurman suggests that they did not want to push to have this ready now so as not to confuse day one purchases.

MacRumors suggests that they maybe would want to have this be unveiled at an October event. As a reminder, if you're like, what does this mean? So this is from Mark Gurman's previously reported news on this. The program would differ from an installment program in that the monthly charge wouldn't be the price of the device split across 12 or 24 months. Rather, it would be a yet-to-be-determined monthly fee depending on the device that the user chooses.

So you may say, for example, pay $25 a month every month forever for an iPhone. That's just going to be something you do. It's not financing. It's a subscription. And you would turn in your old one and get the new one. And it wouldn't be one of those things where you pay off your loan, et cetera, et cetera. It would literally be, they would say, now it's time for you to get your new iPhone and

return that one and continue to pay or get a new model and pay a little more. But that it's just a rental, basically. Yeah, and, you know, probably there's a version of it that includes Apple One or whatever. I had a couple of questions on this rumor. So Mark Gurman, so he suggested that they didn't want to have it, didn't want to have it like to go now

because it could confuse things. But I think, how would it be different to any other year? If they unveil it at the end of this year, come next year on day one sales, it's still going to be there as a thing to be more complicated. I think the idea is if you launch this after the spike of iPhone purchases, you get a runway. the spike of iPhone purchases, you get a runway. You get nine months where the iPhone purchases are lower than they are on day one to shake out the program before that day comes where the new iPhones come out and you have to deal with this at a high level. I think that would be the rationale. Okay. Right? Because there aren't as many people buying iPhones. People still buy iPhones all the year, but there's a big spike when the new ones come out.

So if you miss the spike, go right after the spike, roll this thing out, you get all of that kind of runway in order to shake out your program before you get the spike again. Because the spike's going to be painful, as spikes usually are, and you get to work out the bugs. I think that may be the idea there yeah right because imagine launching a brand new program that you've never done before on with peak iphone it's like oh no no no no no like work up to that you give yourself some some some time to figure out all the details and i guess you you know as with all of these things you don't know exactly what is going to confuse people until it's available

like that you could realize oh there's this thing and we could maybe streamline this part of the process and it would be easier for people to understand how to do it. The other thing though that was weird to me is if they did announce it this year I think it is a bit like if they said they did announce it at the October event say

people just bought all their iPhones you know it's just like yeah it would make more sense to me to do this like in the spring or something like that so i i think if i'm the advocate for this program inside what i would say is i really would like this up for the holiday right yep yep you know although the the counter argument would probably be yeah but this is a subscription you're going to give somebody a subscription for their Right. Yep. Yep. what you're going to do. But yeah, you're right. You could delay it a little bit. People are still going to be like, oh, well, I just bought my iPhone. But it's like, well, we'll get you next time. Or they have a buy-in kind of, right? They'll be like, well, yeah,

but you'll trade that one in and then go on this plan. And then you'll have the money that we traded you in for applied to the plan. And now you're on the plan and it you've you know now you're on the plan and it runs until september and then you get the new phone and then it all works out or something like that i don't know it's tricky yeah and ming chi kuo is reporting today that the iphone 14 and

14 plus are currently seeing slower pre-order sales than the 13 and 13 mini but the pro and pro max are selling better than their predecessors now the thing about this is this isn't really actually like information information like so quo is like looking he's like talking to people he knows and looking at the way the orders are shaking out right now like from the stores he no one actually really knows this information but let's just assume that this is correct it's interesting but isn't wouldn't apple's ideal always be sell more of the most expensive ones yeah i think the question is so so yes right like it shows that the mix what do they say in the in the calls favorable mix um having the more expensive products be the ones that are selling better is good for Apple.

And it might say something about the appeal of the camera and the dynamic island that they're peeling more people off of the lower end product. Because the higher end product is so much more high end than it used to be, right? Because it's got the faster chip and it's got the better camera and it's got the dynamic island. And it's always on screen. So it's got the dynamic island and it's got like it's like oh and it's like always on screen so it's like oh so many things in there and so you tip over into i guess i'll get the pro instead of the non-pro the other way to look at it is that the uh lower end model not getting a chip update and missing a bunch of other features and being kind of a less exciting update means that while the pro buyers are very happy to buy the 14 pro, the people who are not pro buyers are looking at the 14 and are unmoved. And so that's the question, right? Does this little data point

mean that people have shifted to the pro and pro max or does it just mean that a bunch of people also just dropped out of the low-end phones and that's a that that was always apple's gamble with this i mean we talked about it last week and i keep laughing at the moxie of them to sort of claim retro retroactively that their strategy going forward was their strategy last year of having the lower end model but this is the year where they have to grit their teeth and use very specific language to not talk about why they're using the exact same chip with one more GPU as they did last year. But going forward, these phones will move in lockstep and they'll both get an upgrade from the previous year. But this year,

they didn't. And so it's a risk that they're taking that that iPhone 14 doesn't appeal. That said, again, most people who buy iPhones are not buying on a one-year cycle. They're buying on a two or three or four-year cycle, at which point the 14 is the latest model, and it is a big upgrade from the 10 or 10S or 11. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at FitBud. Between balancing work, family, and everything else you've got going on in your life, it can sometimes be hard to make fitness a priority. What you need is a program that will work with you and not against you, and that's why you need FitBud. Their algorithm learns about you, your goals and your training ability and will

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Thanks to Fitbod for the support of this show and RelayFM. So it's been a busy week. There's been a lot going on. There are a couple of things that I wanted to touch on that I thought were interesting, like little tidbits of information. And then I think that we have a couple of bigger topics

that we wanted to talk about in reflection since the event last week. So one of these was I wished that the phones would get the new GPS technology that's in the Ultra Watch. So this is like a dual frequency GPS, which means it can operate better in cities of tall buildings. Turns out the pro phones are getting that feature. So I'm really excited about this. Like we had a short layover in chicago for various reasons that

i can't get into at the moment but we'll do at some point in the future uh and uh it's like a whole thing and um we i'll tell you i'll tell you about it like i i feel i really wish i wouldn't have said it nevertheless uh so we're in chicago chicago is a city with tons of skyscrapers and we were just trying to get from our hotel to a restaurant and we ended up like getting turned around a bit because the gps just struggled and i was like oh man i cannot wait to have this feature uh because you know i live in london so i'm frequently in the city right and it's gps just gets very confused and so i love the idea of having a better thing here yeah well and i mean the fact that apple tried to solve this with like hold your camera up and it'll try to figure out by matching the buildings where you are it's like whoo or you could use this

new uh gps frequency and that is hopefully less interfered with and that's that's great i'm glad that they're doing this a question question I have that is about the phone and the watch really is they talked about having a hard time acquiring signal also when you're out in the middle of nowhere. And I know there was a lot of misunderstanding. I can't believe I'm breaking the seal on this again, but there was this. So when the iPhone got GPS in the first place, which was a long time ago, people kept saying it was a GPS, which is assisted GPS, which it is. And people were saying, well, what that means is, uh, you, it's not real GPS. It's fake GPS. It comes from the cell tower, which is not true. The way assisted GPS works. If anybody has ever used a standalone

GPS that has no data connectivity whatsoever, one of the challenges with it is it doesn't know where it is in the world. And so it has to sit there and triangulate among GPS satellites until it knows where it is in the world. And it's got to go from anywhere to a very specific place. And assisted GPS is great because the cell tower knows exactly where it is. And so it can look at the cell towers it sees. It knows vaguely where it is. And that's good enough that it can get a GPS lock almost instantaneously, because it's not looking in the whole world. It's looking in a very specific place. It's very clever. But you don't need the cell towers. If you're out of range, it will figure out where

you are. So my question is, especially for the Ultra watch, but it's also true for the iPhone, So my question is, especially for the Ultra watch, but it's also true for the iPhone, is this new, and I don't know the answer, but is this new GPS frequency, is it also helpful in getting GPS lock on faster if you're not near a cell tower? And I don't know the answer to that one. I mean, I could say it's probably not going to do us. I would think this is the new frequency maybe maybe it's better at that but uh but yeah it's it's either way i love it because old gps it's funny how we've come to rely on gps too that's a that's a thing that in 20 years has just completely massive changed in the world so uh so better gps and they list all the different gps uh networks that it's capable of looking at too

and they're like five of them because there's some some western ones and there's also like the russian one and the chinese one and it's like it's uh it's good it's good as reported by steven akino the iphone now has a boot up chime yep it's optional yep um but you know accessibility advocate yeah it's it's a fun idea and also if you're somebody who can't see the see the boot screen uh for accessibility purposes right that's and i gotta tell you i mean all of us have dealt with this on ios devices right it's like is it off yet can i turn it back on especially if you're trying to shut it down and then reboot it like is it as it is it gone yet is it is it on now

so having a little audio note to say okay i'm i'm shutting down or i'm awake i'm back is uh it's cool that's a cute little sound yeah i mean it's just a fun thing to add and if it helps people in these situations like fantastic right like this wins all around this one's weird to me the nike watch faces are now a part of watch os 9 they are not exclusive to nike watch models anymore i got one on my watch right now i don't understand why they've done this i don't i don't get it like i can't get the hermes one i think nike um i don't know i think maybe nike is just uh likes likes if you want a brand with nike on regular apple watches good follow-up from zach they don't do nike watch models anymore that would be why so there you go that's the answer so i didn't know that all watches are nike watches

now and they have nike bands they do nike bands but they don't do a nike watch interesting i've missed that i mean it makes sense, actually. I think that makes sense. You know, just sell the bands, have the watch faces. You don't need to do a Nike watch anymore. Well, that would explain it, but it is still interesting, right? Now you can just get them all. Like, why not?

Go for it. As we're recording today, like iOS, watchOS isn't out yet, I don't think. It'll be coming out at some point soon. I think probably before we end up finish our recording today i'm really looking forward to the metropolitan watch face uh in watch os 9 it looks so good i'm really excited about it i haven't said this anywhere but i'll say it here i'm really disappointed in the upgrade they did to the utility face which is one of my favorite faces because what they didn't do is add all the complications that are available on other faces like uh because the california face can be made to look a lot like the utility face

but it's not quite as good and they all they've added some modern complications it's basically they they you can't put one on the top of the circle like you can in california and on the bottom it's got a it's got one long circular partial arc of a complication instead of the two corner complications. And it's just, it's too bad. They updated it, but only a little bit. It's better than it was, but I think I'm going to end up sadly continuing to use California to make it look as much like the other one as possible, because they really didn't do a good enough job with utility so i'm bummed out by that but i do have a nike face now and that was fun although when i added the nike face um it it uh i think it crashed and so i ended

up with my watch face was blank um i could use i could press the side button and like use apps but when i went back to the watch face it was just nothingness until I rebooted. Then it was fine. They wanted you to just do it. I just rebooted, yeah. Just reboot it. Yep. The Apple Watch Ultra is shipping

with a braided Apple Watch cable. I just want Apple to do all braided cables. I love the braided cables. Just do all braided cables now, please.ided cables just do all braided cables now please no more plastic that's where they're going I think it's only a matter of time everything is slowly creeping toward braided cables

I'm sure that they'll get there eventually especially now they don't include the chargers right so like give me a good cable if you're not going to give it a brick that's what I think. Except in Brazil, I guess. Hi, Brazil. Yeah, I think that it's a trend.

I think they will eventually get there with every product. Honestly, it feels so much nicer that it gives it that high-end feel. I can't imagine that Apple would not want their cables to feel better than your average generic cable. It's been a long process. I feel for the people who are in charge of cables at Apple, because the first thing they got hit with was the taking all of the bad chemicals out of their plastic, which took all the like supple plastic cables and made them all stiff and awful. And like there was a period where you started getting apple cables and you're like why is this so terrible and the answer is well we took out all the harmful chemicals that made it nice uh which is good like good for you but the end result was that the cables were were crappy um and now with this

uh with the braided cables my apple you know cables when I get a braided one, it's like, ooh, you notice how nice it is. And they need to do that on every cable they sell. And remember last week we were talking a little bit about what does the H2 chip do in the AirPods Pro? It felt a little bit confusing at the time one of the things that i totally missed from the keynote i think i was too uh distracted by the severance cameo was adaptive transparency mode so it's a new transparency mode like it's more advanced and this is a quote from um from apple on device processing that reduces loud environment sounds like a siren construction work or loudspeakers at a concert without silencing noise entirely so i know i've experienced a version of this with the current airpods that

like a police car drives by and i can hear the siren get dimmed but if they've done something to make this better i'm all into this like i'm very excited to try this out so i guess it's like because now they've they've rebranded it right now we have active noise cancellation and adaptive transparency mode so like i find that interesting okay so i like this idea i wonder if it's like uh you know just trying to reduce the dynamic range of some sounds yeah yeah so that the really loud stuff just gets gets quieter yep because the, I read this and I think a siren, like if you're in transparency mode, you want to hear the siren, right?

Cause it may be coming for you. You might want to, might want to know that the siren is approaching, get to the side of the road, do whatever you're doing. So you wouldn't want to remove that stuff completely. But I, the idea that it's processing it to reduce the dynamic range and maybe also do things

like amplify voices or something like that, like it's a it's a continuing process for them. This is augmented reality, right? This is the audio version of augmented reality. And they're they're trying to find ways to adjust adjust this to improve that mode, which I love. I love that mode. So so great. Like, I'm looking forward to this. I I'm. I love that mode. So great.

Like, I'm looking forward to this. I'm going to end up with these AirPods Pro. It's just a matter of when. But as somebody who... So when I take a walk or a run, I am sometimes on paths and sometimes on street. And so when I'm on street, I have transparency mode on

because I want to hear if there's a car coming or whatever, right? And so I use both of these modes a lot. There was some stuff that we were thinking about talking about today around some bigger themes that I think you were touching on. One of them being kind of around the eSIM, right? Yeah, well, I was thinking about how, this is in my like bin of things i want to write about it's great to go out of the summer and you go from uh what am i going to talk about

or write about to i have too many things uh but that's what happens when apple holds an event and one of them is apple always does this right where they're like we found this technology and we think it's time to rip the band-aid off and be like we're going to this right whether it's we're going to take the headphone jack away or you know but but they've done this a bunch of times where they're like yeah we're going to standardize on this thing now usbc a little bit too early but they're like too bad we're going to do this now and that's what struck me about the e-sim is the e-sim thing in the US. That strikes me as Apple. I mean, maybe it's the carriers providing some pressure for them.

I don't know the dynamic there, or are they providing pressure on the carriers? I'm unclear on it. But it seems to be one of those things where, yes, there are complications. There are a whole bunch of people afterward who are like, but what about, but what about? But what about if I travel to a place that doesn't support e-sims what do i do then and apple's reaction is like you know stay on your carrier then because your carrier will

support roaming and but this is where we're going and the only reason they're not selling the e-sim only model elsewhere in the world is that the e-sim uptake is not as great there and i i feel like this is all part of apple it just felt right out of their playbook of like, this technology is the right one. It's the inevitable future. Somebody needs to step up and just say, forget it. We're done with the SIM card. And there's a tangible, maybe not in this version because they have to make two versions, but there's a tangible benefit for Apple in getting that thing out because it is another water ingress. It is something internal in the phone where they have to leave space for it. And they can get rid of it. And if you think about it, as we said last week, regular SIM cards are dumb, right? If you thought about it today, they're

like floppy disks. They're not necessary. I get that they have their uses, but it is a relic that no one would invent smartphones today and say, well, what we need is a special slot where a little tiny memory card with almost nothing on it except an ID number gets inserted. And that's the only way you can like, no, nobody would ever do that. So I appreciated that. And it has some sort of a resonance for me of other moves that Apple has made that have been a little bit uncomfortable. But I think Apple does have this attitude sometimes, which is, I know people are going to be uncomfortable.

But if we listen to the people who are uncomfortable, the change will never happen. And the change needs to happen. So here we go. Like, I've resisted. I don't have an eSIM. I still have a physical SIM in my phone. And when I start reviewing these new phones, well, guess what? I'm going to eSIM because I'm not going to have another option.

And that's what Apple wants, is to shove people like me into the eSIM future. Again, I'll report next week and tell you how it went for me. But in theory, I have no problem with this. Because it seems like there's a very simple path. And I'm sure things fall through the cracks. But things fall through the cracks all the time when it comes to carrier stuff, right? If the process is as simple as

you can just put the phones near each other and it just transfers the information and gets you set up. If it is that simple, great. I have no problem with that. And then I don't have to deal with this tiny little card and keep a SIM card ejector tool around and like do all that nonsense yeah my first uh real experience

with e-sims was when um when my daughter went to uh europe this summer for school she did a school study abroad summer program and so i'm looking at the AT&T, you know, very convenient $15 a day roaming international, which is better than it used to be, but it's still for a month plus, it's not great. And you can get, you know, I was able to buy her an eSIM for Europe that was super cheap. And the eSIM support on iOS is so good because you can add, you can load in your eSIM and then toggle like which one does data and which one does phone. And you can have them both on, you can have them both off. I knew all of this, but to see it in action, I was just really impressed by it. And it's so, it's so nice. And I would imagine that on one level, the carriers

hate it because it's like it's instant access to a different carrier. On another level, though, I suspect the carriers like it because it means the carriers can control, you know, control what or at least know what you're doing on your phone at a level at a software level instead of just like what I imagine it is now, where if I move my SIM card to a different phone and I turn it on, then the carrier is like, well, this is a different phone, but SIM card checks out. So, okay. I don't know. I don't know whether the carriers love it or hate it, but it's certainly just so good for users. It really is great. It feels like, you know,

it's freedom. It's freedom to move. I told Jamie, like, okay, it's loaded. Turn it on when you get there and turn off your American SIM and you're good, right? And I said, you can leave your phone on if you want to, but leave the data off or you can just turn the whole thing off and leave the eSIM on. It's very, very cool stuff. And, you know, you can buy those in apps and install them. So for travel, it's great. Yeah, it's really good tech. And my fear is that the carriers are going to be bad at it. But I feel like it's been out there long enough now that maybe I've just avoided the badness. Well, but they can't be in the long term, right? If this is what Apple's doing,

they have to get good at it and this is one of the things that apple has done over time is like force the carriers to be better because the scale is so large you know like so yeah i have no doubt that it's gonna it will push and i'm i'll just do it for evidence right like if this works for me this process for transferring i'm sure apple will probably roll it out in future phones but even if they don't i'll just stay on the e-sim wagon forever like it is a it is a system which makes way more logical sense to me in 2022 than a tiny little piece of plastic with some copper on it that i stick into the side of my phone yeah yeah no it's it's like i said i said sim cards were dumb and a couple people wrote and

i'm like but what about this but what about this it's like yeah i know that it's problematic in certain circumstances to go to an e-sim right now like i get it but just objectively we should not have them they just they're they're dumb they're old they're outmoded they're they made them smaller and smaller and smaller but the last step is to make them nothing right that's the final step here because they need to go away they're a relic of uh you know early 21st if not 20th century technology they need to they need to die and there was also like a couple of interesting things around kind of apple's uh marketing spin right like the a15 yeah bionic stuff like that i mean yeah where's the chip lab is the here's the note that i wrote

down just like i gotta write about where is the chip lab and it's like i i predicted on the you know in the draft i said we'll see the chip lab because i always see the chip lab and we didn't see the chip lab and it's so telling i know i covered this a little bit earlier but like it's so telling that we didn't see it because there's no chip story really like apple and they they use the graphic which i'm i appreciate that they did which is that they're so far ahead in smartphone chips that honestly they're years ahead now and they they had that that with the 11 iphone 11 being faster than the fastest competition which i haven't double checked that but if it's not the 11 it's the 12 they lapped the competition a long time ago with their chips and so i don't it's it's one thing where it's like okay they had

to do max stuff which probably slowed the pace they they don't need to go ahead they probably got new processes coming from TSMC. I mean, this one's on the smaller process, but there's more in the works there. There's probably a larger chip platform update coming. There are some rumors to that effect. There's a lot going on in Apple's chip making process. So taking some time and taking not stopping but like taking your foot off the gas is not unreasonable for them to do the problem is from a marketing perspective you still have to market these products as new and exciting and one of the ways you've always done that is with chips uh so here they're like comparing it to the competition and they're uh they're doing

things like talking about well there's a new like they mentioned the new system and package on the apple watch in one context for like the se but they didn't really mention it in any other context and it's unclear whether that's actually faster or it's really about the sensors and they did their little sophistry with the oh it's upgrading to the pro pro processor from last year and it's like yeah but you introduced that processor last year on the on the base model too it just had one lower one you know one fewer gpu so there's a little like oh no it's it's new slightly and then the a16 or i mean the a15 is like uh so we've got this we've got this very weird combination where it's like we've got two chips one is not new really and one is new in an it's new ish right like even

the claims about the new chip on the new process are pretty vague right and i get the sense and i think this is right if you look at how they marketed it i get the sense that the real innovations in the new chip are about supporting the new camera architecture not as much about raw speed and like again it's okay they're so far ahead that taking a break is okay i just i'm i i wanted to note the marketing challenge it causes because, you know, look at the faster chips, look at the faster GPUs, let's do some game demos of games you'll never play on your phone was such a staple of iPhone marketing. And when you take a year with your foot off the gas for the chip part, you got to work harder in other areas, which I just think it's an interesting place that they're in. I do think that, as we spoke about last time, to me, it just makes sense to not need to have a new chip in the iPhone every year. It doesn't need to keep being pushed so specifically, at least every iPhone.

And I understand that maybe now there is like well if they want a new mac chip every year maybe they have to work on a new iphone chip every year but i still don't think that we're at a point at the moment where all of these devices require more more more all the time when the power is already so good right i also think i mean they did last year remember they did the the launch and they talked about compared to the competition and we all had to figure like oh well it well, it's not going to be faster. And it actually was faster. They weren't trying to hide it.

I wonder now if maybe that was setting the stage for this year that they said, look, look at our roadmap. You can see where we're doing some changing in our chip strategy. That's going to mean if we're constantly comparing to ourselves, we're going to look bad. And again, I'm not saying they're trying to, well, okay, I am saying they're trying to get away with something, but I'm not saying that it's bad. I think that part of the motivation is like, I can hear that people in the meeting saying, well, look, raw CPU and GPU is not where we're focused in the next chip. And the A16, it's going to be all about the ISP and working with that giant camera. And we're doing a bunch of stuff for that. And the general public is going to be like, oh, look at Apple, the GPU and CPU didn't really progress very much. And this is kind of a loser.

And they probably will do that anyway, right? But like Apple doesn't want to lean into that. So they make some decisions about how they're going to do it. And yes, they did start this process last year to get off the, I get it, right? Like they're not competing with themselves. So to compare themselves to themselves

and come up short is actually not, you know, what they want to do. I mean, we focus on upgrades here for obvious reasons. And also in the Apple world, like you're going from iPhone to iPhone. But like if the bigger picture is also expanding the iPhone and dunking on the competition, well, you do that by comparing the iPhone 11 to the competition and saying, look how far ahead we are. Well, you do that by comparing the iPhone 11 to the competition and saying, look how far ahead we are. Not, and then look at the A15 and A16, not saying 8% faster than last year because nobody's upgrading from last year, except our listeners. And it's not the point, right? The point is upgrading from two, three, four years ago and from Android phones. And so if you're looking to get the best marketing message out there,

that's gotta be what you wanna do. So I get what they're doing. I just am, I'm fascinated by the fact that they have to do it. And it's also a case, right, where the Mac has stolen some of the thunder of the iPhone here. And I, you know, that's the truth of it, right?

Is that they have so much to brag about the last couple of years on the Mac, but I feel like this is the other, you know, I don't know how directly connected they are, but they're doing a lot less bragging about it on the iPhone than they used to. And they're doing a lot of bragging on the Mac side. So it makes me wonder if maybe that's the trade-off

that they had to do. They're like so far ahead that they can afford to spend that time showing off these Mac-specific processors. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Memberful, the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience and used by the biggest creators on the web. We use it here at RelayFM to power our membership program. We talk about Upgrade Plus. We use Memberful for that. With Memberful, we're able to and you can to generate

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Of course, the reviewer of reviews is over at MacStories.net. Did you say that Dan was working on something for Six Colors? Yeah, Dan's got a review going up at Six Colors 2. It'll probably be up by the time people hear this. Awesome. So you can go and check that out for Six Colors? Yeah, Dan's got a review going up at Six Colors too. It'll probably be up by the time people hear this. Awesome.

So you can go and check that out on Six Colors as well. In fact, it definitely will be because it's up right now. There you go. So say it, so shall it be done. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. Breaking, breaking. Review posted.

Thank you, Dan. See, look, you might be a new dad, but he can still get the review up on time. Oh, he did. He's back, everybody. He's back. Dan's back, Dan. See, look, you might be a new dad, but he can still get the review up on time. Oh, he did. He's back, everybody. He's back. Dan's back, baby. Better watch out.

I don't know why, but you better. Dan's back and he's coming to get you. I don't know why I'm saying all this. He's coming to review your iOS. He's going to do it. So I wanted to just touch on a couple of things. Obviously, we've been using iOS 16 for most of the beta cycle right i put it on pretty early uh because i was excited about it and you know i think for me there are four things that i

am excited about um that are kind of the bigger elements so it's the lock screens the focus mode changes the enhancements to messages, and the home app redesign. So they're the things that I'm really excited about. There's a bunch of stuff that I'm also excited about, but it's not shipping right now. Stuff like live activities and the free format. It's like, I want to know what that's all about.

iCloud photo sharing, photo shared library. What's it called? iCloud shared photo library. Shared photo library. It's not photo sharing. That's it called iCloud shared photo library shared photo library photo sharing that's a different thing right so you know there's stuff that I want that's coming later but there's still enough stuff for now I have I haven't tried uh the watch osb as I mentioned earlier so I'm excited for that oh one thing I forgot to mention the medications feature I really like that in iOS 16 as well I think that's been a nice addition uh how have you been setting up your lock screen what have you got going on on it uh i have the i don't have a

lot of them i've been primarily just using one i need to do more of that uh customization because i've got a bunch of little things i mean now's the time though right because you know that we've been on betas but now as of today there are loads of apps that are coming out supporting lock screen which is there's apps that i use a lot that i've not been on the beta for but i i'm looking forward to trying them out and i've got that i just i you know i i don't have like i don't switch among my many lock screens and i'm not using focus in order to change that. Right. So I, I, that, that's something that may change maybe, uh, using the always on screen. I might experiment with that, but on my iPhone, um, right now, you know, what I've been doing is I picked a, you know, I, I picked a space photo as I often do for my lock screen. And I have, uh, the widgets I've got right now. I'm using Carrot, which has widgets that are coming out, I think, in the final version today.

But I've been on the beta for that. And so I've got a little thing on the left side right below my time that is next three days weather forecast. And then on the right side, I have a little circular widget that is out of the scriptable app that is literally just the temperature on my home weather station so i can actually see the current temperature at a glance at my lock screen which i love but i'm not uh that's all i'm kind of doing on the lock screen right now so i changed my lock screen image so i'd used kind of photos of things or abstract things for a while um but there was something about i was actually using an illustration that my wife adina had made for a birthday gift for me i was using that as my lock screen for a while but there was something about the new design to me

that really spoke to having a person uh like you know i think this new lock screen is really focused i think a lot about like people or pets i think it's like the key thing that they're going for yeah people and pets um and so like at first i just wanted to see like you know if i i had a picture of my wife and i and i put you know so i could see like oh the time goes behind her head or whatever but then over time i was like no i think this works really nicely. So I've moved to that now and I expect that will be for me going forward. It will be pictures of people again. I really like the clock customization.

So I changed my clock to the Apple's New York font. So people think about San Francisco a lot, but Apple has a font called New York, which is a serif font. And I love it. And I've been using that. so that you know people think about san francisco a lot but apple has a font called new york which is a serif font and i love it uh and i've been using that um as my clock i then have uh the kind of the top one where it was you know it has like the date or whatever i've put um fantastic cow up there so that's really great because it has the day the date and then also my next event which i just think is a fantastic thing to have above the clock.

It's like, that's brilliant. Then I also have Kara. I have the kind of forecast one. So at the moment, it tells me the high and low temperature and what the conditions are for the day. Then I have two of the circular ones. Currently, I'm running an app,

which is in, if you're in our members discord, some of our incredible RelayFM members built an app to track the cintude fundraiser and it has widgets and this year has all of the sub campaigns and all that kind of stuff in it and they also have lock screen widgets so i can see right now that we are 37 to our fundraising goal and then i also have a widget smith widget because you can imagine underscore you know it's got the widgets

you know that's what he does and I have one for step counting there too so I like to have my step counting right there on the front I was playing around with having the activity rings there for a while right because Apple shipped that which I think is really cool but I have those on my watch so I thought oh I don't really need the activity so prominent but I do like to know my step count so put that there for now but I think I heard Federico talking about this and I have no doubt that it's in his review I haven't gotten very far into it yet but because I was hearing him talk about on app stories that there is a level of kind of shaking out if you if you wear an apple watch what things do you replicate or not right right because i have my

step counting on my apple watch too so i probably don't need it on the lock screen maybe so i'm gonna like play around now with some of the other stuff that's coming out and see if there's something that i would want to put in its place but there's a ton of great apps coming out with these widgets in them and like this is it for me. Now I'm wondering, do I want to have multiple lock screens? Because I'm using the focus modes now more than ever. Because it's so easy to set them up now. The setup process is simple.

By default, it includes everything in. You can have that as an option. And then you can just remove the things you don't want to be in the focus mode. So I now have regular focus mode, I have a recording focus mode, a travel focus mode, weekends, and sleep. And I have those mostly firing off on automations, and it changed my lock screens to have different apps on them.

And I'm thinking I will also have them eventually change my lock screen for the phone too with different complication widgets, whatever you call them. And I think most of that's going to shake out with the always-on display. So when I'm recording, usually at home, I have a dock on my desk where my phone stands in it. So now when I'm in my recording focus, I guess I will probably would like to have some, I don't know what they would be, right?

But I pick some widgets maybe that would match that. Maybe I'll have like the time tracking one from Timery up there or something. Oh yeah. Right, because it's gonna be always on, right? So I think that's gonna change the way I think about wanting more access. Like I think I would like maybe a couple more

of these widgets on the lock screen. I think just like the three in that little bar or like four if you use the circle ones i wouldn't mind another row but maybe that's too much i don't know no i i think that um i think the challenge is apple's like no no you only really get this one row and the top line and that's it and i think i think apple is going to need to accept that people might want more of these and uh i'm not asking for a free form widget dropping tool on the lock screen but more space for more widgets would be welcome yeah i would like to see them in fact okay i'm gonna make another wild suggestion here which is you know how the flashlight and the camera are down at the bottom? Yeah. Those are circular widgets.

There should be more widget space down there. You should be able to add or remove the flashlight and the calendar or the camera and put other widgets down there and have that be another widget space down at the bottom, I think. Or let me change those. Or, yeah, whatever. But that would be a place that wouldn't overdo it. And they are they are very similar to widgets so yeah so i wouldn't you know but that feels like a that's a free ios 17 or ios 18 feature right like to add those in and also put them on the ipad at that

point right next year which is going to be all the ipad review ipad os reviews next month are going to be very sad that this feature doesn't exist on the iPad because the iPad could totally use it. It would be really nice. And they're like, no, no, no, no. We can't design more than one lock screen at a time. So for me, the focus modes and the lock screens and the home screens, they're all tying together quite nicely. And I'm looking forward to tinkering a little bit more with the lock screen stuff as my needs change with it with messages i just really like that i can edit my messages it's just a simple thing you know but i have a habit of spelling mistakes because i type fast and don't look and just press send all the time that's my main issue is i don't

proofread my messages because who's got time for that but sometimes i then send them like oh man that's such a simple error i could just change that rather than sending a second message you know to right to say oh no like asterisk and then the actual word i meant to say it's a simple thing but i'm just happy that they've added it like the the edit the retraction thing like the the deletion i don't think that's so much of a thing for me um i mean i guess if i ever need it i'll be happy that i have it but the editing is is what i'm pretty excited about and i'm looking forward to it being on all my devices and all of the people that i send messages to having ios 16 right because at the moment i've been a little hesitant to use it because it then sends the second iage where it's like message edited and then it has the new message.

Like it's a bit clunky. So I look forward to that being more seamless once everybody's using iOS 16. Yeah, I like edited messages or something that I'm very slowly starting to work into my message brain, right? Like saying, okay, oh, I made a mistake there. This happened to me just the other day. I made a mistake and I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to edit

the message to correct the mistake. And I know that if you're on an older OS, you're just going to get Jason edited the message to say, but I was talking to somebody who I was pretty sure was on the beta and I did that. And it's like, this is better. Like this is that that's really nice. I like it a lot. Yeah. It's a good feature. And I love the Home app. The Home app redesign is so much cleaner. It looks better. The information density is way better. I like that I have customization better than I did before. Something I didn't know, it was in a MacRumors article that I was reading about some of the delayed features, is that there was also a reference to an updated architecture for the

home app that apparently is not in this shipping version of ios 16 that is also coming later so that's good because hey if it gets even more reliable because of this i'm not going to complain and then i still cross my fingers for matter to make my life better whenever whenever it ships and bring all my home stuff together i I wonder if those are related too. But that's also, I think, related to the idea of the new architecture is going to be the one that isn't supported on the iPad. And what they're going to do is let people stay

on the old architecture if they only have an iPad to use as a home hub instead of an Apple TV or a HomePod mini. But yeah, otherwise, there's stuff going on in the background, right? Like clearly they don't have it all together. But yeah, the Home app's better. It is better. It's not, you know, it's not fantastic, but it's a lot better. Yeah. I like it a lot. It's cleaned up a lot of the things that annoyed me the most about the Home app. You know, just like very quickly

getting to certain things. Like you have that button, you can tap and see all the lights and you can just hit all the lights. It's just stuff like that. I just think it's cleaner and I like it a lot. Is there anything else in iOS 16 that has really been jumping out to you? Well, so shared photo libraries, I'm still working on it.

I'm still playing with it. It's gonna be great. It's not in the shipping version because, okay, just to be clear here, if you're using a beta and you put something in the shared photo library, and then you go to a device that's not on the beta, those items disappear. They're just not there. So that's not great. So yeah, so I think they're working for a time where they're going to turn that feature on for everybody so that everybody can use it and everybody can see it. And you'll still have that thing where you're like, okay, we got to

update to see this thing, but it'll be more in sync than it is now. I like it. I think it's actually very good. I think they were very, very smart and careful in what they were doing, trying to be aware of all the different use cases that go beyond people saying, yes, share my every photo I take with this other person in my life, because while that is a use case and that's probably my use case, there are a lot of other use cases where you only want to share certain things. but having the option of her throwing photos from our family trips in the shared library, but nothing else, that's great, right? So I think that they're, I think they're doing a good job with that. And when they turn that feature on, you know, I think people should give it a try. That said, it's not all there yet.

Like I was experimenting last week. We had a question last week from somebody who asked, I forget where they asked this, but I'll answer it here, which is what happens if you have duplicates? Well, right now when you have duplicates and they're put in the same library, they're just two of them, which is really bad if you've got a main library that you've been importing photos into over the years. And then you've got your partner's library, let's say, from which you imported those photos, and then they joined your shared library. Now you could say not before this date, which is the date of the last import. But the fact is, you also do things like, you know, maybe text on a group text, and it gets

added, they need to do a better job with duplicates. I've asked around, it sounds like duplicate dealing with duplicates is supposed to be in there and it's just not in there in what I'm seeing right now. But that's a big red flag, right? Like at the very least, photos for Mac, which has duplicates detection built in, should flag them as duplicates.

And really what should happen is probably photos should say, this is a duplicate. I found some things that are already in the shared library. What do you want me to do? And ask you a question. Now, there's some challenges with that because the person who contributes the photo to the library owns the photo and can pull it back out. So you could be in a situation where it's your photo and their photo and it, but, but they already imported it. So you don't contribute it. And

now you don't own it. So they have some stuff to work through there. I think maybe the right thing to do is to basically not share it and market is hidden something like that. So you don't see it in your library and you only see one, or they could have it be like, well, there's two and they're identical, but I'm only going to display one, but they got to do something right. Because like the last thing you want is to get really excited about the shared photo library and then have a thousand duplicates that aren't flagged and you can't deal with them. That's the worst. So hopefully they're working on that part of it. them. That's the worst. So hopefully they're working on that part of it. But that's the big hiccup that I've seen so far. Otherwise, it looks really very thoughtful. And I'm really looking

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It is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Wow, those lasers got to me way faster than normal it must be because of our distance that makes so much sense first one comes from john and john wants to know do you think we could see a nylon backed iphone se coming in the future okay so this is referencing the apple watch se, which is the nylon back, which probably drops the production price a little bit. No, because I think it's very specifically for the Apple Watch. But I think the idea that they would use cheaper materials in the iPhone SE is not unreasonable, other than to say they're going to do whatever makes making that phone cheap possible. And if changing the materials to a cheaper material costs more money than they would save, they will leave the materials of

whatever phone model they use alone, right? In the end, they will make whatever decision is cheapest for them. So if that's a plastic backed uh iphone se they'll do that um the rumor is that they're going to take the 10r which is also the 11 size and do an se based on that um and that that had a didn't that have a plasticky back i think it might maybe it did no or was it no i don't think so it was it was a glass back i think it was glass all right well my guess is that it'll be that then right like that they're gonna they're gonna use the 10r11 size and and uh just not change the materials but if they can save money by changing materials they will i think the challenge there is that you know one of the reasons old phone models are

cheaper is because they don't have to retool and they don't have to redesign they just kind of use the same assembly line more or less as much as possible uh next one comes from andy i'm buying a new iphone and watch this year should i do anything in particular to make sure that the migration goes smoothly The migration goes smoothly. I mean, I don't know. The migration stuff that's built into the iPhone is really good now. The new quick setup thing is fantastic.

That's what I recommend. Some flavor of the quick setup, for sure. And doing the transfer, kind of depends what you're looking for, right? Like if you want to do the fastest transfer, but you won't be able to use your phone for a while they have that like direct transfer or something it's called now which is really good but your phone both of your phones kind of are just dead for a bit which you know dead for an hour but then you have like fewer passwords and stuff to put in or you can just do the simple one and do the iCloud restore so you can start using the phone immediately but it's going to take you a little bit longer and a bit

more set up I think yeah I like it a lot and then it will also walk you through I think the Apple watch stuff is also pretty pretty straightforward now they yeah just pay attention yeah yeah If you're getting a new watch, I would recommend move the phone to the new phone first, transfer your current watch, then do the new watch. Yeah, unless it asks you. I haven't actually done that, so I wonder if it asks you, do you also have a new watch? But probably not.

And you would move your watch over. And it would say, no, why not? Do you not like the new watches yeah what's wrong with you placing an order right now do i can you give me your credit card uh so yeah it might i mean because if you unpair the old watch as part of the process and then it's got a backup you could possibly just pair the new watch and have it work i I haven't tried that. But, you know, following following Apple's instructions at this point, I think, is the right way to do it.

And I also prefer the restore version, cloud restore version, just because it gets you up and running faster and you don't have to sit there while every app downloads. Yeah. Eric asks, on a scale from 1 to 11,

how weird is it that the german apple website markets the iphone 14 pro as das pro plus ultra das pro plus ultra and i have a screenshot here that eric provided but there's just that is three different product names right you've got pro and plus and ultra so it's the marketing line on the website so at the moment that marketing line on the american website uh says pro beyond they need to change a little bit every now and then but it's you know talking about like it being the most pro so i think there's just like some german stuff that's going in there like language wise to explain like but it's just so funny of like they know the names right and like the names are in english in in germany that it's called the iphone 14 pro so it's just funny that they then put plus

and ultra in the name of their marketing materials yeah it's it's it's whatever is name plus ultra right it's it's like latin and and and so they're they're so yes there's a german translation thing going on there it is hilarious uh to answer uh the question though eric's question on a scale from 1 to 11 i don't know i i think it's going to say like a 5 because like keep in mind the iphone 13 pro slogan on apple's website for an entire year was oh so pro which is the dumbest slogan ever they've run out of things they've run out of things to say they've and but there's a spot in the slide where they have to put something so they put that there and it's silly so i would i

would much prefer that it's a dust pro plus ultra everywhere in the world quite frankly so i'm going to take it down it's a one it's a one i love it you will love it that's plus ultra it is weird though okay five it's a five it's it is weird it's just weird right it is weird like i know what they're going for it makes sense right but it's strange because it's not like these are rumored names yeah dear apple germany you missed a word it's dust pro plus max ultra yeah come on get it together will you get it right chris asks the apple watch ultra doesn't seem to be a part of the series 8 family like the edition or hermes models were it appears to be a separate line of watch model,

like the SE is. How often do you anticipate it would be updated? So if you go to Apple's website, it's got its own little part in the banner, right? So you've got Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE. You've still got Apple Watch Nike. It's still up there, but they don't do them. Just the bands now. So it's considered its own kind of brand, but not a part of Series A. Dein Abenteuer wartet. Indeed. Thank you very much. The German slogan is your adventure awaits. But yeah, it's the same thing.

Adventure awaits. Yeah, it's a totally separate product. So I do wonder, will there be a new Apple Watch Ultra in a year or two? Or will they just update it with the series, but call it, just call it the new Apple Watch Ultra? I don't know. I'm curious about it. I don't really know. I would imagine that if it does well,

it'll get updated every year or two. It might be little stuff. I could imagine an update next year because it's new, right? So there might be a couple of things I want to add to it. Yeah. But I don't feel like it needs every year.

But who knows? I mean, we'll see. It seems like a lot, right? Right. If they've got something that, that they need to enable. I mean,

on the other hand, if it's literally just use the same system and package. And so you might as well, I could see them doing that too, which is just like, look, we just roll it out everywhere every year. So it gets it.

It'll be interesting to see how they do it. I honestly don't know. Yeah, but I guess the thing is the watch doesn't get a new system on a chip every year anymore, right? Like that's been, it was using the previous one for a couple of years. Yeah, right. So if they're doing that, then why would they update it at all? Yeah, I think the bigger point here is clearly it doesn't need to be updated every year. I mean, we could argue, does the Apple Watch need to be updated every year anyway?

But they do. But I think they'll judge it. I'm hopeful that it will be updated more often because they are going to try and aggressively push this line to compete with the high-end sports watches. push this line to compete with the high-end sports watches. And this is just a starting point because there's more they need to do to compete with the Garmins of the world. The Garmins, anybody who says, oh, well, you know, this is it for Garmin. It's like, no, like there are so many features that the Garmin watches have that the Apple watch can't do. So there's a lot of work that Apple still needs to do in this space. and so i would like to see them be more aggressive in improving that model but the other way to look at it is no they wouldn't need to do it on the same time frame as the apple watch because it is its own thing

on the garmin thing so like i mean i feel like without knowing a ton about this world and i can i've been seeing a little bit more of it than i have before i imagine this will take a chunk away from them because there will be people that maybe would want all of the things an apple watch could do plus look nicer maybe yes and also have some of the features right but yeah you're right it's not going to come and completely destroy them but you've got to be worried if you're garmin yeah i mean the nuance here is so lost which is i know it's the internet but like neither of these things are true neither is garmin destroyed today nor is garmin uh untouched today because i think you're right i think there are people who bought the garmin or might think of buying a Garmin watch who will look

at the the Apple Watch Ultra and say oh I'd rather have that I'd rather have an Apple Watch and like are they there's somebody who is not going to use a lot of the Garmin features and it's enough for them to sort of fulfill their their desire to to have a sports watch. So I think it hurts Garmin at the, at the low end of its product line with people who are like thinking, well, do I sacrifice the things I like about Apple watch in order to do this Garmin watch? And, and they'll say no, but it's going to take, this is like step one for Apple. And I think, do I think Apple could really threaten Garmin? I do. I think they could.

But they're going to have to try real hard to do that. And I think that's the question. We see this a lot with Apple. Remember, I mean, it's things like iBooks too. Like there are so many cases where Apple comes into a market and it's like, aha, we're going to take it over because we're Apple. And then they look at the market and they're like, this isn't that interesting a market. Uh, we would have to try really hard to take it over. We're not going to try that hard. And that's my fear about Apple watch ultra is that Apple's not like, I don't know if I would say fear. I think that it's a question you have to ask about the fate of, of Garmin and how Apple

wants to play in this market is does Apple really want to be in Garmin's market? Or does Apple just want to kind of slice off the bottom part of it and push Garmin further up? They are not willing to do what Garmin is willing to do. Exactly. Because you would have to take out so many features from an Apple Watch to make it last for a week. And they want, also that takes effort, right? Now you're putting a lot of your Apple Watch development effort into an increasingly small slice of the market, right? So I guess that's my question is, how high up does Apple really want to go with the Apple Watch Ultra?

Is this it? with the Apple Watch Ultra? Is this it? Do they want to kind of be like in the discussion of whether you should bother getting a Garmin sports watch or another competitor like versus just,

but they're the leader, versus just like, oh, well, but this sport Apple Watch will give that to me and that's enough for me. Like, is that all they're really trying to do is sort of set a cap

and take away some of the bottom of garmin's market or do they want to go higher up and i you know they might want to go a little higher up over time but i think it's also unlikely that they would want to do uh all the things that would be required for them to reach like honestly this is the same conversation we have about sherlocking if you put it in that context. A bunch of apps do a thing. Apple puts it in the system. What happens to those apps?

Well, their life got harder. But what generally happens is Apple's only really interested in the broad use case, a very simple version. And all the third-party apps end up being, they survive. Maybe it's a little harder for them, but they get to do all the things that Apple's just not going to bother with because Apple doesn't want to do a feature for the niche. They want to do a broad version of that feature. One that's got broad appeal, but doesn't have the power user features and all that stuff. And that's where those Sherlock apps end up living and honestly, often thriving.

I think that's the situation Garmin is in here where Garmin is going to be fine. They may, their business may hurt a little bit on the low end because Apple's going to push up, you know, against it there. But I have a hard time believing that Apple is going to come for the highest end Garmin sports watches, right? Like it would be way too much effort and as you said they would have to do some really weird things to the apple watch platform to get it there and i'm not sure they really are interested because they should further up you go the thinner you slice it you don't have to make all of the products they they i am already surprised that

just how extreme sportsy the ultra is like it's more than i thought they would do right this is as much as you need to realistically do to get a nice slice of a market but also not make something so niche that it only appeals to that small slice of the market right like i think the ultra is straddling a good line between this is a cool thing, which also does all the Apple Watch features you like, plus it has all these additional things, which are also really good. Maybe you'd use a few of them.

I think it could appeal to a lot of people that way, rather than like, oh, we made this watch for scuba divers only. You're a scuba diver? Great. You're not? What are you doing? Why would you buy this? You don't need to be in that market. I don't think that's a good market for them to be in. That said, I think one of the things that we need to watch in the next couple of years

is when the Apple Watch Ultra comes out, it's a first cut at this. I know that they've consulted with people in advance, but it's going to be out there in the market. And they're going to get criticized by people who are in this space who want to use this Apple Watch because they think the because like never bet against Apple software. Right. Like Garmin's. I heard some people say, well, you know, but Garmin has the software that's various. Like, OK, look, I think Apple can win any software battle it wants to fight. I think the issue, though, is like, what do they want to fight and what do they want to do? And are they going to listen when people say, people are going to come and say like, here's

40 things that Garmin's products do that you guys don't do. And that's why I'm not going to buy an Apple watch ultra. And, and my question is what are they listening to there? And are they striving are, and I don't know the market well enough to say this, but are there five moves they could take next year with software and hardware or 10 moves or four moves, whatever, a small cut of it that gets them more of an audience, right? That gets them the lowest hanging fruit in that market where they're still not going to hit the highs, but they're going to be able to eliminate some blockers and get more people to use the Apple Watch Ultra. Because I think a lot of the potential audience for the Apple Watch Ultra is people who know the Apple Watch and probably like the Apple Watch or think positive things about the Apple Watch,

but it just doesn't provide the level of functionality that they need. And if they can get the more of those people they can get, the better that product is going to be. My fear is that they will have having done this product, that they will be less focused on this market. And that's sort of it. And that's not going to kill the product.

The product, I think they'll still be pretty successful, but it's going to be like, like that's the question is how how much do they want to push it or has apple already reached the limit if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of upgrade just send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or use question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you can get access to if you sign up for upgrade plus at get upgrade plus.com and you'll get longer ad-free versions of every episode of Upgrade. Don't forget this Friday it's the 16th, 12 to 8pm

US Eastern Time twitch.tv slash RelayFM for the fourth annual podcast of Farm for St. Jude broadcasting live from St. Jude's campus here in Memphis, Tennessee it's going to be Stephen and I keeping you entertained for a really long time. We've got a bunch

of wonderful RelayFM guests. We've got game shows. We've got fun. We've got frolics and activities. Please come and check out what we do on twitch.tv slash RelayFM. Please donate to St. Jude at stjude.org slash Relay as well. Our thanks to Ooni, Memberful, Fitbod, and TextExpander

for the support of this week's episode, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.