Upgrade - 425: This Intelligent Blob

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

After reviewing the iPhone 14 Pro and discussing the pros and cons of the Dynamic Island and the new 48MP camera, Jason and Myke discuss the current pace of upgrades and innovation across all of Apple's product lines.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 425 today's show is brought to you by hover memberful and door dash my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm good uh we're recording this on the evening of sunday the 18th of september i'm leaving for home tomorrow uh so we're recording a tad earlier than we normally would but i'm feeling good sunday night upgrade and you're uh you know in a different location sunday sunday sunday and i don't i don't know how i'm gonna even get up on monday morning because because you're the reason I get up on Monday morning. You give me a reason.

Let me rephrase this. Mike, you give me a reason to get up on Monday morning every week. And usually it's for a hashtag snow talk question. This one comes from Chris who wants to know, do you think, Jason, that a mid-cycle release of the iPhone 14 line is coming of a new color, either pro or regular? Well, after we made fun of it last time and everybody said, no, no, it makes sense from

a fashion standpoint and it might prod people into going and considering getting a new iPhone. It all makes all the sense in the world because we thought it was kind of funny, right? Like they put out a press release and they literally sent me a green iPhone and said, look, a green iphone and said look a green iphone and i thought to myself okay great uh so chris yes of course of course they'll do it because this is what they do now they will do a mid-cycle release of some color for the iphones and it'll not be anything too exciting for the rest of us but it will put another color in the store and that seems to work for them so I think so I think this is just what Apple does now is they have their spring color refresh which usually means they add a color to an iPhone

part way through its life I don't feel like I know why they do it like i you know i can assume that they are doing it because they think it helps make more money but like i also don't really feel like i know if that's true like i don't know if that necessarily makes logical sense to me like that that many how many people are really waiting that much for whatever color it is you know i think a lot of people aren't waiting right the the The point that we got when we complained about this the last time is that there's so many people out there who are just buying an iPhone and they're not waiting for the new iPhones and they're finally there. And the idea that you might prod some of them to rethink buying any iPhone, not just the

new green iPhone or whatever, that it's worth doing. There must be some sign that it gives them a lift or they wouldn't do it, right? Like, I'm sure that their metrics focused enough. They're smarter than us and they have the data. They know, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're probably smarter than us, but what we do know for sure is they have

the data and we don't. And I'm going to assume that they would not do this because there's somebody in there who says, no, I just like having an extra color in the spring, right? Like, probably somebody that's the that's the guy who's gonna get fired as the colors are when we're put in charge of that guy mr extra extra color i like by the way that you say probably about the smart that was nice it's correct they just have the data if we had the data we could make a lot of decisions maybe i mean we could try i mean we could we could make them i don't know if they would be

the right ones but there are decisions we would make i'm not going to assume like so many people uh who are in our position do that the people who talk about things for a living are smarter than the people who do the things that they talk about correct because no i also i'm not going to assume that the people we talk about are smarter than us because they might some of them might not be but probably a lot of them are and like there's a lot of smart people who work at apple but you know not necessarily all of them and and that guy who's like you know it's green right like that guy that guy that guy doesn't sound very small that that guy i don't know why he still got that job get him out replace a new

color new color color commentator. Anyway, yes, is the answer. There must be a reason why they do it. Maybe I did have a theory, which is that, um, at a certain point in the life of,

uh, of the iPhone production cycle, they're so far ahead that they can, they can afford to add colors to the mix because they can like reduce what they're making in. Like, I don't know if they make all the colors at once or if they like make a bunch of one color and then a bunch of another and bunch of another.

But maybe there's a thing where like the extra color comes in when they have some bandwidth to make another color and add another skew to the line. I don't know. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question to help us open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk or use use question mark snell talk in the relay fm members discord that was a real ask upgrade feeling snell talk there though yes not very personal right no i mean it was a question to me no it's good question good perfectly good question so here's why i picked that one i actually

picked that one specifically though and forgot the reason why I picked it until right now, which was to mention at this point that today's episode features our review and discussion of the iPhone 14 line. That's why I picked this one as like a setup. But then I forgot to do the setup. Well done. So, you know, it's late. Yeah, look, I can't do the setup well done so you know it's late yeah look i can't be trusted to remember everything you know that's just how it goes sometimes i'm afraid

no i i'm gonna withdraw that statement i made before about who's smarter hey hey there is a reason we're recording this show today and why it's late and all that kind of stuff is i'm still in memphis tennessee because just a couple of days ago, we hosted the fourth annual podcast-a-thon for the kids of St. Jude. We are raising money all throughout September for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in their 60th year since opening its doors in 1962. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has grown in size and capabilities for this one special reason that they have, which is finding cures and saving children, because they believe that children all over the world deserve the same chance at survival. We love St. Jude and being there and hosting the podcast with them for all that time and getting to interact with the people that we, one of the people we get to work with and seeing the incredible videos that we get to

watch all night that they put together and are able to show our viewers and listeners, it is a good reminder of why we do the work that we do. Chartered Cancer Awareness Month is an opportunity for us to come together in the fight against childhood cancer because together we can make a big impact. And so far this year we have made a huge impact. Together as a community this year, we've raised over $380,000, as where we stand right now. This year, we have a goal of $494,840. Because when we hit that, we have raised $2 million over the last four years as a community, which is just absolutely unbelievable. If you didn't catch the podcast, I'll put a link in the show notes. It's on YouTube now,

so you can go and watch it. It really was, it was a magical evening for me, honestly. It was everything I wanted it to be. I was so happy with how it came together and we raised over $100,000. I think it was $109,000 we raised, which is the most we've ever raised

during a podcast. Everyone's blown away, including me. It was a fun and very emotional evening uh i was so happy that we got to do it and it was so happy to be back together in person and to be in the studio and just had a great time and we raised a lot of money together we had a lot of fun uh jason you did such a good job with the family feud oh sorry the families i was dying it was so funny uh so that that's there for you to go and watch too um yeah it was it was really really great and

uh yeah i'm just really happy to be here uh to be able to do this and i'm even more happy with how much money we've raised together uh please go to stdew.org. You can donate still up until the end of the month, and we're going to keep talking about this. We're doing the first time we've ever done this this year on September the 30th. A little more details to come shortly. We're going to be doing a closing celebration where we announce the final total raised and

close the fundraiser. We've never done that before, but we want to make fun out of that, so we're going to be hanging out on stream for a couple of hours and talking about stuff, playing some games, those kinds of things uh so you can come catch me and steve and then um we're still working we've decided we want to do it but we haven't worked out any of the plans yet other than the fact that we're doing it because the the goal sorry the final total every year it's always so much higher than when we end the podcastathon like we've raised right tons tons like tens i think that tens of thousands of dollars since the podcastathon ended

a couple of days ago so we want to do something more to celebrate where we actually end at the the end of the month so this is the first year we're doing that. And I hope in future years, that also becomes more of a grand affair too. So we can get to celebrate a bit as a community is what we've all come together to do. We've mentioned you can donate and you can donate any amount that you want. You can also sign up to fundraise. We have over 200 people

that have signed up to fundraise themselves. And there are some special incentives that are available to you for that. So there's a bunch of stuff for you to go and check out. Please go to stdude.org. Check out the podcast. I'll link in the show notes. Thank you so much to everybody who's tuned in and everyone that's donated so far.

That's a follow-up for you, Jason. Okay. All right. I'd like to thank the Academy. Yeah. Would you like to go ahead and thank the Academy on behalf of Ted Lasso? Yes. Thanks. Emmy Awards for once again bestowing many Emmys upon Apple TV Plus' Ted Lasso. Best Comedy, Jason Sudeikis won Lead Actor, Brett Goldstein won Supporting Actor, and they got a Directing Emmy as well. directing Emmy as well.

So more, I mean, the big one is, I mean, Sudeikis really and Goldstein are great, but also Best Comedy means that Apple has won that one two years in a row. Plus they've got Best Picture. Like, you know, it's good. It's good for Apple.

It makes Apple happy and makes them feel like their service is legitimate. Oh, I bet. I was a bit disappointed that Severance didn't pick up any major wins tough tough categories i mean i think i think ted lasso did really well and i definitely heard people grousing about that too there's a lot and you know peak tv there's a lot of really good

stuff out there and for severance i think the truth is for severance the honor was just to be nominated you know i think you're right that that drama that best drama category was absolutely stacked this year um you know like everyone is mad about whatever at least one show that didn't win it you know what i mean like i am as equally upset that better call soul didn't win it but i know they're going to get one more shot and i really they do i really hope they pick it up next next year because they've never won and which is wild that show so good uh but i also wanted severance to win so i think one of those things where like most people were just not going to be happy about where the best drama went um but yeah it's really interesting to to see i still have my eye on on

ted lasso like what are they going to do like it seems like i was reading some stuff that apparently the the season's been delayed a little bit which which has been called Sudeikis Perfectionism. Yeah, there was actually a lengthy piece in Puck News, which is a subscription site, that is fascinating because it went into a lot of details about how Bill Lawrence is not one of the showrunners this year who sort of helped them get started. And he was never a major creative force, but like he wasn't involved this time. He wasn't over there. He's got other shows that he's doing. Sudeikis, you know, exerting more of his power as, you know, and the fact is that those guys, him and Brendan Hunt, those guys were the brains of the show from the beginning, really, who plays Coach Beard.

And they kind of stepped into even more authority this time. But also it sounds like they demanded some rewrites and they changed some stuff midstream and they added additional shooting locations for stuff late in the season and uh this was all keyed off of his moment when he accepted and he said that you know that essentially he said you'll see season three eventually yeah um because they wanted it this summer which is now over and it's unclear when season three of ted lasso is even going to be done and then the article also went into a bunch of stuff about like, you know, the, it was a really good article, but it's like, you know,

the compensation that some of the actors are grumbling because they don't get paid as much as they should for this Emmy winning show. But at the same time, it has made their careers so that they're making a lot of money on other things now because they're bankable and that how Brett Goldstein doesn't get paid much as an actor, given that he's won two Emmysys but he does get paid as a writer and a producer so

that kind of like eases the pain a little bit there's a lot you know of complications going on he is a star on the rise right and that it came from being so good in ted lasso yeah all of the people who are in ted lasso even if they don't make a lot of money and i'm not saying they shouldn't make a lot of money from ted lasso but the other thing they're getting is a real boost to their careers but there's a lot going on and there's the there's money overages when they say we want to go shoot in amsterdam like there's money overages and who pays for it and that's fascinating because of course warner brothers is the producer of the show even though it airs on apple tv plus and so there's a question of like who pays for the overages does

apple pay for it does uh does warner brothers pay for it does apple use apple pay when apple pays for it how many woodchucks would a woodchuck chunk so uh and i'm sure hanging over all of it too is like a desire from a lot of people maybe not everyone for the show to continue and like what what does that mean and are they going to are they going to try and find a way like this is stuff we don't really have any answers to yet yeah it's uh all just kind of floating out there um of um because i think the puck story suggests that although everybody has always insisted that it's a three and out sort of thing, um, that there's a feeling a lot of people involved had this feeling that

everybody may realize at some point before too long, that this is one of, if not the high points of their career and that it probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. If they extended, they already, the third season is already 12 episodes. So they've already extended.

Um, it's like, give us as much as you can um but they've been pretty insistent that they're that the story ends after three years but i i you know i've been saying for years now here on this show that um you you have to resist the money truck being backed up to your house because at some point they're going to be like apple's got all the money and they want you to make more ted lasso and jason sudeikis is going to have to say i'm okay with where we are and i don't want your money or you know like just to say what you were saying maybe sudeikis wakes up one morning and he's like actually this might be my best work and maybe i don't want it to end you know who knows or maybe there's some other some other way for this story to go or with some of

the characters or something like that and i mean i admire him if he if he says no this is what the show is and it's and we're done and walks away from it i really admire that um i'm just saying that the reality is that a lot of times doesn't always work that way the commerce gets in the way yeah it's i mean it's that classic simpsons line right which is that we're all going to have a great time until the show becomes unprofitable. And if it keeps on making money, you have all these shows that you're like, how did that show go on that long? This weekend was the 50th anniversary of MASH, which is one of the great TV shows of all time. For people who haven't seen it, it's old.

It's 50 years old, although it's also 40 years because it was on the air for more than 10 years. And more than 10 years and um more than 10 years about 10 years and even in the retrospectives about 50 years of mash they they say oh yeah those last few years they weren't very good and it's like they weren't very good but they made so much money that they just kept making them even though they weren't very good because the networker was like nope 22 more episodes please and everybody said, I want to feed my family. So we're going to make more episodes. So that's the art versus commerce thing that's at the heart of this.

And if anybody was going to do it, Jason Sudeikis might do it to say, I got what I wanted out of this. This is the story we wanted and we're walking away. And there's nothing wrong with that. I wanted to just before we move on as well uh just touch on the apple watch series a a little bit in that all we're really going to touch on is a little bit you have one right i do it's right here in a box in its box yeah i don't i have no intent i mean i said this on the show right i i wasn't i was no intention

of buying this device it's not for me really i'm perfectly happy with my series 7 and the series 8 doesn't have any features that i want as such um and you know like a lot of these devices it is i think some of the easier reviews and i feel like this a little bit about the iphone 14 and we may fall into this trap a little bit too of like if you do year-over-year reviews there aren't that there isn't that much to say about the apple series 8 the same as the iphone 14 and then that can kind of become the review which i don't think is necessarily that helpful to everyone it's only helpful to the person that either A, gets these devices every year from Apple to review,

or in my case, buys these devices every year because I am, one, want to, and two, I consider it a part of my job. All of this to say, I think the best review I have seen of the Apple Watch Series 8 is by Victoria Song at The Verge because she comes at it from just a very simple perspective of going through the product and talking about what's good about it. And I liked kind of the way that she looked at it, which is it's a simple line, but it's a fun line. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But in a way that that feels more positive than the often used take I've seen about some of these products of like apple's just doing the same again iterative iterative yeah i know we've we've covered this a lot but it is one of my least favorite things about tech product reviewing and tech journalism in general is that tendency for people who do this for a living to say boring like the goal is to entertain them while they're doing their job yeah and we know the truth right and they sometimes they get really irate like like how dare apple release a product that's not that different from the one that i reviewed last year i don't know what i'm gonna even write about it's like i believe me i get it but nobody again other than our listeners uh nobody's buying an Apple Watch every year. It's not the point.

This is why John Gruber wrote that column for Macworld for me 10 years ago. This is how Apple rolls. It's this iterative thing. And there are moments, delightful moments, like in the early days of the smartphone and even the early days of the Apple Watch where things were happening fast. But for the most part, whether it's a laptop or a smartphone or a tablet or whatever, you know, it is about the cumulative effect of going several years between a purchase. Right. And so so the Series 8 is not that interesting in that it's a lot like the 7 and a lot like the 6. interesting in that it's a lot like the seven and a lot like the six however if you've got a series six or five or four or three that is the you know you you will pick up a lot of features it's just a matter of of uh you know because most people aren't buying it every year because why would they i mean

really why no even if they made huge changes every year people are not going to buy an apple watch every year they're just not going to do it yeah and i think that this is a nice upgrade if there are features in it that you want like if you care about the temperature thing if you care about the retrospective like ovulation tracking if you care about the car crash detection like this could be a good product for you i'm just saying for me i'm not i don't want any of those things particularly. Right. Which in the same way that I didn't want any of the stuff from the Series 6 particularly. So I didn't get that one. And so like that's just like a thing for me. I think later on we go, I want to talk, you wanted to talk about this.

And I'm really interested about kind of the upgrade cycle. And I'll touch on this again in the Apple Watch then. But, you know, like, so I'm not going to buy it. And I don't think you're particularly that jazzed on reviewing it fast at least still on the box yeah it's yeah it isn't that interesting as a brand new product it is more about that like what's new over time from where you're coming from and that's there's nothing wrong with that that's okay and this is a prioritization piece for me and you right where like yeah you have three iphones right now which we're gonna talk

about in a minute. But like websites like The Verge, they can assign each of these products to three different people and like they can make it work. I feel bad for the person who is assigned a product that hasn't changed much in the last year, because what do you say about it? And the answer is, I think you have to start with, this is, you know, here's what's different from last year's model. with this is you know here's the here's what's different from last year's model and here's what is what is accumulated over the last two or three years because i you know like you said which i just want to pause for a moment and reflect about this if you want it for crash detection uh which i like on one level i get it but another level it like, do you get in a lot of car crashes? If so, yes, you should get this product.

Yeah, but I don't drive. I have my iPhone on me all the time. It's not, for me, a thing. But my wife was like, I want that. So she's going to, you know what I mean? All right. And everybody's different. That would be enough. Because it's always this way right it's like if one of these two

new features matters to you get this thing otherwise you know you're you're one from last year or two years ago it's just fine and we move on that's hard i get it like like i don't i don't envy anybody who has to try to find a a news angle for a slowly iterating product because it's not fun. I get it. It's just also not... Again, the problem is to say the new Apple Watch is bad because it bored me. Because that's not... It could be bad, but it not having a lot of new features versus last year does not fundamentally make it bad. Just because it bored you is not enough to make it bad but sometimes that i do see that where it's sort of like you didn't entertain me you know boo bad product and it's like well really is it is it a bad product or is it just boring to review because it's not

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Could you let our listeners know what models you have and how long you've had them? I got on Wednesday, I want to say. I got the day that the reviews dropped, which is when the second wave reviewers get their products. I got three iPhones. that the reviews dropped which is when the second wave reviewer reviewers get their products i got three iphones i have a what they claim is a purple iphone 14 i have a black iphone 14 pro and a purple iphone iphone 14 pro max that's what i have and i've been using the black iphone 14 pro okay space black spacey spacey black i don't really feel like there's much to say about the the black iPhone 14 Pro. Okay. Space black. Spacey. Spacey black.

I don't really feel like there's much to say about the colors anymore. Like we kind of said it to the end. We sort of beaten that one to death, haven't we?

Yeah. I'll just say that I feel, once again, I feel like Apple is pranking me by claiming that this iPhone 14

is purple because it looks white to me. But it's not quite white. Apparently it's purply white apparently it's purpley white white is interesting i haven't heard it described as white so far um i'm colorblind but it certainly doesn't jump out at you yes so i i'm like okay i don't see any colors there so it must be white or some sort of gray yeah but anyway yes we've beaten the we the colors aren't aren't aren't

the strongest. No. And people can differ on that. I love the one that I get, though. I got the gold. I think the gold looks great. For me, about the gold, it's all about the accents more than anything else. And I think they do a good job of complementing the gold Pro Max, or the gold Pro, with the glass back that they do.

And I feel the same about the white slash silver too. I think they do a good job of complement in the silver and the white together. I think that those colors are pretty standard at this point, but also I think look really good year over year. I'm very, continue to be very happy with my choice of gold. I have the 14 pro max, as you would naturally assume that I would do.

Of course. I want to, obviously want to hear everything you've got to say, but I have something I need to get out of the way first. All right. Which is, you know, long-time listeners of this show will know that me and Jason spent a long time talking about the setup and transfer process of the new iPhone. We have had many episodes about this.

And then over time, it got better. I think this year, Jason, I have had what I think might be the worst transfer process I've ever had of an iPhone. For what I expected to happen. How much of it had to do with you being in America and how much of it had to do with other badness? I am not talking anything about eSIM. So the eSIM process failed for me, but I'm not surprised about that. I'm expecting I'll need to do that when I get home and it won't be a problem.

At the moment, this phone can't talk to my actual network, so it can't do the transfer. I am talking merely about the phone-to-phone data transferring process. Right? So I set the phone up as fresh so I could have it on podcast on sunday so i got it

on friday morning so i just basically set the phone up i put a couple of apps on it so i could use it during the day and like you know take pictures on it and that kind of stuff because plus i gave my 13 pro max to my wife adina and she was posting things on my instagram and on twitter and stuff during the podcastathon so i didn't have to it was really helpful but i could still have my phone on me to take pictures and that kind of stuff then on that night i refreshed i like reset the phone to factory settings and did the phone to phone transfer right so you put the two phones next to each other and you have it like it took three hours and it

does the transfer from one phone to the other. Then once the phone's done, I set it up like put the last parts in that I need to. Now, I don't know if I did something wrong here but

I have been coming across, I don't know, maybe like 70% of the apps that I use, it's as if they've never been used by me at all. I'm not logged in. My preferences aren't synced. Or it's like a bit one or the other.

I'm logged out, but when I log in, my preferences are there. Or I'm logged in, but my preferences aren't set correctly. My data's not in an application my you know like I am going through app after app and it's some form of one or the other and it is completely inconsistent about which apps I'm signed into and which aren't um and i like it's absolutely maddening to me because of the inconsistency of it now we had john

siracusa on the podcastathon and he spoke about having a very similar experience now john was talking a little bit about some of the beta apps that he was using but it isn't just beta apps that have given me this issue i have, it has been the last two days I'm basically having to try and go through and open effectively every app that I have to try and get it to some kind of normalcy again.

Like, is this one logged out or is this one logged in? Are the notifications on or are they not? And I just, I don't know what has happened, but just something terrible happened. And then i get so far into it it's like a sunk cost thing where like i was working on it for a day and it's like why don't you just try it again i said well because i spent the last day

setting it up halfway i don't now want to go through this whole thing again if i then do another three hour transfer and i'm back to where i was before so like i don't know what has happened so you did device device transfer instead of icloud backup transfer yes yes which i've done before and my understanding is this is the best way to do it now i mean it's not what i do i just do icloud because i want to i don't want to wait for hours and hours i want to i want to have the phone up and running again and then have it backfill. And it does mean that I have to log into a few things, although not as many as it used to be. My concern, so my son got his and he did a device-to-device transfer. And it said five minutes left for four hours and then basically we kind of flipped it open and

had it just it just basically said just no go ahead and uh or maybe we powered it off i i think i just flipped it open you know from the bottom but anyway so we basically sort of like i wondered are you in a weird interim state or were you really done after all and it's unclear and i haven't heard from him so i don't i don't know he see hasn't he if he probably if he had he would come to me because that's how that works in this house yeah yeah of course or maybe he's having trouble and he just doesn't know like what was the thing with the usb port that was broken or whatever right that you just didn't tell you you know maybe it's one of those situations uh but yeah look i don't know if i did something wrong or whatever i don't know but all i know is for me this shouldn't be what occurs right so i've just found this whole thing

to be very frustrating potentially i'm an edge case here or potentially i'm not but like this is one of the most important things that they should be working on it's like because it's not even about the year to year anytime somebody does this every single path should always be flawless for as much as it possibly can be and like i don't understand how an app can say transfer from device to device have all of the stuff stored in it but maybe logged out right like it's just like how is this occurring and then like i'm running into all these random edge cases now because apps are getting confused some apps are bad at this some apps won't let you bring it across. Yeah, and there's some that I expect.

If you're having that a lot, then you're having a bad experience. And the thing that I always wonder, because my transfer went fine, but one, I used iCloud, and two, I didn't do it on Friday when everybody is there. And that's always my fear,

is that there's some authentication or authorization or some other thing that's going on. is that there's some authentication or authorization or some other thing that's going on. Theoretically, if you're doing device to device, you should not have to have this, right? Because you're not using anything but the two devices to talk to each other. And that's why I did it because I'm in a hotel on hotel Wi-Fi, right? So I'm like, I'm not going to do this over iCloud. But still, Jason, all the apps downloaded from iCloud.

So it's like, what was the point? I had to leave the phone overnight for the apps to download like what is it actually transferring like when I opened the phone and it was done every app said like waiting and they were all downloading from the app store what is happening in this process

what I'll say is I'm going back to iCloud again because I feel like that was less frustrating maybe um so yeah this that i just needed to get out of the way because this has been a very frustrating thing for me over the last couple of days so i just needed to get it out there we can now move on from this if you want to i would be very curious what would happen if you erased your phone and did device device transfer again and if that would actually work better but i understand your point which is you don't want to go through

this again yeah if it fails again if it fixed and great but also i've now spent like four hours in total like going through all the apps and log it so now at this point i'm kind of like i'm just going to move on but yeah potentially if i, potentially, what I should have done in hindsight is just do it again immediately. But I didn't. And now this is where I am. So yeah, eSIM for me, I'm confident it will work when I get home. Even if the device-to-device transfer doesn't work,

my network does eSIMs, I'll get an eSIM, it'll be fine. I tried it while I was here, it didn't work, but whatever. How did that process go for you, the eSIM part? I'd like to exclusively reveal it's not exclusive. I'd like to reveal here after the great cliffhanger last week about my eSIM experience that I apparently did already transfer to an eSIM

because there was no SIM card in my iPhone. So yeah, I already... You had Schrodinger's SIM card in your phone. We will, until I opened it up. It could have been an eSIM or it could have not. Actually, I already Schrodinger's SIM card in your phone. We will until I opened it up. It could have been an eSIM or it could have not. Actually, I went to the cellular menu and it did not say convert to eSIM. Instead, it said remove or delete eSIM.

And I was like, wait a second. And then I popped it open and, uh, there was no, no SIM in the SIM tray. So that is incredible. I already was living the eSIM life. The call was coming from inside the phone. And so I just did a transfer and I did the iCloud backup and the, would you like to transfer your number from phone A to phone B? And I said,

why yes, I would like my number to be transferred and it transferred it and not really any problems. And it said, would you like to transfer your Apple watch? And I said, yes. And the Apple watch rebooted and it was a very quick and that all seemed to work fine although

what i will say is that and i don't know whether this is the transfer or whether it's the the os update or what but my apple watch seems to not be talking to things as reliably as it did before i had i went out for a run and it couldn't see the cellular network and then i i've had a couple of times where it's it's done that little icon that basically says i can't find my phone my phone is my buddy and like its buddy was right there and but it was like no no phone so i had to restart them both to get them to talk to each other again and i again i don't know whether that is an effect of the move or the iOS version or the watchOS update or what, but I have had a little bit of that, but in terms of the direct from iPhone 13 mini to iPhone phone 14 pro transfer, that all went pretty smoothly. And because I

chose iCloud, I was actually up and running and running um although you know with apps still having to load pretty fast yeah yeah i'm honestly always surprised that the apple watch transfer works at all like that it seems so precarious and weird they they have come so far with that like it i did not do anything i didn't have to do anything i was listening to i think atp last week where they're like i wasn't john i somebody was saying it was probably john like oh what do i have to do do i unpair and do all that and i'm sitting there thinking no don't do anything yeah because it's all built in now it didn't used to be but it's all built in now and it says hey used to be, but it's all built in now. And it says,

hey, you have an Apple Watch. Is that Apple Watch moving to this iPhone 2? And you say yes, and it goes, great. I'm going to need to restart your Apple Watch, but otherwise it'll be fine.

And then the Apple Watch restarts on its own and scene. Like, that's it. That was it. It's incredible. And remember, you used to have to

unpair your watch from your iphone and then repair it and watch as it reloaded everything onto your watch right that is out the window now well because that unpairing was effectively delete everything yeah yeah you do an icloud, wipe your watch and then go to your new phone and pair a new new watch and restore an iCloud backup. Well, now they don't do that anymore because obviously Apple has figured out ways in watchOS and iOS where a phone can take a phone that's been restored from a different phone can take ownership of a watch and the watch goes oh you're over there now got it and all it takes is a reboot which is set off manually by the phone and so that the user doesn't have to do it so i was very happy with that uh because it used to that used to be terrible and now it's actually pretty pretty okay i expect that it's something along the lines of the watch independence over time right it's allowed for it to be able to live a little bit

more freely that way maybe although this this feels this feels very much like um i mean it's a little bit of that but it's like they they when they launched it they didn't really think about what happens when you upgrade your iphone And they have inserted something that is literally, there's something in the code that lets a new watch say, you're mine now. And then the Apple watch or a new phone says, you're mine, come over here, little watch. And the watch is like, oh yeah, I live over there now

and reboot and it's done. And that is, it's a beautiful thing. What do you think of the always on display? It seems now, okay, I am not your average iPhone user. I really am not. I use my iPad way more than my iPhone. I use my Mac way more than my iPhone.

I almost said I live in my garage. I don't. I live in my house. I work in my garage. My commute involves not going outside. And so I'm not really out and about with an iPhone a lot, right? So I'm bad at this. Things have gone wrong for me.

I live in the garage now. I live down. This is where it is now. There's something heavy fell in front of the door and now I have to live here. There's a blow-up mattress out here. I can blow that up later. So that all said, that's my disclaimer about being a kind of a weird iphone user it seems inessential to me if that makes sense it seems like it's nice i mean i've been

since i got it i've been carrying it around and i put it on my coffee table and i put it on my desk and i'm looking at it now and like is it nice that that I can see the time? Sure. I can see the time on my watch though. Is it nice that I can see that I've got the weather forecast and I know what my next appointment is in the little widgets? Sure. Is it nice that I can see sort of the album art for whatever is currently playing if I've got that feature turned on? Yeah, that's actually, that is kind of nice, but is any of it essential? I kind of think not. And then on top of that, I would say this is one of those cases where I think Apple's restraint in terms of design hurts it because the widgets especially are so restrained that the information, I know that they didn't want a lot of information density on the lock screen.

I get it. But like that always on screen would be more valuable if I could see more things or they could be bigger. So I could see them from further away because oftentimes my phone is, is laying, you know, four feet away or two feet away, not like right by my eyeline. you know, four feet away or, or, or two feet away, not like right by my eyeline. And, um, and they didn't do that. It, it, it is, uh, limited in what widgets it has. And, and, and so that's the, I mean, like, I'm, I think it's cool, I guess, but it does seem inessential or, um, I could also say unnecessary or like it's it's cool that it's there but I'm not getting nearly as much kind of use out of that information as I thought I might and I or I hoped I would how have you reacted to it I'll start by saying I really have grown to like it a lot

and I'll come back to that in a minute. But it does feel to me in a way that somebody at Apple heard that an always-on display was a thing that existed and decided to make the iPhone's display always stay on. Which is not necessarily

what people think of when they hear about an always-on display on a phone right they literally thought what if we take our lock screen and just keep it there all the time yeah what if the phone looks like it actually never goes to sleep right that's that's what they decided and you know what though that may have been like hey here's what we're going to do that no one else can do, quote unquote. We are going to make it look like the iPhone never goes to sleep. Won't that be cool?

No one else does that, right? I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, because I actually now, after a couple of days, I think I like it more than it does that it's like this. And we call it the sleepless retina display. Yeah. But like it's a bold choice, right? Because everyone's going to have this experience if they get an always-on display on a phone,

like on the iPhone, a Pro Max, maybe if it comes to other devices they're on. Within the first couple of hours of using it, you're going to look at it and be like, oh, my phone's on. But it isn't, right? Like you think you haven't locked it, but no, it's just how it looks now

because they have done a very good job of making it just look like the phone's display dims. That's it, right? Like I can look at the picture of my wife and one thing I'll say that they're doing jason i'm pretty sure they've done this i think that they are looking for people and keeping more color on the person on the lock screen uh-huh because i on the image that i have here the background is less saturated than the the the subject of the image of my was on display and i if i look at it i can kind of see there's a little line that goes around her hair

like it's a portrait photo which isn't so i think that they're doing some stuff here with their new like person detection feature stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, they are. They are definitely processing, like really processing those images in order to get them to show up. I mean, not only are they doing all that processing for the layering effect, which is not only limited to like portrait mode. They will process any photo and find the foreground in the background and i think you're right i think they are also um generating a we

saw this because somebody found that the clownfish pictures you remember that and it looked like it wasn't just like a filter like they were processing it for a certain effect and that that's the dimming effect. So something is going on there. So that's like so what but what I've come to really like about it, though, is just it's just my phone. My phone looks like this. I see my phone like this all the time and it always is like this. I have the widgets there. I can see notifications when they come in. If I have it it set up that way i've actually come to really like it

it there is a consistency in the experience that i like you know just like this is just what my phone looks like um and i i use sleep focus mode and therefore it goes off at night time on its own which is exactly what i hoped it would do. I have seen people say on Twitter that like, if you don't do that, the phone's too bright, which I expected 100% would be the case. So I recommend people look at the sleep focus mode. I will say it's really cool.

You should do it. Do what I do, create a home screen as well. So you take off the apps that you shouldn't be looking at at midnight because really you should be going to sleep or you should be winding down or whatever so take slack off your home screen and all that kind of stuff so you look you have less of a desire to look at those things that is my recommendation to you if you have one of these phones because then you'll also benefit from the phone going into sleep focus mode you don't like don't get it twisted this is what i thought i

thought if you set up the sleep focus mode you had to use sleep tracking and all that kind of stuff. You don't have to do any of that. So you can just have it do its thing and the screen will turn off at night kind of around the time that you want it to. But what I also am wanting to do, and I'm going to play around with this a little bit more over the next few weeks is, so one of the times where I would have my phone kind of like on my desk or whatever a lot is when I'm recording a show. I have you in a dock. I want to set up a recording focus mode. I have a recording focus mode already, which really pairs back with the notifications that I get. But now I'm thinking, oh, I should set up a recording home screen that has like widgets that might be useful for recording as opposed to usual. So maybe there's like a time tracker on there and

like maybe I have a different wallpaper. So I'm liking it for that because it's kind of, I'm playing around with it more. Always also on the display, when the display is actually on, I have found the additional brightness that this screen has to make the phone feel more vivid in a way that I wouldn't have necessarily expected just brightness to do. I don't know if there's maybe something else going on with the display itself, but putting the phone side by side at both what they consider to be the automatic brightness and also setting up the same brightness level, I find the display on the 14 Pro Max to be nicer than the 13 Pro Max.

So that's great. And the extra brightness is always great, especially outdoors. I don't know if you've experienced anything like that. I know obviously you get a lot of sun where you are. Yeah, it's a big, bright display. I mean, there's no doubt about it. I haven't, you know, I don't think I have anything to quantify there. Every time I hit something that's in HDR, it's like, whoa, right?

I love it. Yeah, yeah. It's very impressive there. But yeah, it's a bright, beautiful, colorful display. There's no doubt about it. I just, the always on seems, I think you're exactly right in saying Apple just wanted it to be what if my screen never went dark. Apple just wanted it to be what if my screen never went dark. And I also appreciate that there's a bunch of stuff like the live activities stuff that will make this.

In some ways, the bottom part of the screen is a canvas for live activities to appear on. Yeah. Just like currently the now playing interface for audio goes there. And that's actually really useful. And so I can see like, if you've got some other kind of live activity going on to have it sit there and know that it's your, you know, it's your DoorDash order or sit there and it's a baseball game or sit there and it's your Uber driver and when they're going to come and get you. And with those activities also on there i feel like it's a little more information dense and a little more useful but one of the funny quirks of this cycle is that those don't exist yet right and that leads to the dynamic island not having as broad support as it presumably will down the

road and it also means that the lock screen is a little more barren. Although regardless of that, I think there should be a second row of widgets optional. And I think there could be more widgets on the home screen and that, that would be perfectly nice. And I think they're a little too spare, especially when they've got these huge phone screens. So, um,

yeah, I just, it, it just feels a little bit less necessary or less necessary than I thought it would. I thought it would. I thought it would be like, oh, now I can see everything. But especially now that they're rolling up notifications, there's not as much on my lock screen as there used to be.

Yeah, I mean, I use count notifications as an option where it just shows the number at the bottom now so there's even less on mine so but i like it like yeah so i there's there's some space there that i feel like i i appreciate that there's not a lot going on there and that for a lot of people that's great but i i feel like if you're going to have this this screen that is always on and can be in my peripheral vision um i'd like the option to put more stuff on it so that I'm not required to pick it up or tap it in order to see what's going on. If I could put more stuff on there that I could just... The idea that I can pick it up and unlock it and launch an app and

get a piece of information and then close it down. But one of the ways that an always on lock screen could help me is by having me put or having the phone put it because I set this up, that information on the lock screen. So I don't have to do anything but look at my phone. And then I've saved myself a pickup and an unlock and an app launch and maybe being distracted and launching another app while I'm there. I think there's value in that. distracted in launching another app while I'm there. I think there's value in that. And I think that the problem with the always on screen as it is right now is that it's not enabling quite enough of that kind of behavior. You mentioned the dynamic island. Yep. What do you think about the dynamic island?

You know, I think it's a really, everything we said last time, I think think i think it is a really clever idea i love that apple is leaning into a design limitation and making it a strength i think it's very smartly designed i think that the way it looks and the way it moves is um beautiful in you know for some as much as a system widget status widget can be beautiful, like they bless them for trying, right? Like they're trying really hard to make a black blob at the top of the screen, dance and sing. And like, it's like, wow. Okay. You didn't have to do that, but I love that you're trying that. Um, and so like, I'm encouraged by it, But again, the problem is, and this is like, I know I said this a week or two ago. It's just like when it starts out beta season, you get that new OS on your phone,

new OS on your phone as a beta user. And you're like, all right, all right, this is going to be great because there's this great feature that I'm really looking forward to. And then you realize, oh, that, that feature, it has to be, you know, built in to the new APIs by all the third-party apps that I use. And that means that I'm probably not going to actually see almost anybody using this feature until the fall when the OS ships or even months after as they get their apps updated for the OS and support the new APIs. This is a little like that where it's like, all right, the dynamic island is here. But other than a handful of Apple apps and people who are using the now playing interface for their audio, or I think there's one other example where stuff gets thrown up there, but basically like everybody else just has to wait for the live

activities api and so it feels like a work in progress it feels like apple has built a really interesting scaffold that might become great but it's too early to tell because right now most of what i see up there is my music or podcasts playing what about you yeah i just to touch on the live activities thing because i agree with everything you said about that right that like you know it's like a one two punch in a way like you can experience it for what it is now and it's going to get way better later and because of that i kind of can't believe that live activities was not a 16.0 feature like they must have known how important it was going to be like and i i'm surprised is it like because for as much as i can tell it isn't i don't believe developers can like

specifically ask for what goes up there or maybe i'm wrong yeah anyway but surprised me i think they could do it so this is my question uh which is is the live activities thing not in 16.0 because it wasn't ready or is it not in there because they knew that if they released it it would do something everybody would everybody would know what the dynamic island is i i think maybe it's the latter and And so here we are. But it does feel a little bit like, I mean, I get it, right? You don't want to give away the secret, but now your secret has come out and yet nobody's going to be able to take advantage of it. People are going to expect the Dynamic Island to just be supported by all the apps and it's not going to be for a while. So it's a challenge for Apple, and I get it.

But it does diminish what the possibilities are. And like I said, I think that's true of the lock screen, too. So it's a double whammy because I think live activities works, right? It's like live activities make the lock screen better, and they make the dynamic island better, and it's not there. island better and it's not there however the dynamic island for what it is right now it's kind of like you know like it or not this is apple at its best where they have had a smart idea which improves upon the technological limitations that they are otherwise given and they create something incredibly fun with it the way in which this thing animates is so unnecessary but great like uh cable sasser had a tweet that i think kind of went viral over the last few days where he's kind of like showing how you can depending on the angle at

which you throw an application like you know like when you're going to the home screen depends then has a relationship to the angle at which that app minimizes into the dynamic island and it's like there is no reason to go to that level but i love that you did right and then the reason is because we want it to just be as good as it could possibly be right which not everyone would necessarily do and so i appreciate it for that like the animations are very fluid they have a kind of almost a live feeling to them they do they're using that pro motion mic which you know i haven't been using for the last year and yeah and i started using it and i think oh right oh my god like i i almost feel like i'm getting dizzy because the all the promotion but like number one reason for the promotion like dynamic island really looks good with that extra

the extra frames and the and the and-pixel anti-aliasing. And there's a little glow that happens around it sometimes, depending on the context. There's a lot going on there. It's really, really cool, right? Like, it's really, really cool. Right. So the next question is, but is it useful? And the answer is, yeah, kind of right now, kind of.

But I feel, again, that we need to see the third party support here. And that's going to tell the story. And I hope that Apple has figured out the third party support story, right? Because the danger is that everybody's going to look at the live activities API and be like, oh. The one thing I've seen people kind of grousing about with live activities is and it just doesn't actually doesn't surprise me when i hear it but it could frustrate people you have to open an app before a live activity can begin right yeah because the whole concept of the dynamic island is that essentially you trigger an event that's happening yeah and then you leave the app and the, and the happening events,

thinking of music playback as the best example, you play a song and then you leave the music app or the, or Spotify or whatever, but you play a song or a podcast or whatever, and you leave that app. And what happens next is that app flies up into the dynamic Island with a little waveform and a little, uh, image image and it now is playing in the background and that playback is being displayed in the dynamic island you can tap and hold and control it and all of that so that's the fundamental premise is like you start an activity and then you you know swipe it off into the dynamic island and you move on with your life and you and it continues living its life in the dynamic island and you move on with your life and you and it continues living

its life in the dynamic island it doesn't happen automatically right and and and very little happens automatically on the iphone but i can see that as a developer you might be like oh but wait a second what if and it's like yeah well that's where it's going to get you and that that's the fear it's like did apple anticipate all the needs here where it's going to get you. And that's the fear. It's like, did Apple anticipate all the needs here? And I'm sure if they didn't, they will address it down the road. But they're already going to be late with this feature. And people will already have had their phones. And I know this is the start of the journey here.

here but that is that is the the danger is that some some new technologies die because they're just uh they're not adopted early on and they're not embraced and that's something that you know i think apple really wants everybody to embrace the dynamic island and that means they need to have that api be really robust and have the user experience be really good i've also found that the island makes for me the screen feel bigger um i think just because there's more pixels up there that have got color on them like it just is a trick of the eye oh yeah all the cynical people are like oh why do they even have those pixels up there it's like because it makes the whole phone feel bigger i've got a i've got a sky background on my iphone right now and the fact that that above the dynamic island is is part of the blue sky like it makes a

difference it really does even though there's no information imparted up there it's saying i'm part of the of the whole i am the part of this larger thing on your screen it's like it's really smart and it is much more noticeable than the notch ever was um for me at least at least right now like i feel like i was able to ignore the notch way more like i would say i use a lot of uh dark i use my phone in dark mode all the time and i actually use a lot of apps in like pure black rather than gray if you do that you are treated to not seeing the dynamic island very much whether you consider that a good or, I don't know. But I also actually think the animations of the dynamic island also look nicer when you're using dark mode anyway.

Like if you've got something playing, to me, it looks very attractive to have it that way. Well, I mostly don't use dark mode. And I agree with you. It is, right, the notch was meant to be ignored. It was, it's like your blind spot, right? Like it's meant to eventually just fade out of your view. And the dynamic island is not. Like it's part of the personality of the phone is that there's this blob up there,

this intelligent blob that morphs and puts information around it and that you can tap on and all of that. Like, that's why it's there. And I think, yes, it's going to be interesting to see how different people react to it. Because as much as we made out of the notch, the notch was really easy to ignore. And this thing isn't. So is it going to frustrate people? They're going to be like, oh, why is this stupid thing up there? Or are people going gonna love it or are people or if we wait another week will we all have lost sight of it again i

doubt it but it's a good question the last thing i think to talk about is the camera yeah i think that for me the jury's still out a little bit on the camera and i know i've only had a couple of days to use it. It feels like across the reviews, the general consensus is that the Pro's camera is not a massive leap. It's definitely not the leap that I hoped it would be if you're using it normally.

So if you're just taking photos regularly and they're taking the 48 megapixel and they're bidding it down to 12 megapixels, you know, the actual detail in the image can sometimes be better're bidding it down to 12 megapixels you know the actual detail in the image can sometimes be better maybe in medium to low light situations but most of the time looks pretty similar to the iphone 14 and you know depending on who you are you may either like or not like this camera and there's some photonic engine stuff, and that seems to be helping the ultra-wide look better, the selfie looks better, especially with the autofocus.

That's kind of the general consensus from the reviewers that I've seen. What's your take, Ben? And I want to rely on the people who really care about iPhone photography because they care about it more than we do. because they care about it more than we do. I'm encouraged by the fact that it does better in low light because it's doing the quad pixel thing. I think that's great. What I have seen, and this is what surprises me, is it seems like the thing that we thought would be less,

more of a niche thing and less important was the fact that there was a 48 megapixel sensor in there uh and that you could you could do two things with it you could do the 2x where where you just kind of crop to the center and there was the raw shooting and i will say about the 2x i really love that that feature is there and i know i know that it's you're you're losing performance because it's not being able to do pixel binning anymore. But Apple makes a point of saying that it's actually the best. If you do the math, you can see it because of the sensor size.

It's actually the best 2X camera that they've ever had in an iPhone. Now, not all iPhones have 2X cameras. So there's an asterisk there, but it's giving the extra range of having the 2x mode and having it not be a digital interpolation, but it literally being the pixels on the sensor. And it looks it doesn't look as great or perform as great as the bend pixels, but it doesn't matter because it's the shot you wanted. I think it's really good and that surprised me a little bit the one that really surprises me is that the people like sebastian who does halide um and uh oh what's his name now i can't remember you know the guy that apple always links to the austin man right like that's the thing that's austin man's really interesting

because they give him the the i thought he gave a really's the thing that's austin man's really interesting because they give him the the i thought he gave a really measured review and it's worth reading because he criticizes the things that he doesn't think are that great about the camera which is not normally what you see in a thing that you know phil schiller tweets out right but they they but they love that he's so enthusiastic about the cameras and he does highlight what's great about them. But what surprises me is that that 48 megapixel raw, I have seen all the people who are like the really into it, raw shooting photographers say it's amazing. And I know that's a real niche, but like, I thought they would, they would look at that 48 megapixel raw and they'd be like, yeah, you know, it's amazing. And I know that's a real niche, but like, I thought they would, they would look at that 48 megapixel Ron. They'd be like, yeah, you know, it's okay. I have, all I see about it is raves from people who are blown away by the fact that they can get that out of a camera.

that it's the best image they've ever gotten out of a phone. And I'm going to take them at their word, right? Because it's not my, it's not my bag to do that. So that's, I think that's really interesting. And it's kind of funny that I expected it to be the reverse, which is, we'd all be like, oh my God, the quad pixel binning, it's like, looks totally different. It's the, the performance is so great. And then the, the raw people would be like, yeah, yeah you know it's not as good as the because and that's not what's happened so uh i'm also keeping in mind coming from the mini which has a much less good camera experience already um as opposed to coming from a 13 pro but i've been really impressed with it i did some action mode shots today oh i haven't played with that yet that's the stabilization thing yeah yeah it's it is um at least so far like it's kind

of amazing right like i have used so many video cameras with motion stabilization and and also post-production software doing motion stabilization and you know some of it looks bad and some of it looks okay the the few action mode shots that i took today i felt like i really did feel like i had suddenly switched on to a gimbal or something like it was very impressive so i'm looking forward to playing with that more so i have been just taking a few side-by-side photos with raw and i cannot believe the detail that this lens can't can give so yeah it's very easy you can go into the settings app and go to camera and you can turn on the ability to shoot in RAW.

And then you get a button on the top right-hand corner of the camera app that says RAW on it. And it's got a line through it when you're shooting normally and it's not when you're shooting in RAW. And it turns off and if you're photographing styles, the photo style scene, it turns off all that. Live photos just turn off. So I've just been sitting on my phone and staying in a position, take a photo,

turn on RAW, take a photo, it takes a couple of seconds longer. And just zooming in on them, I cannot believe how much detail, like sharpness, is there in the RAW photography. So, I like to take pictures of lots of things,

lots of people. I very specifically love taking pictures when I'm traveling. I like to take pictures of buildings. It's lots of people i very specifically love taking pictures when i'm traveling i like to take pictures of buildings it's just a thing that i enjoy i imagine now i'm looking forward to the halide update when they actually fully support it because i find halide to be a really great app for it can do a thing that i really actually very much like where it takes both photos at once right so you take a picture and you get the the standard heath is it or is it heek h-e-i-c which one is the image one is image one video but the high efficiency codec one yeah it's the heek h-e-i-c is the container file that contains the

image file that's a heath format so it's both and it also spits out a raw image and at the moment they can't take they haven't got access to the full 48 because they have an update they haven't tested and updated it right because it's phones just come out so it's been taken a side by side but i also like to take my images and edit them and and do raw is the best way to do that i know that but i've just never really cared about it enough but now i feel more inclined to want to play with this because it feels like the benefit to me if you're taking an image in raw here is I'll get additional detail in certain circumstances

and I find that intriguing. And what I like about highlights specifically is it will give me both if the raw image isn't necessarily going to be that helpful to me right because it can also be more finicky right so i what i'll say is i am i thought there was going to be more of a difference in the standard lens than there necessarily is but there is actually an incredible amount of headroom available and i'm very excited about that i mean about playing around with that and learning more about that so

maybe i'll follow up on this in the future if i tinker around for some more but it is something at the moment i'm finding myself uh pretty excited about to be honest yeah and i mean i feel like with photos it really does take time you need to to shoot a bunch. And I love listening to the people who live and die by iPhone photography because they're the ones who notice those details and we should all be paying attention to what they have to say. that that is spectacular. If you're not one of those types of people, the improvements are going to be, it sounds like, more subtle. And again, it's one of those things, though, that you're going to get a new iPhone and it's going to have that. And whatever iPhone you're coming from, it's going to be that much more of an improvement if you're coming from a two-year-old or three-year-old iPhone than from somebody like me or Mike who is comparing it to last year's model yeah i'll put in the show a couple of links one is to uh something some images that sebastian do with

he actually took the photos i posted them on the halide twitter account yeah from san francisco and there's that with the street sign and the sun in the background it's kind of a spectacular yeah yeah and then also i'll put a link in the show notes to tyler storman's uh youtube review i always really appreciate tyler's reviews uh because he kind of just looks at the camera um and really does a good job i think of showing these differences side by side and explaining them in a way that I can understand. So yeah, I'm excited about this overall. I actually think this is a really great upgrade and it weirdly seems like, as we mentioned, especially with live activity,

is a phone that's going to get better with age in the near future, which is strange. I just have one other note, which is using this phone for a week after using the iPhone phone for a week after using the iphone mini for a year oh yeah okay every time every time i pick it up i think did i make a mistake is this the pro max it's not the pro max but it feels so huge it just feels so huge it feels you know it's big when it's in my, I was, I carried it around today. I took

pictures when I was doing curling and I was like, oh, that phone is gigantic in my pocket. And I look at it and I think like, again, I always do a double take. And I think, is this the big phone? Did I use the big phone by mistake? The answer is no, it's not. So that is really taken some getting used to. I'm so used to the smaller phone. But the ProMotion is really good. Like, again, I learned to live without it. But when I see it, I think to myself, oh, that's really nice. So I'll give you that one.

But I'm missing the size of the mini. Like, it's just really funny to have been so trained on the smaller phone that now the smaller of the two pro phones feels enormous to me but that's where I am oh well are you going to order one of these 14 pros no no you're going to stay on the mini yep

yep when all is said and done that's my phone and that's fine but for now I'm'm gonna live with the uh i'm gonna live with the pro while i'm writing the review and all that and that's uh and i'm liking it like it's really good i just i i just the the size take just i'm taken aback by the size on a regular basis it's just because it's so much larger than the mini. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Memberful, the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience

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of something exciting. Thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. So you wanted to talk a little bit about upgrade cycles today. It's just a thought that I had of a little game we could play, which is what do we recommend for people and what do we do ourselves? Because we've been talking a lot about, oh, you don't upgrade every year. You upgrade every two or three or four years and i was wondering if we might have our own recommendations for what that what we think that that should be today um

how often should you be updating your items or or you know separately from that how often are we updating the stuff that that uh that we buy. What I would say for me personally is rather than what I think people should be doing is what I would recommend people would do to have a good balance between a good experience and not necessarily buying every single product. Because should is like difficult, especially with something like an iPhone, right? Because how often should someone upgrade their iPhone? Probably every five years you know i mean it's like you're gonna be fine for a really long time like you know do you do you see what i'm saying there like the should part is is is a little complicated especially because i mean our audience i'm sure is is way over uh because i know

it to be uh pretty over indexed to people that do upgrade their phones every year but i do really love this as a conversation do you want me to start or should you start well why don't you start with this well let's let's start with the iphone okay i upgrade every year and did before and would anyway right irrespective of my job. I would, because I was doing this every year. I mean, I've had every iPhone except one, which was the 3GS. I honestly don't remember why I didn't upgrade to the 3GS, but I just didn't.

I think I was in a contract, and at that time I was, I don't know, I was like 19. I didn't have the money to do the upgrade. I don't believe, I don't know what was going on with me at the time, but I just didn't do it. Actually, I was probably older than 19. I was in my 20s, whatever. But other than that, I do it.

So I would go every year. Everybody else, I mean, every two years, probably, two to three years, because you get on that like tiktok kind of schedule right yeah um you know if i look at the iphone 14 i would say the iphone 13 was skippable but the iphone 12 i think was great the iphone 11 you know what so like that's kind of if i think back i would say every two years and you would get a more meaningful upgrade for sure so i would say two to three years personally it's every two years right um i'll buy a new phone every two years and we've generally been rolling those down in my family so we'll see how that goes i i feel like the iphone you could get away with at this point i feel like you could get away with

three years yes um pretty easily so jamie's got an iphone 11 and she's gonna she got it her freshman year she's gonna be a senior right so three years and it's fine but i did have that i had that thought today or or this week i've been thinking about that phone i thought like iphone 11 how's that going for her and then i had that moment where i realized well she's going to graduate from college in june so you, she'll get a new iPhone. I'll get her a new iPhone for college or for her birthday or something like that. It's coming. But I think at three years on from getting that iPhone...

That's funny. I thought you were going to say, which is where my mind went, she can get a job soon and buy her own. No. No, I really... So this is why I say three or four years because i feel like she's at three years and it's like you know it's fine but it's at the edge and i feel like next year she probably should get another iphone and again like mike said the so many caveats here

everybody's situation is different everybody's priorities are different everybody's budgets are different but if I'm like giving really broad advice to somebody about like how how how many you know is it okay like if you had a friend who's like oh I've had my iPhone two years should I get a new one should I should or is it okay if I keep it another year I would say I would say you're fine and if they they said three years, I'd say, well, if you can eke another year out, do it. If you're feeling pain now, go ahead. Which is why I come into that kind of three or four years. And I also know that there are people out there and I have friends who have like five-year-old iPhones. I'm like, great, great, good for you.

But that's when I start looking at the new stuff compared to the old stuff and go, yeah, you're going to get a lot out of it. Apparently, it's like you're going to get a lot out of this upgrade at this point. It's been a while for you. Apple Watch? Apple Watch. I mean, for me, two to three years, easy. I have no problem with that. I think it actually works pretty great.

three years easy like i have no problem with that i think it actually works pretty great even for like someone who considers himself an enthusiast like i do i wouldn't recommend getting every apple watch i don't think they do enough to them which i think is fine for everybody else i'd say four years probably yeah i think you're right. For me, it's, for me, it's three years or maybe two to three years. It's, I have not bought that many Apple watches,

even though it's been out for seven and a half years. I think I bought three. So, and Lauren's on her second. So I, you know, you could take your time with the Apple Watch. It's fine.

And I would apply that to everybody else, too. I'd say you could, you know, if you got a new Apple Watch every three or four or maybe even longer years, it's fine, right? Because the pace is so slow. And unless there's a new feature that you, in fact, I'd say with the Apple Watch, sometimes that's what it is. It's like one year, there'll be your feature. and you'll be like yeah i'm updating and it's for that one feature and as long as that feature doesn't come you just don't worry about it because your apple watch is doing just fine ipad oh i also just i simplified it and just had one iPad. For those who have many iPads, I'm sort of, pretend you have an iPad.

For me? Yeah. Three years. Two to three years, easy. Yeah. Because I have been doing that. I had been using an iPad very frequently. Before my iPad Mini, I was using my 2018 iPad Pro.

That's what I would take traveling with me, and it was great. So that was a four-year-old iPad at that point. And I forgot the age of it. I would say three years is easy for me for other people like five you know if you're using an ipad pro you're in a different category i reckon which is probably closer to me i think that's one of the challenges ironically i think that if you've got an ipad pro um on one, you can use those for years because like functionally, other than some of the feature changes, like the 2018, it's still pretty fast, even 2018. Right. So that's a four year old iPad pro some pretty, you know, it's still, I'm showing it's aged a little bit in

terms of new features, but still pretty good. Um, it sort of depends. So not only it's, it's like, what model do you have and what are you doing with it? Um, I think that the iPads, I think that's one of the reasons people were grumpy about the m1 requirement for stage manager was because those ipad pros tend to you know you can use them for a long time and and they don't ever break a sweat it's very impressive so i i agree with you i think i ended up buying an m1 ipad pro and i had previously bought the 2018, I think. So I only lasted whatever that is two years. But I think that, I think that for me, like I use my iPad a lot and yet I feel like every two or three years is plenty and yeah, the, it's hard to make a generalization, but I feel like the iPad in some ways is even longer life object than an iPhone or an Apple Watch.

Because you're probably buying it depending on what you use. You buy a base model iPad or an iPad Air or an iPad Pro or an iPad Mini based on what you're using it for. And I think they're all pretty well matched then in saying you can probably hold on for whatever level you're at. You could probably hold on to it for four years. Easy. And it'll be fine. And again, the caveat is if there's that must have feature, then you're prompted to upgrade. But I feel like you can hang on to those for a long time.

And then the Mac. I don't have a years for the mac it's like when there's a design that speaks to you it's kind of like my thing here huh the last few years have been complicated for me um because there's been all this new stuff going on including like here's a new iMac did you prefer this to your current one the way it looks and acts yeah I do or like here's a new MacBook Pro now here's a new MacBook Air like now I've got these sorted like I don't envision making any change to my Macs for multiple years now um so for me it's like it's either like a design and that design can be either visual or like the overall hardware design the package like what it provides um i think that is

that's what it is right like i don't think that there is a necessary time limit that i think for me or that i would recommend to other people just kind of wait until there's a product that, for whatever reason, you think feels better than yours, but it's not on a cycle. I don't think that there's really any need in going. So when they have an M3 MacBook Air, I have no desire to move to that product. Same as when they have an M2 pro macbook pro i'm good like this

i'm all set with this thing yeah well i was thinking about that i bought the imac pro and then the mac studio and so that was not quite five years but it was close and that's my workhorse on my desk and before i had the imac pro i was using a 5K iMac. And so that was 2014. So that was about three years. And you're right. Some of that is just what speaks to you when, but I went three years and then five years with those desktops and the laptops are a little different. You know, again, we hand things down in this house, but, um, but it's the same sort of thing of of uh every context is going to be different but like um my son had a 2018 air 2017 air and went to the 22 macbook pro and my wife had a 2018 i want to say or 17 air and just got my m1 and the fact that

the m1 is still for sale apple silicon really changes the game too i feel like these apple silicon macs are gonna be great for a long time i really do they overshot by so much oh yeah oh yeah maybe the idea for everyone is like just run it until it causes you a problem Maybe the idea for everyone is like, just run it until it causes you a problem and then think about changing. I think that there's real truth to that. And when a design speaks to you, I think is a good phrase to round up everything we've said here, which is obviously maybe the number one reason. I mean, number one reason you upgrade to a new device is because your device died or is dying. That happens or you broke it.

No judgment here, though. It just wasn't feeling well, and so it had to go. Number two is something prompts you to upgrade, right? Something in a product. It's not the calendar flipping over, right? It's something in a product that you go ooh that is enough for me to go um and then sometimes it's time which is sort of like it's getting slow it's getting old you know maybe there's all these new features but it's like okay it's time and you're almost fortunate if you get to that point where it hasn't fallen apart. And, you know, I don't know.

It's, it's, it's, I just thought it was really interesting because we talk about this a lot and yet I never really kind of walked through it. So I appreciate you walking through it with me, this idea of what we do. And we are, you know, we are in our unique cases of covering this and talking about it. And so we need to spend time with the new technology and all of that. Although there's also a truth about what we would do, regardless of whether we need it for our work or not doing a lot of things with computers right now. So, but also sort of like when we talk about Apple's iteration process, what do we think we, you know, the pace is?

And I think that what we've said here is actually, if you extrapolate, what do we think we, you know, the, the pace is. And I think that what we've said here is actually, if you extrapolate kind of what we're saying, the pace is in terms of what, uh, uh, like we obviously think the Apple watch pace is less and that the iPhone pace is a little bit more and that the iPad pace is a little bit less. Um, and I think that's true and that the Mac pace is kind of all over the place and also to be determined because the Apple Silicon thing changes it. But I think that that's part of this story too, is like how long, it's not just about like, how long can you hold onto it before it breaks? It's also how long can you hold onto it until you look at what's current

and say, it's so much better that it's worth getting a new one. And you know, not all of Apple's products work in lockstep. It's not like Apple one. And, you know, not all of Apple's products work in lockstep. It's not like Apple comes and says, all right, 2018, clear them out. Like that's not quite how they do it. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. What do you want to eat tonight? Maybe you want a home-cooked favorite, but don't feel like going to the store. Or you want something exciting and new, but it'd be great to stay in tonight. DoorDash connects you with everything you want, whenever and however you want it. Along with the restaurants that you love, you can also get groceries and other essential items delivered with DoorDash.

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to me uh get home from a thing and it's late and you kind of skip dinner because you were busy at meetings and stuff. Great. I can open DoorDash. I can see what's around. I can order from somewhere I've eaten before or I can try something new. I think it has actually become a great little treat of mine when I'm traveling is to use DoorDash. For a limited time, our listeners can get 25% off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter the code UPGRADE2022. That's 25% off up to $10 of value on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter the code UPGRADE2022. Don't forget, that is Upgrade 2022.

For 25% off your first order with DoorDash, subject to change, terms apply. A thanks to DoorDash for the support of this show and all of RelayFM. It is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. First one comes from Brantz, who says, Do you think Apple would bring the dynamic island to the non-pro models

and if so do you think Apple would bring those features to non-pro models without also bringing the 120Hz display or do you think it is required for everything to work properly I think it's inevitable

that the dynamic island will come to the rest of the um iphones yep i don't think i think 120 hertz is nice but i don't think it's required um and i think it it is a matter of sequencing i think it becomes a matter of what apple wants to bring because apple remember apple is really trying to differentiate between the two models but it's got cameras and processors and the dynamic island and promotion and always on there's a lot differentiating these two so even if they pull a couple of them off the shelf and push them down into the lower end phones there will still be plenty of differentiation so i i think i think dynamic island is so fundamental a a change to the interface that it has to come to

the other phones and i so i think you need to look at Face ID and the notch and see how it was not that long after when they went everywhere, right? Like when the XR came out, XR was an LCD, not an OLED iPhone, but it had a notch and a Face ID sensor. So I think it's going to be like that. If not next year, then the year after. But it might be as soon as next year that they do this. Because remember, all they're really doing is a cutout and the under glass proximity sensor and then the software on top.

And if that's all that's required, that's not hard for them to introduce. I think Jaws said it was like just as iconic, or it's iconic already, right? Yeah, well, it's literally, I mean, I mentioned this in a piece I wrote for Six Colors, but literally, they used to have the silhouette of the iPhone, and it had the bars at top and bottom, and the circle at the bottom for the home button. And then the iPhone X came out, and it's like, no, no, now this is the iPhone. And it was with the notch. And now they've got that same silhouette with the dynamic Island on it. It's like, no,

no, this is the iPhone now. And it's like, that's how Apple thinks of these things. It's like, what's the simplest way to, to express what the iPhone looks like. And it's now the dynamic Island,

at least for these pro models. But like it, it, it has to be as the home button vanishes and the notch kind of gets pushed down, the dynamic island starts to go everywhere. We're reporting a lot over the last couple of days, but display analyst Ross Young has said that he thinks that the island will be coming to other phones, probably with the iPhone 15, but not ProMotion or Always On. So they're more likely to roll out the dynamic island. It's like this is, as you say, like the iconic thing. This is the way it goes, but it doesn't need to bring everything.

ProMotion, Always On, and the dramatically improved cameras are really easy to just leave in the pro line right those are really easy to leave there well what about this then from jref who says do you think the dynamic island will show up on the ipad pro and if so would it be on the short side or long side uh my answer is maybe if apple thinks that the dynamic island or a version, because we got to say, or a version of it, right? The idea of using the same information that's coming out of the live activities API on iPadOS to do a status thing somewhere, maybe inspired by the dynamic island, maybe like the dynamic island. Yeah. I think that there's a strong possibility that they'll do that because it shares a code base. iPadOS shares a code base with iOS. And if they

feel like this is going really well and the people sort of expect to have that information, that they would also build that in to the iPad. Would it be on the short side or the long side? My answer is yes, it'll be at the top because the ipad doesn't need cutouts for sensors and i don't think it ever will and so i think that if they do bring something like this to the ipad it will just be software oh you've just blown my mind there because because what what i've been thinking of is like i don't imagine apple changing the design of the ipad from what it is right now for the far foreseeable future of like there being a thin bezel that is uniform around the whole device right right i can't imagine them making like a really thin bezel on one side so they could put the dynamic island

in there and put the face ID sensors in there because that doesn't make sense for just how fundamentally the ipad works so like you just pick it up and it's already ready to go in whatever orientation you want and the ipad does need bigger bezels so you can hold it more comfortably but if they did what you're suggesting of like they have a just a pure software version which shows the live activities and that kind of stuff that would probably work pretty great right yeah yeah especially because you don't need to look at the dynamic island necessary like you know like on the ipad because like for face id because the face id works in all orientations etc etc yeah that makes right and you know they may do if they do it it might be just an implementation of the dynamic island or or it might be their unique iPad spin on it, right, where they're like, oh, but this is different in that you flip it down from the top of the screen, or I don't know, right?

I don't know whether they, you know, might have their own spin on it and that they like that live activities api is really interesting on the ipad when you've got that extra screen real estate how do you instantiate the information about other activities that are going on especially if you're not in stage manager mode right maybe this is the way maybe not maybe it's something that's more like the menu bar, right? Like I feel like the menu bar on the Mac is what the dynamic Island is more or less. You can put stuff up in the menu bar to tell you what's going on. Um, but the iPhone doesn't make sense. The where's the iPad and all of this, like it doesn't have a menu bar, but it's not so small as the iPhone where it needs the dynamic Island. So what do they do?

It'll be interesting to see if they have a new take on it. But I think they could, if they really love the Dynamic Island, they could just do it in software on the iPad and it would be fine. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of Upgrade, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. Please send in your questions. Now that we're kind of at this stage of the year and need new

questions because some of the older questions that I haven't gotten to are somehow out of date eclipsed by the fact that we have new information like the phones and the OS's and stuff so if you have any questions for us please send them in hashtag askupgrade on twitter or question mark askupgrade in the RelayFM members discord which you get access to if you have any questions for us, please send them in. Hashtag AskUpgrade on Twitter, a question mark AskUpgrade

in the RelayFM members Discord, which you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you'll get longer ad-free versions of this very show. Thank you to everybody that has done that. And a huge thank you to everybody

that has donated to St. Jude so far this year. Please go to stjude.org slash Relay to learn more and donate now. We appreciate it incredibly much. And it really goes all towards helping cure childhood cancer, which who wouldn't want to do that? If you would like to find us online in the meantime, you can go to sixcolors.com and at jsnall on Twitter for Jason.

I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you to DoorDash, Memberful, and Hover for their support of this week's episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.