Upgrade - 530: I Am Beyond Recovery

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

from relay this is upgrade episode 530 today's show is brought to you by squarespace vitally and ladder my name is mike hurley and i have the pleasure of being joined in person by jason hi jason hi mike high five yeah in person that's right that's us we're uh in the pod cabin we're in the we are we're in the pod cabin steven hackett has been removed by steven yeah and we've taken all of his stuff and we're using it to record our podcast it's true but i have a snow talk question for you it comes from benjamin who wants to know i've recently found myself suddenly sluggish in the morning instead of energized and i wonder if tea may help me what advice do you have for getting into tea well there's a lot but what i would say is um you don't have to be there there's

a deep hole you can go down you don't have to go down that deep hole you can start it simple i like english breakfast tea which has a lot of caffeine in it i think there's a green tea that has caffeine in it too here's the challenge though it's like the like homer simpson said about alcohol it's the the cause of and solution to all of life's problems caffeine is like that too yes so the danger is if you have caffeine too much caffeine especially late in the day you may find yourself sluggish in the morning instead of energized because you will have slept poorly. So keep that in mind. But I'd say I started drinking tea more regularly because I talked to a friend who actually said, oh yeah, I get up at six in the morning and I go for a bike ride or a run. And I said, how do you do that? And he said, basically caffeine. So it helps. It does.

So what I would say is to get into tea, the simplest thing maybe is go to your local supermarket. And first off, don't, if you're an American, don't buy Lipton, don't do it. But there are lots of brands that will have an English breakfast tea. Twinings is a good one. There are some others out there, but get a, get, get a box of tea bags and then you boil water. You put the tea bag in to the boiling water in your cup.

Or you put your tea bag into the cup and then put the boiling water into the cup. Don't put the tea bag into where you boil the water. Anyway, wait three or four minutes. Take the tea bag out. This is important because it'll get all bitter and bad if you leave it in there. I see TV shows where people are drinking tea and the bag is still in there. I'm like, what are you doing? Maybe they just can't wait.

Or if it's an herbal tea and then it's okay. Anyway, try it. And then you can try it with milk. You can try it with sugar. You can try it with honey. You can try it plain, just black. And see if you like it. I mean, that's really the answer.

And see if the caffeine has an effect on you. But I have a tea robot and loose tea and all these other things it's like you don't have to i'm a i'm not a complicator i don't want to build up walls here it's really easy get a nice english breakfast tea in bags at the store if you're in the uk uh which you probably aren't if you're asking about tea uh pg tips is fine too you could get that get get a builder's tea it It doesn't matter. But in America, just, yeah. Look for something that says English breakfast on it. Don't get Earl Grey.

Earl Grey is not the same as English breakfast. Some people like Earl Grey. I love Earl Grey. I don't love it. I prefer not having the Earl Grey smell in there. But whatever. Start it simple. So that's my answer, Benjamin.

I recommend coffee. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show you didn't ask about coffee i know you didn't but i'm just saying what i think you can go to upgradefeedback.com and send us a snow talk question now we're in the pod cabin because we're here in memphis uh because two days ago we uh were a part of the podcast both of us uh along with case Liss and Kathy Campbell and of course Stephen Hackett. And we raised over

I think $130,000 during the podcast this year, which is a new record. So thank you so much to everybody that tuned in. It was an incredible 12 hours. We had a ton of fun. It was my favorite podcast that we've done so far. Wonderful group of people, wonderful games,

incredible work by everyone. And thank you all for watching. It's on our YouTube channel, the Relay YouTube channel. I've put a link in the show notes if you want to catch up on it. There's a lot of good fun there. But we are doing all of this because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. So for the sixth consecutive year, we have united the whole Relay community to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because they have a simple mission, which is to make sure that no child loses their life to cancer no matter where they live, and they need our help to drive the mission forward. The podcast was a great success, of course, but there is still time left in September, and we want you all to

donate because of the incredible work that St. Jude does in making sure that the children that are receiving treatment in the hospital try and live as normal a life as they can. Like, for example, Jason, did you know that St. Jude has a school that spans preschool through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upward of six weeks? No, I did not know that. I have learned a lot over the

years, but I think I missed the fact that they have their own school. This staff that are a part of the St. Jude school includes teachers trained in English language, learner instruction, visual impairment instructions and services, a librarian, a STEM coordinator, and there are even reading dogs who visit to read with the kids.

So all of this really helps the children try and live as normal life as they can, which is a big thing they try and do. This is in the idea of providing food, providing somewhere for the families to be and to be together to try and make sure that these kids have the best recovery possible. Yeah, you may think, oh, wait a second,

I'm going to the hospital and I also have to go to school. Yeah, I know, but there is the whole, I've been through my treatment and now I have to go back home. i know but there is the whole i've been through my treatment and now i have to go back home and after there's a very difficult thing suddenly i'm also behind in school yeah and get left behind like you don't want that you don't want that our community has shown so much generosity over the last six years in fact as we're recording this today as we're recording a little bit early uh we've actually passed the most money that we ever raised in a campaign oh how about that and we still record-breaking year in all respects and it's not over yet month is not over

please go to stjude.org relay you can make a donation today there are some incredible rewards that you can redeem if you do so like if you really enjoyed uh the artwork that we were using uh during the podcastathon you can have some of that for yourself in the form of stickers or wallpapers if you sign up to fundraise and you can get coins and desk mats. You can find out about all of this at stjud.org slash relay where you'll also see some information about employee matching

as well. So it's stjud.org slash relay to donate or create your campaign today. I thought for a second there that uk english had started pronouncing other strange other letters differently yeah like you say z i say z you say t i say tay it makes sense yeah it's such italian now taylor came changed everything i don't know what to tell you it's interesting yeah i have some follow-up for you

jason snell oh thank goodness my car i wanted you to actually mention the issue that you had with the sports app that you were telling me about yeah uh apple sports i had several people say why are you even using apple sports it's like it's because it's from apple and because eddie q told me to so uh i was looking at some football games and realized that there's a bug uh where at least sometimes in some games it leaves off the last score. So there was a, I believe Stanford beat Syracuse on Friday night with a field goal at the end of the game. And when I looked at the score in Apple's sports app, it had the score as final as a tie, which college football does not allow ties. I don't know if you know this about Americans, but we detest ties. Yeah. In America, you're a winner or a loser that's right yeah that's right yeah there's no there's no in

between no we all did pretty fine it's uh you're a winner or a loser so college football especially it's impossible to tie so uh that didn't make any sense and then i also noticed for several other games that if i looked at the scoring drives list for football, and football support is new in Apple Sports, it would leave off the most recent scoring drive or the last one in the game. So clearly there are some real bugs there. So it's great that you want to know the score. That said, I used it yesterday for a few college football games, including my beloved Cal Bears, who lost tragically to Florida State. Sorry about that. Played well enough to win, but they didn't.

And that worked fine. And that timing was fine. And as we sat here, I used a feature of watchOS, which is that it picks up the live activities from my phone. which is that it picks up the live activities from my phone and a feature of iOS, which is that sports app now does live activities directly instead of through the TV app, which is always a bad idea. And I actually got a buzz on my watch telling me that Arsenal scored a goal while we were sitting here. So now it's, thank you. Yes, it's this just in.

At some point during Sunday's match, Arsenal led 2-1. Breaking news. Yes, it was. And then you all know how that turned out. We don't care. Anyway, so I guess what I'm saying is the sports app has some things that are good about it that troubles me is, although it definitely feels like it's a passion project from Eddie Q and his team, the fact is it's an Apple-branded app from the platform owner, and I think it needs to be held to a higher standard, and they need to put more effort into it, bottom line. Yep.

Apple Intelligence is now in public beta, which I guess makes sense. They needed to do that if they were. So this is the idea. I think you, I heard, I overheard somebody say to you, oh,

there's no app intelligence. And you made the point of like, well, technically there is. That's, that's the thing is it's the bare minimum, right? This is the bare minimum,

which is the day that their phones shipped that are claimed to be built from the ground up for apple intelligence which is not really true but i mean it's compatible with apple intelligence or they made sure that apple intelligence fit within the specs of these phones whatever it is i do i do think they made some some changes i think they probably had to to really ram add the ram to the uh to the 16s to make sure that they could do it. On the day they shipped, you could be, as a regular person, you could opt into the public beta of 18.1 and run Apple Intelligence.

Now, there are like 80,000 asterisks there, right? Because there's the fact that it's not really Apple Intelligence. It's Wave 1 of Apple Intelligence. And we'll talk about this more maybe next week. Mark Gurman has detailed a little bit more about what happens in 18.1 and what's in 18.2 and what's in 18-3 that comes out in january and what's in 18-4 and what's in 18-5 and like apple intelligence in the in 18-1 is not all of it it's a little tiny

fraction of it it's essentially notification grouping and writing tools and summaries in mail yeah there's not a lot more than that and messages to type to siri cleanup i mean there's type to siri in not in 18-0 uh yeah because old siri is still in 18-0 yeah the reason i know this is that is that just turns out that i tap a lot at the bottom of my ipad screen it's kicking in type to Siri and I don't want it. I might actually turn that off because I've had the same thing on my iPad where I keep hitting it. And I reckon I'm going to be worse on my iPhone. And realistically, for me, currently, that is not useful because it is slower. Because it is slower.

And I mean, at the moment, Siri is no better, which I still maintain is a mistake from Apple to change the Siri UI in 18.1 because Siri is no better. It is no better. Like I tried a bunch of things and it is as inconsistent. Like, oh, can it remember the previous question sometimes or maybe all the time but other times it just decides to do something else completely so but anyway yeah i don't know if i'm going to keep the type to serious and maybe again like by 19 it might actually be

useful to ask it questions like that like you know the way in which i might ask chat gpt a question right that might be cool to be able to do that from anywhere on my phone but i don't even know what the 18.1 integration is like yet and like if i ask that question do i have to tap more prompts than if i just open the chat gpt app right you know these are the things we don't know yet because they haven't enabled that exactly but yeah you can now at least get some features in the public beta. Right, and I think everybody anticipates that will be fairly soon in the next couple weeks that that will ship to everybody. They said October. Yes, right.

Apple have said next month. Yeah, but I think Gurman mentioned that it's probably sooner rather than later. I would expect so. But it's, I think, technically making it a public beta available now, especially since 118.1 chips, they're still going to call it beta. Yeah, this is the beta of the beta. Yeah, that's right. There's betas within betas and betas within betas. Indeed, day. Apple have confirmed to TechCrunch that they are looking to support German, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese for Apple Intelligence in 2025.

German, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese for Apple Intelligence in 2025. And they also stated to TechCrunch that they are working with China and the EU on bringing these features to these regions on all devices. I mean, those go together, right? Is there some Italian-speaking colony out there somewhere?

That's what I thought, right? Like, Italian and German. I mean, I'm sure that these languages are spoken other places, but it's not like Portuguese, for example, right? Right. Where that has wide, like very wide speaking, people speak Portuguese throughout the world. Well, especially Brazil, that's a large market that speaks Portuguese.

But German and Italian, I don't think that they have like a mark, that they don't have like Portuguese where there are more people that speak Portuguese outside of Portugal than in Portugal. That's not happening for German or Italian. So, and again, this is, I think some people just see this as like, oh, Apple just doesn't want to work with Europe. But that doesn't make any logical sense for them to be so headstrong on apple intelligence and then just be like whatever it's an important feature of these products right they they want apple intelligence to come in fact if we look at that chat gpt announcement and the idea that it is going to be open to other partners that may be a little clue uh that they want to that they know they need to build that stuff so that they're allowed in the EU. They don't run afoul of the EU saying you're only preferring your own stuff and that maybe

that's their way to fight that, in which case it's not ready yet. And so they're just... Yeah, I think the idea that it's a fatalistic, like the EU is never going to have Apple intelligence, that's wrong. Clearly they're're going to and this is apple moving down that route because it doesn't make any sense otherwise to have german and italian in there and i wanted to give a public service announcement bellatro is coming to apple arcade this week is it a service or is world productivity about to take it it's about to go down big time latro is in the running for my game of the year right now it's like maybe first or second currently uh i've been playing it i played hours and hours of it on my steam deck knowing that it would it was obvious that this would come to mobile

one day because it is so perfect for that on my steam deck i play with touch the touchscreen controls uh but interestingly so this is there have been a lot of questions asked for years about are Apple actually doing anything with Arcade? And I think this is an example of there are still people at Apple that understand what to do with mobile gaming because they're doing something different here

that I've not seen them do before. Bellatro will be a paid game on the App Store at the same time that Bellatro Plus is available on Apple Arcade. They've done versions of these kinds of things over time, but this is like a on the day. I actually think

the paid version is launching a couple of days later. But Apple understand the importance of getting this game. This game is going to be huge. It's already big. It is going to explode. And explode and if you're an apple arcade subscriber you unlock everything without paying because you're a subscriber and it's it's a ten dollar game to buy so like oh there you go this is a great way to at least try apple arcade because you'd get in for like what five dollars a month or whatever and play it for a couple of months. But yeah, this, trust me,

this game is incredible. It's a great game. It is a poker game. You don't need to know how to play poker. I don't know how to play poker. The game does a great job of teaching you, and it's incredibly well done. It's fantastic.

Trust me, just go get this game. You're going to have a great time. It's really good. Rumor Roundup. Yeehaw. Mac rumors have discovered code that references quote apple silicon mac mini per n five port per n giving more evidence to mark german's rumor of an upcoming refresh of the mac mini having five usbc ports makes sense three on the back two on the front we think i think that that seems about right sounds sounds likely i think this thing's going

to be a little mac studio i think that's what they're building here i gotta be honest i am there's a little aside here i'm interested in this mac mini i'm very interested in it like you i'm not i i'm coming around to the idea that i'm not sure i actually need a max chip and that the pro chip might be fine for me i think i need more than the base m4, but an M4 Pro might be enough that I don't need to hold out for an M4 Max studio. And the other thing that makes me think maybe I'll be interested in this is when I left home last week,

I left my Mac in complete failure DFU mode. The mode where the light on the front of the Mac blinks SOS in Morse code. That was the mode that I was in. What happened? Do you know? I, my Mac got in a state where when I tried to, tried to, I don't know what it was doing, what it was taking.

It, when I tried to apply a software update to get on the new version, the new beta, it said, I can't personalize this for you. And I looked this up, and it seems like this is a very bad thing because it's basically like trying to compare the cryptographical signature and failing and saying, I can't do this. And it sounds like a reset was about all i could do complicated by the fact that i was running a beta which means i couldn't just like reboot and say install this again because i was on a beta version and it was preceded by a series

of very strange things where i had the thing i don't know if you've ever had this, where when you reboot, it says some system extensions got updated and you need to allow them and then I'll restart and then it'll be okay. And the system extensions were from Apple and I get allowed and rebooted. And then it just comes up again and says some system extensions need to be allowed and you need to reboot.

And you can say, forget it. But system extensions need to be allowed and you need to reboot. And you can say forget it. But the next time you reboot, as you know, I reboot every day. I turn off my computer and start it every day. It once again says, hey, could you allow this and reboot? It almost sounds like you're using a Hackintosh. It is eerily similar. How do I know that that extension is really from Apple? I can't personalize this for you.

I can't personalize this update.. I can't personalize this update. So then I'm stuck, right? Because I thought I could do an update and that might shake out this extension permission problem. But I can't do an update ever, apparently, because of this. And I tried all sorts

of different pathways. And in the end, it seemed like putting it in restore mode. And to be clear, this is the mode where you have to put it, connect it to another

mac via usbc like it's an iphone that you're restoring oh wow you know i haven't had that i've never done it before because this is this is an apple silicon thing yes like i have not yeah how do you do anything because it's it's an ipad now basically because you used to just does it not have the recovery partition it does and that doesn't but that didn't work beyond recovery i am beyond recovery whoa yeah so anyway i left it where my where where my laptop was attached to it as it's blinking sos and it claimed that it was installing a reach a restore image on it however it the the bar had gone like 10 of the way and then just stayed there for hours and you you're end up being right it's that point where you're like is it doing something

and not telling me can i give up or is it not doing something and if and if i click cancel so what happened is i did click cancel and the progress bar jumped way forward and still sat there and didn't cancel so that was bad so i started it again i started the whole process again and i went and i left the state so what i'm saying is maybe i'll get a mac mini i mean maybe maybe that mac studio is going to get buried in a shallow grave i don't know boy i have i have laptops i can just attach to my monitor and my keyboard and continue moving on with my life and maybe it's time maybe it's time i don't know but anyway i'm excited about that mac mini yeehaw i say so uh emma in the discord i think has found a similar thing and they've, they've quoted it from the Apple support forums.

I was instructed by Apple support to have an Apple service center perform a quote revive procedure. You can actually do that with Apple configurator and you can do it yourself. And I did attempt to revive it and that failed, which meant I then needed to do a restore. And yes, according to Emma, the only remains the remaining solution.

This isn't an Apple discussion thing was a made logic reward replacement because there may be a corruption of the security firmware built into the Apple silicon I think that's what's happened it's possible oh boy so if that fails I'll pursue it and we'll see what happens it kind of feels like that is the thing that if something goes wrong there

is it's done you need to start again. Because that has got to be so low level, I would expect it is lower than the operating system. It definitely is. But the question is, if I can't even with a tether load it up with the right thing,

what happens then? So we'll see. I'll look forward to hearing more about this. We'll see. But I may be living on a laptop in the meantime and then waiting for a mac mini perhaps we'll see anyway we'll leave this saloon in the roundup and we go back to the roundup like a tumbleweed just blew through yeah okay or we were going to see like the snake oil doctor or something yeah they're trying to bring this was the snake that i found in my boot ming chi kuo is reporting that the apple watch ultra 3 and a new se model are still

in the works now expected for 2025 yeah fair enough mark gorman is reporting that the new design of the apple watch series 10 was a contributing factor to apple delaying blood pressure monitoring for the apple watch so they just couldn't do both things at once seems like it it seems like maybe this is one of those scenarios where one team has one thing, another team has another thing. And whoever was doing the blood pressure couldn't get that technology

small enough in time to fit inside the Series 10. So they're like, forget it. Yep. For next time. And I can imagine that too. It's like, we know we can make it smaller. Do you know you can make this work? And they ended up not going with that. And I's like we know we can make it smaller do you know you can make this work and they ended up not going with that and i feel like this was a year where they could because they had other legitimately good health features this year yeah so why not just put it off put it

off i told you about this my phone asked if i wanted to opt into the sleep apnea detection which i said yes to and i don't know if it did that because I'm in America, because I don't believe it's been approved in the UK. So I'll let you know in a month if it worked or not. That's right. That's the feature that takes 30 days.

And Ross Young is reporting that he expects all iPhone models will feature a ProMotion display next year that would include the 17, which doesn't have it, and the rumored 17 Air or Slim, whatever you're going to call it. I think it's about time that all of these phones

get a promotion display. And it would not bother me, and I think it would not bother most people, if the 17 just had a 90 hertz display. You can still make them different, but the 60 hertz, to me, is rough now to look at. People who know about Android, too, I think that a phone that costs $700

on the other side is not going to be at 60 frames. There are phones that cost like $300 that have 90 hertz displays in the Android world. So we've more than passed that point now. Okay, well, that's good news for next year. I wonder if they'll have colors next year. Like, oh, you can get the nice screen, but the colors aren't as good.

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and all of Relay. So we have our iPhones. We do. We'll call this the iPhone 16 review but I'll say from my perspective this is like first impression yes that's what so maybe we should just call it that okay just be honest about it and call it

that because i'm sure you're going to write a review i'm sure i will at some point and i guess we can kind of give thoughts on the entire line because for those who watch the podcast on there was a moment where you took a very large cardboard box and started just producing phones like Apple Santa for all of us. So you have the 16, the 16 Plus, the 16 Pro and the 16 Pro Max. Yes. I have a 16 Pro of my own. Right.

Should we talk about colors to start? Sure. So I got Desert Titanium and I would say the way to describe this, actually in different light, this phone looks very, very different. So in some lighting, in kind of like cooler lighting, it kind of just looks like a slightly warmer version

of the natural titanium. But in others, I would say it's more of a rose goldy kind of look. So, you know, you can see we're looking at them right now and you can see it looks quite different, the natural to the desert. Yeah, the natural is a much cooler gray back but in my hotel room they look basically the same so this is i at first i was a little bit like oh that's quite pink but now i've kind of gotten to it's more of like a coppery rose goldy color and i'm on board of it because it's something new so i like it but i wouldn't say

if i was just choosing again right now i've seen them in person i would just go for the natural go back for natural i think that's a really good look this is different and interesting to me um i like and think i can pull off a rose gold i'm not sure everybody can or would want to. Okay. Right? Because it's a bit, I think it is, of the options, the most garish, maybe. Like it's doing something different. The black I saw in the Apple store. Yes, me too. Not impressed by that. Interesting.

I was hoping for something a little bit more. Slate or whatever. They're not calling it black, right? Are they? Who can tell anymore? Let me go to the website. Dark titanium, black hole i think i actually think this one is called black titanium okay well it was it was i liked it but that's always going to be my default i think is the dark yeah it's the darkest phone black titanium white natural and desert oh okay yeah it was it was not you know jet black it was no it was a i was expecting something

a little bit more fun like that you know yeah like like it was it like did they clip it was jet black but everybody was calling it piano black right because that was kind of like what they were going for yeah and this is not that this is this is just a it's a very dark it's the darkest of the titanium it's even darker but of course you've heard the story in it by now i'm sure the the 16s are incredible yeah the ultramarine color which we have here uh this might be good for the for the video viewers out there because we are in person today yes we are we kind of can't uh stop that assuming our video system works that's true it's a mystery we're using what is that the gopro 360 yeah incredible so this episode's in 360 no it's not yeah you can see the wall oh wow this ultramarine

is stupendous it is this is just an excellent color and i think that apple have really nailed the color infused glass that they've they've been working on i think this looks extra special like the deep color around the camera and i actually really like the two stack camera um i don't like the way that cases look with this phone because it also has the weird cut out for the flash the flash because the flash is flush on the back yeah which i like as a look on the phone but i think if you are a case user i think that's a little weird that kind of detracts that a little bit is it also strange to look out on the phone they're like just like on the body of the phone there's just this white circle where the flash is but i think

that they've done the best they could and i'm happy that apple didn't extend it to like a triangle or something oh sure fit it in there sure Sure. No, it's nice. The colors are beautiful. It's so good. The colors are really amazing. You don't like the teal. I think the teal is fine. It's a color that I'm just kind of bored by it. The pink and the ultramarine are so good that the teal is like kind of whatever. If you want green,

a teal is available to you, but the ultramarine is beautiful. The pink is really nice and i'm not you know pink's not my favorite since i have trouble seeing it i have no trouble seeing this one though you can tell you that is not gray or white that is a very pink phone um and i you know i like them i like them attempting to take parts of it like the flash and put them flush again. Because shouldn't the ultimate goal of iPhone design be no camera bump? Yes. Shouldn't that be part of the...

And I realize that may be unrealistic. I think it's impossible. Maybe forever. Yeah. But it should be the goal, I think, to have that bump be as little as possible and as unobtrusive as possible and if you can help it along the way making it smaller at least by moving some of it to the back you should do that right you should do that not make a weird triangle and so they did that but yeah

these are beautiful it shows you the colors that apple is capable of when it wants to do it and it feels like it's a good time to do it and that blue is just i love it i feel like this is a year where someone with really good taste won yeah one the the the brutal dog eat dog battle yeah and was named the colors are for 2024 these these are these are extra good they are extra extra good like they're undeniable in their color. Like, if you see someone using these, you'll be like, that's the new iPhone. You know, like, I feel like these really, really stand out.

So I think they've done a very good job. Similarly, a lot of cases are really good. There's a yellow one, which is like, you could see that thing in the dark, I think. It's pretty incredible. But we, I think, you know, as is the way for us, and I do think probably for the vast majority of our listeners, the majority of our time is spent thinking about the Pro phones.

Of course. The ones we use. Pro phones got a bit bigger, screen size and physical size. What are your takeaways from that so far? So going from the 15 Pro to the 16 Pro, I don't feel like it feels any different in my hand. I likewise don't really feel like I'm noticing the difference in the screen size.

So it's a very subtle thing. It's not going to blow anybody away. I like the idea that they attempted to just creep out to the closer to the edges without making the phone that much bigger um so that's a good start we haven't talked about camera control i haven't used it a lot again this is first impressions i it's funny because i saw somebody i don't even remember who it was complaining about the placement of the camera control button i find that my finger goes very naturally to exactly where the camera control button is and so i i think that part of it

is good i'm unsure if okay i'm gonna mention the touch bar here whoa hello i'm gonna mention the touch bar but don't take don't read too much into it. But what I will say is, I'm not convinced that that UI where you double squeeze and bring up a thing that you slide and then click and then go in has a little touch bar vibe to me in the sense that I get what they're going for,

but I'm not sure that's the right approach. Here's my thought on it. Right? So yeah, we'll come back. I want to come back to talking about sizes but let's dig into the camera control now. That UI is the most fiddly user interface design I've experienced from Apple.

So you have to double tap it but not tap it. You have to double press it but don't click it. And then when you're in there, you can swipe left and right and then you can tap it again and then you can change some settings. And if you want to go back, you have to double press it again, but not click it, and then you can go back. It's very fiddly, but I think this is reviewer syndrome in that we're using it a lot. Right. Where realistically, I think most people, it remembers the last setting you had it yes so

i think most people will have the thing that they want to do i agree and then change it like for me i expect i will be leaving it on the camera selection which is 0.5 it's interesting they have camera and zoom they're like different but the camera selection of 0.5 wanted yeah and i will then just swipe between those and take the picture that I want. Because realistically, I don't need to change exposure or photographic styles or tone that often. But some people, that might be the thing that they want. They might want to just swipe through photo styles and choose one. The other thing I've noticed as well is when I'm doing that,

I quite frequently, the way that I'm holding my phone, the palm on my thumb touches the display which stops it from working because it's almost like it's trying to, like, I'm interacting with the application. But again,

the camera control button, great. Oh yeah, absolutely. I like the button and the UI. I think the swiping ui is not a bad idea my problem with it really is i wonder if when it meets the general public if they're going to say yeah that's not quite the interface we want but i also agree with you when i try to tell people about this thing is it's only as it's only as complicated as you want it to be as you need it to be if all you do is press the button and take a picture

it's fine if all you do is do the halfway or that's fine if all you do is the sort of swipe that's fine like you don't have to be double tapping and moving between things and all of that which is good because it's kind of awkward I actually so I went into accessibility and changed the amount of pressure

needed for the single like tab to be the lightest. And I found that to be better. I would also like to be able to move between the settings with less movement. So I was just trying to take a picture of you there. And with my thumb, I couldn't get it to swipe between the cameras. For whatever reason, it just wasn't enough movement. So I would like also to be

able to tweak that but that's all tweakable and i do think the thing that people will most likely want to use it for which is focus weirdly is not there um although i don't know i i need to see what i saw a story that said that they're going to do a software update yeah down the road that is going to add the halfway to focus idea now the question is how does that work in a smartphone camera but i think the idea is i think the idea is that there'll be a focus mode where they will put a focus target on the screen and let you do the thing because the way it should work is like a camera it should work where if i want to focus and in the end it may just be setting where the portrait mode is right essentially because you can change that setting as well but if I want to take a picture of you

but I want the couch behind you to be in the picture what I would do on a regular camera is I would take the crosshair in the middle and I would put it down at the couch and I go halfway and it would focus on the couch they showed that in in the keynote. And then I'd pick it back up, and then I'd do it. So that's going to happen, but it's not there yet. That's yet another feature, and this is one of these themes right now, of Apple shipping software that doesn't do all the things they promised. And we're going to have to wait for some of this stuff. But I do think that that very familiar interaction,

I would argue maybe that's not an interaction that is necessary. But I can also see that if you're trying to emulate a film camera, it is going to make some people feel comfortable. Yeah. One thing that I'm really surprised by is you can't flip to the front facing camera using the camera control. Interesting. I feel like thatfacing camera using the camera control. Interesting. I feel like that should be in the camera selection. So, because I can... You can take pictures of it.

So, I can flip it on the screen and I can take pictures of it. And I can also still do all the adjustment with it. So, when you're doing your camera swipe, maybe you need to be able to swipe past. To go to, I don't know, go from 0.5 and then to front face i don't know how they would do that but like i feel like i should be able to to have that control because i

can do it's almost like there are two cameras yeah in a way which is weird like there's two distinct systems because i can do all the same adjustment on the front facing camera with the camera control but i have to already be there somewhere somehow else selfie camera yeah so i find that to be an interesting thing uh sure i in general with the camera system um i've been happy with the images i've taken so far again this needs a lot more testing but i've been doing some side by sides and the quality of the force macro mode is higher in the images that I've taken so far. Again, this needs a lot more testing, but I've been doing some side-by-sides and the quality of the forced macro mode is higher in the images that I've

tested. But the thing for me is I need to take more pictures of people because that's where I notice the shadows the most. But I do feel confident that I looking at like Nilay Patel's review, I may be able to have a lot more control over this with the photographic styles, which there is

again, I feel like this year when it comes to the I may be able to have a lot more control over this with the photographic styles, which there is. Again, I feel like this year when it comes to the camera, Apple have kind of taken the reins off a little bit because camera control is complex. Photographic styles also very complex. Yes. They've done a good job of trying to show you things in a simple way. And that little tone control that they have the little square is nice but it's also like a slider yes below it below it yeah and it's like an apple in the camera control they have two distinct things one called style one called tone right and you can change those with the camera control but they're both part for the graphic

styles ui and styles are the previews you can swipe through. And then tone is the controls at the bottom. So there's a lot of complexity here. I think we'll see how people react to it. The thing that I appreciate is, okay, so you're Apple. This comes up a lot with Apple because they have so many users

at so many different levels. And a lot of the criticism Apple receives is from expert users or advanced amateur users and the problem is most of the people aren't that right that's the problem is most people aren't that and apple struggles and and they bring it on themselves right they want to be the computer for the rest of us, right? They want to reach the masses. But it is hard to make something, one thing that is easy for people who want it to be easy, but offers an array of complexity for people who want it to be complex.

It's very hard to do that. And what they can't do i mean this is this is like okay they added on the mac in sequoia they added um all the window management stuff the tiling and we say this when we talk about sherlocking it's like well if you want something like moom you know this the apple's thing doesn't do anything like that well of course it doesn't because apple's trying to create something that's for kind of like a regular person who's never gonna download third-party software. Well, you see it with the camera control

and you see it with the photos, the camera app in general. And the photos app actually is the same idea, which is they're trying to create a setup where if you just don't know anything, you can do what you need to do very easily, but that if you want to do a little more, it will start to unfold. That's really hard. And it will be interesting to see about things like the photographic styles, what form they take, because I think ideally, if you don't need to know about them you don't worry

about it or if you set it once to go like i like my photos to be more colorful or whatever you set it once and you forget it and then all your photos are like that can i make a note on that that's actually not the way it works this time so if you set a photographic style and take a photo with it the next time you open the camera it goes back to the default. You have to set a default. You have to go into settings, app, and then camera.

Then there's a subsection called preserve settings. In there is a toggle to turn on photographic styles. Then it will retain the one you set previously. The default photographic style. Then it will retain the one you set previously default photographic style there isn't a no then it will retain the one you last used i thought you could set a default photographic style i don't know how to do that if you can all right the only way i could get it

first impressions is to go in and do the preserve seconds thing yeah so my point is can they make it so that people are happy just clicking and shooting and make Neelay Patel happy? Who's somebody who has real opinions about photography. It's a good review. It's a really good review. What it seems like is that Neelay is happy because, and I think, you know, you guys on Connected have talked about this a lot. and i think you know you guys on connected have talked about this a lot the increasing feeling that apple processes its photos so much yeah because they've got a they've got a a philosophy that we're going to you know re-expose everything seven times and merge

them together so that you can see detail and shadows and things like that but what you lose is contrast that you somebody i saw a post on Mastodon that was, I think it was Mastodon, that was literally two shots of fog at sunrise in San Francisco. And one of them was the sun is like blown out through the fog. And the other one is an Apple HDR picture where you can see the individual wisps and all that. And they said the blown out one that came, I think, from Halide is more accurate to the experience of being there.

And then Apple kind of, because the sun is really bright and shining through and it's sort of blown out, gets that effect. And Apple's one, in order to try to retain all of the detail of the clouds, has made something that actually doesn't feel like the real scene. So if you're somebody who cares about that kind of stuff, having the ability to set up that sort of thing might take the pressure off where Apple's like, look, we have a philosophy which is capture everything. And if you don't like the fact that that deludes or removes contrast, denudes all the contrast from your images and you're left with this kind of grayish haze, then change it. Right. And it will let you. And that philosophically, I think that's really interesting because it's basically saying, OK, Nealey, if our default bugs, you change it and then you'll be happy too. But the default,

I would argue Apple feels the default works the best for the majority of people. If we only have one default, right? The default is the default. It needs to be like, do no harm. And also please people who will never change any of their settings. How do you set that default and and i can see why that default might anger other people so this is very confusing so zach in the discord has shown me to a thing in the camera settings called app settings photographic styles where you can go through like a wizard and choose a style but it doesn't have all the styles in it it just has the tones so i don't i need to dig into this more but like that the setting that i found which is in camera then preserve settings is photographic style and if you turn that on the one i've set in

the camera app stick will stick because the ones that they're showing me here in the app setting section are just the colors like amber gold rose neutral cool but i like the vivid style yeah and then i've adapted that a little bit okay so quite confusing need to look into that yeah don't understand it yet but i the one that i've chosen it now shows up every time which is the vibrant actually and i've adjusted a little bit so it works for me the yeah i think when they introduced photographic styles a few years ago the first version of this um they it was a big moment because apple was sort of saying okay our look isn't the only look that you could get from a photo we it's so quaint now almost because we live in an era where their competitors are

building ai cameras where you can change everything and other than editing out background items in cleanup in uh 16.1 i'm sorry 18.1 the apple and then apple actually somebody at apple made a statement about this to somebody and basically said look our philosophy is photos are of things that actually happened um and there's a lot of there's a lot more room in there right it's like it because the photographic styles allow you to have it look differently because we all know that there are so many different ways to capture an image and get different color and a different look and all of that but it's still the image and if that's their hill to die on i'm okay with it right the idea that we're not going to have a camera that detects you you in the foreground

and puts you in a field yep we're not going to do that and i'm okay with that and i also really like now that you know if i'm thinking about, I think this is, again, some of the confusion I'm having. So I just went through the wizard and all I can do is change the color and then adapt the color and it saves that as the style. But none of those are the ones you want. There's stuff to the left, which is colors, and there's stuff to the right, which I think is called moods. They've got undertones and moods. But aren't they all photographic styles? Yeah, I guess. In the photographic style section of the camera app, all I can change is the undertones and moods. But aren't they all photographic styles? Yeah, I guess.

But in the photographic style section of the camera app, all I can change is the undertones. This is confusing. But this is what I'm saying about a lot of this stuff. I feel like this is good. They've kind of let the reins off a bit. But in doing that, you create a complicated scenario. It's chaos.

And so, for example, what I want to be able to do, the photographic style that I've chosen is like a recipe. Now in the old version, you could save that. Right. You can't do that anymore. So now I've taken a screenshot of my numbers

so I could change it back if I needed to. Yeah, because I would argue that if you create a photographic style in the camera app and say, I like this, I want all my photos to look like this, you should be able to tap somewhere and say, save that's mine it's like my and then ideally save this and then say save this as my make this my default yeah and maybe they'll get there again yeah it does feel a little

bit unfinished as well like yep oh we got to get this ready for the new iphone and there are maybe some pieces that are missing but what i like i said what i what i do like is that it feels like they're erring on the side of creating a fun a basic function that everybody can use and then they open the box and say is that not good enough for you okay and then the rest the other thing that i really appreciate about this new system is that if I take a photo and I'm not happy with the coloring, I'm not happy with the way that it's been processed, I can now go in back into photographic styles

and see if I can fix it. Yeah. Where before, once that photo was processed, done. Yeah, the capture, the photographic style changed how the photo was captured. It was baked into the image. And then all I could do is try and quote unquote save it in that dark room. Now I can go back in to the photo, into Apple's system,

go back into photographic styles and see if I can change it. So I'm excited about all of this, but this leads to the complexity of it all, I think. Right. about all of this, but this leads to the complexity of it all, I think. Right. But I do feel like, just straight out of the camera, I'm able to get closer to my desired color profile

of images before I put them through an app like Darkroom, which is my app editing of choice. Yeah, if you prefer a certain style... I like warm and colorful. Yeah, you should be able to dial that in and have all your photos do that without any work. Because it's my camera, right?

And with this, yeah, you could make the counter argument now, which is if your style is bad and you come to regret it later or somebody else goes, oh, no, no, no, no, we can't use this. Guess what? There's a lot of extra data in there. You can change it. You can change it. Yeah.

I want to talk just a little bit about the physical size of my phone because I have jumped down one. Yes. So I did try out, I did hold the 16 Pro Max. It's real big. It's big. This is a big, big, big phone now. It is accentuated right now because I've been using the small one

because I picked up my 15 Pro Max today because I'm still doing all my transfer stuff and it feels big now because i'm getting used to the pro again but the immediately when you had to be the pro max during the podcast i was like oh boy yeah now i stand by them doing this i think make the big phone as big as you can make it because people who want that want that. But what I'm happy about is that the smaller phone has gotten a little bit bigger over time. Yes, it has. So for me, that's good because I can maybe make that jump. And this is just an experiment. Like the small phone feels small to me. It feels this is a small phone and it's already changing

my relationship to a little bit. What I've noticed with this phone is I'm kind of like throwing it around more. And I don't know why, but like if I'm, you know, I'd like to throw it on the bed, throw it in my pocket. Like it's more maneuverable.

It feels fantastic to hold. I like that I can type with one hand really easily, but if I'm typing with two hands, I'm not tripping over myself with my thumbs. Like it's not big enough. So it still feels good for watching video, which was a big thing for me. So I can watch video and that feels good.

It's definitely different. It feels wonderful with a camera control. I'll say that. Like one-handed photo taking with the camera control is very doable with this phone control is very doable with this phone not so doable with this phone like if I try and hold it in one hand I do not feel like I have a good grip on this phone with one hand I'm trying to support with my pinky finger and that I'm making it work but like I am like claw gripping this phone and what I also know is I said if I'm

touching the screen, which I kind of would do to get it, that messes with the camera control a little bit because the phone's trying to work out where are you controlling this right now. Exactly. So, you know, if you want the big phone, as I have wanted for many years, this is an even bigger one.

But it just so happened that this was, I'd felt myself wanting to change it up a little bit and i would say i'm very very happy with this but this feels like a the pro feels like a tiny phone to me i know comparatively well it does you adapt and change so that's going to be the thing to watch is if you can you adapt to it because you know i adapted to the mini and then when i went off the mini i adapted to the pro and it took it took some adaptation because it's like whoa this is so big but honestly after like a week or two um and i could type way more accurately on the pro than i could on the mini that's that's the truth that's the real shame of the mini was that i could never type accurately on it it was the keyboard was just

so small yeah but um but i got used to it so that's going to be the question for you is you live with this for two three weeks and see if yep you can still use it my setup went really well uh i actually did something i was able to do this time that i've not been able to do it for any years so any of my friends who have been telling this piece of information to it's wrong now maybe i was able to transfer my e-sim now in previous years that has not worked at all until i got home right and my expectation was that it needed to connect to my network and couldn't do that in america but it did it this time so the question is is it connecting to your network through a partner network in America, roaming, or is it connecting to your network over the internet and getting your validation that way?

Something's changed. But something changed. Because the last two years, that has not worked. I've tried and tried and tried. And then last year, I did it in the airport and it worked. So it just needed to be able to connect to what I seemed like to my UK network. But this time it's done and it's it's working everything's fine i've been able to roam and all and it's working so i'm happy about that but that's new for me the question my setup went really well i did the phone to phone thing put it overnight i really wished it would transfer apps

like it didn't have to then download the apps from the app store right but this transfer was smooth the one question i have is why does apple put garage band on my phone it wasn't there before i had the same thing that you put it on the home screen you created a home screen and you put garage band on it yep i didn't have it installed so like at what point like i need to we need to speak to the european union i think and i work this is unacceptable and And I work. You had that too? I have those apps. I had Pages and Keynote and I do not have those on my phone and they were added as well. Something weird and iMovie as well,

which I don't have. And I think that's one of those weird cases where there are these apps that are system apps but aren't system apps. They're in the App Store. And it used to be you had to claim them. You got a new computer and it would say you need to claim them in the App Store in order to buy them. But they come with a purchase of that. And I honestly, maybe somebody could tell us.

Maybe Luca Maestri can tell us once he's not the CFO anymore. I actually wonder if there's a very specific accounting practice going on. Back in the day, there were things that Apple couldn't give you. Yeah, you had to pay for software updates. Yeah, right. And some of that was legal or accounting.

Sarbanes-Oxley. Yeah, Sarbanes-Oxley, exactly. Whatever that means. I know the words. I don't know what it means. It's two guys. It's two, Paul Sarbanes, and I forget who Oxley. Yeah, Sarbanes Oxley. Exactly. Whatever that means. I know the words. I don't know what it means. It's two guys. It's two Paul Sarbanes and I forget who Oxley was.

Oh, is this like how... Because something I've found more over the years is like... It's like the Smith-Hawley terror fact. Every lore in the UK is named after something. So it's like Verizon Drinko, which I hear Ben Thompson talk about

on almost a weekly basis. So, yeah. So it's a... And ZMK is pointing out the reason the reason your apps don't transfer is that they change what you download based on what your what device you're on i don't care but i would also say what about some logic to say you know this phone's pretty much like that phone i'm just going to transfer it over i mean like these things are like uh the way i describe a lot of this stuff is none of this stuff happens organically

right there are decisions being made yeah and they could change it they could say you know what Like these things are like, the way I describe a lot of this stuff is none of this stuff happens organically. Right. There are decisions being made. Yeah, and they could change it. They could say, you know what? We're going to keep compatibility on the 15 and the 14 so that when we get to the 16, those will just transfer right over.

How different is Slack from one device to the other? Right. So, yeah. So anyway, I do wonder if there's an accounting issue of some sort where those things, because you had to claim them in the app store and that they used to be like sold if they're accounting for

them as like when you get a phone you get these apps in a bundle and that we charge against it and that changes i don't know it it's really weird yes he's very sure oh you got a new iphone and on your previous iphone you deleted garage band well here it is you're getting a garage band enjoy it you just need to just get rid of that yeah but yeah i look forward to playing around with these more i've already noticed as well these phones charge faster if you plug them in they do up to 45 watt charging yep uh i plugged my phone in yesterday it was like 20 i was still using it and i was like five or ten minutes i have 45 battery life and uh it's early yet but um battery life feels pretty good too so yeah i'm not really making any judgment on it because

i've changed phone you know like i know mine's going down so when i i transferred here oh i mean stevens and it just maxed pro oh that's right so you can't really say yeah well my yesterday my battery was getting killed because i was doing an update and downloading all those files and downloading every podcast and all of those things happening but um we'll see the early i'd say early suggestions are good but who knows this episode is brought to you by our friends over at vitally vitally is bringing in a new era for customer service productivity with their all-in-one platform, Vitaly's collaborative workspace combines your customer data with all the capabilities that you expect from today's project management and work platforms. With Vitaly, you can measure the effectiveness of OKRs and operational strategies on customer outcomes at scale thanks to their

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That is vitally.io upgrade for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting. Our thanks to Vitaly for their support of this show and Relay. You also got the Apple Watch Series 10. I do. Are you wearing it right now? I am wearing it right now. I bought this.

Oh, that's your one? This is mine. I also have a review unit, but this was my year. I had a 7. Wow. So I went up to the Jet Black 10. Were you wearing the 7 daily?

Yes. Like you weren't wearing a review unit? No, I was wearing the 7. Titanium, which was a treat yourself moment from three years ago. Actually, I remember that. But now I'm on the 10. Early thoughts? I know when you look at it and hold it up, it doesn't seem like it's thinner,

but it really is thinner. and hold it up. It doesn't seem like it's thinner, but it really is thinner. And the place that it is thinnest, I think, is the sensor dome doesn't stick out so far. And so the whole watch

feels closer to my wrist. It looks nice, I think. It does. I'm very used to the Ultra, which is a big, it's so huge. So huge. But I am struck by the fact

that it looks like your Apple Watch is sitting on your wrist. Exactly. Which Apple Watches never look like that. They don't. They are perching on a dome. Yeah, like it is flat to your wrist. Yes. Which is a different look.

It's really different. And I think it's much sleeker looking because of that. I agree. And the screen size, what do you think of the screen size? You know, it's too early for me to tell. Sure. the screen size what do you think of the screen size you know it's too early for me to tell it's definitely bigger and that's nice but it also feels not disruptively larger as a watch it it i would say the thing that i've really noticed is it being very close to my my arm and to the point

where um i was at one point it snuck a little bit up up my arm where the digital crown was close to the bone in my wrist and I tried to move the digital crown and it was like not moving very much because it was kind of pushed into my wrist a little bit. I was actually causing trouble there. So no, that change in how it sits on my wrist is the big change. size doesn't feel that dramatically different although you know i'm sure i will appreciate that extra the extra space on it um i have i have a a real good i think relatable way to describe the feeling of the size difference so you gave me yours to try on right and you have a nike sport band i have with my apple watch i have a nike sport band yes i have with my apple watch i have a nike sport band too i was able to wear your nike sport band one notch tighter than mine interesting so you can tell the thinness difference yeah and kind of where it's coming from yeah that the the watch to skin like

the watch attachment to the skin is closer of course i'm comparing it to an ultra but i don't really know how different that is realistically but like say from this to that like i could wear the watch tighter because it's not pulling away from my wrist as much so i found that to be interesting right so it's i got the jet black aluminum so it's shiny that's aluminium yes that's just i knew that it's like i forgot they did that because when i looked at this that looks like steel to me because of how shiny it is right that is very impressive what they've managed there yeah they should make phones look like that interesting and i think they're gonna right someone wrote in about this this might actually be an ask upgrade we'll get to it okay

there but yeah let me see actually and the reason i went down from titanium is i as much as i enjoyed treating myself in the series 7 for titanium and it was light and it looked pretty the truth is the price difference between titanium and aluminum to me is not so great that it justifies yeah the the it's too big to justify the difference in the product yeah i guess is what i was saying and the honestly, the Jet Black aluminum looked so great that I thought, I'm just going to do aluminum this time. This question came from Matt, who says, I have a theory that the Jet Black Series 10 is a potential hint at how the iPhone Slim will look,

which is rumored to be made of aluminum and how it may be finished. I think that is a, Matt, spot on. New process, right? So they get to try that process out. That is a strange look for aluminum. Like, it's good. It's shiny.

I remember when we were talking about like, oh, they would go to aluminum for this incredibly expensive phone. Well, if you can make it look expensive, you've done 50% of the work. Which is this polishing process that they do. Now, I've seen the stainless gold one. I'm convinced that I will be upgrading to that when I. Yeah. Now, I've seen the stainless gold one. I'm convinced

that I will be upgrading to that when I get home. I think that is incredibly good looking and this is like that difference for you. Like, for me,

that's worth the extra money. Let's, yeah, so we're going to play people who like one Apple Watch are admiring another Apple Watch. Yeah.

So you have an Ultra and you're admiring the Series 10 in gold, stainless or gold titanium, not stainless titanium. I will say as a series 10 owner, I got to see at the Apple store.

We went to the, the Memphis, Tennessee saddle Creek, India, Germantown, Tennessee, Apple store with Stephen Hackett driving us around Tennessee. I saw the black Ultra 2.

It looks so good. It's incredible. And as our team, our baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, are orange and black. Orange and black. We just got an orange watch band. Ultra 2. It's so good. Oh oh i do have an orange watch

well let me tell you that this people who bought an apple watch recently will have will know this the vagaries of what band you can buy with your apple watch especially if you want it on a certain day because i wanted to pick it up on saturday here yeah and there were a whole array of bands that i wanted that they're like yeah that'll be in october i'm like well okay i'm not doing that i'll just buy this fun nike band that i'll wear and it's nice but um anyway the ultra two black looks so good and the orange highlights on it i think just pop it is chef's kiss good i didn't buy it uh i don't i don't want to watch that big is the bottom line but it looks so good so i love the way the gold looks the the main reason for me is i think that i think it is clear now that the ultra will not be coming along with the series

the the watch series numbers right that it may be in every other year from now on or many years they've well they've changed it this year right so three years three different three versions in a way because it's ultra two but black that's new right right but it doesn't have all of the new stuff it doesn't have all of the new senses it doesn't and i think that's going to continue yeah no they they said we talked about this after the event yeah it they described the ultra in not really different terms but like i think they they specified the ultra is our rugged yeah sports watch yep and what it's not even though it was this when it was introduced they it was this but it was almost like de facto it was this which was it was also their biggest screen and their

best technology and a whole bunch of stuff it was the high-end apple watch and i think what they're saying is no no no it's not the high-end apple watch it might be the most expensive apple watch but like it's not it's the rugged sports watch and that. It might be the most expensive Apple Watch, but it's not. It's the rugged sports watch. And that's why you get the Ultra, or because you like the look. And for me, it's like, I wanted this watch because I wanted the battery life.

And I'm going to lose that. But I figure I've got to lose it. At some point, I think I want to go back to the Series 10. I like the way it looks. I was making a funny face here because i'm looking at the comparisons because like well what is different and it's like you know some of the new screen technology is different you know the always on is better one of the the in the features you know the comparison feature breakdowns one of the things that the apple watch ultra 2 does that the apple Watch Series 10 doesn't is high-speed water sports. I'm not sure what that means.

And like, can you not, will it not, what happens? I don't know. That's interesting, right? Because like, okay, recreational scuba. I get that, right? Like it has a better depth gauge. Yeah. I understand that.

This is the snorkelers watch. That is the scuba watch. But what like it has a better depth gauge yeah i understand this is the snorkelers watch but what is high what is high speed water sports and why does this one do the water skiing i guess i can understand what i can imagine what they are but like what in the ultra supports that better who knows you know i want to make a note about watch faces because this is something I learned in my product briefing as well about this. So the new always on display has improvements, including second by second update, which means that you can have a timer and look down and it will theoretically tell you the time even when like a second even when i want that because that happens to me all the time i'm cooking and like i'm looking at my watch but it's not on yeah and then and i get like full so we can yeah it can refresh by second yeah and that's great that's great one second refresh rate fantastic and they they said in the keynote

and look at these great faces we had that face where the thing kind of the second hand is essentially like a water wave thing that kind of pops up higher, higher, higher, higher until the minute changes. And then we've got this other face that is new that has the ticking second hand. And it's a smooth movement until it goes to sleep, at which point it becomes a ticking secondhand and it keeps ticking. Whereas on the old watch faces, you know, because they couldn't do always on at a second update, the secondhand just vanished. one of these things Apple doesn't want to talk about, but I think we need to talk about, which is the real skeleton in the closet of watchOS, which is the watch face development and design. It's been 10 years, folks. The pace of Apple watch face development is poor, but poorer still is the fact that after Apple builds a face they very rarely ever change it even to get new features and if you think about that it's kind of bananas because on ios and mac

os generally if there's a brand new feature to the os they like add support to it to their apps and stuff. But if you're using and want to still use an Apple Watch face not introduced this year that has a second hand on it, when it goes into always on mode on the Series 10, the second hand disappears instead of ticking. I don't understand how that is happening. Only the three faces they introduced this year

use the always on display with the ticking second. It suggests to me that the development of these watch faces is based on a rickety system. Yes. That's what I mean about the skeleton in the closet here. Why shouldn't...

What is the watch looking... So there are two watch faces for every watch face, essentially. There is the on and the always on. Yeah. That seems to be what they're doing because what should happen is all of these elements should be defined

and they just work within an API. So secondhand, does it tick? What watch is it on? That kind of thing that I would imagine. It suggests that they have built this contraption to build watch faces that is rickety, and they haven't updated it. Similarly, how some of the older faces

don't support the newer complication styles, but you can still use those watch faces. Right, but they don't use the new... Yeah, exactly. My beloved watch face that is my favorite is Utility, and I don't use it as much because it doesn't have the same complications. So I'm on California, and I like Utility better.

Utility looks better, but it won't do the corner complications in the same way that California will. It will do one at the bottom instead of the two in the corners. And that is entirely, which makes me believe, honestly, Mike, it makes me believe that the watch faces themselves are so brittle that they can't change them to behave differently on different models.

They have to stay, like when they've done the updates, they've probably just started over. Yeah. Or they're like, well, well no we can't have this face beyond this model and then this face behaves differently on this model it must stay the same throughout and if that i don't know if that's the case or not and somebody at apple might say no no no no that's not it at all but here's the thing we can speculate about why it is this way but it shouldn't be this way that's the bottom bottom line is, is you can, and I'd

love to know, but it's an excuse. It's an excuse. And I know people will probably who are listening to this will say, oh, but it's always been like this. Like, yes, I know it's always been like this, but the way it is is wrong. Apple introduced the ability this year on the series 10 to have your watch tick second by second what a great thing because that's how watches work it should do that and it should do that and now it's capable of doing that and they have an array of watch faces with hands and only three of them do it it is stupid three like why only the new ones. They didn't update all the old ones. And like, look, I'm arguing with an imaginary Apple person now, but I'm just going to say it. I'm sure that if somebody who works on watch faces came and talked to me in secret, they'd be like, Jason, oh, oh my God.

You can give me a great explanation. I don't understand that. I'm sure. But bottom line, as a user and a reviewer of the products, if you introduce a watch screen that can tick when it's sleeping once a second, every watch face you make that shows seconds should show seconds. Because that's a feature you're telling me that I have. But now I have to change the watch face to get that feature. I don't want to use their new don't like their new watch face that has a second hand that that that ticks i don't like it yeah it doesn't show numbers i want my watch face to have the little numbers on it and look like my old swiss army watch and modular

does that i can coerce california to more or less do that but why is it that they have all these faces that i kind of like but i can't use because the complications aren't compatible, because it doesn't support my new watches display. So, whoa, get with the program. Use this new one. Like, why is it like this? So, I didn't know that I was coming for watch faces today, but it's one of those things that we can praise the hardware, but like, how do you build hardware like that? If I was, I'll put it another way way if i was the person who finally got the apple watch after 10 years to be always on and it can tick every second we put so much work into this into the display controller into the screen itself into the battery and the and the energy consumption

and the system on a chip so that the so that the apple watch can finally tick this is the thing that we've been talking about for 10 years. It can tick on the second. And then there's somebody in watch faces who's like, yeah, we're not going to do that. We'll give you three. We'll give you three. Yeah, that's bad.

It's bad. So I don't know what they're doing there, but they messed it up. This is just fundamentally like the software is letting down the hardware, which if I'm being honest, is the story of the last 10 years for Apple, is that their hardware game is pretty much perfect, and their software game can't keep up.

I will provide a slight balance to just, again, extol the virtues of the new photos face. My Apple Watch has become an instant joy machine. It's so good i mean this is and it's the same technology that they put uh two years ago into the iphone lock screen and last year into the ipad lock screen it was what they call photo shuffle on the on the lock screen and you can choose these categories which can be people pets places like cities and nature yeah and you can choose you know i have my wife cities and nature and Yeah. And you can choose, you know, I have my wife, cities and nature.

And every day. Your three favorite things. My three favorite things. Every day, it seems like at some point, I think it's midnight in GMT for me, because it happens at like a weird time in the afternoon while I'm here. It seems to load a new set of maybe 10 images. And you can tap through them. Or every time you raise your wrist,

you see it shuffles through them. And the, and you can also, you can also select up to 25 and, and have a set yourself, but you can use this other mode, which I didn't even know was there in the watch app that lets you do this. Which I think is a,

is the way to do it. Cause this is a surprise. It's a good surprise. So this is the thing that, that it's one of those things where there's complexity, but it's a good surprise so this is the thing that um it's one of those things where there's complexity but it's delightful and and i wrote a whole piece about this about how my wife what lauren didn't know that these features existed because she just uses her iphone the way she's always used it and when i said oh no we can set it up so that our kids are on your

lock screen and there's a new one every time and that that was, I mean, we were in, in Eugene, Oregon when we did that and it was winter. So that was probably like a year and a half ago. And to this day, she picks up her phone in the morning and goes, Oh, look at this one. Like it's magical. And it's one of those ways where Apple is trying to surface. We have this controversy where people are like, I want photos to be utilitarian, but it's like, but no, i want photos to be utilitarian but it's like but no you want photos to be you want photos to recommend things to you right well this is a great place for photos ability to find pictures of people or pictures of interesting you know things cities nature whatever it is pets and automatically delight you on your wrist in your case. It's great. Because there's a picture of Idina from,

oh, it's gone now, from like 2014 or whatever. Or like this one is, I don't know where that is. But they put the time behind the thing. Right, because they're doing the subject detection. And you get two complications, which is not enough, but enough. I've got the weather and I've got the date. And then what i love i love

the new widgets because i get so much stuff in that little stack now um watch os 11 incredibly good fantastic operating system vitals is great uh i i really like this system i'm loving the ability for if your phone's running a live activity it pushes you i said the arsenal score tap my watch it's like it's a live activity i care about it maybe i want it on my wrist too my only thing here i'm gonna complain about watch os again i love having uh a clock with hands on my on my wrist but when it goes into the stack mode if you you're using a watch with hands, it shows you a little tiny watch with hands at the top. And I don't think that a tiny with no numbers watch is what I want there. I want the time.

I like that they have decided to visually match them. Yeah. But yeah, you should be able to say thanks, but I would prefer something else. If you're going into that mode, I just want the digital the digital time i don't i don't want hands at that point um so i find myself rolling out of it but like having having it there is really nice for that and that's an option you can turn it off but i really like that about it so if i was going to

make one uh feature request for this incredible uh new watch face i would like to be able to choose more choices for the typography style. Because I really like the I usually use it on my main home screen but I'm in my recording focus right now so it's different. I use Apple's New York font for the time. I think it's a beautiful serif that they've made and it looks wonderful

on lock screens and stuff like that. But that's not, I have not found any options to make changes to the new photos face and i would like to be able to set it in new york because i think it looks really good all right and i've got one thing i want to show you just because so this is my lock screen on my uh on my ipad yeah and the thing that i didn't realize you're talking about segmenting subjects so that they can you have a person or a mountain or something like that. And then the time is like hiding behind it. Here's a thing that I didn't know, which is when I swipe down Notification Center on my iPad, as it fades in, the time comes down right at the top.

It's on the top. And as it drops behind the mountain on my lock screen. Oh, it tucks in. It tucks in behind it. on my lock screen oh it tucks in it tucks in behind it it's almost like uh so you're you're there's a mountain and the sky and your lock screen's time is like tucking itself in between the sky and the mountain like it's recognized those two layers that's very good yeah that's unnecessary but it's fantastic it's amazing so yeah good job you love to see good job and that's all based on portrait mode essentially they have built this system in portrait mode to do subject detection and then from that comes

like 40 other features including uh spatial photos in uh vision os2 where you can spatialize a photo it's all of that using that same it's the working backwards from understanding how to do portrait mode right which again initially was a physical thing they had to do. Then they built a software version of it in that way where it was completely fake. They've moved it on from there. It's incredible. It's super good and it's created my absolute favorite

watch face of all time. Nice. This episode is brought to you by Ladder. Let's be real. We all have a tendency to put some things off until the last minute, whether it's going to the DMV, arranging a dental checkup, getting to that next home improvement project. I have a stack of things in the house, just like this is my home improvement stack. And eventually I'll get to those boxes. These things, they're not massively important. You know what I'm talking about. Most of the time this stuff works out, but there is

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ladderlife.com slash upgrade. Thanks to Ladder for their support of this show and Relay. Just real quick, AirPods 4, you got a set from Apple for review. I did. And just before we started today, we both tried them on to see what

we thought about the fit, the feel, and the noise cancellation. From my perspective, the noise cancellation, pretty good. Like better than I ever could have imagined you could do without a seal. But it reminded me of a problem that I had with the original AirPods. It doesn't sit in my left ear. And like I even have this AirPods Pro. So they go in, but my left ear, eventually, it's going to come out.

But as soon as I put the AirPods 4 in, you saw me, I was like, well, that doesn't feel safe at all. So again, I think it's a lot with these things. It's all the AirPods line, really. You're going to find something that fits you. It's not necessarily going to be the same for everyone. But I'm now happy, I'm very happy,

that they have made a version of AirPods with noise cancellation for the people who cannot suffer with the tips and the ears. Yeah. Yeah, it's... I need to spend more time. I will actually use it on the plane as well and give it a try. Yeah, that's good. Because we're in Stephen's studio.

Put it in. I couldn't hear the air conditioning. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's better. It's studio, put it in, I couldn't hear the air conditioning. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's better. It's not AirPods Pro, right? And it isn't priced that way. But they're doing some noise canceling

and, you know, the fit, ideally the fit is still pretty good where it's snug enough in your ear. It's not rattling around. It's pretty close.

It's making most of a seal. And then there is also the, you've got the transparency mode to let which does help because it's most of a seal then it passes through and it sounds good yeah it's it's i almost want to say like it's better than you could expect from airpods regular airpods right like it it's great that they have that as a feature especially especially if you prefer, strongly prefer regular AirPods. So maybe some more on that later on.

Yeah, I think we'll do some follow-up on it. But it's, I got them, and I'm trying them, and it's interesting. Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade. Arjun asks, how useful is camera control with left-handed usage?

I'm left-handed and love the action button to control the camera as it's directly under my thumb when taking the photos from my pocket. Is the camera control as quick and easy for point-and-shoot pictures? I think so. So I think what Arjan is thinking is if you hold it just in the left hand, and I found in portrait mode, it's fantastic. My middle finger is right there right over it and even if in left-handed mode you could kind of do it in a in a different way maybe

you're kind of grabbing the phone with the you're kind of looking at the screen you get your hand around the screen it works like I found it again I'm using the pro I think harder on the pro max but even you could i don't know grab it and use your thumb and kind of hold it up from the yeah i think yes i will say we've both taken pictures of each other right now which you can probably see in the video version but yes i think it works great left-handed or right-handed um for for usage so yeah i think so i think you'll be happy either way however you use the phone you'll be happy with way. However you use the phone, you'll be happy with that. I mean, I hold my phone in my left hand. Do you? Have we spoken about this before?

Anyway. I don't really know what I do. I think I don't have a particular thing that I do. I think I kind of do both. Tom asks, Do you think Apple avoided mentioning the two sizes of the Series 10 during the event? Because it's confusing to say biggest screen ever and available in 42 and 46 millimeter models especially when the ultra is 49 millimeters which refers to case size

but does everybody know that this is an interesting thought to me i think i'm not sure if the size difference between the two models was the reason but i do think it's if they would have spoken about the millimeter sizes it would have become complicated and so they kind have spoken about the millimeter sizes, it would have become complicated. And so they kind of just found the easiest way out was to say this is the biggest ever and not really talk about the sizes of them. I don't think it has anything to do with the size of the Ultra. I don't think their worry was, oh, wait, they said 49,

but how can it be 49 but the 46 is bigger? I don't think that's it for screen. I do think if some of the superlative claims you're making are about it being the biggest Apple Watch screen ever, if you mention, if you talk about it like it comes in two sizes, you then have to say the biggest one is the biggest one, and this one is the biggest of all the smaller ones and like and i think that was a level of complexity that they didn't want so i think

that's probably part of the reason yeah i still think they messed up though i agree i think you got two phones you should or two watches you should mention them yeah deal with the complexity of it yeah say i mean say that for our smaller model it's also the biggest in that class yeah okay it's not that it's not that hard. I think they, I wonder what they think, right? I wonder if they think it was great and they nailed it or not.

Because I think this event aired too far on the side of lack of detail. And I know people said it was boring and all of that. I mean, I guess, whatever. It's a commercial you're watching for two hours i guess it is how exciting these but like to not say you have two watches yeah yeah it feels like you should mention that yeah i feel like my main criticism about the event was more that it was weird and confusing than it was like boring. Also, I mean, the truth is, for a lot of us tech people, the most boring stuff was replaying

iOS and Apple Intelligence because that's all just a rerun from June. But they have to do it, right? Because they want to reach all the people who don't watch a WWDC game. It would be irresponsible to not do that. It would be. And that's why a lot of the commentators

who said it was boring, I don't give a lot of credit to because they're people who are paying attention in june yeah if a regular person thinks it's boring okay uh that's a bigger problem but they're trying to introduce apple intelligence still i think ultimately i don't think they they needed to over complicate it in order to detail some stuff that they omitted that were strange omissions like you know and maybe there's some production issues with some of this stuff too i think it would have been great if they had actually said you know it's coming out the os's are coming out next monday and they didn't say that either right so they're just some weird omissions there i wonder

if they could uh maybe add in a little more detail next time. Alright, this is a longer question, but I think it's a good one. It comes from Daniel. The capacitive surface on the camera control button shows that Apple is willing to place touch sensors inside side buttons on the iPhone. Given that, combined with the rumors about a thinner 17 Air model next year

and Apple's ongoing efforts to reduce the size of the notch of Dynamic Island. Do you think it's possible Apple would remove the larger Face ID sensor array and instead put a fingerprint sensor on the iPhone's side button to achieve ultimate edge-to-edge full screen glory? Oh, interesting. Well, what I would say is that iPhone Slim Air whatever is a new product and all bets are off. It's going to be weird. to biometrically authenticate via a touch ID button on the side instead of putting sensors behind the glass, I'm sure they waited and decided that.

We don't know what they decided. But it's possible, right? I feel like we don't know, but i'm sure they thought about that that could we make this really edge to edge and and take the dynamic because dynamic island can always be there in software i expect when they when they got to we're going to make the dynamic island there were two paths there were are we going to continue with face id or we're going to change it yeah right and like they decided to continue which i think is the right move i prefer face id same um i prefer touch id on an ipad interesting actually but face id the ipad doesn't the ipad doesn't recognize me as often and then this is not an issue i have my mini because i press the button to turn it on

and sure that's fair. Right? If you're using it in a keyboard, Face ID is better. If you're using an iPad, it's just an iPad. Touch ID is better. Interesting. Okay. I find. I don't think I agree,

but I can see how there are different use cases there. I know that for the phone, a lot of people are wearing gloves and stuff and it's really nice to not to have... Because you can wear the gloves that will let you run touchscreen, but they're not going to read your fingerprint. So Face ID is really nice for that. Other people, you know, we do have the ability to do face coverings now with Face ID. So there's that.

because I think it goes back to the fact that this product, if it exists, is going to be the result of lots of conversations just like this one, where just because we've had it before doesn't mean... I mean, think about the iPhone X, right? The iPhone X, the whole conversation was let's do

Face ID instead of Touch ID. And what does that mean? And they put a notch on the screen and eventually it moved to being the dynamic island so they're gonna they're gonna go through all of those things and stuff's gonna get left out stuff's gonna get changed and that's all in the interest of making a very different piece of hardware and this could be it or yeah or not because because the question i think it's a absolutely legitimate question to ask.

The question is, I'm sure they tried both things and found one of them better. And I don't know which one that is. Because the iPhone X was the foundation of iPhones for the future. Yeah. I think this slim phone could be.

Yeah. If you can, because you can take the logical path of, well, they have to make everything thinner so they can fold it. Yes. And is that maybe the future of the iPhone? Right. the logical path of well they have to make everything thinner so they can fold it yes and and is that maybe the future of the iphone right or at least a a future future and and what we learned too is um if you can make it at scale with all these thinner accessories in it thinner

components that will have knock-on effects where they will build all these things with the small components. And then in a year or two, they'll say, well, we've got all this skill with assembling based on these small components that we buy in huge volumes. So we might as well use them elsewhere. And everything else starts to use them and maybe gets a little thinner and lighter themselves. And it keeps going. And certainly, if they're going to

do folding phones having a thinner base that they can fit their content in so that they can then you know fold it up on another one because you don't want that sandwich to be too thick so um it's a great idea i don't know the answer right that that's that's the question is um and on top of that too is also the question of are there other sensors they could use behind the screen could they use a sensor behind the screen that doesn't even have the dynamic island i think that the goal for face id is to put it behind the screen and i know there's been there's been talking of them trying that is it possible right and what's the and what's the thickness issue in the end some of it may just simply be,

you know, it's better to put that biometric authentication hardware behind a button that sticks out of the phone than it is to put it right behind the screen there. But that's the question is, which one makes the thing thinner? I would expect Touch ID makes the phone thinner. Because if you could put the camera behind the screen and you could put the biometrics in the button, you might be able to make the dynamic island be a software-only feature that appears when you've got...

Well, it would exist for live activities, right? Live activities, yeah. But then it would just disappear. Yeah. If you would like to send us in a question or you want to have any feedback or follow-up about this week's episode or any episode, go to upgradefeedback.com.

You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. Hear his shows on The Incomparable and here on Relay, where you can hear me too. And check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is at jsnell, J- double l i am at mike i am yke you can watch clips of this show on tiktok instagram and youtube where we are at upgrade relay thank you to our members who supports of upgrade plus this week i want to talk about

hanging out in memphis all right what that's been like over the last week or so uh well it's been longer for me it hasn't been as long for you i've been gone for a long time it feels like uh thank you to Squarespace Vitaly and Ladder for their support of this show don't forget to go to stjude.org slash relay

this will be your penultimate warning maybe for that I'm not entirely sure when the campaign is closing I don't know what time it is you're going to hear it

at least a couple more times maybe thank you so much for listening to this week's episode we'll be back next time until then say goodbye Jason Snow goodbye Mike Hurley for listening to this week's episode we'll be back next time until then say goodbye justin snow goodbye mike early