Upgrade - 580: Iconic Plateau

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 580 for September 9th, 2025. Today's show is brought to you by FitBod, Oracle, 1Password, and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm good. I'm excited. It was iPhone Day. It is iPhone Day. As we record this, it's just iPhone Day.

Was and it is. I'm actually going to jump him with a snow talk from me. Okay. Snow talk question this week, Jason, is from me to you. And then I can also talk about me too. How was your keynote viewing experience today? Well, unusually for me versus past iPhone events, the smaller crowd. Yeah.

The dog was there. Cat came by. Oh, nice, nice, nice. Did they scratch up the leather seats in the Steve Jobs Theater or something? No, they did not. But I got to drink as much tea as I wanted during the broadcast, which was kind of nice. And even during one of the videos, I went to the bathroom. So it was just freedom, sweet, sweet freedom.

And as we are recording this, I'm not in the hands-on area, which means I don't get my hands on these products, but it also means I don't have to have the unbelievable stress of being in a very chaotic hands-on area. So I'm going to make the best of it. And I, you know, in the end, it's a video we all watch together on the internet. Absolutely it is. Yes.

So you're at home today. I'm here at the studio. I've had a fun day. I actually will say live in studio guest who's busy working is underscore David Smith. Sure. Who's downloading and uploading over there in the corner. That's great. I'm listening to half a podcast.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if you can hear me right now. I think you might be like totally locked in. Like, it's impossible to know. Sounds like Dave. I hope he can't hear me because this would actually suck. Like, just to hear me every now and then say a bunch of things. Mm-hmm.

But the live stream says hi to underscore. I will know if he's listening to me. If he turns around a wave, he isn't. So good news for everybody. He's busy. But you, he's double thumbs up. Hang on, he's got his AirPods in, which might mean he's attempting to listen to the show right now. And he's just gone red.

So this is good news. Good news from everyone. Everyone's favorite on the score is here live in the studio. Excellent. We had a good time. We had a good time watching together. Let's move on and score the draft. Okay.

Let's do it. This was a wild one. And I want to just say that as the person who doesn't have to adjust his pennant because I lost again, Mike, our drafts are really close every time. Like every time. That's the thing is I would feel better about it if you just beat the pants off of me. But it's like, how many of them have been tiebreakers? How many of them have been one point?

And this one is, there are the weirdest shadings here, but the ultimate endorse score by all involved is nine to eight in your favor. Yep. I got the, I finally got the tiebreaker right. Congrats. Congrats. Congrats, that everyone. It doesn't matter.

Okay, so you want to go through it? Yeah, this is super close, this one, I think. Yeah. So I like it. super close. It means that we know what we're doing. And what I will say too is this one, we made it harder for ourselves, I think, still. So yeah, we're doing what we can. For sure. Also, if we didn't do the St. Jude challenge, I would have won. But alas, we did the St. Jude challenge. That's how it goes. It's my sacrifice for the kids. So what we got,

what we got right is all of the iPhone picks, which is interesting. I said there'd be a C-modem in another phone. The iPhone Air has a C-modum. Apple introduces. is a replacement for fine woven. They did it in the pro phones with tech woven. The iPhone Air is the thin as the iPad Pro, which is absolutely where it is. Good pick. The Apple logo on an iPhone is shifted. It is in that second area on the iPhone Pro. So that's 4 for 4. And you had iPhone Pro models feature aluminum on the back, not just glass. Oh, yes, they do. iPhone Air has a single camera on the back. Now, I'm going to give this to you, even though Apple would like us to believe that this single camera is many cameras

because it's one camera. iPhone cases feature lanyard attachment. That whole cross-body strap thing counts, we decided, and I think that's only fair. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, is the cross-body strap a lanyard? I mean, it doesn't matter. The iPhone Pro Max has an increased zoom

on the tetraprism lens. Now, there's another pick later that I feel like is balanced out by this one, but I would say that if I was trying to throw myself on the, on the feet of the jury, I would say, What happened in the iPhone pro and Pro Max, the Pro Max, by the way, basically not mentioned. It's mentioned one time in passing.

I was like, oh, when are they going to get to the Pro Max? And they was like, oh, no, they did it already. It's like, wait, what? It's like, oh, it exists. When are they going to get to the fireworks factory? Because it's just a big pro. It's just a big pro and there's nothing else different about it, which is surprising, I think, a little bit. But increased zoom on the Tetraprism lens.

I should have seen this coming. And this is, I mean, it's a very good pick on your part. and in hindsight, it's an even better pick because by taking the zoom camera up to 48, it means that they get an optical 24 megapixel mode

like they have on their other 48 megapixel cameras where they crop the sensor and only use the inner 24. So what happened here, it's amazing. You made an increased zoom pick. We can talk about it more later, but you made an increased zoom pick. Just to be clear, the tetraprism

lens only does 4X. now. But if you crop to the 24 optical sensor pixels in the middle of that 48 megapixel sensor, it's 8X effectively. And so you get it. I think you get it

because it is increased zoom because it is. It's 8X. That's more than 5X. Even though they actually, so just kind of amazing. But that's shenanigans. Apple does shenanigans. I would honestly never have guessed this. Like I don't, like the function is essentially the same, right? It's like in the same way that I think even on the last

episode, we were saying that like that cut in, it is actually still a telephoto, even though it's done in a weird way, you know? But yeah, it's like, I wouldn't have thought that they would do it this way. Like you said, if you would have thought about it, like there's no, there's no world in which I would have thought of this. Oh, our chat room says optical 12, although yeah, and then it's, that's true, it's optical 12 because it's the center part and it's, it's multi-dimensional. But anyway, so they basically get a thing out of it. I tell you, Mike, if somebody had whispered in my ear last week, think about the ramifications of a 48 megapixel sensor

on the zoom lens, I would have probably come up with it because it would have been like, oh, because then they crop it and then double what they claim the zoom is. Anyway, you got it. So that's 4-4. Pretty good. Apple Watch, I had Apple Watch Ultra 3 gains communication via satellite. Got it.

I said the Apple Watch Ultra 3 gets a new chip. Friends, sometimes the upgrade draft rules are painful because we focus on the event and not the details on Apple's web pages. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 does have a new chip, but it was never mentioned, not even on a slide. Why you would not mention that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has a better processor than the Ultra 2? I don't know. The geniuses at Apple. All the other watches got it and they took time to mention it for everyone. I mean, the tell was that it has 5G, right?

That was what I was like, well, I assume that there's something related there possibly. Like, I don't know, but it was my assumption. But they didn't mention it. They wouldn't mention it. So, okay, Apple introduced a feature you said that scores your sleep or vitals. They did. There's a sleep score, as was rumored, and you got it. And Apple Watch Ultra 3 gets a bigger screen, and it did.

It goes further out without making the Ultra actually bigger. So now they can say, again, after an embarrassing year where the Series 10 had a bigger screen than the Ultra. The Ultra now has a bigger screen, and it's the biggest screen on Apple Watch. So that puts you up by one. In the Wild Card Picks category, where we could pick from anything, I said the iPhone Air Base

price is greater than or equal to the iPhone Pro base price. Now, here's where I went wrong, Mike, is I should have said the current iPhone Pro base price, because then it would have been equal. But it's not, because they increased, they did the thing they do where they increased the specs and raise the base price, but they say, oh, but

at this price, it's the same. They're basically saying, you know, it's the same price as the increased spec last year, but what it is is effectively a $100 price increase for the iPhone pro of the base price. You know, I miss that? Because I can never remember how much anything costs like in these moments. There's too many numbers, and they don't want you to think about it either. iPhone Pro was $999.

Now it's 1099, but it comes with more storage. And so they're saying it's not really a price increase, even though it is, because if you bought the base model, you can't buy that one now. And you have to go up to $10.99, and the air is at $9.99. and by doing those shenanigans, I don't get that pick. I also said, no new health sensor on the Apple Watch, which is great, because there's a new health feature based on sensors, which is hypertension, but it doesn't have a new sensor.

That was a good pick. Yeah, so I was happy about that one. You said iPhone Air has an always on display. iPhone Regular has an always on display, pretty wild, and Pro Motion, pretty wild. But definitely the Air does it, so that's really good. And then you said dual camera recording on the iPhone Pro. Now, this is the flip side of the TetraPrival. which is it is obvious.

It would be obvious to literally anyone who watched Apple's video that the iPhone Pro can do the same thing that all the other iPhones can do when they introduce the dual camera recording feature, right? It would seem obvious that that feature exists on the iPhone Pro, but they didn't mention it for the iPhone Pro. They didn't mention it in the video at all. So that one's going to be marked as a down. I feel like between the arguably yes and the arguable,

know. I think it evens out pretty well there. That's the rules. And those are the rules. And again, if I had gotten the chip in the Apple Watch, you would have gotten, I think, I haven't looked at that webpage, but I think you would have gotten dual camera recording,

right? I think if we had dug into the web pages, it would, but it doesn't matter. So it came, in the end, it came down to the St. Jude challenge, but that's okay because you also got the St. Jude challenge.

So edge-to-edge was said, and I got four points for that, and you got three. Most advanced camera ever, you, oh, nobody said. Aerospace-grade aluminum, aluminum got a point. World's most popular headphones got a point. If you're looking at the transcript, the first time they say it, they don't quite phrase it that way, but then they just say world's most popular headphones later. It wasn't edge-to-edge that said it was thinnest iPhone ever. Oh, sorry, thin-thest iPhone.

Never. Four to three. We missed on edge to edge. Right. So that gave me four, which means 40 points to Stephen. And you got five, which is 50 points to you for the St. Jude challenge. And just for note, in gorgeous colors was also said, but we didn't, neither of us put any quotes behind that one. Yeah. Speaking of St. Jude and the St. Jude Challenge, this month is childhood cancer awareness month. And that's, why we're raising money for the kids of St. Jude, as we do every year. Since our first campaign way back in 2019, we've raised over $4 million as a community for the kids of St. Jude. And we want to add even more to that total, and every one of our listeners can be a part of helping us achieve that. In April 2025, St. Jude announced that childhood cancer medicines have been delivered to five countries, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Nepal, and Zambia.

This effort is part of the global platform for access to childhood cancer medicines, which is a collaboration between St. Jude, the World Health Organization, and other global partners. The initiative aims to reach more than 120,000 children in 50 countries over the next seven years. This is just one of the many things that we love about St. Jude and what they do for the kids all over the world. They obviously treat kids incredibly at their facilities in Memphis, but they're, reach extends globally, and that's just one of the many things that we love about what they do. And we want to invite you to continue the incredible generosity that you've shown over the last seven years and make a donation to support the life-saving mission of St. Jude.

Donors who make an individual gift of $60 or more will be eligible to redeem a digital bundle of campaign-themed wallpapers and a screensaver. Donors making a gift of $100 or more can redeem the 2025 sticker pack, which features six all-new host stickers, including me and Jason. There's a ton of other things I want you to know about. So if you make a donation, you can click the blue search employer button on the donation summary page to see if your employer will match your gift because that can double your gift. You can learn more about donor advised funding at st.jude.org slash relay, where you can also find out information about signing up to register to fundraise yourself

of a community fundraising campaign. Help give them more tomorrows. Go to st.jure.org slash relay to donate or start your own fundraiser today. I had to jump in there because it was like the perfect segue yeah but we're not done scoring because you cropped

out two categories no you meant didn't you mention it or was it just from my screen shot no no you're you put you welded two screenshots together and omitted it put you ahead by more points

and then I tried to count and we didn't have enough points so I went back to upgrade dot cards as administered by Zoe Knox and the other picks category AirPods Pro 3 include some health monitoring sensors

yeah heart rate sensors I got that pick and I also picked AirPods Pro 3 have improved noise canceling and they do it's 2x or it's 4x or it's it's lots of X's you picked AirPods Pro 3 have a new design and although they don't look that different they are a new design for sure I didn't think I was going to get this and then they spent a ton of time talking about it and I was like about the shapes of ears and how they move things around yeah and AirPods improved audio quality as a microphone is mentioned it was not mentioned no so now

in our discord people are are talking about the the spacecraft titanium I believe it was spacecraft titanium. That's fine, but we didn't pick that. We picked aerospace grade aluminum, which they did say. Yeah, so. So it was two different things. And again, literally one of those tipping the other way would have tipped it for me. But they did say aerospace grade.

So I think that it goes to you. And the Discord seems to agree because I'm about to, I mean, yeah, we search the transcripts. We checked it out. we pick too many things that this. St. Jude's challenge is actually very hard to score, so we should probably not do it this way. No, we can do it because the transcript's so easy to search. We just need to select fewer things. Yeah, we do. And maybe designate somebody to be paying attention to the phrases and scoring it live. To be honest, several people did do it. I don't think we should worry about doing that. Like searching the YouTube transcript was really easy for me at the

end, so I'll just do that. It was. That's what I did too. Yeah. So, all right. So it's, it's nine to ATU, the penance remain in place. Congratulations. Thank you so much. What is your overall, before we jump into the products, do you feel the vibes good in this event? What do you think? I do. I was actually thinking about how,

I think, okay, they did three things, right? Apple Watch, iPhone, and AirPods Pro. AirPods Pro doesn't get enough credit for being one of Apple's most popular products. It really is, and successful and good. And they did a good update to their most popular, I assume, AirPods model, the pro, with a bunch of new designs.

They're trying again to get it to fit better for everybody. They put foam in the little ear tips and all. They're trying to do all of that. They've got their live translation. They're trying anyway. It looks like a nice update for AirPods. Apple Watch, I think the thing that I walked away from the vibe there was, boy, it's really nice to have millions and millions of sensors on people's bodies opted into studies so that

they can build machine learning models to figure out the correlations so they can use a heart sensor to determine that you might have hypertension. That's one of those things where it's like, it really pays off to have all that data and to do all of that, the studying of the data. Because this is how they did the sleep apnea detection. too is they're not using new sensors. They're studying people's watch data and their outcomes and being able to infer from the watch data what the outcome is to a pretty decent enough degree of certainty to say you ought to talk to your doctor. Not to say you have this,

but to say you might have this talk to your doctor, which is they said, you know, we'll get to it, but they said like a million people are going to be diagnosed with hypertension because of this. in the first year, which is a wild claim, but I have no doubt that they're right about that. And then the iPhone is Apple's most important product. And we talk about it a lot. It is by far Apple's most important product. And I think it's hard not to look at this and say that it's a pretty amazing upgrade cycle because, you know, sometimes the Mark German reports in Bloomberg give you the details, but you maybe fail to see the forest for the trees. And the nice thing about an Apple event is that their marketing has crafted a story around

the product features that Mark German talks about. And here with the air, that's a really interesting product. And with the pro, I think we didn't necessarily quite see the forest for the trees in terms of how

dramatic a redesign of that phone it is, not just on the inside, but how it looks on the outside. Like, it looks much more striking than I thought it would be based on the rumors. The inside is a big deal, too. Like, and this is something that wouldn't come

from even the leaks that we see from the supply chains. It's truly understanding the work that's gone into that, that it's not just a visual thing. There's more going on there, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I say vibes good because they did what they needed to, and they

kind of did what they needed to across the categories. So, and some of their most important products. So yeah, I think so. You think so? I do. But I think we should get onto it, though, right? I want to talk about these products. On to it. This episode is brought to you by FitBod.

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but you can get 25% of your membership by signing up at FitBOD.me slash upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at FITBOD.m.me slash upgrade. that is FitBard.me slash upgrade for 25% off your membership. Our thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and Relay. Let's start by talking about the iPhone Air, which was not a one more thing product.

It was actually the middle. It was shown off at the point in the iPhone section where it is in the iPhone lineup. I was wondering, and we were wondering, how would this product be priced? And it is actually still priced. I think, I don't know, somewhat unbelievably to me, in that 99 spot, I think the amount of time and care they talk about talking about this product, I really thought they were going for like a jewel in the crown kind of thing, which I still think it actually does serve as that.

It is up from the plus, which was 899, right? So they did, it is a slot increase. It's taking that base model pro slot for a non, you know, named pro. remains in that spot in the lineup, but the price is more expensive, right? Yeah, if you want to view it as the replacement for the plus, it goes up 100, as does the

pro, the base model, goes up 100. Also, interesting little quirk, it's iPhone Air, not iPhone 17, air. Yeah, so to me, this suggests that maybe there's only one of these. I don't know. There might only be one of these because maybe next year it's the fold, like they

don't go with five, I don't know. Or maybe, who knows? I can't work this out, like, why they've done this. Maybe they feel like it's... I was going to say maybe it's far enough away from the 17, but no, like, it shares a lot of the... It shares things from all over the lineup. You know, like, it's odd.

Odd to name it this way, but fun at the same time, I think. It could be a similar approach to the Apple Watch Ultra, where they just say, why don't we just call this iPhone Air 2 next time and just do it like that and have it be different and have it be... They can update it some years and not, other years or whatever and it allows them it certainly allows them to defer that decision for a year so fair enough okay that could be the case right this is 5.6 millimeters the thinnest iPhone ever um is still a couple of i think it's like a half a millimeter or something thicker than the

ipad air yeah um ipad pro i should say so it's it's but that's super thin uh six point five inch display super thin bezels that feature pro motion and always on um this is is like I think all of the phones has ceramic shield two on both sides. I believe the iPhone 17 has that too, right? Oh, I'm scrolling through pages now. Yes. Well, I'm not. Oh, no, okay, 17 is just on the front.

But the air and the pro, they have it on both sides, which is more scratch-resistant, more break-resistant. The quote, iconic plateau, as they call it. It's the iconic plateau. Now we have a, I would say, let's stop calling it out there. things. It is a plateau. That is the chosen metaphor by Apple. You don't have to call it iconic if you don't want to. But they will, though. It's the

iconic plateau. Surprisingly, there's a bunch of stuff up there. It's all up there. The whole phone is up in the plateau. Right? Like they got chips and sensors and all kinds to make space for the battery. I was, you know, we were wondering, like,

what is this going to be? And I think that maybe is more than we would have expected. it? Yeah, it is a trend now. Also, I thought this was actually kind of fitting because it's a little bit like the MacBook air where, you know, you can't believe that they put the whole computer in that little teeny tiny space. And that's exactly what's going on here is they seem to have loaded most of the phone into the sensor. Well, we've considered the sensor bar, which you really need to consider like an iconic plateau or non-iconic if you choose, because it seems like basically the camera, the front and back cameras and the brains of the thing are all in there.

And then the rest of the phone is screen and battery, which is a pretty interesting, I guess not surprising when you think about it. Like this is the extra space part and you can make the space here and make the rest of the phone thinner and thinner and put just screen and battery. and that's all you're taking advantage of the extra square the volume of it because the screen is so large to put a little bit of battery behind it. That's the best place to do that. But then you can put the brains just behind the little, you know, plateau. I guess I got to say it, plateau. So I think that's really, I think it's really interesting.

This is also the premiere of, I mean, it's across the line. I'd like to talk about it now, which is the new center stage front. facing camera, the selfie camera. I, you know, I didn't think I would be like, you know, selfie camera. Remember the Slophies? Remember those?

Good times. This is a big deal because I know that they said how many people get, take selfies, you know, how many selfies get taken on the iPhone? 500 billion a year. But it is huge

because what did they do? They took it. It's 48 megapixels. It's ultra- wide, it's, it's square, right? No, right? Yeah, it's square. It's not 48. It's, it's, it's 24, I'm getting the, it's, it's, it's, 24 megapixos. I think it's, isn't it 18, I think it's 18 megapixels of front facing camera. 18 megapix. We're doing our best there, folks. Yeah, no, no, I, I'm just, well, the problem here is that we're not going in show order and they introduce things in a different order. So, we're trying to, we're trying to put it together. 18 megapixels, square sensor. So what do you get with that? They put center stage in it, right? All right. What do that means is, sure, if it's on a stand,

but it also means that they've got this next generation hand, right? Because it's not meant, to be on a stand, handheld, where it's going to lock onto your face and stabilize you when you're talking to somebody while you're walking around, holding your phone, doing a FaceTime. If you've got a group of people, it will know that there's a group and it's a group shot and it will automatically adjust your selfie shot

to have the group in it. That's really great. And because it's a square sensor, they've made it so you don't have to flip your phone sideways or right side up or whatever to get your orientation. You can take in any orientation because the sensor is square. It literally doesn't matter if you put your phone sideways or not to take a selfie. This is, I know, I mean, there's especially people who roll their eyes at the entire concept of selfies, but I take them all the time. Most of my photos of me with my family are selfies because there's nobody around. So I will stand there,

hold i've got the best iPhone and i've got the longest arm so i hold it out at arm's length and i take a picture this is a big deal if 500 billion selfies last year doesn't give it to you alone i mean the idea that if you do a face time it's stabilizing your video and holding you in the center they've got the other feature where you can record forward and back at the same time and the point they made there that i thought was good and maybe a little subtle so just to rephrase it if you're taking video of action and your reaction to the action, what you don't want to do is be looking at your picture in the preview to make sure you're in frame while you're trying to video something that's occurring, right? You don't want to take yourself out of that moment.

Well, the way this works, you focus on the moment, the kid on the basketball court in their example, and you can just have confidence that that center stage selfie camera is going to keep you in frame as you're shooting everything there even if you're sliding left and right don't worry about it it's going to keep you in frame we'll have to see how it works in practice but like this is an enormous iPhone update and it's for every iPhone because it's on not just the air but the the standard 17 and the 17 pro i think it's a i was surprised by this uh and surprised to be so enthusiastic about it but it's really um it's got a huge amount of potential I think that this will sell iPhones, like this feature will sell iPhones.

I think it is something that's tangible, that people can see how it will fit in their life, and they're like, yeah, that's a good reason to upgrade. I would say beyond that, not only will it sell iPhones, in five years, the way everybody takes a selfie will have completely changed from the way it is now. You know, I was thinking that too, because it's like obviously all of our selfies are portrait, it because it's just easier. But then if the phone is automatically changing it. I wonder how people will react to that too.

Like, are people going to like that or not? It's going to be interesting. Most of the selfies I take are landscapes because they're pictures of like me and Lauren or me and my whole family and you want to get them all in there. And so that's the best way to do that. Instead of getting like two people's shoes, you get four people. But the fact that it will be able to detect the faces and do all of that for you. The fact that, yeah, and flipping around your phone to get it.

the right orientation just ceases to exist with this. I think it's going to be, you know, in the long run, if Apple just puts this on every single phone they make, it's going to be, and every single device they make ultimately, I think it's going to be a real change for everybody. So this is a, you know, low-key, huge shift in how people live their lives. The iPhone Air is the only iPhone to still have titanium. It has a titanium frame, which is a polished titanium frame. Yes. Space ship grade. Spaceship grade. Is everyone? one's favorite titanium. I will have no titanium unless it's ready for space. Thank you very much. It's grade five. Great five is the fifth grade. That's when you reach space is

you're up in the fifth. Well, why do they do this, right? It's light and it's strong. Yes. And the titanium frame in the air is so you don't bend it. Right? Like, it's very clear. Like, that's their goal here. So titanium remains a material in the lineup. It's used here specifically because they want it to be as light as possible, but they also need it to be strong. So that's why they do it here. And polished it's going to be shiny it's going to be shiny the air has i guess it's probably fair to say the most apple silicon in any iPhone it's got three apple silicon chips as the a 19 pro which they said uh you know obviously more efficient fast we'll come to specs later right like in later in the month when we can actually do some tests and do benchmarking whatever but they

our friend of the show tim malay said that macbook pro levels of compute in an iPhone, which is a wild thing to say. But as well as the A19 Pro, it has the N1 chip, which is Apple's wireless chip, which has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and thread, and the C-1X chip. So it's not C2 yet, but this is a revised modem. It's two times faster than the C-1, 30% less energy consumption. It's the most power-efficient. They say most power-efficient iPhone ever, not just the most power-fishing chip. And they also say that the C-1-X modem is faster than the modem in the 16-Pro. You know what, as I say this, I wonder if, again, it's like because of the video, and I have to check, are these chips in the pro phones, too? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Like the N1 and the C1X?

Yeah, that I don't know. C1X, I'm pretty sure is not, right? That was never one of those reports that Apple was going to put their own modem into all the iPhones. So my guess is that it's a, it's a slow rollout, right? They're slowly. rolling it from the 16E to the air and then next year to the 18s. It's just funny to reference that this modem chip is faster than the 16 Pro, so it would probably be faster than the 17 Pro as well. No, no, no, no, that's why they said 16 Pro and not 17 Pro is, I think it's not faster than the 17 Pro. 70 probably uses a newer Qualcomm chip than the 16 pro.

They really making, like I don't know, like I don't follow Qualcomm news. Like, are Qualcomm really turning out new chips every year? That's that much faster than the one before? In terms of their 5G chips? I don't know, maybe. Well, whatever. I don't know. Well, Qualcomm fans can tell us, but I thought it was interesting that, like, of course, it's faster than last year.

Qualcomm fans. All you Qualcomm heads out there. You're right into us now. All you snap dragons out there. That's so funny. Oh, yeah. Oh, you snap heads. Let's hear from you.

Battery life, all day battery life. The battery life is less than the 17, which is probably the nearest compare. Well, I mean, Mike, usually when Apple talks about battery life, they talk about how many hours something gets. Did you notice? Yes, they talk about hours. They don't talk about, oh, it's all day.

I mean, and Apple watches are like this too. It's like hours is a good way of measuring time, right? I think. I'm a fan of hours. and time keeping. What do they say about the air? They said all day. That's a time, sort of.

And they said, and you're like, as it's hanging in the air there and you're thinking, hmm, no hours quoted, I wonder what that means. As it's sitting there, they say, hey, guess what? We also have a battery case. And it's really thin. Yeah, and it goes on the back. Not great. And if you've got the battery case on it, how long do you think it lasts?

and the answer and the answer is 40 hours oh we found hours again hours has returned somehow hours returned in that moment and like look I'm sure it's going to be fine

and I'm sure that on the website they quote actual battery life and I haven't looked at the website yet hey look you know what Jason I'm looking right now it's actually I'm telling it's better than you think they're quoted numbers right

so the iPhone 7 27 hours of video playback Yes. The iPhone 16 Pro has 27 hours of video playback. Okay. So the iPhone Air's battery is by Apple's stats as good as the iPhone 16 Pro's battery, which is significantly better than I would have expected from this device. In terms of the video playback rating, which isn't everything, but my point is not that it's going to be bad. My point is that isn't it something that Apple didn't mention it. Like they just omitted hours from that and then introduced a battery and then they boasted about the hours that the battery adds. It's just, I mean, it's less. The point is it's less.

The point is it's less because it's the super thin thing that's got a, you know, really advanced, compact, you know, dense battery, but it's still, they're trying to keep it light. And so it's just a thing to notice that they did not make a specific claim in their video for battery life for the iPhone air. I think that it is really weird to have not spoken about it if on the website the statistics. seems so much better than how way they presented it in the video. Like saying all day, and then by the way, we immediately made a battery for this, it was like, oh, this is going to be terrible. But their statistics that they rate, I mean, unless it's bad, unless it's bad in ways they don't talk about, right?

But we just don't know it yet. They're different profiles, right? Video playback is, in some ways, a very good profile for them because the video gets decoded in the chip with a custom decoder. and the frame rate is scaled because this is a promotion display to the frame rate of the video so it's going to go down to 24 or 30 probably

so you know if you do something else with it you can that's a problem with measuring battery there is no like single way to measure battery Apple does have a battery of tests that they do for battery life and I'm just saying it's really interesting that they highlighted video playback and then in the video they didn't talk about it at all

I would imagine that if you really punish the air it will not have as great a battery life as the pro and that's not surprising and it's not a scandal but it is something to be aware of because you're getting a that's part of the tradeoff of the of the super thin phone um the let's see what else what else i want to call out it comes in four colors that are uh we're going to get to the good color news in a little bit but the air comes in it made me laugh they referred to the colors as being a palette of colors that evokes lightness Yep

These are light colors everybody You know It's fine They're space Space black Cloud white Light gold

And sky blue I've got some Questions about Black like space White like cloud Gold like light And blue like sky Light gold is so bad

Is that's not good That's up there with my joke that I make About midnight lemon Being a color It's like light gold The barest touch of gold It's almost like

it's not, it's almost like it's not there. Let me tell you. If you're applying gold, never go light, right? If you want gold, give me the gold. Like, give me it. I want it. This is an ESIM worldwide phone. E-sim. E-sim, I like, first off, that they took credit for it. We pioneered it. Now it's a global standard. And they're like, hey, it's great. And it's easy for travel. And it's available globally. And we've worked with every partner everywhere. And so you'll be able to buy this everywhere. Because the question about ESIM was always like, oh, in some countries, They don't want you to get an ESIM. And for this one, they're like, well, this is the one where if you want this thing, you need to do ESIM.

It's available globally. We've worked it out. Also, they carted in the battery features from iOS 26 to talk about that as helping their power profile. I also want to give a shout out to John Turnus actually says, hey, you can watch all of for all mankind. Thank you. Great show. You should watch it all. Yeah, good job, John Turnus.

Obviously, we're rattling through specs and stuff here. I just want to say, I think this phone looks fantastic. I'm very excited to see one and try it and use it. This phone looks so cool. I think it looks very exciting. Oh, no, I'm really excited by it. I will say, though, where the rubber meets the road, if not in the battery, is going to be in the camera. And they did exactly what we expected, which is introduced a 40 megapixel fusion camera and then said, you know, it might appear to be a single camera.

but it works like multiple cameras in one, and they just kept cranking it up where it's like it's 2X telephoto with the photonic engine updated, right? Which is that, again, they're just carving out of the center of the sensor. They had a picture of waffles. John Ternis loves the waffles.

He's delicious waffles, he said. But, you know, it leads to a total of four lenses in your pocket for one lens. But that's Apple. That's what they're going to do. They're like, it's basically four cameras, even though it's just one camera. And I think some people who really prioritize

the rear, camera. That's going to be a reason not to get the air. What's not as interesting is, you know, the processor is the A19 Pro, it's got ProMotion. Like, it's got a lot of features that are also found in the iPhone Pro, but are also found in this. So what it comes down to, unless you're a big SIM card fan, maybe a Qualcomm fan and a SIM card fan together. Snathead and a Simhead. Maybe? Yeah, they're together. In the same household. Are you getting it yet? It's one person, that person hates this phone, but everybody else, like, I think it's going to come down to the cameras more than anything else. I think there are way fewer trade-offs in this phone

than we had expected there to be. Like, I think that this is a very compelling product that feels very premium. In fact, I would say one of the things that's clever about this is, other than the cameras, if you're upgrading, which everybody is, from an older phone, it will feel pretty much like you're at home. Yeah. Because it's, you know, it's got advances that help offset some of it. Other than, again, the camera is a real, it's a real step back. And you know what?

Some people are not going to care because we obsess about it. But I think a lot of people having the 2x and the 1x and the selfie side, they're going to be okay with it in exchange for a phone that looks very different. It's going to be a really good camera. Like, that's the thing that the camera that it has is going to be really good. That's just fewer cameras in the system. And like the ultra wide can be a problem in ways as well as it can be helpful. And I come excited about the pros camera with the 48 megapixel ultra wide, which I get onto a minute. I think that's going to make that a better scenario.

But it's not always good to have all the cameras in some instances. So, yeah, I'm very intrigued to try this. I think it is a very, very compelling looking product and is worthy of the pomp and circumstance that they gave to it, I think. I agree. Looks really good. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Oracle.

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I will say new Johnny Ive videos You know what I mean? It's like oh we're gonna narrate you Especially the air one That was like the johnniest of all Like it was like That's I think Molly Anderson Who is a design VP

But she's got the Johnny Ive voice going on Yeah But they were very like Modern right Like it wasn't just like a talking head but it was a narration. It was very good. I liked them.

They were good tone seters. The thing about the 17 Pro, so I mentioned earlier about the redesign being quite significant inside as well as outside is this isn't just they went back to aluminium.

They have created a unibody aluminium enclosure for this iPhone, which is the first time they've done that. Obviously we're used to unibody in the laptop line and it is with it

bringing lots of colour. So there are, are three color options for this device. There is silver, an orange, and a blue. I am fascinated by if they put color in the pro iPhone, they have to get rid of the black one. Is that the scenario? Like, is that what had to happen? It's odd. Very odd. Yeah, I wonder, is there a deal that they made with the devil that prevents the black, well, black phone has to be there or it needs to be gone? I mean, all the fans of the black phone, if they want to get this, I guess they'll get deep blue.

It is very dark. The silver looks really nice, I think, too, actually. I think all of these look really, really good. Yeah, I mean, this is, I just got to say it, this is the best set of iPhone pro colors in ages because they actually have colors. The silver looks nice. The deep blue, look, I can guarantee you,

didn't get to see it, but I'm going to guarantee you, it's going to be like Apple's other dark blues where it looks almost black. It's midnight. It's midnight. It's going to be like that, I think. I don't think it's going to be, anybody who wants a dark phone. I think it's there for you.

And then much to my surprise, because I talked myself out of the idea, it's like, oh, they're not going to call it orange. It's not really going to be orange. It's going to be kind of a coppery, medley, kind of almost more gold than orange. And it's not, it is, when you leave the space-gray space,

you enter cosmic, orange and again haven't seen it in person but it doesn't matter this phone rules it doesn't matter it looks so good

it's there they're gonna sell so many orange iPhones yeah they got the giant plateau at the top and then they've got a little thing that I have a wallet on the back of my phone

they've got this little space below it that looks like my wallet space that's your that's your mag safe area and that's where you do all that kind of stuff down there on the bottom part and you know a lot of cameras probably helps with some antenna stuff too maybe

I know there's antenna lines but maybe it helps well I think they said the antenna is around the plateau is where they did it to improve because this is the this is the unibody aluminum iPhone which is just a wild idea but it kind of makes sense right for all the same reasons that the unibody computer might make sense they get to make this thing in one piece which just means it's going to be a lot more stable and aluminum is really light and thin and then By doing that and then building in the vapor chamber for cooling, you know, the point they made there that I think is extra important is not just that they did the vapor chamber thing that's whatever laser welded or whatever they said, but that it's using the heat transmission of the aluminum to help cool the phone. Because with a metal back, you can transmit heat across a wide area on the back, which means the individual like little small locations won't get as hot. It'll spread it around.

We'll have to see, again, in practice what that means for the heat because the iPhone 16 Pro would definitely got hot. So we'll see how this does. But the fact that this has a, it's a redesigned, you know, heat spreading system with that unibody aluminum on the back. It's a really interesting collection of new features, right? That's the thing is it feels like a new iPhone in a lot of ways. Maybe you need to pay close attention to it,

but I think the look is going to be striking because it is that anodized, aluminum back, and then they've also got a ceramic shield on it. So, like, there's a lot going on there. Just before, let's just, I want to just before we move on, colors are fantastic. I'm so happy that they've done it. We've been asking for colors for so long. And also, Jason, let's go Giants. Sure. Let's go Giants. Orange. Orange and black. Well, there's no black phone, but that's okay. You get a black wallet? Come on. Yeah. Yeah, baby. Let's go Giants. Let's go giants. Thank you. Yes, orange, a good color. Love to see it.

You love to see it. They reference the best ever battery life in an iPhone. It is funny to kind of like, just like, forget about that one from earlier. This one, this is the best ever. We love it. Oh, Amanda, we love the battery in this one. We're going to tell you all about the numbers. We're going to tell me what these numbers.

Let me tell you about the hours. So many hours. Numbers, we got them. Up to 33 hours of video playback on the 17 Pro, and 39 on the Pro Max. On the Pro Max. Pro Max, which I didn't really spend any time talking about. It's just got a bigger battery and otherwise it's the same.

Out there doing its thing. So you got your wish, which is that they've got a 48 megapixel on all three rear cameras. They're all fusion cameras, which means that you're actually going to have a sort of a panoply of zoom options because every one of those stops has a halfway center crop optical, you know, non-digital zoom two. So there's a lot of options there. and it means that your macros are going to be better. I'm very intrigued to see what that whole range of Zoom options is going to feel like in use. Like, I mean, is it too many?

What is that going to feel like? Like, how is it going to operate? Am I going to feel like I'm scrolling a bunch of stuff? Like, it's going to be intriguing to me to see. I'm also, like, you know, you mentioned this has been a bug bear of mine for a while, the macro mode that was brought in when they went to the 48 megapixel sensor because the, like, the distance for sharpness, there's a better term for this.

Like, when you get close to a... The focal distance changed when they went to the 48 megapixel lens. And it meant if you were super close, it would switch automatically to the ultra-wide so it could get like a macro-like shot of something. But the quality difference in that image

was so stark and would result in much worse images when things were close up. And I take pictures of a lot of things close up. So I'm very pleased to see and increase my expectation. is it will make these images better the thing that I am most keen about

is understanding just how much better like how close are they now and that's very exciting to me to try that out this is a year to really pay attention even more than usual to the iPhone camera reviews that you get from those really impressive photography people

because you've got the 3 48 megapixels what does that do for that other that new 48 megapixel camera how does it affect wide how does it affect macro what is that interface like for the eight pro lenses in your pocket

I imagine it's similar to what they have now where there's sort of like little snap stops as you if you slide to zoom it'll do little snap stops at the at the ideal point and then it'll go past if it if you wanted to but yeah very impressive and then they also threw in all of the like little filmmaker section

where they're like you know what and I thought address some of the criticisms that people have. They showed the rigs that people use for shooting with iPhone, which everybody's like, oh, I can't believe. Why would you even put an iPhone in there?

And they actually said, well, you're going to have big, you're going to have small. Filmmakers love it because they like being less encumbered and being able to get closer to their subjects, which is like them saying, this is why people,

why pros use iPhone. And then they threw in, you know, they've got, you know, Genlock and ProRes Raw Capture on device. And, you know,

there's a new Black Magic camera pro doc and there's basically like there are features in here that the pros will flip out over if they're filmmakers and that's still a part of Apple's message with this device so they get all that all that in there I also just to go back on on the back with ceramic shield I just wanted to mention the continuing ratcheting up of the of the toughness of the iPhone you know that this is four times more resisted, again, whatever that means, where that came from to cracks.

So the idea that you've got on the back, you've got a much stronger ceramic shield back there. And then also the front, there's no mat option, but there's a seven-layer anti-reflective coating that makes it more

readable. I think that's improved in some way. I think Apple's goal is for the iPhone, especially that everybody should not have glare, right? It's not necessarily a feature where you can pay extra to get the screen that doesn't have glare, but that everybody should not have glare. So they're still headed down that route. You know, I'll say as well from the idea of durability and making the majority of the back

of this phone aluminum again will decrease the amount of broken, amount of repairs needed on iPhones, right? that, like, in some of its impact points, it's less likely to shatter, because if it lands on the corners, it's mostly going to be dealing with aluminium. Like, it's, it's, it's, I think that is a good thing. And I'll just say, I've got this tab open, Jason, I love the way this phone looks. I, I was really hoping for the two-tone look. It'd come up earlier in the rumour cycle, and then I kind of shifted away over time.

Because, you know, the case manufacturers, they don't need the specs, they don't, the sizes. So, like, a lot of the dummy models. They don't know what the colors are going to look like. But just the two-tone look looks fantastic on all of them. Like in the blue, it's the most understay... But that looks nice because it's a bit stealthy. And the orange, it just looks great because the orange looks great. And then on the silver, it kind of gives me NASA vibes.

Like, like kind of silver and like a light of silver, like a white, like kind of space suity. I just think this phone looks fantastic. And I'm already used to, like, just from seeing images mock-ups to the last few months, the edge-to-edge kind of like iconic plateau it just looks to me this looks like a great phone I'm really

I am really excited about this my my enthusiasm for the 17 pro is much more than I expected from the phone this year like I think that the overall package looks really good the cameras you know it's all what we are hoping for

and stuff we're expecting the thermal system the design and the durability and the battery life. Like this is like a, I think is a very solid upgrade for people, even on the year over year, people on year over year like me and you. Yeah, this is a, this is a, it feels like a bigger one than I expected, like I said earlier.

And that having the unibody aluminum, that's going to look, I think in practice, it's going to look striking because it's not just the plateau, but it's the fact that it's all of a piece, that the whole way around from the sides and the back up to the plateau. It's all one piece. And I think that's really going to look different and interesting. And then if an orange. Do you have anything else on the pro? Should we touch on the 17 real quick? Want to talk about tech woven? I have a whole thing about cases I want to get to in a

minute. Okay. We're going to do a bunch of case talk at once. All right. Well, let's talk about the base, the base 17. Like, you know, the base 17 exists and a lot of people buy it and it's got a good price and they did a bunch of nice updates right like promotion and uh with the adjustable frame rate which also means that there's battery savings they finally bring that to the non-pro phones um and it's bright 3,000 nits so it's it's like a really good screen update uh they are also using ceramic shield two uh update to the a 19 non pro chip using the most advanced three nanopeter technology as they said it's the only phone that has the a 19 in it right because all the others have got the pro in there.

Got the pro. I guess an iPads and stuff. A future laptop. Yeah, we're like speeding through it. But like if you, if we had spoken about the iPhone 17 in the order in which Apple did, it is a very impressive device, right?

Like to underscore what you're saying. It is. Getting pro motion is fantastic. Like this is way too late. Like it should have, for the price of the iPhone, they should have been doing more than 60 Hertz for a long time.

But we're going, it is the full thing because there was some speculation about would it be a lesser than promotion? But no, they've gone the full thing. It's from 1 Hertz to 120. That means that you get always on, but you get like live activities and always on, right? So you get these

extra benefits that the other phones have. It has the screen brightness. It has the stronger glass. Yeah, it's got the new selfie camera. The screen is a bit bigger. Yeah, it had the new selfie camera. It's the first time we saw about that. So like this package, the iPhone 17 package, this

year is a really good one. It's a nice update. You know, where do they skimp? They skimp in a few areas. They skimp a little bit on the processor. They skimped a little bit on the rear cameras. But for that, you get it at a lower price. And for a lot of people, like, that's perfectly good enough.

And yeah, big update with Promotion and Always On. That's like a huge step forward. And it's increased the battery life because of it, right? Because now they have a more efficient screen. It's funny, right? Like, even that you have an always on display. but because your display is more adaptive and responsive to the things that are happening on it,

it means it will offer quite a substantial, like from the 16 to the 17, again, on the video playback, which is how Apple rates their batteries on all their stuff, it's gone from 22 to 30 hours on that spec from the 16 to the 17. So from most people, you know, upgrading from any of the standard iPhone line,

going back further, like 14, 15, something like that, it's going to be a fantastic upgrade. Like, I think, you know, the iPhone, the standard iPhone, it doesn't get all the love that it should get every year. But I think this year is a pretty big jump because it's got a few features that are significant. Like, it would not have surprised me if the new selfie camera came next year to the iPhone, for example, right? Because that's like a brand new thing. They could have made it a pro thing or a pro and anything. But they didn't.

They just imported it into every single iPhone. Which I think is very good. Because I think that that is, I mean, it must be real, right? Like, kids love selfies. Kids are most likely to get the base iPhone. And so give them the best experience there. And again, again, I'll just say, selfies is a mainstream thing, too. It's not just about kids taking selfies.

Oh, I know. But I mean, young people, the younger you are, the more selfish you're likely to take is one of getting it. Right. Like, there is a, there is a selfie scale. Everyone takes them. I think the younger you are, you take more of them. them. And the older you are, you take less of them. That would be my expectation. All right. This episode is brought to you by OnePassword. If you're a security or IT professional, you've got a

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As somebody who's managing this stuff, I love that kind of stuff. I love how it's in my browsers. I love how it's accessible to me on my phone. I love that I can not only do my passwords, but also my two-factor stuff, my one-time passwords, all in one password. I love that it's not just my passwords. I have important documentation in there and other numbers I might need.

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That's one password.com slash upgrade or lowercase. are thanks to One Password for their support of this show and Relay. I promised you we would talk about iPhone cases. Let's talk about iPhone cases. There's a bunch of things going on. Woveen. Tech woven is one of them.

I don't really know. You know what I mean? I don't know. Like what is it? I couldn't tell. We'll just have to see my colleague Dan Moran points out that there's still a fine-woven wallet. Like there's still got to move these wallets. We've got a lot of fine-woven left over.

But the case is tech-woven, which is. is, again, it's a synthetic yarn woven together in two tones for a sophisticated look, they say, and has a coating. What is sophisticated about that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't like the colors, though, Jason.

I've got to tell you, they didn't do a great job on the colors here, in my opinion. I'm not a big fan. All right. I'm curious to feel what they're like and to see how they are in use, but I remain skeptical. Yeah. Me too. I mean, this is the thing, right? is what we're saying, we would never

had a skepticism about iPhone cases. Now we do. So I think they explicitly called out the fact that it has a coating to prevent against scratches, right? Because this is the whole problem with Fine Woman. We'll see how that goes.

They have clear and silicone cases and all of these cases have a lanyard hole because they have a crossbody strap. Right. So are you I don't remember if you spoke about this, But are you familiar with this trend, the cross-body strap trend for phones, like phone wearing? Have you seen this?

Not even a little bit. This is a thing. Like, this is a thing. I see it a lot in London. I get the idea that it happens a lot in cities now. And like a lot of the way that these things work is like you have to have like a case and it plugs into the USBC port and some of them and has this like extension. So it like holds into a case.

Sometimes these things are built into cases. Sometimes you need a specific case. that has lanyard traps like the little hook and like the hole in it Apple has built their own and it is lanyard and it's got magnets

and all this kind of stuff I'm intrigued to see exactly how it works I can't yet get my head around it from looking at the imagery that they have so yeah I'm not surprised

they have done this because of how popular it is what I am surprised about is that the lanyard holes are on every single case now Like whether you want that or not, that is interesting to me. That is interesting. Yeah, we'll see.

They are, I think, trying to get on, again, Apple, like, looks at it and says, hey, people are making money on iPhone accessories. Maybe we should make it easier to have those accessories and make them ourselves and make even more money that way. So here they are. I think it says something about, I'm going to leave the sociology of this, I guess, to others other than to say that I think it's interesting that our phones are so important to us that some people would prefer to kind of like just have the phone attached to us where it's always accessible. And I'm not judging that. I'm saying that that's kind of what's going on here is, look, I need my phone with me and I need accessible.

So I'm going to save you from the inevitable feedback of some people who don't have pockets. This is one of the big reasons that people do this. I know you know this, but like I'm saving the feedback form. Well, I think more, I mean, people often who don't have pockets have a bag with them that they could put it in. but that's what my point is, it's less accessible then, right? You want it more accessible.

So you want it on your body in a way you can just pick it up and look at it instead of having to tuck it away in a bag. So they're obviously clear in silicone cases as there always are. The air has two specific cases. One is a clear case with a very thin back, right? Because, come on,

you make the phone thicker by putting the case in it? What are we doing here? It adds a millimeter, which to a phone... That's thin. That thin, I don't... great about that, and I don't like that. But what they did is what I wanted. They made a bumper,

baby. Let's go. A bumper? Jason, I'm going to tell you right now what I'm going to do. Okay. I guess spoilers here. I'm buying this phone, the air. You buy me here. What color? I don't know. Definitely not the gold. I might get the blue. I might get the blue. And so I need a clean testing device for my work at Cross Forward. So I've been doing some stuff preparing for the updates to our apps and like mostly of Whitchersmith. And it has been a nightmare. It has been a nightmare to not have my personal photos show up in the work that I'm doing. So I need a second device. I'm definitely going to get one of these because lucky me. You know what I mean? I have a great reason to get one.

And I'm going to buy a bumper case for it and I'm going to buy a crossbody strap because why not? to do the whole thing. I'm going to be that guy. You're going to live that life. Let's do it. I want to see what happens. Let's go. Let's go. We're so back. Because we are so back, Jason. Because I want to be attached to those apps at all times. Let me tell you, they're great apps. That's right. That's right. So yeah, I'm excited

to see people who attempt to destroy their tech woman cases and just see how that goes. I mean, go do what you. Do you do you? You do you. AirPods Pro 3. Much bigger update than expected. Yeah. So what I was personally expecting is what you picked, right?

Which was, there will be some improvements to the, like the noise cancellation and sound. And there'll be improvement and we'll get the heart rate. But if we mentioned before, the redesign, they put foam in the ear tips. There are five now, five eartip sizes. Like, there's a lot more going on there. They talked, there's the third time that they've talked to the public about doing research into ear shapes and sizes. Now, I think it's funny because in some ways,

it's just that they haven't quite got it right, because they keep on trying it. But I appreciate that they keep on trying to express this, that they want, look, they want everybody to be able to wear AirPods Pro and be comfortable with them, right? Like, they want to be able to sell them to everybody. And I still run into people who say, well, I can't wear AirPods, but they don't fit my ears.

So they're trying. I mean, we'll see. We're going to get, you know, more anecdotes about this. I've never had a problem wearing AirPods Pro so I'm not the I'm not the person to decide but we'll see from people who have had trouble whether this makes a difference

and it certainly you know it's another doubling of whatever they're measuring for noise cancellation because the one to the two was a 2x and this is so they said now that's a 4X because that's how that works I wonder how much of that is aided

by the new eartips I don't know I mean it's probably probably a combination right there you want you want more of a seal but also they're talking about bringing the air in and that's part of uh how you how you do that and and they didn't go into detail of like oh we're sampling the sound at this rate or anything like that which suggests to me that there are a lot of things that are still the same as the AirPods Pro 2 can I read to you something from the from the website please do ultra low noise microphones using advanced computational

audio to remove more noise around you than ever so that that's one thing that they're talking about. And then also they're saying about the soft foam silicone to give you even better acoustic performance. Yeah. Because you know this is one of the funny things about the AirPods is that they listen on the inside of your ear to hear what sound gets in there. And then

they use that to do it. So it's great. I mean, there's a popular product. It's a great product. People really love it. And making it better is a thing they should be doing, right? And so I think this is a great example of that. In reality, I feel like

maybe the better audio quality, certainly the better noise cancellation are going to be the biggest things about this. They talked about live translation, which is a feature that was already enabled in the beta firmware and will work on older devices. I don't know, but that's okay. I mean, I don't know.

I'm skeptical that they can do it. Every tech company wants to do this because it will be so amazing, but it does require you to hold up your phone in the one example or have somebody else who has either AirPods like this or has another product that does live translation. But look, I also, I'm skeptical of how useful it is today, but I also do feel fairly positive that we are headed for a world where it will be fairly common and easy to converse with people in other languages using essentially our

augmented assistance to translate for us. And that's, That's cool. That's good. But I'm going to, yeah, I'm a little skeptical of the utility of this. We'll see. So with the heart rate monitoring, it's also adding a kind of fitness, like workout function to the iPhone. So what happens here now is that since you've got a heart rate monitor in AirPods Pro, it means that all of these things that are, either unlocked or certainly better with a heart rate monitor are more possible for people who are not Apple Watch users.

So Apple Fitness, if you do a workout with the AirPods in, you will get your bar and your heart rate and all of those things, your workout effort bar, whatever it's called. And it will also track you, you know, if you do a workout with your phone in your pocket and your AirPods in and it's going to get your heart rate data and it's able to log that. So it's like, I mean, really, they didn't want to say this, but it's like you get access to fitness features without wearing an Apple Watch. That's one of the things that you get here.

It doesn't do your green ring, though, shusha move ring, which is interesting to me, which is odd. But this feature, it's close, but it's not exactly what I personally want. Like, one, it's only tracking your heart rate during workouts, and you have to initiate the workout. Now, my hope will be, in future versions, both of those things could change, that maybe it would be, whenever you're using them, it could be looking at your heart rate like the Apple Watch does, and then would have worked out, you're working out and be like, how are you working out right now? Like, there's something about, like, say, walking, you know, like if I walk for long enough, which I have a decent commute, my Apple Watch would be like, you know, I'll be like 15 minutes in, and it's like, hey, are you walking right now? But the Air Force Pro are not going to do that, right? is my understanding. I'm going to have to tell it I am walking, which is that is less interesting to me as a feature. Sure, but it will monitor your steps and your heart rate as a part of

that workout. Yes, which is great. That is a great thing to have, but I would prefer for it not to be a thing that is proactive for me. I was value in the Apple Watch, the reactive nature of that. It feels like that's a feature that should come at some point that if you're walking around with an Apple Watch, now that there's an activity feature like this, that it should be able to use the same machine learning that happens on your wrist to say, you appear to be on a walk, would you like me to log it? I've been looking at it for a while. My guess is that that's just a thing that they didn't do to ship this product and that they'll add it later.

It is probably something that requires additional data collection and information over a longer period of time, the same as with the Apple Watch, right? The Apple Watch didn't do automatic detection of workouts initially. Right. It took time to do that. I mean, they're doing so much already with the pedometer and everything in there that it feels like it's more just they need to build a model to detect that. Yeah.

Can I tell a quick anecdote? This is not really the episode for anecdotes, but I would like to tell it anyway. Is it AirPods related? It is AirPods related, yeah. Okay. So it was my mom's birthday. Well, it is going to be my mom's birthday. I love my mom very much and she doesn't, she's not listening to this.

I don't know why I said that, but I do. I love my very much. I miss her birthday every year because I'm a mom's birthday every year because I'm Memphis. My mom's birthday, I miss it every single year. So I always try and give her an early birthday, which is really good. I go extra hard for her birthday. And this year, I bought her some AirPods four. So my mom, not really, I never really would have imagined her as somebody didn't care about AirPods, but she was, she takes a boss to work and she was finding it frustrating. The noise was frustrating her. So I gave her maybe a year, 18 months ago, maybe a little bit

longer an original set of AirPods that I had like just it's like rather than me buying you try this see what you think about it you know so I gave her some original AirPods and she really liked them and I was like right at some point I'm going to get her another set but I was a bit stuck because I didn't think she would like airports pro I don't think that she would like the feeling of like the going in the ear I think that would be a bit of a hurdle for her and so I was like I've only heard good things about the airports four so I got her the airports four and we went for the whole thing she finds noise cancellation incredible I set her, I basically set her up and said, you're on a thing called adaptive, you don't need to change it, I don't think, but this is how you do that. She understands how to do it and it makes sense to her. And, you know, we're going through all the features and she loved it. She called me the next day and she was like, I love these things so much. Something you didn't tell me that I was not prepared for is how incredible they sound. And I was like, oh, I didn't think about this. You went from AirPods to AirPods four. That is a huge jump. And it wasn't really something that I was. would have thought necessarily that she would notice but there are a few things obviously the quality but the volume is better because those things are old right so they're kind of worn out but yeah it made me happy like to to give her these things but that was yeah and it is it's a cool feature these are these are AirPods are really nice but I'm obviously an AirPods Pro Boy and I'm looking forward to these I think they're good and my AirPods I will always update AirPods because any improvement to that product is worth it because it's

such an incredible product. Yeah, every day. Yeah, same. I use it so much that I would increase battery life. I think I'm going to call out to eight hours of noise canceling. And for people using the hearing aid feature, they called out, it's up from six to ten hours

of transparency with hearing aid enabled, which is also pretty great. Yeah, AirPods is like, okay, great. I never think about the battery life. Like the amount of times in which I am pushing AirPods battery life is incredibly rare and they charge so fast. Yeah, it's long flights, but even then I usually make a point, I mean, maybe this is me being trained knowing that they're going to go

down, but I make a point of taking breaks. I'm talking to somebody, talking, you know, ordering dinner on a transatlantic flight or whatever it is, like, or just need a break from listening to something and having things in my ears and I pop them in the case and then, you know, 15 minutes later, I can pop them back in and they're charged again. So, but it is, I see. the point here of saying that you know you could go on on that transatlantic flight now and uh they will just work the whole way which is great great because what what you want is not necessarily say oh man i really need eight hours what you want is never to have to worry about it yeah this episode is brought to you by express VPN going online without express VPN it's a bit like having no case for your

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So I'm finishing out by talking about the Apple Watch. So the entire lineup received updates of varying degrees. Let's start with the SE3 because it'll be the quickest to blaze through. It got the S-10 chip, which includes 5. 5G. I don't know why the Apple Watch needs 5G. Because at some point it has to have it. I think what they said too is it's more, I mean, it's more about there are 5G, right? It's more connectivity. You can see now you, if you're in an area that maybe didn't have great connectivity on LTE, it'll see the 5G and it's got that. So it's just giving you more

connectivity even if like you don't need it to be super fast. It's just giving you more availability. Yeah. And yeah, probably in the long run, something more than that. It's like, I guess. You know, it just doesn't really feel like. much of a selling point to me, but I get, you know, you do. Adds temperature sensor, always on and faster charging. So I would have, I always want more out of the SE at an apple want to give me. I want them to do something fun with this product, but here we are. It exists as a product in the lineup, still 249.

Look, the SE getting always on and getting those gestures, like that's, that's all, I mean, it's nice. It's got extra stuff. It doesn't, it, it doesn't feel quite as far behind as it did before. and that's the purpose of it, is to be cheaper and, you know, but yet not feel super far behind. Always on display on a 249 watch, it's good.

When they started talking about the series 11, I was like, oh, I didn't think about this product. I forgot about it. Like, that obviously there needs to be a new Apple watch and it has to have something in it. Like, I just obviously been focused on the Ultra 3 getting an update.

It was like, obviously they need to update the Series 11 too. It also has 5. It has ceramic shield too, so it's two turns more scratch resistant. It does the high blood pressure stuff, which is the hypertension detection. It's kind of like seepaphyr detection, where it has an algorithm. It's running in the background, and they can let you know if they've seen any events. Yeah, this is what I said earlier, that on one level, it's really just, isn't it nice to do these studies and to have all this data?

Because what they are able to do now with their studies is in front. other medical conditions possibly existing based on the readouts on their sensors. And that's huge, right? Because they're like, well, can you detect sleep apnea only with motion sensors? And they say, yes, you can. And can you detect high blood pressure from just the heart rate monitor that you've been using? And the answer is yes, they believe you can, or at least to a degree of certainty that they'll tell you you should talk to your doctor. and that is the whole promise of the Apple Watch

and like it's a huge tactical advantage that Apple has in having all these sensors out there having people enroll in these studies where they're able to share their data and then fill out like what conditions do you have and all of those things and then be able to build models machine learning models from there

that can analyze your data and pull you know pull signal out of the noise it's very impressive up to 24 hours battery life is nice that's a nice increase to find more battery life in the Apple Watch. Especially if they want you to wear it when you sleep, which they do.

If you only have one time a day where you charge your Apple Watch, if you can truly get through 24 hours, you know, and it's probably not quite that. But like if you can get, the more you can get to that where it's a once a day thing and you wear it all day, the better for them because they do want you to wear it all day. Yep. And titanium remains as a material.

in the lineup also in the Apple Watch. On the Apple Watch. Yeah, and it's got the Sleep Score thing, 399, solid, fine update. Yeah, I agree. Fine update. Oh, it has new watch faces. There's a liquid glass watch face and an exactograph watch face. Yeah, yeah.

Good news. That's always some new watch faces, aren't there? Yeah, there has to be. The Ultra 3 also got a watch face, a waypoint face, which looks interesting. But the Ultra 3 is much more of an update, bigger screen. It kept the design, though, and it didn't do what I expected. You know, I was expecting them to kind of bring out the screen a bit to kind of flatten off the edges a bit more,

but they didn't do that, but the screen is bigger and it's brighter. It's now a new, just, it now has the newer display technology, so it shows ticking seconds, which is the thing that was in that. That was in the 10, wasn't it? Yes. Right, you did that for the first time. And they, and in I or in watchOS, 26, many more watch faces have been updated to do the ticking seconds.

Not all, but many more. The Ultra 3 is the first Apple Watch to get satellite communication. Right. Now, did you notice the details here are interesting? It's two years of SOS free with the Ultra 3. We still are unclear what happens when you run out of time with a satellite feature because they kept kicking it down the road. And I still wonder, are they going to, you know, are they really going to not let you do an SOS because you didn't pay them or what? We'll have to see.

But they say that. And then they said, also you can do messages and find my, but they say messages and find my requires a cellular plan, which... I don't understand. I don't know. Like, if it's doing it by satellite, why do you need a cellular plan? Right. I don't know. What is going on there?

Right, because every Ultra is cellular, but they don't have to have a plan on it. They're just capable of it. But why would you tie it in unless you're doing something where it's like your infrastructure is based on the phone number on the watch or something? Because it's got

a number, even though you can't call it, I guess because all cellular devices do. It's a strange there's a lot of questions. This is in my questions to ask category about this product. Yeah. Something that I'm trying to work out and looking at the page now is if these features are available in more territories yet. Oh, yeah, that I also don't know. It's in some, but how many is it? So the use case question, I think, is worth asking too, which is if you've got a phone and it does satellite, why would you use a watch? And they actually had one case in their Apple Watch video where they talked about people who had lost the snow had covered their phones and they didn't know where their phones were, but they were able to use their watch. watch to call for help.

Now unclear whether the watch was talking to the phone or whether the watch was a cellular watch that was talking to the network itself. But I think it's that same point, which is you may have your phone with you. You may not. I would say also it may be that with this thing, if your watches on your wrist, which means it can see the sky, if your phone gets lost or is in a bag or something and you need to call for help, your watch is right on your wrist there. that will matter. I think there are some use cases. It's not quite as revolutionary as putting it

on the phone, but I think it's still for the ultra, especially. It makes sense. It's part of the brand promise of being out. Rugged out in the middle of nowhere. Yep. Up to 42 hours of battery life, which is a lot of battery life. It's a lot. Especially for the people who are on the ultra one who have degrading batteries, they're going to have a great time when they move over to this one. I don't really have a lot to say I think about this I would say that starting with the video of the saved lives

again made me feel guilty for not wearing an Apple Watch which I think is kind of the point Yeah I mean your iPhone has fallen crash detection So you'll be okay You're gonna be okay Yeah but there's other stuff going on

You know there is You know people having their lives safe left right and center It's like But I'm happy not to wear it be wearing an iPod right now That's a hypo. But yeah, it's solid. Solid upgrade. At least I upgraded.

You know? Like, I think the Apple Watch Ultra is unsure it's going to be happening with that thing in a long time after the addition of the black one, as opposed to having any more updates. So it's cool. It's cool. So that is there. Do you have anything more on the Apple Watch?

I don't think so. Other than to point out that, you know, every time I see that the Ultra 3 costs $7.99, I'm like, that's a lot of money for Apple. I know they start at $3.99 for the Series 11, but then if you want the bigger one, it goes up from there and it just rapidly increases. But I'm just reminded like $7.99 Apple Watch.

Again, Apple is really good at making money of selling products. And one of the ways that they do that, and especially Tim Cook's era, Apple, does that, is by offering a spread of product so you can get in for a reasonable amount of money. But like, if you want the really nicest best thing and money is no object, they're happy to take your money up above, you know, up at $800 plus dollars for an ultra. Do you have any closing thoughts on the event?

We covered it all now. We did it. Wow. I would say, obviously, this is a quick reaction because we just came out of the event. So there's much, much more to glean, right? Luckily, there's an episode next week, Jason. We have another one. There is, we do this every week.

So there's more to glean. And I think more things will come out. The way this generally works is there's things to glean off the web pages that we maybe didn't see. Things come out. So some people will get briefings. And some of the briefings will be on the record about the products. Because usually what you do is you get a briefing about the factual record of the product. And then you might get embargoed on the review.

but your briefing about factual stuff is not generally embargoed. So there are people who will talk to Apple today and maybe tomorrow who will get some interesting questions answered that maybe we don't know the answers to right now. And then that'll all solidify. We've done this long enough now

that we know what the week after the iPhone event episode of Upgrade is, which is a lot of little details that might not have been noticed or might not have been known that kind of leak out over the course of the next week. But, you know, leaving that aside for a second, I would just say, to come back to my statement at the beginning, this is, I think I got good vibes from this event. I think the iPhone 17 Pro is a bigger upgrade in a bunch of ways than I expected, especially that it looks different. And that unibody aluminum approach for it is really interesting.

And it comes in actual color. So that's exciting. And then the air, I want to touch it, you know, I want to feel what that feels like because it also. looks super interesting to me. I'm very intrigued by that. And I don't know how it will do. I don't know how it will do. But I love that Apple is trying this for two reasons.

I love that Apple's trying this because, look, they are obviously not satisfied with the mini or the plus as a phone. And this certainly feels more differentiated. So maybe people will opt for it because it's so thin and cool looking and different, even if it's a little bit lesser. Yeah. And I also love it for the same reason that's been hovering out there since this product was first announced, or first rumored, which is also feels like they are pointing their way to a folding iPhone, which would be next year. So I like that this is Apple really doing something very aggressive with the iPhone design for the first time in a little bit. And I think that that's interesting. Plus the fact that the pro is so is more different than I expected. So I think those are the key things. And then the, you know, Apple Watch updates and a new airport. Potts Pro is going to be really big. I think it's a good, I think it's a good event, right?

I think it did what it needed to do. And now it's like when the attorneys rest in a case and then it goes to the jury. Yeah. Like basically now it's in the hands of us. And I don't mean us in the media. I mean us is people who receive these products. Apple has had their moment and we'll have for the next little bit to frame these products for us. the next step is going to be

we use them and judge them and see how people react positively and negatively and I'm looking forward to it I can't wait to get my hands on them Yeah I would say Tim kind of framed this as like one of the biggest years you know

And they always say these things And you're like okay But this lineup of iPhone is significant Like there's a lot of stuff going on We have a whole new iPhone That didn't exist before Yeah pro phones have a brand new design.

Like that, that is a, you cannot miss it, that phone looks different, which is always a big deal when that happens. And there's just across the entire lineup, significant benefits for even if you upgraded your phone last year. Like, if you upgraded your phone last year, whatever you upgrade your phone to this year, if you decide to do that, you're going to notice a difference where if you upgraded from the 15 to the 16 on any of those, you may not know about it because like that was that was small. And the biggest change was camera control, which kind of ended up being a bit of a

and who knows, there might be things in this device is we don't know yet, right? Where we go, nah, you know what, that's not so great now that we use it. But on the face of it, this looks like a very, very solid set of upgrades. And I think, I think people are going to be really happy with these phones. That'll be my, that's my hot take. That's my, my, my, my, my, my, My out there bet, Jason, is people are going to like these iPhones. Amazing, a popular product. Can you imagine it? If you would like to send us your feedback, follow-up and questions,

go to UpgradeFeedback.com. Specifically, Upgrade Plus questions. You've got questions about these phones. You want to get our opinions. Maybe you have opinions you want to share with us. Send them in at UpgradeFeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us of UpgradePlus. Go to GetUpgradeplus.com.

You'll get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week. You can find us on YouTube by searching for the upgrade podcast. Don't forget, go to st.jude.org slash relay, where you can join us in supporting the wonderful institution of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Please go and find out more at st.ude.org slash relay. I would like to thank our sponsors for this week. That is ExpressVPN, One Password, Oracle and FitPod. But most of all, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

Goodbye, Jason Snell.