Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - New iPhones, iPad Mini, and all the other Apple things!

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

This week Marques and Andrew go over everything from the new Apple Event. They start off with some related Apple news first, and then dig right into all of the new gadgets including the watch, the new iPad and iPad Mini, and all of the new iPhone 13 models. Techtember is here! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Apple vs Epic: https://bit.ly/3CjyTXb Keyboard sherlocking: https://bit.ly/2VOer1d Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Alright, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're

your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And it's Apple Week. I don't know if you knew, but there was some Apple stuff this week. I think if you're listening to this podcast, you know about it. If you somehow didn't know, yeah, surprise. There was one of, there may be more,

but one of the final events of the year for Apple, their September event, which is where we get a couple things we know are coming. And then we actually did have a couple surprises and we'll talk about that stuff briefly. But we also have a couple quick news hits at the top that are unrelated to their event that you wanted to dive into. Yeah, they're both related to Apple, though. So I thought we'll just go really quick since this is a whole Apple episode. Apple versus Epic.

We kind of got the ruling after the whole lawsuit. We've talked about it before. Epic suing Apple because they made them take out a button that was letting people pay on a third-party site and apple obviously with their ios store and their 30 cut doesn't want that to happen um so it kind of is like a win lose lose more even though that's three parties and there's only two parties associated in this yeah it seemed like everybody was not happy yeah kind of kind of sort of so pretty much um the judge ruled that they are not being anti-competitive they claim success is not illegal and both apple and third-party developers like epic have symbiotically benefited from the ever-increasing

innovation and growth from the ios ecosystem fair feels pretty fair um now they did also though and this is what kind of is a lose aspect for apple is that they uh they ruled there for a permanent nationwide injunction blocking apple not only from keeping iphone users in the dark about alternate ways to pay but potentially allowing developers to stick their own purchase mechanisms into apps. So that's a win for developers. Yeah, so initially that one rule that Epic was pretty mad about was that in-app purchases had to go through Apple's payment method, which automatically took a 30% cut. And the argument was, why should there be an only Apple in-app purchase method?

There should be other options. We should be able to an only Apple in-app purchase method? There should be other options. We should be able to have our own in-app purchase methods. We should be able to offer alternates. Maybe some of them are cheaper because they don't have to go through a 30% cut from Apple. And this ruling is that Apple will now need to allow other purchase methods for in-app purchases. Yeah, and there's a little bit of they're not quite sure how this is going to work, what constitutes a button inside it and stuff. So that'll be a little weird. But so the reason Epic doesn't really win on this is because the way they started this whole suit was by adding that. And the judge also ruled that it was a breach of the contract

and Apple is allowed to continue to not basically let Fortnite back into the store, not give them back their developer account. So while you are there blocking that and you will potentially be able to put a button in for this kind of skirting the rules, Epic can't because they're not allowed back in the Apple store. Epic knew what they were doing when they broke the rules. Yeah.

So developers win, Apple kind of loses, Epic really loses because they're not back on the ios store and they also had to pay some sort of a fine because of the money that they made in that process of breaching the contract so that's a super super tldr version of it i'll have links in the description so you can read the full thing it's super interesting um but yeah it's been going on for a long time and yeah it also seems like it's far from over anytime there's a big suit like this it's just like all right another year of like back and forth between like re-sewing each other so that is uh still developing but that's at least some

development exactly um and then the other thing is somehow kind of relevant to the event um but apparently this has been going on for a long time i hadn't heard of it until the event happened but it looks like we have another case of apple sherlocking an app do you want to explain what sherlocking is real quick oh yeah so we made a video about the relationship between apple and those who develop products specifically attached to apple products um sort of described as like a shark and uh the remora relationship where if you're a more shark you you you do something the shark doesn't want to do or doesn't necessarily feel like they have to do but that is your only purpose and if suddenly the shark decides they don't need you anymore you're out of there uh so apple will sometimes decide to pivot and do something that

one of those developers was doing on their own, in which case your app has been essentially Sherlocked stolen. Yeah. And Sherlock was an app that did that. It helped you look through your files. Right. And now Finder. Yeah. That's the infamous example is the Sherlock app that is no longer useful because Apple made it themselves and called it Spotlight.

OK. Yeah. Yeah. So Apple made it themselves and called it Spotlight. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. And so what we're seeing now is,

this actually happened back in January, but there's an app called FlickType, which I've never used, but what it looks like is, we're all pretty familiar with Swype. Oh, it's the keyboard app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was a keyboard that was made,

but made mostly because one of the options was it had an Apple Watch way of being able to type and respond quicker. In January, it got kicked off of the App Store, quoting, the app is a keyboard for the Apple Watch. For this reason, your app will be removed from the sale of the App Store at this time. So that was a while ago. Since then, the developer of FlickType has sued Apple.

But what we saw was at the event, when showing off the Apple Watch Series 7, there was something extremely, extremely similar to it, which was that new kind of swiping feature for a keyboard for Apple Watch Series 7. Yeah, skipping ahead a little bit, but when we were watching that, I saw the Apple Watch Series 7 has a much bigger screen yeah so they i've been used to typing like one letter at a time or drawing out letters on the apple watch to respond to messages and they showed this full qwerty keyboard on the watch i was like okay who would ever want to do like full qwerty typing on that tiny watch screen but i guess you know maybe swipe typing

would be yeah easier from what i've looked like flick type looks like kind of a mix between swipe and it almost reminds me of t9 where it starts kind of like guessing the words you're using basing on letters you're picking and and through the examples i saw because i've never used it it looks pretty functional like it looks like a good way to type on you know a not ideal situation on your watch but yeah after that the creator of flick type tweeted like, well, guess we know why we got kicked off the store now. Yeah, because that's weird.

Why would you, so they got kicked off the app store just because they were a keyboard on the Apple Watch? Was that not allowed or something? I don't know the exact, and I'm sure there's some nuance to this. I'm sure Apple will have a reason as to why they kicked them off, not just because like, hey, we're doing this as well.

I mean, it's very possible their rule was like, you're not allowed to make a keyboard for the apple watch it's possible that was one of the rules it could be i just i don't know exactly what it is and i don't yeah um but the the email that the guy tweeted that like what i said was from it was this is an app for the a keyboard for the apple watch and for this reason your app will be removed from the sale of the App Store at this time. That happened in January. Now we obviously see

what's going on. I'm sure there's more nuance to it, but yeah, another Sherlock, I guess. And the thing is, is even if they didn't take it off the App Store,

just developing this and putting it out there would essentially completely kill that app. Why would anyone download something that is now just a default on it? Yeah, it would have to be better in some way. Like there are other third-party keyboards for the iPhone, but the iPhone has a pretty good keyboard.

But yeah, anyway, that's a perfect segue into talking about the event that we had on Tuesday. So Apple had their September California streaming event. It's yet another digital event. So they're not back to in-person events yet. We all knew the iPhone was coming, but there was some other stuff coming. And it turned out California streaming was this sort of symbolism

for them using a bunch of different locations. So they had a lot of drone shots in this episode, transitioning to like Santa Monica and to the Redwood Forest and to all these other places. I think Joshua Tree was where the intro happened. I was actually, when he tweeted that picture, you were like, I don't think this is going to be at.

The Steve Jobs Theater. Yeah, and I was like, oh, California streaming with a picture of a mountain and a lake. I was like, this is going to be all over California. I was pretty excited that I guessed it. Yeah, they definitely. 10 minutes before, yeah. A lot of drone shots, a lot of drone shots.

Fantastic drone shots. And good ones, yeah. So the of drone shots. A lot of drone shots. Fantastic drone shots. And good ones, yeah. So the production quality was top notch as always. I think they had a moment where they accomplished exactly what one of the OnePlus events I think failed so hard at. Oh, the like transition between. Yes. It was like a perfect transition. This lady was talking in one environment about one thing with all of these new features this is by far the most powerful and versatile iPad mini

ever then went across a wall and which created a wipe transition to a new environment or she continued to talk about a new different thing and with both the new iPad and iPad mini we continue our commitment to the environment and I just i had flashbacks to that one plus transition where they were talking about one thing crossed over the wall and were in the same environment it was just like outside the door and then they went back in the door after yeah yeah this like this worked because just like in general the shot and the framing and everything was like perfect. And then also

just the context of what was happening. Like it, she was talking about something else. It moved to a different area. It just fit with the presentation. It, it nailed what, yeah, OnePlus was trying to do that one time. So I enjoyed that. I was also looking for a meme moment. I don't think we got one. I don't think we got a meme moment. I don't think a big one. This one felt way more like produced almost parts of it almost reminded me of the pixel 5 event where like aspects of it almost felt commercially does that make sense like a lot of like upbeat music multiple cuts feels very much like a commercial or almost like a music video and i think that was their just kind of like between segment vibe that they were going for.

Yeah, because they had such big transitions to pull off. Like you're not going from upstairs in the lab to downstairs in the silicon lab. You're going from one desert to a forest to a mountain to a beach. So they got to really spruce it up. So, yeah, it did feel kind of, you know, California casual. But there were a bunch of things announced, some of them we were expecting, some of them we weren't. I say we start with the iPads. Yeah, let's just go in order for one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah, the order of the event was iPad first. So we got a new budget iPad, the infamous $329 iPad. It is, once again, in the same body as before, and it didn't really get all that much improvements, but it is a spec bump this time. So it's got the A13 Bionic chip, which is 20% faster across the board versus the last gen.

And it's got a new selfie camera. I believe it's now the 12 megapixel ultra wide that has center stage. I think that's the biggest feature added to it. That's pretty much it. It's still got the home button, still got the thicker bezels, still got the small back camera with no bump still got a lightning port it's still that old hardware

and that oldish screen but it's 329 and so that spec bump is nice for that price but it's not really much different from the old one i think like though in the times that we're in with way more video calling adding a better front- front facing camera and center stage is actually pretty amazing for something that affordable. Like just being able to get this in the hands of more people and $300 for schools. We're just seeing people need that more and more. Hopefully not for much longer, but it is nice to see that. I think that's just like a cool little announcement for maybe not the tech heads here, but I think they'll actually benefit a ton of people. i'm gonna add this to the i'm gonna

have a theme for this episode of things they should have added a year ago yeah i think this would have been great for different reasons but i think this would have been great about a year ago for obviously the pandemic and obviously the beginning of all the video calls everyone had to start doing for sure uh so that's the the new budget ipad ipad mini honestly star of the show yeah this was like the one no one nobody was really expecting it yeah so we all had our you know our iphone hats on going into the event but the ipad mini got the biggest redesign year over year because it's been a couple years since they refined the ipad. So, okay. It's basically a small iPad air. Yeah. From what I can tell all the improvements across paper and across specs minus a couple of things are iPad air shrunken

down. So it's got this new design that I really like. It's the flat edges, smaller bezels. It's funny. It's an 8.3 inch screen on the iPad mini, and it's got this bezel size. That's still a little bit thick, but I feel like it's got this bezel size. That's still a little bit thick, but I feel like it's a little bit thick because you still need a place to put your, your fingers when you're holding it. And so even if it's the same size bezel as the iPad air, when you shrink it down to a small screen,

it looks kind of like a big bezel. Honestly, the fact that it's all even, it just makes it look nice all the way around. Yeah. So it's got a larger 12 megapixel camera on the back. It's the first iPad mini with around, yeah. So it's got a larger 12-megapixel camera on the back. It's the first iPad mini with a camera bump. So there's actually a little bump just like the iPad Air on the back.

It's not too dramatic, but it is there and it's new. I didn't think about that, yeah. It's the A, what is it, 15 inside, A15 Bionic. So it's 40% faster CPU, 80% faster GPU. Again, it's been a while since they refreshed iPad mini. So this is much better performance. It also gets USB type C like the iPad Air and it gets a Touch ID fingerprint reader like the iPad Air.

The one weird quirk I noticed is the volume buttons are also at the top alongside the Touch ID power button. Did you notice that? I didn't, but just you saying it it makes more sense because it's smaller and you're not reaching up there on this giant ipad instead you're saying like the top like the top top right not on the sides yeah like if you hold the ipad like a piece of paper like a rectangle the touch id buttons on the top right yeah the button volume buttons are also on the top on the top left okay i expected them to be alongside like

the ipad air yeah that still would probably make the most sense but yeah so i'm curious why they did that maybe it's because you'll mostly have it in landscape mode and if they knew that they should have moved the location of the selfie camera but that's another story um but it does get the 12 megapixel ultra wide selfie camera with center stage it also gets 5g and it supports the second gen apple pencil magnetizes to the side just like the ipad air so it's a 499 dollar mini ipad air what do you think of the price i think that's about right 499 now in the tablet world at that price you do see a lot of other like seven inch tablets popping up and it's funny like every time we talk about tablet prices and being competitive,

I can't help but compare it to other iPads because like there's not that many other competitive tablets. There's some stuff at the very high end. There's some Samsung and Huawei tablets out there. But like for $499, would I rather have any other tablet than this one? Not really.

So iPad mini is pretty sweet. Here's my favorite thing about this, which comes from the USB-C is the way they described it by saying like this gets USB-C, which is X amount better, X amount faster, blah, blah, blah, than its predecessor, which we all know is lightning, which is just hilarious to me because you're saying all these reasons as to why it's better, but we still see lightning in the iPhone. Yeah, the mental gymnastics required to defend USB-C in the iPad, but then defend lightning in the iPhone are very impressive.

It's just very funny. It's a lot. It's hilarious to me. Yeah, and it's not even like a pro thing anymore. All the iPads, except for the baseline budget iPad, have USB-C. So every time they explain USB-C, they're like, oh, it's a better port, it's got more bandwidth. It is not Thunderbolt as the iPad Pro,

but it is just USB-C, which is the same as the rest of the iPads. So I love it. I had this thought. I was just tweeting about how it could be like an in-the-wall smart home screen. Like imagine having an iPad mini, just cutting a hole in the wall, put that iPad mini in there, and that's probably the best smart home, assuming you have HomeKit, assuming all your accessories are HomeKit. Assuming HomeKit works for all your accessories.

Yeah, assuming it all works. But that would be like a pretty sweet remote for turning your lights on, turning on whatever else, your cameras, whatever stuff you've got going on in your smart home. Yeah, it's cool. I kind of agree without even putting it in the wall. I feel like the mini aspect of it is nice because it can just kind of float around your house for different things. Like, hey, we have a party going on in the backyard now. I want to turn my string lights on.

I want to control the music. Oh, it's nighttime. Let's all move it inside to the dining room. Now bring that into the dining room with you. So like doing it like that, you could put any iPad in the wall and I guess it would just look tackier the bigger it is, but having the small one and just being able to kind of bring it around the house is nice.

Yeah, it's just, it's discreet. I was very tempted to get one. I think it really strikes me as like the ultimate mobile note taking thing. I am, as a reviewer, I'm always taking notes on the go. I'm driving this Volvo for review for Top Gear. And I'm always just like opening Google Keep on my phone and like, you know, having a voice note real quick when I notice something or like going back to my computer and I notice

another thing I want to take a note on. I open another app and I have notes all over the place. And it'd be nice to have just anytime I have a note, I just grab the iPad mini, pull out the pencil, and write it down. And that was very tempting to me, but I also want to use my iPad all the time for watching videos and media and doing other stuff. And the way I use my iPad Pro, I love 120 hertz. And this iPad mini is still 60 hertz.

I've got the perfect solution for you. Okay. The S Pen on the Fold 3. The S Pen on the Fold 3. The S Pen on the Fold 3. It's got everything you're asking for. It's right there for you. It's got 120 hertz. No, it doesn't because it doesn't stick to the side of the Fold.

That's the one thing. Bro, just get the case. I don't like case. I'm not a big case person. I can put a skin on the iPad even if I do a folio on the front just to keep it. I feel like you thought I was serious about this on the front just to like keep it no I think I just want to confirm I feel like you're playing a devil's advocate of a real commenter who's gonna suggest that um no I I like the idea the iPad yeah and the Apple pencil can I take this a step

further go for it pen and paper pen and paper get out of here leave huh yeah uh the thing about pen and paper is, no, I have no good argument against it. I was going to say it's wasteful, but, you know, charging electronics is not much better. I don't know. I'm just,

I'm super into the note-taking aesthetic of iPad mini. I think it's going to be good for students and a lot of people who take a lot of notes. This is a random question. When you have like Android Auto, and you've got Google Assistant on it, right? You can take notes, like you can ask it to write a note down right uh i think there's probably a command i can do for that where i take a note in google i mean it's just regular google assistant

like we were messing around with it on the road trip a bunch and just telling it to play music it's great it just like on the screen had a little button for google assistant and you could just ask it to do whatever so So I can only assume. Yeah, yeah. No, but my problem, which is an entirely me problem, is I have three different places that I take notes, which is on me. I have Apple Notes, I have Google Keep,

and I have my Tasks app. Is there not something like Evernote that can be on all of them and sync? Yeah, I actually used to use Evernote. And I've tried a couple other universal note-taking solutions. I don't know, that's again, it's a me problem. They never really stick. I like the idea of the Apple Pencil just swiping up

from the corner and just taking an Apple Notes app, and that's only going to work with Apple Notes. Anyway, that was a fun redesign. It's got a couple new colors also. There's this new Apple color they keep calling Starlight. This is going to come up again in the future, but it's kind of like a faded gold.

And they're, you know, it's kind of an interesting name. They don't really name things. Some are calling it pink, no? I don't think it's, no, they have a separate pink. There's a different pink. On the iPad mini, there is a purple. And on the iPhone, I think there is a pink. But this Starlight.

I think it might be the same thing. Starlight? I think Starlight is somewhere in between silver and gold. It's like a faded gold, even though we still have a silver. So I just wanted to shout out that new, like, somewhat interesting color name, Starlight. So while I go and look up all the different colors of the iPhones before our next segment,

let's hop on a quick ad break. We'll be back with Apple Watch Series 7 and then obviously the new iPhones. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it.

Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon or they could be late for the bus you never know ambition is on the inside so that thing you love keep doing it drive your ambition mitsubishi motors all right welcome back let's talk about the last two things the two probably biggest things to come out of the uh the event that we're more expecting which is the watch and the phones that we were expecting yes i would i mean we weren't expecting everything that happened with the watch but we were expecting a new watch okay yeah we were expecting a new expecting a new watch. I think these are the two biggest things

that came out of the event. One, because it was what we weren't expecting, if you say expecting, because of all the leaks. Right. And then obviously, there's a big feature in iPhone we'll get to later that I think was the biggest part of the entire event. Lots of things that didn't happen with the watch and the phone.

Yes, exactly. That's a good theme. Okay, so the watch, Apple Watch Series 7. So quick summary, better screen. Okay, that's it. Any thoughts? No, it is a 20% bezel all the way around, which makes the screen area bigger. It is the exact same shape,

but now that the screen area is bigger, it gets even closer to that very edge where the body hits the glass. The glass is slightly more curved right i they made it sound like it i think that's why it feels like the smaller bezel too almost like the the infinity edge on like samsung phones is that little bit of curvature on the top glass part of it they laminate the screen right up until the edge so we'll see it i want to see it in person because this is what i was talking about in the video

which is on my current apple watch shape there is a solid amount of reflections all the way around the corners and the top and the bottom and this is going to be even more reflective and this text on the screen is going to get even more into those well yeah because if it's on the curve part on the side that's pulling the reflection all the time now you're going to start losing information on the screen right yeah so we'll see i might be. Maybe it doesn't matter at all, but that is the biggest difference. There's also a set, a much brighter display, which is going to be cool to see both indoors and outside. Yeah. We saw that a little, uh, swipe type keyboard implication, uh, application, which is pretty cool, but obviously a lot more bigger buttons and bigger things happening on the bigger screen. It's the first dust resistant

Apple watch. It's also still water-resistant. I think it's dust-resistant because now the speaker is a slot instead of a hole. I think it's like a couple small slots instead of holes. And it is now going to charge 33% faster with a new USB-C charger in the box. Underrated. I think that faster charging is really nice. I'm one of those weird freaks who wears the apple watch 24 7 including when i sleep and so the couple of times during the week that i find

to charge it are pretty crucial when do you charge it that every time i shower okay which is like a solid like half hour of charging which is usually pretty great and when i wake up in the morning it's my alarm and it wakes me up. I take it off when I wake up, put it on the charger while I get ready to do stuff. Why not in the car? Um, it's a short enough drive. I guess. Yeah, it could be. So I don't have a, that's what I found it the best. I would, when I was using it for when we were doing all the content, I put it in the car, my commutes a bit longer, but like that was the one time where I never felt like it needed to track anything. Like, yeah, I mean, it's minusc longer, but that was the one time where I never felt like it needed to track anything.

I mean, it's minuscule, but you're losing steps when you're doing it in the shower and getting ready in the morning. David might sneak up on you in a competition. You'll just be wishing you had those shower steps. This is very fair. I think I might take that new USB-C charger and put it in the car. That might be the move. Series 7 is going to start at $399. There's some new colors. I think you were liking that green

you and David like the green color right? I like green anything it's a nice little green color I don't love the Apple watch but yeah I think sometimes the Apple watch looks really nice and then I'm like I don't feel like this looks like much watch on my wrist well there's a whole watch conversation to be had for sure but

there are some new colors and I think I ultimately usually go with a neutral color watch, and then if I want to spice up the bands at certain times, I'll do that. They'll all look great, but the problem is then you worry about it not matching with something you're wearing that day, so neutral just always is the best option.

Exactly. I'm sure those are the most popular. So the thing with this is we didn't really read that much difference here. Would you recommend anybody upgrades from a Series 6 to a Series 7? No. No one, right? No. This is one of those small incremental year-over-year improvements that's nice to have,

but doesn't constitute like someone like me or you or anyone with any like probably last three years Apple Watch needing to upgrade. If you're upgrading, this is nice that you get a couple of new features. If you don't need to upgrade, there's no point in point in doing this yeah it's all about the bigger screen they didn't mention the chip on stage at all they didn't mention it having found on reddit it's literally the it's not even like a different name it is the exact same chip i would believe that um having a bigger brighter screen is of course nice on any gadget anytime there's a refresh especially something that that's outside so often. Yeah. But aside from that, yeah.

I think personally I would be very happy to stick with the Series 6. The one other thing I think... Oh, we were trying to figure out... Oh, yeah. Well, we mentioned the charging. That was the other thing. So they're keeping around the Series 3 and the SE. Yeah.

So Series 4, 5, 6, and... 4, 5, and 6 are so similar. keeping around the series three and the se yeah so series four five six and uh four five and six are so similar that they might as well not exist yeah so we've got we've got the se which is like the budget cheaper version and then we've got the three which is the much less features and many less sensors even cheaper entry-level apple watch it lives lives. It keeps living. And I think just kind of, unfortunately, the biggest news with Series 7 is just that it wasn't the redesign that everyone kind of... It was one of those things where it's leaks and it's renders

and we all tell each other not to get excited by them, but this was one where it felt like a couple more leakers were all kind of on the same page, and it just was not even... If anything, it was supposed to be a boxier design kind of like what ipad mini did and it wound up actually becoming curvier with the glass okay so in hindsight now that we have the new design are you happy that it's not squared or did you want

it to be squared about i think the renders looked cool but either way it's still not all right we know that answer adam you saw the rumored squared off apple watch versus this new big screen curvy one we got do you like the actual one we got better or would you rather have had the square one um i think i would rather have had the square one if they were going to keep it this design i feel like they should have added a functionality that differentiated it other than like a bigger screen they didn't have much functionality to add i mean this we're going to talk about this with the iphone pretty shortly but it's a it's the same watch with a better screen are we just at a point where the

apple watch is popular enough that you just can't skip a year on it it's popular enough that you can't like it's just like they're not going to ever just let it sit for two years and then do a bigger update yeah no they're they're going to make a let it sit for two years and then do a bigger update yeah no they're going to make a new one every single year yeah and i'm sure there's little things like the faster charging like that's kind of nice there's little things that they can probably adjust every year the technology gets better enough that they can probably add like a slightly bigger battery next year and honestly that's fine if they never change anything else about this watch but eventually other stuff's going to catch up right eventually you got to make moves so maybe it's a redesign in the future someday but as of today um it's it's looking

pretty similar it's very similar yeah no problem there okay then the iphones iphone 13 13 mini 13 pro and 13 pro max pretty solid lineup um very similar again to the 12 but i'm going to talk about some of the things that are more important so a15 bionic chip in all of these phones it's got a five core gpu in the pro phones four core gpu and the smaller phones or uh the 13 and 13 mini and then everything else is the same with the specs a new new two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores in the CPU. And it's still got ceramic shields, still got IP68 water resistance, still got the squared sides. It's got aluminum on the 13 and 13 mini, surgical-grade stainless steel on the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Perfect.

What we did get changed is, first of all, the 64 gig model is finally retired and it starts at 128 gigs of storage. That's something they could have done last year, but there we go. They've finally done it. The battery life is improved. It's one and a half to two and a half hours longer depending on which model you get. I don't know exactly how that will translate to real world use because they keep saying like all day battery life yeah it's all we need to retire that phrase well Apple's used it forever and yeah everyone uses it's not just Apple yeah it doesn't really mean anything substantial until we test the

phone but I like that they're quoting longer battery life and not shorter mini needed it for sure the mini needed it and these phones are actually slightly thicker and slightly heavier to support an actually larger battery capacity okay not substantially larger but it's it's not smaller so that's cool the screens are brighter um a thousand to twelve hundred nits of peak hdr brightness a thousand nits or 800 nits for regular use on the 13 and 13 mini i like having brighter screens obviously it's the same resolution but what's more important about these screens is the pro phones now have promotion they now have a variable refresh rate up to 120 hertz that's something they should have done a year ago yes but it's here okay i'd say biggest announcement of the to me this is the biggest new feature it was the one

we were the most excited about, and it was funny because we talked about leaks before, and 120Hz is something that leakers have claimed is going to happen for a while now, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't see much speculation of it this year. There's been so many other phones to have

120Hz for so long, we just kind of forgot about it and stopped thinking they would do it. But yeah, they've finally done it it and it's interesting because these are now these are oled phones and oled screens where the ipad pro is still uh lcd still a backlit screen so that'll be interesting to see if it looks even better than the ipad pro um but yeah that'll be that'll be good to see so this is this is where we're going to find out how much of a difference 120 hertz really matters because as much as i've said in the past like guys you got to see 120 hertz in person it looks so much better i can't believe apple's still selling a thousand dollar phone at 60 hertz and everyone always goes well nobody really cares and no one notices the

difference to 120 this is where we're going to find out. There's going to be a 120 hertz iPhone in the store next to a 60 hertz iPhone. Will anybody see the difference? I'm still interested in that scenario if someone would be on both of them and not see the difference but choose to spend more money because of the difference. Right. Well, they see the difference and then go, wow, so the more expensive one's $1,000 and the 60 hertz one's $800. Do I want to make that jump yeah and i you know i obviously would i think for the majority of people listening to this podcast right now that's a jump they're willing to take i personally would do it i recommend it but i do still i mean one one person who says it all the time is uh john morrison tld today and i don't disagree with his opinion on any of it i don't think the majority of iphone users care about

the 120 hertz the the majority outside of our bubble that we live in who are going to a carrier service or just getting a new iphone but now like you said now that they're going to have it will that change will that change? Will that change? Will they even really know what the difference is? Are just other phones gonna feel slow and then they'll learn about what it is and it'll become more of a standard? That's kind of how I see it. Yeah, I think so.

I think one of my best litmus tests of like a new feature is if people in the real world like care, talk about it at all. And you're not gonna see a lot of people talking about 120 hertz, but I think when you see the new pro iPhones start to arrive in people's hands and people start to go,

whoa, this feels way smoother. That's what they're going to say. My phone feels so much faster than my last iPhone. Yeah, way faster, way smoother, way more responsive. And when all these apps are going to take advantage of it, there's going to be 120 hertz games and 120 hertz web browsing and just scrolling around and going through things. And Apple, apple of course has talked a big game about how they've optimized every little

animation in ios because that's what they do they've had this to be fair they've had the smoothest 60 hertz phones out i will give them that and that that actually gives me more confidence that the difference to 120 will be that much more well taken advantage of and they've done it on ipad also so like this isn't the first rodeo on a mobile device like this so i think people are going to start to see the 120 hertz in person and go whoa that's a really big difference whereas if you just told people hey this phone has 120 hertz do you want it no one really knows what that means or cares yeah and so i'm fully agreed with that like when you say regular

people don't care about 120 hertz i agree it's because they don't know what it is yeah so when you show it to them and they go here's a new iphone it has it and you show it to those people i think that's where we're going to find out how many people really like it i agree i don't know if paying 200 extra for it is going to be the uh initial into it for, again, the average, the non-techie. Yeah, I'd want to look at the numbers. I think if two people saw it in a carrier service and were playing with them and that was the only difference they noticed,

I don't think they'd be up for an extra 200 bucks. I think they'd pay $200 for a different color they wanted more before they would do it for a smoother experience. I hate to agree, but i think that's probably true of a lot of people it's really hard to think outside of our mindset sometimes but i i would guess that that's probably yeah but i think a lot of people who are waiting for the iphone to finally get 120 hertz there am it's here finally so like i said 799 for the iPhone 13, $699. Actually, those are prices without carrier activation. So it's $699 or $729 for the 13 mini and $799 or $829 for the 13.

And then it's $1,000 or $1,029 for the 13 Pro. And then $1,099 or $1,129 for the 13 Pro Max. Also, there's a one terabyte version there is just saying no that's 15.99 15.99 yeah for the old pro max only right pro mac oh pro and pro pro and pro max the one terabyte pro max is 15.99 yes that's the most for the highest end yeah okay so that's the same as a fold three right pretty close fold three is Fold 3 is about $1,700, $1,800. Oh, is it? Okay, yeah. Yeah. We also skipped over, I mean, design-wise,

the only real design change we saw, which was in the regular models, the 13 and 13 mini, which is, since there's only two cameras on the camera bump, rather than have them vertical, they're now diagonal. I think it looks nice.

I don't necessarily think it looks better or worse than the vertical. I think it's a functional change, change too because the sensors are so much bigger that that actually makes space for them. And the primary sensor has now that larger sensor and that sensor shift stabilization. So remember the 12 Pro Max was the only one last year

that had that new big sensor and sensor shift. Because of how much space it has, right? A lot of space. They're bringing that to all of the primary sensors on all the phones now. That that's a big deal so they did have to move it diagonally and it looks a little different and i probably thought that would be nice for the new phone to have a different look but that is a much bigger better sensor um so they've moved that primary sensor that bigger sensor to all of the entire lineup which is pretty sweet And also there's now faster apertures across the range. I think it's F1.5 on the main aperture on the Pro. So now it's a bigger sensor and an F1.5 aperture,

which is pretty sweet. But all around wider apertures on the Pro than the regular. And we'll probably also keep an eye on how that does in low light. And there's no like astro mode or anything crazy. It's just probably gonna be incremental improvements and better processing and less noise and things like that. But we'll

see how that goes too. But that's all just numbers. And of course, we'll see better quality. I was most interested in two of the features they announced and they're both video features. So after the break, let's talk about ProRes cinematic mode. We'll also talk about some of the stuff that didn't come to the iPhone. Yeah. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights.

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Even thicker camera bumps. They're thicker this year. It feels like when it did that side profile, it's like it has three separate bumps. The bump to get to the bump, the bump for the outside of the lens, and then the bump for like the glass or something on it. It's a triple mesa.

It's a whole thing. But the features we got were ProRes and Cinematic Mode. Which should we do first? Cinematic Mode's more fun. Okay. So Cinematic Mode, I've thought a lot about Cinematic Mode since it came out.

And I'm very curious about how this will land with regular people. It's in all the phones, not just the Pros. And it's a new mode that will let you have a little bit more fine control over shooting video and specifically with focusing yeah so i think apple took a couple looks at okay we've got bigger sensors there's going to be more natural blur and we're going to have a lot of people shooting video with the iphone as they usually do let's build into the stock camera app a little bit of a more uh

prosumer i'm doing air quotes for audio listeners a prosumer way of shooting video specifically with like some focus racking and some ai intelligent focus racking and some fake blur we added some some adjustable blur so it's it's literally like portrait mode for video which is adjustable in post that you can switch between subjects while you're shooting yeah since you said you've thought about this a lot can i give you my initial impression on it and then you can tell me what you think sure later so when we first saw this my very first thought was like every time apple does camera samples they're like the most beautiful pictures and videos ever because they have like really intense rigging and they're in these like studio

situations and like they're basically showing examples that you will never ever ever as a consumer hit apex yeah so when they they showed this i was like oh focus racking this is really cool we're all kind of video nerds here so we think that's really sweet i don't think the video sub the way it showed it off in the examples was great felt very jumpy sometimes it looked like it was hunting which is weird because it's not actually like yeah racking a focus like normal and just for some reason it like just felt off from like we do focus racks all the time it just didn't quite feel like it obviously it's much different this is on a phone yeah using cameras with i thought the same thing of lenses i thought the same thing so and then i thought that's kind of what i thought or i was just like if apple's not nailing this in their

product demos like this is i think this is going to be worse there's also a lot of haloing which is something that their portrait mode doesn't do quite as bad anymore um but in video obviously portrait mode video is new so you know maybe i'm being too picky this is for that kind of average person they'll probably think it's really fun but then i immediately thought i can't think of the average person that's going to be like super pumped about this and now i'm back to like i don't really get it okay so the one thing that that i i thought a lot of the same stuff when i watched it i was like this is going to be the greatest demo of all time and then the first thing they showed i I was like, did that just hunt?

It was weird. But the one thing that I watched back and thought, more regular people are going to care about this than I think we think, is this is right next to all the other modes in the camera. Oh, like when you scroll through that? When you swipe through. Okay, like studio or whatever? There's photo mode.

There is portrait mode. There is video mode. And there's photo mode there is portrait mode there is video mode and there's cinematic mode and cinematic mode right next to video is like the portrait mode for video and i think a lot of people are just going to flip it over to this like almost by default anyway just to like oh this is the better video like obviously portrait mode looks better than a lot of photos let's just turn on cinematic mode and we're taking some videos of our friends and i think they're going to see a lot of that like shallow depth of field and they're going to crank up the bokeh all the way and it's going to be this big fake blurry background and they're going to go oh wow the iphone video looks crazy good with this cinematic mode and i guarantee we see at least one random viral video of like fake blur

from an iphone people going look how much better the iphone is than everyone else. Even though you've been able to do this on other phones for a while. So that's one thing I saw. Wait, can I just interject right there? Is like, you just made me think of another issue this could be doing to somebody is, if you think people are gonna go to cinematic as default, how many random videos are people gonna have

where it's like, they're taking a video of their friend and someone walks by in the background and it hunts to focus that and now their video they have is out of focus on the subject because they don't know how to use it correctly yeah we'll have to see how it works but yeah i can see that happening now i just think the the this is going to be more geared toward the average person and i think people who want to shoot like creators like us if i was to shoot a video on the iphone i'm either going full auto or i'm using a third-party app to get way more manual control yeah and there's kind of no in between like you can you can exposure lock and i think you can can you focus lock with

the current iphone video app i don't even think you can do that totally sure so that's one of those things like when you look at people who shoot full-on videos on their iPhones that they've been waiting for, this cinematic mode is still trying to use AI and like auto switch for you and add fake blur. And this isn't really something that those creators are going to want to switch to. They're still going to keep using the dozens of really good, like third-party camera apps you've already seen for the iPhone, especially for video. So that's why I think this is a normie app. I agree. And those same people who are putting that much effort into it are probably going to see that focus like the way it does it the rack focus and probably be like i don't like that they're going to be someone who's picky enough where they wouldn't enjoy that

whereas yeah there's there's phones out there with manual focus sliders yeah where you can do manual focus i think lg brought that up like lg's done it sony's done it i think a motorola phone's already done it and i literally you'll be able to like slide to manual focus with focus peaking in the in the stock camera app in like the pro mode which is nuts so that's not what apple's doing yet but i do see this like people swiping and going what is portrait mode mode? Oh, it's a blur. I totally agree. This is the video portrait mode.

So that's fine. I think we'll see a lot of people trying that. I also want to go over my quick segue of things that they didn't add to the iPhone because this is a notoriously minor update. I think we're all on the same page. Like you have an iPhone 12, you don't need this. It's a small update with the screen,

with the slightly, we didn't even say that. It's a slightly smaller notch, 20% smaller notch. Was it actually? Did we confirm that? It is a little smaller. Yeah, yeah. You know, they move the earpiece up to the top. It's all the same regular Face ID array,

but that's what else is new with the screen and a little bit better cameras. It's a minor refresh with some new colors. I would say without 120 Hertz and without the just like focus racking demo, there was almost like nothing to talk about. Yeah, yeah. That 120 hertz is kind of the only buying feature

that I'm concerned about with this phone. Maybe a terabyte, but yeah. Yeah. And so I want to go over just this quick list of things that we didn't see and how we feel about them not being added. Okay. So they didn't get rid of the lightning port.

It's still a lightning port at the bottom. I feel like I don't feel strongly about that yet. MagSafe is still the same. Charging speed is still the same. Everything is the same as it was last year. But there were some rumors of them maybe going full on MagSafe, no lightning port. We're just, and we're just totally past the rumor of ever doing USB-C, right? Yes.

No one believes that will ever happen? It would be. It's just lightning MagSafe to portless? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. that will ever happen it would be lightning magsafe to portless okay yeah yeah it would be hilarious if they switch the iphone to usbc after the ipad mini but it's so much faster than its predecessor they should have that team talk to the iphone team um they didn't add touch id back under the screen or any sort of like touch id anywhere maybe on a button or anything like that

how do we feel about that i hear a lot of people saying with masks and everything it would make the most sense i you know like that theory makes perfect sense i just don't know if like they're going to design a phone based on the pandemic going on now which is pretty unknown we've seen it get better we've seen it get worse so do you think are you saying just adding it like how do you feel about adding it just as not even thinking about the pandemic um i think it would have been nice okay i think it'd be nice whether it's like nice enough to sway some people yeah we've seen so it's kind of like one of those features where a bunch of other manufacturers will try early versions of it and then once it gets good enough then apple will hop on okay and the real

question is what is good enough like right now we have you know s21 and one plus nine and all these phones that have the fingerprint reader under the screen on near the bottom and it's like a little bigger than your thumb and you just have to hit the middle is good enough like the bottom half of the screen you touch anywhere is good enough like just like a little bigger than your thumb and just having it be 100 accuracy every time and it works with water on your finger what is good enough and i don't know that apple's like considering adding face or touch id back to the phone but when you consider that you add the pandemic element and you add the mask element then it's like it would have been nice to have touch id for sure in that situation yeah yeah but we don't have that either um no faster charging that's a funny one because

i think by the time this podcast goes live we also have a video up on a phone that has 120 watt fast charging yeah which is like apple's just not a big hardware bleeding edge type company where they they know what they do well and massive batteries and 100 watt fast charging is not one of those things and it's confusing to me because faster charging seems like one of the things that probably isn't that hard to do everyone's doing it now it's i don't think it needs as much i mean and maybe this is the the neglig or the ignorance of me and and knowing about battery, but it feels like one of the easier things to do. So it's one of the easier things to do, but in a certain,

first of all, in bigger phones, even if you do have a big iPhone, the way Apple does their internals, like, yeah, you can do split batteries if you want, but then you remove even more capacity from Apple's already pretty small batteries. and it's a little bit of a battery health thing too long-term battery health has always been apple's bias over battery like overall yeah um i think i have like a 95 battery health or something after a year on my iphone 12 they will go so far as to throttle down your CPU to continue to maintain your battery health rather than have your phone be faster. So, uh, yeah. Uh, I think a company like that probably not going to do super fast charging anytime soon, but they didn't do anything faster. It's still, I think 25 watt peak charging, which is meh. It's all right. Feels like they could go a tad faster. Yeah. They could go a little faster. I mean,

meh sorry it feels like they could go a tad faster yeah they could go a little faster i mean literally 120 watts out there um so they didn't do that we did not get higher resolution cameras and this is one thing that is uh it's again it's it would seem really easy to do you can just add if you can just drop in a 50 megapixel sensor if you want to. You can just drop in 108 megapixel sensor if you want to. Apple's done bigger sensors, but they have stuck with 12 megapixels. I don't know that I feel too strongly about this. I was looking forward to bigger physical sensors because that's a different look

and that's different capability and more light gathering and all that. There are bigger pixel sizes now, but I don't know. Do you find yourself limited at all by a 12 megapixel camera? light gathering and all that there are bigger pixel sizes now but i don't know do you do you find yourself limited at all by a 12 megapixel camera i mean not on iphone it's just they're so good i mean like we were just ripping on even video stuff before different video things from apple and it's just like even while we we don't think all that's perfect apple still just clearly

has the best video out of any smartphone out there it's just like kind of not even close and when it comes to video or just photos they're still at the top yeah they said something right they said something on stage that i that made me kind of wince like is that true they said i'm pretty sure they said verbatim they have the most detailed smartphone video and immediately i was like well you don't do 8k video so what do you mean and to do 8k video you need a 36 megapixel sensor or higher because that's 36 megapixels per frame but apple still with a 12 megapixel sensor cranks out 4k video and i think if you put it side by side you would see more granular small fine detail but if you just zoom out and watch the video side by side the ip iPhone's video still typically at a high bit rate looks better also we didn't even mention ProRes but with that high

that impressive codec ProRes is really really good codec and it's 422 on the iPhone you can shoot 4k 30 ProRes video straight from the iPhone as long as it's not the 128 gig model as long as it's not the base model because that will only do 1080 i guess because maybe you'd fill up the storage too fast maybe they're using cheaper storage and it wouldn't have written fast enough i think it's probably a little bit of both um but i think yeah at the end of the day you put those videos side by side and you'd take the iphone video over the jello-y 8k video from the Samsung. So no faster, no high resolution cameras, but that is, I don't think that's missed as much as it might be for some other stuff. Also, no high resolution displays.

This is a smaller thing too. It's not like we got a 2K display on the iPhone. It's still like roughly 1080. Not a huge problem. And I put one more note down here. There's no astrophotography mode. We have like this incredible night sight mode on the Pixel. And we have like night modes on all these phones now. And there's still night mode on, for the first time, all of the cameras

on the iPhone Pro, which is sweet, but it doesn't do like this, you know, amazing astro, like see the stars mode, which, I mean, you you can they did show me some demos that did have like some faint stars so maybe they would argue against that but i still feel like night sight is like next level they didn't do that so those are some things that the iphone didn't do and as a result minor update not bad yeah it's funny because all those would be pretty minor updates also but just like but if you do minor updates you want all of them to be together so it feels like a major you said if you'd stacked all those things if you had this new iphone update smaller notch high refresh rate screen and touch id underneath the display and the better cameras and a bigger battery and fast charging and high

resolution cameras you just took away their next five iphone releases yeah that's probably true they're gonna do like one per camera but i agree so like if right now if you were to say if someone had this similar question to the watch if someone has an iphone 12 right now they want to just upgrade to iphone 13 would you recommend it 12 to 13 yeah no yeah only i would i mean if you're going like 12 to 12 pro or 12 to 13 pro maybe. No. Yeah. Only, I would- I mean, if you're going like 12 to 12 Pro, or 12 to 13 Pro, maybe. Then maybe. Like if you want that jump. Then maybe.

Yeah. Same phone, next generation. It's not worth it. Yeah. But now you add some of these, maybe that would be worth- Yeah, maybe Touch ID is that much more convenient. Maybe you'd want it to take much better photos.

Yeah, we'll wait to see. When we get these phones in hand, we should have reviews of a lot of the stuff coming up pretty soon, which is exciting. We should have them in the studio ASAP by the time you see this. Um, hopefully. Yeah. And I guess we'll, we'll get right to reviewing them because I want to see what that 120 Hertz looks like.

I want to see what those new photos and videos look like. And I want to see if that cinematic mode is as spicy as it looks. We need to do some fun cinematic mode tests. We'll be trying it out. So stay tuned for all that stuff on the channel. But in the meantime, that's been our Apple podcast. That's all we talked about today is Apple stuff. There's a lot of stuff going on this week.

Either way, thanks for watching this episode. We'll catch you next week in the next one. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina. We are partnered with Vox Media and our intro outro music was created by Vane Syl.