115: Overwhelming Apple Week, LIVE Titanium Unboxing, and Non-Timid Zooming

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for September 22nd, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett, how are you doing this morning?

(laughing)

- Did that sound at all like my voice?

I don't know.

- It did.

And I'm thinking, wait a minute,

is this Jeff as a recording today or?

(laughing)

- So one of the new features of iOS 17

this feature called personal voice. And the idea is that if you spend 15 minutes reading a bunch

of sentences that come onto your screen, the iPhone will learn how to digitize your voice,

which is interesting. It's something I remember years ago when Robert E, you're in Chicago today.

I remember when Roger Ebert of Chicago, the film critic, was losing his voice at the end. He had

some very sophisticated technology that recreated his voice based upon all of his television

appearances and stuff like that. Right. Right. And so that he could use a keyboard and speak

with his voice. It's amazing that everybody's iPhone now has that built in all you need to

spend 15 minutes talking to it and it learns your voice. And so now in the future, for some reason,

I couldn't speak. I have a digital version of my voice built into the iPhone. It's only on

my iPhone. It's not upgraded to it's not uploaded to Apple servers or anything like that. So it's

all okay. And I can use it whenever you want, whenever I want. So for example, I could type

a phrase and I could have it speak. And again, it doesn't sound exactly like me, but it does

sound sort of like me. And I noticed that one of my, my weather app, Carat Weather,

you can now have it every time you start the app, it will tell you the weather in your

own voice, which is a little silly, but anyway, so that's just one of the bajillions of new

features added from iOS 17. My goodness.

It's very nice to meet you, digital Jeff. And maybe you could just, maybe you could

just do the whole podcast in digital Jeff voice.

You know, I like the real Jeff.

- We need a digital Jeff and a digital Brett,

stick them together, put them with AI, chat GBT,

see what they record.

You never know what they may come up with, you know?

- Oh my goodness.

Okay, well, really quick, we just want to say thank you

to SaneBox for sponsoring digital Jeff today.

We appreciate having them on board.

We'll talk a little bit more about SaneBox in a moment,

But not only are we talking about iOS 17 updates, we're already

having update to the update, Jeff.

So we, we, we, uh, talked about the fact that iOS 17 was coming out on Monday.

And I'm sure just like you, um, I upgraded immediately on Monday, got all the devices.

I have been very happy.

We'll talk about a little bit more in depth in just a moment, but, um, was it

just yesterday or maybe even today now it's 17.0.1, which is like an active

security patch is already available.

So if you, if you've been working on iOS 17 this week,

you might want to go and check the updates yet again.

- Yeah, I did not expect to see updates

on both Monday and Thursday.

- Not this soon.

- At the same time, it's nice that when Apple sees

these actively exploited security flaws,

and of course that's the trigger language,

that means this is not just theoretical.

Someone out there is actually using it.

Apple quickly gets updates out.

And so yesterday on Thursday, they both updated iOS 16,

And then shortly thereafter, they updated iOS 17 to 17.0.1.

So, and then it's not just the iPhone,

it's also the iPad and the watch and everything else.

So, you know, it's tough in this day and age

that you need to already, you know,

frequently be updating and patching your devices

to give yourself the most security,

but that's the world we live in, I guess.

- It is the world we live in.

And again, we've talked about this many times already,

'cause it just seems like

they're coming a little bit more often.

And I know that there's a balance,

like everybody gets a little, you know, unnerved.

It's like, well, wait a minute, I just updated.

I got to update again.

And the answer is, well, yeah.

I mean, you know, first of all,

what would be the alternative

that Apple doesn't release these updates, right Jeff?

And I, frankly, I prefer the fact that they do

because most of these like point updates go fairly quickly.

Like it doesn't take a long time.

Yeah, the phone has to reboot, you know, the watch reboots,

but they download fairly quickly

and they get installed fairly quickly.

And then you're just, you're continuing your life.

I predict maybe in the future,

it'll even go even more smoother at some point.

But again, I just prefer, yes, go ahead.

And I'm glad that, you know, they were already on it.

And again, just to also highlight,

I think the fact that, you know, it's not like,

you know, this was iOS 17 for the general public, right?

We've had developer betas, we've had public betas.

We've been talking about that for weeks now.

And so it's like, it's not like Apple,

just all of a sudden realized this, right?

I'm sure they've been planning this for a while as well.

So anyway, go ahead and get updated,

but let's get to the actual part of iOS 17

and the actual fun things that it does bring.

There has been a lot, you linked to several stories today

where people are just kind of highlighting

their favorite features, the new features,

the things that you should be trying,

like the first things you should be trying in iOS 17.

This one, I think from CNET was really good.

It's a good rundown of a list.

A lot of people talking about the standby mode.

I haven't tried that yet, but a lot of other good things

that have been coming out in this, Jeff.

- I tell you, standby mode is incredible.

I have been using it for, you know, this week

and I'm gonna do a full post on it on iPhone JD.

- Oh, good, good.

- Maybe not this week,

'cause I wanna test a couple more things.

But I mean, let me just give you a preview.

It's like having a whole new Apple device.

You know, wouldn't it be fun

if you just suddenly had another cool Apple device?

And that's the way it is.

And I say that because, you know, right here,

as I'm looking to you, Brett,

I have my, I'm looking at a computer monitor.

I'm actually at my office.

So I've got two monitors side by side

and they're showing my work stuff and all that stuff.

And then I have my iPad off to the side here with stuff too.

But I now have a fourth screen, which is my iPhone.

Normally when I'm using my computer,

my iPhone is just sitting on the side, not doing anything,

you know, not helping me in any way.

- Yeah. - Exactly.

Maybe I'm charging it, maybe I'm not charging it,

but it's not really actively helping me.

But now that's completely changed

because I have my iPhone sitting right below my monitor.

It's on a MagSafe charger.

I'll talk about that in a second.

But when I glance down on it,

I see exactly what time it was, it is, on the left side.

And on the right side, I'm seeing a calendar

that tells me here's my upcoming events.

At this time I have this, at this time I have this.

And so just as I'm sitting here, I glance there

and my iPhone is showing me all this useful information.

It reminds me of how the Apple Watch can be pretty good

at showing you information,

but I have to actually lift my wrist.

I'm just glancing at it.

And with standby, you've got three different modes,

not to, I don't wanna make the whole podcast about standby,

but you have three different modes.

You have the widget mode, you have a photo mode,

which is just showing you photo albums,

much like a digital photo frame.

And then you have a clock mode

that it's a full screen clock.

But by far, the standout is that first one, the widget mode,

because you can decide which widgets appear

on the left or right.

You can decide, do you want them to change automatically

throughout the day, just like on an iPhone,

Or do you want them to just stick with the one

that you prefer?

And you can pick which ones are in the stack

of the multiple widgets.

And so for me, for right now, I have them not changing.

I just have the ones that I put in there

and they never change unless I want it to.

But on the left time, I always have my clock.

In fact, the one that I've actually using

is a really nice clock by the Widget Smith app,

which I've been using Widget Smith, my iPhone for a while.

He has standby and he's got this really nice clock

that's super big numbers with like the hour at the top

and the minutes at the bottom.

So it could not be more clear.

And then on the right side, sometimes I'm

using the Widgetsmith calendar, which is nice.

Sometimes I'm using Fantastical's standby widget.

I'm just sort of switching between them.

But it's just, as I'm working, my iPhone

is giving me glanceable information that I need.

Here's the time.

Here's my next appointment.

But for some people, it might be something else

that's important to them.

Stocks, or I mean, I see like, in fact,

what I should have on there right now

is the app that I use to track my deliveries,

which is called Parcel.

It has, in fact, I'm gonna switch it right now.

It has a little app that will tell me what's the status.

And I can see right now that my iPhone--

- Whatever could you be waiting on

to be delivered today, Jeff? - My iPhone 15 Pro Max

is out for delivery is that status.

If it suddenly changes to it has been delivered,

you might see me jump up from this podcast.

- Oh, I remember.

We've recorded podcasts when you jumped up, Jeff,

and you can do that again.

You have full permission, yes sir.

- Exactly.

Again, just standby alone, it makes my iPhone

more useful to me.

I love it, it's great.

I wanna get a stand for my nightstand at home,

but that's just one of the bajillions of new features.

I mean, let's keep going about some other ones.

- Yeah, hang on, because I want,

I know that I have access to standby,

but I gotta tell you, I haven't tried it yet

because I actually don't have a stand.

Now, I don't think you have to have a stand for this,

But, but, uh, okay.

But the phone does have to be charging, right.

In order for standby to be on.

So somehow you've either got to plug it in

or you've got it.

So in other words, I could plug it in

and just kind of prop my phone up, I guess,

on something and the standby would happen there.

But that's, that's, that's not cool enough though.

- It's yeah.

What I was doing earlier this week is

I have previously reviewed this little thing

that sits on top of my monitor

that it's a Belkin thing that has a magnet

that holds your iPhone.

And you can use it if you want your iPhone

to be your camera, right.

I just had it sitting here.

And if you just sort of like stand it up there,

it's sort of like a little stand.

So any little stand that you have,

or you can lean it up against something,

it either has to be plugged in

or it has to be on a MagSafe charging.

So the idea is if your iPhone display

is gonna be on it all the time.

And I guess I should also mention that

the reason it works so well for me

is because I have an iPhone that supports

having the screen on the entire time,

which is, that's the iPhone,

you know, the iPhone 14 Pro has that feature,

the iPhone 15 is of course.

So, you know, if you don't have an iPhone with an always on screen, then you have to

sort of tap it to see the information, which works, but it's not quite as ideal.

But if you do have an iPhone with an always on screen, and if you have an easy way to

keep it plugged in, whether it's a stand, you know, with a cord or a mag safe, then

you're good to go.

Now, I don't have to do anything because, okay, so I just plugged my phone in because

I wanted, I'm so excited to try this.

And you have to turn it on its side.

So it's got to be landscape and you need to let it sit there for about four or five seconds.

after it hasn't been moving.

- I'm too impatient.

- If you're moving around,

if you're driving around town in a car,

this is not gonna work,

but it has to be stationary,

in landscape mode and plugged in.

And once those- - There it is.

- Are enabled. - It just came on.

- There it is.

- Welcome to standby, view helpful widgets.

- And then, if you hold down your finger

for a second or two, you can customize it.

So again, I mean, we could literally do a whole show

on standby and I tend to do at least one or two posts

about it, both in terms of the software

and some of the hardware to use.

But it's great because it means I have this whole new feature.

It's almost like, you know how Amazon sells these Echo devices

that have a screen on them?

Or imagine if you would, like, imagine a HomePod Mini

that had a screen on it.

That's basically what my iPhone is now.

It's an Apple device that is always on,

that's always showing me useful information.

And then, of course, I pick it up

and I can use it as an iPhone.

But when I'm done using it as an iPhone, I stick it back there.

And now it's being the second type of Apple device

that's really useful to me.

It's really cool.

- I'm so glad you talked about it because now,

like I'm trying to figure out something

I can prop my phone up on.

(laughing)

That is so amazing.

I can see now why you're so excited about this on there.

I mean, I've got a simple clock,

I've got the temperature and everything.

Okay, like you said, you're gonna post on this,

so we'll definitely be talking about standby mode later,

but I'm so glad you mentioned that

because I just hadn't had a chance

and an opportunity to plug that in,

but that is absolutely amazing.

Okay, well, okay, we'll move on

because you're gonna post about this

and I wanna talk about standby a little bit more,

but maybe next week I'll have a stand.

And of course in your post, I expect and anticipate

you'll talk about the stands on there as well.

What else in Iowa 17 do you wanna cover?

Chapter so much really.

- So right there on the screen issue,

the post that you're showing right now,

it talked about how autocorrect

and messages is vastly improved.

What you'll now see is not only is autocorrect better

and it's noticeably better,

But when you're typing, like if I start to type a word,

what I've typed so far, of course,

is appears on the screen as you would expect,

but then in sort of a grayed out mode,

it will, you can see the rest of the word

that it wants to put there.

And sometimes it's even like two words.

And so like for my last name, if I start to type R-I-C,

it's gonna show Richard,

like the rest of the word Richardson there,

that I can just hit the space bar and have it auto complete.

And sometimes it's even the rest of the sentence.

So it's not only it works better, but it's faster.

That's a really nice feature in it.

- Yeah, and on a quick related note,

I've noticed that just quickly,

but I feel like the dictation that I've done so far this

week is a little more accurate.

It seems like it's doing a little bit something else,

or maybe even offering some auto-correct on the dictation,

but in a similar kind of a fashion with the auto-correct,

I feel like the dictation has improved on there as well,

which is really good.

Really, really amazing stuff in here.

I mean, I gotta tell you,

I was so excited when I got a phone call this week

that I did not pick up and answer Jeff,

because I wanted to see the live voicemail.

That was so amazing.

I was actually on a train here in Chicago

and I couldn't actually pick it up.

You know, I wouldn't be able to talk to anybody,

but just seeing the live voicemail, like, okay,

I can't take this phone call.

But then I even got more excited

because I was able to read a fairly good transcription.

Wasn't perfect, but I got the gist of it.

I knew exactly who it was.

And I'm like, okay, I can file that away for later.

but it was just so neat to have that,

instead of like waiting for the voicemail at the end,

is it done?

And did a little item show up in my voicemail

and then I can go and maybe look at the transcript

or listen to it.

It was all right there on my lock screen

and that was really fantastic.

- I haven't tried that one out yet,

but I look forward to trying that one out.

Another little silly little fun one

that I can't wait to use is that in addition,

your photos app can automatically recognize people's faces

and then you can create an album of like,

these are all my pictures of my son,

These are all my pictures of my wife or whatever.

But one of the new features is that on your phone

and your iPad, et cetera,

it will recognize pictures of pets.

Now I will tell you the reason I haven't tried

the feature yet is that I'm not ready.

When you first update to iOS 7,

you need to keep your devices plugged in

and you really need to keep them plugged in all night long.

And it goes through and it processes your pictures.

And since I've got like 50,000 plus pictures,

it's gonna take many, I mean, so far,

it's been almost a week and it hasn't gotten there yet.

But whenever it finishes processing pictures,

as I understand it, when I open up the photos app,

like I'm on my iPad right now,

and I see that there's a tab called people,

but whenever it's finished processing,

that's gonna change.

Instead of saying people, it's gonna say people and pets.

And once that happens, then I can go through

and it will be able to say, here's your dog,

and you can say, this is my current pet,

the cat that I used to have.

And again, it's a silly little thing,

but it's another cool little feature that they have.

The grocery list and reminders is neat because, you know, they've always had like a grocery

list as a built-in reminders thing.

But now when you add items to it, it will sort them based upon where the items are located

in the grocery store.

And you know, I don't go to the grocery store as much as my wife does.

And so sometimes I'll forget, you know, where is this going to be?

But as long as I just have the item in there, it's going to say, okay, this is right.

The bananas are in the produce section.

Okay, thank you very much.

You know, those sorts of things that automatically sorts it.

But you know, that's really what iOS 17 is for me.

There are some big features like standby, but it's really more of these little bitty

quality of life throughout the scope of the operating system.

You know, one that's both on the iPhone and the iPad and the home pods.

And I guess even the AirPods too, is that instead of saying, Hey, she, he'll shut up

be named.

You can take out the hay and you can just say, and you may say, what's the big difference?

What's the big difference?

You're just taking out the hay.

Well, you know what?

It's only taking out one syllable, one word.

But for me, the difference is when I say,

"Hey, you know who, comma,"

I always pause before giving my command.

Under the new system, when you take out the "hey,"

you can just say the name S-I-R-I and then your command.

And so not only are you cutting out a word,

but you're actually cutting out a pause.

And it sounds totally silly,

but in my experience, it actually is faster.

- It works.

- So my home, and you have to enable this feature.

I don't think it's on by default.

So like for my HomePods, my HomePod minis at home,

I had to go in and turn it on that you could accept either.

Hey, as I or the regular one, but once you turn it on, I find it faster.

And again, is it life changing that I've saved myself a second or two?

No, but it's a quality of life improvement.

And it's one of many, many, many.

I agree.

I didn't think that was going to be that big of a deal.

And I think actually when you upgrade to Iowa 17, I remember there was a splash screen there.

Oh, you know what?

There was an option.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And they said, like, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to, hey, anymore,

you can just go in.

But I don't know if it's just psychological or not,

but you're right.

It seemed like it was just faster,

and it just seemed like it was a little bit more

responsive on that.

Hey, okay, so I have a question.

I haven't tried this yet,

even though my iPhone was trying to tell me,

set up your contact poster, right?

So in other words, this is a picture

and the name for yourself that my,

the people that I call will see of me,

if that makes sense.

I think I'm making it more complicated than it really is.

but you're setting up a contact photo.

I gotta tell you though, Jeff,

I was a little hesitant because I usually,

I will call family and friends

and I might have one picture of myself

that maybe is a little bit more informal

that I don't mind that they see.

But then I stopped myself 'cause I said,

well, sometimes I call professional contacts

and I maybe want a little bit more

of a formal picture on that contact.

Is it possible, do you know,

that can you change the contact photo?

I just, I stopped myself from setting that up

because I just didn't want one picture to be shown,

you know, to everybody.

And I don't know if I can, if I can customize that or not.

- Yeah, I don't think so.

I think you choose a single photo for yourself.

- Yeah.

- And if you choose, that's what the other person sees.

- Okay.

- I'm actually curious, Brad, if you don't mind a live test,

although you and I, I'm sure you're on mute right now,

but if I call your cell phone right now,

I have mine set up.

Can you just look at the screen of your iPhone

and just tell me, I've just tapped on your number.

So are you seeing on your screen right now

when it starts to ring like a full screen

Jeff Richardson picture?

- Hang on, it looks like,

oh, I think I sent you the voicemail.

- Oh, that's right,

because you're in the do not disturb mode, of course,

that makes sense.

So I should have started talking.

- No, there you are, I saw it.

Yes. - And it was a big screen.

- No, it was your picture, I did see it.

Yes, sir, yeah.

- So I was able to choose a full screen picture,

so the entire length of the iPhone,

I could choose the font that it had my name,

I could choose whether it said Jeff,

Jeff Richardson, Jeffrey Richardson.

I could choose the color of the font.

So it's like silly little things,

but you can make a little contact card

that appears in a way that you think is nice.

So for example, the picture that I showed you,

I was wearing a blue shirt.

So I used a blue font for Jeff Richardson

'cause it just seemed like it sort of matched.

- I saw that.

- I mean, it's totally silly,

but you can just set up those things.

And that way, when you call somebody else,

they will see it's you and see it's you

based upon however you wanna be seen.

If you want to be seen as being at the beach,

or if you wanna be seen as standing at Apple Park,

like the picture you're showing right now,

you know, whatever you want,

if you wanna be wearing a business suit,

you know, it would be interesting

if you could have different pictures,

as you just indicated,

but it's nice that you can sort of choose.

So it's not a picture.

- And again, just quickly,

I gotta figure this out a little bit more too,

because I know that my wife, she upgraded,

no, I don't know if she upgraded her phone.

I believe she did,

but I know for a fact that she did not

go set up a contact poster.

But when she calls me now, Jeff,

It is the picture that I had associated with her in the contacts.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

And so that's what shows up.

Now, it's a little wonky that it's blurred a little bit because obviously it doesn't

fit the parameters.

It's a little circle or maybe a little square as opposed to like a full portrait picture.

But anyway, I want to look into that a little bit more.

And it had like a default font.

And it's lovely because I can look down there now and instead of it just saying my wife's

name at the top, it has her name but it has her lovely picture on there as well.

And it really was cool that it shows up,

but yeah, I wanna experiment with the contact poster

just a little bit more, which is good.

- There's so many new features

that you and I are gonna be talking for months.

- I know, I know, I know. - New cool features.

So go ahead.

- Well, one last thing quickly that you mentioned

was this article from Dan Morin about downloadable...

- Maps, yeah.

- Or I guess it's officially called offline maps, right?

Where you can download a map, which is really neat.

- Yeah, and I've tried that one.

So if you wanna do it, the way that you do it

is you go into your Maps app and type the name of a city.

So for example, I typed New Orleans, Louisiana.

And then once you type, once you tap it,

you'll see a little option

onto the side of the word New Orleans.

And it'll say like,

do you want to download a map of this city?

And then once I hit yes,

there's a square, like a rectangle on the screen.

And by default, it just had like the main city

of New Orleans and like the main suburbs,

but you can pinch in and out.

So for example, I didn't just want the part of New Orleans

that's below Lake Pontchartrain, which is the big lake here.

But I also wanted what we call the North shore

on the other side,

because if there's ever a place

that I might have a bad cell phone coverage

or might be up there.

So you decide how big of an area you want to include.

And it will tell you based upon this much area,

it's gonna take up this much space on your phone.

And it's very, very small.

It was for me, it was like 200K.

And so then it downloads the map,

which just takes a minute.

And then you have an option

that it can continuously update,

'cause of course the maps are improved over time, right?

So you wanna keep it up to date.

But the idea is that now I have a downloaded map.

So if I'm driving around and I lose my cell phone coverage,

well, my GPS is still gonna work,

but because the map is downloaded,

not only does it know where I am,

but it can show the map of where I am.

And so I think this is a great feature.

If you're traveling to another country

and you're not sure if you're gonna have cell phone coverage,

you know, I'm gonna go to Milan, Italy.

So let me download the entire city of Milan,

stick it on my iPhone,

and now I don't have to worry

about not having cell phone coverage.

I can still see where I am while I'm there.

So it's again, it's not something you're gonna use every day

but it makes a lot of sense.

Okay, iOS 17, so much more, we'll stop there

because we need to talk about the iPhone 15,

which I don't have yet.

You don't have quite yet

'cause you haven't jumped up from your seat.

- Actually, I just received it.

I see that it's now in my office.

So it's sitting in my mail room as we speak right now.

- You go and I will.

(laughing)

- You wanna pause for a second?

- That is so great.

I do wanna pause for a second.

Yeah.

we will be right back through the magic of technology.

So through the magic of technology, Brett, I am now back and I am peeling open the strip

for the live unboxing. The live unboxing! This is such great timing.

And there we go.

- Oh, look at that.

Okay, so tell us and tell everyone,

which model did you get?

- So for the first time ever,

I have gone for the big model.

I've thought about this for many years

and I decided this year,

I was really interested to try the 5X zoom on it.

- Yes.

- And so as I'm peeling the top off of my brand new iPhone.

So this is interesting.

I mean, I can instantly see the difference in size.

It's a little bit taller.

- Yeah.

- A little bit wider.

- But the weight, the weight, how does it feel?

- Okay, that is an excellent question, Brett.

And I tell you, the big one should weigh more.

And in fact, technically I know it does weigh more,

but as I go back and forth

between my left and my right hand,

- Yes.

- This is really interesting.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max feels lighter than my iPhone 14 Pro.

- I've heard that.

- That doesn't make sense,

but I think it has something to do

with the distribution of the weight or something like that.

- Yes. - That is bizarre.

- Well, it's titanium. - It feels like it's actually,

yeah, it feels like it's thinner.

It's not thinner, they're the exact same width,

but it feels just because of the way the weight

is distributed in the titanium.

That is really interesting.

Okay, so this is a good year for me to upgrade

because even though I'm getting a bigger phone,

I'm not getting a noticeably heavier phone.

That's really interesting.

Having said that, I can instantly feel the difference.

You know, I know so much what it feels like

- Of course.

- The width of an iPhone that's the smaller size of my hand.

And this is the first time in my life,

except for being at an Apple store,

that I've held the bigger one,

and it's a little bit bigger in my hand.

So that's gonna definitely be something to get used to.

It's not bad.

- I was gonna say, it's not gonna be that bad.

You'll get used to it in a couple of days.

You'll be fine with that.

- And I put it in my shirt pocket.

Actually, it mostly fits in my shirt pocket.

So obviously I'm gonna be playing with it this weekend,

but this will be cool.

So the real thing that I'm interested in though,

is the zoom lens on it.

because of the three lenses, one of them of course,

is instead of a 3X lens, it's a 5X lens.

- Yeah.

- I've been reading about this a lot this week.

And one of the things that excites me about it

is that there's, when you think about it,

there's not a huge difference between 2X and 3X.

Yes, it is more zoomed in, but it's only incrementally so.

But there's a pretty substantial difference

between 2X and 5X.

And one of the things that I link,

I know we're gonna talk about the Daring Fireball review,

but another thing that I linked to today, Brett,

was some pictures that Jason Snell had posted yesterday.

And if you want to pull them up on the screen, he's interesting because he's looking at a

hotel window because he's in Memphis right now and he's looking at a hotel window at

a store across the street.

And when you use the one X or the two X lenses, you can see the store across the street.

But then when you switch to the five X lens, you can literally read the words on the signs

in front of the store that you can't do otherwise.

It's just a different type of picture.

And so my thinking of it is, is, you know, for the times in life that I want to zoom,

Let's go ahead and really zoom.

You know, let's not, let's not be timid about our zoom.

Let's have a real zoom.

Zoom all the way.

We know that the zoom lens doesn't have, it's not going to be quite as detailed as the regular

lens.

You're going to get a better quality picture with the regular lens for many, many different

reasons.

Um, you know, the F stops are different and the quality is different, but things are going

to be bigger.

And so if you want to get close to something, you don't want to do a digital zoom because

that's going to be all blurry, you know, go ahead and do it for real with the 5X lens.

So, you know, again, this is, I haven't,

you've just seen me unbox it,

obviously I haven't used it yet,

but I'm excited about it for this possibility.

So the question for me is going to be over the course

of the next weekend, of the course of the next year,

you know, does the value of having the 5X lens,

and also it's got a bigger battery since it's bigger phone,

so I can go longer on a charge,

are those two advantages,

how are they going to compare to the larger size?

And then the other thing is just having a bigger screen

when I'm like looking at my emails

or if I'm reading a webpage, it's gonna be,

I mean, it's not a huge difference in screen,

but it's a big enough difference.

Am I gonna find that more enjoyable,

almost like it's a little mini iPad,

or am I gonna say,

hey, I don't really notice a difference at all?

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, you referenced the John Gruber Daring Fireball review

and right off the bat, he says,

he's got four reasons to consider upgrading

and he puts titanium first, above the camera.

So those Jason Snell pictures,

I thought were absolutely fantastic there.

And it just, that really brought home

how powerful that that camera is.

But I know as soon as I heard about the titanium

and even that weight aspect,

my 14 Pro to me feels so heavy.

And I think I said this last week,

especially when I pick up my wife's, you know, iPhone 12.

And I'm just like, wow, this is,

my 14 Pro is so much heavier.

And so I want to stay with the Pro model.

I'm not going max like you,

But I was so happy to hear about the titanium

and it's exactly what John Gruber says here.

I mean, he talks about, he goes,

don't shy away from admitting it, right?

But gadget lust is real.

People are drawn to exquisite objects and premium materials.

And so his argument is the titanium is just,

it looks really, really good.

People want the most exciting thing.

But I thought he had a really good discussion in here

about the fact that titanium is not new to Apple,

but they finally have maybe gotten closer to perfecting it,

certainly for the mobile aspect in here.

I really thought he did a good job writing about that.

- It feels really nice in the hand.

And you know what else is nice?

Not only the substance, but the side of the phone.

On my iPhone 14 and my prior phones,

it's not that it's a sharp edge,

but you can definitely feel that corner,

whereas it's a little bit more muted.

This is just not the material, this is just the case design.

And it feels really pleasant in the hand.

I tell you what, it's, you know, I remember years ago

when the iPhone was it between the four and the five

or between one of those generations when they added

Johnny Ive talked about the chamfered edges

and I had to look up the word chamfered

to see what it means. - I remember that, yeah.

- But that it was just, it wasn't just a sharp

90 degree angle, but it was sort of like, you know

cut in a little bit.

This is, it's not chamfered.

It's actually more rounded, but it's,

it feels super, super nice.

That's cool.

Very cool.

Is there any kind of a texture on the surface at all, Jeff?

Is it like, I don't know, when I hear titanium

and the way that they've had all these little bits

and pieces flying around, you know, I almost feel like,

you know, would it be like almost like a matte feel?

I mean, what does that feel like?

- It is, and I tell you, because the iPhone 14 Pro,

of course, it's got sort of the shiny,

- Right.

- Stainless steel on the side.

- Right, right.

- I wouldn't call it slippery,

but it's a tiny bit slippery, you know?

This is the reason that I would often use a case

if I was traveling,

I normally don't use a case day to day

So but this it has a matte finish. So of course, it's not as shiny

It does it does feel a tiny bit different. It's not grippy or anything like that

It's not like it's tacky or grippy

but um

I think that I wouldn't be surprised if there is a very very very tiny reduction in

Slippery Ness and then of course I showed off last week that I had the case that I already have the case just sticking there

And the case and like a glove if it's nice as you would expect

I'm gonna be very curious to see how this fine woman stands up over time

There was an article in the verge this week that said that if they scraped a bunch of keys next to it

They got it messed up. Of course if you scrape a bunch of keys next to a who's case it's gonna

Mess that up too, but right now if I'm not mistaken you have the black

Titanium color I like black because I've just always preferred the black iPhone

But I will say that a lot of people say and one of the most popular color of colors is the natural

So it really sort of looks like a like I expect titanium to look sort of that

You know sort of like a I don't know like a handgun gray sort of

That's a good look at too, but but the back the black looks great

I think you had a link to a story today. I can't fight it right now, but

the

Tim Cook prefers the natural titanium. That's what he chose. Yes exactly

There's there's natural there is white there is blue and black, but if you heard Jason Snell talk about this

It's really just different shades of gray.

It's all great.

Like it's not like that.

They really had a whole lot of the color spectrum here, but it's like you can get

gray a little bit less gray a little bit more gray and really really great.

Just what you have on the black side.

But it sounds like you're you're already pretty you're happy with the color

though.

It sounds like just even looking at it right off the bat there.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I agree.

It's not black black.

There was a time years ago that they had a jet black iPhone or forget

what model that was.

Yeah, this one is almost like a piano black, you know, like a grand piano

black.

This one is a dark gray.

It's a really, really dark gray.

Sometimes Apple calls this space gray.

You know, it's that sort of a dark gray.

But I think it looks really good.

- Okay, so we're going through the rest of this

in John Gruber's review here.

He starts with the titanium.

And he just, titanium is better functionally.

It's stronger.

Just as importantly, it's just really cool.

Then he goes into the camera side,

which I thought, again,

Jason Snell's little post that he did

of the three pictures,

I mean, I don't even know if you have to have any words

with that.

Just being able to see those three pictures side by side

is really great.

I gotta tell you though,

I've gotten lost in all the discussions here.

People talking about the 48 megapixel

and it's 1212 versus 2412.

Just all kinds of craziness in there, Jeff.

But I would like for you to explain that,

if not today, by next week

when you've been playing with yours.

- Yeah, let me say something about that.

When I bought the 14 Pro last year,

I was excited about it having a 48 megapixel lens

because of the detail that it could provide.

But as you and I discussed a little bit last week,

the reality was because it only shot 48 in raw mode

and I very rarely got into raw mode

'cause it's so complicated.

I didn't take advantage of it as much as I wanted to.

The new cameras, and this is the same

no matter what kind of iPhone 15 you have,

the regular, the plus, the pro and the pro max,

they all take advantage of slightly improved cameras.

They all have 48 megapixel lenses,

but they all create a 24 megapixel image.

And what happens is it uses basically half

of the 48 megapixels to create your image of 24,

which is still twice as big as it used to be last year.

So your picture sizes will have twice as many pixels,

but then it uses the other 12 at the top and the bottom

to sort of adjust the, sort of like the HDR,

the dimensions of it, the richness of the color.

And so as a result, although I had assumed

with this new iPhone, much like my iPhone last year,

when I first thought, I'm like,

"Oh, I'm gonna wanna be taking 48 megapixel pictures

the whole time."

I actually don't think that that's gonna be the case.

I'm gonna do some samples,

But I think the sweet spot is to keep it in the standard 24 megapixel mode because what

Apple is doing is they're using the extra megapixels not to make the picture more detailed,

but to make the picture come alive more, you know, more deep, more vivid.

Exactly.

Now, of course, you can switch it to 48 megapixel mode whenever you want.

And there may be times where if I'm taking a picture that I want to have some good details

in, I might take both, right?

I might just take the normal picture,

hit one button to switch into 48 megapixel mode,

and then take a second picture.

And I can decide later on my computer

which one I wanna keep.

But it looks like the 24 megapixel mode

is really the nice one.

Which also gets back to when you take a picture

with the zoom lens, the 5X lens,

it doesn't have a lot of that same,

that's one of the reasons why it's not gonna be

quite as good of a picture.

And so, and even if you, the standard mode picture

side by side to the 48 megapixel mode,

my guess is the standard mode picture

is going to often look better, maybe with the exception of zooming into those details.

So anyway, they've done some fascinating things.

And what's the most interesting about all of it is we're so past the days where taking

good picture was just about the physics of the camera, the type of lens you have.

Now we are fully into this age of computational photography where what is done with the picture

afterwards is so much more important than taking it.

Because of course, taking a picture on an iPhone is not a picture.

What it's actually is it's a series of pictures that are taken in rapid succession, far faster

than you could notice it, that are instantly processed and they are merged together to

create the best overall picture.

As opposed to, you know, when you and I were growing up, Brett, and we just had like a

little snap and shoot camera, it was just a picture, you know, and if it was either

a good one or a bad one, nothing you could do about it.

But now the iPhone is merging all these things to get the highs and the lows and to bring

out the shadows and bring out the details.

It's smart.

This one article that you linked to on pedo-pixel today.

I just, I love the, just the first line here.

And I think this sort of underscores like you explained in all of this, which is great

because you can understand it.

But he says here at the beginning, Apple rides a delicate line with its iPhone camera system.

On one hand, you want to keep it as simple as possible, right?

Just to your point, I just want to pull out a phone to capture the moment when the kids

are doing something.

you've got to also be able to provide some of these other tools for, you know, professional

photographers. And we've been talking about how professional photographers on a hike,

or they've going out and they're using it or even for video or for movies for crying out loud.

And, you know, there are those options in there if you really wanted to dig deep and turn on some of

that stuff and the log and the raw and the height, whatever it is these days. But it also works great

just to make sure that you can capture, you know, a dog running down the street or something along

those lines. And you know, it just that, like you said, this article really just kind of, I think,

brought that out to me a little bit like, oh yeah, when we talk about all these cameras,

they really are trying to straddle, I think, the broadest general audience that they can.

And it seems like they're doing a pretty good job with it so far. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so quickly on

the John Gruber, we talked about titanium, the camera, what are the other things? Oh, the action

- Oh, I can't wait until you start.

He loves it.

He thinks it really works out great.

I at first was a little hesitant about it

when I saw them announce it.

But now that I think about it,

especially reading John's article here,

you know, it really takes some time for me,

especially if you've got a case on there

to like put my fingernail in and to switch it off.

I'm really excited to try out the action button on that,

which you can set not just to be able to silent the phone,

but basically anything that you want it to be.

There's a few built-ins I know,

but then of course using shortcuts.

What do you think you might be using yours for Jeff?

Have you thought about it yet?

- I have.

My first observation is,

as I'm comparing my old phone to the 15,

the action button is the same size

as the switch from before.

- Oh, okay.

- It means that a very small button,

you know, when you go to the side of your phone,

your fingers know the size of the volume button,

you know how like it's a little bit bigger than your finger,

but that action button is tiny.

I guess I'll get used to it over time.

But I mean, that makes sense

because you don't want it to be that much bigger

than the Switch used to be,

but I just wasn't expecting that.

- Interesting. - I think I'm gonna start

by putting mine on the camera,

because for me, of the things

that I want my iPhone to do quickly,

I think jumping into camera mode

is probably the one the most.

I'm at home and my kids are doing something silly.

I wanna jump into the camera mode as fast as possible.

And I know that there's other ways

to jump into camera mode,

like swiping on the screen and stuff.

- Yeah, Gru talks about them, yeah.

- Yeah, and I think as John points out though,

if you're actually using your iPhone,

Well, you can't just swipe on the screen.

You have to turn it off.

- That's true.

- So I like the idea of jumping directly

into the camera mode.

So for sure, that's what I'm gonna start with.

But I will tell you the idea of connecting

the action button to a shortcut

and then letting you control what that shortcut is,

which is infinite.

It can be anything.

It wouldn't surprise me if months from now,

I have found some really useful shortcut

and I have that assigned to it.

But today, once I start to set this thing up,

I'm definitely gonna start by with the camera.

- Do the camera, okay.

All right, well, the last thing that John mentions,

of course, is USB-C.

So, gone, you are done with lightning cables now, Jeff.

(laughing)

Well, maybe mostly, right?

- Yeah, the USB-C connector at the bottom of this thing

is just ever so tiny bigger than the lightning connector,

which is interesting.

I think of them being the same size,

but it's just a slight, slight bigger USB-C.

But yeah, I mean, I don't know that that's gonna affect

my everyday life, you're right.

I mean, I'll be using one type of cord instead of the other,

Maybe I won't need those lightning cords as much,

but I'll still need them a little bit

because of like my AirPods for now.

I guess there will come a time years,

there will come a time years from now

when I won't be using it.

But you know, even with my AirPods,

I might start charging them on MagSafe more often,

especially now that I'm using stands

to keep my iPhone in standby mode.

So who knows, maybe I will get to the point

where I never touch.

I look forward to the day when my lightning cords

can go with my 30 pin connectors in the closet,

in the museum of ancient cables,

along with my SCSI cords and everything else

from days of yore, but we shall see.

- Well, again, I know we've talked about this before,

but you know, especially when I travel,

like my MacBook Pro is all USB-C.

That's how I plug it in, 'cause I don't bring,

like I even have a MagSafe on the MacBook Pro,

but I typically just travel with USB-C,

'cause my iPad Pro uses USB-C.

So I was bringing lightning cables,

mostly to charge my iPhone,

but also as we've talked about,

my AirPods Pro and my MagSafe chargers.

So it doesn't sound like you have upgraded

to the newer AirPods Pro second generation with USB-C.

(laughing)

- I have not.

- Right.

Not, but they're coming. - But what I have done.

- Yes.

- What I have done is the same thing as you.

My existing AirPod Pros are now using the new firmware.

- Yes.

- And you know, in fact, I'm curious to hear from you

'cause I think you've done this even more than I have,

Brett.

It used to be that there was the two modes.

there was either transparency mode

where you could hear the world around you.

And then there was noise cancellation mode

where you're not hearing the world around you.

But now there's this new in-between mode.

What do you think?

What's it called? - Jeff, I love it.

I call it, it's called adaptive noise

or adaptive sound.

I can't remember exactly.

It's adaptive something.

- Okay. - Here, you find it

because I will tell you, I have bionic ears now.

I love it.

So I'm in Chicago, right?

So I usually take the train back and forth.

Well, that thing is very loud.

So what would I do when I was traveling on this, Jeff?

I would put my AirPods in

and I would go into noise cancellation mode.

And it was great because it tuned out everything, the train,

but it also tuned out like the announcements of where I was

or if the driver came. - You don't want that, right.

- Exactly, or similar, like on a flight,

I don't know if I did it coming here yet,

but I wanna hear the pilot

if he's gonna make an announcement,

but I don't wanna hear the roar of the engines

kind of a thing.

I gotta tell you, I'm still experimenting with this

because it's just been a few days,

but Jeff, so far, I feel like it's like my ears

will automatically adjust as I'm walking around.

So the way I've done it before is I had transparency

and noise cancellation, and I would click and hold,

right, the little stem of my AirPod

to switch between those two, right.

And that was great 'cause I know if I'm getting

to the train, I'm gonna click and hold

and switch to noise cancellation.

But then that was it.

Like if I needed to hear somebody,

I would have to either reach up and click and hold again

to switch to transparency

or just rip an AirPod out of my ear, right?

Neither of which happens fast enough for me.

And it was just like,

well, I wish there was a little bit

of an easier way to do this.

I feel like now, and I'm still working

with this a little bit, but I put them both in Jeff.

I switched to, was it adaptive?

- Adaptive audio.

- Adaptive audio, thank you.

I switched to adaptive audio and I'm walking down the street.

And as I'm walking down the street,

I can hear the cars a little bit more

than maybe what I would want to.

But as soon as I start walking to the train

and the noises get louder,

I feel like the noise cancellation, it's very gradual.

It just kind of swoops in and I'm like, oh yeah,

that's exactly what I would want it to do.

Like that's, instead of it just being a drastic switch

into complete noise cancellation,

I just feel like it gradually just closes out

the additional noises.

And then when I get off the train

and I start walking through the streets,

then I can hear a little bit more.

It's a little more transparent

'cause I'm walking down the street.

I wanna see if a car is turning.

I wanna hear if car's coming up, that kind of a thing.

I am thrilled with it.

Now, I did leave on the option to click and hold my stem,

but now instead of switching between transparency

and noise cancellation, it's three options.

I can do transparency,

'cause I still wanna be able to at times

to just say no, full transparency, right?

Like when I'm jogging down the street,

I don't want it to be adaptive.

I want it to just stay on transparency mode.

And there are times that I want it to stay

in noise cancellation,

but I normally now will want it to be an adaptive audio.

And the great thing that I think Apple did here,

I'll just say, is when I click and hold,

in the past you know this,

it will give you a little audio cue

when you switch between noise cancellation and transparency.

And one was like, "Boo-doo-doo-doo."

And the other was like, "Doo-doo-doo-doo."

Like you could tell which one was which.

Now there's this, I think even John Gruber calls it

the joyful noise when you switch into adaptive audio.

And it really is nice to have that audio cue

because I know, you know, pretty much I can tell exactly

what mode I'm in without having to pull up, you know,

normally if I needed to do that,

sometimes I would have to pull my iPhone up

and go into like my Bluetooth settings

and see what is it in or on my Mac.

But I got to tell you so far,

I was very doubtful about this when they saw it.

'Cause we talked about this in the summer

when Apple announced it

at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

I was doubtful.

I'm like, okay, I don't know how well that can work,

but it works very good so far.

And I anticipate once Apple, you know,

gets some feedback from this,

it's going to continue to work even better.

And the great thing is it works on our current versions

of the AirPods Pro 2 Lightning Edition.

- Yeah, so I've played with the adaptive mode enough

to see that I think I like it more than transparency.

So right now I'm set up that I just switched

between noise cancellation and adaptive.

I'm just gonna switch between those two.

'Cause I don't think, you know,

anytime that I'm gonna wanna use transparency mode

is might as well just use adaptive mode.

For now, I'll change that.

But I haven't played around with it enough

to say for sure that I like it.

I wanna stick with it for a few weeks.

But the other new feature that the firmware provided

that I have used a few times now

is called the conversation awareness.

And this is an interesting mode.

It means that if you're in a noise canceling

or pretty much any mode that you're in,

if you're listening to a podcast or listening to music

and suddenly your AirPods can sense

that you're talking to somebody,

it will lower the volume first a little bit

and then more dramatically of what you're listening to.

So that you don't have to say, wait, let me pause.

You know, I can't hear you yet.

It just takes care of it.

And so I mentioned, I think on my blog today

that I got into the elevator the other day,

I was listening to a podcast and somebody asked me a question

And then instantly my volume went down and I was talking with her and she and I

talked for about, you know, five, 10 seconds and we could hear each other.

I could hear her just fine.

And then after we finished talking about a second or two later, my, my podcast

level just, it just came, it comes on back up and I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, now I've heard some people complain that like, well, Jason

Snell mentioned that he's walking his dog.

And he says, you know, you know, Fetch Rover or something like that.

He's like, I didn't really want my podcast volume to come down when I was just giving

the dog a command.

So I guess there's going to be some circumstances.

And I heard somebody else say that they were in a, a nosy grocery store or a train station

and it heard the voices around you and the iPad, the iPods, it's just assumed the AirPods

just assumed that they were talking to you when they really weren't.

So it's going to have to improve over time, but I have to admit so far that the once or

twice that I've used it, it's been pretty good.

Yeah.

what the answer to that is gonna be.

'Cause I tell you the way that I ran into this

is that I had my AirPods on.

I don't know if I was in full noise cancellation,

probably in adaptive audio.

So it was mostly noise cancellation

and I was listening to music.

I started singing along to the song

and the AirPods thought,

oh, well, you're having a conversation.

So immediately-- - Oh, that's too funny.

- It went out of noise cancellation

and I could hear so much more around me.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't wanna do that.

I'm just humming along to a fun song.

Like, don't go out of that.

So that's the way that I expected and anticipated.

But similar to your experience in the elevator

that you were describing, Jeff,

that's sort of the way that I feel like

that it works even with adaptive audio.

I mean, it's kind of the same technology, right?

And the sense that if it does understand

that maybe you are having a conversation,

then it will lower the volume or it'll stop the audio.

So far, again, I was very doubtful

when they talked about this in the summer,

but so far I have really been happy with it.

I'm just, you know, I think we're gonna have to have

more experiences with this a little bit more

before we can be confident.

- Do you think it's possible that you were singing

so off key that your AirPods thought,

there is no way in the world

that he is actually singing right now.

He must be having a conversation with somebody.

No judgment, I'm just saying.

- We're gonna stop the music.

We're gonna stop the music out of mercy.

- Out of mercy, yes.

- For the people around.

Oh, good.

Okay, we'll talk more about that, but let's,

okay, couple of other things quickly that came up.

How about the Apple Watch?

The update to the Apple Watch,

which was Apple Watch OS 10, right?

Well, now 10.0.1, since I updated this morning here.

Several fairly drastic updates.

I think you had a post on this, right?

You wrote about the, I say drastic in the sense that

the buttons aren't doing what my buttons did before.

That was the biggest thing.

Although I gotta tell you,

I feel like I've already over the last four days now

gotten comfortable with the new way, Jeff.

I thought it was gonna be a lot more drastic,

but at least for me personally,

maybe 'cause I knew some of these changes were coming up,

you know, so that it wasn't as much of a surprise.

I kind of like, I definitely like the additional widgets.

I definitely like the fact that

I can jump to the different apps.

The new watch faces are fantastic.

I have caught myself a couple of times

if I wanted to go and check my batteries percentage,

normally at the watch face,

I would just scroll up from the bottom.

Well, that doesn't work quite the same way.

It brings up those widgets.

Anyway, it's taken just a little bit of work to it,

but overall I'm very happy with the watchOS update.

- Yeah, I haven't yet decided what I think

about the new button assignments.

(laughing)

You know, you just have so much muscle memory

that you swipe up to see the battery

and now I need to press the button on the side.

So I'm not saying it's good.

I'm not saying it's bad.

I understand that Apple has put a new emphasis on widgets

in both the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple Watch,

and they wanna be more widget central.

And I think I like that, but when you change the buttons,

it just, I need to adjust to that.

But I will say that the thing you're showing

on your screen right now,

that's this article in GQ is so funny.

There is this new watch,

and it's the one that I'm using on my watch.

It's the Snoopy watch face.

And it's really, it's fun.

We've had an animated watch face before

with some of the characters from "Toy Story,"

And of course the Mickey Mouse and stuff, but the Snoopy one brings it to a whole new

level.

There are well over a hundred animations.

Every single time that I lift my wrist, I get to see another cute little Snoopy animation.

And the article is really cute because they talked to the guy that developed it, who knew

Charles Schultz and works there and is now in charge of this stuff.

It's it's, it's a lot of thought and design went to this watch face.

And after a week or two, I'm sure I'll get bored with it and I'll switch off to it, but

It is a very fun, nice new watch face.

And you know, Snoopy has been on watches, you know,

for he's been one of the iconic watch faces

since the sixties and stuff like that.

So it makes sense for, you know,

much like a Mickey Mouse watch is something that people,

you know, it means something in society.

A Snoopy watch means something too.

And so how fun to have a little animated Snoopy.

I mean, I just look at my watch right now

and I see Snoopy and Woodstock.

- It's fun.

- You know, Snoopy's throwing Woodstock

on a paper airplane and I look at them again

and they're jumping up and they don't just do animations.

They interact with the clock.

And so like, depending upon where the minute hand is,

Snoopy will jump up on the minute hand

and he'll like throw out a fishing rod

and do stuff like that.

It's very fun.

So it's silly, but it makes me happy.

- Oh, it's gotta make you happy.

I didn't read the full article,

but I heard somebody else talk about it on another podcast

and just the amount of time and love,

literally the passion that went into this,

to make it all those little details

like you're talking about.

I haven't tried the Snoopy watch face yet.

The main reason Jeff is because with my Apple Watch Ultra,

I was more excited about the new modular Ultra watch face

which came out, I changed to it immediately

and I don't think I can go back.

I can't, they now finally are using every single space

of the screen.

I can have the seconds go around the outside

or I can actually have elevation on there.

I have now, I think I have seven complications

on my watch face Jeff.

- Oh my goodness gracious.

It's fantastic, plus the time, by the way.

So it still tells the time, but I've got my date,

I've got a calculator, I've got my timer,

I've got the weather, I've got my compass,

so I can jump straight to my compass.

And then in the middle, like the other modular watch faces,

you can have a fairly large type of widget.

Right now I've got flighty, because the flighty app

did have now finally an update for the Apple Watch,

and that's fantastic to have in there.

Normally I have like my activity,

but there's so much that I can put on there.

I'm almost overwhelmed, but I love it.

Like I welcome all of that information.

So that was the other one.

And you do have to have the Apple Watch Ultra

in order to get that.

I will tell you quickly on this.

If you remember the Apple Watch Ultra had,

I forget the name of the ultra specific watch face

that they had, Jeff.

But if you remember on the Apple Watch,

you could turn the digital crown on that new face

and it would go all red.

You know, you remember what I'm talking about?

- Yeah, yeah, the night mode, right.

- Into a night mode, exactly.

Well, guess what?

The digital watch crown does not do that anymore.

It almost has its own switching back and forth

into night mode.

And so the funny thing that I've noticed

that if it is dark in the room,

it'll go automatically into that night mode.

The only thing that I have a beef with it so far

is in the past, I would purposely spin the digital crown

to go into the night mode.

Well, now if I wear a long sleeve shirt,

or if I have a suit jacket on, guess what?

It covers up the watch, the Apple Watch face.

And so when I pull my sleeve back to check the time,

it's in night mode.

Not that big of a deal, but it's like,

well, wait a minute, no, no, I want the colors.

I don't want the red face, the night mode.

So just a little thing that I get to get over.

And of course it only works

in those Apple Watch ultra specific watch faces,

but I'm very happy both with the,

I'll try the Snoopy eventually

just because people have been talking about it so much,

but I also like the new modular ultra watch face.

Oh my goodness, okay, phone.

We haven't even talked about the iPad today.

That's okay, we'll leave that for later

'cause there's some really good stuff in there

and I know you gotta be writing about that too

with the interactive widgets and everything.

We did the phone, we did the AirPods, we did iOS 17.

TV, Apple TV, let's not forget Apple TV OS,

you gotta update it too.

And the big news there, another column.

- Yeah, I haven't even turned on my Apple TV yet this week.

So when I go to watch TV tonight,

I'll get to see the new screen.

- The other thing that they announced,

now we just have like a quick rundown here.

If you need more iCloud space,

you can now buy more than two terabytes,

which used to be 9.99 a month.

And now you can buy six terabytes for $30 a month,

or 12 terabytes for $60 a month.

I admit we upgraded to Apple One subscription, right?

Quite a long time ago, Jeff,

probably because I remember you kept mentioning

how great it was.

We love it for all of the options that it gives,

but the Apple One subscription

comes with a two terabyte space.

I don't think we're anywhere close to filling that up.

So I don't really necessarily feel the need to upgrade,

but I'm just wondering, you know,

you can get iCloud storage separately,

but are they gonna up our storage options

in the Apple One subscription?

I don't think anybody's mentioned that yet

or Apple hasn't said anything about that yet.

- Yeah, I haven't even looked at the option.

I'm sure there's a way that you could spend more money.

I mean, I'm sure Apple will be happy

to take my money and get more.

The last time that I checked,

my family was using about 1.3 of the two.

So, you know, I'm not going over it,

but I'm not that far away either.

- You're getting close.

- So we'll have to see how that works.

- Well, before we get into In The Know,

let's quickly talk about SaneBox, our sponsor today.

Thank you for hanging with the SaneBox.

And even more so, thank you for the service

that you provide because I know we've talked

about SaneBox quite a bit and I get it almost every day.

I am so thankful for, for me, the biggest thing

that I still appreciate is the SaneNews folder, Jeff.

So I didn't realize, I think before SaneBox,

how many like general newsletters

that I subscribe to in my email.

You know, over the years, you just say,

oh, that's a great, interesting product.

I wanna know when you get something more

than just like Weber grills.

Yeah, I wanna know when you send a recipe.

New York Times, you know, sports.

When I buy something from somebody,

they usually put me on their email list.

And in the past, I didn't ever wanna unsubscribe

from some of these newsletters

'cause I would like to every once in a while,

I just wanna know what's going on.

But I didn't wanna put 'em in spam.

And so I would just leave 'em in my main inbox.

And then I would just have to filter through them

and delete them and take the time to maybe delete

or look through them quickly,

while I really wanted to get to the email

that really mattered.

Well, now with SaneBox, it's just so much easier for me,

Jeff, I'm so happy that by,

even without me interacting with anything,

the newsletters all get shuttled

into the SaneNews folder.

And it's just so great.

I know that it's not getting deleted,

I know that it's still there,

and maybe once a day,

I'll go through and check the SaneNews folder.

while I'm checking my regular inbox,

you know, maybe once an hour.

But I know that all those newsletters

are getting shuttled over into the same news folder.

And so at the end of the day or so,

I can just go directly into that same news folder

and I just will look at those emails.

Yeah, I don't need that, don't need that.

Ooh, I wanna see what they're talking about.

You know, that's an interesting thing.

But in those times that I check my regular inbox,

it's just so much quicker

because I don't have to wade through

all of the newsletters and stuff that I get all the time.

So thank you, SaneBox for the SaneNews folder.

I know I've talked about this before,

but it just continues to be my absolute favorite feature

that they have and pretty much means

that I can't ever get rid of SaneBox

from this point forward.

- Yeah, and the thing about the newsletters too

is that when you talk about saving them

that you're gonna wait till this weekend to read them,

they sort of junk up your inbox, right?

Because you might have a newsletter

and then an email that matters,

and then two more newsletters,

and then two more emails that matter.

And so when you're looking at your inbox,

just sort of like, it's confusing. Like, is something unread because I need to read it

and act upon it? Or is something unread because I'm saving it for this weekend?

Whereas when SaneBox automatically moves that for you, it just makes it work so much better.

So that's what I like about it. I mean, I have it set up on two accounts right now,

my iPhone JD and my Gmail. And when I look at the inbox instantly, it's like, I'm only seeing the

things that matter. And then later on, I will go look at SaneNews or SaneLater or something else.

So, so yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to describe, but it just makes you much

more efficient. It allows you to get in and out more quickly and it allows you to know right now

I'm in the mode where I want to look at emails that are for me. And then right now I'm in the

mode where I want to look at newsletters that I subscribe to that were sent to me. And it's just,

I love that you can quickly jump to those modes. So yeah, I highly recommend SaneBox. Any of our

listeners that haven't tried it out yet you know, you should at least just try it for a week or two

and just see what you think. I think you can always go back. Yeah. Right. Right. I've said it

it before quickly, it's literally like having my own personal assistant just for email.

My email assistant.

Right, right.

Because it's like, they're just saying, "Okay, Brett, we know you've got a lot of email coming

in, but here's the ones you need to look at now, and then you can go and get the others

later."

But yeah, for anybody that hasn't looked at it, you can go to sanebox.com/inthenews, all

one word.

We've got a special page set up there at sanebox.com/inthenews.

You can go get a free trial.

And then, once you realize that you can't do without it, just like me, I can't do without

my SaneNews folder right now, you can sign up for one of the subscriptions.

They're really cute.

How do they have it?

It's called Lunchbox and Dinner.

You can sign up for a subscription.

And if you sign up through the link that we're giving you here, you can get $25 towards a

SaneBox subscription.

So SaneBox, S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com/inthenews.

So thank you, SaneBox, for being a partner with us

and helping us out on In The News podcast.

And thanks everyone for listening to us as well.

In the know.

All right, I thought quickly we would just pick

our favorite iOS 17 feature.

The ones that we already haven't gone through and mentioned.

And I will pick quickly, the small,

to your point that you said,

the small but amazing little tiny improvements

to the Safari browser on my iPhone.

I don't know that I was aware

that they were gonna make some improvements.

I know they talked about the number one thing

was profiles, right?

And I set this up this morning and I liked it.

I don't know exactly how I'm going to use it,

but I can go in and set up a profile for my Safari

so that I can go, for example,

have a business profile, right?

These are just some of the links that I want to maybe,

you know, have open or tabs that I wanna have open

from like a business perspective,

because this is something I'm reading,

maybe a Law Review article or something else.

But then I can have a personal profile in Safari

so that it would just be tabs open

that things that I wanna research

or things that the fun things maybe

that I just don't want kind of getting intermingled

with my serious tabs.

I can have my personal tabs.

So that's number one, the profiles.

But I think even more, the more immediate thing

that I noticed when I went into my Safari browser

on the iPhone is we talked about the fact,

not too long ago, when they made the changes

to a lot of stuff, like the tabs are at the bottom,

I am so much muscle memory now,

where I can just flip around on the bottom,

and if I wanna create a new tab,

I just basically put my thumb in the bottom URL box,

and then flip up, right?

And then all of my tabs now come into a visual component,

and I love that.

If I'm in the tabs, though,

I don't know that this was available before.

Maybe it was, but I can now just swipe left to right

on my tabs at the bottom, Jeff,

and I can go to my different tabs

and it just pulls them in.

I think that might've been available before,

but for whatever reason,

it just became more apparent to me.

Like I didn't even think about it and I just saw that

and I'm like, okay, well I can now flip back

and forth on there.

And then when I flip up and see all the tabs,

it actually lists the number of tabs

that I have open down here at the bottom,

which is now 35, that's a lot.

But it gives me the ability then

that I can go into some of the other options there

if I wanted to go into the private mode, for example,

or if I wanted to have a different tab group.

So that was a lot there,

but really just the improvements in iOS 17

that came for the Safari web browser are really great.

I like the fact that you can go

and create even private browsing mode now,

and it will lock the private browsing mode now

with your face ID.

So that wasn't available before,

but that's something new

that if you wanted to go into private mode,

then you can lock it now,

and then you can only open it with your face ID

and you can flip back and forth between that there

at the bottom on there as well.

So that's my general pick, my favorite things,

'cause I'm realizing I really do a lot in Safari

on my phone, just for general research

or just checking on things or trying to win a bar bet

or something, I mean, I'm always going into Safari

to check on those things.

So I appreciate just the little tiny incremental updates

on there.

- So here's my tip today and it's a photography tip

for the camera app in iOS 17.

I have noticed over the years that many times I will take a picture and it's a nice picture

and then I go home and I look at my computer and when I look at the picture on the big

screen I can see that it's a little tilted to the left or to the right.

You know, often you'll notice it if there's like something that should be completely flat

in the picture, like, you know, a picture frame.

You're like, oh, I thought it was holding my camera the right way, but I guess it was

a little tilted left or right.

But one of the cool features of iOS 17 is in addition to having the sort of very, very

light on screen grid, which has been there for a while.

When you're holding your camera pretty either in your portrait or in landscape mode, when

you're pretty close to level, you will suddenly see in the middle of the screen this line.

It's a level line.

Oh, really?

And it starts off white but when you get to the point where it's perfectly flat, it will

actually turn yellow.

And once it's in that yellow part, you'll know using the gyroscopes inside the camera

that it is perfectly level.

And so if you take your picture right then, it's going to be a perfectly straight picture.

It's a little guide and if you don't like it, you can turn it on or off if you go in

the settings app to camera composition level, you can turn it on or off, but it's a tiny

little feature.

It doesn't really get in the way if you're not using it, but I sort of like it if you

are using it, if you just want to frame that perfect picture and you want everything to

be perfectly level.

It's such a cool, it makes so much sense to have the level built into the camera.

I almost am surprised that it hasn't been done years and years ago because this is one

of these things that once you look at it, you're like, oh, well, of course that makes

sense.

So it's a nice new feature.

I've been enjoying it, using it a little bit this week.

I'll be enjoying using it even more

with my brand new camera in the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

But that is the level of the camera.

- In about 20 minutes, right?

- Exactly.

(laughing)

- Now, okay, so it's not on by default, I don't think,

'cause I'm trying it right now.

- Oh, so maybe you have to turn it on.

- Oh, wait, there it comes.

- There it is.

It only comes when I have it on this level.

- Yeah, yeah.

I went into camera, into settings, camera,

and then there's a composition box there

where I usually turn my grid off, right?

And I think in this, the picture I have on screen here,

the grid is on, but you don't have to have the grid.

You can just turn the level on and wow.

- It's really not very obtrusive.

If you're worried that this is gonna be like

this big honking line in the middle of your screen,

no, it's incredibly tiny.

It's not gonna get in your way.

It doesn't distract from taking a picture,

but it does make it easier to give a perfectly level picture.

So I like it.

I recommend that you try it.

That's something, yeah, that is really neat.

So many little Easter eggs, well not even Easter eggs,

I mean they're apparent.

It's just we gotta find them all, Jeff.

This is crazy.

Woo, okay, well my friend, thank you for your patience

because if I was in your place, I would say,

hey, can we record this podcast later?

(laughing)

Because I wanna play with my new iPhone 15 Max.

Okay, Pro Max.

Well, I'm very happy for you, my friend.

I expect a full rundown next week

so that we could talk a little bit more.

I wanna say thank you to SaneBox again

for sponsoring us today, sanebox.com/inthenews.

Thanks to them.

And thank you, Jeff, as always.

We'll talk with you next week.

Looking forward to it.