Welcome to In the News for September 12th. It's a Saturday, 2026. There's a reason why.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD. Hey, Brett.

We actually did try recording yesterday, Jeff. We had a few technical difficulties with travel and things.

And now I was in a hotel yesterday. You couldn't get it work. You're in a hotel today, although you still sound great.

flipping the the uh the the the text just a little bit here but that's okay because it worked out

you have successfully pre-ordered one of the brand new phones so let's talk about this week surprise

surprise surprise that was surprise and shine was the tagline that apple had for this week's

announcement, I guess, or event is what they call it. I'm trying to still process all of this,

Jeff, because this was Wednesday. It was like an hour and a half. I mean, maybe an hour and 40

minutes or so. First event where John Turner stepped out as the CEO of Apple. Although I did

go back and rewatch because I had missed the very first minute of that. And I'm sad that I did because

wow, what a nice little cameo by Tim Cook to be like, no, not me. It's that guy. That was nice to

start everything off. And then the announcements started happening and they did not stop. I mean,

a lot of this I felt like we expected and kind of knew about, but boy, the surprises to me just came

in the little details that unfolded, if you will, throughout the event. Absolutely. That was the

thing. We knew big picture items because of the rumors. We knew there was going to be a folding

phone. We knew there was going to be an iPhone 18 and even thought it would have a better aperture.

but the details and what Apple did, it's like, this is the polish.

This is what makes Apple Apple. And this is what we want.

This is what makes the products that we use for both work and play just so

valuable. And I was so incredibly impressed by the announcements this week.

Let's, so let's, let's, let's get to it. Where should we start?

Well, let's go right to your article because you do this every year,

which is great.

You have a post on iPhone JD called why lawyers will love the new blank iPhone

models. It happened to be the iPhone 18 Pro and the Pro Max. Interestingly, not an 18, nothing like

they didn't announce that you can get into some of that. But you write these great articles every

year after this event. Now, and again, it says why lawyers will love these phones. But I always say

this every year as well. This is good for any professional that just wants to get a good rundown

of what they should be looking for within the new models, what's going to be important,

what we didn't see or maybe did see.

Anyway, you did a great job of walking through that.

So let's start with the headline.

The one more thing was the iPhone Duo.

You get to that.

But let's start with the iPhone 18 Pro and the Pro Max.

Okay.

By the way, just a little behind the scenes,

I do very frequently have these posts that say why lawyers will love.

But if you actually look back in history at the almost 18 years of iPhone JD,

There have been a few years when Apple's announcements have been a little bit more bland, and I have not called the post.

It has just been, okay, here's the story on blank type thing.

But the years that I really think that people are going to get some real value, and most years that's true, you can sort of tell my enthusiasm by the title of the post.

So again, let's start with the 18, and then we'll get to the duo, which is the more interesting one perhaps, although the 18 is amazing too.

Every year, Apple does an iterative change for their iPhone.

And iPhones are so powerful.

They're so strong.

I'm using my iPhone right now to talk to you for this Zoom conversation.

Yes.

You're listening to me through the iPhone right now.

And they're just so incredible.

And every year, they need to give them better.

And so the two big changes to the iPhone 18 this year, and there's a number of them.

There's more battery life and other great stuff too.

But the two big ones are the processor and the new lens for taking photographs.

But they're particularly good changes this year. I mean, to sort of start with the processor, Apple always has the new processor every year. Some years are a little bit more of an incremental change. Some years are a little bit more transformative. And it's not just the A20 Pro, which is the chip that they're using here. Not only is it a faster chip, but it has been specially designed through technical ways that are a little over my head to do even better jobs of processing AI.

And I just feel like this is one of those years, you know, Apple has been talking about AI for a while.

Two years ago, they claimed they were coming out with it and fell flat in their face.

They went back to the drawing book.

They connected with Google to get Gemini.

But everyone that's been using the beta over the summer says that this is it.

I mean, this is the truly useful AI.

And Apple had some good examples in their presentation this week.

Yeah.

A real gold example of people asking questions about, you know, what was this thing that we talked about?

And it helps you.

It's really truly your extra brain that just can remember things and find things and make connections and get information and then act upon it.

And you can interact with it just by talking to Siri in a way that's very natural and very helpful.

And so to take full advantage of that, this stuff is incredibly processor intensive.

And in fact, a lot of this stuff is using AI on your device, which is great for privacy.

So you want to have the best possible phone.

And I'm not saying that the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 16 Pro, a lot of devices will work well, but you're going to get the best possible performance with something that's really tuned for it.

And that's what Pro and Pro Max are going to be.

And so that's why, you know, the new iOS 27 comes out on Monday.

I mean, yeah, September 14th.

You know, it may have already come out by the time you're listening to this podcast, unless you listen to it right when it comes out.

So this is it.

We are there.

And this new phone is going to be the best possible way to really tap into that stuff.

So I feel like this is one of those years that it's a good – if you're interested in just sort of seeing how can this enhance my life, this is a good year to get the beefiest device, which is the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max.

So that's why I'm – that's one of the reasons I'm excited about it.

Before I go on the camera, any thoughts that you had on the processor, the A20 Pro?

Just, again, this is the same story every year, and it's a good story.

It's faster, better, sleeker, right?

I mean, and that really comes down to the processors.

And ever since that Apple has started creating,

you know, building these processes internally,

I'm just continuing to be amazed

at the leaps in technology.

And, you know, we just get the very type little,

you know, crust of that

because we as, you know, normal lay people

that just cannot fathom the understanding

of even what a nanometer is necessarily.

I mean, we just understand it.

I think you said it in your post here.

All you really need to know is that it has better performance so it can do more and it's more efficient.

I mean, and that's really what we need to know as, you know, the general consumers on this.

But my point being is they started showing some of these tools and I was looking to see if they have it on their website.

You know, they show these pictures every year of where it's like, hey, there's there's they show like an outline of the chip.

And like there's more chips here.

There's more GPU here.

There's more CPU here.

There's more neural engines here.

And I want to see like a spectrum of like what it started out as with maybe like the A2 or A3 chip and how it continues to build and iterate on this.

And again, I just can't fathom how critical this is and how important that it is.

But for most of the people that were just sitting there, it's more than I think that we can really fathom on here.

I can't find the little pictures that they're doing on there.

But that plays out into everything else too, Jeff.

It's the battery power. It's, you know, it's the response time when you're touching the screen.

It's again, to your point about how Siri AI and everything is going to be able to take so much advantage of it.

And quickly, I'll just underscore the battery part, because one thing has stuck out to me from from that presentation.

And this week is that the iPhone 18 Pro will have longer.

I think this is correct. It will have longer battery life than today's iPhone 17 Pro Max,

which again, the Pro Max has a bigger battery.

So the iPhone 18 Pro, not the Max,

but the Pro theoretically would have a smaller area for battery,

but because of all of these improvements, including the chip,

it's going to have longer.

I mean, that blows my mind.

And I think a lot of this is underscored by the internal guts here that we're

talking about.

So the efficiency is the thing and the power, you know,

if you're going to focus on just two numbers, one of them is,

and I mentioned this in my post that it's the first processor for,

the phone to be using a two nanometer process as opposed to a three nanometer.

That gets smaller over time.

And I explained the details of that technically in my post, but in terms of what it really

means is, you know, Apple is saying, and we're now starting to see, I just linked to one

of those things from Tom's hardware in this week's post that we're starting to see some

initial results that like, we're talking like 40% more powerful for some tasks.

That's going to really help for, again, if you're just reading emails on your iPhone,

whatever, that's not gonna make a difference.

But when you're doing some of this AI stuff, this is going to make it a lot more responsive.

And, you know, this is going to make a big difference.

And so and to be clear, we're talking about this processor in the context of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

But the same processor is also in the iPhone Duo that we're going to talk about in a second.

So, yeah, I'm very excited about that.

The other thing is iPhone cameras.

You know, so many people take fantastic, you know, pictures with the camera.

for many, many years of my life, I used a DSLR camera, a very nice Nikon camera with very nice

lenses. And I loved it. And I took fantastic photos and my wife did as well. And a couple of years ago,

I got to the point where I'm like, you know, my iPhone camera, it's not always better,

but in so many times it is better because even though the lenses are smaller, so it can't

physically do the same thing that a big Nikon or Sony or something camera can do. But because

it has all the processing capabilities, it can give you a picture. You know, what it takes in

might not be as sophisticated, but through all the processing it does, which is even better than a

Nikon, that you end up with a better picture. And at the end of the day, I don't care how you get

there. I just want a good picture. Right. Plus with my phone, it's always with me. It's always

in my pocket. There's no bulk. Exactly. That's what I'm definitely to the point where I never

really use my Nikon anymore. And I'll probably never buy another one again, even though there

were years where like, you know, every, you know, maybe not every couple of years, but over time I

would spend, you know, thousands of dollars on these fancy cameras. I don't do that anymore. Now

I just spend thousands of dollars on my iPhone. But one of the things that a fancy camera always

had was the ability to change the aperture, to change how much light is coming in and out.

And, you know, as I said in my post, we all know you can just look at somebody's pupil in their eye

and you can see like on a sunny day outside, you know that your people get smaller, right?

And then at nighttime, it will get bigger to take in more light. So this just makes sense to have

something mechanically changing. And so for the first time ever, we now have iPhones that will

mechanically change to either let in more light or less light. And so for example, it can let in,

and I talked about the specific F stops if you want to get into things, but don't worry about

the numbers. What really matters is that this new iPhone can let in more light than any other iPhone

in the past by getting even bigger or less light by getting even smaller, which means that it's

going to have so many things that it can do. It can take low light photography is I'm sure going

to be much better. That's going to be great. But even when you have a lot of light, you can take,

you can control it more. You can, you can get more exact and what you need for the best picture.

And then this bokeh effect where things in the background look more blurry, which has always been

a hallmark of professional photography. Like if you were a professional photographer to take

pictures of your family for, you know, Christmas or Hanukkah, whatever, like you're, this is what,

You know, this is one of those things you could say, oh, this is a professional picture because this has done so well.

The iPhone is now going to be able to do this.

It's been able to fake it a little bit in the past, and Apple has some software to sort of fake that too.

But now it's going to be able to do it for real in ways that are going to be much more satisfying pictures.

So I think this is going to be, you know, there's three cameras on the Pro.

And last year they improved the wide angle and the telephoto by making the telephoto even closer.

This year, they didn't change those other two, but the middle one, the main camera, the one that you use 90% of the time, that's now better because of the aperture.

And I'm excited about it.

By the way, let me just have a little mea culpa.

When I did my post earlier this week, for some reason, I was thinking that the physical aperture feature was only on the Pro Max.

I don't know.

I was taking my notes at that.

And I was actually wrong.

And somebody did a comment on my post.

I'm going to give him credit.

Mark Greenfield.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I saw that down here.

and said i said jeff i think you have this wrong and mark was absolutely right so i went back and

i added my post both the pro and the pro max have this cool aperture feature so yeah i can get on

that but like i think it's gonna make a big difference and in every year as apple improves

the camera you're like well gosh what more could they do and this is just an example of you know

there's always more they can do and let me just end by saying apple for the iphone for years has

has been moving towards, they want to get away from physical parts that can break and move,

you know, more buttons, more, you know, a sense, you know, something that can sense your finger as

opposed to actually going in and out as you press it. But this is one of the rare examples where like,

you know what, we just need to have something that physically moves. And so they created this,

you know, this, this, this, this aperture thing. It's a, it's a tiny part. They say like the little

blades that make up the circle of the aperture are like as thick as a hair. I mean, they're human

hair right but crazy you know for apple to decide adding a physically moving part to an iphone they

must think it makes a big difference so i can't yeah yeah play it and so as you said brett just

before we started recording this morning on saturday morning i jumped online i i ordered it

um problem ordering through that apple store app i kept getting an error message and so i jumped

over to the apple website and that worked fine and so i have ordered mine i decided to uh to you

can either have it delivered or pick up from a store. I decided to pick it up from a store. So,

you know, after we record next week's episode, we're going to record in the morning and then

I'm going to run out to my local Apple store and pick it up. That way I don't have to sit around

and wait for the, you know, UPS or FedEx driver to show up all day. And so I'm going to be really

looking forward to playing with that. And the camera is going to be one of the first things I

play with. And then the second thing I play with is going to see how well it does with all of the

new Siri AI features. So I'm really excited about this new iPhone. I think this is one of those

years that, and again, there's other new features too. You mentioned battery life and stuff,

but those are the two big ones that I see. And I think that they are meaningful

differences. They're going to make the iPhone better for people that decide this is a year to

upgrade. I listened to a short interview from, it was Mark Spoonhour from Tom's Guide and Lance

Ullanoff. I haven't seen that yet. You've got to watch that because it was, it was talking with

John Ternus and Jaws from Apple and Jeff, it was an excellent, excellent interview. But I remember

specifically mark spoon hour was asking about the fact that they've added this physical now camera

you know uh feature in here first of all john turnus came from the hardware side and i've seen

multiple but by the way let's just say i thought john turnus did an excellent job it was all

pre-recorded videos but just the way i mean i get nothing against tim cook of course because i have

so much respect for tim but because i think to some extent or maybe i'm just reading into this

john turnis came from the hardware side all these years he's got a little bit more of a connection

maybe with some of this and just his enthusiasm or the way that he was talking about it it just

it really came over very well for me so in this in this little uh interview that they were doing

mark's moon they were asked john like okay why you know people are concerned that you put in some

physical components into the into the iphone you know is that going to be as durable like is that

going to be you know what happens and john looks at him and he says well first of all the iphone's

always had physical parts in it it's it's not like it's you know it's not like it's anything new

but to your point that you were saying app it was it was it's very obvious apple has put so much

thought into this right and they have made sure that it's going to work the way that it's going to

you know from the quality standpoint and i mean they've been very forthright i i don't know where

the little image is but i remember seeing it maybe it was in the little video as part of the event

that they showed exactly how those little plates, you know, work together and how it's like sliding

back and forth. And it's just amazing that that's, that that's even in there and just giving

certainly more professional. I mean, they even talk about this in the interview.

If you're a professional photographer, you can take full advantage of that,

but there's so many of us that I don't really want to take the time to understand how to do all that.

Although you did a great job of explaining F stops and everything. I just don't really understand all

that i just wanted to take the best picture and the software will still control that for me when i

just want to click the shutter it whether regardless of whether it uses physical components or not on

there and brett you don't have to understand that because even when i had my fancy nikon camera all

the time yeah just every fiddly right exactly do that one percent of the time 99 of the time

i just let that slr camera you know i was in automatic mode and it did its thing and the

iPhone, of course, is even better.

So you don't necessarily have to understand what F-stop.

Just tell your iPhone, just take a picture,

and it's going to automatically make those adjustments.

All that you're going to notice is that your picture is like,

wow, this is really a nice, you know, I would assume.

I'll see you next week when I start to have it.

Yeah.

It's going to be great.

Right.

Okay, a couple of things just real quick.

I wanted to highlight it, maybe a couple of others.

First of all, they spent a good amount of time

talking about the improved vapor chamber.

I still just like talking about a vapor chamber in here.

But yeah, I mean, from the, again, I do, I cannot understand all of the details involved in this, other than the fact that it's going to be not as hot to use when I'm using something, if I ever do, that's really taxing on the device.

And it's just, again, it goes back to the efficiency component on there.

But they spent some time, they were pretty proud of what they've come up with here as well.

And can I just say that for 10 seconds, when the first vapor chamber was used in an iPhone, and you and I talked about it, was it just last year or was it two years ago?

It was, last year.

But it made a big difference because heat is the enemy of these processors.

They're so small.

Right.

If they overheat, you can't do as much.

The new vapor chamber is like much bigger.

It's the entire length of the phone.

And so it's going to allow it to be more efficient, to be more powerful, to run hotter.

But this is a way that you can understand it.

Have you ever had a situation, Brett, this has happened to me, where you're using your iPhone, maybe you're outside on a hot day or something, and it's just so hot that your screen really dims.

You can see a physical effect.

You're like, oh, wow, this thing is overheating.

We've all been there before.

Having this vapor chamber the entire length of the iPhone, I just think that this has the potential to make a big difference.

And so, again, I look forward to trying it in practice.

But I think this is, it's not just that new A20 processor.

It's not just the other advancements.

I think that this vapor chamber is going to be a big part of the reason that the new iPhone

is a better iPhone.

Another thing that caught my eye was an improved dynamic island.

Oh, yeah.

I love this because, so right now you can have a total of two items up in the top of the dynamic

island.

And again, this is getting, I feel like the first world type problems here.

But I love it because when I travel, I will have like live activities from the United app.

I'll have live activities from the Flighty app.

But I'll also be having Spotify playing music.

Well, I can only see two of those.

And typically, it's the United and Flighty app.

And I can't access my Spotify live activities in order to tap it to go to it.

So now if you can see, again, this is very, very tiny.

But I'm really excited about this.

You can now have three items up in the Dynamic Island, which I generally call working with the live activities.

Dynamic Island does other things as well.

But you can see up here, it shows right here, there are three items.

So I could have Spotify, United app, and the Flighty app all accessible from the Dynamic Island.

They redesigned it, made it, I think, a little smaller.

But you can put more information up there.

And again, little thing, but I'm pretty excited.

I mean, this all started because Apple wanted to have a screen in the iPhone 10, the entire screen.

And by not having a band across the top that would have like the front facing cameras and stuff like that, they had to have a way to sort of hide it in the phone.

So it started out as a disadvantage that there was, you know, originally it was the notch.

Right. And so it was like a downside.

And then Apple's like, how can we take a negative?

Right.

And then it into a positive by having things around those physical cutouts, the camera lens, stuff like that, which led to the dynamic island.

And I just think it's such a wonderful thing.

If you take a negative, you turn it into a positive.

And I'm assuming, I heard you say, Brett, the way that they're able to fit three instead of two is I think they've made like the cameras and stuff that are there.

They must have made them smaller.

They did.

They had more space up there.

But I have also been in a situation where I had two things up there and I'm like, gosh, I wish I had a third one or I wish I could swap out.

Like, I don't want that one.

I want this other one.

So having three instead of two, it's going to be one of those tiny things that it's like, oh, this is just this is nicer.

this is better. I agree. Okay. So we got to move on, even though, again, I'm going to,

I would love to keep talking about what we have covered so far is the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone

18 Pro Max. Those were the only two non-duo phones that were announced. Missing from here,

it was an iPhone 18 regular, although we expected that, but I just, you know, for a lot of people

of them maybe don't pay as much of attention to this as we do like they may have think oh well

i'm gonna wait and get my you know i'm gonna upgrade my iphone 17 to an 18 you know in august

you can't do that yet there is no iphone 18 yet next year i agree i agree just a guess but yeah

and there was no next model of the iphone air either now i don't know when that's going to come

we haven't really talked about that but i'm just making sure i point that out for folks because

there were so i feel like some people could expect that hey i'm going to upgrade my 16 or my 15

you know the regular phone to the iphone 18 you can't do that yet it was just the pro and the pro

max on there which are the higher end aspects and for the most part you and i both have a iphone 17

pro is what i have and you have the 17 pro max these 18 models the pro and pro max are exactly

the same form factor like nothing was changed right from the physicality aspect of it well a lot of i

mean again the dynamic island but i'm saying the form factor overall was not changed there are some

colors i think you talked about that in your post here uh there's the the the silver and the black

as there always is but the the new colors are um burgundy which i think actually kind of looks

nice it's kind of a rich color and then glacier is the other color that apple came out with although

it's sort of like a baby blue i think more than anything else uh on there you know brett you say

there's always a black but that's actually not true because last oh yeah because i know you do

pay attention to the phone. But last year, they did not have a black iPhone. So the one that I

have right now that I'm talking to you on is a dark, I forget what the Apple name for it is,

but it's basically a deep blue. Oh, like Space Gray or whatever it is.

It's a blue-ish. Oh, the blue. That's right. You got the blue. Yeah.

And again, it's fine. It doesn't bother me or anything like that. But this year,

when I had the opportunity to get a black one again, that is what I did. Hey, let's also just

say the price real quick. We knew these were getting more expensive iPhones because of the RAM crisis.

I expected Apple to increase from apples to apples, like the entry-level 17 Pro versus the entry-level 18 Pro.

I thought that Apple would go up in price $200 because RAM is so expensive.

I was surprised that they only went up $100.

Again, in a perfect world, it would be cheaper, not more expensive.

But I feared a much larger price increase.

So when they said it was only $100 more, does it start at $1,100? Is that right?

The 18 Pro starts at $1,199, so $1,199.

And the Pro Max starts at $1,200.

So last year it started at $1,100.

This year it starts at $1,200.

So that's good.

I expected much more.

Again, if you wanted to not get a Pro model and spend even less, I think you're just going to have to wait for that.

But if you are already in the market for a Pro, I was pleasantly surprised.

You said you thought this year's iPhone would cost $200 more.

I frankly felt like that they would have been able to justify even $300 more just with all of the rumors that were coming out about the chips and everything going on.

But $100 more, that's not bad.

I appreciate that.

And there's been some rumors that Apple has decided to just eat some of their profit to do this.

We'll see.

Make it up on margin and stuff.

So that's the 18 Pro and Pro Max.

Before we get on to the one more thing, which, by the way, I thought John Ternus did it again, an excellent job channeling Steve Jobs in that.

Let's just make a quick mention to something that we talked about last week and you are always good to highlight.

There is right now going on.

This is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and St. Jude's always has a fundraiser.

Or frankly, I feel like the technology world, at least some parts and pieces of it, have kind of rallied around this cause, mostly because I think Stephen Hackett, right, and his son.

And the fact that you can donate now, you've got a great post in here.

And even if – do you still have some of those cleaning cloths if somebody donates $100?

I do.

So I would just encourage everybody that while we're talking about spending money on all sorts of fancy gadgets, which is fantastic, spend a little bit of money to do some good.

And this time every year, the technology community, you know, gathers money.

I mean, I think it's going to for the last the total it's they're going to cross over five million dollars total from the last few years on this.

Amazing.

Incredible. So if you want to be a part of that enthusiasm, you know, go ahead, click on that link on my website, you know, give a donation.

If you give at least one hundred dollars and you want to get a cleaning cloth, do it.

I will mention, by the way, somebody donated one hundred dollars anonymously, which is fine.

And they put in their email address, you know, that would not be displayed in public, which is totally fine.

reached out to that person and said, you know, give me which size cleaning cloth do you want?

They haven't written back yet. I hope that they typed their correct email address. So if you did

it and you think that you haven't heard from me yet, you know, reach out to me. You may have used

the wrong email address. But, you know, whether you're anonymous or not, if you give $100 or more,

you can get a great cleaning cloth. But if you give $5, that's fine too. I would just encourage

everybody to give. It'll make you feel so good. And let me just say one quick thing. When St.

you started in 1962, 80% of kids with childhood cancer died. That's horrible. And today, you know,

because of advancements through science that St. Jude has been a huge part of, it's 20%. I mean,

is that incredible? I mean, I think of 1962, I was born in 1969. That wasn't that long before I was

born. So over my lifetime, there has been this incredible reversal of fortune. And as horrible

as cancer is, we've all had loved ones in our family who have died from cancer. And it's nothing

but sad, but, but childhood. Oh my God. Just, so this is a great cause to get something to

throw in some money. I just encourage you to do so, you know, do what your heart tells you.

Thank you. Okay. We can move on, but thanks. Thanks for letting me mention that.

Let's go to that. One more thing we expected and anticipated that Apple was going to release some

kind of an Apple foldable phone and they delivered. Although I'll just quickly say

in that interview with Mark Spoonhour and Lance Olonoff,

Jaws, he made a comment.

He's like, what I'm so proud of is that we kept it so secretive.

Like we did a very good job of keeping it secret.

He goes, even though he admitted

some people were able to get some of the form factor

because I felt like I had seen some 3D models or so,

you know, throughout the last several months

that were similar to this.

But the one more thing that John Ternus announced

was called and is called the iPhone Duo.

And hence the reason it's called Duo is because in a way it is like having two phones in one that you can unfold.

Now, you did a good job, again, of breaking this down with the iPhone Duo.

Everything I have seen so far has seemed to be positive.

There was one story you linked to today where Ben loved Joy at 9 to 5.

The Duo is drool worthy, but the iPhone 18 Pro camera feature wins for me.

And I agree, there are some, I guess, you know, some benefits you're going to have to give on if you go with the iPhone Duo, such as the camera, for example.

But this just looks better than I thought it could.

It looks incredible.

I've got to touch it.

I've got to have it in my hand before I think I can make a decision on any of this.

It is not available yet. It's going to be almost a month before you could even see it in an Apple

store or make a pre-order. But so far, everything I have seen so far that this is just incredible.

It's not the first foldable iPhone by any stretch. And a lot of people have made comparisons to that

Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 that's been out for a long time. It's almost the same size. But everything

that was great in that, it looks like Apple has just taken it and improved it even more.

Yeah, I mean, let's talk about what is so special about this device. And then we'll finish up by talking about the compromises and why this is why it's the one I did not buy yet. But I do think that this is fascinating. Just a quick note on the name iPhone duo, such a great name, you know, duo, it's only three letters, it harkens back to the 1990s, when Apple had the the PowerBook duo, which was one of the first.

Oh, yeah.

It was, you know, there was a time when laptop computers were so big and heavy and they had floppy drives and everything else.

And Apple had this idea of let's have something that's as thin and light as possible.

So when you're going around as a mobile device, it could be, you know, easy to carry.

But then when you get to your office, you basically slide it into this unit.

It's almost like putting a VHS tape into a VCR.

And then that hardware component has the drive, even some extra memory and all sorts of extra things.

It was a fascinating way to do it.

It didn't last very long, but for the people that used it, they loved it because it allowed

you to do two different things at once.

Sometimes you could have something thin and light, relatively for the time, and sometimes

you could have something that was as powerful as a desktop computer.

So it's a name with a deep history at Apple, and it's a perfect one here because it means

sometimes you have something that's like the size of an iPhone screen.

It's, what is it, like 80%, 90% of the screen size when it's folded.

And then other times you open it up and you have something that is twice as big.

So you get two, it's not just the duo, two screens, it's two experiences, but it's more

than that.

Yeah.

As you pointed out the form factor, you know, Samsung makes a lot of the screen components.

And so the Samsung Android, they have been making folding, folding smartphones for a

while.

And they started by having folding smartphones that would take the same dimension as a regular

smartphone.

And then you would open it up.

And so it would be sort of like that, that shape.

But as John Tarnas pointed out, that shape is not ideal because if you're watching movies

that, you have all the black areas at the top. It makes more sense to have something open up

with sort of the three, two dimensions of like an iPad or an iPad mini. And so that means that when

it's folded, it's a shorter, it's sort of short and fat, almost the same size as like a passport.

If you ever looked at a passport, you know how a passport's a little bit shorter and a little bit

fatter, not hugely fat or short, but it's noticeable. And this form factor makes sense.

But again, there's an Android phone with this smart faster. They just came out with it. The

eight or whatever it is. Eight, that's right. But so the shape doesn't necessarily surprise me,

but what does surprise me is what Apple did with this from both the software and a hardware

standpoint. Just to say quickly on the hardware standpoint, the problem with any folding phone

is that when you open it up, you can sort of see the crease, which is just a little distracting.

But one thing that Apple did, which Samsung does not do, is they have this nano texture finish,

which we've seen on other devices over time.

Some people get an iPad or a computer with a nanotexture finish.

And it means that it's less reflective on light, which is nice.

You don't have to have like, you know, things shining on it and stuff like that, which is nice.

And I think that's especially good on something that opens and closes,

because as you move the screen, you're going to have, you know,

lights are going to be hitting it from all sorts of different angles.

So it makes it much more pleasant.

But it also helps to hide that little crease.

So this is a hardware feature that Apple has.

which Samsung doesn't have. But aside from the hardware, the software, this is what blew me away

this week. And I have been watching these videos over and over again. They have rethought everything.

This is not, I know that the name has iPhone in it, the iPhone Duo, but this is so different,

much like the iPad deserved having a different name. The iPad and the iPhone have a lot of

similarities with apps and stuff like that. It's really a different device, really. I think this

is truly a third type of device. They could have come up with something that did not, they could

have called it the Apple Fred, or something else completely, and that would have been justified

because it is as different from an iPhone and an iPad as can be. The way that you can have an app

on the screen when it's closed, and you open it up, and it sort of unfolds to the size,

you can have side-by-side apps, you can connect side-by-side apps, you can have, I mean,

there's so many things that Apple is like, wow, that's, it shows a level of thought that I would

have thought, oh, this, this is the sort of level of sophistication that I would expect for a product

that's been on the market for four or five years that they've made changes over time. But this is

the 1.0 version. They have clearly been thinking about this in so many different ways and then

taking advantage of it. So like, for example, you have, when you unfold it, you have this big screen

in front of you, but you also have the screen that was, you know, on the other side of it,

the screen that you were looking at when it was unfolded, when it was folded up.

And so they have all these creative things you can do where normally that's that small

screen in the back is going to be blacked out.

But like, if you're having a FaceTime conversation, you can have another person on the other side

of you and they can be a part of the FaceTime.

So it's basically three people in the FaceTime, the person you're talking to, you, and the

person on the other side of your phone.

just so many clever things that they've come up with that I'm like, wow, I would have never thought

of that. The idea that you can like fold it like a tent. It's not just open or close. There's other

ways you can use it too. If it's sort of like a tent on the table, it can be like a clock,

but it can actually shine the inner part on the table to sort of glow, to help you, you know,

wake up to a light that sort of gets slowly brighter over time. People buy these things

to help them, you know, wake up more, you know, gradually as if the sun was slowly coming up.

There are so many little fit and finish features that I'm like, you have thought of so many different things.

I'm so incredibly impressed.

It's just, it's really cool.

It's not quite as big as an iPad mini.

So it's got a little bit smaller screen.

Yeah.

But it's getting there.

But it's closer to that when it's opened all the way.

It's enough that if you ever are using something and you want to just have a little bit more space, or if you want to be able to do a little bit of multitasking, you know, doing messages on the right.

while you look at some photos on the left or look at a website on the left where you're doing notes

on the right, it has that ability that you really can't do in an iPhone nowadays. And so it saves

you the trouble of reaching for an iPad or a computer to be able to do multiple windows at

once because you can do two windows there. But it's not just the unfolding this way. I mean,

it can unfold the other way too. You can have it in sort of this L-shaped, like it's like a laptop

where the screen you're looking at is in the back.

And then there's a flat screen down here

that can have like play pause controls

if you're watching movies and stuff.

There's just so many, the software is amazing.

It's just amazing.

I think it's worth noting here,

the original iPhone came out in 2007.

And presumably John Ternus,

I mean, I think he's been at Apple 25 years, right?

He was involved with the original iPhone

in some form or fashion.

In 19 years, we have not truly seen

like a an overhaul of that form factor right it's always been a rectangle i mean it's always had the

touch screen on there you know there's obviously it's been different you know the plateau and the

cameras and things have changed but nothing have we have not seen anything like this i i feel like

it's just so fitting that john turnus you know being the hardware guy that he is sort of led this

in apple going to this new device because again to your point i think it's great they called it an

iPhone and I, and it is a phone, but this to me almost, it could be in a separate, uh, uh, you

know, silo all of its own. Like it's a different device almost Jeff to your point. That can be so

much more than this. I can see this, as I said, like it's, you know, it's the alarm clock. It is

a phone. I mean, when it's opened up all the way, it is like holding an iPad mini. And I remember

some of the jokes back in the day, like people would hold an iPad mini up to their phone, you

know for a phone call i mean i guess you could open it all the way and have the phone call

but in addition to just the hardware the hardware would have been great on its own but i love your

points you're making the software itself has been redesigned even to the point where i don't know

if i've got a picture here but i know when it's closed there's a lot of the controls that they put

over on the right side which is great if you're right-handed i guess i don't know how lefties are

going to feel about that but you can you can read it they just put some of the actions that you would

access in a place where it just is it's almost a redesign even though it's all familiar with what

we all know but the idea that you can access that and again to your point again they had this where

was it the standing here where did I where did I have it to where you've got a video playing it's

almost like a laptop in a way a mini tiny little laptop here you don't have a keyboard but you've

got your play controls on the bottom as you're watching a video maybe on the part that's that's

up just just incredible again the hardware is amazing in and of itself and everybody's been

talking about that even just the way that the the layers of the glass that they're using are are

they put multiple layers so they could slide on each other as you folded it up and down i mean i'm

sure samsung's done that that's been around for a long time but the way they were showing that's

amazing but yes i think times in history have we had a category where there have been other companies

that make thing, you know, go back plus years, MP3 players, other companies had MP3 players.

And then Apple comes out with the iPod and everyone's like, oh, that's, that's the right

way to do it. And then all these smartphones, you know, I used a Palm Trio and stuff like that.

And then Apple comes out with the iPhone in 2007 and people are like, oh, that's it. You know,

back to the nineties, laptop computers. And then Apple has the idea of having push back the keys

so that you can have a trackpad at the bottom.

And then everybody else is like, oh yeah,

like now every laptop is like, this is the same thing.

We have had a few folding phones,

but the decisions that Apple made here,

like putting the software,

all the apps on the right and the things on the right,

once you look at it, it's just like,

oh, well, of course it's that way.

And you almost lose appreciation for it

because it's so obvious that this makes sense

that you forget that,

well, it's only obvious in retrospect.

Somebody had to come up with this idea.

And then once they did it, that's just so natural.

And so I got to give the designers at Apple credit for really hitting it out of the park on all of these ideas.

I will also say, though, as impressive as the software is, there was a video from Joanna Stern that I linked to, and I know that you watched it.

She held it up right close to her microphone to sort of close it.

And she said, you're going to open and close this thing all the time.

It has a very satisfying click.

And I know that's a silly thing, but it's one of those little, you know, when we fidget with things, like you just, you want your Apple technology to feel good.

I mean, as I'm holding my little, my AirPods case here, it has a nice click as a close.

Oh, yes.

So many Apple hardware devices, just, they just feel good.

And I get the sense that the iPhone duo is going to do that too.

So in that same video, the next thing that she says is exactly what I was thinking.

You're going to be opening and closing this thing a lot.

I mean, it's hardware.

So at some point, I don't care how good it is

or how titanium that it is.

At some point, some of these components

are going to wear down.

And honestly, Jeff, that's probably my biggest concern.

I've never had an iPhone foldable

or a foldable phone of any kind.

But I mean, I would constantly open

and close this throughout the day.

And how is it a thousand times that it's fine?

I'm sure Apple has had multiple secret labs where they have had machines that open and close this thing probably millions of times, right?

They've tested it.

So maybe I'm just being a little silly on this.

But that's what I say.

I can't in good conscience put an order on this or say much about it until I hold it in my own hand.

And then, frankly, I want to know what it's going to be like three months down the road, four months down the road.

And I want to hear people, because you know as well as I do, there's going to be YouTubers that are going to take this, and they're going to do their own stunts and crazy things with it.

So we'll know in several months about how durable this is, but it's that durability that at the same time makes me question.

But on the other hand, Jeff, because we've been doing this long enough, I know Apple has tested this.

Like, there is a level of confidence that I have that, yeah, it's going to be fine.

Yeah, but this is a good transition into the compromises, because as fascinating as this is.

and it's just so, I can't stop thinking about it.

There are reasons to be cautious.

One is the durability.

I mean, again, I trust Apple, like you say,

but we'll have to see how it holds up over time.

And then there's also, you lose certain things.

I mean, it still has that same beefy A20 Pro processor

that we're just thinking about.

So that's good.

So when it deals with like AI and sophisticated tasks,

it should be just as impressive, just as good.

You know, it's got amazing battery life,

you know, considering how small.

You know, when it's unfolded, it is the thinnest iPhone ever, even thinner than the iPhone Air, which is, you know, impressive.

There's other compromises, too.

You don't have the cameras are not quite.

They're certainly not as good as the brand new ones.

I mean, you don't have the aperture thing.

Right.

Not even as good as the iPhone 17 Pro.

I mean, it goes back a couple of years.

The cameras are not quite as good.

You've got other little, you know, compromises throughout it.

You don't have face ID.

So you have to unlock it by putting your finger on it with Touch ID or use your Apple Watch to unlock it if you wear an Apple Watch.

It's got other little compromises.

Of course, it's more expensive.

Now, I expected it to start at closer to $2,500.

That was amazing.

That Apple got the starting price at $19.99.

But essentially, $2,000 to get in the door and then even higher if you want more memory and stuff like that.

It's expensive.

And that is, you know, for a lot of people, they're going to be as cool as this is.

I just can't justify spending that much money on it.

Another compromise that worries me is because this is something brand new, the dimensions are different.

If you look at the Apple apps that they showed off, you'll see that they have basically rethought the apps.

Things are positioned in a different way.

Things that might have been on the bottom are now on the side.

Things that might have been on the left are over here.

Apple has rethought the layout of their app.

But what this means is that every third-party software developer is going to have to rethink their apps as well.

And that's going to take some time to do.

And so the developers, in fact, if you're an iPhone developer right now and you want to start working on the new iPhone Duo, they don't even have a developer kit yet.

The developer kit hasn't come out yet.

It's coming out later this month.

And so if you get an iPhone Duo when it first comes out in about a month, I think the Apple apps are going to look good.

But every third-party app that you do is going to not be ideal.

And there's a couple of categories.

If the third-party app hasn't been updated in a very long time, it's going to basically be like this iPhone-sized screen in the middle of your big old iPad.

That's right, like the old iPads.

Even if it's a slightly newer app that uses some of the new frameworks, things are not going to quite be laid out perfect.

To really take full advantage of the iPhone Duo, you need your app developer to come up with a brand-new interface designed for the Duo, and that's going to take them time.

I mean, they learned about it this week the same time that we did.

And so it would not surprise me if some really good apps.

Now, there are some like Netflix that Apple told Netflix about it.

And so the Netflix app is going to be good from day one.

But a lot of these third-party apps, you're going to be waiting.

I mean, if you're lucky by, you know, the holidays this year.

But it may be next spring or next summer before the apps can truly take advantage of it.

And we've been through this before.

Remember when the iPhone 10 came out?

Remember because it took away the button and it had the really bigger screen.

That's right.

And because it had the notch at the top.

Remember how some apps, like it would have a button that was underneath the notch or things like that.

And it changed over time.

But we've been through these transitions in the past.

I mean, way back when, the transition between the iPhone 4 to the 5 when the screen got taller.

And so there have been times where we had to wait for developers to improve their apps for this new environment.

We had the first iPad Pro.

And it's going to happen.

It's going to happen, I think.

early adopters are going to be just waiting for things to happen. I mean, heck, I feel that way

about my Vision Pro. When the Vision Pro first came out, there was very few software. And because

some people use it, because it's a real developer thing, some apps have been updated for it,

but others have not. I mean, a big thing I do with my Vision Pro is I watch TV shows and movies and

stuff. There is no Netflix app for the Vision Pro. Now, I can still watch Netflix on my Vision Pro.

I watch it through a web interface, and Apple has made that as good as possible because of the

video come out, but it's still not the same. So you need to wait for it. So even if you're excited

about the iPhone Duo, there's a real reason to wait and maybe get the second generation of this

product, because by then the apps will be updated. By then we'll know more about the durability.

We will, you know, Apple will, any little tweaks they'll be able to make, you know, that would be

the sensible thing to do. Having said that, if you're really excited about this new design,

you're not going to be able to help yourself and you're going to get one and find a way to

the cost and it's going to be really cool it's going to be really cool i want to get your thoughts

on i know somewhere in there they mentioned and announced that at some point the iphone duo will

be able to be used with an apple pencil later this year what is up with that for i mean the first

thought i had is like well where's it going to be stored like i can't like to you know put it on the

on the side, you know, magnetized on the side and like, wait a minute, we've never had an iPhone

that uses an Apple pencil because I don't know that we've needed it necessarily. How is that

going to work? Because I guess it's more when it's open, like if it's an iPad mini,

are you going to draw on it or write on it? I mean, what are your thoughts, Jeff?

Yeah. I love using my Apple pencil with my, I know you do. And so it's going to be much tinier

because again, it's even smaller than an iPad mini, but there will be times when you have

something big like that, that you might want to jot down notes on it and stuff. I can see times

that you want to use it. Okay. Okay. Here's my thought on that. There was a time when a big

thing that I did on my website was I reviewed third-party styluses because there was always

something new and stuff like that. And then Apple came out with the first generation Apple Pencil

and the second generation, and now the Pencil Pro. And I no longer, I mean, it's been a long time

since I reviewed, I think I did one during COVID because it was a fancy stylus that had a UV thing

on it. We thought that, you know, for COVID, you know, doing a UV, you know, cleaning things using

ultraviolet light may have been a thing. But I haven't reviewed third-party styluses in a long

time because why not just get the Apple Pencil? That's all you need to do. I actually think

there's going to be a potential for third parties here because what Apple is doing is they're saying

that the USB-C version of their pencil, which is like what I'm holding in my hand, but it charges

be a usbc instead of connecting to the top and charging magnetically um that's the version of

the pencil which was not designed with the iphone duo in line but that's the version that they say

is going to work with the iphone duo i think third parties will come up with creative ways

to come up with maybe like a tiny version of a pencil something i was thinking closer to the size

of like a golf pencil or something like that um they're going to come up with pencil shapes and

sizes that make more sense in an iPhone duo world.

And that's interesting.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity for development there.

And maybe Apple itself will eventually come up with a version of the pencil that works

great for the duo.

You raise a good point, though, like where are you going to put it?

You know, maybe you're going to want to have something with a clip so you can stick it on

your pocket.

You know, I don't know what I don't know.

But let's let creative people think about it because you're not going to want to use it

all the time.

But you will want to have it every once in a while.

And I look forward to seeing what the possibilities are.

You mentioned that Palm Trail 650, like didn't it have that stylus that was, it was like the top of it was curved.

So it like went into a hole in the top and you had to use your fingernail.

And I even had a third party one that like it was short and then like you expanded it to make it longer.

So like it could be really short, like a golf pencil, and then you could pull it out and make it longer like the size of a regular pencil.

We're going to totally see products like that.

Okay.

Just a few more things, quick hits.

You mentioned you brought this up in your post here.

How cool is this that if you want to take a picture of your kids and you're using an iPhone Duo, when you have it opened all the way, so you're taking a picture of your kid, you can now have, is it Snoopy?

I think it's Peanuts now.

We'll be playing on the screen to get your kids to smile for the camera.

That is just a fantastic little use of that.

First of all, it's so clever because we've all been there before.

How do you get the kid to look at the camera?

It's your picture.

This is the perfect thing.

Look at Snoopy.

You know, look at the funny, stupid thing.

You're going to get so much better pictures of your kids than iPhone Duo, thanks to this feature.

Can I also mention that when Apple first announced the relationship with Peanuts, they don't own the company.

Sony or whoever still owns it.

But like if you want to watch Peanuts cartoons, you watch them on Apple TV.

You don't watch them in Netflix or another service.

When I announced that, I'm like, oh, I just thought that that meant that you're going to be able to watch the TVs and the movies on the Apple TV streaming service.

But they have taken that so much further.

I love and I still use it right now on my Apple TV hardware device.

Same.

The screensaver that I use is the Peanuts screensaver.

And they can update it with hilarious little clever things.

I have never – I mean I haven't read Peanuts cartoons since I was a kid reading the Sunday comics, right?

But now I find myself laughing to clever new Snoopy cartoons all the time.

And here they are extending that relationship yet again by using it with the iPhone do.

And I don't know if there's going to be other funny things you could look at for kids besides Snoopy.

But even if it's only Snoopy, that's enough.

So that's great for Apple and, you know, Charles Schultz, you know, rest in peace.

But the people that are still working at the Charles Schultz studio.

That's so great.

I just I hats off to you.

I love what you're doing.

Keep it up.

Good job.

The Apple watch faces.

Right.

I mean, the fact that they've expanded.

Those are so good.

So good.

OK, another thing I had to ask about.

will the duo have MagSafe?

Can you charge it wirelessly?

Is that, I was trying to, okay, you can.

Okay.

So you can charge it and you can,

you can use MagSafe attachments.

The only one that doesn't work is Apple sells that MagSafe wallet that goes

in the back of your iPhone.

Yeah.

Because the, oh, that's too large.

Yeah.

It doesn't fit.

So that's one of the very few MagSafe attachments that won't work,

but yes, you can wirelessly charge it using a MagSafe.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And then the last question I had, I think I see it answered down here.

As I was watching this in the Duo, and I'm like, well, if I have that, can I get a case for it?

Because I normally rock a case on my phone just because I like to protect it.

And I'm like, there's no way there's going to be a case for this.

But there is.

Apple's already got a case for it.

And one that looks pretty cool that even has a little kickstand, too.

Yeah.

So we'll have to see.

Because there's screens on both sides of it, it's a little bit more complicated as to how a case works.

Exactly.

You know, I usually don't.

Nowadays, I really don't have cases for my iPhone.

I've been fine with just having the iPhone by itself.

But a lot of people want cases.

Apple has their ideas.

I'm sure they're clever.

Third parties are going to have their ideas.

It's going to be interesting.

Again, because you have to rethink it.

You know, go back to the drawing board.

And how does this work?

I see that one of Apple's cases has a little kickboard.

That's right.

And yet we didn't even mention this because the device folds.

This is one of the first iPhones that can just stand up, you know, just have it at an angle.

it could stand up on a table by itself.

Yes.

So like if you're looking for an iPhone to use for like, you know, time-lapse photography,

or if you even just want to set up an iPhone so that you can step back and be in the picture,

this iPhone Duo is great for that.

Yeah, look at that.

Here's this little video.

I've reviewed them in the past.

I have in my wallet here a little tripod that fits in my wallet.

I forget what this thing's called, pocket tripod.

So if I want to set up a little tripod for my iPhone so that I can take a picture like with a big group of family and friends

and I want to be in the picture.

But with the iPhone Duo, you don't have to do that.

It can stand up on its own.

It's very cool.

Yeah, I just, and apparently on this,

again, I got to have this in my hand,

but the hinge will allow you to,

I can't fully tell if it's like at any angle

or are there like ratchets that it goes down to?

I think it's any angle.

That is amazing.

In fact, that you can put it into,

like if you wanted an intent item right here,

I guess it's just folded just a little bit, right?

And you can put it up.

Okay, and then I guess the last – I keep thinking of more things to talk about.

When it's folded, unfolded all the way, you can have split screen on it.

So, again, that almost acts more like an iPad in the sense that more people were showing that you could have two different things.

In fact, here you can have messages on one side of the iPhone Duo unfolded.

I don't know how you're going to say that.

But let's say you have messages, and then you can have photos on the other side so you can drag a photo over to your messages, and it'll send it.

That's iPad stuff.

Yeah.

Now, it's not quite the same as an iPad because in modern iPads, you can make screens whatever size you want.

I mean, I'm talking to you right now, and I'm looking at my iPad, and I've got our tiny.

And so you don't have that same flexibility.

You can't make screens any size.

It's either a full screen or the left side or the right side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Although keep in mind, you can then turn the iPad Duo this way, and then it will be the top and the bottom just because you physically turned it.

Right.

But I actually think considering how small the device is, you really wouldn't want to do anything else.

I mean, I don't think you'd want to make it any smaller than the entire left side or the entire right side.

So I don't think that's really a limitation.

It's just like that's what makes sense for this form factor.

But, no, I agree.

This is going to be useful for, you know, doing multiple things at once.

You know, having two screens versus one, it's definitely a power user feature.

But you don't have to be some crazy PhD to use it.

I mean, these are things that anyone can use.

Like you just said, the messages or the photos.

It makes perfect sense for people to use that and just drag things over from one to the other.

Really, really useful.

Okay, last thing, and we can move on.

I think the most Apple-y thing that I saw with the iPhone Duo is the animation that they have when you open and close it.

I know you can't see the video so well, but on Apple.com, if you go in, you can kind of slide this open and shut.

And, you know, all of the YouTubers and people that were there that day that were, you know, talking about and they've seen everything.

Right. They were all even amazed at how fluid this was.

It's almost I would almost say it's like it's a blurring of it, but it's like you've got it closed all the way.

I don't know. You can't see the video, but I'm looking at a screen when it's closed.

Right. Just on the smaller screen. When I open it, it's got this animation that blurs it.

But then it goes into the same screen.

It's hard to describe.

But like if I can see the video right now, I can see what you're saying.

If you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, you know, either watch wherever we are on the podcast.

Jump into the video version on YouTube or just go on the Apple website and look at this animation.

This is an example of like I don't know who thought of this idea.

But again, give that person a raise.

This is so impressive.

Just amazing.

I mean, because, again, first of all, it just looks cool.

But second of all, I think from an intuitive aspect, it keeps you in that same screen because it's opening, it's unfolding, but it keeps you grounded in that same screen.

And from a, I don't know, a psychological standpoint, whatever, I think that that just, that keeps the continuity of the experience.

And again, like I said, that's the most Apple-y thing that I saw of the iPhone duo.

Okay, that's probably enough, although I know we could keep on talking more and more about this.

Okay, we don't have to take anywhere near as long to talk about some of the other things quickly that were released.

I don't even know if you had a chance to even talk about some of these.

A few new Apple Watch models.

There was the Apple Watch Series 12, and they also announced an Apple Watch Ultra 4.

I feel like this is more along of everything is just upgraded on the internal components,

Although some of the stuff here is really impressive.

Let's focus in the interest of time, because we've spoken so long about the other devices.

I ordered a new Apple Watch 12.

You did?

Yeah, the battery life that I have on my 10 is it's not lasting all day and I have to charge it every night.

And so I was ready for a new Apple Watch.

So I ordered one.

It's going to come next Friday.

Let's wait.

Maybe next week we can talk about some of the other new features.

I just want to focus on one thing, though, because I can't not think about it.

This is sort of like a privacy feature that we've been talking for about the last year

about certain companies have been taking advantage of AI to have these devices that will listen

to what's going on in the world and will sort of like transcribe it and summarize it and

stuff like that.

And it's the idea of having like an AI assistant with you.

And, you know, we all know that Johnny Ive left Apple and he's now working with OpenAI

eye on a product that's somewhere in this category, Apple announced these two features that work on the

new Apple watches that are just really, really fascinating. So one of them is called Live Rewind,

and the other one is called Siri Recap. And just to focus on those, what Live Rewind does is your

app, if you have it turned on, and you don't have to have it turned on, but if you do have it turned

on, your Apple Watch is constantly listening to what's being said around you.

Whoa.

And if you've ever had a situation where somebody says something and then you're like, well,

wait, what did they say?

You can go to your watch and the last 15 seconds, which doesn't sound like long, but 15 seconds

is actually a little bit of a while.

You can actually look, just scroll on the screen of your watch and see a transcript of

what was said during the last 15 seconds.

And, you know, they have the example in the video of like a waiter comes and describes something and then like, you know, here's today's specials.

I'll come back and check with you.

And you're like, well, what was that?

You can just look.

And it's, you know, word for word what they said in the last 15 seconds that you can look at it.

And then it'll go away.

If you save it, you can save it.

But otherwise it goes away after that.

It's just a really interesting feature.

And to a certain degree, there's privacy implications of it.

But again, you were just there.

You heard it yourself.

That's one feature.

Another feature, and this one is perhaps more controversial, although the more I think about it, I think I'm in favor of it, but I know that there are people that will disagree with me.

Okay.

This is called Siri Recap.

And the way it works is your Apple Watch, as I just said, is always listening, right, to keep those last 15 seconds.

Your Apple Watch records the words of things that are said around you, and it processes those words.

Some of it is on device, and then it sends it to your iPhone.

You have to have a relatively new iPhone.

And then your iPhone basically takes everything that's said and uses AI to summarize it to get it about half size.

And so like if, you know, a thousand words or say, it will get it down to 500 words.

Then what it does is it sends it very securely to the Apple Secure Cloud where the Apple Secure Cloud doesn't remember anything.

It doesn't train the AI.

It's all incredibly secure.

And it summarizes it even further.

And the end result is that if you have this turned on all day, at the end of the day, it will basically have this AI summary that is only kept around for seven days and then it's deleted.

But if you were like, gosh, earlier today, I remember I was talking to somebody and they recommended that I watch this TV show.

And for the life of me, I don't remember what it was.

You could just ask Siri and it will look at the Siri recap.

And it will say, oh, yeah, somebody – and it's not going to know who the person was, but it's going to say like, yeah, this afternoon.

Somebody recommended that you watch, you know, Ted Lasso or whatever it is.

Oh, that's the name of the show, Ted Lasso, whatever it is.

Or that's the book that they recommend or that's it.

Or something, you know, it's going to be able to help you with your memory.

Now, the part that's going to make some people freak out is, oh, it's recording you all the time.

You know, oh, my goodness, this is a privacy invasion.

And I do understand where they're coming from.

But Apple, no technology company is more focused on privacy than Apple.

And you may still disagree.

You may still think they went too far, but they're going to be a lot more conscientious about it than OpenAI or Google or these other companies.

And so, for example, they're not saving the audio at all.

The audio is just transcribed.

And the way that they do it is they actually have this special secure portion of the processor that separates.

So, like, no third-party app could even get into there to say, oh, I'm going to capture all that audio from your conversation about it today.

No.

The audio itself is gone.

It's just the transcript.

And then the transcript is gone because the transcript is summarized.

And they even do some special sauce that like, you know, they're not going to save things like, you know, curse words or things that are more private.

If somebody says a number by design, they're not going to remember that stuff.

Things that are more confidential.

But the end result is it's going to have this little summary of your day.

And you may see and people are going to say, yeah, that's still a privacy invasion because it's listening all the time.

But in my mind, it's no different than let me tell you about my wife.

I love my wife.

She's great.

But one of the things that I envy about my wife is she has this photographic memory.

Do you know people in life that they just remember details and believe me?

Sometimes she uses this against me of, you know, can you believe years ago you said such and such?

And I have no memory of saying that.

But she just has this great memory of things.

I wish I did.

I don't.

I feel like I'm a smart person that can understand and process things.

And I feel like I, you know, craft good arguments from my clients as an attorney.

But I don't have a photographic memory.

But this feature allows me to get more on parity.

I may not personally remember it, but because there's this Siri AI that's very secure and only I can access it and blah, blah, blah for security.

But it allows me to what was that detail from earlier in the day?

That's what it is.

And then I can say, OK, now I can act upon that and I can use it.

So I personally feel like it's just something that's getting me to the same place that I would have been if I had a better memory.

Let me also say one more thing about it.

The way that Apple is using this feature, in theory, why does this require the Apple Watch?

Because your iPhone has a speaker, has a microphone too, right?

And I think that this is part of the whole privacy thing.

Because imagine an iPhone.

I could have my iPhone.

And if I wanted to record a secret conversation, I could just, and you know, you could do this right now.

I could hide my iPhone somewhere and then I could turn on a recording device and it would serendipitously record it and people wouldn't know that they were being recorded.

But the thing about the Apple Watch is the Apple Watch is always right there with you.

And it can sense that it's next to you because it has these sensors.

It knows when it's on your arm.

And so the idea is that because it requires the Apple Watch, it is literally only using

this technology when you yourself are right there.

Now, I guess you could be asleep.

So maybe if somebody was saying something around you in your sleep, maybe there are some examples

of where people would not know.

But I mean, essentially, you were a part of the conversation.

And so it's only using this when you are actually there.

And, you know, from a legal standpoint, you may know, Brett, that, you know, different

states have different laws and when it's when it's OK to record a conversation.

And most states in the United States have a one party consent rule, which means if the

person that's recording the conversation by definition consents because they're creating

recording, it doesn't matter that the other person does or doesn't know it's recording.

There are some states.

And again, I'm not an attorney in Massachusetts.

I think Massachusetts might be a two party consent state.

But there are some different laws.

But for the most part, this is a way to recognize that the only time that it would really be appropriate to have a technology like this is when you yourself were there, were present.

It's something that you literally heard.

You just may not remember the details.

So we are going to continue.

And I linked today.

There was a great, great article by the very thoughtful Glenn Fleischman.

Yeah, I've been showing it here.

He explores a lot of these features.

He explores these issues.

There are ethical issues.

There are moral issues.

People are going to disagree about it.

You may not want to have this on all the time, and Apple has it in there.

You can have it that it's only turned on when you're at work, or it's only turned on when you're not at work, or it doesn't work for this time of day, or you turn it off completely.

These are all things, but we as a society, we are moving into a world where more and more people will have this type of technology recording, understanding, processing, summarizing the world around us.

and Apple is doing it in a thoughtful way that respects privacy.

Other companies may not with their devices,

and we're going to all encounter that going forward.

This is just, it's huge.

This is far beyond just it's a new Apple Watch model

with new bells and whistles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is something really new,

and we're just starting to think about it,

and I think that we're going to be talking about the implications of this,

and Apple, unintended consequences are going to come up,

and Apple's going to have to tweak the technology,

But this is going to be a big topic for the next five to 10 years.

And it's going to come out starting Friday when the new Apple Watch comes out.

I found it interesting that they spent as much time as they did.

I mean, just a few minutes in the event video talking about this.

And, you know, like you said, it was the waitress coming through.

And it was just really, I mean, obviously they put it,

they put it forth and promoted it as like,

this is just going to be revolutionary for your life.

But boy, Heidi, I mean, people have been like questioning this.

Like you said, Glenn does a great job.

I'll make sure this article is linked in the show notes here.

Because he even brought it.

He started off talking about his gym.

Like you can't bring phones into the gym or no live streaming, that kind of a thing.

But you're going to have your Apple Watch on all the time.

You know, just like how does that work?

I mean, there's so many areas where this could be questionable.

Anyway, we will be talking about this a lot more going forward.

Can I just ask you one thing?

Yeah, please.

In the context of the new iPhone 18, they have this new technology called the Apple reference image,

which again, this relates to AI and stuff like that, that people are so, and this is sort of a

lawyerly thing too. You know, it used to be like, you know, how do you prove something happened?

Well, you'll look at it. Oh yeah, here it is. What if you can't trust the picture? What if the

picture was manipulated? Because AI technology is so fantastic that you can create an AI version of

a picture that adds something in the background that was not there in real life. How do you know

what is the truth? And I think about this so much as an attorney in terms of what evidence and stuff

like that. They have this new technology that for now, it's just on the iPhone 18 Pro, but eventually

it will get another devices called the Apple reference image where Apple actually keeps a

digital, it's like a digital negative was what Apple says. It's like, this is the original picture

in a secure way that because they use, you know, cryptology, you know, these secure things,

people can always tell that this was the original image. So if you ever need to prove up, maybe you're

a newspaper reporter and you want to show, no, this picture is actually accurate. You can pull up

this reference image in a way that it can prove that this was what was actually seen at the time

so that you can then compare that to, you know, the only difference that I made is I just, you know,

brightened it up a little bit, or, you know, maybe I did this, or maybe I removed this one smudge,

but I haven't really changed it. But it's a way to establish proof of what actually happened in

real life versus how the image has been tweaked. I just want to put a little flag on this because

it's, this is all new. It's just starting. But I think that years from now, you know, in an age of

deep fakes and everything else in our society, this could be a big deal. So I just, I'm so glad

in the sand on this. So glad you brought that up. Cause when they talked about this, I perked up

because in my career work life, you know, when I work with lawyers, not so much like you, like trial

litigators, right? I mean, today, this is a huge question about authenticating evidence and because

it can be and there's cases already that are out there it's not like it's anything new people have

been fabricating evidence for for years and photoshop and stuff like that so this isn't new

but the fact that it can be done so easily today we we are so many legal professionals and judges

are begging for ways to be able to detect whether it's a fake evidence whether it's deep fake or

whatever it is and i mean this isn't going to resolve everything but i'm just thrilled to know

that Apple has been thinking about this and aware of this, and they are providing at least some kind

of an aspect to where we can utilize that from an authentication component, right, from an

evidentiary standpoint, which is nice. I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay, so we did the Apple Watch.

Another thing quickly that was announced was AirPods 5, not AirPods Pro, not AirPods Max.

This is regular AirPods 5, but I almost feel like this could have been like all the features that

were in the AirPods Pro have now dribbled down into the AirPods 5, which is a good thing.

Yeah. There were so many announcements this week that when I did my post, I completely forgot to

even mention the AirPods. I mean, how is that even possible? I love my AirPods. They're my number one

favorite device. And yet I forgot to announce a new AirPods that just shows you how many big Apple

announcements they had. You know, we're running along today. So let's save this for, I mean,

let's just say quickly that if you want the regular AirPods, not the Pro, but for some people,

they fit better in their ears. They're also less expensive. They're better around because you now

have better noise cancellation. And also it has the ability that on the stem, you can like raise

and lower the volume using the stem. I use that all the time. So again, this is going to be great.

It's a nice price. I think it's like one, there's two versions of it. One has a nicer case or

something like that. 129 starts at 129 starts at 129. So this is, this is a great device. You know,

we'll, I'm sure we'll be seeing the reviews, but it's nice. Of course, Apple is going to update

them at some point it was another big update this week okay uh we said that the iphone duo was the

most important hardware device that apple released but i was wrong apple has a new wrist strap

accessory for the iphone hey it's new that could be in conjunction what was it the neck strap or

the body strap that they had before so anyway that's that's pretty fun on there and i think

you have to have a k an apple case that's got a little connector for it although you can also use

that wrist strap with you know how your um your air like my airpods have that little holes in the

Yeah. Oh, I do that. Yeah. I've never connected a lanyard to it, but now. Oh, I have. Yeah. In fact, this is the way that we, that we, I got several of these off of Amazon, different colored straps because all the whole family has AirPods. And so they all look the same, except now I've got mine engraved, but I use the wrist straps as a way to differentiate the different AirPods. It was like, oh, that's mine. It's red. It's a red strap.

We already mentioned this, but just to kind of underscore this, because this is just as important.

iOS 7 is coming out on Monday, September 14th, just in a couple of days.

We've been talking about this a lot.

I mean, so many improvements.

It doesn't matter if you have, don't have an iPhone 18 Pro.

You're going to be able to access a lot of this.

I mean, this is huge from the standpoint, of course, Siri AI and all of the other improvements that are going to be coming with iOS 27.

That will also be iPadOS 27, Apple Watch, TV.

All of that's going to be starting to land.

We knew that this was going to be coming quick.

I thought maybe it would take a little bit longer, but Monday is the day.

Yeah, I can't wait to start using it.

I'm very excited.

I haven't tried the betas other than my Vision Pro.

So I really look forward to seeing what iOS 27 brings to my iPhone,

what it brings to my iPad, and just a few days away.

I can't wait.

A little other story you linked to today.

I love this.

We've talked about satellite access.

Apple has been doing this for what, three years now, right?

And they kept saying that there's going to be a time

where they're going to start charging for it,

but they have announced now

that they're going to extend it for another year,

which you and I have often pontificated.

Like, why don't you just buy the satellites

or just say it's going to be free forever

because it's such an important...

I can't see Apple charging for this

because of the life-saving components

and stories that come out of it,

but I'm glad that they at least announced

that they are going to extend it.

I just wanted to throw that out there

because I think everybody's going to be able to benefit

If you have a phone that can access that.

It was four years ago.

It was in four years.

Okay.

Wow.

Announced the iPhone 14, 14 pro, all those.

That was the first iPhone that could communicate via satellite.

And you and I have tried it before when you were hiking and you were off the grid, you

know, connection, but you can communicate with people, whether for emergency purposes, like

you need help.

And we hear these stories, but people whose lives have been saved, or if you just want

to send a text message to somebody saying, you know, I'm, I'm in the middle of the forest,

but I'm fine.

Don't worry about me.

So it's a nice technology.

When Apple came out with it four years ago, they said the first two years would be free.

And after that, they would, you know, they reserve the right to charge for it.

And here we go four years later, and they keep kicking the can down the road, much like you.

I hope that Apple never charges for it.

But, I mean, I understand they want to keep their options open.

They want to see how much people are using it.

You know, can they afford to continue to offer the service?

But it's nice.

It's another one of those safety features.

I mean, I've only used it as a novelty.

I used it once.

I forget where it was.

Oh, actually, I think I was on, like, the top of Pike's Peak earlier this summer.

Oh, wow.

I think I sent you a text message from the top of Pike's.

You did.

That's right.

Nowhere.

And there was no cellular connection, but I'm like, yep, here we go.

Satellites are working.

So you did it and it worked very good.

Okay.

The very last thing I was just going to throw out there because you put this in,

which is so helpful.

We've talked about so many devices, when they're going to be available,

when we can expect them.

Federico over at max stories,

put together a nice little calendar that you,

that you link to that at least just gives you the idea of when you can start

ordering or pre-ordering some of these devices and when you can expect it

to show up from the UPS guy.

You pre-ordered your iPhone 18 Pro Max this morning,

and you're expecting to get that next Friday,

I believe, is that right?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, this is a great little way

to kind of see what's going on.

I mean, obviously it's just for a lot of us

that are just so interested in what the dates are gonna be.

We'll keep everybody up to speed on what's going on.

But right now you cannot get an iPhone Duo.

You cannot hold it in your hand.

That's gonna be about a month away from today.

It looks like the October 16th is when you can pre-order.

And then the 23rd is when you can actually pick it up on there.

So anyway, thank you, Frederico, for putting together this little calendar.

Yeah, we'll just I'll add that as sort of the last thing.

OK, I know we went over long, but I knew we were there's so much more to talk about.

It's crazy.

And we're barely just, you know, a little over two days away from the announcement.

We just had to know that is the all amount of time that we've had to digest all of this.

And there will be a lot more in the note.

Can we do a quick tip section?

Sure.

please go ahead i know we went long today but you know i have one in the no tip um which is the apple

pre-order process apple has been doing this for a while if you've been listening to this podcast

and you decide i'm going to order that iphone duo when it goes on sale next week or next month

or in the future i just want to give a thumbs up to this process because apple has this process

where um you can go into the apple store app beforehand you know if something's going to

become available. Like, for example, I knew that today, Saturday morning, I could buy a new iPhone,

but throughout the, you know, two days ago, or when I decided I was going to get the iPhone 18 Pro Max,

I already knew, you know, I looked at all the different colors, decided the color I wanted.

I decided what size I wanted, everything else, all those decisions I made beforehand. And so you can

go into this, the app and you can make all those decisions. So therefore, when it came time to

actually buy the iPhone this morning, everything was saved right there. The only thing I basically

had to do was click a button to buy it and move out. And as I mentioned to you this morning,

I had some issues on purchasing it because I wanted to put it on my Apple card credit card.

Yeah, right. 3% discount. And believe me, if I'm spending a lot of money on a new iPhone,

I want to at least get 3% of that back, right? So I didn't want to use my Amex for that.

And that's the part that I was running into stumbling blocks on. But so I kept trying it

over and over again in the app and it didn't work. And then I went to the Apple website and it went

through just fine. But the thing that made it all so much faster is that I did every time I had to

do it, I didn't have to re-enter in, I want this size, I want this capacity, I want this color,

because it was all saved as a pre-order. And so that's just such a really nice feature. So

anytime in the future that you get excited about buying a new Apple product that's going to go on

sale on X date, such as the new iPhone Duo, I just encourage you to use the pre-order system,

because that way, you know, often if you're buying, especially this morning, like I was trying to buy

it right away because I wanted to get one in the first day. So I was excited. And you don't want

to be making a mistake of, oh, I accidentally clicked the wrong size or I ordered a pink one

by mistake or whatever it was. You want to have all those decisions made beforehand. So I just

want to give, even though I had some stumbling blocks on the payment side of it for who knows

what reason, but I'm so happy that that pre-order process was out there. So I just want to encourage

you to use it. And again, it was nice because once I did the pre-order through the Apple Store app on

my iPhone, even though I ultimately placed my order through the Apple website, because that's

what worked for me, because of my Apple ID, it had all that information. So I was able to put it in

there and stuff like that. Well, maybe one of the reasons is because you're such an eager beaver. I

mean, you were literally on like the second that it opened up, right, the pre-orders, along with,

you know, 5 million other people probably that were trying to do it at the exact same time.

And by the way, just even that is amazing that it didn't probably, it didn't crash all the way.

You were still able to get it in with that.

I think you ordered it within four or five minutes.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

Of it being open.

So you were still one of the first on there.

But you're right.

Just quickly, as you were talking, I've been going through any of these.

I remember the pain that it used to be to order this.

You just walk through.

You make all of your decisions as you go through.

You know, even just if you start from scratch on this, it's a really nice and smooth process

for doing a preorder there.

But I like the fact that, yeah, if you've got an Apple ID, it'll recognize if you already

got a phone asking for the trade-in even that process is amazing on doing the trade-in and it

will ask you do you want to trade this in do you want to keep it on your same number with your same

carrier all that kind of stuff they've really done a great job uh on that process that okay we're now

we're gonna stop because i know we've been talking about this it's so much and we're gonna have so

much more to even talk about uh next week as well so you know what we'll we'll table it for now

excited about your new phone Jeff and we'll talk with you next week thanks Brett bye-bye everybody