Welcome to In The News for September the 18th, 2026.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

It feels a bit like Christmas morning for me, Brett, because I'm looking at Parcel.

Parcel is the app that I use to track my things that I purchase.

Yes, yes.

Apple Watch is here in New Orleans.

It is out, you know, it's arrived at the facility.

It's not quite out for delivery yet.

Okay, okay.

It's early in the morning.

It's going to be on the truck soon.

And then, of course, I got a text from Apple last night saying that my iPhone 18 Pro Max is at the Apple store in New Orleans waiting for me.

So I'm going to pick that up at 10 o'clock today.

Okay, so that's just barely maybe, I don't know, an hour and a half or a couple of hours or so.

Oh, my goodness.

Okay, so that's what – so did you order both the Apple Watch and the iPhone last Friday morning?

Is that right?

Or was the Apple Watch earlier?

You could actually order those the day of the keynote announcement.

So what was that?

Wednesday.

So I ordered it the same day.

And for whatever reason, they said that it wasn't available for shipping to the Apple

store.

Because I usually prefer to pick them up at the Apple store because I don't have to sit

here and wait.

Like, where's the UPS truck?

Where's the FedEx truck?

Whatever.

And so anyway, but that's just my little exciting thing.

So it's a lot going on this week.

And we're going to talk about the operating system.

I wish we could have recorded this like five hours from now, because then you would have

had both your brand new Apple Watch and your brand new iPhone 18 Pro Max. I'm so excited. There's so

much we need to talk about. Your post is packed today because not only this is the day that most

people, if you had pre-ordered like you at the crack of dawn last Friday morning, gotten up for

Saturday, I guess it was, right? Because we recorded last Saturday morning. If they had ordered that,

then today is the day that so many people are going to be getting in their hands. By the way,

I think if people had waited maybe an hour or two that last Saturday, Jeff, isn't the ship date or the receiving date sometime in like middle of October now, right?

I mean, it just got – it plummeted so quickly.

But I just know so many people are excited.

But then today, your post, you had so many people talking about it that have been reviewing it.

We're going to get to that in just a minute.

but probably the most exciting hardware item that came out that you reviewed,

the Apple polishing cloth.

I'm looking through your website.

Okay, I always look at the end of the news, and I'm like, okay,

what other product did Jeff review?

Like, what is exciting?

And I land upon the Apple polishing cloth, my friend.

Pretty amazing.

You splurged the $9, which is better than it was before,

and you have the new Apple polishing cloth.

Yeah, these things used to cost like 20 bucks.

Now it's nine bucks, but it's got the Apple logo on there and stuff.

Oh, it's so cute.

It's very nice.

And I can keep my iPhone nice and clean and stuff like that.

So it's a fun little product.

But I will tell you, I actually think that the other one that I use, the mobile cloth,

that company that's no longer in business anymore, I actually think that they are a little bit

better because the little ridges on it, I actually think it does a little bit of a better job.

But this is nice too.

Yeah.

This is good too.

Okay.

I know I'm making a little bit of fun of this joke, but the reason that I bring it up is

because the last few weeks you have been offering this fantastic way to donate some money to St.

Jude to fight children's cancer. And if folks are willing to at least pledge $100 or donate $100,

you're willing to send them one of those mobile cloths because you only have a few left.

Absolutely. With the beautiful iPhone JD logo on them. Plus, they work really well, too.

So, but I mean, heck, if you'd give $100, give $5.

Anything that you can do to donate to St. Jude would be much appreciated.

I saw that the overall relay campaign has now crossed over like five.

There you go.

You got one in your hand.

I got one in my hand.

It's over $5 million since they started donating money a number of years ago, which is incredible

because, I mean, obviously people give to organizations like St. Jude, but these are tech enthusiasts.

These are people who enjoy listening to podcasts about technology, all chipping in a few bucks

here and there, and the end result can make a real difference.

So anyway, if anybody wants to feel really good,

pitch in some money, you'll be happy.

And it's very, very cool.

Plus you get a cool collection.

I know, I know.

And it's really cool.

And I'll make sure that we have the link in here.

You posted this a few weeks ago

about where to go and on the page.

So anyway, thank you everyone.

I mean, the fact you've already got folks

already donating is amazing.

People reaching out to you, just really great.

I'm always very proud that you do that.

Okay, so let's then get into

so many of the things that were released.

Now, we just talked about your new hardware, the Christmas Day for you today.

But something else happened this week that affects everyone with an Apple device,

even if you haven't gotten the brand new iPhone 18.

iOS 27, an iPad OS 27, Apple Watch OS 27, TV OS, all the OSs, the Mac OS.

I've upgraded everything.

I have been extremely happy.

We don't have time to go through all of the crazy details that have been happening here.

But you had a few links to some stories today about iOS 27.

That's the big one on the phone.

So far, I have been impressed.

I have been happy with everything.

We knew this was just going to be some minor updates in the sense that everything was just a little bit more improved.

And so far, I have really been happy with this, Jeff.

Yeah, I've never seen an update like this before because sometimes we have operating system updates that have like some really cool, big, new features.

And then sometimes we have the ones that are more, you know, fit and finish, polished, just make everything work a little bit better.

And, you know, oftentimes people say they're more excited about the ones that don't try to change the world because they just want everything to work better.

And in such a big way, that's what iOS 27 is, is it's just let's let's get the liquid glass interface working better.

Let's make things more efficient.

Let's improve this.

And yet and yet it's got the elephant in the room.

It's got this huge feature of this working Siri AI, which is just – I mean, we're going to be talking about that throughout the podcast today.

We're going to be talking about it for the next years and stuff like that.

Oh, yeah.

It has fundamentally changed, fundamentally changed the way that I use my iPhone.

And I know that some people are in the beta over the summer.

I just updated on Monday.

And I mean, you're showing right now the post from David Pogue.

David Pogue is such an amazing writer.

I haven't worked three days.

So he came up with, what is it, 125 things to try with the new version of Siri AI.

And a couple of them don't work because there's one or two things.

Like he was asking things that would gather information from Apple's health app, and Apple hasn't integrated that yet.

But most of the – as you scroll through the page, it's funny because it's got green checkmark, green check.

There's so many green checkmarks of so many things that you can ask about this.

You can ask about this.

And it's just, it is, I'm just blown away by the number of things that it will, I mean,

just this morning, I'm driving into work and I was thinking, you know, what are we going

to do for dinner tonight?

It's Friday.

We sometimes do pizza on Friday night.

Right.

And I'm like, oh, you know, maybe we'll do Thai food.

We haven't done Thai food in a while on a Friday night, you know, just something sort

of fun to go.

And because my wife and I will often get food and we'll sit around and watch something on

Apple TV, like Ted Lasso or something like that.

And I'm just thinking, you know, what is it that my wife normally gets from Thai?

And I'm like, well, let me just ask Siri.

So I said, you know, hey, you know who?

Oh, wow.

What does my wife usually order when we get Thai food?

And I guess it's because of like years and years of text messages where like I'm like, what do people want?

And like people tell me it went through it all in a second.

It's like, oh, you know, she usually gets the red curry, you know, whatever.

But but every once in a while she gets pad Thai.

And I'm like, yeah, that's right.

And the only way you would know that is by having this vast, you know, database of all the personal information.

And there's a million other things, too, that I've just asked it this week.

and it's given me these answers that are like i mean it's it's we all know that the old siri had

limitations on what it could do and you would just accept that you know it's not going to do certain

things right and yet here there's just so much that it's answering and that it's doing and like

i'm looking at things on my screen i was trying to figure out something out just last night on my

ipad and i asked it i'm like and so this is using it on the ipad os version of it i was like you know

on this screen, like, what is this setting here? Cause I was in the settings app trying to figure

something out. I was like, what does this do? And so it can see my screen and it can say, oh, well

that what you're talking about there, that's such and such. And the reason you might want to change

it is because of such and such. And I'm like, wow, like you're like, you're like this personal coach

that's like here with me in the room that can see what I'm doing. And of course has an incredible

understanding of the operating system because you know, the iOS knows the iOS or the iPad OS knows

the iPadOS. And it's just a million different examples of things that it is telling me.

Now, again, it is AI, which means that it's not 100% perfect. And so you need to understand this.

And I'll give you an example of this. And this was not a real example. I was doing it just to

sort of find out what it would do. A long time ago, when my son was much younger, he's in his

20s now. But when my son was probably, I don't know, in middle school, we were watching like

all the James Bond movies. And we started at the very beginning. And we sort of went through the

in order. And I had a note in my Apple notes that I haven't updated in probably a decade,

where I had like a list of all the James Bond movies. There were a couple of them we were

going to skip, but like all of them I wanted to see. And I would put like a little thumbs up

emoji next to one as we watched it. Right. And so I just asked it, I said, Hey, you know,

what's the next James Bond movie for my son and I to watch together. Now my note did not say

my son and I are watching these movies. It was just the notes called like James Bond movies,

of the list, but it was able to AI was able to figure out, well, first of all, Jeff has this

thing in his notes app of all these James Bond movies. So that's, that's probably what you're

talking about. And then it went through and I guess it figured out that the thumbs up emoji

was the ones that we had listened to, we had watched, which was true. And then it said the

next one that you're going to watch is, and I think it said, you know, tomorrow I'll never die.

But, but the reason I mentioned it is because it had a link to the note. So I looked at the note

because I haven't looked at this note in years.

Yeah, right, I was going to ask.

And I saw that it was actually off

because it was actually the one right before it,

which I think is a movie called GoldenEye.

It's like, oh, I could see with my own eyes

that GoldenEye was actually the next one,

not the one after it, Tomorrow Never Dies.

And I asked Siri about that.

And this is such a typical AI thing, you're going to laugh.

I'm like, well, hey, I'm looking at the note.

It actually looks like GoldenEye is the next one.

And what is the AI going to say?

Oh, of course, you're so right.

My mistake, yes, you're correct.

So I joke about it,

But the key is, is that even though that was technically a fail, it was actually really

good because it instantly brought up that note that I haven't seen in a decade and brought

me right to it.

So I could, you know, trust, but verify with any AI, right?

So it gave me that information.

And although that's a silly example, it's the only part, it's the only one I've seen

this week where Siri got something wrong, where the AI got something wrong.

Everything else is so spot on.

And as I started my post, you know, I've said forever that my iPhone is like my extra brain.

You know, things that I can't remember, I put, or I don't want to remember.

I stick it in the notes app.

Or like something about a person, like my contact entry for people.

Like, for example, for you, Brett, for example, my contact entry for you in the little notes portion of it,

it has like the name of your wife and your kids.

Just so that like if I forgot, oh yeah, what was your wife's name?

Of course, I do the same thing.

But it's just a way to store things in there.

And now all of that stuff is personal, but it's also, it's private.

I mean, this is not me giving it to chat GPT.

It's all very private.

It's very secure.

As David Pogue pointed out that even, even the times when Apple goes to its, um, its

little, its data center, like if it's not doing the AI on device, if it's going off

site though, all of the Apple's data centers, um, use a hundred percent renewable energy.

So at least it gives you a little bit better feeling that I'm not burning coal and stuff like that to answer my silly AI question about what we're going to have for dinner on a Friday night.

It's really revolutionary.

And so that's why there's all these little bitty changes in iOS 27 that I'm starting to discover and I'm starting to love.

And then there's this huge thing.

And again, this is how good it is today on day one.

It's only going to get better in the future.

And it's just so helpful.

Oh, I love it.

I have been amazed.

While you've been talking, I've just been reading through this David Pogue list.

I didn't have a chance to look at this before.

But first of all, how accurate that it is, how creative that he is, of course, and how

many of these things, as you said, are correct, like that they look great.

It works.

It actually works.

It's really helpful.

That's the thing.

It's being helpful to you, and it's having all of your personal information on your phone,

which is so much stuff, your messages, your notes, your emails, your contacts, your calendar,

your you name it, plus plus third party apps that integrate with it. So for example, I use the

things app to keep track of my little tasks and stuff like that. Things was updated this week to

integrate with this new AI. And so I haven't, you know, it could also, you know, show up, you know,

show something on my, on my things app or add to it. And so many other apps are being updated too.

You know, just the one thing you mentioned, just like you, I use my notes app for so much, Jeff, and I used to go into my notes app and I would hit that little search button to say, you know, what did I name this or, you know, I need I need the door code for, you know, this office.

And I'm like, I'd have to go and find that.

Did I call it door code?

Did I call it office code?

Did I even say key?

Did I say key code?

Like I'd have to go and search for all of that.

But you're saying now I could literally ask the question, Sally.

And it's almost like that's my knowledge repository that now I can have access to.

That's pretty incredible.

Okay.

Which means, Brett, that you have even more incentive than ever before.

Any little bit of information that you want to remember, capture it more than ever.

Because, yes, of course, you can always open up the notes app and do a search for it manually.

And that's fine.

But if you're just casually there asking your iPhone, if you've got your AirPods in, you can just, you know, ask, you know, who.

And and that way you can have this, you know, you could be sitting there, you know, getting ready in the morning, you know, brushing your teeth, shaving.

And if you've got your iPhone out there, you can just say, hey, Mr. iPhone, you know what?

What's on my calendar?

What's on my schedule today?

So, for example, I asked that this morning as I was getting ready.

And it's like, well, you've got these things on your calendar.

But it also said, but also you have a reminder, like remind yourself, because there's somebody

I need to call at like 11 o'clock today.

It said, you know, you have a reminder that at 11 o'clock you need to call so-and-so.

It just put it all together into here's the things I need to worry about today.

And I'm like, wow, that was really nice.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let me ask quickly about logistics because I upgraded when, as soon as I upgraded my devices,

I did not go in to settings and turn on Siri.

You have to do that.

Okay.

So you must've done that.

You must have done that almost immediately because I remember you texting me pretty soon.

I updated my phone.

I tried to ask it a question.

I wasn't seeing anything new.

I'm like, wait a minute.

I thought this was a new feature.

And then I'm like, oh, yeah.

So I just went into the settings app, go to Siri, and it tells you it's beta because it's obviously not finished yet.

Correct.

It still says that.

But you turn it on.

Once I turned it on on my iPhone, I noticed that it was also turned on on my iPad.

Oh, really?

Okay.

And I presume that means I haven't even used it on my Mac at home yet, but I presume it

also turned on my Mac.

But once you turn it on places and then I have read on the internet that once you turn it

on, you may have to wait because so many people are turning it on.

That's my next question.

That there's a waiting list.

I personally did not wait.

Like I turned it on and within 30 seconds it was available.

But I know from the internet that some people are having to wait a short period of time.

I don't know if it's minutes or hours or whatever it is.

I don't think it stays.

I'll tell you my, that's exactly where I was going next.

my experience is I finally went and turned it on maybe two days ago.

And it told me that it's indexing, right?

We talked about this before because this isn't something that's just going to be automatic.

The reason that it really can read through so much of this information and access information,

it has to index all of this, at least in the way, you know, on device, the way that

Apple has designed it to be.

I think, I feel like, I think I remember I turned it on later in the afternoon of one

day, whatever it was. And it wasn't until the next morning that I woke up and I had a little

notification message that said the indexing is done. You can now use Siri, whatever the language

was, but it was just like a little notification. Okay. So that's why I was asking because I did

have to wait a little bit. It wasn't immediate. And again, I don't know if that's because everybody

was waiting in line necessarily, or if it just had, it had to take that much time to index

everything whichever way it wasn't like it had to wait you know all that time and and um okay i just

wanted to ask about the logistics and let me just mention this the uh yeah apple apple you know we

talked about this a couple of months ago that apple updated one of its latest versions of ios 26 this

we're on 27 that's right one of the latest versions of 26 would actually start the indexing process

so that it was already done and so for me i guess i had done that and maybe you have it but i will

I also mentioned that all of this indexing, I mean, it tries to do some of it in real time, of course, but most people plug in their devices overnight just because you want it to be plugged in because of that your battery's there.

But an additional reason to do it is that when your iPhone is plugged in overnight, when your iPad is plugged in overnight, Apple uses that time.

Like it figures out, hey, it's the middle of the night.

You know, Jeff doesn't normally touch his iPad.

That's right.

And so I'm going to devote some of my processing power efficiently, but I'm going to do it to like update indexes and stuff like that.

And so especially in this new world of the AI on our Apple devices, you want to do that

because that's when it does much of it.

But it's not all of it.

I mean, it will index during the day too, but it does most of it at night.

So it's interesting that you had a little bit more indexing to do and I did not.

It's not like either one of us purposefully planned for it.

It's just the way it was.

But again, these are minor hiccups.

You're going to get it done within a week or so, within a day or so, it's done.

And then you just move on.

I just wanted people to know, like it may not be immediate on there.

It does take some time and that the indexing is important.

Plus, but of course, I don't know that many people have as much junk on their phones as

you and I do.

But once you turn that, you have to actually go in and turn that on.

I think it may alert you or so.

That's in the settings.

But like you said, Jeff, and then there's some other options and stuff that you can look

at as well.

Can I remind you, I just saw this last night and I have no idea.

Maybe other people have this problem or maybe it's unique to me.

When I was testing the AI last night, I asked a question on my iPad.

about something that my brother had texted me

and it didn't give me the answer.

I'm like, that's really weird.

And I'm like, I wonder what this is.

And so I went into settings and I went into Siri.

And if you're in the Siri settings

On the iPad.

On the iPad.

On the iPad, there is like a thing of like apps.

And if you tap that,

it will list every single app on your phone

or your iPad in this case.

And when you tap on a specific app,

there's a toggle switch at the top

as to whether or not it works with Siri.

And for some reason, I have absolutely no idea why my messages app was turned off.

It's turned on my iPhone.

So it meant that when I was asking my iPhone questions, like, you know, what kind of time

food is my wife?

Like it had that on my iPhone.

But for some reason, last night it was turned off my iPad.

I have no idea.

I mean, things, who knows?

So as soon as I noticed that, I turned it on and then I immediately asked it another

question about my messages and it still didn't have the answer.

And I think it's for the reason that you just said that it was now that it was turned on,

it had to sort of index and understand my iPad and stuff like that.

I'm sure I haven't tested it yet this morning, but I suspect it did that overnight.

So why in the world I had a particular app turned off?

I have no idea.

But I also mentioned this as a, I guess it's like a privacy feature.

Like if you have some app on your device that for whatever reason, you don't want Siri AI

to have access to that information, you can on an app by app basis, turn it off.

So I just throw that out there for people to know.

I'm so glad you mentioned that.

Because I trust it, I personally think I do want it to have access to all my information

because I know that it's secure and Apple's not educating the AI with it, you know, and

all those sorts of things.

But hey, I mean, who knows?

Maybe at some point I'll find a reason that I want to turn on some particular app or maybe

other people will have a reason to.

I don't know.

I see that.

Anytime you go into an app, there is, well, there are several things now.

A lot of times I see this if I go and I want a certain app to have access to my location,

right but one of the other options in here is apple intelligence and siri and you can go in

and just like you said it says learn from this app that's the toggle allow siri to learn from how you

use this app to make suggestions across apps interesting i'm glad that you mentioned that

because oh so you're telling me yeah i was getting to it by going to setting series apps but you just

showed me you can also get to that same thing by going to settings oh that's true yeah yeah i actually

did your first way yeah but you can't do it either way it's the same location on work yeah but you

know then i just was thinking wait a minute that iphone had already indexed all of your messages

so why didn't the ipad use that index but then i thought oh maybe because it's on device it's on

in other words as soon as i thought about that i'm like oh that even that gives me a little bit more

confidence in the fact that it's on device. Oh, interesting on that. Okay. Like you said,

we're going to, we're going to be talking so much more about Siri. I mean, it's almost like,

now all my devices are going off. We're going to talk so much more about the new Apple Sally.

This is almost two years in the making, right? We all remember summer of 2024 when so many promises

were made. I mean, you've only been playing with it for a week, but would you go out and say that

Like this is what you think Apple intended it to be something similar to two years ago?

Yeah.

What Apple said two years ago they were going to do, this is that and much more.

And much more.

Wow.

And it's already for me on day one more than I would have expected.

And again, to repeat myself, the idea that this is only going to get better over the next six months, the next year, the next two years.

I mean, this makes me, this is one of these things that makes me excited for technology again.

Because, I mean, it's cool for cool sake, but it's like, it's helpful.

I mean, this is technology that is going to make my life better, not just because it's

the new whiz bang feature that's got, you know, some cool thing that I'm interested in

because I'm a geek.

It's because it's going to, it's like a personal assistant that, that I don't have to pay anything

to.

That's just, you know, they are, and it's going to help me and, and, and make me a better

person and remember the things that I don't want my brain to remember because I want my

brain space focused on more advanced skills, like analyzing things and coming up with solutions

for me and my clients, but I don't want to have to just remember silly things.

And my iPhone can take care of that and provide me the information when I need it.

This is, this is great.

This is what we want.

I'm still fascinated with David Pogue's list here, only because here's my thing.

This is a new way to interact with our devices now.

Oh, yes.

In a way, like, I mean, you know, maybe it's an evolution of a way to interact, but I just

don't think about this though, Jeff.

That's the thing.

It's like, if I, where was I?

Like one of the things is like, where was I on July 8th?

I may have that question in the past, but what would I have done?

I would have gone to my calendar and I would have flicked all the way back to July to see, did I have anything on July 8th?

I would have never thought to ask that because we just have never had access to this.

And so for me, looking through this list and David Poe's list here is at least giving me the ideas to know these are the things that I should be thinking about.

Yeah, we need to move on to the next topic, but I'll just tell you on that one.

I know. David Pogue mentions that the reason that the AI was able to figure out where he was on July 8th is not because of a calendar entry, but it was because he took a picture.

And from the location data on the picture, it knew where he was.

But I will tell you, I asked the AI this week, what were my last couple of vacations?

And so it told me, oh, well, you were in Colorado in June and you were in such and such.

But you know what it told me my most recent vacation was?

It says, I was in D.C. this week.

And I'm like, I wasn't in D.C. this week.

You were not in D.C.

I was in D.C.

You were not.

Because you were in D.C.

And do you remember that you sent me a picture from the Irish Times bar, which is right near Georgetown Law School?

Yes.

Yes.

You saw that picture, and you must have had location data in it.

And the AI mistakenly thought, even though I wasn't in the picture.

You were there.

Mistakenly thought.

Now, that's obviously a flaw, because it needs to understand the distinction between the picture that you sent me, and I saved to my camera roll.

is not the same as a picture that I myself took.

But that's, it's an example of the AI was trying to be smart

and it's cool because it knew I took pictures

in Colorado Springs in June.

So it knew it was there,

but it mistakenly thought that I was,

no, believe me, I would have loved to have been there

with DC with you this week.

That would have been fun.

Yeah, how was your vacation in DC?

That's great.

Exactly, yeah.

Oh, goodness.

Okay, that's the Siri part.

Now, I don't want to move on from iOS 27 yet.

Just, I, because, I mean, there's so much that the more,

I mean, obviously you link to, you know, six colors here.

The incredible, the completely exhaustive review from Federico Vittici, who does this every year with iOS and iPadOS.

He's kind of squeezed them together.

General highlights.

I think one of my favorite things you linked to today was 50 new things that your iPhone can do in iOS 27.

But before we get to that, or maybe just run through a couple of the favorite things, any other things you just want to cover some highlights for iOS 27 yet?

Yeah, I mean, it's more efficient, which is nice.

Things are a little bit snappier.

It's got some nice features to the Photos app.

Like, for example, one that I was using just recently is I had a picture that's like a – it's a landscape picture.

And I wanted to print it out in a 5x7 frame in portrait orientation.

But there wasn't enough at the top and bottom of the picture.

And so this is – and this is a feature that the AIs have had for a while with photographs.

But it's now built into photos.

It can basically extend the picture.

And it can use AI to fill it at the top and bottom.

I did try that.

And again, this is different from reality.

So you need to decide.

And sometimes it will add something to the picture that you're like, oh, that's not real.

But other times it just like makes the wall a little bit higher or something that's totally,

you know, not offensive to me.

So that's a cool feature that it has.

Another one that's really neat.

And Dan mentions, Dan Morin mentions this in his review is, and we talked about this a

week or two ago, you copy something and then you open up another app and you bring up the

little keyboard on your iPhone.

And instead of you having to like hold down and wait for the little pop up that says paste, but like right there at the top of the keyboard in the center, like the same place where it has the tips, there's actually a little thing there that you can see a picture of whatever you copied.

And so you can paste immediately just by tapping on that.

It's that's that's like a totally cool, useful feature that I've already used it once I try something like I'm going to use this all the time.

But like, again, that's not revolutionary.

You don't you don't update your iOS to have that feature.

But when that feature is one of a hundred or whatever, it's just like everything, it makes you smile.

It makes you smile.

Yeah, yeah.

That's great.

I mean, I would just say again.

Yeah, there's a picture over there.

You just had it.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I see that.

And I don't know that I've quite had that yet, even though I do a lot of copying and pasting.

The first thing that I noticed was just the clearness.

I was looking here in Federico's review.

He goes through like all of the different apps and just shows.

We talked about this, of course, as well.

Things were just a little bit nicer, a little bit clearer.

It's just subtle changes.

But I could almost tell as soon as I did the upgrade and I looked at the home screen, I just had a sense of cleaner, better, more polished.

And that was kind of nice.

You know, I know that a lot of people are very hesitant to upgrade from a major upgrade, right?

from 26.1 to 26.2.

Most people, we've told people it's not a big deal.

26 to 27 are a big leap like that.

There are some people that are a little hesitant

and I think you're fine doing that.

You can wait for a while.

You know, if you want to wait for a couple of weeks,

let people stomp on all the bugs.

I will tell you, I don't know if this is necessarily a bug,

but I find that every time that I upgrade

from a major upgrade, at least in my sense,

I feel like my battery level goes down a little bit quicker.

I don't know if it's just because it's new, but I feel like then the next point upgrade,

Apple usually improves that.

So I don't see much of a battery drain on something like that.

You know where that's probably happening, Brett?

It's probably happening because when you first upgrade, it's re-indexing everything.

Exactly.

I was just going to say that.

And that's only going to last a week or so.

Exactly.

And then it's fine.

50 new things your iPhone can do in iOS.

I thought this was a great article here from Tim Hardwick.

You know, what are these lists?

I just, I can't stop scrolling because I'm like, oh, that's neat.

Ooh, that's neat.

Oh, I know we talked about this, but I forgot about that.

Like the wallet passes.

I can't wait to get a new ticket or something like that.

It adds some of that.

This is a great list on here as well.

Yeah, cool.

Lots of cool stuff.

Again, we're going to be finding these things forever.

And again, we mentioned earlier that you need to manually turn on the new AI features.

If you update to iOS 27 and for whatever reason decide not to turn that on,

well, then this is almost like a point update.

It's just a really, really, really good point update

because it's got lots of little bitty improvements that make your life better.

so much i'll make sure we have the links in there we will be talking about this but i wanted to spend

the most most time on this just because i know that everybody you know we were talking about the

new devices and the duo and the new iphone pros and everything coming out but everybody is going

to have everybody gets most you know most i forget how far they go back was the iphone 11 maybe the 10

or something like that but apple is pretty good about making sure that most the most people as

possible can get access to some of these new updates. Okay, so let's just spend a couple of

minutes then on a couple of the reviews that you link to for the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

Marques Brownlee, somebody that I turn to all the time just because he sees and reviews and

picks apart so many mobile devices. I was really amazed at his comments here. I mean, he's so

impressed with the chip, basically the A20 chip that is now in this. And of course, he's also a

big camera guy. He was going through a lot of the details on the camera as well. But I feel like

the things that he is pointing out, mostly on the pro side is I've seen it duplicated in most other

reviews that I've seen so far. Yeah, it's not hard to understand the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are,

I've seen two different reviews, both Marquez's and the one that you're showing right now from

Gruber at Darren Farber. They say, you know, remember way back when Apple used to have like

the iPhone 6 and then the next year was the 6S or the iPhone 4 and the 4S. And we used to sort of

colloquially refer to the S upgrades as it's the same iPhone as last year, but a little bit better.

And a number of people have said that the new iPhone 18 Pro, it's the same as the 17 Pro,

which was one of the all-time great iPhones was the 17 Pro and Pro Max. It's the same thing,

but it's just a little bit better in three ways.

And you can almost say it's two and a half ways.

And the reason I say that is one way it's better

is that new processor.

The A20 processor is a huge increase.

It is like 20% faster.

And especially if this is just from last year's model.

So if it's been a couple of years since you've upgraded,

then you're gonna see a big increase.

And it's not just faster.

It's a processor that's finely tuned

for the specific things that Apple wants you to do

or to allow you to do.

Like for example, the AI features.

and so this is the advantage of Apple making its own chips.

So one of the cool features is that that new processor makes it do better things.

The second feature, of course, is the camera.

There's three cameras in the back of it.

Two of them are the same as the 17 Pro, which were fantastic upgrades last year.

But of course, the main camera, the one that you use all the time,

has got the variable aperture.

And then the third big feature is it's got a better battery life,

but it's not necessarily because it's got more battery.

It does.

It has a little bit more battery in it,

But it's actually, that's the reason I say two and a half is that's actually a side effect of the A20 processor because it is more efficient.

You actually are seeing more battery life for the same size battery.

So those are the bigger features.

But there's a couple other ones, too.

Like one that's worth mentioning, and Marques does a great job of showing it, is the Dynamic Island is smaller.

And the reason it's smaller, you know, the Dynamic Island was originally created because Apple put its little cameras at the top of the phone.

And so it couldn't have screen up there.

it had to have like, you know, these little cameras looking out at you. One of those cameras,

and it's the one that it's the, it's the face ID sensor. Apple realized that the face ID sensor

doesn't have to have a perfect, you know, circle to look through and to look at you.

It could actually look underneath the pixels on your phone. So they took the face ID center,

they pushed it to the right side. And so if you, I could, you know, I haven't gotten the new phone

yet. So we'll see if I can see it. I've heard most people say that you really can't see it

underneath the screen, but Marquez was able to figure out a camera angle where he could actually

show it. But what's really interesting is he puts his phone under like a microscope,

like this really cool microscope. And you can actually see the individual, this is nothing,

something that your natural eye cannot see, but he actually found the individual pixels.

And you can see that there's a couple of pixels that there's like a little bit more space. It's

almost like you're looking at a screen door, you know, like you get really, really close to the

You can sort of see the individual holes, but from afar, you can't see it.

But he was able to use a microscope and this one tiny part of the screen, you can understand

how there's a sensor under there looking at you, but it's not something that takes away.

So since Apple can move that out of the way, now they have more space in the top center

of the screen.

Yeah, that was amazing.

And as a result, the Dynamic Island can now show three apps instead of two.

Or as Dan Morin points out in his review, he says three apps at one time is cool, but

what's even better is when you have the two apps and the dynamic island that

you're used to using, one of those apps has more space.

So we can show you more information.

So it's like an even better dynamic island.

So I look forward to,

I look forward to playing with that when I get my new iPhone later today.

Is it ridiculous that that,

that dynamic island alone is what I might want to upgrade for?

Like, like that just, I, I,

I love the dynamic island on my 17 pro here.

And just the people, the way that people are talking about it is just amazing.

But yeah, just quickly on that, the fact that he was able to show the face ID sensor like underneath, I mean, that just opens up so much to me.

Because I remember when the first Dynamic Island started coming out, like it's a cutout and it kind of still is a cutout.

But if we can start improving on some of that, that cameras can now look through pixels.

I don't know, that just blows my mind.

I think that's fantastic.

You and I haven't really talked about the folding iPhone, the iPhone Duo today.

because it's not going to be out for another month.

But the iPhone Duo, its selfie camera is also underneath the screen.

Yes, exactly.

And nobody has had a review of it yet.

I've heard a couple people initially saying that it does mean that the selfie quality camera

is not quite as good on the iPhone Duo.

But of course, the iPhone Duo is such a unique thing because you don't actually need to use

the selfie camera as much because you can actually turn around the phone and use the back camera

and have a screen.

So I mean, this is something we'll be talking about next month.

But it's nice that Apple is figuring out what cameras, what features could they put under the screen instead of in the Dynamic Island.

Speaking of cameras, every year I get so excited to see Austin Mann review the latest iPhone Pro with the latest cameras.

Every year I just remember these gorgeous pictures and stuff because he's a professional photographer.

I don't know that he's ever accompanied it with a film.

I didn't get to watch the entire thing, but I was mesmerized watching him almost like

the how it was made video behind the scenes kind of a video on this, which was just amazing

to me.

Yeah.

You know, back in the day, sometimes I would be in like the dentist office and you would

pick up an issue of National Geographic that was sitting there on the table just because

you would flip through it and see the beautiful pictures taken by professional photographers.

Part of me views his reviews the same way.

Cause I'm like, you know, he's in Colorado.

He goes somewhere interesting every year to take cool pictures.

And so he's in Colorado.

It's got, you know, mountains and hills and horses and stuff like that.

So like, he's taking these pictures that like, I, I, I'm not a professional photographer.

I know that technically I might have the same equipment as you,

cause we're going to both have iPhones, but, but I, I, I, you're no Austin man.

I'm no Austin man, but it's fun to see.

So just from the same standpoint of looking at cool pictures, but then what, like I said,

the second part of this that I love is it's actually very practical. He's like, you know,

for example, let me show you, if you do this setting on the new iPhone 18 pro, you can get

this effect. And if you do this setting, you get this effect. And I'm like, oh, well, thank you

for teaching me that. Like now I understand it. And the big takeaway is the new variable aperture.

It's cool. I mean, that's really interesting that it can do that, but you don't have to worry about

it. You can just use your iPhone like you normally do. And as a side effect, you're going to get

better pictures. And it's like, wow, that's nice. I have a little better. I mean, it's not like

outstandingly better pictures, but they're better pictures. But on the other hand, every once in a

while, we all want to pretend like we're an artist and you may actually want to do something

interesting, you know, like really explore the bokeh effect where it's more, you know,

the background is more out of focus or the feature that any camera with an aperture can do is that

if you have a certain bright light with a certain setting, you can get like these starburst features.

like a light in the background has a starburst or maybe a woman wearing a diamond earring will have

a little bit of a starburst on it. That is sort of a signature. Oh, that picture is a perfect one

you're showing right there. That's a signature feature of high-end cameras. And because of the

size aperture, we now have that ability. So again, if you want to play around with those features,

you know, just to get like a really cool picture, you know, why not? And again, you have, I mean,

as I always joke, you have unlimited film with your iPhone, take all the pictures you want.

So like, if you're trying to take a picture that you think might be cool, why not for this one picture say, well, what if I change the aperture to this?

What if I change the aperture to this?

Oh, that's sort of cool how it did that.

So that's really cool.

I got to the part of the video when I had to stop that he was talking about focus tracking, which started like, wait a minute.

He was, and I'll make sure we have a link to the video in here.

He's holding like an iPhone close to the camera.

So it focused on that.

But as he moved it back and forth, you could see the background go coming in and out of focus.

Now, you have to see it to kind of understand what I'm describing here, I think.

But just the capabilities there was just so impressive.

Anyway, you can decide how much you want to have in focus, what object.

You can actually say, I want this object to be in focus.

And then that object can actually move out of the screen and come back in again.

Like if you're filming your kid playing soccer or something like that.

Right, right.

And you can put the focus on them again.

And you can do all sorts of interesting effects because of the focus.

He also talks about the, it's not filters.

What is it called?

The thing that Apple has that you can adjust the image, the nature of it, you know, using

something that's more film quality, if it's more gold.

That's something that we've had in the past and Apple's tweaked it more.

It's not a feature I usually play around with that much, but I haven't played around with

it some and it's sort of fun.

There's just all of these really interesting, cool camera features, which is good because,

you know, I love my iPhone for a million reasons.

but like a very big reason I love it is because it's such an amazing camera.

So I'm glad that the camera features are enhanced.

We will move on quickly to the Apple watch.

You're getting your Apple watch series 12 today.

I'm so happy for you, my friend.

It might be a little bit bigger than the one that you have on your wrist today.

Yeah.

Right now.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

And I hadn't, this is the first I'd heard about it was I saw this in review.

It's, it's such a slight, slight difference that you would,

you would have to measure it to actually notice it.

But it's just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit bigger, which means that it has a little bit more bezel than before.

And again, I presume the reason for that is because Apple had to pack a lot more sensors because that's one of the big advantage of the new Apple Watch, right?

Is it's got all the new health sensors that it can like measure.

What is it?

Instead of measuring your heartbeat every five minutes, it's every five seconds or whatever it is.

You know, it's got these features that are supposedly going to make it better at health.

Again, I haven't tried it yet, so I haven't dug deep.

We'll be talking about this in future weeks.

But that was one very, very, very, very slight change to the size of it.

By the way, speaking of size, I'll just mention I heard – I was listening to a podcast this morning, and John Gruber on the way to work was mentioning that the size of the iPhone 18 Pro is almost exactly the same as the size of the iPhone 17 Pro, so much so that a case for the 17 Pro will also work for the 18 Pro.

So he said the only difference he goes that the, what do they call it?

The plateau on the back of it is just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit higher.

I mean, like you have to measure it.

And so like things, if you bought a case, if you're using a case for a 17 Pro, you'll notice that the plateau sticks out just the tiniest amount more.

But that just shows you it's like that idea that it's an S upgrade, that it's very similar.

So anyway, very slight difference of size in the iPhone 18 Pro, very slight difference in size on the new watch.

Quickly on the watchOS 27, I upgraded mine.

I am already very happy with the dynamic app grid.

That's different than what was before.

Instead of like scrolling through a whole list, it kind of bubbles up.

I wish you could customize this a little bit.

Maybe that'll come a little bit later.

But I will tell you.

Can I just say on that one, Brett?

Yeah, please.

What's nice is that, so you press the button, you know, the, what's the button called on the side there?

The digital crown.

You click the digital crown and you see one, two, three, four, five,

so you can see seven apps there.

But then if you just use the digital crown to scroll down,

you'll go right back to the list.

That's right.

You really haven't lost any, like the list feature is still there,

but the apps that you're most likely to want are right there in front of you.

It's a cool feature.

Right.

I'm also finding that I am starting to use the tap gestures and the wrist flicks.

This isn't new.

The gestures have been there, Jeff.

But now I guess with watchOS 27, I find that they're a little bit easier to use.

I can do the double tap and I can do the single tap.

And I'm very much enjoying these.

So here's what's new is you can now select things too.

So let me just walk through it real quick.

So I'm looking at my Apple Watch screen and I'm looking at the clock, right?

If I do a double tap, you know, tap, tap, it's going to bring up the thing that's got

like all the little apps there, you know, one app at a time.

And as I do a double tap, the app stack, as I double tap again, I will, you know, every

time you double tap, you will move through the stack.

But what's new is once you see an app that you want to access, do a single tap.

It will select that.

It will open that app.

And then from within that app, sometimes like, for example, if it's an app that has a big

long list, you can double tap to scroll through the list one screen at a time.

And so the idea is that you can basically do a whole.

And then if you want to go back to where you started from, just do the risk flick.

You do the wrist flick and you go back to your clock.

And so you can now use your Apple Watch with one hand in ways that you never could before.

We had some of this last year, but now it's even more and it's even more usable.

And again, there are times where you might be carrying something with your other hand

or even if you're not, it's just, you can just, while you're looking at it,

so you have the ability, it's just nice to be able to do it.

And you don't have to, if you want to use your other finger to tap the screen,

you certainly can, but it's a nice additional interface.

This is another example of Brett.

We talked about this so many times over the, gosh, as long as we've done this podcast,

Apple has features that they start out with as an accessibility feature for people that

have, you know, they can't, they only have one hand.

And then as Apple perfects the feature even more, it becomes something that everybody uses

and can take advantage of.

This is another example of it because I remember way back in the day, some of these one-handed

gestures were only in accessibility features.

And now it's just a very helpful part of the operating system that anyone can use with their

Apple Watch, you know, big thumbs up for me. Apple also released the AirPods 5, not the AirPods Pro.

This is just the AirPods regular five. Some of the reviews coming in, you'll link to one from

Andrew O'Hara, who basically just said cheaper. I guess it's about the same price, but a lot of

people liking this because it is sort of a lower price point that you can get in. But man, there's

so many features I feel like in here that were only available in the AirPods Pro now coming down

to the AirPods regular? Yeah, there's two reasons in my mind to get the regular AirPods versus the

AirPods Pro. The most obvious one, as you said, is price. But let's not forget, Brett, that

everybody's ear is different. And I often hear people saying online that for their ears,

the AirPods, which are like the hard plastic ones, they feel better than the AirPods Pro. I mean,

everybody's different, right? And so for some people, it's just they couldn't really use an

AirPods Pro, so they need to use regular AirPods. But now they have a lot of those same features.

Now, don't get me wrong, the audio, what we call the cancelization where you don't hear all the background noise, that is not as good on a regular AirPod as it is on an AirPod Pro.

But on the flip side of it, it's better than it's ever been before.

So if you want to have some pretty good noise cancellation, you can now get some pretty good noise cancellation without having to air the AirPods Pro.

And there's other features too in it, but it's nice.

So it continues to get better.

The AirPods Pro work okay for my ears.

And because my AirPods Pro, I mean, I use them throughout the day.

All the time.

Conference calls for podcasting with you, for listening to music, for listening to podcasts.

And so, like, I love my AirPods.

And so, for me, it's worth it to spend the extra money on the Pro.

But again, if the regular AirPods fit better in your ear or fit better in your wallet, they're even better.

All those of you that like CarPlay, raise up thy voices and continue to request it.

because GM has caved.

I don't know if that was, that's the word from Mike.

Is it worth Ellie at Apple Insider?

GM caves, car play won't be cut from gas powered vehicles.

We've talked about this so often about,

I don't even rent a car unless there is car play in it

because I rely on it so heavily.

It is the way that I want to interact with my car information

from the maps, from the podcast that I'm listening to, everything.

It must be there.

And I'm just glad that apparently it's only in gas powered cars, right? Electric cars, GM is still doing their own thing. I think I remember the story from a few months ago that like GM said, hey, we're not going to do car play. We're going to do our own thing. And those of us that rose up and said, no way, we're not going to buy GM then. And I guess they heard us.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's 100% why they're backtracking is because so many people have said like, oh, well, I'm shopping for a new car.

Why am I going to even bother looking at a car that doesn't have CarPlay?

And why would GM turn away those customers?

And they obviously thought that, you know, the reason they didn't want to have it is because they want to have more control over the system so that they can gather information about you and maybe sell it and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

And I don't want to even be holier than thou than that, you know, whatever.

And people are going to sell information about me all the time.

Whenever I use Google, I'm sure they're getting information about me.

That's just life.

But the reality is that CarPlay is just a familiar and very well.

It's a great interface.

It's an interface that updates with the operating system.

So I don't have to get a whole new car to get an update.

I mean, I don't have to sell you and why CarPlay is better.

But now, you know, I would not have even considered getting a GM car or any car that didn't have CarPlay.

I mean, even some of the cool EV cars like, you know, the Rivian and the Teslas.

One of the reasons that they don't interest me is because they don't have CarPlay.

And of course, even Tesla is coming back on that.

They're offering versions of CarPlay soon.

So I think that more auto manufacturers are going to realize that at the end of the day,

you want to offer people what the customers want.

That's what it's all about.

So I'm glad that they're pulling back from their prior decision.

In the know.

In the know.

Let's do two quick so far of our favorite iOS 27 tips.

This one I stumbled upon just by accident.

The new iOS 27 comes with a Siri app, right?

Now, because I have so many apps on my phone, the first three pages are typically completely full, right?

So what happens when there's a new app that gets installed on your phone?

It gets installed on whatever the first page is that has an extra empty slot, right?

An empty square there.

So my Siri app was, I think, on page maybe like four or five.

But I wanted to sacrifice an app on page two that I just don't use very often so that I can replace it with the new Siri app because I want that to be front and center.

Right. So what I typically do then is I go to page four and I tap and hold on the apps and it goes into what's affectionately known as jiggly mode.

Right. So they're jiggling. And so what you do then is you tap and you drag the app to whatever page that you want.

Now, this has always been there.

You could drag to the side.

But I have always been frustrated when I'm doing this because the apps will all dynamically move in different areas.

And I just was never that happy about it.

And then sometimes I went to a page too far that everything else shifted on the second page.

Try this now with me and see what it's doing now.

When you go into jiggly mode and you move an app to another page, there is a nifty little tiny, I'm going to call it a subtle, hesitating rubber band animation that slows it all down just barely enough, Jeff.

Look at that.

So that you can place it where you want it to be.

Isn't that amazing?

Like I stumbled upon this accidentally, but as I was doing it, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's new.

that's different and so much better than it was before so that's my tip i just i i've never seen

anybody talk about this probably no one would even really care but for me that made just a big

difference this morning when i was moving my apps from different screens okay i had no idea what you

were talking about until i tried it myself and then once i did it myself now i see what you're

talking about that is an awesome feature because you're right it would move to the it would move

over one screen too far too quickly this makes perfect sense that it would move things around

and script oh man it was it was annoying that is what do you call that my my official title is a

subtle little hesitating rubber band animation is that good enough there you go whatever it is

feels like a little rubber band that's getting pulled from one side but on the other hand

everything just flows smoothly okay that's my little tip so far so far with ios 27 i mean i

gotta say whoever at apple even thought yes of doing that and then figured out how to do it like

give them a gold star. That is very cool. That is a great tip. Okay. So when I was going to do that,

I thought about looking at one of those lists of like 500 new things you can do with iOS 27.

And we're going to be talking about those for the next year. I understand it, but I'm serious about

this. You might think that this is silly, but this is like my number one tip for iOS 27 is once you

turn on the AI, which I hope that you do is just kick the tires on it. Try it out because we are

all in such a mentality that there's a limit to what sally can do that you just don't think about

using it as much and so when you look at that new list from david poe or the or the one from adam

do that or just try it out yourself this has been my thing this week is like times in my life that i

wouldn't even think about asking my iphone something now i'm doing it and i am being

completely delighted again every once in a while it makes a mistake don't get me wrong this is ai

but so many times it is so helpful to me.

And I feel like I'm going to be doing this for the next couple of weeks and

then it's just going to become internalized.

And then months from now, I'm just going to know the things that it can do.

Not that it won't continue to get better, but like,

that's my number one tip is this is all brand new.

We all just got this operating system upgrade this week.

So we're all really new to it. And in fact,

it might still be indexing for you.

So maybe you're not even using the new stuff yet, but when you get there,

push yourself to try things that you normally would not try

because you're going to be surprised how useful it is.

So that is my number one tip.

And if I have a little side tip,

it is that you, and you just alluded to it,

there is now a new app, a Siri app.

Why would you want to have that app?

The reason you want to have the app

and the reason that you might even want to put it

right there on your home screen

is you can go back and you can see your previous queries

so that if you want to follow up

or if you want to actually,

like what was it that it told me

when I asked that question this morning?

What did it tell me?

You can look back and see it again.

And then you can ask even a follow-up question.

You can do that.

This is anyone that's used, you know,

these modern AI since ChatGPT knows what I'm talking about,

that you can do follow-ups to an existing set of prompts.

So it's nice to have that app.

And like you, Brett, I have put that on my home screen

because it's useful enough that I, you know,

and believe me, my number one home screen

is very valuable real estate.

Like you gotta be an app that I really use.

to live on that screen.

And I had to make space for it.

I had to take one of my apps that, you know,

you used to be a first-string app.

You had to do the same thing, right.

What's it called in soccer?

When you get delegated or relegated,

whatever it is, when you go down, whatever.

So like one of my apps went down

because this app came up to the big leagues

and it was on my first-tone screen.

Exactly.

So anyway, so that's my tip.

It's like, you know,

pick the tires and the stuff, try it out

because you're going to be really surprised

what it can do.

So fun, so much information,

so many new things.

I mean, I just I feel like I'm a kid in a candy store.

I'm just discovering all these little things like that little subtle little tiny thing like that that just made my day on something like that.

Anyway, it's going to be fun.

I wish we could just talk again.

We'll record another podcast, you know, five hours from now.

Right. Because I want to know how giddy you are with your new Apple Watch, your new iPhone 18 Pro Max.

But you know what?

We'll talk with you next week.

And that's the main thing we'll be covering on this.

So I'll be excited to talk with you next week.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thanks, Brett. Bye-bye, everybody.