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And thanks to magic mind for sponsoring this week's pop. Let's get Frank. [00:01:16] Frank: Well, you just blew out everyone's speakers. Hi everyone. . [00:01:19] James: Hi, James. Am I, am I super loud? Do I need to turn myself down? I, I just got a new microphone for the. On the road, Mike is, is it too, is it good? Is it bad? Am I too close to the microphone? Oh my [00:01:30] Frank: gosh. I you're just so much more present. I I'm not used, I'm used to you being like a few more feet across the room, but you you're you're you're right with us, James. I'm excited. [00:01:39] James: that's good. I do think that the, the, the other microphone that I use is a little bit quieter. But the levelization that, you know, Zencaster pumps out is pretty good at the end of the day. Uh, let's get into it. Frank Krieger because I spent an hour and 35 minutes of my life actually last cause I did one more. That's it. That's it. Um, Watching this new apple event, did you watch the whole thing and it's all of its [00:02:04] Frank: glory. Oh, I certainly did. Well, I'll be honest. I listened to the first 10 minutes as like podcast form, but that's fine. Nothing happens in the first 10 minutes, but yeah, I, I, I went all the way through, uh, boy, this one felt a little long to me. They always feel a little bit long. That's why I was laughing. I think it was just two hours. So when you said an hour and a half, I was a little jealous. No, it was a good, it was a good event. But wow. They put a lot of commercials into it. [00:02:29] James: I, I, that, that was my main takeaway is they talked about a, they talked about a product. Then they had a lot of products. They had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 products that they announced. Okay. And between three product lines, which would be apple watch pro air pod pro and iPhone. What they did was they would announce a product, talk through all the features, have all the flash flashy stuff that was going on. And then they would do a two minute long promotional trailer. That's absolutely gorgeous. And then they would go to the next one and they would do the same thing. And then the next one and do the same thing. And sometimes they would open with a, with a commercial, talk about it and then do another commercial that was completely. [00:03:14] Frank: Yeah, I don't wanna complain too much because honestly the format is fine. But do you remember when Steve jobs would get on stage and do a live demo? Yeah. And then like yell at the audience for using up too much wifi. I kind of miss that these things are so polished. Obviously this is just a commercial for their new product line. I get it. It's fine. But I, I, I miss Steve jobs. Ah, that's it. I, I miss the demos. They're just not willing to do live demos. Which I guess fine. Um, but man, the production value, those virtual stages. I'm, I'm, I'm somewhat UN immersed from the keynote because I'm just looking at the production. I know we always talk about production on these things, but there was a scene where, uh, there was a presenter, a woman in a yellow jumpsuit. And she transit transitioned from a subway to outside, to in a coffee shop and the lighting matching on her jumpsuit. I was totally distracted cuz in the subway you were getting like the bounce reflection off of the passing lights in the subway tunnel and I'm like, gosh, apple, you just really show off on this production value. So, uh, hats off to them for that. But I do miss the old timey demo. [00:04:28] James: Well, and the other part that really impressed me was obviously did, they've been doing a lot of outdoor video shoots, especially not only in the apple park, but also during the ultra announcement, which we'll get to the gentleman that was announcing it. Was like on a clifftop or something like, you know, I don't, I know, I don't know. He was like, somewhere's in the middle of nowhere. I was like, what is happening? Was he, [00:04:50] Frank: was he on a sound stage? I don't know what to believe anymore. Their compositing is so good. That's that's I don't know what to believe. [00:04:57] James: Do we, do we, do we, do we need to start this podcast and talk about the last five seconds of the whole thing? [00:05:05] Frank: Uh, so you know what I actually missed, uh, the last five seconds of a thing. I, I don't need spoilers. Do you wanna spoil what I'm not spoiling? [00:05:14] James: Here's here's what you missed, which was at the very, very end after they cut to the apple, they did the outro. Tim, Tim say goodbye. They did the outro, a commercial, it cuts to the apple logo, and then it cuts to, um, The subway and it's, ah, it's a shot of a subway car and a lady standing in front of it and she flickers and then it, and she comes back like she flickers really quick, kind of like a hologram. And then it says, thanks for watching and CUSA black. So was everybody a hologram, the entire thing. Everybody was a hologram. [00:05:53] Frank: That's why they can't do the demos. It would be hard to render the device in their hands. There'd be she, she touched the pole and the subway cart just annoyed me. but compositing it's beautiful. Compositing. Did they announce products? I was too distracted. I was just looking at all, all the announcers, walking around beautiful sets. [00:06:13] James: Well, let's get into it. Let's get into the apple watch. There was three announcements and they all built on top of each other. And this was actually, maybe my favorite part was that they opened with the apple watch series. And now I'm an apple watch series. Three die hard, baby. Beautiful. [00:06:29] Frank: Um, they finally have a replacement for you. It seems like they were attacking the series three left and right in this one. Oh, punching left and right. They're like the screen is 30% bigger than the series three. How'd you feel about that comment? [00:06:42] James: Uh, well, so. We'll we'll get to it, Frank you're. [00:06:47] Frank: Okay. So a lot of emotions to [00:06:49] James: unpack here, they announce the series eight, um, and the series eight has a new temperature sensor, uh, which enables ovulation tracking, which is pretty astonishing. Amazing. Two. [00:07:01] Frank: Well, yeah, it, they demonstrate it. It's actually a really hard problem. Turns out taking your temperature at your wrist is a terrible place to take your temperature. Uh, but they figure with long enough samples, they can actually make decent data. And the best they've been able to apply that to is yeah. Menstrual cycle. Um, yep. I figure there's. Couple click of people who wanna track that in software. I'm curious, uh, everyone right in. Is that something you wanna track on your phone? Probably I guess [00:07:26] James: so. Well, it makes sense. It's they they've had like period tracking and, and this is the ovulation tracking as well. Um, mm-hmm which. I think what's nice about this. Like, so the things that they've had, right. Granted we're two white. Yeah. CIS males, like talking about this, but I think it's actually really important. Like this is really important work that's being done. Um, as someone that's in a long term relationship married, right? Like we, yeah. You wanna plan stuff. You wanna think about stuff, which, oh, for sure. We're not planning anything. Yeah. But you know, in general, like this is really like really great because there are these apps on there. Whose data has it, like, where are they sending your data? Yeah. Like we've heard fishy, weird stuff. So this is cool that Apple's thinking about it and doing crazy stuff. And you're right. Like the temperature tracking, like they're doing it to like the, what do they say? Point zero one Celsius or something crazy like temperature change, which can like, have to do with like different workout or obviously strike all this other stuff. I was like really impre it's all very impressive to me is what I'm saying. [00:08:28] Frank: Uh, it did seem to be best for sleep mode. So they're still definitely pushing, uh, they want you wearing this thing to bed and the new battery life on the giant one might help with that. I'm still not a sleep with my watch kind of person. No. Um, but maybe if I was family planning yeah. That will, I would deal with it. it [00:08:45] James: would do it. Well, there's two reasons. Maybe why one is that these now have fast charging enabled, um, on all the new apple watch models. And there's also a new low power mode. Frank Kruger, which [00:08:57] Frank: is awesome. Yeah. To be released. Uh, is that the one where they said we'll release it in six months? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. , we're all excited to find out what that power mode is. Um, so you're talking about the series a eight. Can I jump ahead a tiny little bit here? [00:09:13] James: No, because the series, no, you can't, you can't jump ahead because the other watches have what the series eight has. Okay. So series eight, besides that, um, two, two big things. One that they introduced. Was the temperature sensor and the low power on the fast charging edge, edge display, which is great. The biggest thing is maybe this crash detection built into the watch and introduces two new sensors, um, with a new gyro and a new accelerometer that can, um, that is capable of up to 256 GS and is sampling it 3000 times per second. [00:09:54] Frank: Boy, I don't really wanna be in a 256 G accident, but I guess if I am, I'm glad. Well, yeah, this goes back to sensor technology, and anytime you're designing an Excel runner, you have to decide what its detection range is gonna be. And so now it looks like there's a whole second sensor in there cuz you still have your good high precision one. You need that for your workouts and things like that. But, yeah, there's this always on big one. I , it was a tiny bit morbid in this, uh, this presentation. They, yeah, they did talk all about a lot of different ways to get yourself hurt. And I, uh, I, I couldn't help, but comment on that, but you know, it's one of those things. If I'm in an accident, I sure as heck want my watch automatically calling everyone. It possibly can. So. Um, I'm here for it, but it is still pretty morbid to think about. [00:10:44] James: Yeah. And it's crazy. They had, they always talk about all these stories of the apple watch and like the people write into Tim everyone's right. Everyone's writing in only to Tim and that's it um, but there was a person that was. There was a bear or whatever, like broke in. He was able to call. And then there was another person, two, two crazy stories. One was a person that was doing like garbage disposal and got trapped inside of a, like a dump, like a garbage truck. That's that? That's crazy. There's another person that was in a, there were, it was like her and her dad were like flying. In an airplane assessment and they were in a crash and like, she was able to like, make a, like, I mean, wild, [00:11:22] Frank: not the crash. Wasn't funny, but it was funny that her grandma called her before she was able to send out a 9 1, 1 or anything like. She [00:11:29] James: forgot that the, you almost forget that the apple watch control that [00:11:32] Frank: stuff, but, well, she had other things on her [00:11:33] James: mind. I'm sure at the time I would assume so. Yeah. Do well. You wanna get to the ultra, but, or do you wanna get to se second gen, let me get to the here's the watch [00:11:43] Frank: let's talk. This is the one you're gonna get as here's you're gonna get the se [00:11:46] James: right. Here's here's the watch I'm gonna get, because the series eight is 3 99 and it. Stuff. I don't know. It's a good price. Right. [00:11:54] Frank: I, I still think that's, it's a lot of hardware and honestly you can use these things for five, 10 years. Yes. So, uh, you've proven that out. So, um, I, I, I do think they're actually worth their money. Uh, I don't think I'd upgrade to that one, unless it's your first watch or something though. [00:12:12] James: Yeah, they said that actually the se is 80% of the people they. That bought it. It was their first smart watch or whatever, or something like that. That, that makes sense. So this is second gen se and this is so got some new materials, new colors, like kind of like the same screen and stuff like that, but it has all of the same sensors as the series eight. Um, I, I don't actually know if it has a temperature center, but I think it dead, but it does have fall detection and crash detection and AFib too. Mm-hmm and it is yeah, 30% larger than the series three, which I like, I think my series three is just fine and it's 20% faster than the first gen. And it comes in at two 50 Frank. Two 50, like that's almost in the price that I would buy it for. Can I get a sale for 1 99? Just saying , [00:12:57] Frank: uh, in a year and a half maybe. Yeah. [00:13:00] James: But I think that this has all this stuff I would need. I, I didn't, I need to do a breakdown side by side of like what the series eight has and what the se second gen has. I, maybe I can do that here. Can you get a [00:13:13] Frank: cellular se did they do a cellular [00:13:15] James: version? Yes. For two 90. [00:13:18] Frank: Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm yeah, that's a tricky decision. You'll have to make between the eight and the se [00:13:24] James: yeah. So I can tell you here. So the series eight, so the se does not have the IP six X IP, six X dust resistant. It does not have the always on screen. It is swim proof. It does not have blood oxygen. It does not have ECG. It does not have temperature tracking. But everything else is the same, but no fast charge. Ooh. [00:13:51] Frank: Oh, no fast charge. Wow. Yeah, I put my watch on the charger at night has plenty of time to charge. Uh, yeah, tho honestly, those are a little bit frivolous features. I mean, if you're a swimmer you're gonna wanna get to your best swimming protection, all that I have the always on screen. It's not great. It tends to blur most information other than the time we'll get back to that when talking about the iPhone, but, uh, yeah, it's tough though. A hundred hour difference really? That's it between the eight and the. No. [00:14:20] James: Yeah, you have to. No, it's $150 [00:14:23] Frank: difference. Ooh, one 50. Okay. Yeah. Tough one. You know, what is a much larger price difference? [00:14:31] James: the most rugged and capable apple watch ever [00:14:34] Frank: with a flat Sapphire screen raised out of its giant 500 millimeter frame? No, I don't know. It's. 50 mil. I don't know. It's huge. It's huge. We are talking about the titanium ultra watch. I was, this is the one I was really looking forward to when I heard some rumors about it on ATP, ding. Um, I it's look, I'm not like a super outdoorsy person. I like to go hiking. I like to go camping. I like to do all that stuff, but I'm also, you know, In urban night. I like my watch with me, but I'm also terrible at charging watches. So I was excited for a larger watch that had a bigger battery life. And they did that. I don't need all their like extreme features of I'm. I'm not mountaineering every weekend or anything like that, but who doesn't want a 36 hour battery, six hours. If the magical low power feature ever comes out, ruggedized screen, I'm clumsy. I'm super clumsy. So I'll take a ruggedized screen. My biggest problem with the gorgeous ultra. So I wanna be clear. I love this watch. My biggest problem with it is it's huge and expensive and I don't think I'm actually gonna get it because during the presentation, all I could look at was the presenter's wrist. And all I could think was. That watch looks huge. I don't think my wrist is any bigger than the presenter's wrist, so I know I'm not sure I can handle a watch quite that big, but, uh, I do like apple, um, playing seriously in the outdoor activity game. Um, because honestly the apple watch is not super convenient when you're doing outdoorsy stuff, especially when it's snowing and things like that. So good on them, but it's so expensive. [00:16:14] James: Yeah, this device would definitely be more for you, but. Someone a little bit more, a better version of me. Yeah. That's I didn't wanna say it that way, but yeah, that's what I was going for because for [00:16:27] Frank: me, 20 years ago would love it. well, because you know, they couldn't afford it, but I, I would love it. [00:16:33] James: They really talked up the, like, who was for right. There's there's three straps that they made for this thing. One is an Alpine loop for, um, you know, doing like mountaineering. One's an ocean band, which is like, you're doing deep sea there. There's, there's a, there's a freaking app for. Yeah is a dive computer. Right. You know what I mean? With [00:16:52] Frank: all the drone searching I've been doing it. I was captivated by the, the dive stuff. Honestly, I I've really been thinking about getting into scuba and all that. So not that like, I need to buy a 900 hour watch to convince myself to go get a scuba license, but, you know, I'm not saying I couldn't use a $900 watch to go SBA diving. It looked great. [00:17:12] James: But I do think that this one is really made for folks that are like, they kept talking about the Outback or like the back, back, back, whatever, you know, there, people that are out there, right. It even has a 86 decibel siren to attract attention when you get lost, you know, up to 600 feet away, you know, to, so, so I really think that it is made for that. $800 for this watch, if you were somebody that is like, I'm out, canyoning in the middle of, you know what I mean? And I'm, I'm out on a, you know, an eight day, you know, I guess it's not gonna last for eight days, but you know, I'm out on a multi-day hike, then this is the watch is sort of built for you. It's it's really the, the apple watch adventure. Addition, you know, ultra ultra to me seems like the wrong name for it. [00:18:03] Frank: Were they gone for like ultra-marathon? Would it survive an ultra-marathon? Probably not, probably just a marathon. Right? They, they designed it for a triathlon and marathons. Mm-hmm . Those were the battery limits. So they say they can do accurate GPS, accurate heart rate for an entire triathlon. I mean, it's probably longer than I'll last . Yeah. I'm gonna wanna sleep halfway through that triathlon. Uh, yeah, it it's a good watch. Uh, garment's been eating their lunch. Uh, everyone. That I know who does physical activities and wants to do tracking and all that stuff with it gets a Garmin. And so I think Apple's just getting into that business and it's interesting. They could have made a more garny one. I was actually, I was hoping for an ING screen, I'm always hoping for an ING screen. But they decided to, instead of make a garment and make an aply version of a garment, they decided to take the apple watch and just make it fatter and bigger so that it, it was actually more powerful for these situations. I am curious, uh, you know, fortunately I don't really support any watch apps right now, but I'm really curious. Exactly how that big orange button on it works. Cuz they keep talking about how configurable it is from the user's perspective. I'm curious what system it's using, like the shortcut system, uh, you know, to actually do commands in your app. So for all the watch app developers out there, I'm sure you could. Business justify one. to try out that orange button [00:19:32] James: that's true. There is a new button on it. There's a new button to button and a digital crown that's bigger and yeah. Bumpier than ever. [00:19:40] Frank: But the rest of the UI looks the same. Some gorgeous watch faces, obviously things like that. I, yeah, they did have that cool mode where it could track where your tent was when you're off wandering around. I, you. I don't say I get lost, but sometimes it takes me a little while to find my way back home and so, yeah, I, I would enjoy that feature. What, what I really liked was they said it was kind of a passive feature too. It would just auto activate. Nice, nice, nice. Uh, I'm not sure if it's 800 hours. Nice. , [00:20:09] James: but I do think that what you are saying is a little bit more accurate, which is the Garin competitor. This is really truly the garment competitor that they're going after. Cuz those Garin watches are very expensive. [00:20:22] Frank: Are they? Yeah. I've never actually priced one out. [00:20:26] James: Um, uh, they're expensive that that's that's for sure. Like I think that the ones that we're thinking of, they can go up to over a thousand dollars. You know, these gardens. Yeah. Those are [00:20:37] Frank: probably the super professional ones. Yeah. [00:20:39] James: Mm-hmm and they have a lot of different ones, but yeah. You know, they're in the price range. Like I'm looking at the Fen seven series that's $700. Epic epics is if you have an, if you live in athletic life, this is the premium active smartwatch $900. [00:20:56] Frank: Gosh, inflation. are you an, [00:20:59] James: I guess I Enduro, are you an ultra eraser and need a multi-sport GPS $1,100. Ultra. Wow. [00:21:07] Frank: Wow. Yeah. So this is a premium ultra product, I guess [00:21:13] James: and uh, to me, they could only go up from here if they really wanted to. I, I could see them ultra max, you know what I mean? Like, Hey, listen, we, we are people that are in multiday X, Y, Z. Like, this is the watch for you. Question is how many will they sell? But there are a lot of athletes out there that. You know, they're, I have family members that swear by garment only for the fact that they're running marathons. Right. They're like, I can't do that on that, that little dinghy, whatever, you know, Well, I think [00:21:43] Frank: a lot of its reputation in that field will come from this low power mode. Um, 36 hours is wonderful. Great. Yeah, you can do pretty much every physical activity in that time, but if you're going for a long hike, eh, you know, 36 hours, isn't that long, uh, sixties, way more reasonable for actually. Making some progress and all that. So I think it'll really just come down to how good is that mode and yeah. If the features are competitive with the garments, but gosh, now that you've said all that, if it's in the price range, Hmm. Sounds like a good product to me. Mm-hmm how do you feel about it? Good product. [00:22:18] James: Yeah. Good product, good product. Another good product [00:22:21] Frank: entry. Are they, are they gonna maintain it? That's the real question. Will there be a version two ever? Mm. [00:22:27] James: Depends out it sell one take that's. [00:22:29] Frank: Yeah, exactly. [00:22:30] James: Really depends how it sells. I well, and like, yeah, I don't know. [00:22:38] Frank: We'll see how many rich hikers there are a [00:22:40] James: lot of 'em I do think that there are a lot of active people. That are out there. It's not the same amount that are gonna buy the se, but they could become the number one, you know, they're like number one, smart watch brand, blah, blah, blah. Cause they'd be the number one, whatever, that's what they want. Right. Yeah. So. Yeah. [00:23:01] Frank: Well, how about we talk about a more reasonably priced product that was kind of an Insta buy for me. [00:23:08] James: the I don't, uh, I don't see any Insta buy products on [00:23:12] Frank: this list. Insta buys really nothing. Well, I am not in the se watch. You're not gonna go for the se watch. Nope, [00:23:20] James: Uhuh and sticking with the series three. Got it. Oh yeah, it still works. And, uh, let's see. So, I mean, I'm listening to you. Talk to me out of, uh, $9 and 99 cent, uh, 3.5 millimeter Jack, uh, air bot air, you know, air little Airbus. Um, [00:23:37] Frank: well, I think I'm gonna spend the big dollars for the Airbus pro [00:23:42] James: Airbus pro Airbus pro second generation. Yeah. So, so this second generation they gave the AirPod, uh, pro AirPods AirPods pro yeah. About six minutes of air time. So that, that won you over. [00:23:57] Frank: Well, it wasn't quite that a I was due for it. I I've always been AirPod pro curious. And so I've been thinking about it. I just had questions about, I didn't really like the in stick it all the way in your ear kind of headphones, especially because I do a lot of riding around on the one wheel with headphones and, and I really need to be able to hear what's happening around me. Noise cancellation. Isn't the best thing in that scenario. , but they kind of won me over when they were talking about their active cancellation and all that stuff where it's, you know, scanning your environment, trying to do pass through when it thinks pass through is actually a good idea. Not doing pass through appropriate times and things like that. I think, uh, I think their commercial worked on me. I I'll I'll I'll put it that way. Plus they. The battery time is just so much larger than what I'm getting with the current AirPods. So I think, I think it's time to put down the big bucks for the AirPods [00:24:54] James: pro yeah. Six hours of listen. Time is a good amount of time. I approve of that amount of time. I have these little, you know, $20 Airbus that, that last like four or five hours. And they're, you know, And, and I, I put 'em in the case all the time, and that really is really solid overall. So there's $250. I think that the most impressive part, I agree with you compared to the AirPods and the AirPods pro uh, specifically, is that, you know, I guess they have the, you know, H two chip, which makes it better, but was those two things, right? It was one better James, one better. Oops. Oops, um, was you're right. It does have the active noise cancellation, which I think is great. But I do think you're right. The transparency mode, which was there already, but the adaptive transparency mode mm-hmm , which is, is way cooler and the how they did this is, oh, imagine you are. I think this is really neat. You're walking outside. And you do want to, to hear things around you because you wanna hear your cars cuz you're running like I'm, mm-hmm, , I'm actively running and I want transparency, Moda cause there's cars. But what if there's a, uh, fire, uh, fire? Um, Yes, not a fire, but a fire. I, I there's police sirens and air there's. There's always something [00:26:03] Frank: there's always some loud noise source. Yeah. In a city who knows it's it's like some law of nature. There has to be an obnoxious loud source somewhere, somewhere in the city. [00:26:14] James: And so it'll filter those heavy. They call 'em heavy noises out. They'll they'll, they'll quiet them down. I thought that was really, really impressive. Doesn't seem like a huge leaps and bounds, but if you don't have AirPods pro and you have maybe an AirPod second generation, this one's gonna give you the S spatial audio. It's gonna give you a touch control. It's gonna give you the sweat and water resistance. Yeah. Uh, it's gonna give you the six hours. So that seems like all. Positive. It's big [00:26:43] Frank: marks. It's a big upgrade. And I, I take your point. Like the $28 ones have gotten really good these days, but, um, I, I spend a lot of time in my AirPods. I don't buy 'em frivolously. I'm not buying these things every month. I was due for a pair, you know, Battery was getting kind of shabby. And to be honest, that's kind of when they, they never really break the battery just gets kind of terrible. And then you get a new pair, which is unfortunate. But so, uh, I was in the market, they released what looks like a really good product. And they got me with their flashy, uh, subway commercial. That thing just, I was hypnotized [00:27:19] James: it? It was solid. It was good. it was [00:27:22] Frank: good. It didn't impress you, but I, I, I, I appreciate. [00:27:29] James: Well, let's get to the, the Promax plus additions, because this is all that I, I don't understand why they, they call it iPhone 14 plus, but then you have iPhone 14. Promax [00:27:44] Frank: it's just, I, and they all got bigger. Did they all physically get bigger or was it just the, just the, uh, pluses that got bigger? I feel, like's why we got a little bit bigger. Well, if it's [00:27:58] James: just a small amount, the iPhone, they all got a little tiny bit bigger guess. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit. Cuz the iPhone 13 pro is five point. Does it have the width in here? Let me look at the screen size. Here was a. No the 6.1 6.1. But I do think it's a little [00:28:18] Frank: bit bigger. Green size. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, you know, again, they got me on this one because I'm due for a new iPhone. My last one I've mentioned this a lot of times spent a week underwater and I think it's time I move on. It was an iPhone 11. I've been thinking about getting a new one and mm-hmm this wasn't a dramatic. um, change in the iPhone from the 13, it has a lot of the same features. It has the same, uh, squared off edge versus the roundy edge. Mm-hmm seems like apple tos on that, but we're still in the square edge territory, everyone, but you know what actually sold me on this one, and this is a little embarrassing, but, and it's a little controversial. I like the dynamic island. James. How do you feel about the new dynamic island? [00:29:07] James: Yes, the dynamic island, which is an iPhone 14 pro exclusive, not iPhone 14 or 14 plus those. Oh, did I not? Did I jump ahead again? um, no, it's totally fine because here's what happened in the here. Here's the rundown of iPhone 14 and 14 plus. It's got the I E 15 bionic, which was the pro model from last year. It's got car crash detection and the emergency SOS oversight. Oh, [00:29:31] Frank: okay. That's cool. Yeah, we, we can, let's take a minute and talk about this. This is super cool. Uh, they must have made some magical deal with some magical of, uh, satellite company. Mm-hmm where you can. You know, point your phone to the sky without putting up a six foot antenna. And if you're incredibly patient, which you will be because you're lost in the forest, point up at a satellite. You can actually get, uh, some data communications happening without cellular, without wifi using the magic of the satellite system. You're paying for it by the way. And it's super slow. I were, were you taking aback by, uh, how slow it was? I mean, I'm a electric engineer. Cannot believe that you are able to transmit to a satellite. That part is still blowing my mind, but what made me actually laugh out loud was when they're like, yeah, sending a bite or two could take a few minutes. yeah. I almost fell on my [00:30:26] James: seat. I was listening to the tech me ride home and they were saying that T-Mobile was looking to spike, spark a deal with, uh, Starlink. And they were saying that for like placing a text message might take 10 to 15 minutes. Yeah, it's amazing. Wow. [00:30:45] Frank: I well, a congratulations to the apple engineers for doing whatever software and antenna magic re this took to make happen. Uh, the cellular network is very different from the satellite network. Totally different. But, and so Bravo, but, um, they made a deal with some company because it turns out they're just giving you the service for two years for free. And then after that you're paying and they didn't bother to tell you how much it's gonna cost. No, but it is one of those things. Like if you are an outdoorsy person, oh yeah. We all get into those cell dead zones. I think it's kind of a no-brainer to pay for it. So I'm just hoping apple is kind with its [00:31:21] James: pricing. I'd pay for this, I'd pay for this feature because I drive so much across different, you know, a lot of these, you know, in, in Washington [00:31:30] Frank: thinking drivers. Yeah. You're out on those highways. Yeah. [00:31:33] James: Highways are going, you know, when I go between, you know, Eastern and Western, uh, Washington or Oregon or things like that, you're in, in that, or you're on the coast, you can get nothing out there. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm, . The one thing that's really cool is that it actually works with fine. My, which I thought was so neat. It's able to transmit the fine, my data over the satellite. So you could like pop it up and see this stuff too. Say that is so neat. Super good. Anyways, iPhone 14, 14 plus garbage, cuz let's get to the pro, um, it's only $200 more. You might as well get to it because here's the thing is it's got the, a 16 bionic. They don't even have non bionic chips aim or everything's bionic. A little camera relies on it. that's true. Let's get to your favorite feature. Cause I have another favorite feature, which I think is so cool, but the dynamic island, right. We've had the notch for a long time. And what they did is they removed the top of the notch and they just made it a. What would you do [00:32:31] Frank: a capsule, a little pill at the top? Yeah, it, I would say they filled in the top. Uh, there are pixels live pixels that you can vaguely control at the very tippy top now, which is totally new. So what was, it's only been what, four years that we've been dealing with the notch and making sure all our software is compatible with it. So yet again, we have to go through all of our apps and make sure it's compatible. With this capsule thing now, good news is you don't actually have to buy this phone. I'm sure the simulator will do all this stuff. Yeah. But I wanna applaud apple. Um, I was discussing this with a friend. They absolutely hate the dynamic island. Hmm. But I think what they did was very clever. They've resigned themselves to the fact that this little sensor package that we wanna put on the front of the phone, we just can't put a screen over that. We've tried. We've really tried. They even did bury the proximity sensor under the screen. Mm-hmm so you can tell, they've been trying to put this stuff under the screen. They just can't manage it. So they made, I think, a wonderful hardware concession they're like. Uh, what, like what, what is it, if, if you can't cover it up, turn it up. So they just, they have this big, um, blank spot and they decided to graphic design their way out of this artistically get out of this. They merge the notification system, the alert. System the current activity system and put those as cute little icons to the side of what's weirdly named the dynamic island. I, I don't love that name, but what's, it's, it's the dynamic island and I, I think it really cleans it up. I like it. I like, I like hardware and software working together to solve each other's problems. You know, it, it shouldn't be a battle between the two. And I, I like to see that [00:34:16] James: it's a dynamic notch. And the dynamic notch. I think that this island, um, I, I think maybe Miguel, or maybe you tweeted that the software sold you on it, because what I said is that it's a little, it's a little pill. That is not only is cute animations, it's interactive. And it's also sort of like a widget. It's an interactive widget island, which we've seen. Um, sometimes when device manufacturers put like little screens on the back of phones, like, oh, here's a little, here's a little thing. You know, that, that has your music player or shows you an incoming call X, Y, Z. But my favorite part, which was so smart is. I don't really love the widget system on, oh, my phone. Hey. But, but one thing that sold me, the, the best feature maybe is on, this is the dynamic island. If you have a timer, it will show you the timer inside of the dynamic island. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. That literally makes sense. You have a little message, you have a little thing. It makes sense. And then on my other favorite part, How many times have we been listening to music on our apple iPhone, and I want to, uh, pause it and you gotta swipe down from the top. Hopefully you get the right thing or do the thing. No, you just tap on the dynamic island. It's alive. It's like, whatever you're doing currently takes thing. Now I will be fascinated. What if I'm playing music and have a timer? What happens then? Yeah, I don't know. [00:35:49] Frank: Well, they actually demoed that. So it does go into a smart mode where it'll show both, but in that case, uh, the timer will just become an icon. It won't show the data for the timer. It'll show the data for the music. So actually I still think that's still better than the current notification system. Cuz if you have two long running things going, it. Kind of a random, which one shows up. I feel like, yeah. Uh, you know, in talking about this, I kind of realized with these phones, they took away the home button. Right. And the little button at the bottom. Mm-hmm we now knew we now have a new permanent button on it. Yeah. Because it turns out that part's still touch sensitive. You you tap the island, which it's gonna cause problem, cuz you're gonna get fingerprints all over your front facing camera but whatever, wipe it off from time to time. Um, but it is actually a touch target. It seems at least in their demos, it was a touch target. So we have a new home button that doesn't take you home. We have a new notifications button, the who work with, and I am curious, which. APIs, you need to access to get your app up there. Yes. But, um, I'm sure we'll figure that out. Eventually someone will figure out which API exactly you want [00:37:00] James: to use. A great example would be if let's say you had an app that displayed a number. On the screen, how great a random number, a random number that magically increased when you were like doing something like cycling, how great, how great would it be? If now you could minimize that app and then you could see that number in the dynamic island. Frank. [00:37:25] Frank: Won't that be nice. I, I doubt that's that, that sounds technologically impossible. That would be transmitting a lot of data. I don't think it's ever gonna happen. [00:37:34] James: Now. Here's the question in I S 16 is that API lockdown and in iOS 17, they open up the API for developers. [00:37:44] Frank: Well in their current mode, it's probably a widget, right? If you have a widget that shows up, or I don't know, like the music ones, I'm assuming like for Mo cast it, it just accesses the normal music APIs mm-hmm and they demonstrated that like the album art shows up there, they demonstrated that for the apple music app, but that would be a really big jerk move on their part. If all the apps that played into the, you know, Yeah. Uh, media system didn't show up there. Yeah. So for, for apps that show random numbers that increase randomly yeah. I'm sure we we'll have to do some research and figure that one [00:38:21] James: out. Yeah. The, the Mo example makes a lot of sense, cuz that was one of my favorite features. Always of. of, um, iOS development versus Android development is that there is sort of an Android notification, blah, blah. It's kind of like a, it was kind of a pain in the butt. The iOS one seemed a little bit more straightforward and you got a lot of niceties. Like, Hey everybody, everybody that gets to do this, I guess on Android, you always got to have a little bit more freedom, but I did think that it was nice and you got a lot for free and I'm putting those in air quotes right now. Uh, and then everyone sort of the same level. Yeah. Uh, [00:38:52] Frank: if you've never done this before, it it's really not even that bad. It's just whenever you want, you can post a message to the media system and say, this is currently what's playing, here's it. Album Mart. Here's his title? Here's the artist. Here's the current play position. And then the operating system does so much heavy lifting for you over there and does all that. But those are all very specific APIs to media players. So, yeah. Again, who knows what the general API is for getting stuff up there? Yeah. Maybe iOS 17.1 16.4. Who knows? [00:39:26] James: Yeah. Who knows? Uh, [00:39:28] Frank: or, yeah, sorry. I, I just was gonna repeat that. It could be the current system too. Maybe the widget system plays in. No one has these phones. [00:39:36] James: We Don. I would be fascinated if it was the widget system, I guess. Does the widget, is there a time or widget? That would be my only question. I don't know. It seem, it seemed more dynamic than what the widget system allows today. So I would be of interest. Yeah. [00:39:54] Frank: I think it's a new system. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, apple does love creating new ways to do background servicing [00:40:01] James: my, my. I mean, it could be widget, but maybe you package it in a different way. [00:40:09] Frank: Ooh, I don't. It could be like the complication. Um, where in the complication system, you project out time, you don't tell it just now data, you tell it data for the next hour or so, and then it updates on its own schedule. Uh, that's kind of how the new widget system works too. Yeah. Uh, because we should talk about even more widgets, which is the always on mode. This is the last feature that I. I, I at least wanted to find out if it's any good or not. Like I said, I have the always on mode on my watch and I find it pretty useless, cuz what they do is blur out everything mm-hmm but show you the time. Yep. And I'm like, well that's nice. You're acting like a watch, but it's a lot of wasted pixels. And so I was never too happy with that. But in the demo of the always on screen for the iPhone, it looked like you had a lot more customization. Options there. It still definitely goes into a dark mode to save your little O led pixels from, uh, eating up all the battery, but it looked like any widgets you get up on that screen were not completely blurred out and were in fact readable. So I'm excited. I, I want this [00:41:19] James: feature. I do like that. I do. I am a pretty big fan of the widget lock screen, uh, controls. They're really, really nice, good and bad. I think that they're great. And yet the Microsoft stock prices staring me in the face every single morning when I wake up. Oh, [00:41:37] Frank: don't put money on your home. Don't put anything that creates anxiety on your home screen. Your home screen should be a blissful field of happiness. [00:41:46] James: Okay, I'm gonna take that. I'm actually gonna do that, maybe. Ah, yeah. What, what now? I know I need it. Uh, yeah, I, that's probably a good call. I like that. Um, that being said I was a really big fan of always on display way back, maybe. Eight years ago on my Moto X or whatever that I had, it had an always on display and there was like some witches, like, yeah, I really, really enjoyed it. So that's cool that this is actually getting it. Uh, and I'm kind of, I'm kind of surprised that the other apple does no other apple device have always on displays. Um, [00:42:26] Frank: the watch is the only other one I know of. You really only wanna do this with O lead because you can. Back off the power a bit and hopefully, uh, spend less power. They also, that may note sense. I get that everyone. Sorry. um, the, the big feature was what they started doing on the max the variable refresh rate, but in particular, the slow refresh rate mm-hmm So the one hurt refresh rate, and that obviously helps. You're doing less computation. You're doing less data transfer, um, less updating all the pixels on every frame. So. Good all around there. Uh, but it, it, it, it really only saves in that mode. Like the iPhone is known for being buttery smooth and having 120 Hertz and all that stuff. But even then they had to put special hardware onto the new a 16, right. A mm-hmm uh, they had to put new hardware on there in order to make it especially efficient and especially smooth. Uh, did you notice one funny thing about the dynamic island they mentioned, they actually had to put special hardware on the main chip to make the anti aliasing on the dynamic island. Smooth. Yeah. So I'm curious if that's like separate logic, like when it's in low power mode, if the dynamic island will still animate at like 60 frames per second, cuz wow. It actually has dynamic hardware or I'm sorry, dedicated hardware. Uh, it's apple, it's marketing. It's hard to read too much into all this stuff, but they're definitely pulling some hardware wizardry tricks to make this work well. [00:44:03] James: Yeah, that'd be. Yeah, I, I, I'm excited to see it because, uh, we will be getting one, this holiday crisis. This is not an Insta buy, but this is a holiday gift for, especially at somebody's upgrade season. So how, how our fam, how our family works is every two years. um, mm-hmm somebody gets a new phone and the other person gets the old phone. So I will be getting an iPhone 12 pro oh yeah. [00:44:29] Frank: Wow. Quite an upgrade. Mm-hmm what are you rocking [00:44:31] James: right now? Uh, iPhone se second generation. What [00:44:36] Frank: an upgrade. I'm I can't wait to hear your, uh, review [00:44:39] James: when you, I don't know the, the physical button's going away, but then I guess Heather will get new physical buttons. So that's a trade off. So she'll get the iPhone 14 pro and the reason I'm excited. More than the dynamic island. It was that this was a rumor that I also heard about early, which is the brand new. 48 megapixel main camera. The reason that this is exciting is that it also has a quad pixel sensor. Now, what this is doing is that you do not get well. You can, if you're a pro James only for pros, it's in the name pro raw, uh, if you are shooting pro apple pro raw format, you do get a pure 48 megapixel raw photo, which, you know, that's fine. A very [00:45:22] Frank: NOIs. Raw photo [00:45:24] James: mm-hmm and you'll take into light room and do stuff with it's. Cool. I now, I don't know if they're doing like my camera, my M my M 50, the can M 50 mark two that I have, it can shoot both JPEG and raw at the same time. Like, that's a huge advantage. So if I wanna get the raw, I have the raw, but I, you know, whatever mm-hmm but the cool part about how this works, right. You're like, oh my God, 48 mega. That sounds amazing. You're still getting a 12 megapixel image at the end of the day. But what this is doing in this quad pixel sensor is it's taking those and it's kind of sampling them at four X the resolution. So it's able to. And averaging, it's able to combine those pixels to really give you an ultra crisp. Amazing. So it's able to do stuff that I wasn't able to do through AI machine learning, processing on the device. And that's why it's like super amazing, which means you get three X better, low, right. Um, Photos on ultra wide, two X better on the main camera, two X better on the, the photo. It's able to, to take all those things and, and put it all together in general. Right. So it's, it's really, really fantastic. So I think this will be a huge upgrade, uh, for Heather. Cause if I was compare it to the iPhone 12, maybe she has the 11. Oh no. She has the 11 pro 11 pro what does [00:46:49] Frank: she have? You'll be getting my current. [00:46:53] James: I think that's what she has. I think this is the 11th pro I'm pretty sure you know, that's a, yeah, I think as a two X, you know, and it's a 64 gig. Yeah. I think that's what it is. So maybe that is a big upgrade. Wow. Um, you know, it's gonna be a huge leaps and bounds, I think over what's what's happening today. [00:47:13] Frank: Yeah, I I'm on record of saying, I'm gonna say it right now. The 11 pro camera is fine. It's all I need. It's fine. It's fine. It does great. 48 megapixels. It's it's not new technology. We've had it for a while. It's downside is it's just a really crappy sensor. Mm-hmm it's noisy. It. It's just not good. And so in order to make it good, you have to average four pixels together. Yeah. If you're a gamer out there, you know what this is, um, multi pixel or, uh, anti Aing, multi pixel anti, how does that go? Whatever. Multis sample Antia listing M S a a you oversample the image. You render it too big. You squish it down. It looks better. That's all they're doing. It's funny. We, we do seem trapped in this 12 megapixel world because these cameras have been stuck there. So even though we're getting this large sensor. In the end, you want the 12 megapixel, cuz it's gonna look good. What we're doing right now is machine learning and all this stuff on a 12 megapixel image, running all those algorithms on a 48 megapixel image is so much better. Even if in the end, you're just batching those together and averaging them out. It's still gonna give you, um, Especially in low light, where noise is a thing, averaging noisy images produces a more clear image, sometimes blurrier, but usually more clear image. It is funny that if you are a pro, you can get the raw, but it is gonna be pretty rough because these sensors, as I repeat are terrible And so you're gonna need some advanced software on your side to make sense of them. I am curious to see how good the raw 48 megapixels are compared to like, say your camera sensor. Isn't that big, right? The camera you just bought [00:48:58] James: the, um, the M 50 can. Yeah, let's say it is actually, it is a, [00:49:05] Frank: I don't think you're quite at 48, but it would be neat to see it compared to other 48, maybe go pixel sensor to see if they're using the XX same sensor as everyone else, or they got a better sensor. [00:49:17] James: Yeah, I like how I bought this camera and I don't even know what the sensor is. on it. great question, Frank. Well, [00:49:25] Frank: because any photographer will tell you the same thing. It doesn't matter. What matters is your lighting source and your composition of the image. That's all that matters. these mega pixels are just, it's a 20 wait. We've [00:49:37] James: really hit a limit. 26 megapixel 25. Okay. Eight megapixel. Yeah. Yeah. [00:49:44] Frank: 6,000. Those are probably. Probably a higher quality sensor too. yeah. Well, a bigger sensor. I, I shouldn't give, I mean, Apple's putting like a high density sensor in the tiniest little area. It's such a hard problem for them to solve, but it does really start to drill home the thought that, wow, these things really are just cameras with screens. yeah. And you know, like, In this modern world in the DIY world, you can put sew their chips on anything. You can put a screen, a nice touch screen on anything. Now on cheap little chips, I feel like this feels like the beginning of the end for the phones. If I wanna take a really high level view of all this stuff, I just see like, Home technologies, small technologies. Everything's gonna be connected to the internet. Everything's gonna have a screen. And these phones are really feeling like giant cameras at this point. And I'm not sure how much longer I want to keep buying giant cameras from apple. Um, I don't care that much about pictures. Sorry, everyone. um, my memory's fine. so it's funny because it's curious. Yeah, I think, I [00:50:55] James: think that's why they were the reverse, like. I have enjoyed using my M 50 and I enjoy taking photos, but Heather is a better mobile photographer than me. Mm-hmm and she really enjoys that. And she does a lot of like little, you know, photo editing and collages like use it. So to her, I think that is a, it's a great use case for it. And that's why I always want, I, I always want her to have the, I always want her to have the latest. Phone, you know, phone with camera because good camera. Yeah. She does, you know, on hike stop more than I do to take photos in the moment. Mm-hmm I appreciate that. She does, even though, you know, I'm like, come on, let's go to the top of the mountain. And she's like, alright, how pretty? This is like, we gotta remember this moment. I'm like, okay. Yeah, let's do it. So, so she's in the moment doing something and I really appreciate it. And then looking at the, looking back at all of our albums that we have, I'm super appreciative. She's the one that has the better camera than me, uh, in general. Now, if I go on a photo shoot, I actually bring my can M 50. Like I am real excited to, to go take some photos and go do some stuff. And I think for the, for the simplicity of. My hookup to like use my M 50 as a video production suite. I also appreciate a little bit more than using my phone on it. So I think there's trade offs on both of them. And of course mm-hmm, , you're getting the interchangeable lenses, right? I'm I'm, I'm getting the adjustable apertures and all these other things that are on it. So will it ever rep you know, it's definitely replaced. Heather's like Heather has a nice Fuji camera that she has. Okay. But she does not use it anymore. I think at some point when she got this new phone, it was like, oh yeah, this, this makes my other phone just obsolete a hundred percent. And it doesn't make any sense. And the hardest part of a physical camera, even though my physical camera has wifi and Bluetooth and all this stuff in it that I'm 50, it's still kind of a pain in the butt to get my photos off the camera on the thing. Like it's a process that you have to go physically do. I just opened Google photos and it uploads to the clouds and I have everything amazingly on it right away. Right. And that's kind of the world that we're spoiled on, I guess. [00:53:11] Frank: Okay. Yes. Yeah. I didn't wanna argue that the camera's useless. I'm just saying the camera's quality mm-hmm has really kind of plateaued to the point where we're relying very heavily on machine learning algorithms to do a lot of the heavy lifting and quality improvements. And it. I felt like it plateaued five years ago, but, uh, apple thinks the plateau's a little higher than I do. So I'm just, I just feel like, you know, eventually are, are we really gonna be comparing camera specs in 10 years? Probably do. Should we be no yeah, I'll just leave it there. Yeah. [00:53:49] James: Uh, what do you give it? What's your rating? Let's wrap it up with the rating out of 10, 10 being amazing nine. [00:53:56] Frank: I. I tend to judge 'em by am I actually buying any products from it? Did their commercials work and their commercials work twice on me. So I'm gonna give them an eight outta 10, uh, 8.1 outta 10 for their amazing compositing on those virtual sets. Uh, apple you're so good at it or whatever production company you're. [00:54:18] James: I'll give them a 7.5 outta 10. I will be replacing my apple watch only because, uh, my apple watch actually has a, I've dropped it many a times. Oh, . And I was in a bike accident with it. It did withstand it, but, um, it has a big crack in it. So I'm, I'm very scared around water with it because I'm pretty sure. The water will be inside of it. Um, it hasn't yet, but I don't submerge it obviously. And I wouldn't submerge my watch normally, but I get a little bit worried around it. So I will be buying that if I have fitness credit left over at the end of the year, cuz we can, you can use it on a apple watch, which is kinda nice. Um, But corporate life. Thanks, corporate. Thanks Microsoft. Um, um, which would be nice, cause I do think it'll be nice to have that upgraded stuff, but I, I do like the size of this really small one. So I do like that the se comes in a 40 millimeter, so at least remain smaller. The [00:55:12] Frank: small one got bigger, right. Or is the small one, the same size. I. [00:55:17] James: I don't know. I think it's the same. Yeah. Okay. So, and I'll get, of course the Heather will get a new phone, so that'll be Christmas present for [00:55:24] Frank: Heather, so, oh, wow. So we, we all came out having to spend some money. 7.5, not bad. 8.1, not bad. Yeah. Another, another incremental update year. We've been saying that for the last three years, but that that's life [00:55:37] James: not bad. Well, I think that's gonna do it, Frank. Any, any other final comments from you on this, on this. [00:55:44] Frank: I guess I'm, I'm, I'm happy. I'm getting out with just spending this amount of money. it could have gone much worse. It could have been way more expensive. Thankfully they, they didn't release any new, uh, IMAX or anything. so I walked out [00:55:56] James: yeah, I agree. All right, well, cool. I think that's gonna do it for our hour long recap of the hour and a half, uh, apple event. um, so that's that's good too. Let us know. Let us, if you're buying anything right into the show tweeted as at merge conflict, FM or James Monte Magno clam on Twitter. Dell next time. This has been an elongated super ultra deluxe edition of merge conflict. I'm James Monte Magno [00:56:22] Frank: and I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for listening. [00:56:25] James: Peace.