iPhone 16 Reviews, AirPods 4 Hands-On, Instagram Teens Explained, ChatGPT Can Reason Now
They ride single file to disguise their numbers. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We have some AirPods 4 in hand. We're gonna talk about that. Plus early reviews of the iPhone 16 and Apple Watch Series 10.
Stephen Robles:IOS 18 and macOS Sequoia is out for everyone. We have it on our machines. We're gonna talk about some of those updates. News from OpenAI. Instagram now has teen accounts, and we're gonna roast your doc.
Stephen Robles:Our community shared some of their doc pictures, and, yeah, we're just gonna roast them, and I'm gonna roast Jason's doc. And no one can roast mine because it's a perfect doc. This episode is brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. Thank you for that. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Rolos, and joining me, my friend Jason Aitken.
Stephen Robles:How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. It's really good. Very good.
Stephen Robles:I just mentioned that we have things in hand. So I have the AirPods 4 and the AirPods 4 with noise cancellation. And, Donut, what device do you have in hand?
Jason Aten:I have both of those sets of AirPods as well as a series 10, Apple Watch in the the jet black polished aluminum, which, by the way, is the only aluminum Apple Watch I've ever thought looks good.
Stephen Robles:Oh, it looks good. Oh, yeah. Jet black It
Jason Aten:doesn't look like aluminum. It looks like stainless steel, basically.
Stephen Robles:Right. The Jet black, iPhone 7. Yeah. We are also on the eve on the eve of all the devices actually arriving. So tomorrow is Friday, September 20th.
Stephen Robles:We have you know, we did our we talked about what we were going to order last Thursday. So real quick, let's say what did we get in? How was the preorder for you? I know I'm I have my iPhone 16 Pro Max in Desert Titanium coming tomorrow. I don't know if you realized all of the theme that I did here.
Jason Aten:Dune with the desert. Yeah. Because because your quote. You didn't ever ask me about your quote.
Stephen Robles:I was gonna ask you about the quote. Yeah. Do obviously, no.
Jason Aten:I mean, I'm pretty sure it's Obi Wan. Right? Is it That's it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Absolutely.
Jason Aten:Talking to A New Hope, maybe?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's A New Hope. That's right. Yeah. He's he's talking about the, the Tusken Raiders.
Stephen Robles:I didn't I changed the quote a little bit because he actually says sand people ride single file, but they didn't wanna give it away too much. Yeah. But, yeah, you know, I'm I tried to do all the desert theme, and I do have a series 10, polished titanium. I'm really excited to see what that looks like in person. We're gonna talk about some of the early reviews that are out there, but it looks good.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm. Looks good. Yeah. So anyway, how was it? I mean, preorders for me, it took me a few minutes to, like I do the thing where I quit the app store constantly and reopen it.
Stephen Robles:Is that what is your process when you do the preorders?
Jason Aten:Well, so this is the first time I did it differently. Right? Because I did mine through Verizon this time. I didn't go through the Apple Store, and I forgot that it was 8 o'clock. And so, like, at 8:15, I just, like, oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:I was supposed to do this. I don't know how I got distracted, but I'm like, I gotta go do this. I went into the Verizon thing, and, like, 3 minutes later, I was done. It was, like, fine. And it says it'll be here tomorrow.
Jason Aten:And I ordered what I said, the natural titanium 256, not Max 16 Pro.
Stephen Robles:Regular Pro.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It was fine. Apple Watch?
Stephen Robles:Did you order an Apple Watch?
Jason Aten:No. I'm gonna keep with this Ultra. I don't have a problem. So the only thing I was thinking about is I'm super interested in the sleep apnea tracking, definitely, because I'm pretty sure I probably have it. I'm diagnosed.
Jason Aten:I'm one of the undiagnosed ones. I'm pretty sure. I get enough elbows in the middle of the night that I think probably I have it mildly, but I don't wanna wear this Ultra to sleep in. So I have been conditioning myself to sleep with my old series 7. Right?
Jason Aten:Because that's super low profile. But because I'm gonna because I have the 10 to test, I'm gonna just wear that to sleep in for the next 30 days or whatever, and we'll go from there. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. We'll talk about some of the the reviews that I've been watching, but the thinness and lightness looks, pretty nice on that series 10.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive, and it's noticeable. So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. So we'll get into that, the iPhone 16 reviews.
Stephen Robles:Cup 1 5 star review shout out from which doctor Ash from Great Britain. Said battery percentage on, nobody's perfect. Apple Pencil this was hilarious. Apple Pencil magnetically attached to a stud in my office wall to stop the kids losing it when they borrow the iPad. Charging situation is problematic.
Jason Aten:I don't even know what to say.
Stephen Robles:That's a person who has figured out a system, oh, because he doesn't wanna lose things anymore. You know what would solve that, Jason? A u one chip. Why doesn't Apple just put u one chips in everything? Everything.
Jason Aten:I mean, it wouldn't stop the kids from taking it, right, when they take the iPad.
Stephen Robles:But losing it. But losing it.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:It would it prevent that. Even the AirPods 4, which, I actually have a video of this coming out. It'll be as we record. I'm gonna see which comes first. When we talk about AirPods 4 in this episode so I can show the review on YouTube or, or we get to it, before it goes public.
Stephen Robles:But these define my in the AirPods 4. Like, the regular AirPods 4 have nothing. They will just tell you the last time I saw these was 2 weeks ago. The AirPods 4 with noise canceling has the Bluetooth Find My like Apple TV. It's not really fun.
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't think that's really fun. I mean, it's okay. But it's not the it's not the u one, like, it's 10 feet away. Sure. That's that's still that's that's how I that's fine.
Jason Aten:Well and I and we'll get to the AirPods 4, but there was I had heard several people pontificating. Is that the right word? I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:Speculating something somewhere between pontificating and speculating, whatever that word. Okay. Upon speculating about that they were the same, everything about the AirPods 4 was the same, and then they just, like, turn off certain features software wise because it would be just cheaper to make them. But I just will tell you right now, they are different. They and the reason people were saying this is because they weigh the same amount.
Jason Aten:If you weigh them on a scale, they're the same.
Stephen Robles:The case literally is different.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The the case is literally different. Also, there are actually like, there's a different microphone in the like, there are different things. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They're not the same.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, we'll get to the AirPods. Real quick, I do wanna shout out St. Jude. It is childhood cancer awareness month, and we have we blew past our goal of $1,000.
Stephen Robles:People are still donating. We're now at $1200 for the Saint Jude, Research Hospital, and this fundraiser goes all through September. So encourage you, if you haven't donated, any little bit helps. Let's end the month strong. We got about a couple weeks left on this, but it goes to a great cause.
Stephen Robles:And we've joined up with that relay.fm, fundraising, and I think let's see. It's it's probably on some amazing number right now. Let's check it live. Actually, I didn't load this tab. So here we go.
Stephen Robles:They've raised $610,000 this month and $700,000 is the goal. So listen, there's probably one primary tech listener out there that's just got a cool 90 ks sitting around in their, sofa cushions. I'm talking about Tim Cook. He's probably a listener.
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, just just just don't but that's amazing. Relay is gonna hit that 700,000 mark for sure, and, you could be a part of that. Link is in the show notes to donate to Saint Jude. That's great. Here we go.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Early reviews of the iPhone 16 came out. One of my favorites. I missed it. I don't know if he did one for the 15.
Stephen Robles:I can't remember. But Austin Mann, he's a travel photographer and videographer. I'm gonna put, his review in the top in the show notes. I'll try and get him on the show, because, I I actually interviewed him back on the Apple Insider podcast a couple times, but Austin Mann is just incredible photographer. This video, encourage you to just watch it because he shot the entire intro, and I think that his entire review is shot on iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Stephen Robles:And the footage that he gets from that camera is wild. Mhmm.
Jason Aten:He
Stephen Robles:does a lot of 4 k 120. Of course, he takes incredible photos with the camera as well. I just highly recommend doing it. And, you know, a lot of people were really, I don't know, cool about the event saying, like, maybe it's not that big of an upgrade. But after seeing Austin Mann's review and seeing The Verge review, which we'll talk about in a second, I mean, this camera seems significant.
Stephen Robles:This seems like a significant upgrade. And the photographic styles, which we can get into, seems, again, very interesting, like, makes a big difference. And I know I'm gonna be playing around. You're a photographer, Jason. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:From the early reviews, what have been your take about this upgrade to the camera?
Jason Aten:Well, one thing that's been interesting to me is the number of people in listening to reviews who talk about how many people disliked the iPhone 15 pro cameras, and I just did not have that same sentiment. I and I but I think it's because the argument has been that Apple has been sort of, like, drifting towards this overprocessed, you know, increased sharpness, increased HDR, no shadows, no highlights, that kind of thing. And I think part of it is, like, if I'm taking a photo that I of something that I'm like, I want this to be a really good photo, I just have shot it in raw. Like, that's that's the benefit of having the pro is you can just shoot it in 48 megapixel raw, and then you don't get it. You don't have to worry about any of that.
Jason Aten:You have an empty pipeline. Right? You can just do all the stuff later. And when you do that, those photos have been amazing. I think the big benefit of the 16 pro is going to be the way that they have allowed you to sort of to dial in the photographic styles, especially, like, the tone, which is specifically it's like a common it's like if you had one feature that controlled both shadows and highlights at the same time, essentially, that's what you're able to do.
Jason Aten:And so you're you can dial in what I'm trying to do in post as the camera has taken it. And I and, like, that's the that's wonderful because that is the one thing you cannot do in a mirrorless camera, for example. Right? You cannot take your Lightroom preset and load it on your camera and have it take you know, same thing if you're shooting video. You can't take your your color profile, right, and load it in the same way.
Jason Aten:You're just gonna shoot it in log, and then you're gonna, you know, color it later. So I actually am pretty excited about this. I'm bullish on the fact that, like, you're now going to be able to set your default with the skin tones you want, with the HDR settings that you want, that kind of thing.
Stephen Robles:I will say if you use the Kino app on iPhone, that's what I use to record whenever I'm doing ProRes footage on my 15 Pro Max. You can actually shoot with the log, like, live in preview, and it will apply that or it'll apply that LUT, live, or you can apply it later. So, you know, app, just shout out is pretty good. But I wanna share this, this is an image from The Verge review. We'll link this in the show notes as well.
Stephen Robles:I kept hearing about this, like, tone mapping pad. Often, man, talked about it, but I never saw it on screen. This is what it's going to look like. And if you were you know, photographic styles was something that has existed before, and you were actually able to, you know, to change the what were the 2 settings? Contrast?
Jason Aten:It was con
Stephen Robles:Contrast and tone, I think. And you could change those two settings, but this is now kind of an upgraded photographic styles. And it has this d pad where you can kind of go in 3 60 on this x and y axis, around and kind of really dial in how you want the tone and the processing. And so I'm I'm curious to play around with that, but I think one of the most telling differences, again, in the verge of you, they have this kind of side by side where it shows what it looked like for the iPhone in the default settings with all the HDR and processing that it's doing. And then with the photographic style that they had, they turned the tone control down to negative 60.
Stephen Robles:And so it's interesting because the iPhone, by default, and Neil Patel talked about this in the Vergecast this week, you know, it it really it flattens the image because it's really trying to make everything even, so it, like, reduces shadows and highlights because in a lot of situations when people are maybe not great at taking photos, if there's a bright light behind them, a normal camera that's not adjusting for that, it's gonna be like, the subject is gonna be well, the background will be blown out, and the subject will be shrouded like a silhouette. And Apple is trying to make it so even if you take a picture in the harshest conditions, you'll still be able to see the subjects, but that can also make for a flatter photo. And so when you go over and you can see, like, what it looks like to have a little less processing, you actually get, you know, I think, more natural look. You see more shadows that would naturally be there, and I I actually like that natural photo. And then you could do whatever you want with it afterwards, apply filters or or change it.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, I'm excited to maybe set my default to a more natural tone. I don't know. Do you do you ever feel like you get over processed images, like, when you're taking them with your iPhone?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well and I think that I don't remember if it was Nilay or Allison Johnson who I believe reviewed the 16 not Pro phones for The Verge. Right. But, you know, the I think it was, like, on the Monday episode or the 2 whatever the day the embargo dropped, you know, lifted. I mean
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Was talking about, like, it seems as though Apple's goal has always been anyone should be able to just whip out their iPhone and take a photo and just trust that it's gonna be fine. Right? Like, that it'll be now it may not it may not be incredibly good quality in terms of, like, the shadows and whatever, but the default has been like, if you're taking a picture of the kid's birthday party and everyone's standing in front of the window, Apple's gonna make sure you can see the faces. Right? And it may look flat.
Jason Aten:The lighting may look you know, it may the shadows may all be, lifted way too high, that kind of thing. And it seems like what they're doing now is they're saying, fine. You wanna mess with it. You want it to look a certain way. We're gonna make it easier for you to do that, and you can bake that right into sort of, like, the default, the way that it's gonna take the photos.
Jason Aten:And I think that that's great. And I think I I feel like it's it's hidden enough that people aren't gonna accidentally do this and end up with terrible results, but it's accessible enough that for people like you or me or anyone who's listening to this who buys the pro and wants to spend that time, it'll that they'll be able to do that, and they'll get good results.
Stephen Robles:One other thing, Austin Mann talked about this in his review, and, obviously, all the reviews talk about the camera control, which MKBHD pointed out to a couple interviews that Apple did. And Apple is so against calling it a button. Like, they don't wanna say the camera button or the capture button. Like, there was I think it was mister Mobile. He was, like, so is it a button?
Stephen Robles:And Apple was, like, we love camera control. I was, like, okay. Okay. But it is a physical button, but also has the haptics and touch sensitive, you know, capacitive layer, and in Austin Mann's video, he talked about it's actually it it was a little sensitive for him where he inadvertently changed settings a couple times while he was taking a picture or video to something he didn't want. Like, he he actually zoomed in to 1.7x without realizing it, and he just because how he was swiping and using the camera control and so he was talking about in the settings of the iPhone 16 Pro, you can actually disable that touch mechanism where it won't change the settings of on those swipes, and so that's how he has actually left his iPhone 16, so he's not inadvertently changing those things while shooting.
Stephen Robles:So I'm curious how that's gonna be. You know, I'm interest like, I like the idea of adjusting exposure just by a swipe or even doing focus, you know, like, in a third party camera app like Halide. But, yeah, you definitely don't wanna inadvertently be zooming in. And I I've I noticed that sometimes, like, sometimes I'll do the camera remote from my Apple Watch. And if I'm trying to do something, I'll inadvertently spin the digital crown, and then, like, zooms in by accident.
Stephen Robles:Like, that's never a good feeling. And so I don't know I'm curious we're gonna talk about obviously because Jason I will have these in hand next episode we record but I don't know I may disable some of that because I don't wanna I don't wanna be swiping and I'm very curious case wise I've gotten a lot of cases here This is just the this is the start, the start of the case collection. I got some I haven't even opened yet. But it's it's interesting to see who has chosen a camera control button, which is namely no one, but only Apple. And then who's doing the cutouts?
Stephen Robles:So, like, right here, I have Apple's silicone cases, which have the capacitive wait a minute. That's a 15 pro case because there's no camera control. Get out of here. I'm trying to throw that one away. So here I have Apple's silicone case with the actual capacitive button on the case and then every other case maker, I think, just because this is it feels like an action button situation again where they were like, we don't know what to do with this.
Stephen Robles:We're just gonna leave a cutout. We have various cutouts. Here's the Nomad cutout, which is very form fitted to the button, and then we have Andar and MOFT. And they have kind of these big cutouts that are, like, huge notches where camera control is gonna go. I'm just curious.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious how cases are gonna work with this, capacitive button.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's not a button, Steven. Every single person at Apple has this right below their camera when they do a briefing. Like, number one point is do not call it a button.
Stephen Robles:Did you write that while I was talking?
Jason Aten:Of course. You know, I've just happened to have this here, Steven. I just have this on my mind. For your writing. No.
Jason Aten:Do not call it
Stephen Robles:a button.
Jason Aten:But I think it's because it it like in their defense. I mean, Apple does some funny things with words. In an event, it's obviously more than a button. Right? It is a swipe control.
Jason Aten:So I don't, you know, a button is a thing people just press. I think that they want to not call it a button so that they are conditioning people to understand that it has more functionality than just a button. That that's fine. Whatever. I'm a little concerned.
Jason Aten:So you didn't get the beats case. It looks like which you have the Apple silicone case, which is the Beats case. I did get one. It's basically the silicone. Okay.
Jason Aten:It's basically the silicone case, but they baked it too long and it's hard. Like, it's a right? It's a hard place.
Stephen Robles:The virtue of you said they actually like the beats case, though.
Jason Aten:I'm looking forward to it. It'll be fine. But based on the Apple silicone case, which I also have one of, I'm a little bit concerned about the button because it is very low profile. Like, when you look at that case compared to, like, the action button or the volume buttons, you're gonna maybe they don't want you to accidentally activate it, but I'm really interested in what the experience will be for people because it is I mean, that just looks like the 5 g radio. Right?
Jason Aten:It does.
Stephen Robles:It It does. If you if you're not watching youtube.com/@primarytechshow, I'm showing my Apple Silicone case. You have the sleep button here, which is obviously raised, and you can see that even here on camera. Camera but, I mean, the camera controls excuse me. Camera control is flat.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it's very flush.
Jason Aten:Even flush. It's, like, recessed.
Stephen Robles:It is recessed. I imagine once the phone is in there, I mean, it does kind of poke out once you, like, push it a little bit. I wanna break my case here. I'm just curious what technology is in there because it's gonna pass through capacitive touch. That even a thing?
Stephen Robles:I didn't know that that was a thing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They're so they're using, like, that sapphire crystal. I think it's essentially the same thing as what they were using for the home button. Right? Uh-huh.
Jason Aten:Where you with the the touch ID home button. Right? It has to be able to send a electrical current through it. Right?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And whatever. So I think that it's just it's just sending being able to sense that in in its in capacitive, which means it can send an electrical current, and then it can pass that through to the actual button. I don't think it's, like, super sophisticated, which is kind of funny that other better maybe it's just too expensive. Like, putting sapphire in there is expensive. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. The silicone case is still $50. I mean, the price didn't change from Apple. And if that was if that was something to raise the prices on, they would have done it. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You know what I'm saying? So, anyway, the last thing I wanna say about the iPhone 16, 4 k at 120 frames per second, which is unique. Oh, and the audio I wanted to mention, looks really good. I'll just say that the Brian Tongs of RIV video review, he did a whole segment of 4 k 120, slow mo with rain. He went to a studio to do this.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it looks good. You know, it looks really good. And I'm excited to try it. Recording to an external SSD, I'm gonna be testing many different models because a lot of them had struggled with 60 frames per second, especially ProRes Log. And so I'm curious what SSDs will be able to keep up with 4 k 120.
Stephen Robles:And, but but it was cool to be able to do it. Austin Manning did a bunch of it too. This is why I ordered a 1 terabyte, Jason, because I don't I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I actually went smaller for the first time. I went to the 256.
Stephen Robles:Smaller.
Jason Aten:Well That's wild. I mean, I just did the thing you do and you look at your storage on your phone, your current
Stephen Robles:I know.
Jason Aten:Which is a 512 and I was using a 155 gigs of it, and I'm like Okay. Well, I don't need 5 12. It's like
Stephen Robles:Well, let's look it up. I'm gonna go to my iPhone settings, general. I'm gonna go to storage, phone storage. I'm using 309 gigabytes out of 5 12.
Jason Aten:Are you storing your photo library on your phone?
Stephen Robles:No. No. I do have 30 gigabytes of in Pocket Cast, but I do have 24 gigabytes in Keynote. And that's one of the things where I was doing my AirPods 4 video. And I didn't bring an external SSD with me.
Stephen Robles:And so I was recording some ProRes directly on device. So that's why I feel like I can justify it to myself. We'll see. We'll see how much I'm doing with it. But the last thing I wanted to mention, the audio recording, which there's the new audio mix feature, which, again, back to the Verge review, Nilay walked down this market in New York City.
Stephen Robles:They recorded audio, which the iPhone if or excuse me, 16 Pro has 4 microphones now, and it's capable of capturing all the audio that's kind of, like, around and these different settings, which you can have, like, a cinematic mode, which will give you, like, a surround sound look, in frame, which will focus on whatever audio is literally on screen at the time, studio, which kinda does a bunch of, like, AI stuff to make it sound good, focusing on the active speaker. And, obviously, you can't hear this in in this way, but go watch that part of the of the video review. You watch the whole thing. But it's actually really impressive. It's impressive how good it sounds, especially that studio setting that cuts out all the background noise and focuses on the active speaker.
Stephen Robles:You can actually get and Neil, I was saying this in the Verge cast. If you play one of the videos captured on 16 pro on your Apple TV, you can't AirPlay it because AirPlay doesn't carry this audio over. But if you play, like, in the Photos app that's on the Apple TV, you actually do get 5.1 surround sound from those videos that you captured on the 16 pro, which is wild. I mean, this the like, Apple may maybe mention that in the event. I can't remember.
Stephen Robles:But to capture 5.1 surround sound on your phone and actually have that separation played back
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:That's wild.
Jason Aten:It is. That's pretty cool. I think it's cool. And it's and I think, if I remember correctly, like, you have the option of doing this all after the fact. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, you Yes. You can decide how you wanna do it after the fact. It's it's it's nondestructive, and so it's creating that mix on playback in the phone. And then you can save that to the file. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yep. It's it's just a mix you do after, and you can play around with cinematic or in studio. So very cool. Alright. Quickly, let's talk about Apple Watch Series 10.
Stephen Robles:Obviously, we wanna talk about more once we get ours in hand. Jason left his, unpaired. He's like, I forgot the fashion designer's name again. What's his name?
Jason Aten:Karl Lagerfeld.
Stephen Robles:Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld. Jason has left it on the pairing screen. For this, I would actually recommend watching the CNET review, which is with, Alexis Savai. Forgive me if I mispronounced that, but she had a really good review of the Series 10.
Stephen Robles:Putting it through the paces, the consensus between a lot of these reviews is, hey, it is noticeably thinner and lighter, and it looks really good, especially the polished titanium, bigger screen. I'm I'm curious if I will switch from my Ultra 2 to the series 10. I think the biggest differentiator is gonna be battery life. Because honestly, as I use my Ultra 2, you know, I don't know about you, Jason, but I'm not exactly an adventurer, or, super outdoorsy. And so even the action button, like, I have videos on my channel where I talk about so you could set a shortcut to the action button, and I've never used the action button.
Stephen Robles:I never use the action button. Do you?
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah.
Stephen Robles:What do you do?
Jason Aten:That's literally the only reason I wear the Altra is I start a stopwatch so that I can keep track of my kids' cross country races.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Yeah. Okay. So if you have a specific reason for that, yeah, I totally get it. The action button is I I'm mapped it to just, like, an outdoor walk so I can just, you know, tap that when I go walk around the house.
Stephen Robles:So yeah but I don't
Jason Aten:know wait you said it to do an outdoor walk when you walk around the house
Stephen Robles:not inside sorry outside okay I leave the house and I walk around the neighborhood
Jason Aten:literally you mean around Okay.
Stephen Robles:I wanna fool my watch thinking I'm outside like an outdoor walk.
Jason Aten:They do have an indoor walk option.
Stephen Robles:I mean, you could just I'm gonna pace my studio for 30 minutes.
Jason Aten:I'm gonna go make more cold brew. Let me start a workout.
Stephen Robles:Absolutely. Got it got it right here right here. But I you know, the battery is the I noticed that, obviously, because it's really good battery life, but I don't you know, the dual GPS, which is another differentiator between the Ultra 2 and Series 10 like, again, I'm not doing crazy outdoorsy stuff where dual GPS, I think, will matter that much. There's, like, the dual microphones, which I am curious how good Siri is going to respond on the Series 10 versus the Ultra 2, because I do find I said the name. I shouldn't have done that.
Stephen Robles:But the voice assistant on the Ultra 2 is very good. I actually use it mostly on the Ultra 2 to do, like, smart home commands because the the mics are so good. So I'm curious how the series 10 will be according to that. And, I don't know. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I I like the idea of going back to the thinner, lighter watch, but I don't know. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But you're
Stephen Robles:not even you're not even considering it.
Jason Aten:I no. I'm gonna just stick with the ultra 2. I'm not buying a a watch at this point because I the battery life is the the best piece of it, but it's also the ultra 2 is still a far more durable and rugged. Now when I say rugged, I just mean, like, for some someone like Steven who smashes their wrist into door frames every time they get up and go on their indoor walk. Like, I don't know that the series 10 is gonna be the watch for you.
Jason Aten:I think it's still gonna be, like, a lot more likely to get scratched or that kind of thing. So I think that there's there's definitely some benefits. And I the action button is, like, a real but it may not be useful for everyone. I can't believe you don't have it to, like, map to a shortcut to open your garage door or something.
Stephen Robles:I had that. You can do that. I don't know. I I'm I'm not sure why. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, that that's the that's the Ultra 2. Also, there's supposedly an additional layer, I think, on the series 10 that is gonna help with scratches, helping not scratch as much. They're, like I I forget exactly what it's called, but maybe less scratches. So there's that.
Jason Aten:My Ultra 2 has zero scratches on the screen.
Stephen Robles:That is true.
Jason Aten:Not even a not even a little one. Like Not
Stephen Robles:even a hairline.
Jason Aten:Nothing.
Stephen Robles:Yep. This is a this is this is a great audio podcast. We're just staring at our Apple Watch Ultra faces.
Jason Aten:I know. What are we even doing? What's happening?
Stephen Robles:No scratches. Yeah. No. No scratches. No scratches.
Stephen Robles:So, let's talk about AirPods 4, and then we'll get into iOS 18 and Macquarie. We got AirPods 4 here. Tried both. The cute little case. I have to say, I like the size of these cases compared to AirPods 3.
Stephen Robles:Here's the AirPods 3 case. The massive AirPods no. Just kidding. I mean, it's a little bigger.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's a little and if you're, again, if you're not watching this, Steven is making a totem pole of AirPods cases. And, the AirPods 3 cases, yeah, a little Yeah. A little bit bigger. It's kind of like if you if you squished an AirPods 3 case to make it as wide as an air original AirPods case.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But it still maintains the same height as the AirPods 3 case. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna do this thing in my video where I, like, literally stack them like a totem pole and then put the humane AI pin, cases because those also stack like that. And you know what? I didn't even care to do that.
Stephen Robles:I was like, you know what? No one no one cares.
Jason Aten:Can we say, though, for a second? Apple has figured out something that no one else has figured out because the AirPods case relative to all other earbuds cases is, like, amazing. Like, here's the Bowers and Wilkins PI Yeah. Whatever things. I mean, this is an AirPods Pro case, which it just makes looks tiny.
Jason Aten:It's like a and so now they have that tiny case, which gets the same kinda, battery life as the previous cases. Compare that to, like, a Beats case
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Which is the size of a small hamburger. It's it's like, I don't know. Apple is doing something here.
Stephen Robles:No. The I love how small the case is. Actually, my showed my wife the AirPods 4, and she was like, oh, I like how small the case is because she's an AirPods Pro 2 user. And, you know, she has a very small purse she likes to carry around, and so the difference if you had an AirPods Pro 2, the difference to an AirPods 4 case is significant. So it is it's nice to have it so compact.
Stephen Robles:But I went to test these because I have both versions, the regular, which is a $130, and the ones with noise cancelling, which is a $180, so $50 difference between these 2. Obviously, noise cancelling is a big difference, but also Find My is better with the noise cancelling version because you actually do get the Bluetooth distance Find My. The speaker has a case, so you can ping it from the Find My app as opposed to the base model, and you get the wireless charging, but I will say I do miss MagSafe charging, which seems like I don't know if it's because of the size of the case, but I have a MagSafe puck here. AirPods 3, you could charge on a puck even on, like, a vertical stand, sticks to that. AirPods Pro 2, MagSafe charging, sticks to that.
Stephen Robles:AirPods 4, chi charging, but it does not stick. I mean, it stick oh, no. It didn't stick. It fell off. So you you have to lay it flat if you wanna charge it, and I do kinda miss the, the actual MagSafe where it'll stick on, like, a vertical stand because sometimes I would just throw it on, like, my 3 in ones because I have 1,000 of them around the house.
Stephen Robles:I would, you know, just throw
Jason Aten:999 now because
Stephen Robles:I sent you one. Because I sent you one.
Jason Aten:Well and Apple talked about this, that they are still you can still charge them on a MagSafe. They're just not MagSafe compatible. And it is it's literally just because of the size. You know, even the AirPods case the AirPods Pro case was just barely big enough to line up with those magnets to stick on there. And so there's just no way that they could make that happen.
Jason Aten:So it'll still charge at the same
Stephen Robles:AirPods 3. They were smaller.
Jason Aten:It's but they're wider. Like, that case
Stephen Robles:I know. They're wider. That's that's why
Jason Aten:it's There is physics. I don't understand what that means, but somewhere, there's some physics that says Blah blah. Geometry doesn't work when the magnets are too big for the case. No.
Stephen Robles:I'm talking to me about sine, cosine, and tangent or whatever.
Jason Aten:Talk yeah. You have to talk to my son about that. I don't know. Yeah. He loves it.
Stephen Robles:So noise canceling, I was curious to try it because without a seal around the AirPod, how does noise canceling work? And I took it to my trusty testing ground, which was grocery store because I do my AirPods Pro every week when I do the grocery run, and I love the because the noise canceling is just everything goes silent. Everything in the store goes silent. So using the AirPods 4 with noise canceling, it's a little different, obviously, because without that seal, it just cannot cut out as much sound, obviously, just because there's stuff coming in around the actual AirPod, but there is a difference. Like, when you turn on noise canceling for AirPods 4, I noticed there was more white noise, like, kind of the fans and the air conditioners in the store.
Stephen Robles:That stuff gets lowered. Kind of the overall crowd noise, basically more like white noise that's kind of the same frequency, all of that cuts down a little bit, but it doesn't do as good a job as cutting out things like cart noise, people conversations that might be sporadic. And then I was actually had the noise canceling on here in my studio. My son was out playing a video game, and whenever he would talk, you know, the volume changes dramatically, the timbre changes, and it was not cutting out that, whereas AirPods Pro does a better job at all that. So if you're, like, flying or you're gonna be doing and, you know, you really wanna have the closed in feeling where you're not hearing the engine noise, AirPods Pro is still the way to go.
Stephen Robles:But AirPods 4 with noise canceling, it's it's nice. And if you don't like any ear headphones, like, stuck in your ear canal, I actually found these to be comfortable and they didn't fall out. I violently shook my head, with AirPods 4 in my ears, and I was surprised because they feel like they're right on the edge because maybe because I've been wearing AirPods Pro for years. They were like they felt like they were right on the edge, but I I shook my head and they never they never came out.
Jason Aten:I really hope that's a part of your video review, the violent shaking of your of your head.
Stephen Robles:It literally is. And that look. It just hit 9 AM, so now I can go to the YouTube video and actually show you. I'll try to find a violin check. But have you have you tried any noise canceling yet?
Jason Aten:Okay. I think it's this is one of those things that I feel like is important to unpack a tiny bit, which is simply this. The noise canceling, the active noise canceling on the AirPods 4 with active noise canceling is meant to be it's both it's they say the Apple says it's basically that the AirPods Pro 2 is twice as good as the AirPods 4 with noise. Right. AirPods Pro 2 is also twice as good as the original AirPods Pro.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:So the active noise canceling on the AirPods 4 is as good as the original AirPods Pro. But here's the thing, That doesn't mean that the effect for the user is the same. It just means that the active noise canceling is as good, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be as quiet in your head. But I do think it's like I think though they've for people who don't like having that pressure in their ear of the silicone tips, this is gonna be a game changer because you didn't really have a good option before. And the act of noise canceling, so the effect of what the AirPods are doing to cancel out noise is exactly this is I shouldn't say it's exactly the same, but it is as effective as the original AirPods Pro, which was pretty game changing at the time.
Jason Aten:So I think it's really good, but you're right. The the effect of it is is a little bit different because you do not have the blocking of just ambient noise. You don't have a seal. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:And so I but I think it's great. I I think that for the, like, the use case you described, right, to wear them around for that, they're they're really good. I thought they were comfortable. I still like the AirPods Pro better, but I'm just I'm used to wearing the AirPods pro. I wear them.
Jason Aten:I have said this before that if if I, like, left the house without my phone or my AirPods case, I would be more upset to not have my AirPods case, like the AirPods. Like, I could go for longer without my phone than I could without my AirPods. Now that seems stupid because what am I using my AirPods for if I don't have my phone?
Stephen Robles:I'm just that ultra too.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's true. I could. I actually you're right. You I could.
Jason Aten:So I'm just Yeah. I think that it's it's gonna be although the AirPods 4, I'm way more likely to lose because they're so so small, the case.
Stephen Robles:So that's why that's why it needs a u one chip. I would just put the u one chip and everything. I will say I found
Jason Aten:Those u one chips are huge. They can't I'm just kidding.
Stephen Robles:I was gonna say, here's me violently shaking my head. This is I was talking about the fit, and there's me head back.
Jason Aten:I wanna just hold on, Steven. For all of our audio listeners, I beg you to watch this episode. Just right now at roughly 30 minutes in, just please go and watch. It is I feel like that is an AI generated video that you're showing me right now.
Stephen Robles:Not at all. I was I was trying to purposely shake them out of my head.
Jason Aten:Dear, Sara, make me a video of some guy shaking his head to get AirPods out.
Stephen Robles:I was try I wanted to see, does it stay in? And they do. I don't I don't know what motion I'm doing. This is why I'm not a dancer. I know,
Jason Aten:but I have to turn my screen off right now because if I keep watching this
Stephen Robles:That's no problem.
Jason Aten:I'm gonna let It's
Stephen Robles:a it's a wild day. Listen, it was 11 PM last night while I was making that video. So but they don't fall out. And I also wanted to mention the, well, I wanna do the fit, the sound oh, the magnetic the magnets in the case. I don't know if you've ever dropped your AirPods Pro 2 case, Jason, but it feels like when this hits the ground, even just from, like, pocket height, the AirPods just fly in all directions, like, they just get ejected, almost like they're spring loaded somehow.
Jason Aten:You don't wanna damage the AirPods, man. They gotta get out of that case. There's something bad happening.
Stephen Robles:That's right. Yeah. That's right. Mayday. But the AirPods 4 we're gonna talk about this in the bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:But this is actually my very first product that Apple has sent me to review, which is a big deal for me. So we'll talk about in the bonus episode. But I dropped them. As I was getting out of my car, it fell out of my pocket. And I was like, oh, no, that was in the garage.
Stephen Robles:And I was like, oh, shoot. Those AirPods are gone forever. I don't know what I'm gonna tell Apple. I can't. I don't know what to say.
Stephen Robles:But they fell. I heard clacking around under the car. The AirPods 4 did not get ejected out of this little case. They stayed firmly in there. And so they're not any harder to get out of the case, but they're Apple may have done something with the magnets.
Stephen Robles:I don't know for sure to make him a little more secure, in the case. So Mhmm. Yeah. Kudo. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I've I've found that because I actually dropped
Jason Aten:it. I didn't drop mine in the garage, so I don't I have no comment on this.
Stephen Robles:I didn't drop it on purpose, Apple. Just please please know. It was an accident. So, anyway, talk about all these again, once we have the iPhone 16 in hand, the series 10, all that. Let us know what you got coming.
Stephen Robles:If you got desert titanium, I'm gonna cut my Dune shirt for that orange background. So, anyway, I was 18, and macOS Sequoia also came out earlier this week. I'm making a lot of videos on all that stuff. I'm still on the beta, so it's kinda like I'm on the 18 dot 1 beta, and the I was 18, like, hypo is like, oh, yeah. Okay.
Stephen Robles:But I got to update, like, my iPad Pro. I updated my Mac Studio, and, you know, cool features. I think RCS is underrated. I don't know how everybody feels about that, but I like being able to text green bubbles and get, delivered in red receipts. I've been scheduling messages.
Stephen Robles:I really love the Imessage scheduling feature. Like, it'll be late at night, and I'm, like, well, I don't want to text this person now, so I schedule Imessage later. That's been a big deal. And control center, I did an entire video on control center, which did pretty well. I think people are interested in it.
Stephen Robles:I do find if you thought customizing your home screen was cumbersome to try and move icons around, trying to customize the control center, even more cumbersome.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Can you play that video of you smashing your head again? Because that's how I feel trying to, customize control center. It's just like
Stephen Robles:I think you're there fast enough. I'm trying to
Jason Aten:share my screen
Stephen Robles:and, yep. There's me head banging.
Jason Aten:Set you up. That's how I feel every time I try. I have tried so far to customize control center. Only there's a wall there that I'm smashing my head against because it's it is it is weird how the same user interaction doesn't work as well on the control center. It's like
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:It's like they made it out of ice, and everything's just more slippery.
Stephen Robles:That's a good that's a good analogy. It's it's weird because, you know, on your home screen for your iPhone, you can move things around. You can resize widgets now, but you can't resize icons. But I think in the control center, because there's, like, the tiny little handle on the tiny little square icons, you can resize controls and move them around, and things might jump to a new page inexplicably. Like, when I was doing a video trying to, like, load up all these control center actions, I realized, you know, you can't create a new page manually.
Stephen Robles:Like and I guess you can't do that for a home screen either. You have to drag an icon over to create a new one. Same thing with control center. You kinda have to add a control on a full page for it to create a new one, but after that main control, your favorites, any custom pages are at the very bottom. So it's like this weird you know, you gotta go all the way down there, and then to remove a control center page, you have to remove all the actions from the page first, and then it will magically disappear.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm. Whereas the home screens, there actually is a mechanism where you can go into the home screen editor and just full on, you know, delete a home screen that you have created, which is nice. So this is the 1st year we've ever had it. I'm sure it will improve. Have you actually changed anything about your control center?
Stephen Robles:I actually put in
Jason Aten:No. Not not a single thing.
Stephen Robles:That's the other challenge because I'm like, what I use all the things. I use all the things. You know, you got your connectivity, lock rotation, silent mode, focus mode. I got some home I'm looking at my, like, favorites control center, so this is, like, the main control center screen. I did change one thing.
Stephen Robles:I changed one thing. I took away the what was it? I can't even remember what control was
Jason Aten:because It was so important he doesn't even remember what it
Stephen Robles:was. Exactly. That's why I removed it because I wasn't sure exactly what it is. But I ShareShot, which is a great app for framing screenshots of your iPhone and iPad, it's a great app, and now they actually have a control center action. So I can swipe down, tap the control center action, and it jumps me right to the app where I can choose a screenshot and make that image.
Stephen Robles:So I did actually change that app. I changed one control, but that's about it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I feel like there was in the last several years of using control center, there's never been a time when I'm like, it'd be really nice if I could access this in control center. So, like, why would I go through the hassle of thinking about changing things if the way that things had been, because it's sort of like, yeah, there's probably useful things you could do there. But are they useful enough to overcome the motor memory of what I already know is in control center and just I'm used to doing? I don't wanna come up with a new routine for doing things.
Stephen Robles:Right. I do. So this is my one of my loaded up control center screens. I will say there are some great ones. Water llama has a really cool animation, but when you tap the, little water thing, to focus on the screen.
Stephen Robles:Here we go. Focus on the thing. Look at that little splash of water right there in control center. I didn't even know you could do those kind of animations.
Jason Aten:What just happened when you do is it just an animation? Like, or did you
Stephen Robles:just turn
Jason Aten:on a faucet somewhere?
Stephen Robles:No. Logged water.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:So you can you track how much water you drink, but drafts has a good one. All the camera apps, Halide, you know, you could have those shortcuts. I have a sofa shortcut here in control center. One thing I I actually like, tap to pay, which this didn't get a a lot of time, but you can now anonymously give someone money. Before, if you wanted to send someone like Apple Cash, you had to basically text them or get their Apple ID so you can send it in like a message.
Stephen Robles:But now you can do tap to cash, which is an anonymous thing. You go to a wallet app. You have to go to your Apple Cash card, tap to cash, or you can just put a control in the control center to, if you're doing it often for whatever reason, and you can anonymously send money just by tapping your phone. But, you know, if if you sell things on, like, Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or whatever and you don't wanna, like, share stuff and they're good taking Apple Cash, you can do it anonymously.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Which is
Stephen Robles:pretty cool.
Jason Aten:It's kinda like you can just airdrop Apple Cash to someone now without
Stephen Robles:You're airdropping Apple Cash.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. No. That's exactly what it is.
Jason Aten:Well, I do say there was so you mentioned that you're still on 18.1. And this is actually I had to actually not publish an article. I was like I was like finger on the button.
Stephen Robles:That's like
Jason Aten:Because I realized that the whole premise of my article was based on a feature that I don't actually think is an 18, but it's coming at 18.1.
Stephen Robles:Which one is it?
Jason Aten:Well, it's the, messages recording and transcription and notes, which I don't think is actually
Stephen Robles:It's it's there.
Jason Aten:Is it in 18?
Stephen Robles:It is because I actually did a whole video on the 95 plus new features in iOS 18, and I had to I went to the PDF because Apple does have a lengthy PDF that talks about all the features, and Apple Intelligence is one section, but you can do the voice recording and transcription and notes. And I actually have an iPhone 14 here where I can test it out. That was one of the reasons why I did it. And you can record a note and get the transcription on an iPhone But
Jason Aten:you just don't get this you just don't get the summary?
Stephen Robles:You don't get the summary. Summaries are Apple Intelligence.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:But you can.
Jason Aten:Okay. So maybe
Stephen Robles:I helped you write an article, Jason. Please give me some credit.
Jason Aten:I mean, you just helped me publish it. So I'm gonna do
Stephen Robles:that when
Jason Aten:we're done. Hang on just a minute. Actually, I have to take out the part about the summaries now and say that the summaries are coming. Anyway,
Stephen Robles:it's gonna be it's a little confusing. That's gonna be
Jason Aten:a less exciting article with all the caveats I'm gonna have to put into it. But I I didn't know because no one in my household had updated to iOS 18 yet. Right. And I was on 18.1. So I'm like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it was confusing. That's why it was it was actually helpful to have an iPhone 14 around because it's not capable of Apple Intelligence.
Stephen Robles:So that's one thing. And also this is on 18.0 not 18.1. But the so that was the I honestly and call recording, actually, too. That was something that I wasn't sure if it was Apple Intelligence or not, but you can do call recording. That's not Apple Intelligence.
Stephen Robles:That's an 18 dot o, and you actually get the transcription as well, because it's basically the notes feature. Yeah.
Jason Aten:When you
Stephen Robles:record a call in iOS 18, it goes to a note, and there's actually a special place in the notes app for call recordings, which is pretty wild.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's right. People saying
Stephen Robles:they're gonna record podcasts. Don't do that. Don't record a podcast with a for a phone call. Use Riverside contractually.
Jason Aten:But even if you weren't contractually obligated, don't do it over a phone call. There are so many better ways. I mean, Skype. No. I'm just kidding.
Stephen Robles:I'm just kidding. I knew I knew you were gonna say something silly like that. I knew it. So that's iOS 18. MacOS Sequoia, I found this a little buggy.
Stephen Robles:I did have some software break like Road Central for my RODECAST Pro 2. I also found some weird, like, mouse behavior things, like clicks not, going through whatever. But the big feature there is iPhone mirroring, so you can now mirror your iPhone, which I didn't I didn't install any betas on my Mac Studio, which I work on all the time, but now that it has macOS Sequoia, I can mirror my iPhone. I did it. I was, like, oh, this is really cool, But then I also was in the habit of just picking up my phone a lot, and because it was easier to just do a thing I needed to do quickly on my phone than use the mirroring thing.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Do you do you find that because you you really like this feature. Do you find that you
Jason Aten:But it didn't work for me, And I thought it was because my phone was on the beta and but my Mac is not on a beta because it used to work. Yeah. And when I was using the beta version of Sequoia and it was, you know, but it it just keeps telling me it failed to connect and I don't know why. Yeah. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I I mean, I'm on
Stephen Robles:the beta on my phone, but Mac was for you.
Jason Aten:Because I had already paired it with a different Mac running the beta.
Stephen Robles:Oh, man.
Jason Aten:I sense erased that Mac, so there's no way to unpair it.
Stephen Robles:You might have to go to settings general continuity. There might be some settings in there.
Jason Aten:Listen. It's not gonna be a problem tomorrow. It's gonna be fine.
Stephen Robles:Well so what I don't know what happens, Jason. Because I don't think I've run a beta and then gotten a new iPhone at the same time. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.
Jason Aten:This is gonna be miserable. You know why? Here's what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna set up that phone as new, then you're gonna have to update it to the beta.
Stephen Robles:Then you're
Jason Aten:gonna have to wipe it and re up reset it up. It's gonna be so so fun for you.
Stephen Robles:I knew it. I thought I thought when you did that kind of setup with a new iPhone, if the new iPhone was on an older version, it kinda gives you that prompt to upgrade during that setup process rather than having to set it up all the way and then wipe it.
Jason Aten:But you can't set it up to 18.1.
Stephen Robles:Well, maybe I'm hoping there's some kind of, like, developer caveat there that they give me a little flag to say, hey, do 18 dot 1. Because I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, I'm gonna do a live unboxing when I get my device, so you can watch my frustration in real time if I have to set it all up and wipe it. It's gonna
Jason Aten:be such a good video. It's gonna
Stephen Robles:be a great video. Can't wait. Also, the Home Hub thing, there's a feature in iOS 18 where you can set a Home Hub manually and not have it auto switch. And if you have hubs like me I have I have 18 Home Hubs. Okay?
Stephen Robles:Don't me. A lot of times it chooses, like, a random HomePod mini in a bathroom that's, like, really far away, and it's, like, my Home Hub, which is in charge of automations and things like that, I don't want it to be a HomePod mini. I want it to be my Apple TV 4 k, probably the most powerful chip in any of the Home Hub devices, and I still haven't gotten it to work. And a lot of people are like, well, you just reset all your Home Hubs. Listen.
Stephen Robles:I'm not going around unplugging 18 different home homes. I might throw the circuit breakers later today and see if that helps. Just reset the whole house and see what happens. But
Jason Aten:What could go wrong?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. We're glad. I don't wanna do that either. I don't so I don't know if I care enough to do all that. And, also, I watch watch OS 11 happened.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah. And it
Jason Aten:has this annoying thing where now if I'm listening to a podcast, my watch automatically goes into the this, whoops, this mode. No way I can show it.
Stephen Robles:Jason is contorting his wrist.
Jason Aten:But do you know how if you swipe up and it starts That
Stephen Robles:was the opposite of.
Jason Aten:There's a reason I'm not at the answer.
Stephen Robles:You could twist your arm. You're, like, break your wrist just trying to check
Jason Aten:the camera. It go, you know, if you swipe the digital crown up and it shows you like the day, the date, and then whatever the little, is it a widget or whatever that
Stephen Robles:they have widgets? Yeah. Widgets.
Jason Aten:So it shows me the pocket cast widget, but it just stays on that screen all the time now. And I don't understand, like, how to I don't want that screen. I want to see my watch face. So I don't know if if I'm
Stephen Robles:It is aggressive. I feel like Yeah. I feel like I see that screen more often, and they change the font of the time. Yeah. Now I'm gonna try I'm gonna try and do it.
Stephen Robles:Ready? Here we go. They changed the font of the clock in that, and I don't know.
Jason Aten:You can tell that Steven's a youtuber because he could actually do that and I could not.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That's pretty good.
Jason Aten:That's gotta be the, cover art. That's that's your thumbnail image. That's what it's called.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Lot a lot of reasons to watch this this episode on YouTube. Just saying. You can still listen to it, then just go back and watch it also. I was the 2 new things actual new things that I noticed and tried, the vitals app, which is an interesting app.
Stephen Robles:Everyone you get it even if you don't have a new Apple Watch. The vitals app kinda gives you just trends, basically, like, what's your typical vitals and heart rate, and I think it's mostly sleep, maybe? Or that's that's one of the things. It does blood oxygen respiratory rate well, blood oxygen if you have an old amp
Jason Aten:line. It's not gonna do it on series 10.
Stephen Robles:Not gonna do it on series 10.
Jason Aten:Steven, do you wanna know how badly I wanted to ask the question? I was gonna ask
Stephen Robles:if you
Jason Aten:asked it. Is the hardware in the series 10 the same way as the series 9 where in the future, it's possible you'll be able to add blood oxygen. But I did not ask the question because I You
Stephen Robles:didn't ask it?
Jason Aten:Got the distinct the distinct impression that that was not a question I was gonna get an answer to. That's just the thing. People always say, well, why didn't you ask the question? It's like, well, they wouldn't I don't think there's any way they would have asked. We don't come in on future features coming to products.
Jason Aten:I think that's what it is. Though. It's
Stephen Robles:the past. It's the past.
Jason Aten:I think that's literally the only thing that they would have said. Yeah. We don't have any comment about that at this time. Like They would
Stephen Robles:say, yeah. The blood oxygen is a product in our past lineup. I mean, that'd be
Jason Aten:the answer. You know? But we have sleep apnea for you now.
Stephen Robles:We have
Jason Aten:blood oxygen when you have sleep apnea.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and also the Tides app, which Apple showed off in the keynote, you actually get that on the Ultra 2 and I think series 9 and and earlier, that's just a an app now on your watch, which is kinda cool. You could see the tides and I don't know. Next time I go to the beach, I guess I'll use it and leave a tie tide.
Stephen Robles:I don't I guess surfers. Surfers use that? Who has?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I mean We're
Stephen Robles:not surfers.
Jason Aten:People at the beach, which is more you than me.
Stephen Robles:But That'll be that'll be that's true. Hey, Steven.
Jason Aten:We did forget one thing. You told me to say this on the AirPods. I did I did find out that all of the hearing health features are coming to both versions of AirPod Pro 2, which means because there are actually 2 people don't know this. There are 2 distinct versions of AirPods Pro 2, and it's confusing because they both are called AirPods pro 2. So it's understandable why you would be confused that they're actually different.
Jason Aten:One difference is the case has a, one version of AirPods pro 2 got the AirPods max upgrade, where they just added a USB C port to the charging case. But I was told, and I don't I've never seen this reported anywhere, that the other difference and the reason that the AirPods Pro 2 with USB c, which is almost as good of a name as AirPods 4 pro or AirPods 4 with airpost canceling with ANC. The AirPods Pro 2 with the USB C port also has a 5 gigahertz radio, and that is why you get the low latency with the, Vision Pro, with only but not with the previous version. And Apple has said that the AirPods 4 also got that, 5 gigahertz reader. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about the fact that that the other difference and the reason why it works, clearly, it was not the USB c port on the case that made them work better with low latency.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But they never said what it was. But Right. They have now said, that it is because there's a 5 gigahertz radio in that.
Stephen Robles:That's fascinating. Well, you've heard it here first. That is what makes the AirPods Pro 2a half work 2.1. 1. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I call it 2.5.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:2 now. But
Jason Aten:2.5 gigahertz. There you go. You got it right.
Stephen Robles:Oh. That's right. Well, anyway, that's good news. Thank you for breaking news. Broke that news right here.
Stephen Robles:It's new. I'm gonna take that. Thank you for that. I don't know if it's breaking, but it's new. New news.
Jason Aten:It's news.
Stephen Robles:It is news. Those are all the things. Let us know what questions you have. Ios 18, all the devices. Next week, we're gonna have all the things, desert titanium, natural titanium in hand.
Stephen Robles:We'll show it all on camera as we twist our arms to try and get it to to focus on camera. You had a few articles I wanna talk about. This one was actually saw this in the periphery, looked it up because I was I was on the Clockwise podcast earlier this week, and we actually talked about the Instagram changes, And this was Instagram launching teen accounts. Well, I mean, there was already you could make an account for a teenager, but teen accounts are now private by default, and there's some other restrictions, like, Instagram is basically giving some parental controls. There's things like a downtime feature where between 10 PM and 7 AM, you can actually restrict, access for your child.
Stephen Robles:That's a setting strictly in Instagram. They're gonna try and cut down on things like bullying, which if there's comments or DMs with certain words, Instagram will basically hide it from the teenage user. But you have a there's a there's a worst problem. What is the worst thing?
Jason Aten:Yeah. First, let me just a super brief story about this because this is so I love this. So yesterday, I was a guest speaker in a in our local high school's journalism class, which I've done before. Right?
Stephen Robles:That's cool.
Jason Aten:And I'm talking about all this different stuff, and you can just tell a bunch of high school students they just don't care. Whatever. It's a journalism class, but they take it because it's an easy class. Fine.
Stephen Robles:It's an elective.
Jason Aten:And I'm talking about a couple of the articles and just walking through the process. And then I popped and I did this on purpose. I popped that article up, which I published yesterday morning.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:And every single teenager in the room had I had their full attention. Wait. What'd you say about my Instagram account? Wait. Hold on.
Jason Aten:My parents can what? Hold on. Wait. What? We talked for
Stephen Robles:Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Jason Aten:We talked for 20 minutes about Instagram in that class yesterday. So the the gist of base of what's happening is one, Instagram is going to force anyone under the age of 18 into one of these accounts. K? Right. You don't have an option anymore, and it is going to use AI to detect if you were under 18.
Jason Aten:So even if you set your birth date to be I'm 27, if, for example, someone posts on one of your posts, happy 14th birthday, boom. It's gonna know that you're actually 14, that you're lying at your age.
Stephen Robles:That'd be that's not exactly AI. That's a word search, But I imagine
Jason Aten:Sure. They're but but the point is they're going to use that that would in that one example, yes. But they're gonna use all of these different signals
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:To identify people.
Stephen Robles:And I yeah. And I just wanna quickly mention, my middle son is 12. He wanted to livestream on YouTube. And when we did that, YouTube actually shut down the livestream, because it said it looked like someone younger than 13 is in the livestream, and if someone younger than 13 appears on camera, there has to be an adult also on camera present, which I was there. I was, like, off camera, but I wasn't actually on camera.
Stephen Robles:So I imagine Instagram might be using some of those kinda, like, facial Yep. Age, prediction tools for for AI, which is pretty wild.
Jason Aten:And so the other diff big difference between what so, like, Instagram has some parental controls. But the interesting thing is in order for a parent to manage a kid's Instagram account, the kid in their account has to approve the parent's request to do it. Right? And if if a parent wants to change a setting in the kids' Instagram account, it's like the parent can change it, but then the the kid gets a notification. Do you want your parent to be able to do this thing or whatever?
Jason Aten:Well, of course the kids are gonna be like, no, I don't want you to make my DMs private or I know I don't want you to be able to whatever. Now parents will have a lot more control over that sort of thing. They'll be able to change settings without the kids being having to approve it. There's, like it's it's this weird balance that they've been doing. But here's the thing.
Jason Aten:The gist of my article goes back to a quote from Marc Benioff, who's the CEO of Salesforce, who a couple years ago said that Facebook is the new cigarettes. That's what he said. That was his quote. And his point was it's this harmful, addictive thing that everybody likes, I guess.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:And my argument was, so why is Facebook making this change now? Yes. Facebook should do a lot more to protect teenagers on its platforms. Why is it doing it now? Because it hasn't done it for a long time.
Jason Aten:Well, one Congress is trying to pass a bunch of laws to regulate in, in there's been this, like, push and pull between Facebook and and then on the other hand, Google and Apple, where Facebook is basically saying we shouldn't be the ones responsible for figuring out how old people are. The app stores, mainly Google and Apple, should be the ones to do have to do that. That may get their problem. And Apple and Google are like, dude, you just upload your app to us, and we're not we don't that's not our job. They're just because they download the app from us, they're you're the ones who are operating the service.
Jason Aten:You should be the ones making sure your service is safe.
Stephen Robles:The app wouldn't be there if you didn't submit
Jason Aten:it. Right. And you and then the people who are using it, that's up to you. Right? We're just we're just a store, like, letting you this is not like if you go to the score store to buy Benadryl and the cashier has to check your right, you know, your thing.
Jason Aten:They're they're basically saying, nope. It's Benadryl's job.
Stephen Robles:Although it it gets a little wonky when because it's like, yeah, we're just the store, but also you sell anything in here. We're taking a big old cut.
Jason Aten:That's true. But Facebook doesn't. So Apple's like, nope. It's on you. So
Stephen Robles:That is true. It's a free app.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And so that's like, there's been this whole push and pull. Facebook is trying very hard to not get regulated anymore, and this is what tech companies do. They're like, we're going to self regulate with this, hoping that that will make you stop trying to do this other thing that we don't want you to do.
Stephen Robles:Basically, don't look at us.
Jason Aten:Exactly. See, we're doing stuff. We're over here doing stuff. And if you remember, like, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg, the last time he was before congress had to stand up, turn around, and apologize to a bunch of parents whose children had either committed suicide or been bullied or harmed as a result of their interactions on the platform. And so Right.
Jason Aten:They're very much trying to avoid that kind of scrutiny. But the other thing is, let's go back to the cigarette, Steven. For years, what did cigarette companies try to do? They tried to get teenagers hooked on cigarettes because if you hook a 14 year old on cigarettes, they will be a they will be a customer. I mean, it'll be a short life, but they will be a customer for life.
Jason Aten:And this is essentially Instagram meta's way of doing the same thing. If parents feel better about letting their kids use Instagram, more kids will use Instagram at an earlier age, and then they will become addicted to Instagram and they will be on there for life. Because what is happening right now is Instagram is losing market share in the teen in teenagers to TikTok. Right? They are.
Jason Aten:So they have to make parents feel better about using Instagram than using TikTok or Snap. And that that's exactly what they're doing. That's the worst part.
Stephen Robles:That's that's a yeah. That is interesting because if parents can say, alright. I know you want social media. Don't want you to have TikTok, but you can have this. It's a easier sell for parents, at least to themselves.
Stephen Robles:Like, they can show themselves on the idea because they feel like they have controls over it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Weird creepy people can't DM you on Instagram. Fine. I feel good about you you using it. The problem is now you're using Instagram, and it's still collecting all of this information about you.
Jason Aten:Right? There are restrictions on ads for teenagers, but they can still show ads to teenagers. They are still tracking who you're connected with. They're creating your social graph. They're doing all this stuff.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Like, maybe that's actually the bigger problem is that now there's gonna be more teenagers who whose parents are gonna feel less worried about them using it when they're still gonna have all of the other negative effects of using social media. So and just to be clear, like, I'm not approved about this. Our we we have high schoolers. They are allowed to use Instagram. They we do have restrictions on their account.
Jason Aten:Mainly, their accounts are private, whatever. We do have some ability to help monitor that for them for their own benefit. One of the things that we did is we just said, if you wanna use Instagram, you have to sign in to your Instagram account on your mom's phone so that if somebody weird DMs, you will at least know that this is happening because lord knows the screen time settings are just garbage and trash, which by the way, I can't believe they didn't get updated in iOS 18.
Stephen Robles:I know that was a huge miss. I'm listen I was asking for a standalone passwords app for like the last 4 years and we finally got it. I'm now asking what is that Bernie Sanders meme? I am now asking you what does that what does he say?
Jason Aten:I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I'm asking you again. A dedicated screen time app. This way notifications and requests can go to a specific app. You get notifications there. Get it added messages.
Stephen Robles:Make it less buggy. All the things. I will say too. So my son, my 15 year old son has an Instagram account, he doesn't have access to it. Like, I basically post for him because he was wanting to post like rap videos and stuff and so I because I just wasn't sure, like, I wasn't sure what what age can you, like, cognitively handle this?
Stephen Robles:Because it's like, there's the dangers of, like, who's DM ing you, maybe bullying, but also there's just, like, the nat the nature of likes and comments and judging your, like, what you are doing by that response. Like, any social media platform, even in the in the best of cases, you get a photo that gets 10 likes, and you have a photo that gets 30 likes, and you have a photo that gets 2 likes. That makes you feel something. Yeah. Psychologically, cognitively, like, you now feel a certain way because something you created didn't perform well.
Stephen Robles:And, like, I don't know, like, what age is okay for someone to be able to parse that, and maybe kids are less immune to that, I'm not sure. I know I'm not immune to it. Like, I post content all the time, and it's, like, well, that video bombed, and this didn't, and, like, once you do it enough, you kinda develop a, tolerance to it, and it doesn't bother you as much. But I have to imagine that in a teenager's mind that that is impacting, like, that it makes a difference. And so even with all the restrictions and all the safety measures, it's, like, is this feedback loop of what am I judged in how people respond to what I post and create?
Stephen Robles:I just don't know, like, when is that okay? I don't did you have any like, what do you mean?
Jason Aten:It's probably, like, maybe 45, 46 years old is when you're I mean, but, honestly, like, there are a whole lot of adults who are super not good at that. Like, let's just be honest. Right? Like and so there's no way a 15, 16 year old can can do that. And, again, I get it.
Jason Aten:Like, there's there are definitely benefits to, you know, social media. If you have a if you have a student who's an athlete who may have an opportunity to play in college, like, they have to have an Instagram account. There's literally just like, that's what coaches do. They look first for your highlights on your Instagram account. So like there are definitely benefits to it, but, but my, my take in terms of these changes is you're solving one surface level and it's a real problem.
Jason Aten:It's a very big problem, but it is also very self serving because you're solving a problem that will make people feel better about using it, but all of those other negative effects you talked about are still there. No. This doesn't do anything about that.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. So, I don't know, let us know. Parents out there, you have teenagers, what what age? What age is okay?
Stephen Robles:Any age? When do when do you allow these things? It's it's a tough question. Like Yep. No generation before has had to deal with it.
Stephen Robles:Really, you know, this kind of thing, but are you okay? You had a couple other articles in here and, let's lightning round it so we can roast some, some docs. Yeah. What is this Verizon, change? Because I don't even know.
Jason Aten:Okay. So listen. Here's the the short version of the story is about a month ago, Verizon started emailing its customers who were still on older plans. Now back in, like, January, Verizon raised those the price of those plans because it doesn't want people on those plans anymore. And the reason it doesn't want people on those plans is they all include Disney plus for free, the bundle.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Verizon is paying Disney for all of these customers who are still on these old plans, and they're really, really, really, really trying hard to not have those people on that plan. So they raised the prices by $4. And then last month, they sent out an email to customers saying, hey. We're lowering your autopay discount by $5, which is 50% if you're still on an old plan. Jeez.
Jason Aten:So they are doing everything that they can to just make it as miserable of an experience for their customers. And then someone pointed out to me on Twitter or x or whatever we call it now. Sorry. That the other thing that and I didn't even put this in the article, and I wish that I would have because this is what actually affected me personally is and, yes, I am a Verizon customer. We've talked about this, so, like, disclosure, but, like, you can think what you want.
Jason Aten:I obviously have feelings, and I wrote about them. But they won't let you upgrade to a new phone until you upgrade your plan to one of these new plans. And the whole reason is, like, the old plan had Apple Music included, had the Disney plus bundle included. And now on paper, they're like, oh, no. The plans are like, look, you actually save $5 except for you no longer have any of those other things included.
Jason Aten:Oh, but you can add back only the ones you want. And so I did the math and it was gonna be like $30 more a month
Stephen Robles:Oh, more.
Jason Aten:To add back everything to the same comparable plan. And and so I just think it's a miserable way to treat your customers. And so the thing I was surprised about is I published this article yesterday and I have like, no joke, got in almost a 150 emails from people that are like, yeah, burn Verizon to the ground. Yes. This is exactly how I make everyone is mad.
Jason Aten:Like I, my headline says Verizon's making everyone mad.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:I was right. Because I've heard from so many other Verizon customers who are just like, yeah. This is so stupid. I refuse to I will switch to AT and T before I switch my plan just to spite them. I don't even watch Disney plus, but I'm gonna make you keep paying for my account.
Stephen Robles:That's wild. I mean, listen. The the bundling and conglomeration of these companies, especially, like, entertainment I mean it's a it's a mess. I'm wondering when AT and T is gonna tell me that they're gonna not pay for HBO Max anymore because I'm still on a plan where I get HBO Max.
Jason Aten:And they don't own it anymore.
Stephen Robles:They don't own it. Right. Exactly.
Jason Aten:The reason they were paying for it is they didn't actually have to pay for it So Right.
Stephen Robles:So I'm sure at some point in the future, that's that's gonna change too, but, yeah, the bundling. Alright. And tell me, I know OpenAI released this new model. Was it o one?
Jason Aten:Yes. O one, not 1. Yeah. The bottom line is it's a it's a model that is less about having world knowledge and more about reasoning. So you I actually asked it a question recently, that new model, and, it's only available in preview, I guess, to the people who are pay paying for it.
Stephen Robles:Chatu plus.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So, here's the question I asked it. I said, my 2018 Tesla model s 100 d has been asleep for 7 days. Neither the key fob nor the app seem to be able to wake or unlock it. What is wrong and how do I fix it?
Jason Aten:So that's a complicated problem that you can't just Google for. It's not going to go out and find just the world knowledge. It needs to actually like work through steps and O one will do that. It takes longer and it'll tell you, it says it thought for 54 seconds. And then it gave me a list of possible clause causes a list of ways to diagnose and figure out which one of those causes it could be.
Jason Aten:And then for each of them, here's what it is that you should do. I mean, the bottom line is called test Tesla, but it needs a new 12 volt battery. I've already we've solved this problem, but it did I mean, like, it can work through any and then I asked, chat gbt 4 o. Their names, by the way, are just as bad as Google. Let's just be honest.
Jason Aten:But I asked that, and it it gave me, like, a summary of things that it found out on the Internet, but it wasn't able to like work its way through the problem in the same way. Ben Thompson used a good example of he gave it the New York times mini crossword and it solved it in like 55 seconds because it can reason its way through things. Now you can't upload images. You can't give it like, it doesn't do any of those things that, like, the 4 zero four o multimodal type thing does, but it is good at reasoning. And that has been the thing that that these AI tools so far have not been good at.
Jason Aten:They're just they were just predictive models that would spit out texts. Sometimes it's true. The problem is the I think it was, either the verge or tech crunch who said, like, the thing is it also got really good at lying to you because if you ask it to if you asked it to do a specific thing, it's going to reason its way into that. So they asked it to I think in their example, they asked it to provide it with links to sources and stuff, and it just literally made them up because the request required it to give you links. So it just was like, here's a link.
Jason Aten:It's just not it wasn't even a real thing.
Stephen Robles:Wow.
Jason Aten:So This is where it begins. It is where it begins and apparently where it ends for us.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. I just looked in the Mac app, the chat gpt Mac app, and you do you have access to o one minutei, which does faster reasoning, and then the o one preview, which uses advanced reasoning.
Jason Aten:Yep. So the mini one is supposed to be faster. So depending on the type of Right. Question that you have. I fed it a question that my son had on his geometry homework, And because I couldn't so the the problem was not Chad GPT.
Jason Aten:The problem was it was like a pic a a, you know, pictures of stuff that it and I could not describe them. So it it could not help me. I'm like, yeah. There's a hexagon with 2 dots roughly in the center with the squiggly line plus another one, and it's like, you what are you even talking? Are you drunk?
Jason Aten:What are you even talking about?
Stephen Robles:And so I I might, well, I don't know. Let's see. I have to try that. That's interesting. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So you can play with the right play around with that. Alright. 2 quick personal tech things.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't
Stephen Robles:know how quick the docking will be. We'll try it, but you've spent a week now with a 3 in 1 MagSafe charger where you can charge your iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch at the same time. Is your life changed, Jason?
Jason Aten:I mean, it's fine. It's it's like it it is listen. It is a very elegant solution to a problem I did not have, which is I didn't care about my pre like, it was fine. But if what you want is for your bedside table to look pretty and not be adorned by multiple cables, this is a great solution. And it's nice.
Jason Aten:The one thing I feel like it does really well that my 2 in one charger that I have. Right? So I had an one of the Anker, like, cylinders at the top popped up. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And you
Jason Aten:can put your phone on there and you can put your AirPods behind it. And I have actually found this to be true in a lot of Anker chargers. The part where you're supposed to put your AirPods most of the time doesn't work because it has to be lined up so exactly because it's not MagSafe. Right? But it has to be so precisely lined up that if it's off even a tiny bit, it just starts to beep at you and the light starts to glow and flash.
Jason Aten:And I'm like, what are you doing over there? What is this what is this magnetic cylinder about to do? So I I I think it's great. The one that you sent me, it worked flawlessly every time. That's good.
Jason Aten:The only thing I didn't like is it makes my phone feel like it's a billboard tower thing because it, like, sticks up so high.
Stephen Robles:It is high.
Jason Aten:It's like, it is sort of like, look at me. I am here. I am in your room and I am on your bedside stand and you shall see your phone. Whereas my previous solution was a little bit more low profile and subtle, but I think I'll I'll stick with it.
Stephen Robles:Are you gonna keep using it?
Jason Aten:I think so. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah. Also a lot of people love MagSafe Duo and so I'm going to be doing a video soon.
Stephen Robles:There are some alternatives now that people are making. Speaking of chargers, so this is a new Belkin one. It is thicker than MagSafe Duo so you immediately lose kind of that thin and light benefit.
Jason Aten:But it's a feltness or whatever. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, feltness. It's compact though. Nice material on it, but it's basically a MagSafe Duo. You open it up and you can put the little Apple Watch puck up and there you go.
Jason Aten:That's kind of a weird orientation, though.
Stephen Robles:I don't understand why the Apple Watch is facing that way. Like, here's the USB c plug on the back, and, like, the Apple Watch charger is, like, a 90 degree
Jason Aten:Yeah. This is definitely product designed by committee. Like, somebody was in charge of the charging port, somebody was in charge of the Apple Watch charger, and somebody was in charge of the other one, and they never talked until this thing came off the line.
Stephen Robles:Like, the what like, the charging port like, the Apple Watch should just face away from that because the cable would be going down behind your nightstand or whatever. Yeah. So I don't understand.
Jason Aten:Maybe there was some sort of a trademark patent with the MagSafe Duo so they couldn't orient it the same or they were gonna get sued.
Stephen Robles:Ridiculous. That'd be ridiculous. But I basically, it's like a MagSafe Duo ish, kinda
Jason Aten:Yeah. Charger. I like that.
Stephen Robles:There's some coming up. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I want one.
Stephen Robles:Nice to hear your review that you'll be that you'll keep using it though.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, that the real reason I'm gonna keep using it is because my wife has since put away the cords that I had and I don't know where they are and I don't wanna take the time to figure out where they are, so I'm just gonna stick with what you sent me. It's good. I like it.
Stephen Robles:Alright. That's that's hilarious. Alright. Final personal take. This is from our community.
Stephen Robles:You should join it for free, social.primarytech.fm. We do fun little conversations like this, and, plus, we post every episode there so you can comment on it. And it's just a great way to, you know, put all the engagement in one place and so everybody can talk to each other. So you have your doc here. Oh my I'm already mad.
Stephen Robles:I haven't even expanded this image and I'm already mad at this doc, Jason. This is Jason.
Jason Aten:I mean, it is.
Stephen Robles:What? No. You didn't no. No. No.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:What's wrong with that doc? Explain to me what's wrong with that doc.
Stephen Robles:This was staged. This image I'm looking at is a doc with the calculator, Microsoft Authenticator app, the circle app, which is our primary technology community which is fully yeah. Totally get that. And Webex. Get out of here.
Jason Aten:I mean, to be fair, when I made that image, I had used Webex three times that day only because of Apple briefings, and they're the only company that I know. But, hold on. Here is my I'm I'm posting a real image of my doc, and I'm putting it in that thread just so it's the same
Stephen Robles:as the
Jason Aten:last time we talked about this.
Stephen Robles:While you do that, let's roast some other people's docs. So here's Steve Penney's doc. Okay. So at the bottom, he's got this is some interesting apps on his,
Jason Aten:it's a lot of messaging apps there. Instagram threads messages, and then some
Stephen Robles:Castro user. Yeah. Castro user. Interesting.
Jason Aten:But we're not supposed to be roasting the home screen, just the doc.
Stephen Robles:Oh, sorry. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Instagram, threads, messages, Safari.
Stephen Robles:Now I actually share 3 of those apps with my doc, which I will reveal in a moment. So I totally get that Instagram and threads in the doc, I don't know. I have a shortcut for this, I'll show you in a moment, maybe it'll save you some some doc space.
Jason Aten:Of course you do.
Stephen Robles:I place. Jeremy Takacs? Forgive me, I probably just mispronounced it. Takacs? Jeremy.
Stephen Robles:He said probably not weird. Okay. So in his doc he has the home app, mail, with a badge, turn the badge off, you don't need that. Messages and the phone app. I mean, this is good.
Stephen Robles:If you have a lot of home devices, I I understand. Messages and mail, okay. Phone and the dock, I still wonder, like, how if you use the phone a lot, maybe you run a business or own a business where you're on the phone a lot, I get it, but no phone in the dock for me. Yeah. You know,
Jason Aten:you're fine with it. Home app in the dock? Like, that feels like you have to use it a lot if because, especially, because all you have to do is swipe down to control center. Right? Like, can't you have all of your own things?
Stephen Robles:And you could do widgets where you literally have, like, a bunch of home controls. I do widgets in the today view, where you swipe over, which I don't know why. I have a feeling Apple's gonna, like, eliminate that page on the phone one day, and I'm not gonna be happy. I hope not.
Jason Aten:I mean and I don't mean this as any shade towards Jeremy t, but I feel like if you have the home app in your dock, you are like a maestro, like conductor of every single thing that's happening in your home. It's like lights go on, shades go up, door goes unlocked, garage door goes like, you're just constantly orchestrating, like, a symphony of smart devices happening in your life. So
Stephen Robles:We need an animated GIF of Dudamel with, the home app on the end of his baton. That's what we need.
Jason Aten:Yes. I'm
Stephen Robles:not I'm not mad about it, though. Alright. Yeah. Chris b, you said
Jason Aten:Another home app.
Stephen Robles:The home app again. Home app messages mail. Okay. Now here's the thing. There's a folder in this doc.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna tell you right now.
Jason Aten:You can add
Stephen Robles:me that. I do not approve of folders in the doc. Don't do it.
Jason Aten:I a 100% agree. This is maybe the first the least controversial thing that we've ever had a conversation about because Steven and I 100% agree. I won't even talk about what's in the doc because I can't I mean, what's in the folder because you can't quite tell, but no folders in the doc. That's a hard rule.
Stephen Robles:Now this maybe this is a troll. Maybe maybe he knows that this was gonna get me upset, but
Jason Aten:Maybe this is, like, putting the authenticator doc or in your text like I did.
Stephen Robles:That was a troll. He he has the x, okay, and the App Store app in this folder in the dock, and it looks like 2 games. Now I'm not gonna you know, you enjoy the games, you enjoy the games, but the App Store in the dock, when are you downloading apps that much? You uploading or updating your apps, like, manually that much? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I don't know how I feel about that.
Jason Aten:Lot of I
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't know how many of our listeners are trolling us. But, anyway
Jason Aten:A lot of tinted apps too.
Stephen Robles:A lot of tinted dark mode apps. This is Jason Edge. Phone, mail, Safari, messages.
Jason Aten:That's basically basically stock.
Stephen Robles:Well, I think stock one of these is swapped out for music, isn't it?
Jason Aten:Oh. I think I think you're right.
Stephen Robles:I think maybe the the stock the stock dock. I I'm not sure. Okay. But that's listen. That's all good.
Stephen Robles:You know, you use all those things. No badges. You know, I'm down with that. Oh, I meant to tell a joke earlier when we were talking about cigarettes. You were talking about cigarettes.
Stephen Robles:It was an old, pastor joke where someone asked if I smoke cigarettes, can I still go to heaven? The pastor said, yeah, for sure. You just get there quicker. Anyway, okay, moving on. And this is who's this?
Stephen Robles:This is Ryan off, long time listener, phone messages Safari and the Gmail app. Okay. I mean, it's basically like, instead of the mail app, you put the Gmail app. I I don't do mail I don't do mail in my doc. I don't like checking my mail that off.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm. I don't do it. I don't know. Do you have mail in your doc, like, for real?
Jason Aten:I do. Yeah. If you refresh, you'll see my real one.
Stephen Robles:Okay. So let's alright. Let's do our doc
Jason Aten:for real. Trusted mine on there.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna keep that conversation pinned to the top of the community. So if you haven't yet, you can go to social.primary, take that out of fitment, send a screenshot of your doc. This was also the image that I saw on threads going around where someone has Google Maps and Apple Maps in the doc. Those are the only 2 apps in the doc. It also looks like an iPhone 7, so
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:Who knows? Alright. Going down to Jason's doc. Okay. So here's Jason's real doc.
Jason Aten:Yep. That's my real doc.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Messages, spark for email. So I do like that spark icon. I give them that. I give them credit.
Stephen Robles:It's a nice icon. Safari and things with a badge.
Jason Aten:Listen, the to do app is the one justifiable reason to have your badge on. I mean, let's be honest, like, what good is a to do app if you don't know how many things you have to do?
Stephen Robles:Well, because I I know I have things to do and so I open the app and to see what I gotta do. The number is like do you have a lot to do or a little to do? You have a lot to do. You always have a lot to do. So I feel like the badge is just like like does knowing 14, like, give you some kind of special insight?
Jason Aten:No. But, I mean, if there was the ability to just put, an there's a there's that's not how many that's, like, the un undone things. It's like it tells me, like, if I've completed everything in there or not. If there was just the ability to put a red dot on there that says you have things, I'm fine with that. I don't need the number.
Jason Aten:What I do need is the constant reminder like, oh, yeah. I need to check this because there's stuff that I needed to do.
Stephen Robles:Sure. Sure. Okay. Okay.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna I gotta post my doc. How how can I do this quickly?
Jason Aten:You could just put it in the thread and then you could just
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, take it take it easy there, Slugger. Okay? I'm trying to I had I just screenshotted it. I'm going to the circle app, social.
Stephen Robles:Primary tech. Fm. Let me ask you a question real quick. One of the privacy things in Ios is like limited apps access to your photo library where they just access certain photos or access the full library. What what is your, like, how do you do that?
Stephen Robles:How do you decide?
Jason Aten:Yeah. For the most part, I'm just like, YOLO, you can have it all. Right? Like, I don't I don't care. You can have access to everything.
Stephen Robles:Like, meta like, for Instagram, I'm like, I don't know if I want an access to my full library. But then anytime I wanna post a story or photo to Instagram, I gotta do this whole process.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There's literally no benefit to using those apps if it doesn't have access to your the only the only exception is the x app, which I do not give full access to anything on my device because I'm pretty much convinced that somewhere Grok is, like, slurping it all up for its image stuff. So that's the only one I'm like, no. You know, Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah.
Jason Aten:He he'd like they'd like to have all of your stuff, but at least you're like, well, we know Mark Zuckerberg.
Stephen Robles:We know he's just gonna serve ads with that.
Jason Aten:He's relatively rational. I may not like his motivations, but I know what they are. The guy who runs x, not so much.
Stephen Robles:We're getting a drill. Alright. Roast my doc, Jason. Here's mine. Safari threads.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Messages with a with a badge on it.
Stephen Robles:You Message is the only app with badges on. Messages is the only app with badges.
Jason Aten:I just called you a heretic. I meant a hypocrite, but just to be clear. And then I don't know what that other app is.
Stephen Robles:That always catches people's eye. That is a shortcut that launch that launches a menu that gives me all the different social media app options.
Jason Aten:So, basically, it's a folder.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But it looks way nicer than a folder because I could put a custom icon. So it shows all the thing.
Jason Aten:So you have threads and you have all of the other things, including threads. Yeah. I'm a content
Stephen Robles:creator, Jake.
Jason Aten:Bear and Notion are not actually social media apps, just to be clear. But
Stephen Robles:Well, I know because it's not just social media. It's access to the things I need.
Jason Aten:Oh, I thought you said it
Stephen Robles:was social. Okay. But it's not It's mostly social media.
Jason Aten:Isn't that, like, the point of your home screen? Bear
Stephen Robles:is already
Jason Aten:on your bear is on your home screen. What is it doing in that menu?
Stephen Robles:Sometimes I just you know, if I tap the thing and I, you know, wanna get to bear, it's okay to have more than one ways to access the thing. Be my home.
Jason Aten:See, that's but here's the okay. Real real talk.
Stephen Robles:Real talk.
Jason Aten:You only get so many spots on your home screen.
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:So I have a rule that if I have a widget on my home screen, I don't have that app also on my home screen because why? Same.
Stephen Robles:I do I do that with weather and, pocket cast and also with fantastical.
Jason Aten:Okay. But you have bear on your home screen, and you have it in the basically, in the folder in the cloud. Listen.
Stephen Robles:It's a free space. That menu, like, it's not even covering the whole screen. It's whatever. You see my emoji for the Facebook app?
Jason Aten:I is it is it crying? I can't tell what it is.
Stephen Robles:No. It's an old it's an old ball dude.
Jason Aten:Oh, the old ball. So that was funny because when I asked the students in this class, you know, how many of you use TikTok? Wait, by the way, all the teenagers use TikTok, maybe half of them use Instagram. One of them had a Facebook account.
Stephen Robles:That's fascinating.
Jason Aten:We didn't have time to dig into why that person had a Facebook account, but one of them had a Facebook. Also, by the way, half of the kids in the room were getting new iPhones this week.
Stephen Robles:Really?
Jason Aten:I'm like, where am I that all of you please don't talk to my children because none of them are getting new iPhones this week.
Stephen Robles:I was I was wondering. My son might be listening to this, so so, ignore the next thing I say. But he's on an iPhone 13. And I was wondering, like, when when do you upgrade a child's iPhone? When it dies?
Jason Aten:When they get a job. It's like when they get a job and they can buy their own. That's my so listen. My can't
Stephen Robles:do with this.
Jason Aten:Oldest is an an 11 pro, which used to be mine, and then was my wife's. And then we paid the $79 to have the battery replaced. And then now so it's, like, good as new. And so she has that one. Our other daughter, our boys don't have phones.
Jason Aten:They don't they're one of them is almost a teenager, but he doesn't care. The other one would love a phone, but there's no chance I'm giving my 10 year old a phone. Not gonna happen. But the but our other daughter has an original iPhone SE. Actually, it's not the original, but it's the because I think the original was the plastic back or whatever or something like no.
Jason Aten:That that was a 5 c. That's what I'm thinking. Okay. So it's the iPhone SE 1. So her battery probably is garbage.
Jason Aten:Her screen is small. She would love she wanted my 15 pro max. I'm like, I'm not giving you my 15 pro max. I do know that my mom who probably is listening to this because she does listen to our show, and we very much appreciate it. I don't I should ask her if she's a member.
Jason Aten:I shouldn't ask her actually. But, if you want to become a member of mom, you can just send me the $5 directly. That'd be great.
Stephen Robles:You could send the, you could send your mom the private RSS feed.
Jason Aten:Okay. Anyway, but she was going to trade in her 13 pro and she's getting a 16 pro that's that was, remember we had this conversation about whether she should buy a camera lenses and stuff. And, I think Apple was gonna give her like $340 for her trade in for her 13 pro.
Stephen Robles:Wow.
Jason Aten:And I said, that's a good deal, but I bet you, you could convince our younger daughter. She'd probably make you a better offer. So we'll see we'll see what happens. So our kids get new phones when they can pay for them themselves.
Stephen Robles:Okay. The training values on old phones is surprisingly good. I mean, Apple really wants people to upgrade.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So Yep. So that's clear. Alright. Well, listen, we're gonna keep that doc conversation in the community. So leave it our docs are in there now, Jason's troll doc and his real one, but we would love to screenshot of yours there, social.primary tech dot f m.
Stephen Robles:And this is a great episode to watch. If you haven't yet, you can go subscribe to the channel. Even if you still just listen to the audio only version, just go subscribe, youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. That link is in the show notes as well, and we're gonna go talk about, what it's like, getting a review unit, which, you know, I'm gonna put behind the paywall, because I don't even know what I can or can't say. I should have asked more questions, but if you wanna hear the bonus episodes, including our Tesla saga, which Jason's Tesla is still broken, because he broke it, hitting a pot of water.
Jason Aten:It's actually more it's actually more broken now than when I took it in.
Stephen Robles:More broken now. So that we'll probably cover that in next week's bonus episode. But you can listen to the whole back catalog of bonus episodes and today's by going to primary tech dot f m, click bonus episodes and sign up there, or you can sign up directly in Apple Podcasts. If you do the, member full at primary tech dot fm, you get chapters and you also get a link to the video version, just a little bonus, because I haven't figured out yet how to reliably consistently deliver the bonus video episode in Apple Podcasts because everyone can see that anyway. That's a long story.
Stephen Robles:5 star review in Apple Podcasts really helps out the show, and we get a shout out in next week's episode, so be sure to do that. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.
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