Apple Unfolds Their New iPhone Future

0:00The Secrets of Technology is brought to you by the StarQuest Production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit gifstarquest.com. Hi, I'm Dom Betanelli and you're listening to the Secrets of Technology, where we discuss the technology news that's important to you, probably uniquely Catholic point of view. Joining me today is a Joanne, verse here. Hey, Joanne. Hey, Dom, I'm real excited. Are you happy Apple Day? Yes, happy Apple Day. This is the holiday that Apple fans look forward to every year. And I look forward to this every year because then you and I get to sit down and talk about everything that Apple introduced in our excitement about or disappointment because sometimes that happens to. And quickly. And yes, yes, we're getting to where recording is right after the event finished. So everything is still pretty fresh.

1:01And I'm certain as always happens that there will be more details that come out over the next 18 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours. Like there's more to come as things happen. So consider this just our first impressions of whatever they announced. And you see like my state of Rhode Island, they moved everything to a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday. We have our voting day, primary day today. So. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So let's start with the one that everyone's going to be talking about. And everyone's going to be wanting to get, I think. I don't know. The iPhone Duo, which is the name that they chose. So it's the ultra, which had been going around. But I like Duo. It's a kind of, to me, it harcons back to the old MacBook Duo, the power book duo, power book, which probably no one. Under the age of 25 knows. I just nostalgia for a moment.

2:03I thought that was the coolest thing ever because it had a dock that it went into and became a desktop computer. That's right. I remember that. I thought that was cool. Anyway, the iPhone Duo, let's look to the future. Because I was Apple's folding iPhone. This is the one we've all been expecting. It's not a surprise. This is exactly what we heard was coming. And frankly, I expected it to be perfect. I expected it to like that they were not going to release anything that had a detectable crease that had any kind of janky mechanisms or anything. I, you know, someday when I get to hold this in my hand, I'll probably go to an Apple Store when they're in the stores and try to. I expected to feel like a premium product better than any other folding phone so far. But your first impression to end like just off the top of your head. Oh, I want this thing. I have to be extremely honest. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about a foldable because I've seen the Android

3:08versions. And I'm like, yeah, love that crease. But this does not appear to have one. And what it can do on all three, I'm going to say three displays at the same time. That's the revolutionary part. Yeah. Because I don't think the other ones can do that at all. No. In fact, I think almost every other foldable out there, you, you, that, that outside can, the outside screen, you know, that screen you see when it's folded only turns on when it's closed. Right. And, yeah, but with this one, they showed up an ability to have it on. So like both sides are on. Like when you're taking photos, which I think is fascinating so that the person you're photographing can see themself while you're using the other side as the viewfinder. I also love the fact that you can, you know, for those who aren't to selfies, you can use the good camera for the selfie and see yourself, which you never can see.

4:12And you got to kind of figure out, am I in the frame? Am I out of the frame? Who's behind me and the, who's photobombing me in this frame? And you don't have to use widescreen just to make sure you get in it, which is what I ended up doing when we took our trip to Italy. You know, you know, I, every, all of the selfie shots with me and my wife and son of something cool in Italy was, you know, a widescreen photo, which was fine, but this is better. So I think it's really cool. So they made a big deal about the, the shape that most of the foldables, all the foldables are out there now are basically two candy bar shaped phones jam together. And they said, no, let's start from scratch and go, what do we, what do we want to look at? We want to look at an iPad, right? This is essentially iPad shape, just smaller. Yes. Although it's, they said 7.6 inch diagonal. Right. I've come here to the iPad mini closed. I believe this, the mini is a, oh, I'd have to go look that up. The store is open again. So, oh, good, good. Yeah, I should have taken a look at that.

5:14The robot before we started the robot before we started. Hold on, I can, I'll be the robot. Okay. Joanne, how big is the, I can ask Siri. Hey, Siri, how big is the iPad mini screen? 7.6. Is it? 7.6. 9. Okay. So, it's essentially an iPad mini fold, you know, when it's folded open, which is an iPad mini is a great little computer that is not too small. I mean, 7.6 is a decent size. So I like that idea. And what else was there? So they, they have a narrow border. So there's not this huge bezel. And much to Steve Jobs probably rolling over in his grave, you can use the Apple pencil USB. Yes. Version with it. And it makes sense that it's the USB and not the magnetic one because they would have needed to have included the magnetic connector, though made it more complex and probably

6:17would have made it thicker. So the USB C makes sense. I love that idea that you can use an Apple pencil on it. Wow. I mean, that's just, that, that, I, I know some people like, I don't, you, every use Apple pencil. So I'm not an artist, but I use it for taking notes. I would love to have like a, a, a small phone that I can open up and use to take notes and meetings and stuff. Exactly. I, I use my Apple pencil constantly to mark up my music scores. Yeah. That's how I use it. But I, I don't like writing on this screen for some reason. It's still, it still takes getting used to. But I just like the fact that if I want to jot a few things down, here, here's the thing for me. This is what I've wanted because of my eyesight as I get older. When you're looking down at these little tiny screens, and I'm having to make things bigger and 160 and 190 on the text, you know, I would much rather have something I can

7:19actually open up and say, gee, now I can see and I can sit here and read while I'm waiting to get my Chinese take out. Right. This feels like the natural evolution of the iPhone's progress, where we were always going with the iPhone. Like this was where the, the, the, you know, from the first iPhone to now, this just seems like, it seems like a natural place for it to go. Yeah. Foldable, a bigger screen where you can take notes. And I wanted to add like the Apple pencil, you can, you can use it on the inside and the outside screen. So you can use it when it's closed, which is, which is really nice. Right. Although you're going to have to find a way to carry that pencil. I'm sure there'll be cases that have a pencil slot, but you'll have to figure out what to carry your pencil around. But you know, I mean, and, and there are going to be the naysayers that are going to say, you know, this is going to cannibalize the iPad. No. Because I still need a 13 inch iPad pro in order to do my music, you know, to do video

8:24adding, you know, so that's not the point. The point for me personally was I've been looking at getting an iPad mini just for around the house. Well, let's, let's be clear. iPad, most iPads that are sold are sold for kids. And no one's buying this for a kid. No. Secondly, iPads are such a small part of Apple's business. I mean, it's a for a lot of companies that would be, you know, a great annual business is what they make an iPad. But compared to the iPhone, it's such a small part. Also, at this price, which will get you no one's, no one's just, this is not a, oh, I get that instead of an iPad. This thing is three or four times more expensive than a basic iPad. Like, you're not buying this as an iPad replacement. But also the, the, what was the other, there was one other point I wanted to make about that. Oh, you could get an iPhone 18 and an iPad, like an 18 pro and an iPad or you get this,

9:29this is just the same price. So Apple doesn't care. Buy one, buy one, buy all, buy none. Like, you know, or want to buy one. But like, this is not cannibalizing anything. That would be it. That is a bad take, I think. But you know, they're going to, people are going to start saying that. Oh, I'm sure everyone is waiting for it. Plenty of people have bad takes every time Apple introduces anything. I was just looking at notes from when they introduced the Apple Watch 12 years ago and all the naysayers, oh, it's just an Apple accessory and, I mean, an iPhone accessory. Nobody needs it. There are plenty of smart watches. It's, it's going to flop. Oh, yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah. Yeah. They said that about iPads. They said that iPhones, they, they always say it. Right. I don't pay attention to that. But this thing is so versatile. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can put it in like a, I want to say, a tent mode. Yeah. And you can have the, you can have your clock display for it night on one side. You can also half fold it. And I saw it on the video.

10:30Yeah. There's a keyboard. Yeah. You can have a lot of laptops. Yeah. I mean, and it's a video controls. Right. And it's supposed, and it's running on this age 20 pro chip, which is a computer chip. Right. You can set this up with a monitor. No. So it's the same as the 819. The day 19 was also, you know, so the A, the A series are the phones in iPad chips and the M series are the Mac chips. They're, they're essentially the same except the M series has all of the extra graphics and other stuff, the graphics driver, the CPU and all that sort of stuff on it. Whereas the A series doesn't. So I don't think this can drive, like it's powerful, but I don't think you can drive a monitor. Well, you know, John Ternis was talking about this, this personal, what's the line? Intelligent hub.

11:30Right. The personal intelligent hub that we're going to have is Apple moving in that direction. Well, I think he's more playing off of what Steve Jobs originally said when they introduced the iPhone. It's a, it's an iPod. It's a telephone. It's an internet communicator. And I think what he's getting at is the iPhone is become the hub, the computing hub of our lives. Everyone for good or for ill, it is essential to our everyday life. People feel naked without it. If you leave the house without it, you're like, what am I going to, I can't get by today without my phone. So it is essential. And what I think what he's saying is as these capabilities grow in these devices, they are becoming more and more important. And so they need to be more and more, not just personal, but intelligent. And they're really emphasizing the intelligence. They're really kind of pushing the CRE AI stuff. And so the, I think that's part of it is the, I thought where you're going to go to

12:32the home hub, which I will talk about later. But let me, let's talk a little more about the things that we're revealed about it. The consistent aspect ratio of the screen. So in other words, when you fold, when you open it, the folded screen on the outside is exactly one half of the interior display. Now you think that might, it doesn't make sense. Except that's not the way it works on a lot of Android foldable phones. Like they have a, it's a different outer screen. It's like it thinks of it as a different monitor. This one, I love the detail of when, as you open it, what's, what you see kind of blurs. And then the interior is blurred until it opens like you're, like you're moving through a portal. And he just so, that's one way to look at it. It's just so perfectly done. Like in the demo, I acknowledge. Yeah. But let's be honest, I don't think they're going to release this product unless it works perfectly

13:34with these sorts of details. Now there'll be, there'll be bugs and whatnot. But I think this, that aspect of it, I love that idea that it's just this seamless movement from close to open. And they had to, you know, if anybody had a bingo card, they had to use the words finnest. I phone, it's the best iPhone we've ever made. Yes. Yeah, with those, those two phrases. Yeah. It's got a magnetic closure as you close it. Like I can imagine the experience of opening and closing this thing is just going to feel like a premium experience. Like it's just going to, you know, the fit and finish is going to be great. And I'm sure that their testing of it was very rigorous because you know, people are going to like slap it closed or. Yeah. The first thing my husband asked me when I was explaining it was, well, is it foldable? Is it, is it a, is it a clamshell? Is it, I said, well, you got to see it. We're going to show them the video later. Right. Right.

14:35So, um, they've also adapted the software, the operating system so that all the screen controls that on a regular iPhone are usually at the bottom are now on the side under your thumb, quarter and quote, which I, I, I notice all assumptions are that people are right, hold their phone with their right hand. Right. Yeah, that's really sad because they're, I'm not lefty. I'm not a lefty, but I have a lot of friends who are. Yes. Well, lefties are the only ones in their right mind. But I'm bump. So yes, but what I love is that it means that it makes the rest of that half of the display, the same shape as a regular iPhone. So all those controls are at the side and you still get the shape of a regular iPhone in your hand. They, they said that it, um, it has touch ID, the button on the side. It's touch ID rather than face ID. Uh, it's just fine. Uh, the FaceTime camera now for the first time is under the screen. Yes. Which is interesting means, which means it, a, it doesn't have a dynamic island.

15:39Right. I think it's fascinating. Although I wonder will those, will that, will a little black pill still pop up for things that, that it looked like it did in the video? Yeah. Because I believe they do have the front camera does have the dynamic island. It's kind of kind of caught that. I'm telling me if I'm wrong. Okay. Um, yeah, I didn't think it. In the front, I would think it would have it. Yeah. But on the inside, I was, I did see something move, but it's not in the center. It moves over to the side. Right. And they talked about how the, the stuff intelligently moves so that if you start to fold it like you can use it like, like a book, like an open book, it'll move the controls out of the crease area to make them more accessible. It's all intelligent about that. I think that's fascinating. Yeah. That's wild. The, the screen that that's 7.6 inches is 50% larger than an iPhone 18 Pro Max. So, and those, the, the Pro Max is a, it's a good size phone.

16:39That's a good size phone, yeah. They talked about the, the, the, the feel of the screen itself. It's a custom polymer. So it doesn't feel plastic. That's been a huge complaint. I've, I've heard about the Android foldables is that the screen just because it has to fold it doesn't feel like glass. What feels plasticy where they've come up up with a polymer that feels like glass. And that's going to put all the screen protector people out of business. They're going to have to innovate some new kind of thing. Yeah. I think I go without one. I would. Especially since it's on the inside. Uh, I might get one for the outside, but I don't, I run without a screen protector anyway, but that's, that's a whole other thing. Um, but I kept saying, how are you going to cover this? Right. How are you, how are you going to put a cover on this? Right. And they showed a couple they did folio is way out of my price range. They want $129 for the folio. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it covers the front cover, which is like, no, I don't want that.

17:43Oh, it covers the front screen. That's what it looks like. I'm on the, I'm in the Apple store right now. And that's what it looks like. Because the other case, it, it, it puts a band around the front screen so it doesn't cover it. Right. Like a protective band. Yeah. But if you look at the folio, I can't see if they, if that opens up so that you can see. It's definitely just allows you to use the, um, the inside. And then it has a little kickstand for the outside. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I think that's a, I, I'm no. And for $129, I don't think I'd get that. No. One other interesting, interesting thing is they didn't say one way or the other, but it doesn't look like this can do MagSafe. Now they said it could. But I thought I assumed that they said something about MagSafe. I'm scrolling the, the, the page. So I'm trying to see what get to the text specs. Uh, where are they? Talk about on the fly here, Tom.

18:44Yep. Uh, well, I have to talk about the camera and that's what the stuff. And the camera is, I mean, for a general camera. Yeah. It's fusion, but it's, you know, probably equivalent to the reg, what will be the regular iPhone 18, which we probably won't see till the spring. But it's not quite the 18 pro, which it never is. Okay, there's the folio case. Yeah, and it does cover. You must be able to open that up. The, the, the, the fully. I would, you must be able to, I can't imagine. But they're not showing it. Yeah. I mean, not yet anyway. We'll see if they eventually will have to get some reviewers. I mean, I kind of wish I was one of those people that Apple sent review units to. But I'm not, I'm big enough for that. I'm not, I'm not an influencer. Um, okay, I can't, there's no, like they usually have like a tech spec. Um, oh, there it is tech specs. Did you see size weight displays?

19:46Uh, ship, camera, scrolling, scrolling, front camera, power and battery. Fast charge capable. Uh, mag safe charger. Yeah. I kind of, because you can put, I would think they would put the mag safe right under the camera. Right. Just, just, please, use that when the phone is like either closed or in that tent mode. Correct. What do they call that? I thought it was cool. So they have the, you mentioned they have the, um, what do they call that? The, the, the, the stand display mode. Like the, the, the, the, the, the alarm clock mode. Yeah, alarm. Yeah. And, but they said like if you do it, if you put it on your bedside table, when the alarm goes off, it makes a glow from the underneath. So the outer screen will have that gentle glow to wiki. I'm like, oh, Jay, that is, I just said, that's like some engineer like in some meeting,

20:47like, oh, that will be a cool feature. Let's do that. That, that's a Craig Frederigi moment right there. So they talked about the better selfies in this, there's a mode where, uh, it's like an auto, it auto snaps the photo for you. So like you set up the camera and you don't need a timer. You don't, you know, you just, it recognizes when everybody's posed like everybody stopped and stopped moving around. It snaps the photo and then you can even repose and we'll do it again. I think that was neat. I hope that's available in other, in the other phones. It'd be nice because you can't, whether you start running in for the, you know, to try to get with everybody even on a delayed timer and it doesn't always work. So let's talk about some of the, the, the, the other, the other aspects of it, the, the, the things to be more know comes in star white and night sky. I'm good with that. Yeah. Uh, it starts at 1999 for 256.

21:47But we know it was going to be expensive. This is actually less expensive than I heard. I was hearing it would start at 2100. So yeah. So that's a, it's better. Not great. The 512, which is probably where I would look. Uh, let me just pick a color. Come on. Let me see. I would go with 256 myself. It's 2199. Okay. So there's your 2199. Yeah. Um, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, and then it pre-orders on October 16th will be available October 23rd. So we're a month away, which is interesting. I'm kind of curious. Uh, I don't expect us to be a huge seller. I expected to be successful, but at those prices, this is a high and niche product. Yeah. It's like the Vision Pro. Yeah. Unfortunately. I mean, the vision was even more niche, but yeah, this is still pretty niche. Yeah, I think it's, I think people are going to, everybody's going to go look at it.

22:47Oh, yeah. I'm, I'm sure, including myself. But I think that like I'm looking at it going, how can I get this if, if I, because my, I have a 16. Yeah. And that, and I planned on another couple of years, but you know, I, I, I don't mind being an early adopter, but I also don't mind waiting either to see with how, how the kinks get worked out. Exactly. Because it will have kinks. Yes. Yes. The display, the inside display. I want to see how long it's going to, you know, somebody's even going to try to blend it or break it. I will hunt down anyone who blends it. Two thousand of just for the waste. Yeah. The waste of it. So we're going to talk about what we're going to, what we, or if we will buy anything that was announced today at the end of the show. So folks can stick around for that. But let's move on to talk about the other things that they mentioned. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max were introduced, but not the iPhone 18 itself. The Pro Max, they, they talking about it having a back glass, which is interesting. I think that's a, that's returning the back glass.

23:51New colors, black silver, glacier and burgundy. Burgundy. I like that. That's, that is a nice, sort of purplish. It's a purplish red, I guess, right? We spent, they spent a lot of time talking about CRI AI and intelligence. A lot of stuff, a lot of the time, it spent on things that we've already talked about because it was announced at WWDC, but, right. Keep in mind, this event is for the general public. WWDC is for the geeks and the tech heads. Right. Which is why some of the stuff overlapped and I'm, I'm saying to myself, yeah, okay, I already have this in beta. So there's some new stuff, though, and you will get to those. They, they didn't mention that CRI answers two and a half billion requests a day. And I said to myself, how many of that two and a half billion are there? Are people asking it multiple times for the same thing? I, and I'm saying to myself, and how many of those does she say, I can open that up for you on your iPhone. Yes. I'm sorry, I wasn't able to do that. Can you try again?

24:51A timer's been set for two minutes, right? Yes. How many of those are timers? Yes. So they talked about the A20 Pro chip and it's, you know, two nanometer, a lot of tech, tech mama jumbo. It's got a bigger vapor chamber, which is that cooling system that they introduced on the 17. It's better connected to CPU, so it's got better heat dissipation, which is good because the 17 get hot. I get it. I get it. The Pro has the same battery life, the 18 Pro is the same battery life as the 17 Pro max. And the Pro max now gets up to 45 hours of video playback, which I think they said was like, I'm not going to mean guess because I, I think I missed what, what the increase was. But it's an increase. Like, you got an eight megapixel, megapixel front camera, which I think they said that one had variable aperture now. Was that right? I think so.

25:51I at least one of the cameras now has variable aperture might be just the back ones, which is really handy. Actually, I think the back ones already had a variable aperture, so it must be the front one, which is really cool. They talked about like you can do video cinematic effects after you've taken the, the video. So now like you could currently presently, you could take a video with the cinematic effects turned on and get that. But with the new phone, you can actually add those effects later, which is cool. And then they have all of these pro controls now where you can adjust all kinds of camera settings, which sorry for the folks at halide, we've, we've, we've Sherlock to your app. That was, that was another one that pro folks wanted so that they could, do all that sort of stuff. Well, now that's built in. I thought it was cool. That does a music settings for audio recording. Yes. Well, good thing because a video is only as good as its audio sometimes. Right.

26:51Right. And if you're recording someone playing music, you know, a lot of times you would, with it, you get like a lot of room echo and, you know, all kinds of other stuff. And this compensates for that sort of thing. So that's really cool. I like the Apple reference image now. Yes. Very interesting. That's a smart thing. However, it's not available in the EU or in China. Well, in fact, many of the features are not available in the EU in the, in the folks, the EU can thank the European Union government for that because they're being draconian. They're being jerks about it. So, you know, you don't get it. So yeah, Apple reference image. So this is to prove the authenticity of a photo versus AI generated photos, right? So. Times the photo data at the pixel level, at the time of capture. So that, you know, so that you can examine a photo and say this is, this is a real photo, not an AI generated photo. So until someone figures out a spoof it.

27:54And then's probably an AI working on that right now. Exactly. I thought it was very interesting. They introduced the idea of iPhone handoff. Yes. from iPhones. So now you can switch your phone number between them easily, which is the use case for people who want to have an iPhone duo and a regular iPhone, I suppose. Or for people who, I mean, I was just thinking influencers and people who write about, you know, they have several iPhones and they have to put all these new Sims in it or, you know, have all these eSims and I heard someone on a podcast talking about how they have, they wanted an 18, they wanted a 17 pro and air and they wanted the air to kind of be their relaxed fashion phone and because let's be honest, there are a lot of people there who have the money to be able to have multiple watches and multiple phones and they pair them up with their activities and their clothes and that sort of stuff. And it's not me, I know

28:55and, you know, if someone's got money, that's their choice. I'm not sure that's, that's those are choices I would make. But me neither. But, but it's an interesting idea that they're making it so much easier and frankly, it would be really nice to be able to do this, say, if you wanted to hand your phone, like you, you own a phone and you want to give it to your kids to upgrade them. Okay. You know, I don't know how that would work on a permanent basis, but, um, well, maybe it is, it's something that can be temporary. It's something like that you can turn on and off. It's, it's go, you can go back and forth. It's hand off back and forth. So that was very interesting to me, not, not a huge factor, but it was interesting. They were saying that, so for this one, the price is 1199, which I think is the same price for the pro, I, the $100 more, 200 because what, well, when I got my 16, it was 999. Was it a 16 pro? Yes. What it was last year, though. I think it was still, I, they were

30:02holding the line till last year, I think. Okay. So the, yeah, so it starts at 1199 for the 256. The pro max starts at 1299. And that's, that's what I paid for the 17 pro max, 512 last year. So that is, that is an increase. So, well, you know, they were going to do that ram again. I mean, you know, it's not, it's not being greedy. It's the fact that the, the, the, they can't, everything's more expensive. Uh, as they were finishing up, they mentioned something in passing. Didn't really explain it. Something called Apple Care One family. Yes. I saw that. And so I, I guess it's a, you can put all of your family's devices under one Apple Care plan and put one amount, which I'm listening Apple. I'm curious. Let me know. Because I'm paying tons of money for Apple Care all of my devices. Well, I have Apple One Care right now. And I have, you can put three devices on it for 20 bucks a

31:05month. And you can have additional devices for like five or six bucks each. Right. But if you looked at whatever what I did with that was I put the most expensive ones if I were to do them for a year. Under that umbrella. And then the other ones are cheaper. So I do like 1499 for the year for the AirPods. Right. So, but it's the kind of thing where if you're now, you would be able to do it individually. I guess now they're going to be expanding it to families. So how, what I want to know is how many devices is it per person? Is it per family? Is it per person in the family plan? Right. I'm going to do you allow in the family because right now they only allow six. So and do they have to all have your same last name? Because you know, people are going to try that too. But the, the, the six limitation dress recruits because they're seven in my family. So, right. Right. So that's available to order Saturday. And those will be available the following week on

32:07the 18. So that those are available now. Then we got into the AirPods 5, which they've now have now has the active noise cancellation, which is got 50% well better active noise cancellation because the four AirPods four had them, but it's better. Transferrency mode live translation, Siri AI that's now one that's I think it's still 129. I think it's the same price. Then they have another version with younger stems that give you access to the touch volume control things, which is only been on the pro until now. Right. And a wireless charging case for 20 bucks more. A lot of views here. Yeah. And I'd again, Steve Jobs is probably rolling over in his grave because there are so many different, you know, here's your AirPods 5, but then there's the one with the more features. Yeah. Then you have AirPods pro. Again, why you do this though? Because then you can still have a product at 129 without having reason price. Right. Right. But most people are going to

33:11say it's just 20 bucks more. I'm going to just get the one with the more features. Right. So not much more to say about that one. I think all of the stuff they were showing with stuff, you know, that we could already do in the AirPods Pro. So it's just the features going down to the from the pro to the regular, which is a they've been doing for years. But they didn't say anything about a new AirPods Pro. We'll get to that. Right. We have a segment where we're going to say, well, what did you mentioned? Yeah. So then they went into the Apple Watch 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4. And in that, they talked about health and fitness and intelligence features as well. There was some interesting stuff here. They talked about they've made the health sensing system, the sensors better, they increased the area, more frequency measurements. They introduced all these new metrics, you know, readiness measure. And what it seems to me is they're boiling down lots of technical data into easily digestible scores. So you can, you know, I don't know what a VO max

34:18means. But if you say your readiness score is seven today and it was six yesterday, that that that tells me something, you know, just like, you know, it doesn't 88 sleep score make a difference. Does it really? What does that mean to me? But, you know, if I see it going up or down, that tells me something. If they start to explain, because I think there was something a few weeks ago that I read and this really applied to me. I was wearing my watch to bed for a while because I wanted to, you know, find out how I was sleeping. But it was making me not sleep well because I knew what was monitoring me. So I would end up waking up more, which would skew the score. I think what they're trying to do is, is, is put it in such a way that people will see, look, this is what it does, this is what it measures. This is what it looks like through this period of time. Don't worry about it. You're doing fine or you might want to take this up with your doctor. I think we who do not

35:23understand medical jargon and do not have friends anymore who do, you know, need that kind of breakdown. Right. And I like the assessments thing that they I want to try that. I hope it's not just for the 12th. I think some of this stuff is only going to be in the new ones. But I think a lot, a lot of aspects of this, the, the new metrics, the new, the new health app, because that's what they talked about. There's a new health app coming later this year. Yeah. That will have a lot of stuff. The one that scares me is the longevity tab in the health app. It'll give you your health age compared to your actual age. I'm like, I can't wait for my phone to tell me that I probably won't live to the end of the year. Or, you know, look at mine and say, honey, you are a lot older than you think you are. I know if that means you're actually 58, but you are your, your, your health age is 72. Thank you very much. Exactly. But in another good thing, we have this theory recap that I

36:30really think is going to help a lot of older folks. So yeah. So they've gotten you, we've had visual intelligence on the phone. Now they're going to add something called audio intelligence that goes with the, the, the, which I think is going to go into the new Siri AirPods. So the AirPods Pro that there's been a rumor that there's going to be an AirPods that's going to have a camera, not for, not for like taking photos, but to sense the environment around you. But I bet this sound recognition will go into it and something they call live rewind. And so, so Siri recap that you mentioned will can listen to conversations, provided transcript and a summary and, you know, give you key points of whatever's going on. You can have it only of active during certain hours like work hours. You could have it, you could turn it on and off, you know, manually. And of course, because of that pull, it's all local. Nothing is going out to the cloud. It's all

37:32private. One of the things I said is they won't not identify speakers, which I think is fascinating. That's good. It can be annoying if you, if you want to use it for like a city-getting meeting. I want you to record the meeting and then I want you to come up with action plans for who's doing what at the end. You know, it won't be able to, to necessarily do that for you. You'll have to do it more manually. Unless you can take the audio and feed it to a different system that'll do that for you. That might, might also be something you can do. There are other, there's other software that'll do all that. So, but I like to fact it's just on the watch. So you don't need to have a computer open and do and recording. But the library wind especially for people who say, what do they say? In the back 15 seconds. They they're their example that they showed was two people at a restaurant. And the waitress rattles off the specials. And then, you know, the guy looks at his watch to see what she said. And I'm like, that only works if they leave before the 15 seconds is passed.

38:33I mean, you're like, it's only 15 seconds. So it's like, so what would you like to order? Let me rewind that. That's true. You spoke too fast. I'm going to use my phone, my watch to tell me what you said. Or you just reassumed it to what they said. But, but I like the idea that it's listening. And it's basically it's closed captioning for the world. Yes. And but there are a lot of people who need this type of thing. And it's not just as a as a memory thing. It's a hearing thing also. Well, frankly, I don't know anyone that doesn't watch TV without, doesn't watch TV without closed captioning on anymore. You don't watch with closed captioning on. Only this strange. Only if it's an English show like from England, from Great Britain, because they tend to speak very low and very fast at times, yeah, in a sense. Or at night, if I don't want my husband to, you know, if he's fallen, if we're in bed and he's fallen asleep, I'll put the captions on. Interesting. So I can keep it low. Other than that, I, yes, I still watch TV without captions.

39:38I find most sound design in TV shows and movies these days to be too muddy and to and people talk too fast. I agree. It's hard to catch what they're saying. So I leave it on. So I can see what they're saying. So so this that there's a new Siri modular face. And this audio and intelligence features coming in beta later this year. So it's not going to be right away. It's probably only going to be the new watches. You know, you have to get it. Here's when here's when Joanne gets mad because they kept the price the same. And I was going for a 12 this year and I bought an 11. Because I was afraid to be more. Yep. I did that. And now I want to slap myself again. So they've the colors, space gray, black, like old dark bronze in aluminum. Yes, they mentioned some colors in titanium. I didn't catch what the colors were. And there's a new ceramic coating. Oh, the blues in the ceramic, I think. Maybe it's like a

40:41night blue and a pearl white. And they look beautiful. I should have some nice colors on that. I have to say the ceramic, the ceramic ones look really nice. And yeah, and those are pre-order now, you know, and pre-order on the 12th and get them on the 18th normal thing. They didn't spend hardly any time on the ultra. There's a new ultra, bigger batteries, two days of battery, two full days of battery life, which is nice. You can get it to 45 hours of battery life and work out, work out mode for an effort. A hundred mile marathon, which, you know, oh, thank God, I was worried I wouldn't make it all the way through my hands on my own. Comes in black and titanium. Those ones, the same prices again. And that was it for announcements, basically, a lot of software talk, a lot of technical talk. But as far as software and also that was where we went. So I want to get into what was mentioned and then some other stuff. But before we do that, I do want to take a moment to

41:43thank our patrons who make it possible for us to create the secrets of technology, including Kathy, excuse me, Kathy S Genny D Matthew C James S K and David G. Their generous donations at givestarquest.com make it possible for us to continue the secrets of technology. And all the shows at StarQuest and you can join them by visiting givestarquest.com. So what wasn't mentioned, no mention of the iPhone 18 or the iPhone air. But we expected that. That was rumored that they were going to start splitting up the phone releases. Instead of all the phones all at once in the fall, they were going to spread it out and do the pros in the fall and the regular other stuff in the spring. It makes sense. It makes life easier for them because they don't have to have all of this product in stock at once. They don't have everything done at once. And you can wait.

42:47If you have a 17, it's still really good. It works fine. And maybe it incentivizes people to upgrade to the pro. I don't know, but that's fine. No AirPods pro. I think that'll probably go with, no, but I think if we follow the logic here, it'll probably go with the iPhone 18 and the air, which I think is kind of, it seems backwards to me because why wouldn't you have the AirPods pro with the iPhone pro? That's true. I wonder if maybe that's going to be like an October announcement or something. Something just before the Christmas buying season starts because AirPods are totally a Christmas gift. That's true. They're good stocking stuffer. Yeah. Yeah. So AirPods pro. And I think the AirPods pro are going to have that sound intelligence feature. They're going to have also they're probably also I wonder if that's they're going to be the ones that can have that camera thing too. So that might be another part of that.

43:49No mention of HomePod's Apple TV or the Mythical Apple Home Hub. Yet again. Or yeah, I mean, it's not surprising though because if you introduce an Apple Home Hub, that's you've got to spend time on that. You've got to talk about you're going to tell the story. And I think that when you talk about the Apple Home Hub, then you then you have to talk about Apple TV and HomePod's and maybe Apple smart home devices because there's been rumors that they've got a walk coming in a cameras and that sort of stuff. Well, my feeling is they better hurry up because there's a lot of older HomePod's out there and older Apple TVs and people getting frustrated. I know my husband is totally frustrated with our HomePod downstairs. That's that S lady will not get an upgrade to Apple intelligence. Right. So she's going to continue to be

44:52as dumb as a stump. And when he asks her questions and she says, if you open up your iPhone, I can show you this. One more time to him, he's going to like take it and propel it out the window. Well, that's the thing is if people are getting the new Siri AI on their phone, but they're not getting that experience on their other devices, that's going to drive people nuts. You can't have this split. You've got to give people the ability to have that seamless experience. So I think it won't be long. I think these things are coming fairly soon. And we've said that for how long now though, two years at least. Well, I think I think it couldn't have come until we had the new Siri AI, which is in the next two, two, three weeks. So that's why I say it's not going to be long because it's got to come out with it or near it. And I think the HomePod, it's you've got to introduce it with it. And I think because they've already raised the

45:53prices of the Apple TVs, which I'm so glad I got the older one at the older price before the, you know, Armageddon happened. You know, they won't raise the price again. Exactly. They can release it at the same price. Right. So, but what's it going to be? Is it going to have a camera in? Is it going to have more power other than other than, you know, Siri AI? What else is going to be in that Apple TV to war and spending that money? Right. It can't just be the newer HIP. Right. Exactly. Home dashboard. I don't know. It can be an interesting question. Like a big TV since they're unused most of the time. So what could it be doing for you? You know, on the wall. You know what I'd finally like in an Apple TV. And this is probably pie in the sky never happened. I'd like a browser. Put Safari in it. Yeah. Put Safari in it because you can now, you now have

47:02Siri AI and you can say, you know, Shlomo, find me this. And it goes out on the internet and it. I think yeah, it's not something you'd want to just regularly browse the internet for. But if you're watching something or you're on your, and you want to find out more about something in a streaming show and a video and you know, especially if they put a QR code on the screen. Being able to bring up a web page from there. Right. And frankly, I wonder if that would make signing into services easier too. It would now wouldn't it? We don't want to go grab another device. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I could see a use case for even a limited browser. But yeah, it doesn't have to be doing what the others do. But even if it's something simple where you know how when you're talking with your kid, you're talking with your spouse, oh, let me get my iPad. And let's go to let's go and take a look. If you have it right there on the screen and can say,

48:04Shlomo, find me this. Yeah, I think that's a little bit of a game changer. Apple TVs are group activity devices, right? More than so than an iPad, totally more so than a phone or even a laptop. You need you have a big screen that everybody can sit in front of it. So it's so I think that's what you have to think about it. How do we use this for group activity? So I agree with that. And I know you're not a gamer, but they could also do more. Please, they could put steam on it because the chips are getting powerful enough that you could run, you know, really good stuff on it. So that's a whole other thing. You can get the gaming stuff and I can get the browser. Right, right. That's all happy. So the other question I wanted to talk about is what you think of John Ternis as the new Apple CEO. He just took over on September 1st. How do you do? He said, and there's one more thing. He did say the phrase one more thing.

49:06Haven't heard that forever. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, you know, very casually. I liked his casual way. Tim was always very. Tim was stiff. Well, not the Tim was stiff. Tim is a money man. I'm married to a money man. He's very reserved. He's very reserved. Yeah. So he came across that way. Yeah. He got better over the years. But the little, you know, pre-roll to the whole thing, he does hand it off. And I thought that was a unique way of doing that. So I think it was classy to have a hand off. Very classy. But I think John Ternis because he's a hardware guy, yeah. This is more of his alley. Yes. So I think he's going to be more excited, more enthusiastic. Whereas if we're Craig Frieda-Rigi, he's always in through the ass to go and it comes to software. So there's sort of like the Yin and Yang. I thought it was interesting throughout how the kept having like all that these other people come in to introduce things. And, you know,

50:09like, instead of Johnny Seroji had some other guy doing the talk about the chips in the iPhone 18. Where's all the, we're all the big guys. You know, Jaws, we act, you know, Federie, and Seroji, they were all there. They all did the duo, right? They seemed them for the duo part of the game. That was smart. Yeah. Because those are the men you trust. And I hate to say men, but those are the men you trust when it comes to these Apple products. That's who's doing these parts of the thing. Yeah. So that was, yeah, that was good. So the big question as we wrap up our discussion, Joanne, gonna buy anything. Well, as much I, right now I am not employed at the moment. So if I'll tell you, if I, if I've gone out for a certain position and if I would ever get that position, I think I'd buy the duo as a present to myself, maybe depending on how much I could get

51:10for the 16 that I have. But the only thing I think I would probably even consider depending on how the reviews come out would be upgrading the 11 watch to a 12 just because of my age, just because of the information it could give my doctors. Not that, you know, I'm in good health, but just to start really working with that material and have it there when things start to happen, that's, I was planning on doing that this year anyway. So if it's the same price, I probably lose maybe 50, 75 dollars in the deal, but I'll take that. Every year I say the first Apple watch that comes up with a glucose monitor, I'm buying it, no matter how recently I've bought a watch, but I'm buying the glucose monitor one. Every year, I say that. I have an ultra that I got last year, it's still great. I'm not, I'm not traded in yet. Am on the 17. I'm on, I usually do two, you know, two years in between phones. And so I'm not,

52:12I'm not planning anything, but I'm going to start saving my pennies to get a two next year. You know, and frankly, I actually have my Apple savings account. You know, you have the Apple savings. I put my needs to it every month. And that is my Dom's new phone account. Okay, that's a great idea. Yeah. So I put money in it every month. And that's set aside for when it's time to buy a new phone. So so I'm not, everything here looks great. I'm doing it wrong. You know, the 18 Pro is iterative. It's not groundbreaking. The duo is, it is revolutionary, I think. The 12, the watch 12 and the ultra four and the AirPods 5 are all fine. If you need new of any of those things, they were, they are nice upgrades, but they're not must have to me. And and let's not forget a couple weeks ago, they announced a new mini and a new studio. So maybe some folks out there, although the mini is now starting at 899, which really,

53:14I think it's a shot to the heart, you know, a couple years ago, I would say, oh, the studio is the new iMac. It's the new base professional computer. I think the mini is now the new base professional computer. It really is. I love mine. It's capable. If I were, frankly, I mean, I've got a studio, I've got an empty studio. If I needed to buy a new computer tomorrow, I might be looking at a mini rather than another studio. I think the studio has pushed up into the old Mac Pro range. You really need that serious hardware for these new, those, these new studios to really justify the cost. I think, I think if you need a desktop computer to do even like sound editing, video editing, even, you know, some intensive tasks like that, I think the mini is still your base. The mini, I've got an M4 mini. I put the beta of Golden Gate on it. It's working like a champ, you know, and it's not buggy at all. The beta, the beta's, I go to admit, we're not

54:18too buggy. Had some issues, but you always do. And I just look at it and go, yeah, it's a beta. Well, Joanne, I have to show you something. Uh oh, what? This is my new MacBook Air. I upgraded. It's an M4. Yeah. So I got to the fish skin on that. Yeah. Yeah. From fish skin. I got fish skin this time. I've had D brand in the past. So I want to try something new that'll be, oh, let people know, you know, more about that future pick of the week, but we got to get, we got to get this show on video. Because we all have interesting, you know, technology. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's time to think about doing a video version of this show because yeah, there's a lot of times I want to show a screen or demonstrate something. If folks would be more, it would be interesting. I'd love to hear from listeners if you'd be interested in a video version of the show. Because it's totally something I've been thinking about. All right. So that is the Apple September, 2026 event in a nutshell. Uh, I think, uh, in general, I think they did, they did well.

55:22So let's move on to our picks of the week. Joanne, what's your pick this week? I, I see it in the list and it makes me laugh. Well, you know, um, I've been, I've been home for a couple of months and I've been cleaning and doing a list kind of stuff and my husband is also a golf aficionado, which means he changes golf clubs like he changes his shirts every day. So, um, we have gotten enamored with or very used to using Facebook marketplace. Now before, before you have the groans out there, hear me out. It's not Craigslist. No, but it's not eBay either. And yes, you do have to vet, you know, the people that you're going to deal with. Yeah. However, if you're near, if you find something that you want nearby or if you put up something and people nearby want your stuff, it's a pretty quick. Sometimes it can be very quick. Sometimes it can be

56:25very annoying because you get the, is this still okay? Is this still okay? Is this still up for sale? Is this still available? You know, the people just kind of hit that for no reason at all. But I don't respond when you say yes. Yeah. Right. But I think it's another avenue because especially now where people are trying to have side hustles and get rid of stuff rather than just throw, you know, call 1-800 God junk. Yeah. I think it's, you know, we've had some really positive experiences with it. But I will say this in the realm of electronics, especially Apple, you have to know your stuff because they will try to sell you something that isn't or not useful anymore for like, and the reason I, we talked about this a little earlier before we started the air, the air, the time capsules. Oh, yes. Okay. We all know in the Apple world that these

57:29don't work anymore. The Wi-Fi routers with hard drives in them. Yeah. We know the only thing they're good for now is like storage. They're hard drives. Right. They're hard drives. They want to sell you the entire, you know, set of things for like $300 and I'm sitting there going, dude, I'll give you a 50 bucks because I'm only going to use the hard, the two-terabyte hard drive in that thing. That's it. Everything else is garbage. And it's a slow two-terabyte hard drive, not like it. And it's old. So it's not like you can, if you buy a brand new two-terabyte hard drive these days online, it would be much more expensive. But this we're talking used stuff. People, yeah, often times you'll find people who don't understand the actual value of the things they're trying to sell. Right. I'm trying to remember we did an episode a while back about buying things on, you know, online, like used, you know, how to be safe. I don't remember. It's actually must've been a while ago. I think, well, I don't know about that. I think it was more recent than we

58:30think. It was actually a year ago. Last September. All right. We did. It always seems like more recent than it was. But we episode 314, we talked about buying and selling used tech safely. And that's a go, go and refer to that folks. I was recently selling some old tech online. I was doing a closet of obsolete tech clean out. And I had some stuff in there that was still useful. And yeah, I sell it online. And, you know, I try to be clear with people. This is what you're getting. This is how much it's going to be. It works. I don't know if it works. Like I try to be clear with people. So you got to, you know, if you're buying things, you know, you get just going to be just common sense and be safe. You know, that's all. Right. And but if you're looking for like a vision pro for 2000 instead of 3,500, they're out there. Yes. If you're looking for air packs, air pro maxes, half price, they're out there. But then again, there are, you know, there are the

59:32phony ones. Yes. But you've got to be savvy about it. And you've got to talk to the person. Kevin's rule of thumb is if this person has just created a Facebook profile, I'm not talking to them. Right. Well, I only deal with people local. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Things that don't buy things to be shipped. Right. Not like that. I want to see your face and, and you know, shake your hand. Right. And always meet up at the police station. Right. I, I sometimes have people come to my house, but that's just because when I'm selling something heavy, I don't want to lug it somewhere. Right. We're the same way. And I'm, I'm, I feel safe. I've got two giant teenage boys who live here. Yes. Where they go. And four kids who take karate. So, hey, don't show up and think you can get away with anything. You're good. So if you're looking to, you know, sell off a few things to buy that iPhone duo, don't discount it. You can't sell kidneys there,

1:00:32though. No, you can't. But it's the US. It's not a bad place to try. And we've been pleasantly surprised. Yeah. I, I'll be honest. I sometimes just have fun scrolling through marketplace. Oh, that's a, that is a deep dark hole for me. I'll tell you. It's, it's actually, sometimes a fun amusement when I get like a, what I do with the kids would be like, you know, laughing and joking about some of the, the oddball things. And you find everything there. Like some oddball stuff there. So vintage top of where vintage anything like it. And cool stuff, too. There's lots of cool stuff. But yeah, it is wild. Everything is there. I saw a, like a semi truck that had been converted into a boat. Oh, really? It was like 40 grand, but it was like, yikes. I said it in my brother. It's a truck driver. He's like, Oh, yeah, I've seen guys do that. And they have, remember the old, remember the old ceramic Christmas trees with the light bulb? My mom made one of those. Yeah. $300 and Tick.

1:01:34ceramic. And I'm like, I have one of my basement. Oh, okay. There's the third of your duo right there. There you go. I wish I still had mine. I don't think I do. Yeah. All right. So my pick this week is a piece of Mac software called moonlock. And it's from MacPaw, which are the people that bring you clean my Mac software. They are, it's reliable. In general, you don't want to go online and download random Mac cleaner or Mac maintenance or antivirus software. You want to, you need to trust the people that you're getting it from. And so MacPaw are trustworthy. They're the people behind set app. So moonlock is a new app that they have. And it's an antivirus, antimelware app. And it's pretty good. I don't have it. Like I don't, I don't feel like I, I, I'm very, I'm not going to say I don't feel like I'm very susceptible. I feel like I'm pretty well protected already.

1:02:38But I looked to it. And what, what makes this really good is it's, it's so well designed that, you know, it doesn't feel technical. It looks like Clean My Mac's other software. I mean, MacPaw's other software, including Clean My Mac. It's well designed. It's, it's, it's pretty. But it also explains things and it's, it's kind of got nice, you know, user interface. So, and it will do scanning for viruses and malware and it will, you know, it does a, it will schedule things. It can set up a firewall and it will teach you about how to protect yourself, which I think is great. So, there, Clean My Mac has some malware scanner in it. This goes much further. It includes a VPN, a network inspector, a scam detector that's AI powered, so on and so forth. It has a built-in guidebook to Mac security settings, which I think is, would be very, very nice for a lot of people. So this would be a great tool for someone who

1:03:43doesn't consider themselves an expert, but wants to know more or wants to feel safer. And so, that's, that's, that's, that you can get a seven day trial and where was it? It's, uh, 450 a month if you get a yearly subscription. So 54 bucks. If you do a monthly subscription, it's 1350 a month, which is substantially more. So an annual subscription is probably your best bet. Or they let you do a one-time purchase, 150 bucks. Boom. But it may not include major upgrades in new features. I'm reading that. Right. They, what, I mean, it's in the, the developer's best interest to have a steady income so that they can pay for making those new features and upgrades. So I like this because of the VPN. Yes. A VPN like built-in, that's, yeah, that, you get a pay 450 a month just for a VPN. You'll pay more than that probably. Right. You know, anyway. So this is, this, is that plus all the other features. So, um, it's, it looks, it's a, it's a pretty nice piece

1:04:48of software. So at moonlock.com. And those are our picks. And that's our show this week. We'd love to get your feedback on anything we talked about. Is it, is anybody else I gotta buy the Duo? I'd love to hear from you. Let me know. You could also be a donor at, uh, give startquests.com. I knew you're going to say that. Folks, you can contact us by sending an email to technology at skpn.com or visit the Starquest Discord community at skpn.com slash discord. You'll find links from our discussion and picks of the week on our show notes at starquest.fm slash TEC 360. And of course, we'll find all our previous episodes at skpn.com slash technology. Be sure to follow the sequence attack where an Apple podcast spotify tune in your favorite podcast app or at our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash starquest media. And finally, a red review in Apple podcast or wherever you can write reviews of podcasts and share the podcast with someone. That is the number one way the podcast grows and

1:05:53reaches new people. So until next time, Joanne Berser here. Thank you for joining me in sharing the sequence of technology. Thanks, Dom. And once again, I'm Dom Betanelli. Thank you for listening to the Secrets of Technology on Starquest and Happy Apple Day, everyone. Here's another show on the Starquest Network. You're sure to enjoy the Secrets of Star Trek. Find it wherever find podcast or found or at skpn.com slash star trek.