74: Thin Air and Budget Devices

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep. I'm Eric Christiansen. [00:00:16] Speaker B: And I'm Chris Hans. [00:00:23] Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep. Good afternoon, Chris. How are you today? [00:00:33] Speaker B: Good. How are you? [00:00:34] Speaker A: I'm great. We're going to talk about the Apple event that happened on Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday Apple had their September event. So what I was thinking is that, you know, while we're not exclusively an edtech podcast because we're in education, we still have that kind of specialty. I know we're not called edtech examined anymore, but because we still have that specialty, I think perhaps we go through the, the announcements that Apple made and then just talk about kind of what our recommendation is, why we think they're interesting, and then maybe at the end of each product we just put a spin on it. So for like the average person or the educator, what would be useful to you? And, you know, is there anything else in that announcement for that audience, kind of the average user audience that we would recommend if we could recommend? I mean, I have some recommendations. You could have different ones, but kind of our perspective of, of each category, what makes most sense? I guess, except for the AirPods, because there's only one announcement, so we can't really compare. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Yes. [00:01:39] Speaker A: So maybe we, we kick this off by starting in kind of reverse order with the iPhone announcement. So every September, Apple announces new iPhones. So what did you think? What was your takeaway? So we have a new set. We have a 17 on. IPhone Air has no 17 on it, and we have iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. [00:02:05] Speaker B: I mean, when I look at the iPhone air, I feel like it's not just a thinner phone. It feels like it's almost setting the stage, like a rehearsal or Apple is going to start looking at new types of devices like foldables and just the way that they're going to be doing things by trimming before they're transforming. So, you know, but yeah, I mean, it was. It's a beautiful looking phone. I mean, it reminded me. I mean, I like the comparison when they showed the iPhone 6. I mean, I still have an iPhone 6 and it's actually a little bit thinner than the iPhone 6. And you know, even just some of the. The material choices and so on. [00:02:48] Speaker A: So what, what are the phones that they release just so for people who haven't seen it. [00:02:51] Speaker B: So, yeah. So yeah, so they had the iPhone 17, there's the iPhone 17 Air, and then they have the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. [00:03:00] Speaker A: So the Air has no 17 in it. That's what I've been calling it. It's just. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Okay, it's just Air. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Well, I thought it was just. I thought it was 17 air, but no, it's just Air. [00:03:09] Speaker B: Oh, okay. All right. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Well, I guess I noticed that this morning. I had no idea. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Oh, I thought they just. Yeah, okay. Well, that's fine. So I guess because it's the first generation, they're just calling it the Air, but. Yeah. And I mean, I look at it even just from. You know, remember that when they released the MacBook Air? I mean, the. Just the. Putting it in a manila envelope and bringing it out like. Yeah. I mean, that's. It's a beautiful device. I mean, even I was chatting with some people and they're. They're kind of looking. Liking that as a different type of look and being thinner and so on. [00:03:47] Speaker A: There's some interesting things about this event, I think, because there's some pretty stark. There's a lot of controversy, but also a lot of excitement. I guess that's how I would sum it up. So the 17. And I'll just say for most people, I really think that the base 17 is the way to go. Historically, the base iPhone has been limited. I mean, it has a few drawbacks. It has a two camera lens set up instead of a three camera lens like on the pros. So you get a standard 48 megapixel shooter plus an ultra wide. But you're missing the macro like the double lens, the zoom lens that the pros have. They come with an A19 chip instead of the A19 Pro. They lack some battery life, but the one thing that they get is that I believe that the standard phones get not only a higher refreshed display. That does make a big difference. So if Anybody has used 120Hz display over a standard 60Hz, it's really smooth. It's really nice. And I think they get an always on display now. So those were historically pro features that have come to that phone. So for most people, that's probably the best value. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:05:00] Speaker A: And then the pros themselves, they have their three camera setup, which is, you know, what we expect. But I think they get a much larger design overhaul. So they get. It's interesting because these phones have been kind of glass front and back for a while. And the Pro. So this. The 17 has the same. Exactly the same design as the previous 16, but the pros get an aluminum unibody. So it's kind of like the way the MacBook is designed. And then they get a ceramic thing cut out for the charging and then the antennas are kind of built into the camera hump, apparently. Now, by the way, since Apple has been able to brand everything, I have called it the camera bump. Apple calls it the plateau. [00:05:47] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. [00:05:49] Speaker A: So they had to rename it something cool. But that's where the, in the Pros, that's where the chip goes. [00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:54] Speaker A: So like antennas, everything goes in there. What did you think of the Pro phones? I was most impressed by the color options. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean the orange is pretty. The cosmic orange. Pretty bold. Yeah. I mean the other one, there's a dark blue and Yeah, I mean I, I think the orange. If I, if I was going to get one, I would probably get the orange because it just, it would stand out. [00:06:19] Speaker A: They get better battery life, 33 and 39 hours, which is a lot depending on which size of the probably. And they made a big deal about their Pro chip and the cooling. There's like a vapor chamber with deionized water for cooling. It seems super complicated. I mean, I think of a phone. I think of like a. I couldn't help when I thought of this announcement, thinking to what Steve Jobs said about post PC devices. And I, well, as you know, I wrote a blog post about the iPhone air and increase over the past few years. These have been strange events. They've been very like almost processor spec heavy, at least in comparison to other Apple events. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:04] Speaker A: And I, you know, I like that when I'm thinking about a new computer or maybe the iPad Pro or something that's like a computer where the specs matter because you're going to be doing content creation. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:15] Speaker A: But I just, I just can't get over a Pro phone. I've never been able, I've never seen the device like that. I've always thought of it as just like a really simple communication device and kind of what Steve Jobs said this, the post PC devices and not talking about specs and focusing on feel. And I still think that the discussion around the 17 and the 17 Pro, we can get to the air in a second was very computery. That was totally. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I, I agree with you. Like see that's something that back in the day you would, you know, especially like I think Steve Jobs would probably cringe at this but like going through and explaining the chip architecture and all this technical stu. And I'm like putting my, you know, here I teach business communication. I'm thinking like the average audience, do they really care about like how many GPUs and how the architecture and the neural network and like it just seemed very spec and technical jargon heavy. [00:08:10] Speaker A: So before when they talked about graphics, they would just say here's how much more powerful it is than the previous generation. And they would have a graph from the original phone to present and they just talked about, they didn't give how many numbers of GPUs, efficiency cores. They would just talk about the, the year over year performance and then they would give an example. So they would bring out a new game that's going to launch and to really showcase what it could do at a high frame rate. And to me that was a more compelling use case. [00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:08:39] Speaker A: The vapor chamber is what put me over the edge. It was like a vapor chamber for cooling and a phone it seems, I mean, I guess it makes sense but for what they're pushing. [00:08:46] Speaker B: But yeah, I don't know, it just seemed a little bit over the top. But this is where like even just from a design standpoint, I mean I look at it like back, you know, they kept going thinner and thinner to the point where like people like, you know, we've talked about this in the past. Like when I had my MacBook, you know, Retina Display, the first one that came out and I kept it, I mean it still works. My, you know, my daughter still uses it, but you know, that, that I kept that computer from like whatever 2013 until a couple of years ago. So let's say 10, 10, 11 years. And it was because of the HDMI, right? I mean how thin do you need it to be and you know, enough. [00:09:34] Speaker A: To fit that HDMI port. [00:09:36] Speaker B: Well, exactly right. Like, I mean where you lose like functionality. So but with phones it's different. Like you know, phones, I think, yeah, like the battery is important, probably cameras, but like I mean even these cameras, even with a single lens. Then they start talking about all the AI, like computational, you know, on device. [00:09:58] Speaker A: Like well, it's interesting that Apple did not so in previous years, like last year and the year before, Apple was playing catch up because of course all these, as we talked in depth, we're almost an AI podcast at this point and we're getting know we're trying to balance it out, but there's so much news around artificial intelligence. So I think there's a huge amount of pressure on Apple to play catch up to talk about and they brilliantly re. They co opted the AI acronym for Apple intelligence, which is just perfect. This is totally what they would do. They didn't talk about it hardly at all in this event I think because they are behind and I think that the. Again, outside of the average person using a free, you know, ChatGPT helped me edit my email. I don't think it's that mainstream yet. I think a lot of people are cautious about it. So I think they were smart not to talk about it because you know, I think most people are interested in oh, would this play the latest games rather than does it run AI on board? Like I think they're not there yet. I think the phones are set up for that capability in the future, but it's almost like future proofing their lead not. It doesn't really matter to the average person. That's my takeaway. So they're good to step back from that. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And then like from a design standpoint too. I mean I, I look at, I was just reading about some of the history too. Like after, you know, Jonathan Ives left a bunch of people followed him or they started up their own companies or even like one joined that device company the. That he was creating and that OpenAI bought out or what have you. And so like a lot of their, there's been like a you a lot of turnover and churn there. And so I, I think for them they're trying to find like do how do we go back? And so like this is where like even some of their product philosophy they're, they're like talking about like you know, thin being a choice and Well, I. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Think this is a good segue to the air the iPhone air which I think. But I, I do want to ask you a question about Apple design in general. So I felt after Steve Jobs passed away, which still kind of makes me sad. I mean Steve Jobs, if you listen to Kevin o' Leary and some of the people have talked about him, not a nice guy to work with, but I had a lot of respect for his ability. He really had a good focus and a good vision. When he passed away, I felt that he was the person who would say no to people for going too far. So for instance, I don't get the impression that Steve would have sacrificed functionality for thinness. He would have said get it as thin as you can. But he was always customer first. He knew that. And so for years after he was gone and Jony I've was still there. I felt that's when things went sideways. They came out with that plastic phone that nobody wanted. They made that ultra thin one port MacBook that they discontinued. They got rid of the headphone jack probably okay now because USB C headphones and stuff are around. But you know, before they went to USB C so they still had a proprietary port Lightning. They did it too prematurely and didn't really make sense. They had a bunch of design over function. And I always felt that that was because Steve wasn't there to say no to the design people. The design people went too far. And I thought after Jony, I've left. This is probably super controversial. Things got better because they came out with the MacBook Pro. I think the latest MacBook Pro that you and I have is by far. I would say that I prefer this design even to the old ones that you and I reminisce. Has a better keyboard, it has all the ports, it has a boxy design. The only thing I'll say is that the other one, because it was curved, it was a little bit easier to pick up from a table because there was a little bit of a lip. But everything else about this to me is great. I mean this is the best design I've ever seen. And it was only after these people that everyone was. They were so. Well, Jony, I was so well respected that I got the impression that nobody had the guts except Steve to say no, that's a terrible idea. [00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:14:03] Speaker A: So I think their design is better now, even if it is computery talk. Like I look at their phones and I go, that's a more functional design that actually works. Like oh, we put a better battery life because our customers who buy pro phones are out in the field shooting photography and they need a long lasting battery life. And I'm like, yeah, like of course you would do that. Why wouldn't you do that? [00:14:25] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:14:27] Speaker A: But the Air is so the iPhone air kind of stole the show in terms of the phone that really is that design centric phone. So what was your. I mean I have some things to say but what about it? Obviously, because I wrote a big blog post about it. But what was your takeaway about the Air? And maybe we tell people what the Air is first. [00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean basically the Air. So they've come out with this, you know, and it's funny because like it's. It's basically in the mid range, right? So you have your basic which is the 17th and then you got the pros which are on the top end and like the Pro Max is like 2000 bucks. [00:15:05] Speaker A: And this replaced the Plus. The airs kind of replaced the plus phones. Yeah, and we had those iPhone and iPhone plus and those weren't I don't think the pluses were very popular. So this is kind of a plus replacement. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And then like material wise so like the, the previous pros would have titanium and so in this case the body is actually made out of Titan. It has a stronger. They've come out with. All the phones are using this ceramic shield too. But it's the thinnest phone. It's even thinner than the iPhone 6. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Does the entry level iPhone get ceramic shield? [00:15:41] Speaker B: I can't remember. [00:15:42] Speaker A: I have no idea. But this one does for sure. [00:15:44] Speaker B: This one does. And so do the pros. I thought they've just come out with some new like ceramic thing possibly we'd have to go back and look at it but I guess you can take a look. I'm pretty sure that they're just to providing that the next generation of this ceramic shield for the display. But I think when I look at it with this iPhone Air basically now Apple is saying that you know, maybe calm down, maybe you don't need everything. Right. Like maybe some of, you know, maybe having it being a little bit more thinner and you know, for the camera do we need the Pro with the three lenses? I mean this is a 48 megapixel camera. Right. [00:16:34] Speaker A: So it's a, it's. It. Does all the phones get ceramic shield on the front? I don't think the base model gets it on the back. That's the difference. So it's a glass back. So just to recap, so this is a 5.6 millimeter phone. The iPhone Air so it's their thinnest phone ever at the thinnest point. And it basically has a titanium band that goes around it and then the front and back of the ceramic shield. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:02] Speaker A: So that's how they're able to construct it. And it gets a few. So it's weird because it's like advanced in terms of its design but then it has some cutbacks. Right. So like you said it gets a one camera setup instead of the entry levels two camera setup. So you get the 48 megapixels the same but you don't get the ultra wide. [00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Would that be a deal breaker for you? I do use the ultra wide. [00:17:28] Speaker B: You know what like I, I might not be the best person to ask because I, I don't, I'm not one to take too many pictures so. But I think it's just because of like my, my day to day activities and stuff. I'm not just, I don't know, I'm not like even. I was looking at this. I went to a performance last week and there's like, everybody has their like, cameras out and I'm. I'm the only one enjoying it. I'm just enjoying it, like to be in. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm not the best. Even I, I saw this one picture of. It was like a photograph of an NBA game. And like, everybody in the crowd had their like, phones out. And like, literally the only person that didn't was Phil Knight, you know, who's the founder of Nike. And he's just sitting there just enjoying the game. And. Yeah, so I, I don't know. It's like we're so like, focused on our devices. But yeah, I mean, for some people, maybe it would make a difference. But really, if you look at this camera versus what's been available in the past is probably better. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Well, this would be an improvement if you're coming from an older phone. So we get a single lens setup. It does come with the Pro chip, so essentially comes with the A19 Pro chip that you get in the Pro phones. There is one difference. It has one less GPU core and presumably because it doesn't have this vapor chamber and all this fancy cooling that's in the Pro models. It would be pro, but it might be throttled due to heat. So it's probably not going to get the performance. If you're like doing a lot of 4k shooting or playing a game that the Pro model would. But from day to day tasks, it'll probably run the same. [00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I also liked. I mean, we talked about this right before we started, but you know, the phones, all of them come with the option where you can put on a battery pack. But this particular phone, the air, has its own because of just the design. But I think that that battery pack for somebody who is concerned about battery but still wants a thin, you know, if you ever needed to like just the way that the design is because it's so thin and the. It didn't make it like as thick as what maybe you would have like in the Pro or something at least. I mean, just looking at it from. [00:19:44] Speaker A: The video and it's a magnetic mag safe battery pack. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I thought that was kind of like a nice little, you know, modular option if you're having some battery issues. But I mean, all the phones, they talked about this where like the. Somehow their chips or whatever, like through their. Maybe you know, the, the Apple Intelligence or what have you, it figures out like when, when to throttle down things for extending the battery life. They had a quick charge where if you put it in like for I think it was something like 20 minutes and it gives you quite a bit of your percentage, gets you back up, you know. So things have changed from a battery maintenance standpoint. But like, you know, again I, I look at it, what's the average person looking for? And you know I, I think you need a good enough like camera. You want to have some decent battery life. I mean in my case especially a lot of times my phone is all like do not disturb or off. So now I don't really, you know, care too much. And so again I think it depends on people's lifestyles and what their situation is. But it is, I mean I've talked about this before. Like sometimes I even wish that I and I could, I could just switch to like a, you know, one of the Apple watches with you know, no, with cellular and then I can get off device. But I think having a little bit of a screen if I ever need to, you know, respond to somebody on the go for some emails, sure it's nice to have and so I think in the interim it's nice to just have one of these like you know, smartphone kind of devices. [00:21:23] Speaker A: I do you make a good point. So I in the age of smartwatches push notifications to other devices, especially in the Apple ecosystem. But even if you're on Windows, I mean Windows has phone link that works with Android or Apple. So I mean we're in a world now where you don't have to pick that particular device up all the time and burn and turn the screen on and do all that stuff to respond to notifications and see things. So maybe people do use do not disturb. There's a lot more press coverage about phone use and over phone use and the harms of social media. So I think that maybe things have changed. I would say that there was kind of a thin for thin sake for a long time and you talked about seeing the future and this is maybe a predictor of things to come. And I mentioned that in my blog post. One thing I will say is that certainly not more fragile because it's thin. You know older iPhones that were super thin, you know there was bend gate, you could bend the six super easy. So titanium plus ceramic is really tough to bend. It's argu. I mean arguably this might be the most durable of all the ones they launched even though that's counter intuitive. But light is nothing to sneeze at and you know When I have I, I have either a laptop or a tablet and I have a phone, I have my wallet and I have my keys and I have a SWE and I have a notebook with a pen and I have a little thing for kids. I mean these things add up and so thin and light that does everything and dissipates heat and it's kind of no compromises in terms of day to day power. I don't think the average person would be able to max out any of these phones. It's definitely future proofed. Yeah, there's nothing to sneeze at. I think the only thing to me that might be the issue is a single lens camera. If people use wide angle shooting, they take a lot of photos of their family or vacations and stuff like that. It's nothing wrong with it. It's certainly an upgrade as a single lens camera but if you're used to a two lens, that might be difficult. [00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:34] Speaker A: I will say though, all of these phones get a huge upgrade to the selfie cam. I think that's the biggest camera announcement all. So for those out there who don't take a lot of selfies, I'm not a selfie guy, I'm not really of that generation, I don't think. But if I was with my family and there's nobody around to ask them to take the photo, a lot of them are selfies. And the problem with taking a selfie is that if you want it wide angle you always had to turn the phone on its side. And that's an issue for photo framing because it puts the lens to the left or the right depending on how you're holding it. And so it doesn't look right. People aren't looking unless they're looking right at the lens. You're kind of looking off to the side. It looks weird. So what Apple did is that they made a selfie camera that's basically square and. But it can crop and go to widescreen or crop to portrait, but still holding the phone and portrait. And so then people would be looking at the lens. It would, it would frame the photo better. So you, all the phones got that feature just to be clear. So if you care more about the selfie camera, maybe less so than the rear camera, which is possible. There's no, it doesn't matter which model you go with because you're going to get that. And to me that was a simple. But it's just a very typical Apple innovation. That's something that's actually a problem that we do all the time. They said there's 500 billion selfies taken every year or something. And so we do this and then they're like, oh, we solved this problem. We made it so the camera framing looks better every single time. That's a good example of why people buy those devices. I'm sure Android phones will follow now because that's standard, so. [00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah, no, exactly. And I think it's probably one of the ones that a lot of people didn't focus on was the selfie cam. In terms of the coverage, I think. [00:25:24] Speaker A: The tech media maybe, but like the average overviews, it was kind of glossed over and I think it's a great, I think that's a great feature because I take tons of selfies with my wife and daughter. It would be nice if it was framed up better. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [00:25:35] Speaker A: And I can edit them with AI and Photoshop, but it's not the same. Okay, so we had a single megapixel camera selfie improvement. We talked about the chip. There is a couple of things in this phone. I mean they're technical but they are things to think about for the average user. So they remember that iPhone 16e that they announced last year, kind of midway through the years, that their budget phone, which I do not recommend at all. There's no need to buy that. It's like a Frankenstein phone of recycled parts. I don't think that they should purchase it. It's also a single lens camera, but a not very good one. It came out with the C1 chip which was for cellular connectivity. So that was Apple's first in house chip for connecting to the cellular network. Apple claims that they're a lot more efficient, so that matters for battery life. The Air got the C1X. So the next generation and so I think all the phones maybe have that, but it got, it also got this N1 chip which is their in house, their first generation in house connectivity for WI fi, Bluetooth and thread. And so this, I think this is the only phone I could be wrong. I should look this up. But I think it's the only phone with both the N1 and C1X. Yeah, I can, I can double check that as we're talking. I thought that was kind of interesting from power efficiency. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, for sure. And so I mean that was something that they brought up. Like they have these new chips even some of what if you think about it, even how when you're going and creating your own personal hotspot and stuff like that's, that's why their Devices with that Apple ecosystem work so nicely in terms of just handing off things and you know, playing nice with all the, their devices in the ecosystem. [00:27:24] Speaker A: So yeah, so okay, so all the chips got the N, all the phones got the N1, but it's the only one to get the C1X modem. [00:27:35] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, there you go. [00:27:38] Speaker A: I'm kind of curious what the other modem that the other phones use. I wonder if they're still using Qualcomm. Oh yeah. So the other phones get the standard Qualcomm cellular modems for 6 GHz and millimeter wave. So Apple's trying to get rid of as many third party vendors as possible. I mean obviously they don't have their own chip foundry, but they're trying to not source it from Qualcomm. So this is kind of more advanced in that way. And I, perhaps this is a kind of good. So I wrote a blog post which I can put in the, for my blog. I'll plug it Eric's two Bit Bulletin. That's where my blog, it's a section on my site. And so this is an interesting device because it's like more advanced in terms of design. The ceramic shield, some of the connectivity it has, the pro level chips, but then it's a bit of a step back in terms of battery life and some of the camera features. So it's a weird phone. So at first when I saw this I thought it's kind of like having a really cool sports car that lacks the luxuries of a budget alternative. So it's like, you know, it's like a Porsche with fire engine red paint job from the mid 2000s. It was like $100,000 when you bought it. But you know, it doesn't have a moonroof, doesn't have very good ac, doesn't have a backup cam, and it has either no or lackluster power steering which are things that you would find in a base model Toyota Camry. But it looks cool. So there's trade offs. But then the more I started to think about it, I thought, well, maybe the trade offs are only trade offs in comparison to what was released alongside it. And instead this is more of like what Apple says. It's like a piece of the future. That's their words, not mine, about what things are to be. So like if Apple had released this and they were still just making one phone model a year and then they made the previous years $100 cheaper or whatever, this would be incredible. And so they, it's Weird to me because they've, they've marketed this much like Steve would have. I can totally see Steve Jobs introducing this. [00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:47] Speaker A: But they're trying to market it the way they've always have while also taking this more computery approach to other products that are launched alongside. And I just wonder if that works. [00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. [00:30:03] Speaker A: Because it's, it's. If you are coming from a three, four year old phone, this is overwhelmingly an upgrade. [00:30:10] Speaker B: Almost. Yeah. [00:30:11] Speaker A: In every respect. But it's only in comparison to the old ones that it was like. And like. But I think you're right. I think maybe this is a design for the folding phone. They're going to glue two of these together. When they get it down to 4 millimeters, then it's only 8. What's. There's two of them or something. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah, well, who knows? I mean I, I still like what I would have preferred because I mean I was just even mentioning this just this past week, but I kind of, I don't like having this like, you know, like let's say six point, whatever inch, you know, rectangular thing. It's awkward putting it in your pocket. Like what would be really nice is going back to the days, I mean now that I guess the kids don't remember these but those little clamshell, you know, like the Motorolas or, or what have you, like the razor and stuff or. [00:30:54] Speaker A: And they have flip phones that, with foldable displays that went back to that. [00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean that's, that's what I would want. Even if it was, you know, let's say if it was even that same thickness but then it could be folded and I could put it in my pocket and I don't know, it's a like a little square that folds out into a rectangle and there's other, you know, like Samsung has created something like that and that's why I think like this is maybe, you know, this is just their first foray to just see. Actually one other thing we should also mention like for the. Just from a technical side. So the way that they were able to get this so thin. One other aspect was that this is only an E SIM only device. So there is no SIM card, which. [00:31:35] Speaker A: Is fine in my opinion. Is there a need for a physical SIM card anymore? [00:31:39] Speaker B: Well, you do have options in the other phones but you know, and I. [00:31:43] Speaker A: Guess according to country availability would be the disadvantage if they don't get. If you can't get any SIM in Mongolia when you want to go there with this phone. [00:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Although I mean, apparently Apple's the one who created, according to this, you know, this video, the E SIM technology. And so now it's become a standard everywhere. I personally still like, I mean, I have, you know, an older Pro phone. I had the option of doing an esim and I got a physical sim because I do like the fact that, you know, if I do go to another country, I can just pull the SIM card and then I know that I'm not going to get charge for roaming and other things. [00:32:17] Speaker A: But I thought what you do is you load an EIM onto it and you can have both EIMS installed. It's like installing a certificate. [00:32:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you can. I, I could have an ESIM and also a regular SIM too. [00:32:28] Speaker A: I see, I see. That's nice. Well, I mean, eventually it's going to go. I mean, eventually I feel like the SIM card is. It's just like another port that you have to manufacture and have a thing that plugs in. Right. It's kind of reminds me, this is a tangent, but. So one of the, one of the things I always appreciated about Nintendo, as a video game collector, I have a Nintendo Switch. I don't have a Switch two. I have all, by and large, all the games I have. I only buy games where the whole game is actually available on like the disc for the Xbox or the cart because then the Internet goes down, they don't support the device. Those, I own those games. I have Game Boy cartridges, Nintendo ds. They're good forever as long as the cart doesn't break. But because things are so huge now and because it takes a lot of like you have to load these things up in RAM and the way that things are loaded into the system, a lot of these Switch two carts don't have the game on it. It's really just a license to download it or to load it in. And so from a preservation standpoint, that's a problem. So I can see like it's not the same because we're not preserving SIM cards the same way. But I do see perhaps a downside is like if you have a technical issue, you can't just pull it out and reset it. Right? [00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:42] Speaker A: But I do wonder, like, if it's another port that has to be manufactured. It's a cost. I'm not saying we're going to get the cost passed on to us, but like it's a cost for this, the manufacturer. [00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:33:53] Speaker A: So our takeaway, what's your recommendation? So like, if you're educator, you're up for a new phone, what would your recommendation be? [00:34:02] Speaker B: Honestly, like, I mean I, I guess it comes down to like, you know, what do you want like the sexy sports car where like it's, or even if it's not even a sexy sp car. Like I look at like a, a BMW. It's not. Usually the interior is not that great inside. Right. Like it's just okay. I mean if you want something more luxurious, you'd probably go to a Benz, right? Yeah. Or what have you. So it's like at the end of it, you know, I, I do like the look of that air. So if somebody like from a thinness, the weight and so on, like I, I, I do think that it's a kind of cool phone. But for the average person, probably the base, you know, the 17 is fine. I feel like the Pro is like overkill. I mean I'm even contemplating like especially when you're, the prices are so high. Like I, I don't know. I mean I actually. So I have my 15 Pro and the full thing is titanium. I, I honestly think that it looks better and I haven't had any lag issues. The only problem that I have is my batteries. I'm having to charge it. [00:35:04] Speaker A: Like you know those are 100 bucks to replace. [00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I mean if I need to. But like right now, basically while I'm you know, teaching, I'll just go and charge it. If I do have those type of. [00:35:15] Speaker A: Issues, I'm in the same boat. Unless people need the camera system from a Pro and they're a big photography and they're a birder or something and you also take that with an slr. I always recommend the base especially since all, most of the Pro features that matter like the 120Hz display, the brighter display, all that stuff came to the base model. There's very little. I will say that if you liked the plus model phones. So the base models that were had a bigger screen size but you didn't need the Pro stuff and you do like nice design and you do want something durable and I think, I have no doubt that this is durable if I'll eat my words. If it turns out to bend gate again I don't think so. I suspect the air is just as durable if not more so than the other phones. I think, I think there's a, I don't think this is going to happen. Um, if you want a plus size phone and you don't care as much about the other features, but it's a Screen size and you like the thinness and the weight. I think the air. I don't know that I would recommend the Pro except to the absolute computational photography enthusiast. [00:36:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:36:16] Speaker A: That's kind of what I would think. [00:36:17] Speaker B: Or if you just want to keep up with the Joneses and show a flash your like cosmic orange around so that you can show to the world that you can afford a $2,000 phone. [00:36:27] Speaker A: I think I would get the air and I would put no case on it and that would be my statement. [00:36:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. [00:36:33] Speaker A: So we have a couple other announcements. So they did announce AirPod Pro 3. So those are their high end wireless earbuds. I've never owned a pair of the AirPod Pros. I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than that I've heard they're great and I've at least look even better. [00:36:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean the, the, the feature that blew me away was that Live Translation, that is incredible. That that's like, I mean that needs the phone. [00:37:00] Speaker A: I mean that's, that's the computation's done on the phone side. [00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but still like, I mean just like now I'm like looking at it like this is like, you know, some of those sci fi things actually being realized. Like you know, to imagine you're in Korea or something. And I mean even the demo like that was, that was amazing. So. And, yeah, and, and that doesn't come. [00:37:22] Speaker A: To the older ones, I take it. [00:37:24] Speaker B: I, I have no idea. This is the thing, like, you know. [00:37:27] Speaker A: I wasn't clear on that. [00:37:28] Speaker B: If Live Transition is older, like this is where, because you're right, like it's the device that's going and processing all this stuff. So you know, I, I think sometimes when they're doing some of these presentations, it's like remember with even the Apple watch, the older one, like you know how you had those accessibility features, you'd have it, you know, if you go and you want to just twist your wrist and have like certain like, you know, kind of actions take place. Well, the old phones could do it too. It's just they were, they were trying to push and sell their new, their new watches, right? So at the end of it they didn't really advertise and you just had to go in and change some of the accessibility options to enable it. [00:38:11] Speaker A: So, so just to be clear, the, the AirPods Pro 2 and the regular AirPods, if you get the active noise canceling version will also feature. [00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah, see, there you go. But that's why? It's almost like misinformation, right? They're making it seem like the only way you're going to get it is if you buy these new ones. But yeah, there you go. [00:38:34] Speaker A: I think they had better noise cancellation, they had better audio quality. I mean, I'm sure there's an improvement, I have no doubt. But those features that they are launching are a part of software in iOS 26, which we can talk about when they release. I'll upgrade them on Monday, I guess tomorrow I'll get it. We'll see if it breaks my device. [00:38:52] Speaker B: But yeah, on a side note for those on the education side, so for certain devices they right now until the end of September, if you use the educational pricing they are giving, like with MacBook Airs or MacBooks, you can get free AirPods. You can even get the, the better ones by paying the difference and, and so on. And so that might be something to kind of, you know, look at. They're probably trying to clear out their old inventory of the, the AirPods. So that's why they're just giving the base versions for free. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. I mean I, that's a good thing. So if you're, if you're interested in a Mac iPad phone education, I don't know, when the education disc, you get an education discount. Plus they throw in either like an Apple pencil for an iPad or you can have, you get a choice between a bunch of things that come at no cost, including AirPods. In fact, I'd never purchased a pair of AirPods. They've always come with something and I think I have the AirPods 3, which is fine. I'm happy with that. Yeah, I don't intend to update them. Should we go on to the watches? [00:39:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure. [00:40:00] Speaker A: So they announced a bunch of watches. So in this ever expanding lineup of products that Apple seems to have. So we get the apple watch series 11. Okay, so that basically, I don't know, you know, I don't even know what the huge advancements were in the apple watch series 11. I think it gets, I have to, I have my notes here, so I'll have to look that up. We got an Apple Watch Ultra 3 and then we got the Apple Watch SE3, which I personally thought was the most interesting. What did you think of these upgrades so far? [00:40:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It just feels like every time I watch it or like see this, like the Apple Watch lineup, it just, they're, they're telling the same story pretty much. Every year it's like more sensors, more health tracking, more, more models. You know the, the Ultra, it's kind of like if we're relating it back to like the iPhones, you know the Ultra is for those. [00:41:08] Speaker A: The Pro. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah, like the Pro, it's like for bragging rights, right? Yes. [00:41:13] Speaker A: Like hiking or do deep sea diving or something like that. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it was cool. Like they showed some of the satellite features so like yeah, if you're out in, out in the boonies and so like you could actually go in access and they put in a better antenna for doing some of that. [00:41:27] Speaker A: Well that's a good place. So we can start with the Ultra. So you get they, I think they did increase the display size by making the bezel a bit slender so that it was pretty thick before. It has a better always on refresh rate. So it can refresh once per second instead of once per minute. So that just gives you a nicer looking always on display. It does have some killer battery life which is a big deal for The Apple Watch. 42 hours which is. And then in low power Mode it has 72 hours of battery life. So if you are out in the sticks hiking and you're not going to charge it for a couple of days, there is a way to put it into low power and then 15 minutes gives you an extra charging, gives 12 hours of usage which is pretty impressive. Yeah, the fast charging plus the battery, I can see it. If you use it and you're like mountain climbing or something. I can see the need. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:18] Speaker A: Built in satellite two way SOS messaging, you know, off the grid location sharing. If you get stuck 5G cellular. I think the older one, the old watches were all LTE cellular. So if you want a cellular connected watch it's 5G. You know they say better durability. I think it, I think there's a better glass or something on it. And then the series 11 and it. The watch, Apple Watch Ultra get this too but they get hypertension notifications so it can use has some sort of machine learning algorithm from some study that had thousands and thousands of people where they can tell hypertension by using the heart rate sensor to some extent. There's a sleep score feature. I think those two things will come to older Apple watches. A couple from nine to present up to 24 hours of battery life on the standard watch. And then they say that their aluminum case is twice as scratch resistant. The ion glass has the ceramic coating like we talked about. And the titanium models again would benefit from the construction Similar to the iPhone air. So you're getting a 5G support, so you're getting some pretty good upgrades. They didn't change, by the way, Apple didn't mention this. I don't think they didn't mention any of the chips for the Apple Watch because they stuck with the same chip as last time. S10 is the chip they didn't upgrade to a new generation of microprocessor. They actually left the old one, which is interesting to me. Maybe for cost reasons, maybe for supply, I don't know. But the reason I caught it is because they are like now the Apple Watch SE3, which we'll get to in a second, their low watch gets the same chip as our best watches. And I'm like, well hang on a second, didn't they just update that chip? So isn't it already out of date? And so I thought, oh, they must mean the most powerful current chip because of course you'd have to pre order these. And they had some workaround to say that. But no, they all stick with the same chip from the previous generation. So this is the most iterative, minimal Apple Watch, I think upgrade cycle ever. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And again, like, yeah, I think mostly what they were kind of focusing on was it wasn't really much about telling the time, but it's more about Apple owning the parts of the life that feel like more medical and yeah, so yeah, it was, it was interesting. But yeah, I don't think there's anything super exciting. It's just, yeah, you got to go and decide do you want to go flashy? You want just the middle of the road and then I guess the entry level which you want to talk about. [00:44:49] Speaker A: I think excited about my opinion these days. For most people it used to be, I mean for laptops it's a bit different when I make recommendations. Like I say go for RAM and storage rather than processing power. The processing power is so far ahead, especially on the Apple side. But even the ARM side on Windows computers like this is not an issue. You're going to run out of RAM by running multiple applications. You're going to run out of storage long before you hit the limits of the CPU bounce. So if you want a MacBook Pro, most people can probably get away with the non pro chip in the MacBook Pro as long as they have enough RAM and storage, et cetera. And this is kind of no different. I recommend that people go budget unless you need the bigger screen and want the thin and light with the bigger screen like in the phone or you need the, the, there's a feature you need because the entry level stuff, it's not even entry level, it's just their standard is so good at this point. Like I, I want, I wear, I use the budget Apple phone, I use the entry level and I use the entry level Apple Watch. I've had the SE and to me this is the one. And CNET said this in their coverage, they said that this, the se, the low, which I think stands for special edition, the lower end Apple watch, despite having a smaller screen and a few things stole the show. You get the always on display. That's a very handy feature. You get the super durable Ionx glass. It bumps up the chip so it's actually parallel with all the other watches. So it gets the exact same internals. It doesn't have the battery upgrade so you get 8. It's an 18 hour battery instead of 24 but it charges like 8 hours and 15 minutes and so it doesn't take like 2 hours to charge it all the way up anymore. You get the sleep score, you know, cycle tracking, you get sleep apnea notifications, wrist temperature sensing. You don't get hypertension, but you can get cellular connectivity if you want. And I think the US price is like 299 or 249 or some ridiculously low for a smart price, a smartwatch price, maybe it's 329canadian. I don't see unless you need a specific fitness feature or the battery life, I don't see any reason to make the 11 or the ultra a product. I mean I've never found that I was lacking health notifications on this one. [00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:47:20] Speaker A: I mean that's just my opinion. I'm going to, I haven't written about this yet. I'll trickle out my ideas. All these things are going to get the same OS upgrade whether you like liquid glass. We can talk about that when it launches or not. So that to me again the budget. If you're like I need a new watch and a new phone, I bought them together four years ago. I would get a standard phone and a standard watch. I don't see a need to upgrade to this stuff unless it's the look and feel that you're after. [00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Because you're on an older Apple watch, aren't you? [00:47:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, and I'm contemplating too like what should I do? Because my batteries SE would be a. [00:47:58] Speaker A: Solid one for you. That would be a good upgrade. [00:47:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I'm like on an Apple Watch 5 and I mean it's still fine. But like now the, the battery is kind of in the. And if I want to replace it, it's. I just think I'm at the point where it's probably better just to get another watch. [00:48:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you might be happy with the se. [00:48:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, I mean, I think it probably is a large improvement, right? Like versus what I have. And then yeah, you have the battery life and then all the other kind of bells and whistles. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Again, it's like I look at their Apple's product strategy, it's, it's getting. For the average person, I feel they're getting a little bit kind of complicated to make those choices. Like what, what should you get? [00:48:43] Speaker A: I agree with you and that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you end this discussion today with. I get the impression that it doesn't bother me as much on the computer side. I feel like there's some holding patterns over there with their desktops and what's happening that's left over from the transition from intel to Apple silicon. But like the laptop line to me makes sense. There's two sizes in each category, but you get the Air or you get the Pro and that's it. I mean, I understand that there's two sizes for each, so there's technically four. But the internals aren't that different so you can get the same internal. It's not like the. I don't think the larger ones get like an advantage in terms of how you can equip them. Same thing with desktops, right? I mean you get the. What is it? [00:49:33] Speaker B: They have the. [00:49:33] Speaker A: I guess they still have the imac though. Let's take that aside really. You get the Mini or you get the Studio. [00:49:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:39] Speaker A: I mean we can even leave out the Big tower because it hasn't even been updated for a while. So to me those product lines aren't overexpanded and Pro models are niche and so that doesn't really take away from the average user because they're not comparing to those anyways. But all these post PC devices, these mobile devices are more or less to me, consumption devices. They're not yet computer replacements. So we have the iPad, the iPad mini, the iPad Air, the iPad Pro, we have an ever increasing phone and watch line. I think this is quite complicated. [00:50:15] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, I mean it would be nice if they just had, let's say with the phones, either you get the Air or you get the Pro, right? [00:50:27] Speaker A: And that would make more sense to me from a branding and maybe that's what will happen. Maybe they'll phase out. I think like you get the Air or you get the Pro. Even if they each comes in different sizes, that doesn't bother me. I'm not counting exactly the phone, like the phone or sorry, the watch. To me maybe the Apple Watch SE is different because it uses older parts, but yeah. And the Ultra seems like a super niche. So I guess if you don't count the Ultra, if you count the Ultra as being like the Pro computer, maybe it, it is. Makes more sense. [00:51:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:02] Speaker A: But the, the iPads to me are the, the worst offender because the Air is the. First of all, the Air isn't even the thinnest iPad, which doesn't make any sense. It's not Air at all. So they need to adjust that and then you have a Mini, which I've never seen the appeal of from a mass market. I feel like that's such a niche product and they have an entry level which is a very strange device but though a good value and there's too many. [00:51:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:51:28] Speaker A: So perhaps stick with entry level devices with more storage and stuff like that. If you need a phone, you're better off maybe to have more storage. My recommendation to people is that for the watch side is entry level all the way. I can't make a recommendation on headphones because it kind of depends on what you already own. On the phone side I would say entry level with more storage would be a better value. [00:51:52] Speaker B: But now, I mean they, they all come with 256 just you know, standard across all the devices. So. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Which I've never run out of. That's always been a lot. [00:52:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean unless I think you're going and you know, shooting like the 4K video or what have you, I don't know if you'd have much for issues. So I, it, I've always just kept at the 256 myself too. And so that's nice at least before it was like 128 and then you'd have to get up to the 256. So. Yeah, and again it should just come down to your lifestyle and what you want. But yeah, I think the iPhone 17 or if you want something new. I mean originally before seeing this announcement I was questioning the Air. I thought it was going to be. It's another bend gate waiting to happen. And you know, given that it's like a new product and experimental but after watching the video and just some of the their material choices. I feel comfortable with that one. If people are okay with just having thinner, lighter, sacrificing on the battery a little bit and the camera, so. And I honestly, I don't see myself getting the pro anytime soon unless they come up with something better, like, just something that, you know, design, like, it. It was cool having the colors, but I don't know. I mean, the liquid chamber and all that, like, it was just, like, more to break. Yeah, maybe. [00:53:21] Speaker A: Yeah, you make a good point. You make a good point. Well, that's probably a good place to end it. [00:53:27] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [00:53:28] Speaker A: So it was a pleasure chatting with you, and we hope people tune in next time. [00:53:33] Speaker B: Take care. Take care, Sam.