Is This Your Dog?
Marco:
So I'm a little bit hoarse because I'm a little bit sick.
Casey:
You're not going to get me sick, are you?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I caught someone's allergies, in quotes.
Marco:
But anyway, you'll never guess where I'm recording from right now.
Marco:
Not the beach?
Marco:
Not the beach.
Marco:
The Delaware.
Marco:
Hi.
Marco:
I am recording from my Rivian.
Casey:
You're recording from your Rivian?
Casey:
What are you talking about?
Casey:
Is your Rivian outside my house?
Casey:
Because that would be amazing.
Marco:
That would be, oh, I got to do that sometime.
Marco:
But I didn't do that this time.
Marco:
It's a little far.
Marco:
Through a weird series of logistical events, you know, as listeners know, I recently bought a house and we're in the process of moving to and it's taking up my entire fall.
Marco:
Because part of that moving process involves the house that I bought is a bit of a fixer upper and that's putting it mildly.
Marco:
And so they're doing a ton of renovation before we can move in.
Marco:
There were like structural problems.
Marco:
We knew going in, you know, this wasn't a surprise, but we accepted the project because it was actually the least bad house that was available.
Marco:
So anyway, so as part of that, we rented an apartment nearby that would go month to month, which is almost nothing around here.
Marco:
And it's just like this, like the side of somebody's house that we knew that was like a separate part of their house.
Marco:
And so we're renting that so that Adam can like easily go to school here in the new town before our house is actually livable, which should hopefully be in about a month.
Marco:
The apartment does not have good internet service.
Marco:
Now...
Marco:
It has it's the house.
Marco:
It's just owned by, you know, an older couple.
Marco:
They don't need much.
Marco:
So they have some really basic cable broadband service from the local cable ISP.
Marco:
And the speed tests I run on it usually are something like 20 megabits down for up.
Marco:
Oh, it's it's not good.
Marco:
And and it also fluctuates a lot.
Marco:
I was not going to try to record ATP on that.
Marco:
Now, naturally, even though the new house does not currently have plumbing or walls, it does have gigabit fiber because, of course, I got that installed.
Marco:
Priorities, baby.
Marco:
And it turns out cars mostly make really good sound recording environments because they are small spaces full of soft surfaces and mostly a bunch of different angles of surfaces.
Marco:
So the sound gets diffused, it gets absorbed by the soft things, and there's not much room for it to echo.
John:
But you've got glass windows all around.
John:
That's terrible for sound.
Marco:
Yeah, but there's enough soft stuff and obliquely angled surfaces that the sound bounces around and gets absorbed correctly anyway.
John:
Well, I guess you'll find out when you edit this because right now Zoom is totally changing the audio so we can't hear what's really going on, but you'll find out.
Marco:
the great that i have great you know precise climate control and everything it's actually quite cozy um infinite electricity that you know run my laptop off of and everything so that's that part's all great does the rivian have podcaster mode so you don't get too hot well i i had to tell it that i'm camping which is not quite accurate i feel like i'm kind of stealing camping valor did you do the auto leveling thing so you're very so you're level while you're podcasting
Marco:
I actually the button is right there on the screen.
Marco:
I've been afraid to push it because I like I got all set up and then saw the button.
Marco:
I'm like, I don't want to mess anything up.
Marco:
It's working great right now.
Marco:
So this is where I'm recording from.
Marco:
And interesting.
Marco:
So anyway, so at the apartment, the Wi-Fi is terrible and we're not going to be there long enough to make a big thing.
Marco:
You know, the couple who's renting it to us is very nice and they're being very generous.
Marco:
And so I don't want to make a stink and make them change their whole ISP just for me.
Marco:
And so I thought, let me try one of those 5G hotspots.
Marco:
They've been around for a while, like, you know, the little standalone Netgear hotspots and similar other brands.
Marco:
And I've never tried one before.
Marco:
And they do usually support high gain external antennas.
Marco:
So I thought, I actually, I had a trip that I recently went on that it would be useful for.
Marco:
And I thought, let me give this a shot.
Marco:
I'll get it like, you know, a few weeks early and I'll try it at the apartment.
Marco:
And so I actually got the Netgear Nighthawk M6 Pro.
Marco:
Nighthawk?
Casey:
Yes.
Marco:
All of Netgear's names are alike.
Marco:
Military, vehicle, manliness.
Marco:
Like, it's terrible.
Marco:
Like, they're the worst.
John:
They look like Transformers or like Kit.
Marco:
They're terrible.
Marco:
It's like, did a teenage boy name all this stuff?
Marco:
I mean, probably.
Marco:
Anyway, so I got the Nighthawk M6 Pro, which is way less violent than it sounds.
Marco:
And in fact, it's just a little black box of electronics.
Marco:
But anyway, so I activated an AT&T.
Marco:
That was a process.
Marco:
I don't recommend doing that process.
Marco:
But once it was activated, it works great.
Marco:
And I recently I was traveling and I was in a hotel last week and I got to use it instead of my like I was like, let me see.
Marco:
Maybe I'll bring it to the hotel.
Marco:
And then instead of using hotel Wi-Fi, let me see if this thing works.
Marco:
And I got the external high gain antenna for it.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
For hotel use, if you have good reception, which I did, it was remarkably good.
Marco:
Now, it's not unlimited data, but like the AT&T plans that you get with it, they start at like 50 gigs for 50 bucks-ish, something like that.
Marco:
For hotel internet use, this thing was amazing.
Marco:
Because unlike tethering, which I know, Casey, you love tethering.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
This thing is just broadcasting Wi-Fi.
Marco:
And it has Ethernet, too.
Marco:
It has a bunch of advanced stuff I didn't really need.
Marco:
Oh, and I should clarify, this is a very expensive hotspot that I did not pay anywhere near the retail price for.
Marco:
I believe the retail price is like $900.
Casey:
It's $1,000 on Amazon right now.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
But I got an Amazon, like, recertified, renewed, refurbished one for, I believe, $275.
Marco:
It was something like that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
If you look on Amazon now, there's a few that are, like, a little below $300.
Marco:
So I thought, well, I mean, you know, I'll take that risk, sure.
Marco:
And it's worked out fine.
Marco:
I can tell there's nothing wrong with it.
Marco:
It works great.
Marco:
And it was, again, I would not recommend this at $1,000.
Marco:
But at $300...
Marco:
Maybe it's actually anyway.
Marco:
So the experience of using it again, to those of you out there who have used this before, this is going to be old hat.
Marco:
This is like me describing Wi-Fi to you.
Marco:
But forgive me that I've never used one of these before.
Marco:
It was great because what it does is it broadcast its own Wi-Fi network and you don't have to individually have all your devices sign into the hotel Wi-Fi.
Marco:
And the Wi-Fi connection doesn't expire after every day.
Marco:
Then you have to go back into the hotel portal and re-enter your room number and all that crap.
Marco:
You don't have to pay the five bucks extra per day to have the faster connection or whatever.
Marco:
It's just like being on your home Wi-Fi.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
And speed-wise, I really, you know, I wouldn't want to burn all my limited data downloading Xcode or anything over this thing.
Marco:
But speed-wise...
Marco:
In most of my work, it was hard to notice.
Marco:
I easily forgot that I was effectively tethering.
Marco:
And again, this was in a 5G coverage area with a strong signal with the antenna.
Marco:
So I was getting very good service to it.
Marco:
But in those conditions, it was fantastic.
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't know that I'm going to keep this plan active.
Marco:
If you buy the thing up front for Amazon or whatever, instead of buying it through your carrier, there's no contract usually.
Marco:
So I got this thing month to month.
Marco:
And so I'm going to only turn on the plan when I actually am going to travel somewhere and use it.
Marco:
But this is great.
Marco:
It is so much nicer.
Marco:
If you are somewhere to work, it was so nice to just open up my laptop and it was just on.
Marco:
It was connected.
Marco:
It's similar to when devices have built-in cellular.
Marco:
This is why we want this so badly.
Marco:
It's that much better.
Marco:
And then everything was on.
Marco:
My laptop, my phone, my watch.
Marco:
All of my devices were on the Wi-Fi all the time for the entire handful of days I was there.
Marco:
It was fantastic.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
It's not for everyone.
Marco:
It's a little expensive.
Marco:
I get that.
Marco:
But if that's if that's for you, that's a good option to know about.
Marco:
It also they have all sorts of features like you can use it as a backup connection with your home router and stuff like that.
Marco:
There's all sorts of features like that.
Marco:
I didn't I didn't test any of those.
Marco:
I didn't have time yet.
Marco:
But anyway, I thought, great, this should fix the apartment Internet connection, too, because we're only going to be there for like another month or so.
Marco:
Let me just get a better connection for that.
Marco:
And then I'll be able to use that while I'm there and be able to do the show from there if need be and so on.
Marco:
and the apartment does not have a good service like there is not only is the wi-fi pretty slow uh but the there is like basically no 5g service and here i'm like going around the whole place like sticking the suction cups from the antenna up against like every single window in the place trying out different different locations they're all bad like there is nowhere i get like two bars of service at best anywhere in the apartment and
Marco:
with both this thing and my phone and any other 5G device.
Marco:
So unfortunately, it does not help me at all there.
Marco:
And that's why I'm sitting in my review and recording this podcast in a very awkward setup in front of my under construction house that has gigabit Wi-Fi.
Casey:
We should move on and we will once again ask you for the very last time until this time next year to go to stjude.org slash ATP, S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP and give some money to some kids who really, really could use it.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
St.
Casey:
Jude is a children's research hospital.
Casey:
It's based in Memphis, Tennessee, and they do amazing work and they do it for Americans and everyone else as well.
Casey:
It is incredible the work that this place has done.
Casey:
And as one of the largest pediatric cancer hospitals in the world, St.
Casey:
Jude treats more than 8,000 patients each year, many of whom are treated as outpatients, which is incredible.
Casey:
St.
Casey:
Jude has achieved a 94% survival rate for a particular type of leukemia, which is a type of blood cancer that is up from 4% in 1962.
Casey:
So from 4% to 94%, I'd say they're doing okay.
Casey:
The work they do is incredible.
Casey:
They are such incredible people there that all they want to do is to provide health care and some sort of smile and good news for sick children and their families.
Casey:
They don't charge their patients or their families a dime.
Casey:
The work they do is unbelievable, and we really should applaud them.
Casey:
So if you have any dollars or whatever your local currency is that you can scrape together and give to St.
Casey:
Jude,
Casey:
Be it $1, be it $10, be it $1,000.
Casey:
Be that if you want to earn some stickers from me, $10,001, because the leading donor is still $10,000.
Casey:
Which, by the way, I don't think you reached out to collect your stickers, so please do.
Casey:
But anyways, if you want some ATP stickers, which are not for sale, and we will probably never put them up for sale because I love having it as currency slash encouragement.
Casey:
Anyway, if you want stickers...
Casey:
Go to std.org slash ATP.
Casey:
Now is the time.
Casey:
Marco, you and I, I believe, have received new telephones.
Casey:
I think Tina has as well.
Casey:
Marco, if you've received some new completely unnecessary device from Apple or someone else, what can you do to help compute the recommended ATP donation?
Marco:
Well, here's the thing.
Marco:
You look at the family of phone that you bought, whether it's the iPhone 15 Pro or the iPhone 15.
Marco:
The Max is not its own family, so you use the Pro.
Marco:
You look at the base price of that family.
Marco:
So the Pro is $1,000.
Marco:
The non-Pro is, what, $800?
Marco:
I forgot.
Marco:
I don't remember.
Marco:
You can figure it out.
Marco:
You're smart.
Marco:
So anyway, look at the base price of that.
Marco:
Then you look at the receipt total from your order, including a year or two years of AppleCare if you chose the monthly AppleCare plan.
Marco:
You look at the receipt total, sales tax, anything, all the different fees, accessories you purchased along with the phone, higher storage tiers, whatever it is, look at that receipt total.
Marco:
Subtract the base price of the family, $1,000, and that is your minimum donation, ideally.
Marco:
So if you can swing it, and many of you can, that's wonderful.
Marco:
We're all very fortunate to be able to do that.
Marco:
If you can swing it, that is your minimum donation to St.
Marco:
Jude.
Marco:
If you can do more, great, do more.
Marco:
If you can't do that, do what you can if you can.
Marco:
But that's your target.
Marco:
Minimum target is...
Marco:
The difference between your total receipt price for whatever you just bought that you didn't probably necessarily super need and the base price of the family.
Marco:
So good luck.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And if you wanted to help compute that for you, is there a website or a slogan or like a name for this whole idea that we could look up?
Marco:
Yes, this is called the Marco Offset.
Marco:
And somebody made a website that I forgot the URL.
Marco:
Is it just MarcoOffset.com?
Casey:
It's the MarcoOffset.com.
Marco:
There you go.
Casey:
So you can plug in your particulars to themarcooffset.com, and you will get a suggested donation.
Casey:
So please, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which is why we're doing it now.
Casey:
As we record, it's Tuesday the 26th.
Casey:
This is the last time you're going to hear this until 2024.
Casey:
But please, please consider throwing a few dollars their way, stjude.org.
Casey:
John, anything you'd like to add?
John:
Even though the September will end, you can give at any time during the year.
John:
That is also true.
John:
This is my last chance to give one of my usual pitches about this is to people in our audience who are software developers or some other fairly highly paid profession.
John:
If you're like just getting out of college or you're getting your first job as a programmer or whatever –
John:
I remember what that was like.
John:
You feel like you're just kind of trying to get your feet underneath you.
John:
And when you hear people talk about charities and stuff like that on podcasts, you say, oh, this is a good cause.
John:
I hope people give to that.
John:
But you feel like it's something for other people because you are not yet in a position to do that.
John:
And that's true.
John:
Maybe you're just getting your feet under yourself.
John:
You really don't have time or money to think about charity at this point.
John:
But what happens is...
John:
Especially if you're in one of these pretty well-paid technical professions like software developer or similar.
John:
You'll have your job for a few years and maybe you'll move to another job or get a promotion or whatever.
John:
And the years will pass by and eventually...
John:
Without realizing it, you will become one of those people who you used to think about as listening to charity pitches and giving money to charity.
John:
Because, you know, if asked in a survey, like, oh, yeah, people should give.
John:
What percentage of people's income do you think they should give to charity?
John:
It's like, well, if they don't have a lot of money, like maybe they can't afford to give anything.
John:
And that's fine.
John:
But once people start making real money and they get, you know, they start, you know, they pay off their student loans or whatever.
John:
And like they're finally getting their feet under them.
John:
They're thinking about saving for a house or whatever.
John:
Those people should give X percent of their money to charity.
John:
Right.
John:
And it's really easy to say that and think about that when you're assuming it's other people.
John:
But if you find yourself in your mid-30s having worked as a software developer for 5, 10, 15 years, chances are good that you are now one of those people who you used to think is supposed to give money to charity.
John:
And if you aren't in the habit of giving money to charity, that abstract concept of what percentage of
John:
you know, well-to-do people should give to charity.
John:
Like you have that in your head, but then look, when you do your taxes at the end of the year and say, what percentage of our income did we give to charity this year?
John:
I'm not saying you have to give to St.
John:
Jude.
John:
You can give to whatever cause that you believe in, although we think this is a good cause.
John:
And it's really easy to do.
John:
S-T-J-U-D-E dot O-R-G slash ATP.
John:
Think about at the year end,
John:
what charities we're going to do.
John:
And the good thing is, for tax purposes and everything, you can give all the money on one day at the very end of the year.
John:
It's not like you need to spread it out throughout the year, and sometimes that you can give monthly or whatever.
John:
But please, think about the idea that perhaps you, without you knowing it, have become one of those people who you always assumed would give money to charity.
John:
Check your tax return and see if that's you.
John:
And if it's not, give a dollar or something.
John:
It's great.
John:
It'll make you feel good.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
St.
Casey:
Jude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
John, there's been some developments.
Casey:
This is a bit inside baseball, but this whole thing, it's almost too bad that nobody else gets to see the accidental channel in the Relay Slack, which is where we take, you know, that's our Slack channel for the three of us.
Casey:
We usurp Relay's bandwidth, if you will.
Casey:
And watching this fly by over the last few days has been a true honest to goodness delight.
Casey:
John, can you tell me what you've been up to recently?
John:
Yeah, last episode, Marco was saying, let me tell you how John gets me to add features to the website.
John:
He sends these pull requests over the fence that he's never even run a code that he's never even run code that he doesn't even have the ability to run.
John:
And then that makes me just reimplemented and do it myself in a language he doesn't officially know.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And he said this because I had just recently done that.
John:
Sent a pull request, noting full well, hey, I've never run any of this code.
John:
I feel like two things here.
John:
One, Marco was employing his own version of the same thing, which I'll get to in a second.
John:
But two, before I get to that one, he talked about me sending a pull request that I had never run.
John:
He had also never run that pull request.
John:
And I know that because when I eventually did the number one thing that I'll get to in a second, I ran my pull request on a dev version of ATP.fm, and it worked the first time with no changes.
John:
So if he'd only just accepted that pull request, merged it and deployed it, or merged it and tested it, it would have worked perfectly.
John:
So here's the thing.
John:
How did I test it?
Marco:
In all fairness, that one was a lot less code and a lot less broken than the first one you sent.
John:
yeah well you know you win some you lose some anyway here's what here's what marco did here's the first thing i was referring to you know here's how his thing was like here's how john gets me to make changes to the website well here's how marco gets me to finally get a dev version of the site up and running he talks about it on the podcast and so i said you know what i started that project to make like a you know a docker uh image that would run the dev server let me finish that project because marco called me out on another podcast so that's what i did i
John:
I picked up my Docker work that I had been doing, and I got the site up and running in Docker in a mostly working state.
John:
And the very first thing I did was went to dev.atp.fm slash specials and saw that the specials page that I had added worked perfectly.
John:
But of course, I didn't stop there.
John:
Once I had a working dev server, I just went down the punch list of all the easy, tiny little changes that are in our like to do document for the website.
John:
And I did a bunch of them as well.
John:
And then Casey tried out my Docker thing and it worked for him on the very first try.
John:
So this is the magic of Docker.
Casey:
And not only that, there was a small bit of user error on my part, wherein there was an expectation of an environment variable that I did not set correctly.
John:
Casey doesn't know how fish works.
John:
That's the problem.
Marco:
Fish is weird.
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
Who does know how fish works?
Marco:
That's not a valid complaint to accuse Casey of that.
Marco:
No one knows how fish works.
John:
Well, I mean, see, here's the thing.
John:
He was using a fishism, so he knows a little bit about how it works, but he needed to set an environment variable.
John:
But rather than setting an environment variable the way you would do it in, like, Bash or the Bourne shell or any other regular shell, he set it doing it the weird fish way.
John:
This is F-I-S-H, not P-H-I-S-H.
John:
It's not Marco's band.
John:
Right.
John:
That shell I would know something about.
John:
the commands are very long right but he could have just used bash cell syntax in a work but instead he used he used the special fish syntax for their universal variable thing which are like turbocharged environment i don't know i don't use fish but anyway he used the special fish specific one and that's not the same thing as environment variables not tripped him up anyway continue casey yeah so
Casey:
Thank you for that.
Casey:
But anyway, suffice to say, you're raking me over the coals here and I'm trying to compliment you.
Casey:
This is the story of our relationship.
Casey:
Merlin, I feel you.
John:
No, I was just saying that you actually do know something about the fish show because you were using a very specific feature that you had to have read the docs to learn about.
Casey:
Yeah, fair enough.
Casey:
Well, all right, I'll allow it.
Casey:
But anyways, the point is, I go to run this, I thought I'd set my environment variable correctly, clearly I was wrong.
Casey:
But, and this is the mark of a mature and well seasoned developer, that when I ran it, the script that you had helpfully provided to start the whole, you know, download the container, start it, run it, and so on and so forth.
Casey:
it immediately said, hey, I can't find such and such environment variable.
Casey:
What would you like it to be set to?
Casey:
Which was just chef's kiss.
Casey:
This is the sign of a mature developer.
Casey:
Immature developers, including probably me, would have just dumped and said, you didn't set it, dummy.
John:
But no, John's script says- No, immature developers would have done two things.
John:
One, they wouldn't have set minus X on the bash script, so it would have continued whether there was an error or not.
John:
And two, it would just blindly continue with an empty string.
John:
Yep, that's all right.
John:
And then somewhere down the line that would manifest in something not working and it would be totally unclear why it didn't work.
That's fair.
Casey:
Anyway, I was very proud of you.
Casey:
And yes, it did work the very first shot.
Casey:
Your instructions were excellent.
Casey:
That was the other good thing.
Casey:
It turns out documentation is helpful.
Casey:
Who knew?
Casey:
And John had excellent documentation and it worked lickety split.
Casey:
It was great.
Marco:
And it turns out that just fixing something yourself is way better than filing a bug report and just waiting forever.
John:
well we didn't have a bugger horses we just had a document with a to-do list so all i needed was the ability to do the things on the to-do list and i did and i'm doing the easy ones to be clear i'm still leaving all the hard ones for you it's also fair that you know like the the things on the to-do list like you keep writing them and i keep not looking at them that's that's quite a metaphor really you just got to get the top two that we put in there recently and i'll handle everything else i don't even know what they are you know yo you know do i you do
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They have smart folders with all sorts of rules and techniques built in.
Marco:
Of course, you can customize them.
Marco:
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Of course, all sorts of filter support and a screener, which turns your inbox into an opt-in if you want, which is really cool.
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This is really advanced.
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
iPhone 15.
Casey:
We're going to be bouncing in and out of iPhone 15 topics throughout the evening or day, whatever, whenever you're listening to this.
Casey:
So the iPhone 15 data transfer over USB-C.
Casey:
We had some feedback with regard to this.
Casey:
Samuel Polay wrote, I was setting up my iPhone 15 Pro in the Apple store, which seems an odd choice unless you have really crummy internet at home.
Casey:
But hey, you know, whatever works for you.
Marco:
Actually, there's a reason for that if you're trading it in as part of the purchase.
Casey:
Oh, thank you.
Casey:
You're exactly right.
Casey:
I completely forgot about that.
Casey:
I take it all back, Samuel.
Casey:
My apologies.
Casey:
So Samuel writes, I chose restoration from iCloud since the store's Wi-Fi was providing 100 megabits per second down.
Casey:
But my estimate still came in at around an hour to complete.
Casey:
An Apple Store employee saw this and plugged in an Ethernet cable to my new phone.
Casey:
The estimate then dropped to 10 minutes.
Marco:
that's frigging awesome i kind of wonder where the ethernet drops are within the apple store because i don't remember having seen this in my inside the tables you know secret compartments yeah no i know what you're thinking of i just didn't realize there are ethernet drops in there yeah everything's tucked in those tables like they it's so funny like whenever whenever you discover something new like if you like you know ask for a bag or you know the funny thing is like if you need change from cash like they just like touch somewhere and all of a sudden boop something pops out like oh you had those in there like
John:
You just pull the right book on the bookshelf and the thing turns around and there's cash.
Casey:
But anyway, that's extremely cool.
Casey:
And I think that that's very fun and very awesome.
Casey:
Although I wonder what is the best way to handle both power delivery and Ethernet?
Marco:
I guess one of those pass-through USB-C hubs, like the dongles that have the Ethernet and then the pass-through charging port.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, that's true.
John:
We'll get to that in the next bit of follow-up here.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
I should have kept reading.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
So Chris Jones writes, After doing a device-to-device transfer, my iPhone 15 Pro still seems to be pulling a lot of data from the cloud.
Casey:
So I plugged the phone into my laptop dock and was saturating my connection at 400 megabits downloading stuff via Ethernet.
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
That's super fun.
John:
Yeah, so if you've got a laptop dock that supports USB-C stuff, you can plug your phone into it to get access to the Ethernet provided by that laptop dock, which probably has an Ethernet port on it or whatever.
John:
Yeah, all the benefits of USB-C.
John:
And to be clear, people are doing this.
John:
It's because they're trying to get better than Wi-Fi speeds.
John:
So Samuel was saying he was getting 100 megabits in Wi-Fi, but USB-C is 10 gigabits if you have the right cable for it.
Casey:
I thought it was more than that, but you're probably right.
John:
Yeah, I think it's limited on the 15 Pro to 10 gigabits, but even 480 megabits is better than 100 megabits.
John:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Nope, that's incredible.
Casey:
Eric Merrill wrote in with regard to USB-A to USB-C adapters.
Casey:
The USB-C spec, for backwards compatibility and cheapness reasons,
Casey:
allows some cases where a USB-C plug connector may supply power blindly without negotiation or additional resistors, namely in A to C plug cables for charging and certain power adapters.
Casey:
But power adapters like this must have the cable permanently attached to the adapter, so there's only a C plug connection available.
Casey:
Because of this, all USB-C socket ports must be able to receive 5 volts of power at any time without warning.
Casey:
A USB-C socket port is never allowed to supply power blindly.
Casey:
But a USB-A port is typically always supplying power and not expecting to receive power.
Casey:
So when you connect a USB-C socket to a USB-A plug adapter, like the one John was describing, you have created a USB-C socket port with 5 volts being output on it.
Casey:
Depending on what things you plug into that port, you can connect two power supply outputs into each other, resulting in unexpected current flow.
Casey:
There are safe ways to use these adapters, but they are not foolproof, and that's why they're prohibited by the spec.
John:
So that would probably explain why there's so many people saying things melted or caught on fire because this is just not supposed to happen.
John:
I know it's confusing with the A and the C and the plug and the socket and everything, but basically this is a violation of the spec because you've got an A plug and a C socket and they're
John:
connected directly to each other not you know normally you would have a cable and people think well if it's a cable isn't it just the exact same thing as the adapter but with a long string between it no because the cable would have a plug on both ends and there would be no sockets this is an essentially an adapter a dongle and that's
John:
Why, yeah, you can find these real cheap, but they're not recommended.
Marco:
And if you think about what those adapters allow you to create is with one of those adapters that converts A to a C hole, and then one of those basic C to A charging cables, then you can create, by plugging those into each other through the Cs, you can create an A to A cable.
Marco:
And that's what the problem is.
Marco:
Like if you have two A ports both supplying power to each other and not expecting to receive power into an A port, that's a big problem.
Marco:
And so there are definitely risks to that.
Marco:
And that's – so that's the kind of thing like it is possible to use these adapters safely if you are careful with how you connect them to things and what you are connecting them to.
Marco:
But as we know, it's generally –
Marco:
Electrical standards and safety standards and things are usually designed in such a way so that it is impossible or very difficult to do the wrong thing.
Marco:
And these make it very easy to do the wrong thing if you don't really know what you're doing.
Marco:
And this is one of the problems.
Marco:
For the first time in a while, you know, the entire USB spec until C, all the various USB plugs and ports were always directional by shape.
Marco:
You couldn't plug a cable in the wrong direction.
Marco:
You couldn't have an adapter that adapted things wrong because, like, all, you know, the A was the source and all the different Bs were all the destinations.
Marco:
There was no way to have, like, you couldn't make an A to A cable legitimately and there would be no legitimate reason for somebody to ever buy one of those things.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That's why, you know, C made things more complicated, because with C, if you just have in your hand the end of a C cable, you don't know whether that is sending or receiving power.
Marco:
And so you kind of have to, you know, things have to be designed a little more carefully.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have something labeled as sharp tech, which I think is a reference to Ben Thompson's podcast.
Casey:
But nevertheless, what is going on here?
John:
Yes, that is a reference to the podcast.
John:
There are many kerfuffles, as Casey would say, related to the new iPhones.
John:
This is one of them.
John:
We'll get to more in a moment.
John:
This is about the 15 Pro and presumably also the 15 Pro Max with their titanium outer ring thing.
John:
And a bunch of people online have noted that when they got their 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max, they could feel something kind of sharp where the edge, the titanium edge meets the screen.
John:
Is this the front or the back glass?
John:
The front, although I think some people also feel on the back, but it's mostly people talking about the front.
John:
And I had heard about this before my wife got her phone.
John:
So the very first thing I did, she's got the 15 Pro natural titanium.
John:
The very first thing I did was took it out and wanted to see if I could feel this thing people are talking about.
John:
And I could, but of course now, like we don't know if I hadn't heard about this online, would I have noticed it?
John:
I think I probably would have noticed it because it does feel different than the 14 Pro, which I have to compare it to.
John:
Now, obviously my wife's going to put a case on it.
John:
So it doesn't really matter.
John:
You're never going to feel this seam again.
John:
And I think it varies from phone to phone, but everyone has been comparing notes in this Mac rumors thread we'll put on there saying, here's what mine feels like.
John:
Here's what it looks like.
John:
It's very difficult to photograph because it's very, very small.
John:
But the bottom line is there's like,
John:
a little tiny gap between the screen and the titanium edge.
John:
And I was trying to sort of quantify it in some way because taking a picture is hard.
John:
This is the best I could come up with.
John:
And it's gonna sound ridiculous, but it's the only thing I could do.
John:
If you take the corner of a piece of paper and sort of put that corner at a 45 degree angle to the screen of your phone and then press it a little bit so the corner bends,
John:
and then slide that corner towards the edge of your phone, it will catch when it gets to the titanium edge, on my wife's phone anyway.
John:
It will catch for a moment.
John:
Eventually, you'll be able to push past it.
John:
If you do the same thing on a 14 Pro, it does not catch.
John:
It just slides straight off the edge.
John:
Is this manufacturing variability?
John:
Is this just the way the phone is supposed to go together?
John:
Are some people's phones different than other people's with respect to this thing?
John:
I guess both of you have 15 pros to look at.
John:
Now, if you feel from like basically put your finger on the screen,
John:
And slide it off the edge to the right or to the left.
John:
Can you feel something?
John:
Sharp is the wrong word, but can you feel the titanium edge?
John:
Do you feel like there's a little gap there?
John:
Can you feel it?
Marco:
Yes, it's very subtle.
Marco:
I mean, I would never have I would never have called this something wrong.
Marco:
To me, this is just this is where two materials meet.
Marco:
But I can feel the edge just barely.
Marco:
I wouldn't describe it even as sharp.
Marco:
But actually, I would say I feel a little bit more on the back glass on the bottom edge of the phone.
Marco:
That, for some reason, feels a little bit more prominent to me.
Marco:
But I wouldn't describe either one of them as even significantly noticeable, let alone a problem.
John:
You should check all the different edges because that's another thing I did with my wife's phone.
John:
I'm like, well, is it more prominent on the upper left, upper right, lower?
John:
And I did find a section of the phone where it felt more prominent.
John:
There's such small things that it's hard to see.
John:
But again, compared to the 14 Pro, just the way they go together, there's not really that same gap.
John:
What about you, Casey?
John:
Can you feel it?
Casey:
Yeah, it's exactly what Marco said.
Casey:
I never in a million years would have classified this as a problem.
Casey:
I don't think it is a problem.
Casey:
I can sort of feel it, particularly in the bottom left-hand corner of the front of the device, but I would not consider this a defect.
Casey:
Maybe the tolerance isn't exactly up to normal Apple standards, but had I not been told about this, there's no way I would have ever thought that there was anything even slightly wrong with this phone.
Casey:
And I still don't really think there's anything wrong with it.
Casey:
But yeah, there's a little bit there, but not enough to make a stink about, in my personal opinion.
John:
I mean, again, this could just be the way this phone goes together because there's lots of different ways you can do that joint.
John:
And this phone is shaped differently.
John:
It's not exactly the same.
John:
It has the curve or whatever.
John:
So this just may be the way the phone is supposed to go together.
John:
And it's just, you know, like in a car, there are panel gaps in there with intolerances, whereas maybe the previous phones had more of an overlapping thing.
John:
So there was, you know, when you have overlapping things, it's easier to hide differences in tolerances as long as the overlap covers any
John:
I will say, though, that I think the fact that I can feel where the two materials joined together is less satisfying than if I couldn't feel it.
John:
So if this is the way it's supposed to go together, I would recommend Apple reconsider it for the next phone design.
John:
i don't think it's not that i use it without a case but if i did use it without a case it's not as pleasing as you know pick it you know obviously the the 14 had very flat sides but still at least the joints were good but if you think about something like the iphone 10 the way that felt about the rounded sides or whatever um feel being able to feel any kind of seam or joint at that point where you hold the phone i think is not ideal so i would suggest apple that they think about this going forward
John:
And related to that, speaking of manufacturing variability, there is another Reddit post link from that same forum thread of someone taking a phone in an Apple store and looking at the very top of the phone, like head on the skinny end.
John:
And they can kind of see underneath the screen, like the backlight leaking out between the titanium edge and the screen.
John:
That seems like either the phone has been damaged by handling from, you know, the people who visit Apple stores, which would not be surprising because I bet those devices get a lot of abuse over the course of the day.
John:
Or it could be a manufacturing defect.
John:
But yeah, tis the season for manufacturing defects and variability in the first run of the very new iPhone.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then we have all sorts of problems with the fine woven case.
Casey:
And let me just start by saying that I did put the fine woven case on my phone when I received it on Friday.
Casey:
I lasted through the end of the day, and then I decided I'm going to return it.
Casey:
I don't have as visceral a hatred for it as seemingly everyone else in Under the Sun does.
Casey:
I don't think it's that bad, the conversation we're about to have notwithstanding.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I didn't care for it, and I really, really dislike not only the feel of the sides of it, but the look and the two-tone thing.
Casey:
I just, I don't like it.
Casey:
And as people are saying in the chat, it's okay, but it's just too darn expensive.
Casey:
Like this is not a $60 case in my eyes.
Casey:
It's a $20 or $30 case as far as I'm concerned in terms of the build quality and the way it feels in my hand.
Casey:
It's not, I don't like it.
Casey:
So right now I am caseless, casey-less.
Casey:
AppleCare is my case.
Casey:
I do not plan to keep it that way because I've shattered the last two phones I've treated this way.
Casey:
So I have not unequivocally concluded what I'm going to do, but I do have a Peel case, P-E-E-L, in my Amazon shopping cart.
Casey:
which I plan whenever we do the next family Amazon order.
Casey:
I will send that through, so to speak.
Casey:
I will have that delivered, and I'll see if that does the trick.
Casey:
I will follow up in the future.
John:
Yeah, so my wife still got her fine woven case, and it...
John:
You know, she's only used it for a few days now.
John:
So far, it's holding up okay.
John:
But the very first night she had the case on the phone and went to her nightstand to plug it in with the cables that we had wisely pre-ordered to make sure there was USB-C connections in all the places where she needed them, she said, uh, there's something wrong here.
John:
She couldn't plug the USB-C cable into her phone.
John:
What do you mean you can't plug it in like it doesn't you have the wrong cable or it's like it's not it's not going in.
John:
And so I looked at it and you could see that we had, you know, a high quality anchor name brand USB-C charging cable three feet long on just on her nightstand.
John:
And if you try to plug it in, the plug does not insert all the way.
John:
Because the hole in the bottom of the case does not allow the, you know, sort of plastic jacket around the metal USB-C plug.
John:
Doesn't allow it to pass through.
John:
The hole is too small.
John:
And I was like, oh, this is, I guess, do we just have really thick, you know, cable ends on these, you know, lots of good strain relief or whatever?
John:
And the answer is yes.
John:
This anchor cable does have a pretty thick plastic shroud around it.
John:
But that made me start looking at the bottom of this phone a little bit more closely.
John:
And it was immediately clear that the hole in the bottom of this fine woven case was not correctly centered around the USB-C port.
John:
Like not even close.
John:
Like just visually, anybody can look at this and say, nope, that's not centered.
John:
I mean, one of the ways to look at it is there's two little screws around the USB-C port itself.
John:
And you can see a little bit of one of the screws and you can't see any of the other.
John:
But even if the screws weren't there, this is not centered horizontally.
John:
It's also not centered vertically.
John:
Now, all that said, I did the test where I took the case off of the phone and then just tried to see if I could pass the plug-in through it without worrying about actually plugging the connector in because now it's just an empty case.
John:
The Anker connector still does not fit through the opening even when there's no phone inside there.
John:
So there's two issues at play here.
John:
One, if you have a USB-C charging cable that maybe you've been using for years on an iPad or some other device,
John:
Maybe check whether the cable you're going to use is able to pass through the hole in the bottom of your iPhone case or do like I do and get a bare bottom iPhone case.
John:
Because that's something we didn't really have to think about with lightning because everybody selling a lightning cable or a case, it was kind of an ecosystem where you knew what you were going to get.
John:
The case has to accommodate a lightning cable and lightning cables have to accommodate cases.
John:
And they all grew up together.
John:
So there was no instance where anyone was selling a lightning cable that couldn't fit through a case hole.
John:
And there's no one selling cases that a lightning cable wouldn't fit through, right?
John:
Because it wouldn't make sense.
John:
You know what's going to happen there.
John:
But USB-C cables have existed for years and years.
John:
And many, many, many of those USB-C cables never had any expectation of ever being put into an iPhone because iPhones didn't have USB-C.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And so lo and behold, all of these, you know, this Anker cable, which we bought recently, was nevertheless a cable that existed in Anker's line for probably years.
John:
And it was not made with the expectation that it would have to fit through a hole in the bottom of an iPhone case.
John:
And lo and behold, it doesn't.
John:
So be aware of this.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes to two examples to the cable that didn't fit.
John:
And I also found a tiny little short cable that I bought for like our little charging like shelf area.
John:
that does fit.
John:
And it was just luck of the draw that one of them fit and one of them didn't.
John:
But think about that, even if you're not getting the Apple case.
John:
Uh, but yeah, the Apple case is getting slammed by everybody because the hole's off center and it's getting people very upset.
John:
It's not just me that has an off center hole.
John:
A lot of people have off center holes.
John:
In fact, uh,
John:
A couple of people wrote in with or, you know, tooted that the Apple silicone case is also off center.
John:
So I don't know if this is just a big manufacturing problem with their cases that they can't center the hole around the port.
John:
Maybe this has always happened and we just never noticed because, again, the lightning connector, maybe there was enough like room around the openings that it wasn't a big deal.
John:
But now the tolerances seem real close if you have a thick USB-C cable.
John:
So this is not going great for the fine woven case, but the hits keep coming.
Casey:
Yeah, well, and for what it's worth, I did break out my fine woven case from the box where I had put it to in order to send it or bring it back to Apple, which I plan to do in the next day or two.
Casey:
And anyways, I put it back on my phone very briefly.
Casey:
And the port, the whole seems to be perfectly centered on mine.
Casey:
So I did get lucky in that regard.
Casey:
Unfortunately, it sounds like you did not.
John:
Yeah, it's not just me.
John:
There's lots of people reporting this.
John:
Vitticci reported that he brought his fine woven case on his iPhone to dinner with him and put his phone down on the table.
John:
And the next morning woke up and realized he had picked up a stain.
John:
Because when you make things out of fabric or fabric type material, you can pick up stains if you put it down in some kind of liquid.
John:
Um, I did peek at my wife's fine woven case before, uh, I came down here to podcast and it still looks pretty much pristine, but I'll keep you updated on that.
John:
But I can tell you from, uh, Christian Moomaw's tweet on, uh, sorry, on September 23rd in the Apple store in Boston, the two fine woven cases on display looked like they were attacked by a badger.
Marco:
Well, that's probably from people who read the Verge story.
Marco:
Like, oh, you scratch it.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Some people go online.
John:
They read a story about how these things scratch when you, you know, look ugly when you scratch them with your fingernail.
John:
Then they go into an Apple store and what do they do?
John:
They take their fingernail and they go.
John:
So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
John:
People are going to Apple store.
John:
I mean, it kind of makes some sense.
John:
You want to know, hey, if I buy this case, is it going to scratch real easily?
John:
And one way to figure that out is to go.
Marco:
scratched the case and so we'll put a link in the shout outs to this uh to you'll see two very very scratched uh fine woven cases yeah it's it's not good there's a number of angles to this like number one i i think anyone who's interested in a bunch of fine woven complaining and nerdery um definitely listen to upgrade from i think today or yesterday uh there was a great segment um jason was talking about how like
Marco:
there was, there's probably like a group in Apple responsible for make a premium case that we can sell for 60 bucks.
Marco:
And when the leather went away, they're kind of like, uh, now what?
Marco:
And they made this kind of in that price point and in that role rather than trying to figure out like, you know, what can we actually make that's nice and doesn't, doesn't need to keep that same price point or whatever else.
John:
Like the leather cases were more expensive than this though.
John:
This is under pricing.
John:
The leather was leather was like 70 or 80, wasn't it?
John:
No, I think it was 60 bucks.
Marco:
Anyway, it was in the ballpark.
Marco:
Regardless, this is not a good case.
Marco:
This is an interesting first attempt.
Marco:
I hope they're going to revise this because, again, what they said in Upgrade, Apple's cases, you could always say they were expensive, but they were at least good.
Marco:
And this is just, this is expensive and not good.
Marco:
And that's not great for them.
Marco:
That being said, I got my Peak Design Everyday case, which I loved the iPhone 14 version of it.
Marco:
And I lasted about five minutes with it on my iPhone 15 Pro.
Marco:
Oh, wow.
Marco:
Because they did not add a button for the action button.
Marco:
They just had a cutout.
Casey:
Oh, I did hear about this.
Marco:
So most third-party cases for the 15 continued their previous approximate design where you would have a cutout where the silent and ring switch was.
Marco:
Because you weren't constantly pushing it in.
Marco:
There was no way to have a sliding switch on a case that was any usefulness there.
Marco:
So everyone just had cutouts.
Marco:
You could reach in with your fingernail and flip it over if you really wanted to, but it was more difficult.
Marco:
Well, I'm already so accustomed to using the action button for something fun that having it be buried in a cutout of the case made it too difficult to access.
Marco:
And so I would strongly suggest anybody out there, if you're designing a case for the iPhone 15 Pro, that's got to be a button.
Marco:
It can't be a cutout anymore.
Marco:
And anybody out there who has an iPhone 15 Pro and is case shopping, strongly advise, get one that has a button there, not a cutout.
John:
and look at the cutout on the bottom and make sure your cables fit in it you know i got a new case for my phone my phone as well my iphone 14 pro i just went up to the attic and pulled down the bull strap case which was basically a clone of the ryan london leather case and i swapped them out so now i have a nice brand new case of course uh you know i thought about it i was like you know maybe i should just keep this one on because my ryan london one's been on it for a year and it's kind of nicely broken in uh but it's also kind of like dented and i dropped it a bunch of times or whatever so i'm starting over and i got a break in the bull strap case and it's
John:
It's working out well so far.
John:
And the fine woven thing, obviously the manufacturing defects are bad.
John:
I don't like that the hole is not centered.
John:
The fact that cables don't fit, like the Anker USB-C cable I have, it doesn't fit both in width and in height.
John:
So it's not like it's just one dimension.
John:
Both dimensions don't fit.
John:
if you made the case larger to accommodate this cable i think the the edges of the case might be too thin like the top and bottom might be too thin so i kind of understand why the opening is the size it is it's just a very thick cable but it's something to keep in mind but i kind of like how it looks and how it feels again durability i don't know how that's going to work out it's only it's been like a week or whatever now
John:
uh that i think i like i kind of like the rubbery-ish uh sides i think the back looks and feels nice uh i think it is it would be a 60 case if you like how it looks and feels because that's just an aesthetic thing and just you know a tactile thing and if they can get the holes to line up
John:
with the ports because i feel like it's kind of important thing for a 60 case and again someone put it put in a picture of an apple silicone case with exactly the same problem so this may be something that has always happened and we've just never noticed that the holes in the bottom of apple's iphone cases have been off by a fraction of a millimeter or two because it never mattered until you know people are trying to plug in cables that don't fit and then they're staring at that bottom hole like i was and noticing that it's off again i'm
John:
A strong proponent of an iPhone case that does not have anything covering the bottom, not for plugging in port, so that's just a nice side effect, but because you swipe up from the bottom to unlock the thing, and I can't stand swiping up over the lip of a case, and Apple really needs to get on that.
Marco:
I mean, was it last year the Clear case didn't have a bottom lip?
Marco:
They have.
Marco:
I was going to say, I haven't seen one yet, but they still sell the Clear case, and honestly...
Marco:
I actually might get one because – oh, by the way, before I get to that, some real-time follow-up.
Marco:
Multiple people in the chat are reporting that apparently Peak Design agrees with me, and they're going to revise the case and issue swaps or refunds.
Marco:
That's amazing if that's true.
John:
I can't believe that they would – everybody knew about the action button.
John:
I can't believe they would sell the case with that giant opening in it.
Marco:
regard look hey look i thought bad on me that's i mean geez if they actually do that that's look i love peak design that's why that's why i blindly give them so much my business that's kind of amazing if they actually do that um anyway secondly on the clear case like right now i think i think the apple clear case might be the best apple case period because did you try the clear case in the 14 pro
Marco:
Yes, I owned one.
Marco:
I used it until I got the Peak Design case, which was probably about maybe a quarter or half the year.
Marco:
That's right.
Marco:
We talked about this last year.
Marco:
No, I did not like the clear case.
Marco:
No, the only problem, it feels great in the hand because it's like nice tacky plastic.
Marco:
The only problem I have with it is that like any clear case, eventually you get a bunch of dust and crap under there and it looks really terrible.
John:
Does it turn yellow?
Marco:
Do you know?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Well, I mean, again, I only did it for maybe four or five months, but it didn't happen during that time.
Marco:
But it was great.
Marco:
If I had to discover the Peak Design case halfway through the year, I would have stuck with it for the whole year.
John:
I mean, imagine the reason that I think we talked about this last year, like why doesn't the clear case have a bottom lip while all of Apple's other ones do?
John:
I imagine it might have to do with the fact like what I just said, if you do the cutout hole for the lightning or USB-C port, it leaves such a thin piece of material above and below the port that maybe they're afraid it would like crack of whatever material the clear things made up.
John:
So they just left open for Apple, please.
John:
Open bottom cases.
John:
You used to make them all the time and then you didn't.
John:
oh just it kills me so anyway uh when for for iphone 16 pro i will be third party case shopping again this is like unified timeline i i understand that it is a do or die requirement for you i don't understand why you do you i'm not saying you're wrong but i just don't know it it is better it really is like if you if you had a case like you know ignorance is less as you would say you haven't experienced this so you're like oh it's fine i don't mind it or whatever but as soon as you had a case that didn't have the lip it's just so much nicer
Casey:
I mean, I guess, but I grabbed my 14 Pro, which is sitting next to me, and it has the Apple leather case on it with a big old lip in the bottom.
Casey:
And I don't mind it.
Casey:
Like, it just does not bother me like it bothers you.
Casey:
But to each their own.
Casey:
So, Jem wrote in with some feedback.
Casey:
As a woman who has had to deal with phones being far too big for small hands for many years, I found PopSockets to be really uncomfortable.
Casey:
I find straps like this one, and we'll put a link in the show notes,
Casey:
to be much more ergonomic there's plenty of versions available including magnetic ones with card holders etc just thought i'd pass the info along in case the pop socket gives you a cramp in your hand like it does for me and we'll put a link in the show notes to this i will be the let me start by saying i've never tried one of these this doesn't look like the sort of thing that i would enjoy but you know i've seen several people make this recommendation so maybe it's worth a shot and certainly it's a heck of a lot cheaper than a pop socket it's like a third of the cost
John:
it's much it's less ridiculous than a pop socket a pop socket always struck me as like i know they have ones that collapse and everything but it's just like talk about adding a structural element to your phone a strap seems much less intrusive because it can kind of lay flat when you're not using it and you don't have to like unpop it or whatever but i know a lot of people love their pop sockets and it just becomes like part of the phone it just it always seemed kind of like it turns your phone into like one of those little puzzle pieces that you give like kids you know like little wooden puzzles they have little plastic pegs you can grab the puzzle piece real easily
Marco:
I should point out the Peak Design Everyday Case does have a loop option on it for $10 more.
Marco:
But what this link is is much larger.
Marco:
This is the whole height of the phone.
John:
Yeah, you shove your whole hand through the screen.
Marco:
Yeah, it loops through the camera hole down to the bottom of the case.
Marco:
I mean, that's a huge ordeal.
John:
I mean, it's like a pop socket is like a peg in the middle that you put between your fingers, right?
John:
Right.
John:
And this is the opposite of that.
John:
It's around the outside of your hand.
John:
Either way, it's making it so that if you open your hand, the phone doesn't fall either because the pop socket is between your fingers or because the strap is over your hand.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Anonymous writes, now we are leaving all case related things.
Casey:
Anonymous writes in with regard to Apple and chip binning, which I think was an Ask ATP from last week.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Anyways, when it comes to silicon chip production, both Apple and Intel create bins based on efficiency, but they do different things with the bins.
Casey:
While Intel holds power fixed and lets frequency vary, Apple holds frequency or performance fixed and bins by power consumption.
Casey:
For example, a Mac Mini can tolerate a hotter SoC than a MacBook Air, hotter meaning higher power consumption.
Casey:
Just like Intel, Apple is motivated to use as much of the wafer as possible, not just for financial reasons, but also for carbon footprint.
Casey:
TSMC does not use particularly clean energy.
Marco:
Yeah, this is really interesting.
Marco:
Forgive me.
Marco:
Again, I only have a rudimentary understanding of modern chip and chip design and chip manufacturing.
Marco:
But I know back in the days when I actually attempted overclocking as a PC user, a chip might run at a certain frequency just fine only if you increase the voltage a little bit.
Marco:
And when you increase the voltage, it makes it use way more power in whatever steps we were dealing with back then.
Marco:
It makes way more heat, etc.,
Marco:
But certain speeds were attainable only by increasing the voltage.
Marco:
So this is interesting.
Marco:
If things work at all that way today, which I'm sure it's more complicated than that today, but the basic idea is probably still there, that a chip might be able to perform at full speed, but you need to give it a bit more power to do so.
Marco:
So that's a really interesting idea, if this is true, that they could bin based on, okay, the ones that can achieve full speed at the lowest power, those are going on laptops.
John:
the ones that need a bit more power those are going in john's mac pro no not my mac pro but yeah the whole idea is if you don't know like apple basically more or less holds the clock speeds the same but they're just picking the ones like you know which one uses more power to achieve the target fixed clock speed that we have and so they'll try every chip off the line and say is this a good one we can achieve our single fixed clock speed and i know it's not fixes they can change whatever they're not selling faster or slower ones on their website you just you get what you get and it
John:
You know, it clocks up and down, right?
John:
But the ones that use more power to do so, they'll save them for the ones that have better cooling systems.
John:
So that's the way Apple is binning.
John:
Because as we said last show, the variability in manufacturing exists no matter what.
John:
Like there's no way to make, if they could make them all exactly the same on the wafer, they would, but they can't.
John:
So there's always going to be quote unquote good ones and quote unquote bad ones.
John:
And what this is saying is within the line of laptops that use the same SoC, they're going to put the quote unquote good ones in the ones with the worst cooling system.
John:
So it's not, and that's going to be the cheapest ones, you know, the MacBook Air with no fan, right?
John:
And the quote unquote bad ones are going to end up in a Mac studio because they have a much bigger cooler there, which is kind of the opposite of the way it is when you're bidding by clock speed, where you test them and you find the ones that can go a higher clock speed.
John:
But I don't, you know, Apple doesn't crank up the clock speeds the higher.
John:
I think that maybe the studio does have a little bit higher clock than like the MacBook Air and those stuff.
John:
And obviously thermal throttling is a big deal, but that's another reason the good ones end up going in the MacBook Air because it's going to thermal throttle no matter what.
John:
You don't want it to be thermal throttled so badly that it kills the performance of the chip.
Casey:
Geeker Juan apparently has thoughts on the A17 Pro, and they decide that it is powerful but should be more efficient.
Casey:
John, tell me about this, please.
John:
Yeah, this is a YouTuber I hadn't seen before.
John:
I was really impressed by it because they're really diving as deep as they possibly can into...
John:
The chip itself going down to the point of like more detail than Apple gave.
John:
We read the detail that Apple gave during the event of like a wider decode and, you know, better branch predictor or whatever.
John:
There's also new ALUs in there as well.
John:
So they have like a chip diagram.
John:
You know, they get these devices and then they probe them as best they can without cutting the top off the chip.
John:
So they're probing them with software or whatever to figure out.
John:
what's different about the a17 pro versus the a16 and so they have a bunch of diagrams giving that information and then they tested them you know a17 pro versus a16 versus like the latest snapdragon uh socs and everything to find out to try to dig into the the point i was making on the last show of like three nan tsmc is three nanometer does it take less energy per instruction executed right are we what is the are we receiving any of the promise of a silicon shrink shrink
John:
And this is from the Verdict chapter of the video after extensive testing.
John:
I would encourage you to watch it if you're interested in this topic.
John:
It's kind of long, but they do go into lots of detail.
John:
This is from the Verdict.
John:
This is Geeker Juan, whoever is the presenter on this channel.
John:
Now I just feel a bit bad, not only about iPhones, but also about the future of the semiconductor industry.
John:
Some conclusion, huh?
John:
The A17 Pro, being the first 3nm chip, didn't showcase any clear advantages over TSMC's last-gen product electrical-wise.
John:
I still don't have a die shot, so I don't know density-wise.
John:
But if efficiency isn't improved at all, even with such a huge jump in fabrication, then how can we make chips better in the future?
John:
He is not excited about 3 nanometer based on the results.
John:
And you can go through them benchmark by benchmark and see.
John:
And by the way, you also see that some of the...
John:
snapdragon socs are actually performing better in gpu but they don't have like the 3d ray tracing stuff or whatever so apple's lead in socs it's still there it still exists uh especially in power efficiency you'll see some tests where the a17 pro is matching a snapdragon's using twice as much power but it's not a giant clear-cut victory that it used to be the competition is kind of catching up and three nanometer according to the test uh that people have been able to do so far
John:
is not really bringing the dividends people thought it would so far.
Marco:
I wonder how much, I mean, again, like this is not anywhere near my area of expertise, but I wonder how much of that is just that maybe Apple didn't really take advantage of as much of the new design tweaks that are possible with the new process.
Marco:
I'm not sure.
John:
Yeah, it's hard to tell.
John:
One of the most convincing tests was they got to a point where the A17 Pro was throttling, which is another issue.
John:
People are saying that the A17 Pro doesn't have as much thermal mass to dissipate heat, so it's hot faster.
John:
But anyway, they had a diagram of power draw and clock frequency, and you'd see the A17 Pro would be taking more power, but going a much higher clock than the A16.
John:
Then all of a sudden, at a certain point in the test, the A17 Pro throttles, and it throttled down to the same clock speed as the A16 was.
John:
And at the same clock speed as the A16, it used exactly the same amount of power.
John:
That's not what you would expect from a shrink.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like you would say, oh, if you shrink, I can either go faster with the same power or use more power.
John:
And, you know, like just – it was a very convincing diagram to –
John:
lend credence to the idea that three nanometer is not buying us any power efficiencies at least not yet and there's also other stories about how this three nanometer process that tsmc is using right now they have all these like we did the same thing with five nanometer they have like these letter suffixes this is you know the the five n process or the three e process this is like the first version of three nanometer
John:
And supposedly, as early as next year, like the beginning of next year, they'll be on to a new variation of the 3nm process that is better than this one.
John:
So maybe just the very first 3nm process is not giving lots of dividends, but yeah, it seems like most of the things that are better about the A17 Pro...
John:
have almost nothing to do with three nanometer and it's more like well it has ray tracing and has another gpu core and we can clock it a little bit higher but when we clock a little bit higher it also uses more power and that produces more heat and the the iphone 15 pro is not very good about dissipating that heat and so it thermal throttles and not not impressive showing for the a17 pro
Marco:
I do wonder how much that is the enclosure design because the iPhone 15 Pro, when I was setting it up, gave me the I'm too hot for full speed charging kind of warning.
Marco:
It overheated while I was just transferring my old phone to the new phone.
Marco:
I've never seen an iPhone do that.
Marco:
Like, I've only seen an iPhone overheat, like, in the sun, outside, like, you know, that kind of stuff.
Marco:
I've never seen it overheat while on my desk in the evening, just, you know, transferring a bunch of data to it.
Marco:
So it does seem like the new enclosure design for the iPhone 15 Pro, as much as I love it in other ways, which I guess we'll get to, but as much as I love it in other ways, something is not as good about the cooling.
John:
for sure i mean i if you just go down to the fact that i don't think titanium dissipates heats as well as aluminum but either even if it did there's just less of it less mass right so you have less mass dissipating the heat so you know because the thing is lighter um and apple has never been particularly aggressive about the cooling of the phones there have been some rumors about them using like
John:
uh vapor chamber heat pipey type things or whatever but so far they haven't really gone whole hog with that in their phones uh android phones in many years past have had to by necessity have much more robust cooling systems because their socs just simply use more power right and there's a whole separate separate breed of android phones that are like gaming phones essentially some of them you have fans in them for crying out loud but like they have way more yeah they have way more robust i was about to make a joke about that that actually exists
John:
Yeah, I think a couple of them have tiny little fans.
John:
But even with the ones that don't, they have more robust cooling systems and they reap the benefits from it.
John:
It doesn't take much more effort in cooling to really, you know, because you just have to do something more than what Apple does.
John:
But Apple has thus far decided that they're not particularly interested in expending space, weight, cost to, you know, to allow this.
John:
Because, I mean, and I think it's reasonable.
John:
Like,
John:
people aren't running sustained batch jobs for their work on their phone that they need to run without throttling and yeah all these phones throttle but um but again setting aside the the the thermal characteristics of the 15 pro and the 15 pro max the you know watch this video like what when going the same clock speed as the a16 this three nanometer chip was using exactly the same amount of power and that is not
John:
great and you can say oh but it's doing more because it was just it was like a cpu test it wasn't even like a ray tracing gpu thing where you can say well but it's doing more ray tracing stuff so technically it's still doing more work for the same power like watts per instruction executed is not looking impressive in three nanometer and someone in the chat room said that the a17 is on the n3b process and next year it will be n3e because e is after b i guess anyway we're never going to remember these things but suffice it to say tsmc continues to improve their process
Marco:
uh and next year there'll be a better three nanometer process hopefully they'll use that one for the mac chips oh my god did you see what user tyler in the chat linked to is it a gaming phone this is a a magsafe compatible attachment fan oh my word sold by the gaming company razor that is 60 does it have rgb lights in it it sure does have rgb lights that must be for gamers
John:
oh my maybe well maybe i should get this next time i have to do a phone transfer oh my god this is incredible so you got to watch that video because in the video one of the things they do is they have they basically have phone coolers because they want to run some tests where they can guarantee the phone is not going to throttle so they massively cool them by sticking the phone into this rig that just like blows cold air at the back of a phone constantly when they're running it this this is like a consumer version of that
Marco:
Seven blade fan with up to 6,400 RPM.
Marco:
You know how loud that would be?
Marco:
I got headphones in anyway.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
This is amazing.
Marco:
That is kind of amazing.
Casey:
Holy Jamalis.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And finally, for follow-up, John, Iowa 17, People's Pets and Places.
John:
One of the things I was most excited about in this year's crop of OS's that I think we talked about when we were discussing their feature sets was the fact that, you know, photos is going to start recognizing animals just like it recognizes people.
John:
So I had been fighting with photos to have a people album that recognizes everybody in my family and a bunch of my relatives and so on and so forth.
John:
I still, of course, do manually tagging of my immediate family.
John:
uh which is much more reliable because the faces thing occasionally forgets who everybody is and loses track but anyway i'm trying to use the system i'm like but i have so many pictures of my dog my my current dog my past dog and it has no idea who they are and i know it knows it can identify dogs and it has that little dog overlay that will try to tell you what breed your dog is and get it hilariously wrong all the time but it will find other dogs that look so much of my dog which is a fun feature but this year it's like now pets can be people too uh and on my iphone
John:
uh this is another thing when you have the shared the shared uh iCloud shared photo album you don't it doesn't share faces we've discussed it before doesn't share album doesn't share faces right so any work that i do on my iphone related to faces is pointless because the quote-unquote real library is my wife's library or that my wife's is the owner of the shared library and nothing i do on my phone can influence the face data for our real library but
John:
Despite that, when I upgraded my phone to iOS 17, I went into the photos app on my phone and in the album section, what was previously the people album now said people, pets and places.
John:
And lo and behold, it had little circles for everyone in my family.
John:
And then it had my little dog in a circle and it had my dog's name under it.
John:
I'm like, how the hell did you know my dog's name?
John:
I guess based on the tag, cause I've tagged like, you know, I have a daisy tag for all the pictures of my dog.
John:
But anyway, I'm like, wow, this is great.
John:
I can't wait until my wife upgrades and her Mac upgrades, right?
John:
And everyone gets upgraded.
John:
I'll be able to finally go into the real photo album.
John:
She's the owner of the shared iCloud photo library.
John:
And she has the canonical set of actually curated over many, many years, people, place and face data.
John:
And I'll be able to start tagging all the pictures of my dog.
John:
Do that thing where it says, review these faces.
John:
Is this your dog?
John:
Is this your dog?
John:
Is this your dog?
John:
You know, that's the exercise of doing this, right?
John:
when i did it on my phone it didn't give me any pictures to review and in fact on my phone it had a little tag a little people thing for my wife and i went into it and had found one picture of my wife and i'm pretty sure i have more than that and then i went review additional pictures and it says sorry there are no additional pictures of your wife i'm like are you sure because again on my phone it's it has access to the whole shared photo library it's not just like my personal photos it's
John:
but the the face data that i derive from that is only private to me so my wife has the canonical face data anyway uh when my wife upgraded all her stuff i went into the canonical photo library on her phone and it just said people it didn't even say people in places i think it just said people and there was no dogs in there upgraded her mac to sonoma now it's running sonoma and i've let it sit there all day and i go over it and launch photos on her mac and go to the albums and it just says people
John:
Like, what happened to people, pets, and places?
John:
Eventually, it did say people and places, but it doesn't say pets.
John:
I can go and look at a picture of my dog.
John:
I have so many of them.
John:
Does it circle my dog's face and say, identify this dog?
John:
No, it does not.
John:
And so here I am once again, just as we discussed in a past episode, begging Apple for a button that would say, find faces now.
John:
Only now I want it to say, find pet faces now.
John:
This is the main feature I want to use from this cycle of upgrades is I want to be able to identify all my current and past pets in my photo album.
John:
And it's been one or two days since I've upgraded this stuff.
John:
And I can't use the feature because I don't know when it's going to decide to identify my dog's face in the literal thousands of pictures I have of my dog.
Casey:
I had a similar experience.
Casey:
And for what it's worth, I am the Tina in our relationship when it comes to photo stuff.
Casey:
My library was a canonical one and Aaron jumped onto it.
Casey:
I was also super excited to see penny pictures found in my photo library and our photo library.
Casey:
And I went and did the same thing and said, oh, it's not there yet.
Casey:
And it took, I think, one overnight on the charger before my phone found Penny.
Casey:
It did not label Penny with a name, but it found Penny and added her as a potential pet or whatever.
Casey:
And I also noticed that, as you said, the album or whatever, the thing that...
Casey:
that you can go to is no longer people.
Casey:
It's like you said, people, pets, and places.
Casey:
But anyways, it took overnight when it was, well, I was going to say plugged in, but it was charging via Qi.
Casey:
It took overnight to churn on this, presumably while power was connected before it gave me that option and flipped that switch.
Casey:
Now, I agree.
Casey:
It would be nice if you could say, do it now.
Casey:
But if you wait at least a night, which I guess at this point you probably have,
John:
No, I've waited multiple nights.
John:
Like, I know how this works.
John:
I know they say, oh, we'll do it while your thing is plugged in and charging.
John:
It's been multiple nights on her phone because she obviously got her phone basically on launch day.
John:
So it's been multiple nights plugged in every single night into a cable.
John:
And, you know, her Mac is grinding away now using the thing I described before, which is basically launch photos, then quit photos, then look at an activity monitor and make sure you see photo analysis using some percentage of your CPU or whatever.
John:
Like, it's doing the work and I have a huge library, so it's going to take a while, but it's the same problem I was saying before.
John:
Like, I don't want to have to wait
John:
for the lowest of low-priority processes to do this, especially on her Mac Studio, I wanted to say use all the resources of this Mac Studio that is otherwise sitting idle while she's at work to right now find all the faces.
John:
And maybe give me a progress bar that says, you know, how far along are you?
John:
Is this going to take a day, 24 hours, 15 hours, 2 hours?
John:
But instead it's like, I will only do it
John:
under special circumstances when I feel just right.
John:
And even then, I'm going to do it with the lowest possible priority.
John:
I mean, how many nights does your phone need to be plugged in?
John:
Is it aborting in the middle because it doesn't finish and it's not making any progress?
John:
Is it going to do it after a week?
John:
So frustrating.
John:
Like, this is a feature I want to use, and it's almost like, hey, if you have 10 photos on your phone, yeah, when you upgrade to iOS 17, you'll create these new features.
John:
But if you have hundreds of thousands of photos...
John:
you'll get these new features at some point in the future.
John:
Can't tell you when, no indication that it's doing any work.
John:
Just trust us, it probably is, but it's the lowest possible priority.
John:
Very frustrating.
Casey:
It's my dog's face and I want it now.
John:
I do.
John:
And there's so many pictures.
John:
You would think like it would do it incrementally.
John:
Like there's just so many of them, like go reverse chronological, just thousands and thousands of dog pictures, right?
John:
Just, I don't want you to have identified all of them.
John:
Identify one, just one.
John:
So I can make the people, like make some progress, but it's like, we're not going to do anything until I've scanned all 170,000 photos.
John:
All right, fine.
John:
I'll just keep waiting.
John:
I suppose.
Casey:
All right, let's talk about new toys.
Casey:
So, uh, John, I guess we don't need you for a while.
Casey:
You can go, uh, get a snack or whatever, but, uh, Marco and I have new toys and Marco, you got a 15 pro in what color, in what capacity?
Marco:
I got one of the many shades of gray that's available in, the middle one.
Casey:
Oh, thank you.
Casey:
The middle one.
Casey:
Oh, totally.
Marco:
Yes, indeed.
Marco:
It's gray.
Marco:
And 256, my usual capacity.
Marco:
And I am so far extremely happy with it.
Marco:
I mean, I know I say this pretty much every year.
Marco:
So the way this thing feels...
Marco:
I might try to go caseless the whole year because it feels great.
Marco:
It is noticeably lighter.
Marco:
It is not as light as the non-pro phones, and that's clear as soon as you pick it up, but the improvement is noticeable.
Marco:
With the exception of the alleged sharp edge that John was talking about earlier, I love the new rounded edges.
Marco:
I think they really feel very good in the hand.
Marco:
I think the phone looks fantastic from the edge.
Marco:
I mentioned this briefly last week, but...
Marco:
I really never see the back of my phone.
Marco:
I only ever see the edges because if I'm holding my phone, I'm seeing the front.
Marco:
Then it goes in my pocket.
Marco:
If my phone is out like on a table or desk, I'm not going to put the screen down and scratch it like a monster.
Marco:
So the screen is always up or if it's charging on a dock, then it's up also.
Marco:
So I pretty much never see the back of my phone.
Marco:
It could be hot pink and I think it would take me three days to notice.
Marco:
So the fact that the back of it is gray instead of gray or gray doesn't really matter to me.
Marco:
The sides look fantastic.
Marco:
That's what I care about.
Marco:
The metal edges of the phone, that's the part I actually see.
Marco:
That looks fantastic.
Marco:
I'm extremely happy with it.
Marco:
It feels great in the hand, as I said.
Marco:
I'm very much enjoying playing with different options for the action button.
Marco:
I'm currently using the flashlight because I actually use the phone flashlight somewhat regularly in my life.
Marco:
And I have found so far that is best bang for the buck for me.
Marco:
But I love...
Marco:
what everyone's like i've heard so many reports of people having good ideas for it you know so certain people like you know gruber has a shortcut to to toggle certain things um obviously i tried launching a camera with it and if you do launch camera with it then it becomes a shutter button as well to me that doesn't offer enough over just like the regular lock screen you know long press camera button that i've been using and yes i know but the swipe i never got used to it
John:
um but anyway so i i tried camera wasn't wasn't good enough for me flashlight i'm loving um some people have made like you know create a new note shortcuts or certain like you know workflow kind of things tons of good ideas out there yeah a lot of people doing the thing where you where the button does something different based on all sorts of factors which to me would just make me think too hard every time i pressed the button i was going to happen but some of those factors are simple things like orientation and when if you're in landscape and you have actually action button does one thing but if your portrait does something else
John:
you can combine that with things like am i on wi-fi or cellular what is my current location like basically anything that a shortcut can do you can do because you know it's just you can just have as many conditionals as you want and say okay well if i'm home and it's in landscape and it's a tuesday and the tide is down then when i press the button it should bring up that like you can do anything you want people i feel like are going a little bit overboard uh yeah i just uh i set my wife's thing to i think camera i'm not sure she's ever pressed the button yet so i'll give you more news than that as we go
John:
yeah actually what i don't i don't think this is possible yet what i would love would be a um lock and unlock of my car because it's the proximity lock and sometimes i want to like just do it manually that would be you should be able to do that like that this is by the way is a new class of apps that i'm seeing get much more popular now that the action button is here apps that essentially the only thing they do is vend actions to shortcuts yeah uh there's a whole bunch of those out there that people i think gruber used one in one of his things there's another one that does like
John:
enter your your uh you know open ai key and we could do chat gpt things and and you know it's all just a connection to shortcuts uh shortcuts so it's exciting to see people trying stuff like this and i think unlocking your car that's something that should be possible with the cooperation of the people who make the app that unlocks your car or if there's like if someone has hacked the api you can just figure out what blob of json to send to your car then you could probably
John:
Do it yourself.
Marco:
Well, it's this whole like Bluetooth short range thing.
Marco:
I don't know how easy that would be anyway.
Marco:
So it's been the action button so far.
Marco:
Loving it.
Marco:
So, so far, I'm very happy with the phone.
Marco:
I am a little concerned about the thermal situation, but I don't really, you know, my phone is not aggressively being used as like a benchmarking tool or, you know, I hardly ever play games on it.
Marco:
So.
Marco:
I'm probably not going to see problems with that, I hope, over time.
John:
And having no case, by the way, is much better than smothering your phone in a case that's keeping heat in because at least the heat is able to dissipate into the air rather than being trapped in a snug rubber case or whatever.
Marco:
Well, and hey, maybe you could make like, you know, oh man, people can make heat sink cases.
John:
That would be comfortable to hold.
John:
There is one that's shaped like that or is trying to be an imitation of the 2019 Mac Pro.
John:
Actually, the current Mac Pro.
John:
Hmm.
John:
Like that kind of cheese gratery type look.
John:
There is a bunch of metal cases that are like that.
John:
So, yeah, metal case should conduct that heat away better.
John:
But I'm not sure, you know, people get that.
John:
It's like, oh, this case makes my phone so hot.
John:
No, if you're feeling the heat, that means it's leaving your phone.
John:
If you don't feel any heat, that means the heat that your phone is making is trapped next to your phone.
John:
So your phone is getting hot.
John:
If your hand is not, it's a trade off.
Marco:
We were talking during the rumor show about how they were allegedly shrinking the dimensions a little bit, like very tiny amounts in each dimension.
Marco:
I actually kind of noticed that.
Marco:
It's not a huge difference, but it is noticeable.
Marco:
So the combination of the rounded off edges, the slight dimensional shrink, and the substantially lighter weight...
Marco:
this really feels good.
Marco:
I would say this might be the best-feeling iPhone they've made maybe since the Mini.
Marco:
And this feels better in some ways, worse than others, mostly because it's bigger.
Marco:
But this is a very, very good design in my opinion so far.
Marco:
Again, I've had it for like two seconds, so it's hard to know long-term.
Marco:
I don't have any opinions of the cameras and stuff yet because it's just too soon to know.
Marco:
But so far, I am very happy with this.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Hearing everyone's reviews of how great the Max 5X camera is, and I'm sure I want to hear from Casey a lot about this in a minute, but I was a little bit tempted.
Marco:
Maybe I should go Max this year, as many of us have been.
Marco:
And I'm actually glad I didn't for two reasons.
Marco:
Number one, I saw the rumor today that the iPhone 16 series is going to get slightly larger again, like by 0.2 inches for each one.
Marco:
And so I'm like, all right, I don't want to get used to the big size now.
Marco:
And then it gets even bigger next year.
Marco:
But then also, I am loving that they just made this nice advance in getting it lighter weight, getting it a little bit nicer to hold in the hand.
Marco:
I want to actually use that and benefit from those savings rather than immediately spending them by getting the next size up phone.
Marco:
I've been asking for this for years.
Marco:
Make the phones lighter.
Marco:
The medium phone is a little bit too big and way too heavy.
Marco:
Make it lighter.
Marco:
Make it a little bit smaller.
Marco:
They actually just did that and it feels great and it looks great.
Marco:
And so I'm happy to stick with and enjoy the smaller size and actually really benefit from these savings.
Casey:
So for me, I did the unthinkable.
Casey:
And as discussed last week, I ordered a 15 Pro Max.
Casey:
I bought it in the good gray, the natural titanium in 512 gigabytes.
Casey:
And in short...
Casey:
I think I like it.
Casey:
I'm really uncomfortable with it.
Casey:
I'm really not too comfortable with the fact that I kind of really like it.
Casey:
Have you broken it yet?
Casey:
Not yet.
Casey:
Okay, good.
Casey:
That's good.
Casey:
This is better than, I think it was my 12, my 12 Pro, if memory serves, that it was a podcast.
Casey:
I've told the story many times, but it was Podcast-a-thon day.
Casey:
We had been to like a local fair.
Casey:
Aaron's car was just utterly obliterated with dirt and whatnot, so I decided to wash it real quick, but I wanted to listen in to Podcast-a-thon.
Casey:
My AirPods weren't working for some reason.
Marco:
This was when the windshield was still intact, right?
Casey:
This is when the windshield was still intact.
Marco:
Was your laptop dry?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Both of our laptops were dry.
Casey:
But then in the process of washing the car, I was trying to go and do like a quick Carl version.
Casey:
And I jumped up with my phone that was in my back pocket of my shorts, my brand new phone that I had had for literally six hours at this point.
Casey:
And it fell out of my shorts onto the cement and shattered the back of it.
Casey:
Thankfully, I did have AppleCare because especially at that point, it was like a $600 repair or whatever if I didn't have AppleCare.
Casey:
But anyways, I've lasted for several days now.
Casey:
So I've already beaten my record in a good sense.
Casey:
But yeah, so I got this 15 Pro Max.
Casey:
I have always hated the big phones.
Casey:
I always thought they were ridiculously oversized, ridiculously heavy, and just ridiculous in every measure.
Casey:
I have made incessant amounts of fun of Mike Hurley and the big phone boys over at Connected, which for a lot of the run of Connected was all of them.
Casey:
And yet here I am, hat in hand, saying, I would like to eat some crow, please.
Casey:
I think I really freaking like this phone.
Casey:
I really do.
Casey:
The weight difference between the 14 Pro and the 15 Pro Max.
Casey:
So I put it on our very unscientific kitchen scale because I was curious what our very unscientific kitchen scale said.
Casey:
And I know I could look up the numbers, but I wanted to see, you know, what does this thing say?
Marco:
I was going to say, Apple tells you right in the page.
Marco:
I have it right here.
Casey:
No, no, I know, I know.
Casey:
But I wanted to test it locally.
Casey:
I wanted to see what that thing said.
Casey:
Because I swear to you, they feel like they're either the same weight or maybe the 14 Pro might even be heavier.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It is not.
Casey:
It is unequivocally not.
Casey:
Based on our kitchen scale, and I wish I didn't have the chance to look and see what the official rate numbers are, but according to the kitchen scale, the 14 Pro, 208 grams, 15 Pro Max, 221 grams.
Casey:
But I swear to you, it feels...
John:
almost lighter which maybe i've been incepted by everyone telling me this from the hands-on area and maybe i'm lying to myself but it certainly does not feel like the boat anchor that the 14 pro max felt like it is amazing because of the size i mean it's like the same same reason it's so impressive you get like a tiny little one centimeter over one centimeter cube of tungsten and you got like a block of aluminum that weighs twice as much but it's way bigger like the tungsten thing feels impressively heavy you know because it's smaller right so that's that's what you're getting if the
John:
If they were both the same size, you'd be able to tell the size difference.
John:
The weight difference.
John:
That's the word I want.
John:
But because you expect the much bigger phone to be much, much heavier and it's only a little bit heavier.
John:
Yeah, that makes sense.
John:
I do feel the same thing with Tina's phone.
John:
I do feel the weight difference.
John:
I still contend that it is mostly the absolute weight difference and not the fact that the weight has been removed from the perimeter.
John:
That is a big deal.
John:
But you can definitely feel it.
John:
In a blind test, I could definitely tell the 14 Pro with no case from the 15 Pro with no case.
Marco:
By the way, I ran the numbers on Apple's site and the 15 Pro Max is actually less dense than the 14 Pro in terms of like grams per cubic meter.
Marco:
It is less dense.
John:
Yeah, of course it is, because that's what you're feeling.
John:
It's like when you get something that seems heavy for its size, the 14 Pro seems heavy for its size, and the 15 Pro Max seems light for its size, because it's less dense.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So I'm curious, Casey, really, how are you... I've had the 14 Plus as a test phone all summer, and I was developing the app against it and everything, and I'm wondering, because every time I pick up the 14 Plus, I would always think to myself...
Marco:
maybe I should try carrying this around for a week or so and get used to the size and see if I like it.
Marco:
Because the 14 Plus is even lighter than the 15 Pro Max.
Marco:
And so I thought, maybe I should try, see if I like the big phone.
Marco:
And I would put it in my pocket and walk around for a couple hours, and I would hate it.
Marco:
I would only last at most a couple hours.
Marco:
I'm like, I can't, I can't.
Marco:
It's too big in my pocket, too big in my hand.
Marco:
I was just never able to get used to that size, at least in those short trial runs.
Marco:
How have you found, like going from medium to big, like how are you used to it?
Marco:
Did you get used to it quickly?
Casey:
So there's several different things I want to talk about.
Casey:
I'm not sure which one is the right one to do first, but I guess let's start with in-pocket.
Casey:
I wear guy clothes.
Casey:
They're generally somewhat loose fitting, possibly and partially because I'm unfashionable.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I'm not in a situation where I've felt like the in-pocket feel was a problem.
Casey:
You know, it's definitely bigger for sure, but it's not a night or day issue.
John:
What pocket are you putting the phone in?
Casey:
Right front pocket, as I have for many, many, many years.
John:
See, this is something I hadn't really thought about, I don't know why, but until this year.
John:
Not because I got a new phone, but because I'm transitioning from shorts weather to pants weather again as the seasons finally start to change here.
John:
And one of the things I miss about shorts weather is when I wear my shorts, I put my phone in my right front pocket, right?
John:
But when I wear jeans, I find, even with just a plain old 14 Pro...
John:
that my right front pocket is a little constricting.
John:
I feel the phone there more when I sit down.
John:
I feel like I might be putting pressure on the phone.
John:
So I'm amazed that you can put a Pro Max in your right front pocket.
John:
Are you talking about jeans pockets or are you just wearing sweatpants everywhere?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Well, sweatpants when I'm in the house and shorts when I'm out of the house.
Casey:
Today was the first day here in Richmond that
Casey:
I think I could have done jeans and been okay.
Casey:
You know, up until today, it has been warm enough.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, so you haven't done the Pro Max jeans test yet.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
That is correct.
Casey:
And you know, had I thought about it, I would have run around today with jeans on.
Casey:
I didn't even think twice about it.
Casey:
But yeah, so the weight, not a problem.
Casey:
The in-hand feel...
Casey:
It's not a problem, but it's different for sure.
Casey:
Now, I'm having a bit of a life crisis here.
Casey:
I need you to be gentle in this very challenging time for me.
Casey:
Did you get a kickstand for your phone?
Casey:
Kind of.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
Did you get a pop socket?
Marco:
He did.
Marco:
He said he was getting a pop socket.
Casey:
I got a pop socket, and for a day or two, I thought, I'm just going to return this pop socket because what kind of idiot uses a pop socket?
John:
It's got to be really flat collapsible if you want to get that into the front right jeans pocket of a Pro Max with a collapsible pop socket on it.
Casey:
I don't, I don't know the depth of a honest to goodness pop socket, but it's not tremendous.
Casey:
It's a little bit like the, it's a little bit above the camera mesa, but not obnoxiously.
John:
So you would actually, it's one of the benefits of the giant camera mesa is that it's makes the pop socket look slimmer.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
But I did after a day or two, I caved and opened the pop socket and,
I kind of like it.
Casey:
And I feel really gross about it because I was so anti-pop socket and I think I kind of like it.
Casey:
And so that's the thing.
Casey:
So to more directly answer your question, Marco, generally speaking, I don't think it's bad.
Casey:
I think it's a little tough as a one-handed phone.
Casey:
I am not in love with the Pro Max as a one-handed phone.
Casey:
So you kind of have to embrace that you either need to dual-hand, you know, wield the phone, or you need to have some sort of affordance, be it a strap like we talked about earlier or a pop socket or what have you, in order to single-hand it.
Casey:
Because I really feel like my prior strategy of the load-bearing pinky...
Casey:
basically renders the top half of the phone unreachable.
Casey:
Now, granted, there is reachability, so you can swipe down on the home indicator and you can bring that down to within reach, but I don't love that.
Casey:
And so for now, I've been using the official, it's a real honest-to-goodness pop socket, the circular one, not the pill-shaped one,
Casey:
And I'm not in love with the pop socket, but I feel like it is extremely nice to have it so that that can increase my range.
Casey:
And I no longer feel like I need the load-bearing pinky.
Casey:
The thing that bothers me the most, though, is that I can barely reach the... I typically use a phone in my right hand.
Casey:
I can barely reach the left-hand corner of the screen, like the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, with one hand.
Casey:
And that is sometimes annoying.
Casey:
So, like, in the Mail app, you know, if you're looking at a piece of mail and you would like to archive it or delete it, you need to go to the bottom left corner.
Casey:
Doing that one-handed is tough.
Casey:
And that's frustrating.
Casey:
But, all in all...
Casey:
I think I like it.
Casey:
And I think, especially once you consider the camera, but even without the camera, I think the juice might be worth the squeeze at this point.
Casey:
Now that the bezels have been brought in some, the weight is way down from where it was.
Casey:
All in all, I think I'm into it.
Casey:
And sitting here now, I have absolutely no desire to return it.
Casey:
That being said, the one place where this falls down real bad for me...
Casey:
is the action button.
Casey:
I love the idea of the action button, but it is so freaking far away from my hand that it's almost not even there, at least when I'm single-handing it.
Marco:
You should try being a left-handed phone person.
Marco:
It would be right under your thumb.
Casey:
You make a very good point.
Casey:
That is something I should probably at least investigate.
Casey:
You're just trying to get her to drop that phone.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
Use his less coordinated hand to carry this giant thing.
John:
Exactly.
Casey:
No, but you make a good point.
Casey:
And I have set the action button to camera.
Casey:
And I'm skipping ahead a little bit.
Casey:
I want to talk about the transfer process very briefly.
Casey:
But I went out this afternoon and took a few pictures.
Casey:
Now, granted, it was miserable weather here this afternoon.
Casey:
But I went out and took a few pictures, specifically because I thought you would probably want you, both of you, would probably want to see the differences between the 3X and the 5X.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
So I am not the world's greatest photographer.
Casey:
In fact, I'm at best an okay amateur photographer.
Casey:
And I was kind of in a rush for uninteresting reasons.
Casey:
And so I didn't do the best job of like framing these photos, but I tried to get representative of examples of photos with both the 14 Pro and its 3X camera and the 15 Pro, Pro Max and the 5X camera, which I've realized I don't think I labeled it always as a Pro Max in these images that I'm about to share, but that's okay.
Casey:
You know what I'm talking about.
Casey:
So I'm going to quickly run through them.
Casey:
And if you have questions, I'm happy to field it.
Casey:
So I went to a park that's in the Richmond area.
Casey:
And again, it was disgusting weather.
Casey:
So consider that when you look at the fidelity of these pictures.
Casey:
It was actively raining a little bit and so on and so forth.
Casey:
So the first thing I did was I parked my car.
Casey:
I parked it obnoxiously because nobody was at the park.
Casey:
I was only there for like five minutes.
Casey:
I don't need to hear any feedback about my parking job.
Casey:
Also, I'm a
Casey:
I parked the car.
Marco:
A BMW would have been diagonal across the spot.
Casey:
That's probably true.
Marco:
You're merely perpendicular across the spot.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
I should have thought about the fact that I'm going to get a whole bunch of flack for this, but I assure you I was one of like three cars in a parking lot that was like hundreds of meters long.
Casey:
But anyways, the point is I ran, and this was, I don't know,
Casey:
30, 40 feet away from my car, something like that.
Casey:
And there's a little knee-height brick wall between the grass and a concrete area that I'm standing on.
Casey:
And I tried to frame the brick wall roughly equivalently at the bottom of the frame.
Casey:
And I took a shot with the 3X and the 5X, and there's a big difference.
Casey:
There is a heck of a difference there.
Casey:
And you can see that plain as day in these two shots.
Casey:
um so yeah so there you can see quite a difference um i actually was not the next one i took but the next one i'll talk about i happened to be on my way out of this park and noticed a goose this one i feel like is a little less dramatic i was probably i don't know 10 to 20 meters away from the goose but i took a picture with both of the uh both of the 14 pro 15 pro max with the 3x and 5x again i mislabeled it my apologies but um
Casey:
But you can see here that the difference isn't that dramatic to me in the goose itself.
Casey:
But if you look at the amount of fencing you can see on either side of the goose, which will make sense if you're looking at the photo, there's quite a bit more in the 3X than the 5X.
Casey:
Less dramatic in this case.
Casey:
Again, I was a bit closer to the subject matter, but still a difference nevertheless.
Casey:
So then I thought, all right, let's take a look and let's try all the quote unquote lenses.
Casey:
This image is freaking huge.
Casey:
Um, so I took one with the, uh, this is all in the 15 pro max.
Casey:
I took it with the one half X ultra wide, the main at 25 main at 28 main at 35, and then the two X main and the five X main.
Casey:
And so that's 48 and 120 millimeters, uh,
Casey:
Interestingly, I don't think I did anything wrong or weird or anything like that.
Casey:
Maybe this is user error.
Casey:
But the ultra-wide, the 2X, and the 5X are all 3024 by 4032.
Casey:
But the main camera, the three of the four on the main camera, so the 1X, the 1.2, and the 1.5, the 25, 20, 35 millimeters, were all bigger.
Casey:
4284 by 5712.
Casey:
I don't know if I did something wrong.
Casey:
I didn't knowingly do anything differently.
John:
Did you do the math?
John:
Isn't that doing the 24 megapixel thing?
John:
maybe yeah i think but i don't know i don't know why the uh the 2x wouldn't also be 24 but maybe the 2x had to bin because this is what we talked about before like that when you use the 2x thing we were talking about the 14 pro so i don't know the 15 pro does but on the 14 pro when you do the 2x thing where it takes a center crop of the main thing
John:
It will try not to bin those pixels and use the actual native pixels.
John:
But of course, the whole reason they use binning is because if you use the native pixels all the time, they get a lot of noise and they're not a lot of light gathering.
John:
So if there's insufficient light, which there might not might not have might not have been sufficient light on this kind of overcast day, then it might be binning them.
John:
And that's why you're getting that.
But.
Casey:
That's a good call.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Casey:
But this is what I got out of the camera.
Casey:
And so anyway, so I don't have a whole bunch to say about this other than to say you can see a truly dramatic amount of range between the ultra-wide and the 5X.
Casey:
Like, it is a humongous difference, which...
Casey:
I think it's pretty cool.
Casey:
And so far in my basic usage, and I'm not going to share these photos, but in quick usage that I've had, I've really enjoyed the 5X.
Casey:
I think it might have been Mike that said having the 3X as well would be nice, like if there was a quad lens or quad physical camera system.
Casey:
But I think I am here for the 5X.
Casey:
And I was at swim lessons with Michaela, I think yesterday, and...
Casey:
It's an indoor pool and, you know, the parents sit on one side of glass and then the pool area and the kids are on the other side.
Casey:
And I would occasionally take pictures of her while she's doing swim lessons with the 3X.
Casey:
And even though I'm not, you know, I'm 10, 20 yards away from where the action is happening, it always felt like it was far away even when using the 3X.
Casey:
But I took a picture with the 5X and it was like we were right there.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
For me, I think I made the right choice so far.
Casey:
Again, this is just like Marco said, we've barely had these phones, but for a few days at this point, but so far I'm really happy with the choice and I think it's worked out pretty well.
Casey:
I have a couple other things to say, but any questions or thoughts about the camera before I move on?
John:
uh tyler in the chat said that the 2x photo you put is perfectly 12 megapixels is that what you're saying tyler i don't know if that's the correct interpretation yeah so that means it didn't bin and it is doing the center crop 12 megapixel but then it is not doing the thing that the 15 and 15 pro are capable of doing which is combining the 48 and the 12 to make it 24.
Casey:
And again, I can't stress enough, super overcast day, actively raining at the time.
Casey:
This was not the right time to do this experiment, but this is the only time.
Casey:
It's been raining all weekend, and this is the only time I had before we recorded tonight, so I did what I could with what I got.
John:
One thing I would suggest for the 5X camera, I know people are like, oh, this is going to give me reach so I can see my kid at swim lessons better.
John:
That makes perfect sense.
John:
But the other thing I would suggest...
John:
Perhaps trying I don't know how this is gonna work out with a 5x camera.
John:
You can find out and tell me 120 millimeters is actually a pop fairly close to some fairly popular portrait lens ranges and in general if you take a portrait photo of somebody with kind of a wide-angle lens they tend to look
John:
Not great, which is why portraits tend to use a little bit, you know, higher focal range lens.
John:
And people are very confused about this online because they think like it's the lens itself that distorts the people's faces or whatever.
John:
That's not actually the case.
John:
What distorts people's faces is being real close to them.
John:
if you're real close to them the view you have of their face is going to be different than if you're real far away you can figure this out with geometry and math and lines and you know you you basically you end up you can see more of the sides of their face when you're farther away than you can if you're up close you think of it being like an inch away from their face you're not even be able to see their ears anymore right but if you go far far away yeah you can see both their ears look at that um and
John:
how that's related to the the focal length of the lens is to get a person's face in the 5x lens you have to stand farther away because if you're two inches away from them you're just going to get their nose right so you're like oh oh i want to shoot you with the 5x lens what will you do you'll back up because you want to get their entire head in the frame and when you back up you're moving farther away from them but all this is to say
John:
The only thing that changes how a person's face looks in a camera sensor, in a camera view, is how far away you are from them.
John:
That is the only thing that will change your perspective.
John:
No amount of lens stuff will change your perspective.
John:
No zoom lens, no wide angle lens or whatever.
John:
The only thing that changes...
John:
how much of the person's ears you can see is how far away you are from them which is why when you take a longer focal length like 120 millimeters and you do a portrait you will have to move farther away to get the person framed and those type of things tend to be more flattering it will i don't know what the right expression is flatten out your face it will make your nose look less big it will make you look less like you're in a funhouse mirror that's why when you know people get
John:
their portraits taken for the cover of a magazine and it's like a headshot that is not taken with a 11 millimeter lens it's like an 85 right or you know 110 or 120 and the person is farther away because it's more flattering so try that with the 5x because i think a lot of picture phone pictures people take like with whether it's a selfie camera or just the 1x it's not the most flattering to your face shape that's a lot of the reason why i want to use my quote-unquote big camera
John:
you know they have better looking pictures of people it's simply because i'm using uh you know even something is like a 50 millimeter or an 85 and i have to be farther away you'll look you'll look better so try that try taking some pictures of your wife and your kids with the 5x lens essentially as a portrait lens rather than the oh i want to zoom in and catch my kid on the stage
Marco:
It also, I mean, first of all, I would say one of my favorite lenses I've ever shot with, it was a 135 prime.
Marco:
And so this, you know, a 120 is very close to that.
Marco:
And if you haven't ever shot with a 135 prime, it's difficult to use in a practical situation because it's a 135 prime.
Marco:
But I would strongly encourage you, if you're a photographer, rent one sometime.
Marco:
It's a lot of fun.
Marco:
You get some amazing pictures out of it.
Marco:
Also, one of the major differences with using a longer lens is it is easier and better looking to get background blur.
Marco:
So if you want your subject to be in focus and you want the background to be blurred, really, like optically, not through AI algorithms and stuff, if you want the actual optical background blur,
Marco:
That is not only much easier to get in a more severe way with longer lenses, but it tends to look more pleasing when you do get it compared to what's possible on less narrow lenses.
Marco:
And when you're dealing with something optically like an iPhone, where you don't really have the apertures and sensor size needed to get real good optical background blur in most cases,
Marco:
Using the longer lenses is often easier.
Marco:
If you use the long lenses somewhat close to you, like as close as you can reasonably focus and frame your subject, you can usually get some pretty good background blur without using any tricks at all.
John:
Take a look.
John:
I just put it on our Slack.
John:
I occasionally do this.
John:
If you work really, really hard and find the few scenarios this works, you can get legit background blur from an iPhone camera.
John:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
John:
But the scenarios in which you can do that are slim.
John:
So take a look on our Slack.
John:
Here's me as I caption this on Glass, working real hard to get that legit iPhone background blur.
John:
i mean and it's not pretty like if you look at this people don't see this picture it's a it's a close-up of a flower like i'm like an inch away from this flower okay with the sun behind it uh and being an inch away from the flower and the flower being in focus actually does give you a little bit of background blur but that is not pretty background but i know this sounds dumb it's like background blur is background blur but in the realm of people testing cameras and lenses
John:
there's whole sections of every lens review that we'll talk about how nice is the bokeh how how nice are the bokeh balls as they call them do they look smooth and creamy or do they look like onion rings or are they busy or noisy are they perfectly round or do you see the blades and you know yeah exactly and sometimes you want a little bit but yeah so this this this the the bokeh balls in this iphone 14 pro are not good but
John:
They're there.
John:
That's legit camera blur.
John:
No portrait mode for me.
Marco:
And I would take that any day over portrait mode.
Marco:
I haven't tried the new portrait mode yet, but I've seen the samples that people have posted.
Marco:
And they look significantly better than old portrait mode to my eyes, but they still don't look quite real.
Marco:
I would take real but bad background blur every day over portrait mode if I had that option.
Marco:
And so anyway, I would I would love like if I if it was an option and maybe in the future it will be based on, you know, on shaky rumors right now.
Marco:
But I would love a future in which that 5x lens comes to the medium sized phone that I have.
Marco:
I'm not willing to jump to the big phone for that alone, but I am envious of it and I wish I could get it on my size.
Marco:
So I look forward to the future and where that might be possible.
Casey:
You know, and I'm glad we brought up Boca because I completely forgot there's one other thing I wanted to say about the phone or the camera.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
So I took a screen recording and I needed somewhere to upload it.
Casey:
So I uploaded it to YouTube unlisted and then it became a YouTube short, possibly because it's vertically oriented.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But suffice to say, what I did was I was standing against the side of a train car.
Casey:
This particular park I was at has a handful of train cars parked at it.
Casey:
And I used the telephoto lens to take a shot of a far away other train car.
Casey:
The train car I was against is like a black color.
Casey:
The one I was taking a shot of is blue and white.
Casey:
And it did the thing where it offered me the automatic portrait mode.
Casey:
You know, it shows a little aperture F or whatever it is, you know, at the bottom left-hand corner of the photo.
Casey:
So I tapped it.
Casey:
And I took the picture and then the video is me going in after the fact and editing it.
Casey:
And this is where you can decide, you know, the virtual aperture.
Casey:
You can decide what's in focus and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And I will be the first to tell you that even as an amateur photographer, some of this like fake bokeh and, you know, fake blur...
Casey:
It doesn't look stellar.
Casey:
I'm not going to sit here and try to tell you that this is better than a big camera, that it's natural, and so on and so forth.
Casey:
I'm sure Joe Steele will have all sorts of problems with this.
Casey:
But taking off the cranky amateur photographer hat and putting on the just general user hat...
Casey:
This blew my damn mind.
Casey:
I am tapping around on this image, focusing different pieces of the image, some of which are 30 yards away from me and some of which are 30 inches away from me.
Casey:
And it doesn't always look stellar, but it always, to my eyes, looks at least passable.
Casey:
And you too might take issue with that, and I wouldn't really argue with you.
Casey:
But the fact that you can do this
Casey:
is so freaking cool and that you can do it after the fact i don't need to worry about getting the shot exactly right in the heat of the moment as long as i see that the little f symbol with this you know with the circular the circle with the f in the middle as long as that's on when i take the shot i know i have at least a snowball's chance in hell of getting this right in post even if i didn't get it right when i took the took the photo this is so cool i genuinely don't remember if this came via software to the 14 or not
Casey:
But this alone might have been worth the price of admission for the 15 Pro because this is so freaking cool.
Casey:
My mind is blown by this.
Marco:
There have been a lot of features for the iPhone camera over the years that, like, if you plan ahead and if you set up the shot and if you know or if your subject is very patient and they're like, oh, just hold on.
Marco:
Let me get one in portrait mode.
Marco:
Let me use cinematic video.
Marco:
There's all these features that they've added over the years that, like, if you wanted a certain advantage, you had to, like, go turn it on and deal with it from the start.
Marco:
Plan ahead.
Marco:
Engage that mode.
Marco:
Possibly at the expense of other benefits from the other modes that you were then disabling by using that mode, like maybe you didn't get live photos, maybe you didn't get the right resolution or whatever.
Marco:
To have something like this where it takes away nothing, like you don't have to plan for it, it doesn't cost you anything except some trivial probably amount of storage space that doesn't matter for the depth data like that.
Marco:
To just have that be there for you, to me, it's like when they added live photos.
Marco:
You know, live photos had that same thing where they're really, besides a trivial storage cost to them, there really was not much downside to having live photos enabled.
Marco:
So all of your photos would just have this little bit of bonus available to them with, you know, no sweat off your back, whatever the expression is.
Marco:
And so I never know.
Marco:
But anyway, so this is that now.
Marco:
You don't have to plan for portrait mode.
Marco:
You don't have to set everything up and get everything right the first time or have your subject hold still.
Marco:
Let me get one in portrait.
Marco:
No, none of that.
Marco:
You just have it and you can deal with it later.
Marco:
That's how you get more great shots because then you don't have to
Marco:
you know you don't have to hesitate you don't have to set it up you just take the shot you just fire and that's it and afterwards you can say oh if i tweak this like this it's even better that's that's true like you know apple iphone camera magic i love when they do stuff like that yeah i couldn't agree more and again if i put on my curmudgeon hat which is the hat i normally have on i can take issue with so many things in this little video but that's not the point
Casey:
The point is, this camera is always with me.
Casey:
It is unusual, and maybe this is a problem, but it's unusual for my phone to be more than a few feet away from me, ever.
Casey:
And so this camera is with me always.
Casey:
And if I can do this sort of magic with this camera, I mean, it's blowing my mind.
Casey:
I'm watching this thing on repeat and it's every time I see it, I'm the one who took the video and it's still blowing my mind.
Casey:
And not only can you adjust what's in focus, but you can adjust how much focus or how much blur or no blur.
Casey:
And you can turn the blur totally off.
Casey:
And then you've got...
Casey:
What appears to be a reasonably good photo from, you know, when of course you can, there's a tremendous amount of depth to it, but nevertheless, it's a pretty decent photo that I took with 120 millimeter lens.
Casey:
Like this is, this is so cool to me.
Casey:
And this alone is, is worth the 15 pro or 15 pro max, you know, pick your poison.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
This is so cool.
John:
Yeah, and what Marco was saying about features that you get in post-processing that you don't have to think about during, as much as I really dislike portrait mode, that philosophy, Apple should continue to pursue that.
John:
Because what I want, and it's going to take a while before they're able to even do this technically, but eventually they will be, is I want them to implement essentially the workflow I do myself, which is shoot everything in both JPEG and RAW.
John:
but throw away the raws unless i favorite them you know what i mean like because it's like i don't have to decide is this is this because i have the same problem right now it's like should i spend the 75 megabytes to shoot this thing in raw or should i just take the jpeg and i end up just taking the jpeg because i don't have the storage space and i don't want everything to be seven but you have to think is this one of the ones i want to spend the raw on
John:
What if it just took everything in JPEG and raw and then give me like 30 days?
John:
And if I don't heart it, chuck the raw data in the garbage.
John:
Kind of like, you know, the live picture thing where if you, uh, I think like if you, if you deactivate the live photo thing or whatever, eventually it will, it will chuck that sidecar.
John:
I think at least that used to be the case.
John:
um and i was i was wishing it kind of did the same thing with portrait but it's like i don't want to have to think about it in the moment just do all the things and then later there should be some way for me to say do i want this to be portrait mode or do i not and i'm never going to want to do portrait mode so it's useless but raw or not raw i can make that decision and post pretty easily which pictures actually came out which ones do i care about and more likely
John:
Which one's like, oh, this JPEG came out really bad.
John:
It's over-processed or the shadows are crushed or something like that.
John:
That's the one where I'm going to want to dig in there and say, actually, since you took RAWs for everything, let me see the RAW for this one and see if I can recover something.
John:
And even if I just recover something from the RAW and then re-burn a JPEG and then still chuck out the RAW, that's what I want.
John:
You can't do it now because storage space, processing time, the capture.
John:
There's a million reasons why you can't now.
John:
But if phones keep getting faster and then...
John:
You know, if TSMC's three nanometer thing isn't a sign of the end of Moore's law coming sooner than we thought.
John:
Eventually, these phones should be able to shoot everything in JPEG plus RAW.
John:
And that's what I do on my real cameras.
John:
But then I have to manually, like, save the RAWs for the ones that I favorite.
John:
That's something that the phone could do automatically.
John:
So I'm looking forward to that in 10 years.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
The transfer process, I wanted to quickly talk about that.
Casey:
I did a device-to-device transfer.
Casey:
Actually, I should have put this in follow-up.
Casey:
So we talked last episode about how I was doing a Finder-based encrypted backup, and I did the unthinkable, and I left my phone in the office overnight rather than next to my head in my bedside table.
Casey:
How did you sleep?
Casey:
Actually, I had a really crummy night's sleep.
John:
Knowing your best little buddy was so far away from you in another room in the same house.
Casey:
Well, no, no, no.
Casey:
Aaron was next to me, but my second best little buddy was across the house.
John:
And more importantly, Aaron's phone, in case you just needed that phone.
Casey:
Yeah, right, right.
Casey:
But anyways, I left it overnight, and it killed me, but I did it.
Casey:
And I woke up, and the Finder backup was not there.
Casey:
And Finder was like, what are you talking about?
Casey:
You never asked me to do a backup.
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, great.
Casey:
Thank you for that.
Casey:
So that didn't work.
Casey:
So I did a device to device transfer.
Casey:
I don't love that process.
Casey:
I love the results of the process because I had to log into almost nothing.
Casey:
Slack being the number one offender in this department because I had to log into my Slacks again.
Casey:
But almost everything else came across...
Casey:
Lickety split.
Casey:
Even my WireGuard VPN came across, which I didn't expect in a million years that would work.
Casey:
But everything came across just fine for the most part.
Casey:
But it takes forever.
Casey:
I started the process and I had a sheet of paper with this written down on it.
Casey:
And somehow in the last hour, I've thrown it somewhere.
Casey:
But nevertheless, off the top of my head, I started it roughly nine in the morning.
Casey:
And it showed me something to the order of six hours left.
Casey:
It quickly dropped to about two hours.
Casey:
And it ended up that it finished sometime between 11.15 and 11.30-ish.
Casey:
I went downstairs to do something for a little bit.
Casey:
And it was during that time that it finished.
Casey:
I will say that it hung on two minutes remaining for something like 20 minutes.
Casey:
Again, I had it written down somewhere.
Casey:
I don't know what happened to it.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I don't love that process, and I don't love that you can't use either phone.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
I get why that is, but I don't love it.
Casey:
And I'm really, really hopeful that when I'm going from 15 to 16, or 15 Pro to 16 Pro, when theoretically I can do a high-speed USB cable between the two of them, I really hope that this process gets way freaking faster.
Casey:
Although, as we talked about in follow-up, I wonder if I should have done...
Casey:
If I should have put the 15 Pro on Ethernet, if not for the device-to-device transfer, which I don't think that would have mattered because I think that's peer-to-peer, but at least for the subsequent step where it's downloading all the apps again from the App Store and so on and so forth.
Casey:
So I wish that was better and faster, but I'm really hopeful that next year it will be.
Casey:
But we'll see what happens.
Casey:
But so far, I really like this phone.
Casey:
I probably should find a case for it, but I'm just rocking the PopSocket.
Casey:
And although I'm embarrassed about it because I feel like the PopSocket looks so ridiculous, but I think I'm in the minority in saying so because almost everyone uses one these days.
Casey:
I am slightly embarrassed by it, but I really like this phone a lot.
Casey:
I really, really do.
Marco:
Just own it, man.
Marco:
It's cool.
Marco:
Look, it is no longer an unusual position to take to say that you like big phones.
Marco:
Big phones have been here for a long time now, and they offer some substantial advantages.
Marco:
It's all about what you're prioritizing.
Marco:
For many people...
Marco:
One handed use, like while moving, walking the dog, trying to reach that bottom left button is not as important as it being like your primary computer throughout the day, which it is for so many people.
Marco:
You know, like you get a way bigger screen.
Marco:
You get way more battery life.
Marco:
You get either either tied for the best camera or a better camera than the other pro every single year.
Marco:
there's a lot of good reasons that that's really attractive to people.
Marco:
And so it's all about, you know, what's important to you?
Marco:
What are your needs?
Marco:
What trade-offs do you want to make?
Marco:
And, you know, what's most important?
Marco:
Like, in my life, I like to have that one-handed use.
Marco:
I use it all the time.
Marco:
And meanwhile, you know, when I'm browsing my phone in bed, you know, I wish I had the bigger screen at that moment.
Marco:
When it's in my car mount, since my car doesn't have freaking CarPlay, I wish I had the bigger screen at that moment.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I've made the choice that the one handed use while walking is the more frequent need for me.
Marco:
And so that's what I'm going to prioritize.
Marco:
But I'm very close to that dividing line where like, yeah, actually, you know, I can see myself maybe down the road as different things in my life shift around and change.
Marco:
Maybe I would like the bigger screen phone then like it's not so out of the question.
Marco:
I mean, you know, here I am sitting in my SUV that, you know, three years ago, five years ago, I hated SUVs and I never thought I would ever buy one, let alone enjoy it.
Marco:
And here I am loving the thing.
Marco:
So look, it happens.
Marco:
Like, you know, our positions change over time and our needs and preferences and priorities change over time.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
Liking the big phones now is not only nothing to be ashamed of, but surprisingly mainstream.
John:
He likes big phones and he cannot lie.
Marco:
Oh my God.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsor this week, Clean Email.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.
Marco:
At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean it.
Marco:
One of the unexpected benefits of being in America again is, wow, Amazon's fast when you aren't on an island.
Marco:
I have been living at the beach for three, four years full time.
Marco:
There is no door-to-door mail service.
Marco:
There is no access for FedEx and UPS, so stuff has to get sent over on a ferry the next day, and you go pick it up with your wagon.
Marco:
It's a whole thing, which I find very charming, and I love it, but
Marco:
The downside is that Amazon stuff takes up to a week to get there.
Marco:
It depends on how it's sent and how it goes, but you're looking at up to a week.
Marco:
Whereas last night, I had packed everything from the beach to do the show, I thought.
Marco:
I had everything set up, and I realized last night, oh, wait a minute.
Marco:
My mic stand that I brought is going to be really annoying to use in the car because it was just one of those little tabletop tripod looking ones.
Marco:
And I'm like, there's no there's no where to really put that that I can like lean up against it without like bending my neck the whole show.
Marco:
Let me let me see what Amazon options exist.
Marco:
Last night in bed, I ordered a mic stand that got delivered at 4 p.m.
Marco:
today.
John:
for free like yep yep yep and i know and this is something like yeah everyone else in america is like yeah we've had that that's not new and that's not even like the you know the city people have like same day practically or like within you know that's what this was it was same day it was just you know i was ordering at 10 p.m and it got it got here the next day i know but you know what i'm talking about the ones the ones they have like in limited city things have it really close to the thing you can order it and get it a couple hours later i've never experienced that but it sounds really cool
Marco:
I placed like four orders today for just random crap that I'm like, I could go to the store for that.
Marco:
But why waste the trip?
Marco:
Why take the time to drive to the store?
John:
I can tell you one reason why, though, by the way, and you're asking about the Netgear thing that was $1,000 on Amazon.
John:
You got to be careful because occasionally you'll buy you want to buy some incidental item and you won't notice that Amazon.
John:
Yeah, Amazon has it.
John:
but it's two to three times the price it is in the regular store even for something simple like oh a duracell battery or something like is that how much duracell batteries how much could a battery cost ten dollars right if you don't look too closely and it's it's like basically what it's saying is amazon doesn't really carry this there is a seller who carries it who's selling it through amazon at a massive markup so be careful about like oh i just want something in hurry let me just order it on amazon and you're like wait a second
John:
If I just walk to the grocery store, this thing is a third of – literally a third of the price.
John:
So be careful about that.
Marco:
Yeah, that's fair.
Marco:
And there are certain things obviously that are much better to get locally.
Marco:
Like because we're in this apartment temporarily, I've taken a couple trips around to just get some little quality of life improvement issues like a shower caddy, a paper towel holder, that kind of stuff.
Marco:
And a lot of that stuff is like this stuff is so basic and cheap and any grocery store would have this.
Marco:
So I'll just get it when I'm at the grocery store getting groceries anyway.
Marco:
You know, that kind of stuff.
Marco:
That's that's simple.
Marco:
But, you know, more specialized stuff like, oh, you know, my life would be a lot better here if I had like one of my good nail clippers.
Marco:
And so, you know, that's I'm never going to find that in the grocery store or in a local store without driving around a bunch.
Marco:
And it's like, all right, that that kind of stuff.
Marco:
I can I can get that shipped in in like, you know, the Amazon day delivery.
Marco:
And it's no big deal.
Marco:
And that man.
Marco:
having having like modern amazon is i look i know i know they do some shady stuff i know they're not a great company in all ways by by a long shot uh but as a customer my god it's amazing and i know everyone else discovered this a million years ago but i'm just i'm just rediscovering this now and it's it's it's like christmas morning every day like oh wait i can just get that like tomorrow morning it'll just show up like i don't have to wait a week wow 2023 man