Everything Announced at Apple's Fall iPhone Event
By Donna Cleveland on Tue, 09/10/2019
In the 119th episode of the iPhone Life Podcast, David and Donna are joined by iPhone Life's founder Hal Goldstein to break down everything Apple announced at its fall product launch. From the iPhone 11 Pro Max to the seventh-generation iPad, tune in to get the details on Apple's new lineup.
Click here to listen and subscribe. If you like what you hear, be sure to leave a review. And remember to tune in every other week to hear our editors share with you the latest Apple news, best apps, iPhone tricks, and coolest accessories.
This episode was brought to you by Matias and GOBUDi. When Apple discontinued its wired keyboard, Matias stepped in to provide a better one. The built-in hub with multiple ports is great for connecting your wired mouse and other devices. The Mac-friendly function keys make it easy to transition. Ditch the hassle of recharging the battery on your wireless keyboard—buy the Matias Wired Keyboard. Our second sponsor is GOBUDi, a company that creates products for one of our favorite Apple products—the AirPods. Keep your AirPods secure and your iPhone fingerprint-free with the EARBUDi Accessory Kit from GOBUDi, featuring ear-loops, a cord, a cleaning cloth, and a case for your AirPods.
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Which new Apple device are you most excited about? Why? Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know.
Articles referred to in this episode:
New Apple Watch Series 5 Comes with Always-On Display, Titanium & Ceramic Options
New 7th-Gen iPad with 10.2-Inch Display Available for Pre-Order Now
Apple Reveals Details of Apple TV+ & Arcade: Cost, Launch Dates, More
Enroll in iPhone Life's Ultimate iOS 13 Class
Join the iPhone Life Facebook Group
Become an iPhone Life Insider
Sign up for the free Tip of the Day Newsletter
Email the Podcast
Subscribe to iPhone Life magazine​
Transcript of episode 119:
Donna Cleveland: Hi and welcome to the iPhone Life Podcast. I'm Donna Cleveland, editor-in-chief at iPhone Life.
David Averbach: I'm David Averbach, CEO and publisher.
Donna Cleveland: And we have our guest today, Hal Goldstein. He's the founder of iPhone Life. Welcome, Hal.
Hal Goldstein: Great to be here.
Donna Cleveland: We have a special episode for you today. Apple just held its fall iPhone keynote event today and announced a slew of new products including iPhones, iPads, new Apple watches, and gave us dates for the services including Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade.
Donna Cleveland: We're going to break down everything Apple announced today for you, and we're also going to help you decide whether these devices would be right for you, if there is something that you should buy this fall. Before we do that though, we want to give you a message from our sponsor.
David Averbach: One of my favorite Apple products, although we won't be talking about it much today, is the AirPods. You guys both have AirPods, right?
Hal Goldstein: I love my AirPods.
Donna Cleveland: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Averbach: I love my AirPods, I love working out with them, but sometimes they fall out of my ears, and so the sponsor today is GOBUDDY, and they have a really awesome product called Ear Buddy. And what it does is it hooks onto the AirPod, and actually they have a model for the wired EarPods as well. It's a little silicon thing that wraps around your ear and prevents the EarPods and the AirPods from falling out of the ears.
David Averbach: It's great for working out, it's great for if you're using your AirPods or EarPods on the go, really affordable, and so make sure you check it out. You can look for it in Amazon if you search Ear Buddy, or we'll link to it in the show notes if you go to iPhonelife.com/podcast.
Donna Cleveland: We also found out today when iOS 13 will be available. For those of you who don't know, iOS 13 is the operating system for your iPhone, and every year Apple updates the operating system and brings with it new features and improvements overall to the way your iPhone works. So in that spirit, every year we also update all of our guides for you and we create content specifically to help you learn how to make the most out of your phone with all of these new features.
Donna Cleveland: When you update, it's going to be available September 19th, wasn't that right? I believe.
David Averbach: Yes, September 19th.
Donna Cleveland: That's next Thursday. September 19th, Apple will roll out the software to your iPhone, and if you don't have any help you might be confused by some of these new features. We wanted to take a moment to tell you about iPhone Life Insider, that's our premium educational service for iPhone users, and it's a great time to sign up now because we're coming out with an iOS 13 guide on the 19th, that will teach you how to use all the new features.
David Averbach: And we're really excited because for the first time ever, we're going to also have an iOS 13 class. If you want a more hands-on approach, then the class is perfect for you, and Don and I will be leading it, so if you like the podcast, then come hang out with us. What makes the class awesome is first of all, it's a much more in depth comprehensive program. We have six sessions an hour each. It's also live, so there's opportunity for question and answer. We send you a downloadable PDF for each class, and we have a really special deal going on right now.
David Averbach: If you subscribe to the class, you can get a subscription to Insider for free -
Donna Cleveland: For a year, yeah.
David Averbach: For a year, thank you. So you get both for one price, and for that you go to... Give me the link.
Donna Cleveland: It's iPhonelife.com/ios13class.
David Averbach: Yes. And so we're really excited about that. If you are already in Insider, don't worry, you can subscribe to the class and get the same deal, you get your next renewal of Insider will be free for you.
Donna Cleveland: And these are both, you get that discount at checkout, so you just go to iPhonelife.com/ios13class, go through the checkout process and either select to get a year of Insider for free or to get that redeem toward your account if you're already in Insider. So it's really easy [crosstalk 00:04:11] -
Hal Goldstein: And the replays are available I assume if [crosstalk 00:04:13] -
David Averbach: Yeah, good question because that's one of the common questions. The classes are live but the replays are available to you anytime. If you go through the class and you want to rewatch them, you can. If you can't make it to class you can, and you can also email us and ask us questions at any time. If you get tripped up you can always email us any time, and we're going to have our first class on the 19th, the day iOS 13 comes out. So we'll walk you through the upgrade process on that day, which will be super fun.
Donna Cleveland: Yes. And so if you are just interested in becoming an Insider, I didn't give you the link for that yet, that's iPhonelife.com/podcastdiscount, and you'll get $5 off an annual subscription to Insider. Insider, just to explain the differences between the class and Insider quickly to you, Insider you get a guide but it's not with a live instructor. You don't have classes that are helping kind of guide you through the process, it's more self-directed. But with Insider, you get a ton of other features that are really great to have. Of course, we think having the class and Insider is the best deal, so iPhonelife.com/ios13class to get both the class and Insider.
Donna Cleveland: But just to tell you a little more about Insider, you get a digital subscription to iPhone Life Magazine, you get a one minute video tips in your inbox every day and we'll be sending you iOS 13 tips every day. Now with iOS 13 out, you can ask an editor where you can send your tech questions to our editors here and we'll help you find solutions, and you get a premium version of this podcast, so that means no ads and we have a special premium section just for you. Go to iPhonelife.com/ios13class for both the class and Insider, or iPhonelife.com/podcastdiscount to just get $5 off an annual subscription to Insider.
David Averbach: All right, I'm excited. Let's talk about all of the new products and services.
Donna Cleveland: Yes, let's. I thought it'd be fun for us to just give our general takeaways from the event today. It's really interesting to kind of see the bigger themes of what is going on with Apple at these keynote events, and a lot of people, a lot of you listening to this podcast I'm sure didn't listen to the whole keynote.
Donna Cleveland: Hal's been in this industry the longest, let's hear your takeaways.
Hal Goldstein: Well, I'm going to start off a little negative, but then I'll get a little positive. The whole thing started off with services, games, movies, and I thought this... I started this company to learn about the hardware and all the geeky neat stuff you could do. And they show like a Lord of the Rings type preview of some movie that Apple's going to be distributing through its movie service, I guess what they call that... What?
Donna Cleveland: Apple TV+.
Hal Goldstein: Apple TV+, yeah.
David Averbach: And it's a TV show.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah. And then they, of course they have music and then they got into watch fashions. They didn't talk about it, but the credit card, so is Apple a finance company, and so Apple is doing all these things. And I must say as also revealing, I'm an Apple stockholder. So I'm happy they're doing that as an Apple stockholder. As an Apple fan, I wasn't so thrilled especially because they started the whole thing with that. They did have the... I was sort of intrigued about the games they have, we'll talk about in a minute, but they have a $5 a month Apple Arcade program where you'll be able to have all sorts of neat new games that you can test out. But even that, that I wasn't very happy about.
Hal Goldstein: One of the things they kept emphasizing was how environmental friendly they were and how much that was part of their process in building these machines, and I'm glad they kept saying that. I thought that was really important. And then the actual announcements, I was intrigued by the cameras on the iPhone, which we'll be talking about, about the entry-level iPad, which is I think great to get people into the Apple echo system. Those are sort of my pros and cons of the big picture.
David Averbach: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things we were talking about getting ready for this podcast is how you didn't watch the services announcement in the spring, correct?
Hal Goldstein: No.
David Averbach: And so for Donna and I, we've been kind of, we've been adjusting to the new Apple since the spring, when Apple had an announcement discussing just their services. The weirdest announcement [crosstalk 00:08:51] -
Donna Cleveland: It was.
David Averbach: Ever seen, had no hardware at all.
Donna Cleveland: Definitely left us all being like, "Wait, what is Apple [crosstalk 00:09:00]?"
David Averbach: Yeah. But if you're someone who doesn't necessarily follow Apple in the news year round, and you tune in for these new iPhone releases, you're in for a little bit of a rude awakening because Apple is not the same Apple of old, they're not a hardware company anymore. They do everything and it is a little bit weird sitting through these announcements, especially for those of us, all three of us who've been watching them for years and they used to be two hours about an iPhone. Now it's like 10 minutes about an iPhone.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah, and you just wonder Steve jobs -
David Averbach: Yeah.
Hal Goldstein: Going through all this. One thing I thought was interesting at the very end, Tim Cook said, "What Apple is about, we are about empowering people and enriching people's lives." So that's sort of their big picture view, which sort of says nothing and everything.
David Averbach: Which sort of is exactly the point.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah, right.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. I do feel like Jony Ive leaving the company too was like another step away from Apple's presentations, having that Apple quality to it, which a lot of times Apple events can be sort of pretentious and you can make fun of them in certain way. Like Jony Ive's making it's aluminum new designs seem like most innovative thing in the world or whatever, was sort of cheesy, but I do feel like it gave a certain quality to the announcements that... It's just every announcement feels like a little less like that from what I'm used to seeing from Apple.
David Averbach: Yeah, I was thinking that too. First of all, I hate to say it, but I kind of miss Jony Ive's pretentious in the announcements and his enthusiasm for the fact that, pretending like they reinvented things, but also more to the point, when you think about it, not only did Apple eventually got to their hardware announcements, we have a new iPhone, we have a new iPad, we have a new Apple watch, they all look exactly the same. They did not change the form factor for any device except for Apple, but that was purely a functional change. I think it is a little bit different, but they don't care about hardware design anymore.
David Averbach: It's pretty clear that they care, they want to make elegant devices, but I don't think they care about continually refining their devices on the hardware front as much as they do kind of refining their services.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Jony Ive may have been involved with designing the new iPhones it's possible, but I agree with you that it just kind of felt like refinements of the same exact thing.
David Averbach: Yeah. It used to be that when Apple came out with a new iPhone, each year it looked pretty different and that was one of the exciting things was to see the unveiling of what it looked like. And of course Steve Jobs always had the dramatic unveilings, the classic MacBook Air pulled out of the manila envelope, but -
Hal Goldstein: In defense of one thing of the whole iPhone and where it is now and the cycle, this is iPhone 11, skipping one version or whatever, but -
David Averbach: Yeah, we have a critique of that scheduled later.
Hal Goldstein: As a product matures, it's a different, it's not like... They've already sort of refined it to a certain point, and so I'm not sure how much they can do with new hardware unless there's a real reason.
David Averbach: Yeah, and I think that's a fair point. We long ago accepted that the MacBook Pros are going to look pretty similar, and so I think some of it is a maturation of the iPhone as a product but there was no new hardware as far as I'm concerned, at least anything that was really notable.
Donna Cleveland: One thing that struck me is also I feel like with the iPhone X, the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, Apple did really push for a ton of new features -
David Averbach: That's true, yeah.
Donna Cleveland: And that year we saw Face ID, and a whole new form factor, and the edge to edge display, and the OLED display and everything, and that they just haven't had like that much new to add since then. Because last year's, was basically the same phone. I saw no reason to upgrade from the X to the XS.
David Averbach: Yeah. It was the first year I did not upgrade, honestly.
Donna Cleveland: And this year I will, just because I like the matte back of the new phone, and I want the new camera, but those are really the only new things and that's not that much.
Hal Goldstein: Well, I'll tell you one other new thing since [crosstalk 00:13:20] -
David Averbach: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're getting way ahead.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah. Is that, it sounds like you can drop the iPhone now and it won't crack the screen.
Donna Cleveland: I'm so excited about this.
David Averbach: I am so skeptical of that though by the way, Hal.
Hal Goldstein: Well, that's what they said about the XS Max.
David Averbach: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hal Goldstein: I watched some of those films and I managed to crack mine [crosstalk 00:13:36] -
David Averbach: Yeah, I'm not willing to trust the iPhone to not break it on itself.
Hal Goldstein: But it sound like they were making that a big claim, so we'll see.
David Averbach: Okay. Okay.
Donna Cleveland: That gives you a bit of an idea of our general takeaway from the event. We did... In a lot of our rumor posts, we were not expecting the Apple watch and especially the iPad to be available right away at this event, we thought it might be a later fall event, so Apple did release a lot in this event. That's something that'll be exciting to some people.
David Averbach: All right, let's dive in to the details here.
Donna Cleveland: Let's talk about... Okay, so let's talk about the services first. Apple is releasing Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade as how I was talking a little bit about. Let's talk about Apple TV+ first.
Donna Cleveland: We did see some previews of shows. I agreed with Hal, that when I was watching that I wasn't particularly excited because it's just like... But some of that is like I usually watch new shows because I hear from friends like, "Oh, this show actually is really good," and so it's way too early to really judge Apple TV+ I think, and you can't always tell that much from previews.
David Averbach: I will say, speaking of pretentious announcements, I had to roll my eyes when Tim Cook said... I can't remember the name of the show. It's with -
Donna Cleveland: See. Jason Momoa.
David Averbach: Yeah. He said, "The most innovative and creative show in history." That is what he said. And I was like, "Okay, [crosstalk 00:14:55]" -
Donna Cleveland: I was going to say it looked like a really formulaic like post-apocalyptic show.
Hal Goldstein: Yes. Yes.
David Averbach: Okay. So here we go, $5 a month -
Donna Cleveland: Yes.
Hal Goldstein: Which by the way, they have no backlog. I don't think they're coming... They don't have a library, right?
David Averbach: No.
Hal Goldstein: So it's only original shows. I don't know, even five bucks a month is that great of a deal?
David Averbach: Well, what they did, they got me. Because I've been sitting here the whole time being like, "There is no way I'm going to pay $5 a month for like four shows," and it's like who knows if they're any good, and even if they are, Netflix has thousands and thousands of shows.
Donna Cleveland: And movies, yeah.
David Averbach: But if you buy an Apple device this year, they'll give you a year for free, and so that's how they got you really. I was wondering about that, like what if I buy an Apple watch band or like -
Donna Cleveland: That's not a device.
David Averbach: Okay.
Hal Goldstein: [crosstalk 00:15:47], they weren't really clear.
Donna Cleveland: In the picture they had like a presentation up at the time and there was definitely an iPad, an Apple watch and iPhone on there. I don't know what else it applies to, but they said new Apple device.
David Averbach: I think that makes sense as Apple builds out their offering. Because they said it comes out November 1st, but they're going to come out with new shows every month. So as they build it out, I think giving away for free is kind of a value add to their loyal customers, makes sense, and if I hear the shows are good, I'll watch them if they're free, and then if they're really good I'll pay for it next year to watch the season twos. They got me in the end by giving it to me for free, but I'm so reluctant because of what we're saying like I'm such a purist for like Apple being a hardware company.
Donna Cleveland: I know, and also like Apple Music. What other Apple services? I've been sort of underwhelmed with the way they've gone about services so far, I haven't found them to be better than their competitors necessarily. I've stuck with Spotify after trying Apple Music.
David Averbach: Well Apple too, one of the things they -
Donna Cleveland: A little skeptical.
David Averbach: Yeah, totally. One of the things they do is, they copy other services and then they say, "You should use us because we've integrated it into our ecosystem." For example, Apple Music. I use Spotify, but the thing I miss about Spotify is with Apple Music, you can use it on your Apple watch easily, you can use Siri with it, and so there are just inherent integration advantages that Apple has, whereas for Apple News or Apple TV+, there's no real integration benefits. There's nothing I care about.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it's still very easy watching Netflix on your TV.
David Averbach: Yeah, exactly.
Hal Goldstein: And by the way, they didn't say, or maybe you've read it, we'll be able to watch Apple TV on... like I've got a Fire TV on Amazon.
David Averbach: I know they're bringing it to smart TVs, they're bringing it to Samsung, they're bringing it to LG, I have not heard Fire, and Amazon and Apple are particularly uncooperative. So I would be surprised if you could.
Donna Cleveland: But there is an Amazon app. The Prime TV app is now on Apple TV.
David Averbach: Yeah, that's true. But that took years and I think it was only this year that Apple TVs could be purchased on Amazon, which is crazy.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, that is crazy. That's a good question. We'll have to wait and see on that, I guess.
David Averbach: I've got survey results.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, yeah.
David Averbach: We did, as a kind of a brief aside, we do commentary on our Facebook group. So if you all are listening to this now and you want to check out our Facebook group, you can go to iPhonelife.com/facebookgroup, and it'll take you to the page to subscribe or join the Facebook group conversation. You can read all of our commentary. One of the fun things we did this year was we did polls throughout the announcement. So we'll give you the Facebook group's reactions as we go along. For Apple TV, I asked, are you interested in Apple TV+? And this was... I didn't specify the fact it's free, et cetera, et cetera, but 37% said, "Not interested," 33% said, "Not sure," and 30% said, "Interested."
Donna Cleveland: That's a pretty split.
David Averbach: Yeah, pretty split, but a pretty large percentage are not interested, especially given that it's free.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. I was going to say, I am excited to check it out because I'm planning on getting a new iPhone. If it weren't for the new iPhone, I probably wouldn't buy it. I would probably wouldn't do it.
David Averbach: Yeah, we'll see. Again, like you're saying, I'm going to wait and see what people think of the shows. If they like the shows, I'll watch them.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. That's always how I watch shows. What about you guys? Do you wait to hear someone tell you, that who you trust, that it's a good show or do you go and try out a show you know nothing about?
David Averbach: Usually I'll wait, but sometimes I'll just like dive into some random show.
Hal Goldstein: I don't watch that much actually, so I'll either wait or look for five star stuff [crosstalk 00:19:40] -
David Averbach: Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: Okay. Let's talk about Apple Arcade quickly. Apple Arcade is also $5 a month, and as Hal mentioned earlier, it is bundled together about like a 100 shows. It's its own tab in the App Store app from what I understand -
David Averbach: A 100 games.
Hal Goldstein: A 100 game apps.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, under a game. What?
Hal Goldstein: There are a 100 apps, game apps.
Donna Cleveland: What did I say?
David Averbach: You said shows.
Donna Cleveland: Oh wow, okay.
David Averbach: It's been a long day for us.
Donna Cleveland: So 100 games, and it will be in the App Store app. There'll be an Apple Arcade tab in the App Store app.
David Averbach: Yes.
Donna Cleveland: It's $5 a month, and really I think that a lot of parents around here have been excited because they're saying like a lot of shows basically just encourage you to make in-app purchases in order to move ahead, and really like if you have just something you're paying for monthly and then the shows you're not being -
Hal Goldstein: Games.
Donna Cleveland: God, games. You're not being... I'm not a gamer, you're not being prompted to... Sorry, to pay anything after that. Really it's more focused on accomplishing things and your skill level as opposed to just trying to get money out of it.
David Averbach: Yeah. Well and that's something the two people I share an office with, Noah and Raf, both have sons and they've been really critiquing this exact point. Because when they first announced the Apple Arcade, I was a little mad about it because of this exact thing that there's so many free games available right now on the App Store, and so I thought, "Well, why would I pay when I get so many for free?" But their point was that all of the free games are designed... They're monetizing you in one of two ways, either the really obtrusive ads or they're designed to get you to buy via in-app purchase.
David Averbach: For adults that's obnoxious, but for kids it can be a little bit dangerous because what they're doing essentially is they're designing games that are structured so you lose unless you pay money, and it can create a really frustrating response with kids who are trying to use games to learn competitive skills and they're always losing and always getting mad at them, and it's frustrating for parents and kids. And so having games that are not structured and designed for you to lose and have to pay money, is a really nice refreshing idea.
Hal Goldstein: It'll be interesting to see if they have the whole variety of games, logic games and tower defense games, and all the different kinds of games, team up games.
David Averbach: Yeah. I know they're -
Donna Cleveland: Are you a gamer, Hal?
Hal Goldstein: Not so much, but every once in a while I get hooked by a few games. There's about three or four that always at any point I might play.
David Averbach: Yeah. Yeah, and they're putting a lot of attention on that exact thing, having pretty unique creative games, so I am excited about that. The ads too, it's like I just hand my phone to my stepson and I hope for the best and... It's like, I don't know what ads he's being shown and like he's constantly getting frustrated by these games that he's losing all the time, and so I came around, I think I'm going to give it a shot.
Donna Cleveland: Okay, cool.
David Averbach: How about you guys? Any interest?
Donna Cleveland: I will not be, but I am not a gamer.
Donna Cleveland: As you can tell, I've just been calling game, shows.
Hal Goldstein: I might use your approach to see what some people say and if enough people say there are good games in there, I may go for it.
David Averbach: Okay, let me give you guys the survey results. Only 10% were interested, and I was in that group. It was a small group of people interested. 55% were uninteresting. 35% were unsure.
Donna Cleveland: Interesting.
David Averbach: Yeah. It seems like it might have a niche, but again, this is what Apple's doing. They're just having a bunch of services, each one will have their own niche audience.
Donna Cleveland: Let's hear from our other sponsor, David. You want to tell us about Matias?
David Averbach: Okay. Yeah. Interestingly, because we're talking about Apple hardware and the downfall of Apple hardware, Apple has discontinued their wired keyboard. I don't know if you guys know this, but they have, and it's a product that a lot of people love, including myself. I have a wireless keyboard in the office, but I have a wired keyboard at home, and it's really nice to not have to worry about battery life issues.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah.
David Averbach: And it's also really nice, what I have at home is I have the wired keyboard connected to a monitor, which then I can connect to my laptop, and so you don't have to deal with the Bluetooth connection with different computers. You can just plug it in, and it syncs with either computer because it's wired. Matias has a really excellent wired keyboard. They are really great company. They have, it's the same basic keyboard that Apple made except for it's cheaper than even Apple used to make it, it's aluminum, and they have the metals that match the finish of your computer. So they have the space gray, they have the silver, they also, if you are someone who wants a Bluetooth keyboard, they have a Bluetooth keyboard selection as well, so make sure you check them out.
David Averbach: They have 10 keyless and with the 10 keys, and I use them in my office at home. I love them. Make sure you check them out M-A-T-I-A-S.ca. They're in Canada. But we'll link to it as well if you go to iPhonelife.com/podcast.
Donna Cleveland: Okay, so next let's talk about the iPad. Apple released a new iPad. It's from the main line of the iPads. It's the seventh generation one. It's... Let's see. It is 10.2 inches. The previous one is 9.7 inches, so it's just a little bit bigger. It's like weirdly close to the size of an iPad Pro. There's a 10.5 inch iPad Pro.
David Averbach: Okay. There's an 11 inch iPad Pro, a 10.5 inch iPad Air, and a 10 point... Now the new one's a 10.1 inch iPad.
Donna Cleveland: 10.2 inch.
David Averbach: 10.2 inch iPad. It's iPads are super confusing right now, so we have just to recap. What we used to have is we used to have a 9.7 inch what they just called the iPad and that was 329, and then we had the iPad Air which was again 10.5 inches, and then we have the 11 inch iPad Pro. They upgraded the iPad... There's no descriptor other than the word iPad.
David Averbach: We went from the sixth generation to the seventh generation. The main difference in that is, it went from the 9.7 inches to the 10.2 inches. So it's a little bit more screen, a little bit thinner bezel. They upgraded the chip, but they upgraded the chip to the 10, that's the A10, whereas the iPad Air is the A12, and the iPad Pro is the A12 X. It's basically they kept the price, this is the base, here's all... The prices help clarify this, and I'm trying to find my notes so I can make sure I got all of this right for you guys. They upgraded the price. So the price is 329 for the iPad, seventh generation. They kept that price the same. It's 450 for the iPad Air, and it's 799 for the iPad Pro.
Donna Cleveland: And the 329 price, it's the same price that the sixth generation iPad was when it came out as well.
Donna Cleveland: And they have an education pricing available for this new iPad that's 299. If you're a student or a teacher, you're eligible for the 299 price. I have the sixth generation iPad. I ordered it because it's like so much cheaper than iPad Pro and I wanted to have an iPad. I do have to say that the display is not very impressive once you're used to the really nice display on the iPad Pro or if you have the iPhone X or later, you're going to notice a difference. But they did say with today's announcement that they put some work into the screen. It's going to be better than the iPad that I have, but it's not OLED and neither is the iPad Pro, but it's not as good of a display as the iPad Pro.
David Averbach: It's really a budget option, and it's still an excellent device, but it's hard to exactly figure out who should buy it because the thing with iPads are, you don't really need them. Everyone has, at this point, almost everyone has a smart phone and a computer. I don't believe that iPads can replace computers. So I think you still, if you're in school or if you're in the professional life, you still probably need a computer.
David Averbach: It's like the iPad is sort of a luxury product, but you're buying the cheapest, cheapest version of a luxury product and it has a slower processor, it doesn't work with the new Apple pencil, it doesn't have Face ID -
Donna Cleveland: It works with the original Apple [crosstalk 00:28:43] but not the new one.
David Averbach: Yeah, and not the new one. It doesn't have Face ID, it's touch ID. So that's my critique, but I'm sitting here looking at Hal, who has the Pro and I know you love your -
Hal Goldstein: Well no, first of all I'm a little confused. [crosstalk 00:28:54] -
Hal Goldstein: And the Pro, I thought there were two Pros.
David Averbach: There is.
Donna Cleveland: There are, yeah.
David Averbach: Yeah, good call. There's an 11 inch Pro and a 12.9 inch Pro.
Hal Goldstein: Oh, okay.
David Averbach: Yeah. So sorry about that. I have the 11 inch Pro and I always forget that the 12.9 inch Pro exists.
Hal Goldstein: Actually this is the second version of iPad Pro, so it's still 9.7 though the one that I'm having here [crosstalk 00:29:16] -
Donna Cleveland: Hal's pointing to an iPad he's looking at right now, yeah.
Hal Goldstein: Oh yeah, you may not be able to see. I actually bought the new iPad Pro 12, whatever it is -
David Averbach: Point 9 inch, yeah.
Hal Goldstein: 12.9, and I'm selling it on eBay.
David Averbach: Oh, if anybody out there wants it now...
Hal Goldstein: That's right.
David Averbach: How come? Why don't you like it?
Hal Goldstein: I love this. This is the right form factor.
Hal Goldstein: Whether it's 9.7 or 10 or... all the new iPad, it's perfect for an iPad.
Hal Goldstein: The other one was a little too bulky. I couldn't really use it as a laptop, and I didn't need the screen size. And so I wasn't using it.
David Averbach: So if you were, let's pretend somebody steals all your iPads, just to pretend, and you had to buy yourself a new iPad.
Hal Goldstein: I'd do an iPad Pro 10, whatever it is, 11.
David Averbach: You'd do the 11?
David Averbach: So you do like -
Hal Goldstein: I love the iPad.
David Averbach: You like the Pro, the notch and the Face ID and you think it's worth the extra money, you just don't like the really large form factor?
Hal Goldstein: Right, right. But I do think the entry... I don't know if I completely agree with you, and it's interesting because Apple was positioning this new iPad. One of the things they said was very interesting is that, one of the first slides was comparing it to laptops.
David Averbach: Yeah. They always do that, they always do that.
Hal Goldstein: And then they were talking about the iPad, the new features and the new iOS for iPad OS, and so I think there are a number of people that really don't need all the real laptop features, they really could do all their computing needs on an iPad especially now that the new iPad supports the... What do you call? The smart cover with the keyboard. I think that's a good entry level product for students and for a lot of adults that I know that really don't need the kind of desktop power and desktop apps that -
David Averbach: You might be right, and I will say I've come around a little bit since using the keyboard on the iPad because it does help a lot. There's a lot of shortcuts you can do. My main complaint with it though is that, first of all, you don't have a mouse, and second of all, you don't have a true desktop experience where you have overlapping windows -
Hal Goldstein: I completely agree. For me, that's one of the reasons why I returned that 12 [crosstalk 00:31:32] -
David Averbach: Yeah, it drives me crazy.
Hal Goldstein: But for a lot of people who maybe don't have the sophisticated needs that we might have, I think it could be a very [inaudible 00:31:41]. They get into the Apple ecosystem, and then they have the student version for, I think they said 299 [crosstalk 00:31:48] -
David Averbach: 299, yeah.
Hal Goldstein: Education.
Hal Goldstein: It could be a good option for a lot of people.
David Averbach: Yeah. I think you're right because I definitely, when I talk to my friends who aren't passionate about tech and they're thinking about getting a tablet and they're looking at some of the entry level Android tablets and they're $200, I have a hard time convincing them to spend 799 or 999 for the latest greatest iPad. For me it's just so much better that I have a hard time not doing that, but I agree there's a place in Apple's lineup for an entry level tablet because Android has such cheap tablets that still have decent specs.
Donna Cleveland: I think it makes a lot of sense as a purchase for kids because a lot of people are hesitant about buying their kid an iPhone anyway because they don't want them to have a device on them all the time, but this way they can use it for school or they can use it still to text their friends or FaceTime or things like that, but they're not going to be having a phone with them at all times.
Donna Cleveland: That's an option. But yeah, I personally wasn't like extremely excited for this iPad. I think if I didn't have the iPad from last year, I might be interested in it though.
David Averbach: But you have a lot of buyer's remorse from that iPad, don't you?
Donna Cleveland: I do a little bit, and some of that is that I don't use iPads in general that much, and I don't know even if I had a Pro if that would change that.
David Averbach: Oh, okay. But originally you were annoyed you didn't get the Pro and now you're sort of like, maybe you're just not an iPad person?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, that's more where I'm at. Yeah.
Hal Goldstein: By the way, one feature that I liked also on this new entry level one is that it support a thumb drive I guess.
Hal Goldstein: And so that means you could easily transfer pictures and other kinds of things, which is really a pain otherwise.
David Averbach: Yeah. And now it's interesting because the Pro, they added a USB C plug instead of a lightening plug to support all sorts of different functionality, including having a thumb drive. But they kept it a lightning port, but they made a point of saying that it supports dumb drives, which I thought was really interesting.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it is becoming a complex lineup.
Donna Cleveland: It has touch ID, we didn't mention that, it's not Face ID, or maybe we did. Do you want to share the survey results?
David Averbach: Yeah, go ahead.
Hal Goldstein: And by the way there's one other iPad you may have forgotten, the Mini.
David Averbach: Oh, the Mini, yeah. I didn't even look up the specs of the Mini. I forgot about it.
Donna Cleveland: So 45% said they would prefer the iPad Pro, 35% have an older iPad and don't want to upgrade at all, 20% have an older device and don't want to upgrade. Wait. Oh, don't want to upgrade. I'm not sure.
David Averbach: Yeah, I don't know what the bottom stuff is. You got it.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. That means nobody wants to get this [inaudible 00:34:36].
David Averbach: No, no, no, no. 35% have an older... Oh wait, no, I see the problem. Yeah. Sorry, I typed this up quickly. We, like we said a couple of times, it's been a long day.
David Averbach: 25% have an older device and want to upgrade.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, okay.
David Averbach: The thing that was missing was, there was almost nobody who had never bought an iPad and saw this and thought, "I want to buy that." Part of that I think is skewed by our audience because we're an audience of enthusiasts and I think 84% of you all have an iPad, so that skews the data. We're not like your standard consumer where people who tend to love are Apple devices, not surprisingly but yeah, so most people either prefer the Pro or they have an older iPad of some kind and are not interested in the 329 version, which makes sense.
David Averbach: It's sort of, it's hard. You'd have to have a really old iPad to say, "I need to upgrade the 329 version."
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it's true. Okay. Should we get into the iPhones? That's really -
Hal Goldstein: [inaudible 00:35:43].
David Averbach: Oh, the Apple watch.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, the Apple watch. Yes, we should talk about the Apple watch as well.
Hal Goldstein: Sorry.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought it up.
Hal Goldstein: We'll get to the iPhones.
Donna Cleveland: Apple did release Series 5 Apple Watch and the feature that I'm most excited about with this is that it has an always-on display and that just means that right now when you turn your wrist away from you, your screen goes dark to conserve battery. But they've found a way with a combination of software and hardware to have your display always on without lowering the battery life at all. Right now it's 18 hours, so you can get through one day with your Apple watch if you're lucky and you don't work out too much. That to me was the most exciting feature of the new Apple watch. It does not have a sleep tracking, that was one of the features we were expecting and hoping for -
David Averbach: Yeah, it's true.
Donna Cleveland: No sleep tracking. There was some wild rumor that we heard in a rumor posts that was hoping for a camera in the Apple watch, we did not see that either.
David Averbach: Hoping is a weird word. I always thought a camera on an Apple watch seemed weird.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, that's true. That would be a bit...
Hal Goldstein: The other feature was a compass.
David Averbach: There's a compass, which seems okay. That first seemed so dumb to me, and then I thought about it a little longer, and why it's useful is for navigation. You can use your... Because that will orient you and tell you which way you're facing when you're navigating on your Apple watch.
David Averbach: Hal, do you have an Apple watch, by the way?
Hal Goldstein: Here it is.
David Averbach: Oh, there you go.
David Averbach: And so for me, I actually love navigating on my Apple watch. It's when I'm walking, not when I'm driving. But when I'm walking and I'm navigating on my Apple watch, I love it because you don't have to have your phone out in front of your face and it'll just tap you on the wrist when it's time to turn. But it is annoying when I get going and I'm trying to figure out where to go, I have to have my phone out so I can figure out which direction I'm facing. So having a compass here, while I will almost never use a compass like just for compass functionality, it really helps for navigating.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Was there anything else new with the Apple watch? The main things I'm thinking of -
Hal Goldstein: The other thing was just they made a big deal of the fashion and that then you could get like a thousand combinations of faces and [crosstalk 00:38:01] -
Donna Cleveland: Of ceramic, ceramic and titanium are two finishes that the Series 4 did not have.
Donna Cleveland: Ceramic they've had for past models, titanium is a new thing entirely. But yeah, those are going to be more expensive Apple watches. I've always gotten the sports baseline one personally.
David Averbach: Have you have any interest in any of the more expensive finishes?
Donna Cleveland: No.
David Averbach: To me it's so dumb. I feel like you cannot, I'm sorry people, but you cannot make an Apple watch look stylish, so why spend all the money? Just accept that it's a pretty nice looking electronic device as opposed to a stylish watch and go with the cheaper one. I did... I'm having trouble with my notes. I did write down the prices. Are they there?
Donna Cleveland: I don't know. They got all messed up.
Hal Goldstein: It's 399 was the entry level and then their Series 3 you could buy for 199.
David Averbach: Okay. 399, 199 for the Series 3.
Donna Cleveland: So it's the same entry level price as past years.
Hal Goldstein: I was really disappointed because I missed the four. I bought the three, and the four had some health features and then so I was hoping that they'd have more health features, but there was no, I think I'm going to wait for another year.
David Averbach: The four was a, in Apple's defense, the four was a pretty substantial upgrade. It was thinner, larger screen, and it had a lot of great health features. So it makes sense that this year was not that big of a difference. I also am excited about the always-on display because when I look at my watch, it sometimes it won't turn on right away which is really annoying. And so having the always-on, seems nice to me, but I agree other than that, the only other thing we missed was they have, it's like a sound sensor. It notifies you if it's too loud around you, which seems weird. It's like I know when it's loud around me, Apple!
Donna Cleveland: I know.
Hal Goldstein: They talked about some research, which I liked.
Hal Goldstein: You know, the fact they're using data that people can volunteer, and I liked that a lot. I'll tell you one thing I didn't like, just the way they presented it. Because the first little preview of it was all about how, I know this may sound weird especially as an old guy, but about how the iWatch saved people's lives.
Hal Goldstein: It was so fear-based, the whole thing. You got to get an iWatch and it'll save your life, which was sort of the message and you need one. I just don't like that kind of marketing. In a way, I think it's... they could say the same thing and not have it the way they presented it. So I was a little bit taken, just it didn't seem as what I would like in terms of Apple, my idea of Apple.
David Averbach: I half agree with you. It is like, I can appreciate that if you're Apple you're like normally you make tech devices that are pretty high-end and expensive and here you're like, we made a device that saves people's lives. I understand the like desire to tell people about it, and like there are a lot of people who really benefit from those [crosstalk 00:41:09] -
Hal Goldstein: Yeah, and I would be one of those people, but just the way it was presented, I said it probably nicer than they did in terms of save people lives. It just sort of put the fear of God in you to buy one of these things. They have these stories about how it saved their lives or their heartbeat was way up and all that, and I see that and it is a very wonderful thing but just a little bit of an angle, because when you market something you can market either aspirational or you can market in fear-based, and I just didn't like their fear-based kind of way.
David Averbach: And where I agree with you too is I do feel like they're struggling to find the value position and defining clearly. Like the reasons why I love my Apple watch, and again, maybe this is because I'm a younger person, are not the health related features so much. I like the fitness tracking and I love the fact that it allows me to keep my phone in my pocket more and I can access quick interactions with notifications just by looking at my wrist. And it's one of those things where when you have it, the people who I know have Apple watches for the most part love them, and then the people who don't, don't understand why you would need one, and I think Apple isn't doing a great job clearly articulating that.
David Averbach: And most people I know who buy Apple watches except for like people who have very specific health conditions in monitoring, are doing it largely because it's a tech device, not a health device.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Last year with the Series 4, they came out with a feature that's really cool that will allow you to put your finger on your Digital Crown and it will measure your heart rate and tell you whether you have an irregular heartbeat, and I think that's just... It made me really want my parents to have them and my grandma to have one, it also sort of caught my attention, maybe you want to get one, but I do think that it's not... I've never used that feature, or I tried it out when it first came out just to see what it was like, and I think that a lot of people fall into that category like you're saying, it's not really as much of an every day type thing unless you have a heart condition you're concerned about.
Hal Goldstein: Well, I think it's an age thing. Having said all that I've said, that was effective marketing to me because I think, "Well, why wouldn't I want that to warn me?" You guys don't think of your mortality as much as I do.
Donna Cleveland: I think about it.
Hal Goldstein: It's a different way of thinking, trust me.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I believe you.
David Averbach: Can I tell you guys what my favorite Apple watch feature is? It's going to sound so dumb, but it's the fact that I can ping my iPhone so that if I lose my iPhone, I use my Apple watch to find my iPhone. It's not like I buy an Apple watch explicitly for that, but those little tiny Apple watch features are what make the Apple watch great. I have never once in a single Apple announcement heard Apple talk about that feature. They don't talk about the little ways that the Apple watch makes your life better.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. It's true. I want... the other thing to mention, I don't think we did with the iPad is that you can preorder both the Apple watch and the iPad starting Friday.
David Averbach: Okay, yes.
Donna Cleveland: And then they start shipping September 30th.
Donna Cleveland: I think that's pretty much it for the Apple watch. There wasn't a whole lot different. The form factor is the same, they have like we said titanium and ceramic if you want to spend a bunch of money with Apple watch.
David Averbach: One thing I will mention is that we did get the release dates for not just iOS 13 but iPad OS which is the new operating system just for iPad, and that comes out on the 30th.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, it wasn't the 19th?
David Averbach: No, I'm pretty sure Sara said that iOS 13 comes out on the 19th.
Donna Cleveland: Okay. Yeah.
David Averbach: But iPad OS comes out on the 30th, which is funny because it's actually perfect to put one extra plug for our class because it's the last lesson of our iOS 13 course, will be the iPad OS.
Donna Cleveland: Cool.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. All right, let's talk about the new iPhones. Apple came out with the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. The first thing we want to talk about with this, is the names.
Donna Cleveland: We've been speculating about this for awhile and it's a bit... Apple's been in a bit of an odd situation ever since they came out with the iPhone X. Apple was celebrating its 10th anniversary of the iPhone, so that's why they skipped straight from the iPhone 8 to the iPhone X. So there never was an iPhone 9.
David Averbach: Yeah, we were commenting on that.
Donna Cleveland: Last year we were really wondering where was Apple going to go from there, but -
David Averbach: Well, and then the iPhone X of course was a Roman numeral X, so we just called the iPhone X.
Donna Cleveland: And now Apple with the 11, went back. There is no Roman numeral there.
David Averbach: I think my short analysis on this is that I think Apple got it right this time, but there's still so much confusion because they messed it up so badly before. Because I think what they did well in a couple of ways, first of all, so just to explain real quick. We have the iPhone 11 which is the natural successor of the iPhone XR. It's the cheapest model of the iPhone. It's very comparable features to the iPhone XR. Then they have the iPhone 11 Pro, which would have been the iPhone 11 S, it's a kind of natural successor, and then they have the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is the iPhone XS Max.
David Averbach: What I like about it -
Donna Cleveland: That just made it so clear, David. [crosstalk 00:46:46] -
David Averbach: I know, right? Everybody gets it now. Here's what's nice about it, and I think moving forward we will be less confused because if you walked up somebody who'd never heard of Apple and you said, "I have an iPhone XR and iPhone XS. Which one do you want? Which one's better?" No one will know. They're just random numbers and they literally don't even stand for anything.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. I have two friends with iPhone XR that they just have no idea. Like what [inaudible 00:47:10]. They're like, "I think it's one of the 10 ones."
David Averbach: Yeah. Whereas if you walked up to somebody and you said, "I have an iPhone 11 and I have an iPhone 11 Pro, which one do you want?" You don't have to have heard of an iPhone to know that the iPhone 11 Pro is better.
David Averbach: Pro is a self-explanatory word, whereas the R and the S are not at all explanatory.
Donna Cleveland: I agree. And then the Max we've had around for a while so we're used to that about just being the bigger one.
David Averbach: Yeah. And so I think, and we have a coherent somewhat coherent naming structure now between the Mac, the iPad and the iPhone because we have the iPad Pro in the iPad and then we have the MacBook, but anyway it gets easy to use it.
Donna Cleveland: The Pro line is now consistent across Macs, iPads, and the iPhone.
David Averbach: I will say as long as we're critiquing names of Apple, the Air throws a wrench in the works for iPad and MacBook, and in particular for MacBook, I think they've changed now. But for a while they had a MacBook, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro, but the MacBook was thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, disaster.
David Averbach: It made no sense. Okay, that's all I have to say in naming. Do you guys have anything else to say in naming before we move on?
Donna Cleveland: I think the thing that surprised me is I thought at first that the iPhone 11, based on rumors, was going to be the successors to iPhone XS. So that was going to be like the nice phone that wasn't huge.
Donna Cleveland: So I got confused when they first started talking about the features. I was like, "Oh this is their budget phone," because it didn't have the OLED display and all that. I guess overall I think it's a good thing though just whatever is like their baseline model isn't going to have extra things tacked onto the name. So like presumably it would be like the iPhone 12 next, I don't know.
David Averbach: Yeah. The other downside... Yeah, that's the other thing, will they add an S? Will it be an S Pro? The other downside of using the word Pro, for the MacBook and the iPad lines, the word Pro actually means for professionals usually, and poor Phil Schiller had to get up there and explain that while we're calling it pro, but actually you don't need to be a pro to use it because like -
David Averbach: Yeah. For me it's like anybody who wants to spend more on an iPhone, this is the phone for you.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Though one thing I will say is I kind of hope Apple drops its S updates because I think that just, especially now they have Pro and Max in the mix, it gets really wordy. Usually Apple in the past has done like a new number and then the year in between they would do an S version where they wouldn't change the look of the iPhone very much, but they would upgrade the processor and a few other things. So it'd be like we've had in the past, iPhone 7, 7S and then the iPhone 8. I hope that they just drop that and that they just do iPhone 11 and next year, the iPhone 12, because otherwise it just gets too much of a mouthful.
David Averbach: Yeah, I agree. And especially as the phones mature, the changes are kind of incremental each year. They don't have large changes anymore.
Hal Goldstein: So what's with the iPhone 11? What's -
David Averbach: Yeah, let's get into it. Okay. Enough with the names.
Donna Cleveland: I'm going to give you a quick overview of the different features of the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max, and then let's all weigh in on what devices, like what we think of them.
Donna Cleveland: The iPhone 11, it starts at 699. It has a dual camera, so that includes an ultra wide camera and a wide angle camera. It has a 6.1 inch display, so that's the same display size as the XR, so it's a little bit bigger than the iPhone X and XS, which is a 5.6 inch display I want to say, something like that. It has an LCD display so it doesn't have the really, really nice high-end display that you're used to If you have the X or XS even though they're saying it's some special retina version but it's still not as good, and its battery life is an hour longer than the XR. So you get a really nice camera with this. You get a lot of the camera features that you would with the Pro and Pro Max minus a couple of things, but I'd say the biggest things that you're losing are the OLED display and you don't get a triple camera, which the other one has. The iPhone 11 also has the A13 Bionic chip. That's a rundown of the iPhone 11.
Donna Cleveland: Now the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max, the difference really is that it has the OLED display and it's an improved one from the XS before. It's going to be brighter and more efficient than the XS display was. It has a triple camera, so it has the ultra wide angle camera, the telephoto camera, that's the one that does the portrait mode and also does special optical zoom, 2X optical zoom, and then the wide camera, which is just the regular camera. They both have the A13 chip. The Pro and Pro Max have like this nice matte glass back finish and it's tougher glass that apparently as Hal said, you can drop it and it'll be okay. I don't know.
David Averbach: I don't believe that.
Donna Cleveland: I do not recommend if you've splurge on this thousand dollar phone that you try dropping it to see what happens.
Hal Goldstein: By the way, they said the same thing about the 11 too, that you could drop it.
Donna Cleveland: Okay.
David Averbach: Yeah, they're all droppable.
Donna Cleveland: They're all droppable, yeah. The 11 Pro starts at 999 or let's just call it what it is, $1000. Pro Max starts at 1099. As with the Apple watch and the iPad, you can preorder starting this Friday, that's September 13th and this one ships September 20th, which is different than the other ones, so that's good to know.
David Averbach: First of all in terms of preorder, they'd switched it to 5:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, which I'm really excited about because that's 7:00 AM Central time where we're at. [crosstalk 00:53:10] we wake up in a pretty normal time which is awesome.
David Averbach: Let's break down these cameras real quick one more time because they're super confusing and I think to confuse you all even more, I'm going to talk about the XR for a second and the XS.
Hal Goldstein: One thing, there are some other features that they sort of went through real quickly but were really important to me.
David Averbach: Okay. Let's hear those before I break down the cameras.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah, and they seemed to be across both machines.
Hal Goldstein: So the Pros and the 11. First of all, they're droppable which I liked. The fact that it's more water resistant, more dust resistant, well you mentioned the one hour battery improvement. In the Pro, they said something like four and five hour battery improvement.
Donna Cleveland: Oh yeah. I didn't mention that [crosstalk 00:54:01]. It's only a one hour improvement in the 11 and is a four to five hour improvement.
Hal Goldstein: And then the other thing I liked is they said faster Face ID with more angles for both, and to me that's... It's funny for me, it's those little things that are really important to me.
David Averbach: Yeah, and I completely agree. I think in general what commentators talk about for the new phones or like the crazy new features Apple came up with, but in general what people appreciate about the new phones when using them, are all these little details. The faster processor is going to make a big difference, the better battery is going to make a big difference. I actually had missed the wider angles for the Face ID and that's I think really exciting.
Hal Goldstein: Yeah. There are some other things even, they had... Let's see. A better video stabilizer when you're taking videos on all of them. They have something called Quick Take, which is basically you're taking a photo and you can tap it and all of a sudden it goes into video mode. They talked about... And let's see, selfies in terms of this... Well, you'll probably talk about the wide video, so you'll talk about that. And I guess that's it for the things that struck me, is that's what I want even though they just went by it so quickly.
David Averbach: And when we're comparing and contrasting, one of the important things you're going to have to think about, is how much do I care about a camera? And it is nice to think about these other factors as well. Because like you said, I think that the longer battery life and the faster processor is going to really serve you well if you're sitting here thinking about whether or not to buy a new phone.
David Averbach: Okay. Let's break down these cameras really quickly. I'm going to start with talking about last year's phones. On the XR, there was one camera, and that was just the standard wide angle lens camera. And then on the XS, there was two cameras, the telephoto, which is a 2X optical zoom and then the standard wide angle. That's what we had last year.
Hal Goldstein: Can I just ask a question?
Hal Goldstein: What about the selfies? Is that another camera or?
David Averbach: The selfie, the front facing camera we had last year as well, and we have this year. What they added this year is, I'm trying not to roll my eyes when I say this, slofies, which is slow motion on the front facing camera. I can't not roll my eyes. That seems like the most useless feature I've ever heard.
Donna Cleveland: Video selfies with your hair blowing in the wind.
David Averbach: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. So this year we have the iPhone 11, which is again the successor to the iPhone XR, and this phone has two cameras. The XR had one camera, which was the wide angle. This phone has the wide angle, but they added the super wide angle to it. And then we have the 11 Pro and Pro Max. If you remember the iPhone 11 S had the two cameras, it had the wide angle and the telephoto. Am I saying that right?
David Averbach: This has both of those, has a telephoto and the wide angle and they added the super wide. So we have three cameras where there used to be two and then we have two cameras where there used to be one. Where it's confusing, why I got so confused is the iPhone 11 when I saw the two cameras, I automatically assumed it was going to be a telephoto because I'm so used to seeing a phone with two cameras that has a telephoto, but there is no telephoto for the iPhone 11.
Donna Cleveland: 11, yeah.
Hal Goldstein: Again, telephoto is 2X.
David Averbach: It's a two time optical zoom. And so what makes that so valuable is two things. First of all, you can zoom in without degrading the image quality. So if you do a digital zoom, what basically you're doing is you're degrading the image quality when you do that. If you zoom in with the telephoto, you're actually zooming in, like you're using a more zoom on the camera, and so you have the same quality of photo. The second thing -
Donna Cleveland: Up to 2 times.
David Averbach: Up to two times, thank you. The second thing though is that you can still have portrait mode, and portrait mode is one of my favorite features. I use it so much and I love it.
Donna Cleveland: Portrait mode for those who don't know, it blurs the background and keeps the foreground in focus or your subject in focus.
David Averbach: And I think that the XR and consequently the 11, does it with like a software, do you know this?
Donna Cleveland: This, it seemed that, yes, it did it with the software, but I'm not totally clear on that.
David Averbach: They had a cute photo of a dog that seemed [crosstalk 00:58:29] -
Donna Cleveland: With a blurred background, yeah.
David Averbach: Blurred background, and that was on the 11. You can do it, but it's not as good because you're doing it just with software as opposed to actually having the lenses. So yeah, I think that defines the cameras, and I think that gets all three of the phones, we have the differences...
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, like with the iPhone 11 Pro line, you get that extra zoom and you get the better portrait mode, but they brought a lot of cool new camera features to both.
Donna Cleveland: Hal, mentioned some of them but I wanted to mention a couple of others. Night mode is one that we've been waiting for for a long time and that is a low light situation feature that helps brighten up low-light photos, which has been a big weakness in Apple's camera up for a long time. We brought this up in our rumor post. We're really hoping for this. Google Pixel phones have a feature called Night Sight, and Night Sight, we've seen demo videos of it and it was amazing what they could do with some of these photos that would just be really dim and a little blurry looking, and how they looked like really high quality photos. I'm really excited to be able to compare these ones, once we get hands on with these devices, how it compares to Google's Night Sight.
David Averbach: And in particular how Night Sight works and Google's version of it works the same way is, it uses what's called Computational Photography. Computational photography is a really interesting new field they use as artificial intelligence or AI to improve photo quality. And so rather than using a flash, which can really affect the quality of the photo in a number of negative ways, you take a photo in low light and then basically you have artificial intelligence look at that and say, "What would this look like if I added more light?" And it does it in a way that, I mean it feels like magic. When you see these photos from Google Pixel, it feels like it just magically makes your photos look like you're not in low light anymore.
Hal Goldstein: You know one thing that's interesting, it's almost too bad we can't combine the best of Google and Apple because what Apple kept hammering was their A13 chip was so far ahead of everybody else, and so that gives faster processing for their AI and their machine learning, both for understanding Siri and the image processing, whereas Google it seems to be several years ahead in terms of the actual algorithm and their capacity of, their ability to do AI.
David Averbach: I'm excited to compare because up until this year I would have agreed with you and I think you're still likely right, but I'm hoping that Apple caught up and they came out with one other feature that's a computational photography feature. Do you guys remember what was called... I forgot to write it down. Had some weird name. It was called -
Donna Cleveland: Oh, I did write it down. It was deep something... Deep fusion. Deep fusion. I was really excited about this.
David Averbach: Yeah. And basically he called a computational photography for mad scientist or something like that, and basically how it works is the same thing as low light except for it just does it on a pixel by pixel basis and it takes I think, what?
Donna Cleveland: Nine photos, yeah.
David Averbach: Nine photos at the same time and then uses artificial intelligence to blend all nine photos and get on a pixel by pixel basis the ones that have the highest quality. I don't know enough about artificial intelligence to exactly understand the details of it, but it sounded really exciting.
Hal Goldstein: Did you understand they said the first eight were done before you snap the shutter?
David Averbach: Yeah, so basically, this is something that Apple has been doing for awhile or has been building towards for awhile. iOS 13 in general, when you take a photo, it takes it almost instantly. And the reason why is when you have the photo app up, it's constantly processing in the background and taking photos, so when you push the shutter, it's already prepared to take that photo ahead of time. So that's kind of something they've been towards with iOS 13 anyway.
Hal Goldstein: Awesome.
Donna Cleveland: Another feature I really wanted to mention is the ultra wide angle photos you can take now. The iPhone 11 and the Pro and Pro Max, all now have the ultra wide angle lens that David mentioned and that allows you to, when you're taking photos like there's a little swipe, a little toggle, that you can get to go into ultra wide view and it's something that you can see with like a little bit of opacity on either side, that angle you would be getting with your photo if you go into that mode, otherwise you can stay in just the regular wide angle mode, and that's really cool both for landscape photography, we have...
Donna Cleveland: Our video producer, Ryanne, was saying that it's really great, she's been wanting something like this for a long time because you can't really fit as much of a landscape in as you would want with a regular camera, and they also showed a really cool video feature with this. Like you could switch back and forth between wide and ultra wide as you're taking a video, which makes it look like a cool editing effect too of moving in and out. And yeah, anything else to add about ultra wide? I thought that was pretty big.
David Averbach: I think the video is a nice thing to add that you can use ultra wide. They also made it so that you can do edits of videos in the camera app so you can actually like adjust the colors and the saturation and that sort of thing for video, which is one of those features that once they announced that you could do it, it instantly made me angry that I haven't been able to do it all this time, because there are so many times you take a great video and it's just a little bit low light and you're just like, "Well, too bad the video is ruined." And now I'm like, "Wait, I should be able to adjust it just like a photo."
Donna Cleveland: That's how I felt about slofies too. I'm like, "Why haven't I had this for all these years?"
David Averbach: Yeah, where has slofies been my whole life?
Donna Cleveland: So yeah, the front facing camera, it's still seven megapixel, which is what the front facing camera has been for a while. But they made, I think they were like flash was better with it, and then you can do these slow motion selfies.
Donna Cleveland: Again, I'm not excited about but maybe some people are. That's pretty much the breakdown of the camera differences and which is, I think is the biggest change with the new iPhones. Probably we should talk a little bit about the A13 Bionic chip and how that's significant. The other thing I want to mention is rumors that we didn't get, is reverse wireless charging. That was one of the big rumors, we thought you would be able to charge other iPhones or AirPods off of your new iPhone. That's not a thing that is happening. Oh, with the Pro and Pro Max, this is something I am excited about, they ship with fast charging.
David Averbach: Oh, yes.
Donna Cleveland: That means instead of with a lightning to USB cable, it's a lightning to USB C cable and USB C wall adapter, and that allows you to charge your iPhone in like about a half hour, and that's awesome.
David Averbach: And the other phone, the iPhone XS, had rapid charge, but you had to separately buy the cable and the wall adapter which most people either didn't know or didn't bother to do.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Only recently at iPhone Life have we started using third party rapid charging equipment.
David Averbach: Yeah, and so now it ships with it. That means that almost everybody will have the luxury of rapid charge and it really makes a difference let me tell you.
Donna Cleveland: It's crazy, yeah.
David Averbach: It takes so much of the stress of like managing your battery away when you can recharge your phone in half an hour.
Donna Cleveland: What was your overall takeaway from the new iPhones, Hal?
Hal Goldstein: Well, I'll tell you, there was one other announcement and I'm hoping that somehow I can take advantage of, and that was, it had a very brief thing about Apple retail [crosstalk 01:06:02] -
Hal Goldstein: Have the trade-in program, and will they take in my trade-in XS Max with the cracked screen? And if they did, I would upgrade. Otherwise I'll wait for the next generation I think.
David Averbach: So you have the XS Max?
David Averbach: And you were not moved to buy a new phone?
Hal Goldstein: I would like it, but I [crosstalk 01:06:27] -
David Averbach: That much?
Hal Goldstein: Well, I'm not $1,100 more worth. I don't know what I can get for my cracked screen.
David Averbach: Yeah. Yeah.
Hal Goldstein: So it depends on how much they will give me for that, and so if they give me enough for that, then I would do it.
Donna Cleveland: Well, here's another question. Are you generally someone who upgrades every year?
Hal Goldstein: No, I'm usually every other year guy.
Donna Cleveland: Okay. That's actually showing a decent amount of interest, I'd say, if it's not your usual to upgrade every year.
David Averbach: I know we talked about all of these other features. I guess my question to you guys is, how much does the camera impact your purchase decision?
Hal Goldstein: They're just all of them. I like that camera was certainly part of it, and it seemed to me... I'm not a, I know you're more of a camera buff than I am.
Hal Goldstein: But I like just to taking cam shots, I don't want to think about it. I just want to take good shots, and so it seems like more options are available that are fairly simple to use and so yeah, that'd be nice. But I also want the iPhone that drops it doesn't break, that's a big one for me, and a bunch of other longer battery life. Who doesn't want that?
Donna Cleveland: As far as the camera goes, I think the 11 would be just fine for me because I'm most excited about night mode and the ultra wide angle, which you get with both phones, but with iPhone 11, getting a phone without the OLED display and without the extra like four to five hours of battery, missing out on those features is a bummer to me, and I also like the finish on the iPhone 11 Pro a lot more. I think the matte glass back is a really nice look. They had a midnight green one [crosstalk 01:08:09] -
David Averbach: Yeah, they have a new color. We didn't mention, yeah.
Donna Cleveland: The iPhone 11 comes a little more in the like bright rainbow color spectrum, which doesn't appeal to me. I think like, I want the 11 Pro, that's where I'm at with it, but it's not just because of the camera, it's actually more because of there's all the extra premium features that you get with the Pro line.
David Averbach: Yeah. I think, first of all, like Hal alluded to, the camera makes a big difference to me. Especially now as my nephews are getting older and I see them more and I have a stepson, being able to take photos is really important to me, and so that alone is worth it for me to have a nicer higher quality camera. I use portrait mode a lot like I said, and so that alone is worth it to me. Like we said, I skipped the last generation and so my phone feels like it's kind of nearing the end of its like productive life.
Donna Cleveland: It's past its glory days.
David Averbach: It's past its glory days, and I'm obviously really picky because I'm a power user, I do this professionally but like it feels like it's time to upgrade. If I'm choosing between the 11 and 11 Pro... I'm already stumbling over these differences, I agree with you Donna. It's like a no brainer to me. The OLED display is so nice and it makes such a difference to me. The camera is particularly important to me, but I think even outside of that, the OLED display is really nice for me.
Donna Cleveland: I think that's pretty much our breakdown of all. You guys have stuck with us for a long time, thank you. I just want to plug one more time, our iOS 13 class. The new operating system for your iPhone it's coming out September 19th, you don't want to be left behind or be confused, so try our iOS 13 class. It's iPhonelife.com/ios13class. David and I, will be teaching it so you can hang out with us -
David Averbach: We'll see you there.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks for the next episode of the iPhone Life Podcast.
Donna Cleveland: Thank you so much Hal for joining us, it's fun.
Hal Goldstein: That was fun, yeah.
David Averbach: And if you're an insider, stick around, we'll have some bonus content for you.
The iPhone Life Podcast
Donna Cleveland
Donna Cleveland is the Editor in Chief of iPhone Life magazine. After a stint as a newspaper reporter, she became web editor at iPhone Life, where she continues to pair her penchant for storytelling with her love of Apple products. Donna holds a masters degree from the University of Iowa School of Journalism & Mass Communication. She also hosts a feminist podcast called Thread the Needle (theneedle.co).