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This week, invites are out for the “awe dropping” iPhone event! Also: Touch ID and bumper cases making a comeback like it’s 2013, how to combine emojis, the first ergonomic dual-ultra-widescreen setup, Twitter versus Mastodon and Leander’s review of PowerBeats Pro 2!
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Produced by Extra Ordinary for Cult of Mac
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:11 Squarespace
2:19 “Awe Dropping” event invitations
18:35 iPhone 17 Air bumper cases
25:48 Folding iPhone with Touch ID
30:33 Genmoji in iOS 26
41:17 Setup of the Week
50:09 Listener Question
58:49 Under Review: Beats PowerBeats Pro 2
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Threads: https://www.threads.net/@cultofmac
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0:02
Hello and welcome to the Cultcast. The most okay Apple conversation you're going to hear all week long. I knew that
0:08
was going to get you, Lewis. I'm your host, Lea Kaney. Joining me today, we have Lewis Wallace in from
0:16
about two blocks away. Hey, Lewis. Hey, how's it going? Very good. Very good. And G. Griffin
0:21
Jones from across the country in in uh in Ohio. Hey, Griffin. Good evening. Across the information
0:27
superighway. That's right. That's right. Well, we've got an awesome show this week. Absolutely awesome.
0:33
We're going to be talking about Apple's ordropping event coming up. Uh we're going to be talking about a massive
0:39
massive shakeup in Apple's uh case strategy.
0:45
We have an awesome how-to about how to combine emojis. Mhm. And then we're going to be talking about
0:51
this first ergonomic or jewel ultra wide setup. Uh, and then we have a question
0:56
about why we aren't on Masttodon. And there's a good reason for that, which we'll get into later. Oh, and I'm going
1:03
to be reviewing the Power Beats Pro 2 uh from the latest uh sports earbuds from
1:10
from Beats. First of all, I'd like to thank our um sponsor Squarespace.
1:16
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1:21
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1:46
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1:51
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1:57
credit cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay. And in eligible countries, you can offer customers the option to buy now and pay
2:03
later with Afterpay and Clear Pay. This is a great way to sell content. If you have any content that you want to sell
2:09
online, um, you can add up a payw wall or sell memberships or courses. You can
2:15
uh sell files for your customers to download, PDFs, music, or ebooks. So, go to squarespace.com/cultast
2:22
for 10% off. A massive 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with code cult at checkout. Don't forget
2:29
cultcast and checkout. All right. Thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this week's show. We couldn't do it without you. Yeah. So, this week, Lewis, massive
2:38
news. We got a we finally got the invite to the September event. We did.
2:45
Well, we didn't the internet. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be odd dropping,
2:50
man. It's We've been waiting, waiting, waiting. Now we know the date. September
2:56
9. That's when the next Apple product launch happens. Well, it's officially known as the theme. As I mentioned, a
3:03
dropping. And And Leander, I when I heard this, I was like, "Another pun. How you are uh you know you're well
3:11
known to dislike puns and headlines. Yeah. So, how do you feel about Apple's uh never- ending array of cheeky little
3:17
puns about their Well, when they do it, it's okay. All right, then. It's horrible. This one is all right. I
3:25
mean, this one's kind of clever. Mhm. Yeah. Okay. So, it's odd dropping and uh so uh you know, doesn't really tell you
3:31
what's going to be at the event, but of course, it's going to be the iPhone 17 lineup. Uh the image on the events
3:36
invitation, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a like a glowing multicolored Apple logo kind of looks
3:42
like a pronounced fleer. F L I R forward looking infrared image. Uh like Predator
3:48
vision, if you remember that movie Predator Vision, right? That's it's a thermal image, isn't it? It's it's definitely thermal. In fact, didn't the
3:53
didn't the um the file name for the image was something thermal? It
3:58
mentioned literally thermal I can't remember the alt text. Yeah, I I uh I remember reading that and now I've
4:04
completely forgotten what it said, but uh so so now we know what the hottest part of the Apple logo is. We know that the
4:11
top of the apple and the leaf are very cold. The bottom of the leaf is very hot. Uh the the the bottom of the apple
4:17
is is kind of warm, but the bite the equator of the apple is very hot because
4:22
in this in this invitation, you know, it's mostly black. There's like some blues in there, but you know that we the
4:28
yellows around the bottom and then like a hot red ring around the edge of the apple. So that that is now canonical
4:34
information. The bite of the apple is the hottest part as it should be, right? And not just a small difference, like a
4:40
very big difference. Like it's glowing red. So yeah. Uh, and if you happen to look at
4:47
it on uh, you know, an iPhone or an iPad, you can you can press it and it it interacts with your finger, you know,
4:54
the touch, which is kind of a cool little Easter egg. Um, let's see. So, of course, people
5:00
start peering at this thing and wondering, does it offer any hints about what's coming? Some people think it's
5:06
it's a hint about vapor cooling coming to the iPhone, which is a rumor we've heard. Others with bigger dreams, like
5:12
for instance, our own Leander Kaney thinks that maybe it's about the Apple Watch blood pressure monitoring or uh as
5:17
Leander also said, maybe it means nothing. Is is there a link between Apple Watch
5:23
blood pressure monitoring and like thermal imaging? Is that is that how they work?
5:29
Not really. Okay. I mean, you know, the sensor maybe it's
5:34
evocative of the of the blood pressure monitoring sensor, the light that shines on the back of the Apple Watch. Yeah. But it's not really a thermal
5:41
image. Um, it's infrared, isn't it? So, yeah, I guess it is. Maybe it is.
5:48
Maybe. I mean, well, there's there's two different layers to it. There's how the sensor actually works, and then there's
5:53
how Apple marketing chooses to depict how the sensor works, which is often very different. Like, you know, for
5:59
example, with Apple Silicon, the actual chip doesn't look like Apple's neat little tidy like wireframe diagram with
6:05
like, oh, yes, here are the RAM chips here. Here's the GPU. Here's this. like it's it's that's pretty much completely
6:10
fake. Uh so Apple might choose to depict the blood pressure thing with like a sort of, you know, pulsating blue,
6:17
yellow, red animation that kind of evokes that, but you know that that that's kind of a stretch. That's me
6:23
stretching stretching to fit your theory there. Um yeah, right. Which is which is a stretch in the first place. I' I've heard other
6:29
like Steve Troutton Smith I think uh might have linked it to like you know maybe this is there there have been
6:35
rumors of like the AirPods Pro 3 coming at this event ahead of other rumors and there's rumors that that would have like
6:41
you know in-ear like what do you call like heart rate monitoring
6:47
heart rate monitoring yeah temperature whatever maybe more health sensors in the AirPods and maybe that
6:52
could be the link there. I think the vapor cooling is probably the, you know, the um the thing, right?
6:58
The possib the most the most likely possibly. Mhm. And that of course is a new cooling system for the iPhones. Is it going to
7:06
be on the regulars or just the pros? Anyone know? I've read both things.
7:12
I I've I've read things that say iPhone 17 lineup, but then I've I've also seen seen things that say specifically
7:17
supposedly coming to the Pro models so that they have better, you know, better
7:23
performance, right? is cool. And I've also heard maybe only the Pro Max. So Oh, really? All over the map.
7:29
Well, it couldn't be a less exciting feature to um to to highlight, right? I mean, that's not exactly ordropping. And
7:36
a lot of people have been complaining about the the heat of the of the latest iPhones. Like the the iPhone 15 got hot.
7:42
The iPhone 16 also gets pretty hot. I think like people who actually use these phones, especially people who use them
7:48
without cases, feel very often, my phone is getting unusually hot in my hand, especially after running the iOS 26
7:54
betas all summer, right? That'll heat them up. Yeah, I have never had a problem with heating
7:59
with my phone, but then again, you know, I'd never do anything like really spectacular on it. But or if you ever use Apple Intelligence, like I was using, you know, I'll be
8:05
running Gen Moji like uh later in this show. My phone's going to get very hot after doing that for a few minutes.
8:11
Really? Oh, okay. Yeah. running Apple intelligence heats up your phone a lot if you're using like the writing tools or you know image
8:17
cleanup or stuff like that or especially image playground and you know if these are features that Apple wants to put in
8:23
their phones like cooling them down more effectively means that your phone can run faster and for longer and uses less
8:29
battery because it doesn't have to underclock to you know keep itself from melting like an Apple 3.
8:36
I I uh I never noticed that Apple intelligence makes the iPhone run hot. I wonder why.
8:45
That's right. So, should we talk about what else we think's coming in at this thing? I mean, yeah. Yeah. Let's let's what what are we
8:51
going to expect? Uh I I I was thinking about this, you know, of course, iPhone 17, you know, four models supposedly, the normie, regular
8:57
iPhone, the uh Pro and Pro Max, the expanded camera module, and uh super
9:02
slender new iPhone Air is what we think it's going to be called. um other products supposedly Apple Watch Series
9:09
11 and maybe Apple Watch Ultra 3. People are talking about that more and more. So maybe that's actually coming. AirPods
9:15
Pro 3 with heart rate monitoring as you mentioned. Uh iPhone cases. Oh my god, who can wait to see the new iPhone
9:21
cases? Uh the other thing that I was when I was thinking about this, oh yeah, app this is when Apple's going to like
9:27
reintroduce liquid glass, right? They're going to pretend nobody knows what liquid glass is.
9:33
remember how they always do that? They always basically re do a a WWDC rerun of
9:39
of all the software stuff. So that might be like the the main part of the show.
9:44
Who knows? Yeah, I I hope they do that like sort of in the middle of the show like so I have time to finish whatever articles I'm
9:50
writing and catch up. Yeah, we should have like a a office pool on, you know, which which device
9:57
will be mentioned first because then that person always gets plucked out of the conversation has to go hammer out
10:02
their news post about it. It's almost always the Apple Watch, isn't it? Yeah. Well, has from what I can remember,
10:08
they they usually do Apple Watch, AirPods, and iPhone or like maybe regular iPhones, AirPods, and then they
10:14
end with the Pro phones. For the life of me, I can't remember what order they do this stuff in.
10:20
That's fair. I mean, your your experience of the Apple events is even more so of a tornado than mine, so I
10:25
don't blame you there. You're probably editing them in the wrong order, and you know, you've tuned out the the actual
10:31
live event like 30 minutes ago. It's also pretty likely, like Mark German seems insistent that they're going to
10:36
come out with an Apple TV 4K, I think the fourth generation one now. So, that
10:41
might come as well. I I guess another question is like what are we expecting to buy?
10:47
Yeah. Well, I'm think I'm actually for the first time ever just going to get the regular iPhone, not a Pro model,
10:53
which would be the first time ever in the history of iPhones. Are you Are you actually going to go with the regular iPhone or are you going
10:58
to wait for the iPhone 17e? The regular iPhone, just the regular one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we'll see. I
11:06
don't know. Um, it's hard to It is It is really tempting all the pro features,
11:11
the cameras. Mhm. Even though I don't really use them so much anymore cuz my kids are grown up now, you know. So, what do I take
11:17
pictures of? The cat. Um, it's uh neighbors.
11:25
It's uh I, you know, it's it's it it's that fear of missing out. It's like, oh
11:32
god, you know, what if I what if I I do need that? You know, I'm going to go on vacation. What if I need that?
11:37
Yeah, you say that now. I bet after the event you're going to be much more conflicted about that and you're going to end up buying the prophones because
11:43
Apple's gonna like mark Apple's going to make the profone look really really good and you're be like, "Oh, but I have to have it."
11:48
I I could record an album in my hotel room. Well, I think Apple intelligence that's
11:54
the only thing I'm really worried about like as long as they support Apple intelligence, which even though it's it's not great that some of it is good
12:00
and and those are more essential. I think having those software features are more
12:05
important than having the super fancy cameras because the cameras on the regular phones are just as good. You know, for the kind of photography I do,
12:11
the sort of snap stuff, um, they're perfectly adequate. In fact, I can't even tell the difference. I was looking
12:16
at some of my my mom's pictures and and even though she's a terrible photographer, they they actually look
12:22
okay. They look fine. I mean, the entry-le phones also have like the the the, you know, 2x optical zoom, you
12:28
know, that just crops the sensor in, but you know, you're only really missing out the advanced features nobody ever uses
12:34
like cinematic mode and all that stuff and the and the telephoto. So, yeah. Well, I don't even like telephoto,
12:41
you know, shots, landscape anyway. I mean, they're good for portraits. That's probably the best uh reason to use them.
12:47
But yeah, um I've never used the cinematic mode. ever once except I think when I was testing it and and then I
12:53
never went back to I probably should. I probably am missing out on on on using these things. But do it for your documentary.
13:01
Yeah. Which documentary? It's the life of Leander Kane. That's why I I love all these uh you
13:06
know when they do these events and things, you know, so much aspirational stuff. You know, oh wow, you can do all
13:12
this amazing stuff with this tool and and then you get it and you're like, well, I guess I'll send my Darts team a
13:18
text message. And it's like uh you know it's still it's nice to know that you could do this stuff if you ever you know
13:24
had time to pursue something creative or you know chose to take some time to do
13:29
something creative. Uh Apple Watch Ultra especially is that way. Oh my god, I could be climbing a mountain. The the
13:36
other big rumor about the iPhone Pro is that it's going to be orange.
13:41
Right. So, this this is the one thing that I am super curious about, and I'm
13:47
almost certain I'm going to be disappointed. I'm almost certain that the orange will be just a boring orange.
13:54
I slightly peach. Are you bracing yourself for that? I'm I'm thinking more on the brown edge
14:01
of things. And uh I I posted something on Twitter which is a very vibrant uh
14:09
community, lots of people uh showcasing what I want it to look like.
14:16
I mean, I want it to look like uh I I actually searched up what this metal flake candy paint job, you know, like
14:23
like uh on a custom car. That's what I want, you know? I want it to look just
14:29
super vibrant and like, whoa, look at that thing. I want people to almost if you're out in the sun to almost have to like uh you know shield their eyes. I
14:36
mean which I mean to be fair that's one of the things about even the dullest
14:41
iPhone pro colors. Like if you get them outside you can see a little bit of speckling, a little bit of fleck and it
14:47
actually starts to look slightly less dull and corporate and boring. So, you
14:53
know, I think they should just take that to 11 and and just make that orange phone like the most obnoxious,
15:00
brilliant orange color that's ever uh ever been seen on a a custom car,
15:05
right? Make it look like a low rider. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Lewis, you're wishful thinking.
15:11
I know. I'm wishful thinking. Come on. Yeah, like you said, brown. Kind of
15:17
peachy brown. Orangeish brown. Yeah. I mean, remember what was the what was the color of the purple one? Remember we got really excited about
15:23
that and deep purple. You bought not one but two. Yeah. The wife and I both got them. She
15:29
plucks it out of the box. She goes, "That's not purple." And as as I mentioned before, if you
15:34
took it outside, it almost looked slightly purple and there was a little bit of fleck and stuff that looked kind
15:40
of cool, but you know, inside it's just like, oh jeez, another bluish black purpley bru. It's like the color of a
15:47
bad bruise basically. I mean, Apple designs these things in like a 2,00 under like 2,000 lumen lights that are
15:53
just like blasting them with their full potential color, reflecting the most light possible. So, they they've got a
15:58
skewed environment there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's one of the advantage about going with a regular phone. It's going to be,
16:04
you know, like I'll have a a range of nice bright colors to choose from. I really like that. What ultramarine? Is that what they call
16:10
the um the kind of bluey Yeah, that was it. That that's actually I mean that's closer to what I'm looking
16:15
for and I hope to god they actually do it. I mean, there's been so much talk about this orange iPhone Pro. So,
16:22
I don't know. Well, which one are you going to get then? Do you think you that's probably what you're going to be leaning for? The the Pro Max?
16:28
No, not a Max. The Pro Max is too much. Way too much phone. I I just can't put
16:33
myself through another year of it. It's too too big, too uncomfortable. Even I
16:39
was picking I picked up my iPhone 17 or 16 Pro today. I'm like, it's so big. I mean, it
16:45
they're large phones. even the small ones. So, I don't know. I'll probably go
16:50
with the 17 Pro just and and to be honest, only because I'm on the upgrade program. I mean, at this point, I don't
16:57
if I was a non if I was not a member of that. There's no way I would buy a new phone this year. Mine is totally fine.
17:04
The battery is totally fine. I I there's not a single thing wrong with it.
17:09
Nothing. It's It's never too slow. It's never too hot. It's never too anything.
17:14
It's just It's just fine. and I could probably use it for two more years, but no, I'm on this upgrade program which
17:20
I'm starting to wonder is should I do it? But yeah, I mean there was a a fun thing on
17:25
Masttodon which is a fun community of a lot of engaged Apple enthusiasts where people are comparing their battery stats
17:31
against each others and like I've heard of it all six of them. Yeah, I I still have like a 100% of my battery
17:37
capacity available and it's been almost a year and I've only like cycled it like 260 times. So, I have Yeah, battery is
17:45
not a problem for me at all. Yeah, I see people complain about the battery all the time and I always see these screenshots, you know, battery
17:50
life. Oh, it's down to 96% of people are losing their minds. Mhm. Over it. You know, one of the things I
17:56
did uh that you just reminded me is that I think this is the first phone I've had that hasn't been destroyed. It hasn't
18:02
got any cracks really. I've had it I've had in a bumper case all year, but there's no screen cracks.
18:08
I don't screen protector case. Let's be clear, that's not a I sorry, a silicone case. Yeah, bigger
18:13
silicon case. Uh, and yeah, no screen cracks. And I I usually put a screen protector on it,
18:19
but there's no no screen cracks at all. And I think this is a testament to the ceramic glass that they use to protect
18:25
these devices. Ceramic shield, is that what it's called? Ceramic shield. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No uh
18:30
no dings, no scratches on it at all. They're much more durable than they used to be. Well, you're so excited to talk about
18:36
bumper cases. So, let's move on to the next story here. Apple supposedly considered a bumper
18:42
case for the iPhone 17 Air that surrounded the phone's edge, leaving the back exposed. Such a design would help
18:48
strike a balance between the 17 Air's ultra thin 5.5 mm frame uh with some
18:54
everyday durability. As Mark German puts it, the case would be similar to the bumper case that Apple offered for the
19:00
iPhone 4 from 2010. People have a lot of nostalgia for that phone. Maybe people
19:05
don't have nostalgia for antenna gate, but you know, bring bringing back some, you know, retro design there in the way that
19:11
Apple might. It's unclear if Apple will launch the bumper style case for the iPhone 17 Air
19:16
though. Internal testing doesn't always mean the company will publicly launch the product and we haven't seen any
19:23
leaks from Majin Buu about this. But that again, we haven't really seen anything from Majin Buu about the iPhone
19:29
17 Air specifically. So, you know, right, it's just been cases, isn't it? Yeah, mostly.
19:34
A report from May pointed to Apple considering launching a battery case for the iPhone 17 Air that would snap
19:40
magnetically onto the back of the thin phone and extend its battery life by about 50%. Uh would which would help
19:47
because it's a thinner device and it won't have as good of a battery. Uh there also might be the new rumored tech
19:53
woven cases for it. We don't know. And this is now one of the only remaining areas of the iPhone event that we
19:59
seemingly don't know anything about. And so hopefully that stays that way because we'll have at least one surprise. But
20:05
a bumper case. Whoa. Mind blown. Nobody has like really had bumper case.
20:10
I I know Avon has a bumper case on his film. I think there's a good reason for that.
20:16
You know what? I I tried one uh a couple years ago. It was the Rhino Shield, as a
20:21
matter of fact, the one that Arafond loves. And uh you know, it's okay. It's all right. I don't I don't I don't
20:27
understand why really. I mean, in fact, the the the camera bump is so thick that that the bumper case ends up feeling
20:34
like ridiculously thick. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. The Apple's original bumper cases were designed in a
20:39
time before we had protruding cameras at all. So, how would a how would a how would an iPhone X air bumper case handle the
20:45
camera bump then? I mean, it would maybe I can imagine like maybe they have like a a thin bumper around the edge,
20:51
but then around the camera bar at the top like it gets a little thicker, but you know, the part that you hold at the
20:56
bottom of the phone stays a little thin. I can imagine that being a potential design.
21:01
Yeah. And aren't they kind of useless though? Uh I mean they they they're okay if you drop the phone on the edge, but
21:06
if you drop it face down or on the screen, you know, well, you know, it has a little bit of a lip, so even if it falls face down, it
21:11
still doesn't hit it. I mean, the thing about phones is like if you drop them, I think like anywhere above three feet,
21:18
like mathematically, it's almost always going to hit on the corner. I guess I'm I can't say I'm very excited
21:23
about the bumper case, but um battery pack makes sense. This would be the product to bring it back for. Like the iPhone 17 is the
21:30
device that emphasizes thick thinness. And the bumper case is, you know, like why not bring back a fun unique style of
21:36
case? And if you want a regular case, they'll probably still make the regular silicone cases for it, too. or you can buy the myriad of thirdparty ones. But I
21:43
think it would be a it would be a fun revival for a fun new phone that that goes back to sort of that Johnny IV aesthetic. Anyways,
21:49
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and talking about the iPhone Air, I think I'm going to change my choice. I don't think I'm going to get the regular iPhone after all. I think I'm going to get the iPhone
21:55
Air. You are so impressionable. I think that's the one to get, isn't it?
22:00
You're going to get whatever is the last one Apple talks about. Yeah, precisely. Oh, I want that one.
22:07
No, no, that one. Yeah, I know. They're gonna be pulled eight different ways. Tuesday is going to be a roller coaster. Oh, I guess we didn't actually specify
22:13
when the event is in our story. Uh the event is Tuesday, September 9th. Yeah, I think we said that.
22:19
I think I said that. It's 10:00 a.m. Pacific is when it starts. You can stream it. You know, as everybody knows, you can go Apple's event site. I think
22:26
you can stream it on YouTube if you don't want to use Safari. And uh
22:32
yeah, big fun. I God, it's going to be all pre-recorded again, isn't it? I I
22:37
like the pre-recorded stuff. I mean, people were complaining about Google's event, you know, with the Pixel phones, and what a complete, you know, like they
22:44
were saying that it it suffered because it was a live event. They would have been better if they had if they done it pre-recorded. No, it suffered because it was a badly
22:50
done live event. It it was like a home shopping network thing, you know, Jimmy Fallon.
22:56
Oh, it's got IP76 dust protection. But even the even the
23:01
Google people, I mean, it just seemed like it had that kind of a uh you know, kind of a tory vibe. Yeah. It wasn't
23:07
even goofy. It was just like not great. Um but but the one thing about it, and I've
23:13
I've talked about this for years, the the live things, you know, it it it's well, it's more vibrant. It's more live.
23:19
It there's a more of a sense of like something could go wrong. something could be, I don't know, vaguely
23:24
humanistic as opposed to just like trotting out the latest AI polished uh
23:31
presenters. I mean, I question sometimes if if any some of these people are actually a living breathing people.
23:36
They're so I I also would like to know how many takes they do on these things, you know, like like how many takes to to
23:43
for the the twominut spiel on the latest, you know, Apple Watch health
23:48
feature. Not that I'm casting a spursion on any one particular presenter or anything. I
23:53
mean I I just they're all so cookie cutter, you know. Yeah. It's it's a it's a fire hose of
24:00
information which makes it really hard for us specifically to write about because there's no there's no pauses, you know, whenever they they switch
24:06
presenters, you know, walking off stage, walking back on stage, like that that's the moment when we all catch up on our
24:12
writing. It's like some kind of freaking DJ set that just never stops, you know? Just
24:19
what, an hour and a half long, just nonstop. Yeah. Well, I know. I went back and watched the last one after, you know,
24:26
like you said during the while it was live, we were all working and we're all trying to like bang out these posts about what they're talking about, but
24:32
then after I went back and watched it and, you know, it was to totally enjoyable. I really quite uh I like that fire hose of information. you know, you
24:38
get and and and they, you know, they they're kind of disciplined about, you know, they'll talk about four or five features or whatever. They trot them off
24:44
pretty good. You get a pretty good overview of what's kind of what the product does and what what what its features are. The transitions are always
24:50
kind of fun. They have a bit of sense of humor in them. Um, it transitions really sweet. And that's
24:55
iPhone 17. And now back to you. Yeah. And then there's some sweeping shot as they fly, you know, through a
25:02
drone through the Apple space campus, right? Yeah. I would I would like it if
25:08
they used less uh boilerplate language, but but I agree they do get they
25:14
effectively communicate a whole hell of a lot of information in in a very short time. So, and the pre-recorded format allows them
25:21
to have more variety of presenters as well, you know, present like the the direct manager of this project rather than having, you know, Greg Joy talk
25:28
about the entire iPhone. Yeah. I mean, I suppose there's advantages and I I'm not I'm not saying they're poorly done. I mean, I think
25:33
they're excellently done. I just they just feel kind of so so prepackaged.
25:39
I don't think Do you think live events are ever gonna come back? Ever? It seems unlikely at this stage.
25:44
I don't know. Pull one out for that. Well, actually, here's the phone I'm really excited about. The foldable the
25:51
foldable iPhone uh which is going to be coming up in September next year,
25:56
September 2026. And the the latest rumor about this is that it may bring back
26:02
everyone's favorite biometric ID. Touch ID. It's definitely yours, right?
26:09
Works 33% of the time with cany skin, right? With my flaky skin. Yeah. No, it's uh this this might actually kill
26:17
the foldable iPhone for me. So the latest room is it's it's they call it a
26:22
book style foldable going to be launched in September 2026. Due to space constraints, device will supposed to use
26:27
Touch ID instead of Face ID. It'll also lack a SIM card slot. It's going to
26:32
feature four cameras, one on the front, one on the inside, and two on the back.
26:37
Uh, and it's only going to come in black and white. Only black and white. So, more interesting, the report claims the
26:43
foldable will use Apple's new C2 modem. This is a second gen bassband uh design,
26:49
and it'll better compete with Qualcomm's offerings. It'll probably have uh mm wave support for the uh fastest 5G.
26:56
Okay, that's very exciting. Yeah, I I don't think I' I've had a, you know, an iPhone 12, you know, with with
27:03
alleged support for 5G since it debuted in 2020. I don't think I've ever once used like the millimeter wave, like
27:09
ultra wide, super fast, full power 5G. I don't think once in the last 5 years have I ever been in a location that's
27:15
had it. So, I have yet to be blown back by 5G. It changes, right? on the um the in the
27:23
menu bar on the phone when it uses that. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh mine says 5G, but I'm not
27:28
sure it works. It'll say like 5G UW or something. UW I I that happens to me every now and then.
27:35
Still yet to see a blazingly fast download. Yeah, from what I can recall, that seems to be a sign that it isn't working. That
27:42
when that pops up, it everything freezes. It's like trying to use that and then and then it flips back to LTE or
27:49
something, you know? It's like what? Way to go, Verizon. Killing it. Killing it in this backwater known as the San
27:55
Francisco Bay area. Yeah. And the the modems, I suppose. I mean, Apple's been working How long has
28:01
Apple been working on its own modems? I mean, they bought Intel's modem team when I think in 2019, I want to say.
28:09
Yeah. And so, they've been they've been trying to crank these things out, but they and
28:14
any are you any idea why it's so hard? modems, I think, are just one of the most complicated chips that are
28:20
manufactured, which is pretty much why Qualcomm is the only one that makes them. And Qualcomms, I mean, are good are great, aren't they? But then, of course,
28:25
they they weren't they in a big patent fight with Qualcomm for years, too. Yeah. Like not a patent fight, but I
28:31
think it was like a licensing fee disagreement, you know, because every phone basically in the world, if it
28:36
wants to run 5G, has to buy Qualcomm modems because they were basically the only one that makes them. And so
28:42
Qualcomm was charging them inordinate prices that Apple didn't want to pay and so they're like well we'll we'll we'll
28:48
just make our own then. And it's taken them a long time. Well, I guess um you know like like like Steve Jobs said, you know, they always
28:53
want to Apple always wants to want the primary technology in its products and and these are only more important. I'm sure they'll offer like you know Apple
29:00
if it gets its act together possibly, you know, like better battery life, more
29:05
system on a chip features, timer kind of thing. Uh and of course there satellite now as well, isn't it? satellite
29:11
communication is more and more important and then I guess you know Apple's you know these if it does get this modem expertise I mean they're going to go on
29:17
more and more devices so it's not just phones but Apple watches uh iPads maybe
29:22
the Mac maybe the Mac will finally get a modem in fact why hasn't the Mac got a modem why doesn't the Mac have built-in
29:28
um networking it really should they they've run completely out of excuses at first it was like well the Mac's on
29:34
Intel you know the iPhone is all on Apple's you know the A series chips that wouldn't work even that excuse didn't
29:40
really makeense sense at all because then the Mac's got T2 chips which are also like you know they then there was like oh well you know it's an iOS thing
29:47
and like well you know then they then they introduced Mac catalyst so like you can explicitly like just like run iPhone
29:53
software on your Mac in the be in the first place and then and then like you know after they switched the Mac to Apple silicon like it's like oh well the
30:01
excuse was well you know those are Qualcomm chips Apple's waiting until they can make their own chips and then
30:06
oh well the C1 chip it doesn't support millimeter wave so that's that must be the But we we after the C2 chip, they
30:13
have fresh run out of excuses. They they really do need to bring it to the Mac.
30:18
The iPad, I'll remind you, has had cellular since the very first iPad in 2010. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, like
30:23
if the iPad can have it, if the Apple Watch can have it. Mhm. Right. Yeah. AirPods will get it before
30:31
uh before the before the Mac. All right. Well, let's uh let's move on to our how-to section. Um, and Griffin, you're
30:38
going to give us a demo of how to combine emojis in iOS 26. Actually, it's
30:44
Mac as well, too, isn't it? So, this works across iPhone, Mac, and iPad. That's right. So, this is a a fake
30:50
conversation I have with a different Apple ID, the name with a person named
30:55
John Apple Seed that I that I use for demoing uh iMessage features like this.
31:01
But uh here I'll be giving a quick demo of the new features in Genmoji. So
31:07
Genmoji you'll recall is the feature where you can create your own emoji by like giving it a few words or a picture
31:13
of somebody. But now the the hot new Genmoji feature is that you can prompt
31:19
it with two other emoji or or three or four and combine them. So I found a few
31:26
examples that work pretty well. For example, uh the skull emoji works well combining
31:32
with any of the other ones. So, you can do skull uh Santa. I'll find the Santa
31:39
emoji here. Oh, sorry. I'll I'll search for the Santa emoji because I and we can make ourselves a dead Santa. Yeah, there
31:46
we go. We've we've combined Christmas and Halloween. So, it's uh basically The Nightmare
31:52
Before Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now we've got a fresh emoji for that. uh Santa with a skull.
31:58
Um and then you just hit the blue check mark and suddenly you can and and suddenly you can use this as a sticker.
32:03
You can use it as a regular emoji. You can still type around it uh anywhere you would use an emoji. Now um it also works
32:12
really good with cowboy hats. So you can do a uh type in the cowboy emoji and
32:19
then let's do a duck and it'll add a cowboy hat to a duck. Really really cool
32:25
stuff here. That's with two peaks. That's great. It's made It's made an abomination.
32:31
Oh, Apple intelligence. But then you swipe over and there you go. You've you've got a you've got a a duck wearing a fedora. That's actually
32:37
pretty excellent. And I'm going to keep that. At least it's only got two legs. Yeah. Uh it also really works works
32:45
really great with sunglasses. Say, type in the sunglasses emoji.
32:50
And then we can type in let's get a really off-the-wall one like clock.
32:58
Sunglasses alarm clock. We'll see what happens here. I shuddered to think. Hey,
33:04
there we go. That's kind of what you would expect, isn't it? So, yeah. Yeah. Though, the one thing that
33:10
it doesn't work with is flags. I I was thinking, you know, you can play a little world domination here. combined
33:17
the US flag with oh would be spicy the Vatican flag but it says unable to use
33:25
that description sadly we we cannot celebrate the American pope with an American Vatican flag
33:32
but c can you use the American flag with for instance apple pie anytime you type a flag emoji it says
33:39
you we can't use that description what the Apple has some weird things that they
33:44
don't allow you to do Mhm. Mhm. Flag. What? Oh, here's an idea. Let's combine the
33:50
purple splat emoji splatter with eggplant. And it Okay.
33:56
Does nothing. Add some sunglasses to it. There we go. Oh, there you go.
34:01
What the hell is that? I've also found that sometimes it adds hats. Even when you don't use cowboy as a prompt, it'll just add hats to things.
34:08
Oh my god. And a little serving tray. What? Yeah, it's missing the splatter. I
34:13
wanted to have an oberine with a splatter. Maybe it's organiz uh reading it as platter.
34:21
I mean I it's it's just that stupid. Huh?
34:26
You put in splatter, it it thinks it means platter. Huh? That's possible, actually.
34:32
Yeah. Let's do an eggplant with a number one medal. You've got the you you you have
34:38
the best eggplant. Let's see what happens. There we go. Number one. That's really great.
34:45
That's handy for the god show. It's placed the metal in a rather unfortunate place.
34:52
There we go. What's that? What is that? Almost looks like candy corn. Oh, it's a It's like a little
34:59
piece of ribbon for the metal. It It has an eggplant, a number one metal, and it looks like it confused the
35:05
the the red ribbon and it made it part eggplant again. Here we go. That's That's what we're
35:11
looking for. Here's a Here's a gold medal with an eggplant on it. That's a winner. So, how many how many
35:17
variations does it create whenever you uh you make a new one? It looks like four four or five. It starts by generating four, but if you
35:23
keep swiping over, it'll just keep making more. So, we'll do we'll do
35:28
another one here. Skull and do the dances.
35:34
Oh, sure. This this will be like the the movie Coco, you know.
35:39
Hey, look at that. That looks adequate because this is running on device. Like if you keep making if you keep swiping
35:44
over, it'll just keep generating more and more and more. Once you once you once you hit the end, it starts generating the next one. You have a
35:50
little spinning emoji and it'll just keep going. And and this is when your phone heats up. Yeah. And the more you swipe, you can
35:56
see it's like you'll get very different styles. Like it it'll do like completely different things as if it's making like
36:02
different prompts behind the scenes. Like we've got a series in a row where it's has like a background on it, but
36:09
then we swipe over and it goes back to having like sort of a white background cut out and it'll just keep going. Here,
36:16
this one's on the beach inexplicably, kind of ignoring the dancer part, but uh
36:22
you know, it's really good because if it starts making things and it does it kind of wrong, then you can keep swiping over and it'll it'll it'll keep making more
36:29
variations. So, Genmoji, it's a pretty fun feature. Uh it's honestly it's the only Apple intelligence feature that
36:35
I've observed other people like actively using in the wild. Uh I have a few friends who have like you know newer
36:41
iPhones and they'll you know occasionally send a gen emoji in a group chat. So
36:46
can you do a pig and later hosen? Is there a later hosen emoji? I'll do a
36:52
pig. Do you want the realistic pig or the pig head? Uh pig head I guess. Okay. Pig head
36:57
because I'm pigheaded. And what what other emoji do you want to combine it with? Is there a later hosen
37:03
one? Isn't there a later hosen kind of character? What am I thinking of? What's the uh what's what's the sort of
37:10
English word for that? Um kilt. No. Well, oh no. Have I just offended a bunch of
37:16
Europeans? Yeah. Wrong country. Oh,
37:22
wrong country, laddy. All right. Let's do Let's do pig and and a little luggage. Little pigs going on a
37:29
journey here. What about a pig and a dog? A pig suitcase.
37:35
You can do that. I combined the other day. I combined duck with frog and that made some pretty horrifying results.
37:41
Let's do that. I'll I'll show you that. Malard duck and frog
37:48
face. It It gave like a It gave the duck like a weird like big buggy frog eyes
37:55
and a and a bill. That actually just looks normal. Looks like some kind of Amazon frog. There we
38:01
go. Three eyes. Oh yeah, there you go. Bright green duck with frog eyes and a third duck eye.
38:09
That's a frog riding a duck's back. That's like That's like one of That looks like one of those This looks like
38:15
that could be like a fake AI video that goes viral on Tik Tok. Can you believe a frog riding a duck in a pond?
38:22
Wow. There you go. Duck and frog are friends. They're in a pond together. There you
38:28
go. There's another abomination. It gave it ears for some reason. Like goat ears.
38:35
Yeah. There we go. Some of them are kind of Island of Dr. Maro, but I actually figured it would be more freaky than than it was.
38:42
Yeah. There's like an alien with a a finger pointing at you. Is that what that is?
38:47
Oh, yeah. I I made that one. You can combine any of the hand emojis with some of the other emojis to make it uh to
38:53
make something special there. Yeah. and and it saved it to your library. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. In my recently used there.
39:00
So, a lot a lot of fun you can have with this feature. That's Genmoji in iOS 26.
39:05
And that's Genoji in iOS 26. And when's the official release date for
39:10
iOS 26? It comes um when the new phones are available, right? It's usually a week after the new phones
39:16
are available. So, the event is on Tuesday the 9th. So, it'll probably be
39:22
the following Monday, if I had to hazard a guess. There was the one year where
39:27
they said, "Oh, yeah, and the new operating systems dropped tomorrow." And everybody freaked out. So, hopefully
39:33
they never do that again. But that is a background panic in my head that they could they have the power to do that.
39:38
But my guess is Monday the 15th. And you know, like the latest beta kind of looked like the one before the
39:44
release candidate, but then again, it may not be. There could be. There may be a couple more. This is kind of an
39:50
unusual beta cycle, so I wouldn't be surprised if they squeeze in another beta 9 next week and then they have the
39:57
release candidate the week of the event. But yeah, I don't know. All bets are off when they
40:02
when they have such a, you know, wild year as this in terms of in terms of the betas. Although Apple's apps have
40:09
largely stabilized over the last few beta cycles, the uh third party
40:15
developer story is very different. We're going to see a lot of third-party apps that barely implement liquid glass at
40:21
all or, you know, do it kind of spottily because a lot of the there's still a lot
40:27
of user interface elements that are just completely broken and buggy. Like the f the the worst offender is the iOS fancy
40:33
navigation bar at the bottom that collapses the tab bar into a special button and you have the floating toolbar
40:39
elements. That is all basically completely broken. And so as far as I know, a lot of apps like Overcast call
40:45
sheet by Casey Liss or um Steve Troutton Smith's apps are basically just not
40:50
implementing any of that at all. So Oh
40:55
yeah, we'll we'll we'll see what happens there. But um yeah, yep. Probably September 15th is what I'm
41:04
hoping for because that's what I'm that's that's what I'm working around as my imaginary deadline for all of my
41:09
articles around that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it um it's going to be exciting, isn't it? This
41:14
next couple of weeks. A lot of stuff coming. Let's talk about our feature setup this week. We we rounded up some of the best
41:21
dual monitor setups that we've seen over the years. Uh and of course, a dual monitor setup is where you have two
41:26
screens. Uh for some reason, this looks like a four monitor setup to me. Um but
41:31
I guess there's two main monitors. Uh if um what we're seeing here is um a a
41:38
MacBook a MacBook Pro by the looks of it which is plugged into a pair of possibly
41:43
um portable screens. Well, one looks like a portable screen. Maybe they're not portable screens. Those are just uh two ultra wide monitors.
41:50
Oh, I see. And this person has decided I want a lot of screens, but I also don't want to break my neck. So, he has uh them vertically
41:59
on top of each other, which is not typically what you do with an ultra wide screen. I guess maybe he doesn't own a swivel chair and so he can't swivel left
42:06
and right. So, what he's decided is he has like, you know, he's followed the ergonomic rule. His top ultrawide curved
42:12
monitor is at his eye level, but the lower one, the second one is lower
42:18
almost down to the surface of the desk and like pointed up at an angle. So, it's it's very low.
42:26
And then beneath that, he has a standard Apple Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse.
42:32
So, I guess he doesn't care about the ergonomics of his hands, but uh you know, his neck is allegedly protected
42:38
with this setup. So, yeah, it really is unusual, isn't it? That I've never seen a monitor mounted like that, like pointing up at you, but
42:45
I I it actually looks like it would kind of work, wouldn't it? I can imagine that being actually kind of useful. And if
42:50
you look at the uh image at the top of the post talks about it, it looks a whole lot more sane and a lot less like
42:57
behind the scenes kind of weird. You you only really see like the bizarness of like the angles and
43:02
everything from the from the side angle that that we're that we're leading with here. But yeah, there there's another
43:08
picture that looks a little more reasonable. Interestingly, um yeah, so he has a those two screens in the
43:13
middle, the Mac Pro to the side and an iPad Pro over on the left. He's got two
43:20
standing like studio monitor speakers on either side, so he's got good sound. He has a webcam, but he's attached the
43:27
webcam to the lower monitor, so it's sort of in the middle, and I imagine
43:32
that can't be a very flattering angle. So, be a lot of chin. Yeah. Yeah. Straight up the nose shot
43:39
and a weird ring light at the top. Mhm. Which is pointing down and not
43:45
Yeah. It's very odd. Outwards. It looks like he's got a couple of nice um a nice uh monitor arm
43:53
for mounting the uh the monitors. I mean, that looks like a pretty sturdy
43:58
mount. Oh, yeah. He also has another sort of uh arm to the right of the desk. You can't
44:04
really see what he has on top of it, but it looks like it's a it looks like it's a microphone arm. That seems to be the only piece missing from the from the
44:10
whole getup here. But yeah, and these these are 30 34 inch ultra wide 4K monitors. So, I mean, you
44:17
know, they have high resolution. That's a lot of screen space. Um, and with the the MacBook there, too.
44:23
Mhm. And the iPad Pro, that's a lot of screens. I'm always so jealous when I see these. I mean, there's nothing on his desk.
44:30
Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. There's two coasters or something.
44:36
And you can see he has a cleaning cloth hiding underneath the laptop stand. So,
44:42
I guess it's right there. You can just reach around behind it and clean off his laptop screen if it gets Yeah. If he invites somebody over and they
44:48
accidentally touch his screen, hopefully he's not touching it himself because he knows better.
44:54
But overall, I'd say this is a pretty pleasant setup. As much as I dislike, you know, MacBooks and I dislike
45:00
multiple monitors. I find myself pretty attracted to the setup because it's really tidy and you know what? He has a
45:05
lot of natural light coming in. He's got he's got a bright room. So many of these setups are like, you know, they look
45:11
like they could be in somebody's like dim, dark basement that they've just plastered over with like an IKEA table
45:17
and some sound pianos. But no, this is this is pretty nice. He's got two windows, one to the side, one in front
45:22
of him. Uh pretty clean. So I'm he doesn't even have a fancy keyboard, but I'm still like, "Yeah, I might get some
45:28
work done at this at this station." I thought the rim looked pretty grim. It does in this picture anyway.
45:35
the uh with the you know the the beige shades and it's definitely in the picture we're showcasing here it's
45:41
definitely not natural lighting is it is that natural lighting no but the other picture was taken like
45:46
during the daytime and you can see the light coming in I mean there's also a a rich brown desk and you know I my
45:52
feelings about that that that might be a bias as well that I have what do the two
45:57
of you think you work here that's okay yeah I quite like the you know I the most interesting thing is
46:03
that is that lower curved display. Uh the way, you know, having the two of them stacked up on top of each other.
46:09
Like you said, most people's would put probably put them side by side so you'd have 70 in of screen stretching from the
46:16
left or the right and you'd have to physically move your head to to check them out. But this is actually yeah quite a good solution to that. Like
46:22
stuck them on top of each other actually being pretty functional. One thing I don't like about it is that because he has two curved monitors and they're at a
46:29
different angle from each other, you have a weird gap, like egg football-shaped gap between the two
46:35
monitors because they, you know, you can't really line it up straight because they aren't straight. That would
46:41
probably bother me in in actual usage. Yeah. I wonder what it would be like if he he'd stack them completely uh
46:47
vertical, you know, flat against each other. I wonder whe I wonder whether they would still be usable.
46:53
Yeah. then he probably wouldn't get that ergonomics that he's hoping for. Is this ergonomic? Yeah, he's he says all the the monitors,
47:00
everything is carefully mounted and angled for the best ergonomics resulting in no eye or neck strain.
47:06
Even if he's looking at the MacBook Pro screen that I don't know, probably not.
47:12
He has a MacBook Pro on a stand, so it's not like he's looking. You know, most ergonomic setups are more obviously ergonomic. They have like an ergonomic
47:18
keyboard or something like that, don't they? It screams ergonomics. This one doesn't say scream ergonomics to me, but
47:24
I trust the guy. I trust he knows what he's doing. Mhm. Yeah, it looks it's very cool. I I give
47:30
it like a seven out of 10. I give the uh the side picture I thought
47:37
like, oh my god, you know, three out of 10, but the top one looks great. I think are those guitar picks on there? He says
47:42
it's a recording setup. So, uh Oh, okay. I give I'm gonna give it a nine, man. I
47:49
like it. I'd give it I think a four out of five.
47:55
So that's four.5. I give it. Okay.
48:01
Oh boy. I just love talking about people's setups and I look around my room and it's like something exploded.
48:08
Yeah. There's a reason we don't do a setups on on our own setups. That's I'd have to tidy mine up a bit. Mine's a
48:15
real disaster. Mhm. We we got some people talking in the cult club about their setups and my god, some of our
48:22
people, you'd be amazed what they're working with. Uh one of one of one of our govs uh sent
48:28
like a horror photo of like a back office that you know they're they're using and they're like I I felt so
48:33
ashamed hearing hearing about the setup segment on the podcast that like I've been encouraged to clean up this room.
48:39
So we're we're we're creating positive change here. And he sent a work in progress. He sent an update picture. So,
48:45
we're we're we're creating positive change in the world here. Geez, I wish it was uh applying to me.
48:51
Yeah. Well, looking at the post, there are some other setups in the post I like a lot better. Um, and it's a good post,
48:57
I think. Uh, you know, Dave did a good job of rounding up all these different dual monitor setups. There's a pretty
49:03
good variety, all the every kind of like monitor and configuration you could possibly think of. And he has some good
49:10
tips here, too, about the different equipment. um that people are using to
49:16
run these, you know, pretty elaborate uh setups here.
49:21
God, every one I look at it, I just go, why can't I why can't my life be like this,
49:27
right? Well, this this is Instagram perfect, isn't it? I mean, you know, obviously they tied it up. I mean, I'd love to see what maybe these setups look
49:33
like in on a day-to-day basis. Do you think people can really keep I guess these are these kind of You complain about how you can never
49:39
keep your desk busy, but it's not like you're working with like physical products. You have an all digital, all remote, all online job. What is your
49:45
desk cluttered with? Oh my god. The rubbish is just filled with crap.
49:51
The the the cable management. Oh my god. Well, for one thing, you
49:56
know, there's always a constant flow of new products that I'm looking at and trying to think how to write about and
50:02
and uh I don't know, just recently I've been adding lights and doing different things and it's like, oh god, it's just
50:07
gotten more and more out of hand. Let's move on to a question from our from our reader. Uh which we've kind of been
50:12
suddenly making fun of all the whole show. Uh this comes from an anonymous reader and he says, "When are the rest
50:18
of you old fuddy duddies going to be moving off of X and move on to Masttodon?" I'll say we got a lot of questions after
50:25
I, you know, made a rather desperate call for questions, but I saw this question coming. I was like, "All right, this is what we're doing first."
50:32
Well, this is because Griffin is is the only one of us who is on Mastadon.
50:38
That's not true. Well, I guess we have a there's an official cult of my account on Masteron,
50:43
isn't it? Lewis also has a personal account on Oh, are you on it on Louis? Oh, yeah. And I actually uh you know, after I saw this, which by the way, I
50:49
thought for sure this was just you typing in a question, Griffin. No, they I mean
50:55
I was really hoping they gave us a name, but they didn't. It was an anonymous question. You just hit hit the text button.
51:01
Johnny Apple Seed, right? Yeah.
51:07
Uh yeah. So I I saw this yesterday and and I uh said, you know, why not? You
51:13
know, and my first thought was that old fuddy duddy is redundant, but you know what? I realized it's not. I I I did a
51:18
little research. Fuddy duddy just means oldfashioned. You don't doesn't necessarily mean old.
51:23
It it's a clarifying statement. Old fuddy duddy is accurately describing how just how old you are.
51:29
An old old-fashioned person. And uh so I you know, I did I went over to Masteron.
51:34
I I went and I looked around. I you know I was looking at the vibrant conversations with three, four, even
51:40
maybe five participants and uh Okay, Lewis, you're following two people
51:45
on Mastadon. It's not going to Oh, oh, sorry, four people on Madon. I doubled my following yesterday.
51:53
Yeah, not my not my following, my number of people I'm following.
51:58
Uh and you know, I there is something to be said for Masan. I mean, it seems like
52:03
a more to me, it reminds me kind of like Reddit. It seems like a more focused, more sort of, I don't know, knowledge
52:10
and actionoriented kind of thing, you know, like let's let's actually communicate about things in a a sort of
52:17
sane um rational and reasonable. Yeah. Just helpful.
52:23
Collegial is a word that I'm looking for. You know, it seems like a very uh collegial space. And you I mean I yeah I
52:31
stare at Twitter uh a lot, you know, looking for stuff for the job, just getting sidetracked down crazy, you
52:39
know, whatever they're called, bottomless pits, rabbit holes. Um
52:44
Twitter's, you know, more fun, more entertaining, more outrageous, more uh
52:49
and more newsoriented. I mean, maybe if I followed, you know, the right people
52:54
on Mass Time, maybe I could tap into it for something that is actually useful to my, you know, personal well-being or my
53:02
career or anything else. Um, I I could see why you like it, Griffin. Uh, I also
53:09
don't know how many uh social networks I have room for in my life. I mean, I don't like posting to any of them just
53:15
because it's like what what do you get out of it, you know? I mean, it's not like I'm, you
53:20
know, getting a a free dinner and going to a uh restaurant and doing a stupid uh
53:28
influencer thing. I mean, that kind of crap drives me crazy. Uh I just don't I
53:35
don't like posting stuff to these social networks and giving them, you know, fuel
53:41
for their economic engine. I I I it kind of drives me crazy in a way. Well,
53:46
amazingly, if you look like a really good metric is like that that I, you know, pay attention to is the ratio of
53:53
how many posts you have and how many followers you have versus how many followers you have versus like, you
53:58
know, how many people you're following. Uh, amazingly, you have 37 followers for having only posted three times on
54:05
Masttodon. Really? Yeah. All right. I'm going to spend more time on it. I'm going to I'm going to maybe
54:11
I'll learn something. I mean, you know, as you always point out, I mean, there's vibrant Apple developer communities on there and, uh, I mean, it's it's kind of
54:20
stupid to ignore it. Yeah. Well, you know, so, um, because, you know, often we're having like very different conversations than
54:26
seemingly what you I mean, where these intersect is in our private Slack, I'll post interesting things that I see on
54:33
Massadon to the rest of our writers and editors. They'll post things from Twitter that they'll turn into articles,
54:38
you know, into our Slack. And that that's where we intersect in in in some minor way. But from what I see, people
54:46
on Twitter are having very different conversations than the people on Mastadon, you know, because there's way more developers and uh a lot of the, you
54:53
know, people from like the whole Macworld crowd of of the Apple community like Twit that that whole, you know,
55:00
relay podcast, all of those people are on Masttodon and left Twitter ages ago. So, if that's that's a community of
55:05
people that you you know used to follow years ago, well, they're they're still around if you're on Mastadon. And I'll
55:10
say like I have more followers on Mastadon than I than I ever had on Twitter. Like I think now I'm far
55:16
exceeding that. But we should check it. I've never really checked it out. I I checked out Blue Sky and uh I used one of those tools that
55:22
that um helped you follow all the same people that you were following on Twitter. It matched them up. Mhm.
55:28
It it actually was only a fraction, I think, of um because a lot of people hadn't moved
55:33
over. Yeah. But um I found Twitter to be a lot more usable now that I've been blocking. If there's anything I don't like, I block
55:39
that person immediately. And I think that has affected the algorithm. So I get I see a lot less of the stuff that I don't like. Um but of
55:46
course, you know, it's kind of where the action is still. Even though I have a lot of misgivings about it and um I
55:52
don't like the direction it's turned in. Like Lewis said, it's it used to be and still is somewhat, you know, the best
55:59
news channel, the best news channel ever invented for sure. There was just, you know, super great way to find out
56:06
exactly what was going on super fast, a great way to get ideas, great way to to keep tap on what people in the Apple
56:12
community were doing. And it still has that. It's it's still really it's still, you know, vibrant. It's and and and and
56:19
active, you know, that that's a main advantage is just there's so much action on there. There's so many people posting
56:24
so many things that it it it hasn't been replicated at all. Like I was trying to look for, you know, um uh uh wallpapers,
56:32
something as simple as wallpapers on blue sky. None. In fact, my it's just all I see is bird pictures. People
56:38
putting up pictures of bloody birds. It's full of twitches. I don't know why. I will say that like compar Maston
56:45
compared to Blue Sky, Maston is kind of trying to be like its own new sort of thing. like even though it started as
56:50
like you know open source Twitter it's sort of developing into its own thing. Blue Sky is very explicitly we are just
56:56
recreating Twitter. So like the the interface is virtually exactly the same even though it's like technically a
57:04
federated network. The way that it that it works compared to Mastadon is really
57:09
more like everybody is still on the same server. So it's a lot more centralized just like Twitter how Twitter is
57:15
centralized. there seems to be a broader slice of people who moved from Twitter to Blue Sky. So like I think Hank Green
57:21
is on Blue Sky now. He never would have joined Masttodon or like he did briefly and then had like one popular post and
57:27
then like never really came back to it. Like every time I do still have my Twitter account. I do occasionally log
57:32
into it just to see if you know how many people have followed me for no reason just to laugh at them. But
57:38
anytime I bri browse the home timeline or the home view, it's like the the vibe
57:43
of the room has changed. Uh, there is still Twitter. There is It does still have activity, but it has a
57:49
different kind of activity than it was when I left in November 2022. Like, and I I like how it is on Mastadon because
57:56
it's all a bunch of gay nerds and that's the people who I want to hang out with online. It's more like a library and less like a
58:02
uh thriving like town square or something. I mean, yeah, sure. If you only follow
58:08
four people, then yeah, it'll be a little quiet. How many people do you follow on on Masteron? I follow around 130. It
58:16
honestly it's it's it's harder to keep up with than when I was on Twitter. Like I it's it's bustling with activity.
58:21
All right. Well, I I I'm going to take that as a tip to to to to check out Macedon, too.
58:26
Uh you know, and and how's the cult account doing on Macedon? Oh,
58:33
13 followers. I mean, we post to it every day, right? Automatically, we post all these things.
58:38
the cult of cult of max 1600 followers on cult of Mac on Masttodon. You know, it's a great way to
58:44
follow Cult of Mac, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's move
58:49
on to our uh review section and I'm going to switch my camera here. I'm going to talk about the Power Beats Pro
58:55
two, which are the new Power Beats, which came out um how long? 6 months ago. Here we are. Here's the new Power
59:03
Beats Pro 2. I got these uh as an open box. I was way too cheap to pay the 250
59:10
uh price MSRP. But then I somehow I I think we were doing a deals post and and Best Buy had an open box
59:16
for $1 and $7 I think for these. So I was like I'd always been really curious
59:23
um about the over the clipon ear design um especially
59:28
for riding my bike. So, I was like, um, even though I already have about 200 pairs of headphones and earbuds, I I
59:36
just couldn't resist just to check them out. And these are the first clip-on overthe-ear design earbuds I've ever
59:43
used. And so, uh, I feel like that design would be good for riding a bike because if I had AirPods in my bike, I'd be terrified of
59:50
them falling out of my ears and then suddenly they're lost like, you know, 500 feet behind me.
59:56
Right. Exactly. And that that is exactly why I got them because um I I don't know if these are the ones I don't know if
1:00:01
you can see here but yeah that my my AirPods Pro have fallen out of my ears so many times
1:00:08
um while I've been riding my bike that they're pretty beat up. And this is how they compare in size to the to the case.
1:00:15
Wow. Um you can see bigger. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's way bigger. This is a big big chunky case. Um
1:00:21
interestingly the case opens you know like a hamburger. the long the long flat
1:00:26
way, which is which is an interesting change in style. Yeah. And but yeah, the case is pretty
1:00:33
beefy. I mean, it it it doesn't really it's not going to go in your skinny jeans, but it's not, you know, super
1:00:39
cumbersome. I find it fine in my back pocket of my uh my bike jacket. How thick is it? Can you show us the
1:00:45
bottom of each of them? It's pretty like this. Oh, yeah. It's thicker as well. Okay.
1:00:51
Yeah, it's way thicker. It's it's it it you know it's easily double the volume of the um the AirPod Pro.
1:00:58
Kind of looks like small eggshaped sized. The one nice thing it it has is it it
1:01:04
does have wireless charging as well as USBC. So you can just plunk this onto a
1:01:09
chi charger and it charges up. And the case, the the the the um the earbuds
1:01:15
themselves get 10 hours of battery life. And with the case, it's extended to 35
1:01:21
hours, which is pretty good. Pretty competitive, um yeah, and they they they adhere
1:01:28
magnetically. They they they plop right into the case really well. But the one thing I did want to show you that the
1:01:35
the first thing I liked about them was this. The box. What? Yeah. I don't know. I got I got a real
1:01:41
kick out of the box. It's a bit beat up because as you can see it's it's a it's a
1:01:46
a Best Buy open box and I think it's missing the um there was a I I guess a a
1:01:53
nice looking cardboard sleeve that went around it to make it more attractive.
1:01:58
Looks like a briefcase. Yeah, it it it it has the the thing here. But what's nice about it is that
1:02:05
it's it's just cardboard. And I mean, I got even Johnny IV isn't gonna like
1:02:10
this, but Apple's packaging, you know, has starting to drive me crazy because it's so nice. You can't throw it
1:02:17
away. You can't recycle it. I had a collection, an insane collection of Apple boxes, literally, I don't know,
1:02:24
30, 40 maybe. Um, which I got rid of about a year ago. Um, and I felt really
1:02:32
guilty about them because you can't really recycle a lot of them. They had a lot of plastic. A lot of it was glued together. Plastic glued to cardboard.
1:02:38
It's not easily recyclable. This is a, you know, it says here 100 100% fiberbased packaging. And this I can
1:02:46
just chuck in the in the recycling without any qualms. And and you know, it
1:02:51
I feel good about it. Um, here are the spare earbuds. You get a range of spare earbuds. And actually,
1:02:57
I probably put the wrong ones in. I use the XL ones. I probably should be using the large ones. I did the ear fit tip tip tip test and
1:03:03
they they're the ones that it said I should use. You said your AirPods fall out of your ears all the time. So maybe that's
1:03:08
accurate though. Yeah. Well, these these are super secure. They're not these do not go anywhere at all. They they once you clip
1:03:15
them in and you you have to kind of really sort of they do kind of jam into your ears and your ear canals.
1:03:20
Um but they're they're very comfortable. Um how comfortable is the wing around the back? Does it do you feel like it
1:03:26
pinching your No, no problem at all. I I haven't had any um any issues with that even with my
1:03:32
glasses on, you know, because they the arms of my glasses go in the same, you know, it's it's sort of ear glasses,
1:03:41
power beads, clip, and then skull. Um so there's a lot going on there.
1:03:47
The ears are a busy area when you've got those in. Oh yeah. And then also I've got my helmet strapped on as well. So the
1:03:52
helmet straps are in this vicinity as well. Um, but no, I haven't had any any any fit issues, any comfort issues. They
1:04:00
um they've been very comfortable. They stay super secure. Uh there's, you know, um the only thing is the wind noise is
1:04:06
that you it it's there's still a lot of wind noise. So on a bike, you know, you it it it's only when I'm going slowly up
1:04:13
a hill that I can hear perfectly even with the ANC on um the wind noise. What
1:04:20
I'm going to do is you can get these weird uh uh products that go over your
1:04:25
helmet straps that are like um you know those baffles you get on um for
1:04:31
microphones, the furry uh microphone covers that block wind noise. So I'm I'm
1:04:38
going to I haven't got them yet. I'm I'm going to order a pair that um you put on the the front strap of your helmet. So
1:04:45
they are at the front of your ear and apparently they cut down 85 90% of wind
1:04:50
noise which makes it easier to hear. Oh yeah, be smart when you go along.
1:04:56
Um yeah, they have they have they have buttons. So this the B the Beats logo is
1:05:03
is is the main button and you can set this up just like with AirPods um to
1:05:09
either control your music or to control Siri. So I I have it set up so that the
1:05:14
left ear controls Siri. I press this and it brings Siri up and the right ear is for controlling the music and you know
1:05:19
play pause two beats to answer a phone call, two double click to end a phone
1:05:24
call. Um and uh double click to go forward I think on a music track and
1:05:30
triple click to go backwards. Uh and but the the nicest button is this one here which is the rocker button which you can
1:05:37
set up to do um volume up and down. And these are really easy to find and easy
1:05:43
to click um when you're when you're when you're riding along um or if you're at
1:05:48
the gym or whatever. So, the controls I think are really good. The physical controls and the sound. Now, the sound
1:05:54
of these things is fantastic. I really like that beats um the way that they
1:06:00
tune the beats to to to be a little more bass heavy. Um, and for the kind of awful music that u my wife hates that I
1:06:06
listen to when I'm riding, which is mostly sort of electronica and dance music from the UK. Uh, and Afro beats.
1:06:12
Now I'm really getting into Afro um Afro House. Uh, some of that is really fantastic. Um, and it sounds great
1:06:18
through these. I It really does sound good. The ANC is not the best. It's not
1:06:24
the best ANC. Um, I I've been I I use it when I've been walking to work and, you
1:06:30
know, down the busy San Francisco streets. You can still hear buses and a lot of and and a bit of traffic noise.
1:06:35
They don't work as well as the AirPods Pro 2 for the ANC, but you know, I think generally it's okay. It's it's it I
1:06:42
think it's adequate for for most people. I compared it to a couple of other um ANC earbuds, and it's way better than
1:06:48
than some of the uh less expensive earbuds that I have. Um but the the the
1:06:53
feature I was most excited about was the built-in heart rate monitoring. And you can see them here.
1:06:59
This is the heart rate monitor. Um, right next to the um the silicon tip
1:07:04
here and it has just like on the your Apple Watch, there's a a green LED that
1:07:11
shines a very bright green light. You can actually see this if you're wearing these at nighttime, you you can see
1:07:16
people see it's growing green. Uh, and then there's the sensor there. The this is the big problem with these. Like I
1:07:22
was super excited uh because um the heart rate monitoring I keep on forgetting my chest strap when I go for a bike ride, but I I never forget my
1:07:28
earbuds. So um having heart rate monitoring built in seemed like a f fabulous idea. And I was super excited
1:07:34
when they they connected to my Wahoo bike computer, no problem. There goes heart rate straight away. But then you
1:07:41
can't stream music. And I was like, what? If you can, and this is true if you're connected to any gym equipment or
1:07:47
anything that uh uh uh any other equipment that is is going to be recording your heart rate monitoring,
1:07:52
you cannot stream music at the same time. And this is a not the necessarily the fault of the power beats. It's the
1:07:59
fault of the the Bluetooth codec. You can't connect it to two devices simultaneously. Um and so you can record
1:08:05
your heart rate monitoring if you're using your iPhone. Uh but the problem there is that there's only maybe about
1:08:11
half a dozen or eight apps that currently support it and you can't actually do it directly in in the Apple
1:08:17
Health app um or in the activity app. You have to have some third party. The
1:08:23
data go does go to the health app but you can't see it. So you have to use some 30 third third party app. When more
1:08:29
apps support it um then it'll be more useful because then if you can record your heart through your phone through a
1:08:34
through an app. At the moment it's too limited. And of course, this is going to have a um an effect when the AirPods Pro
1:08:40
3 come out, which may be as soon as uh this fall event on the 9th. Uh if they
1:08:47
support um heart rate monitoring, built-in heart rate monitor too, they're going to have the same drawback such as you won't be able to stream music if
1:08:53
you're connected to a machine at the gym or your bike computer. Um it's like a
1:08:59
major major drawback for for this, you know, built-in heart rate monitoring in in in earbuds. And it's it's the fault
1:09:05
it's not Apple's fault. it's the fault of the Bluetooth codec um that you can't um uh connect to two two devices
1:09:11
simultaneously. Um but you know if you see an open box for for 100 bucks I
1:09:16
would recommend or if you don't care about the heart rate monitoring and you just want you know AirPods quality sound and ease of
1:09:21
use but with a you know fancier like more secure sportier design.
1:09:27
Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And of course they're well integrated into the Apple system so pairing is super
1:09:32
easy. Uh it shares um the profile so across iCloud so you don't have to set
1:09:38
it up again for all your different devices. It works with all your devices that are on the same uh account. Yeah,
1:09:43
there's a lot going for them. And I actually like this this um this color too. I I I definitely I wanted the
1:09:48
orange ones. They come in bright orange, but these are the you know because it was an open box, this was the only color that was available. I actually like
1:09:54
I actually went and looked to see if there were other because I thought there were like exciting colors. That's like a
1:10:00
Promax phone color. It's like quicksand. Mhm.
1:10:06
Exciting putty. It's like
1:10:11
All right. Well, let's let's wrap it up there. I think that's all the the cold cast we have for you this week. I'd like
1:10:16
to thank everybody for listening. Uh if you want to get more of the this uh of the fun, uh Twitter, Lewis is on Twitter
1:10:25
and Master Lewis Wallace and Masttodon. Is it the same same handle? Lewis Lewis
1:10:31
might be an M in there. Lewis. Okay, we'll give it a try. Lewis Wallace or Louis M. Wallace. Griffin is
1:10:36
on Masttodon and Blue Sky, but Maston is where you should get Griffin at DG
1:10:41
Griffin Jones. Uh, and uh, I'd like you to sign up for my newsletter, uh, which I write every day, the Colmack Today
1:10:47
newsletter, which you can get at newsletters.cultmack.com. And, and uh, I highly recommend that. It's the best newsletter you're ever going to read.
1:10:54
Um, so send us a text link, please, and or put a comment in YouTube. Send us a question. We shall try to answer it on
1:11:02
the show. That's been the Cultcast, the best hourlong Apple conversation you're going to hear all week long. New
1:11:07
episodes of the Cult come out every Thursday night. And I want to thank everyone for listening, for watching, and we'll see you all next time. Have a
1:11:13
great weekend, everybody. Goodbye. See you. Goodbye. Have a good dental surgery. Oh my god.
1:11:21
How do you What time is it? Are you going to run? Uh, no. I I have to leave. I I think I
1:11:27
need to leave the house by like 11:30, 11:45. And it's not Today's not surgery. Today
1:11:33
is to be clear taking off the temporary crown that is tormenting me and
1:11:39
replacing with a permanent crown. So, today that he's taking it off later
1:11:44
to get a new one. No, no. Today, take off the temp and put on the permanent crown. That's not
1:11:50
surgery. That's like plucking something off and gluing something on. The surgery was last Thursday after the cold cast
1:11:57
when I went in and they yanked a tooth. That was exciting.
1:12:04
[Music]