 The MacObserver's MacGeekGab Episode 779 for Tuesday, September 10th, 2019, a special episode. And welcome to the MacObserver's MacGeekGab, the show where we usually take your questions, tips, and cool stuff found and mix them all together, you know, so that we can each learn five new things. Today, because we just released this week's show yesterday, today we're doing a little special thing that we've really never quite done this way before. Apple just had their announcement, their event, and we are going to talk about it. So for that here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fearful, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun. But then surprise back here, Bob, here in Austin, Texas, I'm Bob Dr. Mac Levitis. Thanks for joining us, Bob. This is awesome to have you. Is this your first appearance on MacGeekGab? Is that right? Yes, I've been on every other TMO podcast, at least twice, but nobody ever invited me on MGG, even though I've been a listener since like episode zero. I know, I feel like I would have assumed that we had invited you for like, you know, episode 100 or 200 or any of those when we were actually doing things. I think once we got to 500. I think we had, yeah, I think we did, we did a jobs retrospective. And I think Bob was part of that. I think I was part of your roundtable remembrance. Well, no, the remembrance was just me and John. The Steve Jobs remembrance episode was just me and John. But there might have been a special episode of some sort that I thought you were on. But in any event, welcome. This is great, man. Thanks for coming to analyze all the analysis. And, you know, I mean, look, you're going to get there's going to be a lot of people talking about all the stuff that happened. So we're going to try and take kind of the the practical slash geek angle like like we do with everything and put our Mac geek upspin on this. So we will start with the the iPhones 11 here. And I I I will start. We can get into some of the nitty gritty. But I think what Apple has done here is fantastic because last year they had the iPhone 10S, the 10S Max and the 10R. And it at least to many of us, to me, certainly, it became immediately obvious that the 10R was the phone for most people. And then if you wanted, you know, an OLED screen and an extra camera and you wanted to pay a little bit more, you bought the 10S and the 10S Max with the iPhone 11 as they're marching through the announcement of the 11. It hits me. It's like, wait a minute, this is the successor to the 10R. This is the phone for everyone. And because it doesn't, it has the, you know, liquid retina screen. It has the it's 699 to start, but they did add a camera to it. So it is the successor. It's not a 10R. It's got the A13 Bionic chip and then came the iPhone 11 pros or the iPhone's 11 pro, I guess, which is where you get essentially the successor to the 10S and 10S Max, where you've got the same guts, right? Same A13 Bionic chip, which is good. So same concept as the 10R versus the 10S. It's just the naming convention has changed. And and speaking of naming conventions, I now get to say my X iPhone is an iPhone X because we're back to numbers, which is good. So there you go. OK, because somewhere we're theorizing that there be an SE replacement. And I guess as you just said, they did here next year. I would agree. Or you think that's still coming. OK, there's going to be a lower end. The SE has never been announced on the same day as all major phones. So and I believe that's because they want to sell all the higher margin items. And then when that market starts to taper off, they can rejuvenate and excite with this smaller lower price model. And people love that form factor. You know, that's a good point, Bob, because last year, the 10R wasn't available for sale initially. It was it was delayed, right? I mean, intentionally like the delay was built into the release schedule where it didn't come out until October or something. But now they all come out at the same time. So yeah, that's interesting, interesting. Yeah. But I think that, you know, the budget unit will come in six months. After everybody that's going to buy a higher price spread does. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's nice that the 11 isn't being treated like the budget unit. It's being treated like the baseline unit. And then if you want the pro, you go get the pro, which I like. That's good. Yeah. And speaking. I think it's good positioning. I think so. Yeah. And speaking of time for the first time, instead of doing this at midnight Pacific, a.k.a. 3 a.m. Eastern on Friday morning, it all happens at 5 a.m. Pacific, a.k.a. 8 a.m. Eastern. And I like this, unfortunately, for the first time ever. This is the one Friday where I would have preferred it earlier. I have, believe it or not, I have a gig on Friday morning. I'm playing drums to start the TEDx conference in. And we have a sound check at 7 30. So it's like, oh, crap, like, when am I going to be ordering from his phone? I've been ordering my phone. So wait, are you in the green room? Oh, come on, you guys. Are you still like I got to get it like immediately? We can line thing. Yeah, I got over that. Well, I have a I have an excuse. Same. I'm still I'm still finalizing iPhone for Dummies 13th edition. All right. Well, and really, I would like to have all three of them. Right. But I'm going to order, I don't know what I'll order something. So at least I have one of them in hand when I finish writing the book. I may get all three. I'm going to ask Apple if they'll lend them to three because because I'll tell you, I was kind of disappointed here. So the thing is, I'm still on eight and I'm still paying it off. Though I'm into the and for those that want to, you know, get a new phone, at least the thing I've done for the last over years is I have a corporate Verizon store in town. So that they get the phones, the limited amount. But, you know, they like me and, you know, I'm local. So I can get it from them. If I really wanted to on release day, the thing is I'm I'm I'm still on the fence as to whether this phone offers enough to convince me to trade in my eight for an 11. I mean, the the camera stuff is awesome. The one I'll just talk to us out the disappoint. My only disappointment is that kind of like some of the Samsung phones is that they did not reintroduce touch ID. I'm very they will not disappointed. No face. Yeah, yeah, they probably won't. But it's a step backward. That would be a step. I just like it better. And no, no, no, I can I can deal with face ID. I can. John, at first, I would encourage you to get one on release day so that we can, you know, do the show in an informed way, because that that would actually be good. But but Bob, you were you were saying something about the features of this phone that might convince someone like Mr. Braun to get off the fence. What would think all the camera? Well, I mean, I know I know John personally and I listen to the show. So I know that he's into photography. And I can't imagine that you wouldn't be tickled with some of the stuff. It's my favorite camera. I also have an icon point and shoot. But I was on a recent trip and the iPhone took much better, especially low light things. So that was one thing that they announced. So they announced so many things. In addition, I mean, I thought it was hilarious seeing the pro version had not one, not two, but three lenses. I mean, it's like a monster. It's got four lenses. Oh, four. OK. The front facing one, too. Yeah, I could. OK, but three on the back, which was like, wow, I mean, why do you. But then when I looked at the specs on them, it's like, wow, that makes sense. So you get better optical zoom, you get better field of view. Almost everything is better. And because I use my phone as my primary camera, that may be enough to push push me over the edge. I'll say this. I'm going to Montana for a 10 day vacation in Big Sky Country this week, right? I'm not even taking my SLR. I just, you know, I take it places and I never take it out of the hotel room or wherever I'm at, because the iPhone really does take, for me, good enough pictures in almost every situation I'm in. And then I don't have to lug around a bunch of stuff. So I'm excited because that's an even better phone. I really like the idea that you can shoot a wide shot and a tight shot at the same time with one iPhone. I mean, for for making things like my courses, shooting two things out of one iPhone and having them both come out nice is going to be awesome. So awesome, awesome. Wait a minute, Bob, this is the first time that in, I mean, we've been doing well, this is our 779th episode. So 778 episodes, we made it through before I got to do this. You're going to Montana soon. I get to quote Frank Zappa. Be a dental floss tycoon. That's right. There we go. I taught when my son moved there, I taught him that. That's absolutely. That's awesome. John quotes Zappa a lot. He when we were talking microphones, he would talk about the the the telephone can you forty seven forty seven with leather with with leather. Oh, so so so the camera is compelling. I'm with you on that and they introduce some some new. I got to say hats off to them, dude, the video of the cars in the snow were all awesome, classic American cars. Yeah, I just I don't know where they got them. I mean, they got the money. But that video was awesome of the cars and how people are and they reinforce this during the keynote is that people are. Making freaking movies with this thing, which is like amazing to me. So that fruit. That was one interesting thing, right, with the iPhone 11 Pro. And I'm curious to see where the feature delineation lives, right, because they showed the the demo of an app called Filmic Pro. It's a third party app coming. It's not out yet. No, no, no, it's out. No, it's out. But wait, wait, wait, it's been out. It's been out. No, it's Filmic Pro stuff. Oh, OK. But it's been out for a long time and it's the best video app on the iPhone. But this is new new capabilities they're going to get with these extra lenses and stuff. Well, so they're their new Apple be out in. Wait a minute. I just wrote about this for iPhone for tummy somewhere. So this is my question, though, because what they showed was that the Filmic Pro app could simultaneously capture from all four cameras on the iPhone 11 pros, right? Correct. Yes. I wonder, can it capture from all three cameras simultaneously on the iPhone 11? The guts are the same, right? Same IA 13 by CPU. So a question, right? So that's that's the big question is like, OK. And first of all, like, whether or not the the baseline 11 can do it in the, you know, versus the pro, what a cool thing to be able to do to just capture all of that raw footage and then you mix. It makes total sense that Apple's app doesn't do this, right? But but to allow a third party app to tap into those streams directly. That's pretty cool, man. That's really cool. Yeah. Now, the trivial side. Yes, go ahead, John. Go ahead, John. On the trivial side, though, I thought the quick take feature now, number one, they're bouncing back to way in the past. If you've been doing the Mac thing for any period of time, quick take. You know what that is? I had one. I don't know if you had one, Bob, or you had one, Dave, that was their camera. Yes. It was OK for one of the first digital cameras. But I can see much silliness coming from this slow motion front video camera video thing. I mean, they showed it. You know, I mean, there was a kid blowing a, you know, air dryer into, you know, his I don't know who it was, but you know, her mouth like got all big like it does. With I don't know. We'll see. Yes, slow fees, right? So slow fees, slow fees. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see if it catches on. And so the version of filmic, the version of filmic that's out now is still called filmic pro, OK, and it's really a great video camera. Trying to figure out because I own it. It won't tell me what the cost is unless I look at it in the browser. But I think it was 10 bucks for the tonlack. That lets you do like production. It lets you like look at different ways that your your stuff may look right. And then it also lets you record with a second camera. But it's it's another camera, you know, another iPhone or iPad running filmic remote and it's got a lot of control over things that you don't get in the camera app. OK, OK, all right. Interesting, interesting. It's what the pros are using, I think, to shoot, you know, stuff that's going to end up on a big screen. Yeah, well, that's the idea is like like the iPhone can be used for this stuff, which is fantastic. I think that's great. Yeah, yeah. And I like the new feature that they showed. And again, this is one of those things that makes me question, why can't it be rolled out to every iPhone running the latest software? But the tap and hold the shutter button when you're in camera mode and it starts recording a video. Like, just do that for everybody, please. That's that's quick take. And I know why they I know why they called it that, by the way. Why there's only so many good names out there. You can trademark and they had that one already. There's a start recycle recycling through them. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. That's a good name for it. And they own that trademark. They didn't have to do a trademark search. No, that's well, they could have, but but they didn't need to. You're right. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's another thing that maybe may convince me to move over, Dave. Now, I don't know if you notice this. I think it was mentioned, but I saw it in my Twitter stream. But another thing that the new iPhone offers is something which I'm sure is near and dear to your heart, Dave. 802.11AX Wi-Fi six. And it's I believe the first Apple product. I noticed that I tweeted that out during the on our live coverage at Mac Observer Live on Twitter. They because I think that's the first Apple product to have Wi-Fi six in it. Right. So that's very interesting to me. The Apple chose to include that here. I think that's I think it's great. Now we need routers with that, of course, but and they're out there. But, you know, it like it's good to see like Apple actually jumping on the front of that bandwagon. That's yeah, that's great. Does the iPhone have it or just the pros? Both. Both from. Oh, I was going to ask that. OK, I know the phone explicitly mentioned it, but did they mention it for the iPad? I mean, it would seem to make sense that they should do that, right? Wait, wait, wait, the new iPad. Yeah. Oh, that's a different question asked. Does it just the iPhone or the iPhone Pro have it? And I and I both iPhones have it for sure. I don't know about the iPad. I haven't looked at the specs on it yet. I'm looking through this. I've got them on my desk. I'm looking great. OK, cool. Right. I think in a nutshell, it's better speed, better security, right? You know, well, it's way better speed yet. It operates at five gigahertz, but we'll do what's I mean? The theoretical maximum is crazy fast, right? It's I mean, it's like you said, it's 802.11AX. I think it'll go, you know, the theoretical maximum is maybe 50 percent faster than than Wi-Fi five, which is 802.11AC. It's using a different queuing algorithm and it's you truly will use 160 megahertz wide channels to to get that bandwidth. So, you know, it's all right. It's hard to say in a real world scenario what we're going to get with Wi-Fi six. But but yeah, no, it could be quite a bit more bandwidth and and more efficient, right? Because it's it's using that different queuing algorithm and it'll do eight by eight so it can use eight antennas. As opposed to like four by four, which is basically the max that we see with 802.11AX. Interesting, because they also mentioned that the battery life on these new fantastic iPhones is going to be better than the prior version. And it's like, wow, but the Wi-Fi is going. So I guess the new Wi-Fi is more power efficient, one would assume, or they put a bigger battery where they have better power management on the new phone. Or they they they mention that more than once. It's like, hey, you get like an hour more than, you know, the prior phone. So, yeah. Well, I think the A13 Bionic is probably a big part of that. They because it's got like it's got more. I mean, the A12 does too. But it's got, I think, four efficiency cores, two high speed cores, one, two GPU cores. So there's various cores that can be used at different times. And that allows the phone to be, when you don't need to be cranking on the CPU, it shuts down all the high powered cores and just runs on, you know, one, two, three or four of the efficiency cores, which would save battery life. So I think that's probably a big part of it. Also, you know, the iPhone XR had more battery life than I think any iPhone before it. And a big part of the reason for that was the screen, because Apple went from the OLED screen on the 10 to a non OLED back to an LCD screen. They call it their liquid retinas, super liquid retina, whatever it is. But that screen will help. I mean, it's way more power efficient than an OLED screen. So because there's less pixels to drive too. So I think that's part of it. I thought it was interesting too that they had who I'll call processor guy. They had him on stage. He was really digging in pretty deep into, you know, here's all the new stuff with the A13 and. And I thought the whole commentary regarding machine learning and neural engine and stuff like that was interesting. But I think and I've done some AI and, you know, it's just interesting that they highlight that because I don't know if many people quite realize the importance or the threat, if you will, yeah, the things Skynet and, you know, whopper of machines going wrong. But they highlighted that saying, hey, you know, our new processor does more, you know, machine stuff or intelligent things. Well, I think he shouldn't have started calling it ML in the middle of his talk because even I'm a geek and I took me a couple of minutes to go, wait, what's he talking about ML? Oh, machine learning. Oh, yeah, it's about five times. And I thought, you know, I bet a lot of people that aren't in the room are going, what? What? What? Yeah. Also, by the way, I've looked it up. It doesn't look like the new iPads do have. They go to AC. Okay. So no Wi-Fi six. Okay. HT 80 with MIMO. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's it. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. It's only in the phones and do we even look to see? But I'm with you, Bob. In the... Wait, wait, wait, Bob was asking a question. What were you saying, Bob? Have we looked to see if the regular iPhones have, or are we going to look for the difference? I think there's a compare chart here. Here it is. Yeah. Yeah. Compare. No, both iPhones have Wi-Fi six. It's, the question was the iPad and... All three? Yes. And the iPad doesn't. Right. Yeah. The iPhones are the first Apple devices with Wi-Fi six. The laptops don't have it either unless they'd snuck it in, which I don't think they did. So... My other thing that I was going to say, John, is I don't know about you, but for me, when I heard four more hours of battery life, I thought, well, that would really take a lot of strain off me because by about mid-afternoon, I'm always thinking, do I need juicing up before I can, you know, finish out my day? If I'm in the office, it's no big deal because it'll sit on a charger when I'm not using it. But if I'm out and about by four o'clock, I'm worried. Four more hours will make it just perfect. Yeah. No, that's good. And even on the, sorry, the 11, so the successor to the 10R still has an hour more battery life than my 10R does, which has been great. So, yeah. It's good. It's good. Anything? Yeah, I'm with you. I'll just agree with Bob is that the terms, Apple has to be careful. And I think you said this, you were hinting at this before, Bob, but using the terms machine learning or ML and neural engine, I've worked with that in the past doing cool R&D stuff, but the thing is for most people, that flies over their heads and they don't know what they mean. So I think Apple has to kind of reframe why that's important. I think they tried in the announcement, but I don't think of it really... Like they did say like, oh, well, you know, it kind of applies to some of our photography stuff and that we can do smart things to make your pictures look better. And it's like, oh, well, that's why machine learning and AI is important, but I'm with you on that. I think Apple's done a good job over the past few years of explaining to people why machine learning is good and what it does. The example is with your photos, right? They're able to teach your computer or your iPhone to identify when there's a car in the picture because they've already done millions of photos on their own and come up with these pattern matching things and then they just send the patterns to you so that your device doesn't have to do it, right? And they've explained this in a couple of different ways. I don't know, I thought they had done a pretty good job explaining how the relationship between the buzzwords, right? Big data, machine learning, right? Quite frankly, I think I learned it from Apple. I don't think I understood what machine learning was until they started fully explaining it. It's like, oh, it's taking, letting like one or a bunch of powerful computers crunch all this data and come up with patterns and those patterns can be matched by very, very low power in computers, which is great. No, and I'm with you, this time around they did, they said, hey, we're using this technology to make your photos look better because your photo sucks but we're gonna make it better. Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything more on iPhone 11 before we move on to some of the other things that were here? No, all right. I can't think of anything, no. Okay, well, I'm sure we might circle back. Those were the high points. I wanna take a minute though. You know, this is an off-cycle episode so we didn't sell any sponsorships for this which is great, right? No, no, no, I like to have one that's just us, right? But it is just us and so I wanna thank, I mentioned in yesterday's episode that we had sort of gotten behind on thanking all of our premium subscribers and so I wanna finish that list and so on our, well, we had two one-time contributions come in. Kurt from Princeton at 50 and Randall from Portland at $25 so thanks to both of you. We had a slew of biannual, $25 every six-month contributions come in so I wanna say thank you to Bartek B, Bruce W, Doug S, Jeff S, Pierre Timo and Joe B. They're all the ones that signed up before we had to start collecting addresses and also on the $25 biannual plan, Daniel from London, Eric from Trondheim, Matt from Midlothian, I love saying these names, Robert from Oro Valley, Brian from Johnson City, Eric from Albuquerque and Anthony from 2112 because sometimes the postal code is more important than anything else and as a Rush fan I appreciate that postal code. I might have to move there someday. And then lastly, but not leastly, on the monthly $10 plan thanking Tony from San Francisco, Elizabeth from Warrenton, Robert from Clearwater, Steven from Costa Mesa, Joan from Sarasota, Ev the Nerd from Marina, Rob from Edina, Olga from Bellevue, Jason from Charlestown, Steven from Plainfield, Luan from Albuquerque, Ward from Mesa, Kenneth from New Lambton, Nick from Mount Clemens and very much lastly and very much not leastly Bob from Working Smarter for Mac users. Thanks for being here, Bob and thanks for being a premium subscriber, man. You're awesome. My pleasure. That's awesome. It's so fun being on my favorite podcast. Yeah, I hope that it remains your favorite. You know, there's that risk, right? When you see behind the curtain, does it stack up? So, you know, the pressure's on. So there you go. Still a winner. Still a winner of chicken dinner. All right. Let's, I don't know where we're going with this. What was next? What's next on the list? Apple Watch. So the first thing I want to talk about with the Apple Watch is sort of, I mean, Apple made it seem today and I'm really happy that Apple Watch 5 is the watch that hasn't always on screen. Now, Apple made it seem like, you know, they invented fire or something with this. Most other smartwatches have had this feature for, you know, since their inception. So Apple's sort of late to this game, but that. Dude, my dumb watch does this like 24 seven. I don't even have to think about it. Your dumb watch. So Apple's ad was, you know, this watch tells time and a few other things, right? Your watch tells time. So there's a difference there, but fair. Yep. So having the screen always on. No, that's a great, that's a great thing. I agree. Yep. So did they do this for power saving? I'm going to guess for power saving. Of course. So keeping the display on all day costs power and there's a tiny little battery in the Apple Watch. So I get it. Of course. Yeah. No, it makes sense. It's just, you know, there are there are examples of those scenarios where you're like, I just like the guys, especially the one where he said, you know, you're in a meeting and you just kind of want to glance at your watch for the time and you can't because you've got to raise it way up that, you know, all of those scenarios are nice. I so I'm happy about that. John, they make a titanium Apple Watch now to go with your titanium Apple Card. So maybe you can use your titanium Apple Card to buy your titanium. Maybe now. Truly, I'd have to get a Sander or what do you call those things? Yeah. I mean, it's white. I can't see the titanium. Well, I can see some of it. You can see a little on the edge. You've probably seen some of the videos. The tear downs. Yeah. Yeah, totally brushing off the white stuff to reveal the metal. Yeah, I like the one with the bullet somebody shot one. Oh, yeah, it's bulletproof. I carry mine in my shirt pocket now, just in case. That's awesome. So I mean, you know, I'm I'm excited about the Apple Watch. I am I I am an Apple Watch owner. As I've said on the show, I don't use it every day. It is not my daily driver, but I probably wear it more often than any other individual watch. I probably wear it, you know, I don't know, two to four days a week, depending on how my mood strikes. It is my favorite watch for traveling, because when I'm traveling, I'm not at my desk and I really like to have those notifications and that sort of thing. But my Apple Watch is an O.G. Apple Watch that I received on release day. Somehow, magically, perhaps because I don't use it as frequently as as, you know, daily, the battery on that has yet to explode. Which is surprising. It could be tomorrow, but I don't think it will be. It's not acting funky yet. But everybody else in my family that had an O.G. Apple Watch, you know, the screen popped off long ago and they had to either get it replaced or repaired. But but so I will I will be getting an Apple Watch five. And I decided that at WWDC when they announced that the new version of Watch OS would have an SPL meter in it. Well, I knew that would appeal to you, Dave. Yeah, SPL sound to pressure level. Yeah. So you can read decibel levels with your Apple Watch. And related to that, I really like what Apple's doing with the World Health Organization. Yes. That's yes. There were like three items there that were awesome. So yeah, you're talking about the hearing study, right? They're doing it. Yeah. There's going to be an app coming called Apple. Oh, now I can't remember. Research Apple research. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Yeah. The Apple Research app that will allow you to participate in these studies and control all the data in an appropriate way, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, one of them is the long term study tracking hearing loss compared to your your regular exposure to different levels of sound in your daily life, which I think is huge. I mean, I think it's great. Well, Dave, especially for people like you and Bob that are musicians and do gigs and stuff, I thought you were nuts. When we went to a show, I think it was a Boston show like ages ago. And you're like, you should get earplugs. And I'm like, well, why are you are you telling me that the band is going to play sound at a level that could harm my hearing? And you're like, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And we were we were we were several hundred feet away from the stage. I mean, we were, you know, we could see the band. But it was just like and they're playing. I mean, do they really need to play it that loud? I don't know. Yes. Yeah. OK, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Now it works. Yeah. But they should really I don't know if they do it these days. I haven't been to a concert in a while. But do they warn, you know, attendees that, hey, you may need hearing protection? Check, check, check this out. I went to see Alice Cooper a couple of weeks ago. And I forgot my earplugs. And I walked up to guest services and said, you wouldn't happen to have ear plugs. And they just reached under and said, here, help yourself. Absolutely. The it's not as uncommon as you might think. And yes, bands still are as loud as you remember. Or yeah, or louder. I mean, what's what's gotten different now is the advent of what's called line arrays, which I think Genesis in 1990, 90, maybe, was the first band to use these in a in a in a real like touring capacity. But the idea prior to line arrays, what you had. Here we are on a geeky tangent. But we're going to stop here. Ross podcast. Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah, this should be for giggab. So if you like this discussion, go listen to giggab where this stuff actually happens, giggabpodcast.com. We so we used to be that you would just put speakers on the stage and and they would be, you know, essentially one speaker or a bunch of speakers. But they weren't directional in any real specific way. And you would crank them up as loud as you possibly could, all of them so that the person way in the back had a chance of hearing. But what that meant was everybody in between, you know, the person way in the back and the stage had to hear it at a, you know, louder and louder volume as you got closer and closer to those speakers with line arrays. This there's there's, you know, dozens, usually of much smaller speakers that are each tuned to aim very directionally to a specific point in either the stadium or the room. And the cool part about that is that they can make the one that's aimed for the guy in the back really loud. But the person in the front doesn't hear that. And the one that's aimed at the person in the front is much quieter. And they not not only can they tune for volume now, but they can tune for EQ because the person in the back needs a different EQ than the person in the front because of the way the room shaped and all of that stuff. So it really makes a difference. You can get it much clearer, but but it's still going to be loud. You definitely want a concert. Yeah. Right. But no, I you would think an audio engineer would kind of know these things. And maybe they were shaking their fists, saying, why can't you let me design a system rather than having two speakers blasting everybody to let me do a more focused thing. So no, that's cool. That's cool to learn about that. So our friend Boyle who made the microphones that, well, you used to use. I still use he built a sound system. He he built, I guess it was right before Owsley Stanley built the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound that Bob built a sound system that was starting to get like that idea going. And then Owsley went kind of nuts where there were separate speakers. All the speakers were behind the stage and and every speaker was for a different instrument group. So instead of mixing everything into, you know, vocals and guitars and drums into one speaker was like, these are the speakers that vocals come out of. These are the speakers that guitars come out of. These are the speakers. Interesting. That was that was that was the idea behind Owsley's Wall of Sound. Yeah. That's an interesting concept. Well, but what's the problem was feedback because the speakers for the vocals were behind you. So if if you see that's right, feedback, John. Wait, did you say feedback? There it is. And MackieGab.com. There you go. If you want to write us, please. Yeah, OK. But but no, the problem was that. So if you see videos of the Grateful Dead back in that in that era, you'll see that every singer has is singing into two microphones. Actually, they're singing into one. And then there's another one that I think was like, you know, 30 centimeters or something below it. It was a very specific measurement. And what they would do is they would only they would subtract one set of that the sound from the speaker that was not being sung or the sound from the microphone that was not being sung into. They would subtract that from the microphone that was sung into so that the only thing noise canceling it was it was noise canceling. That's exactly right. So they would only send the speakers the sound that was coming into one and not both. And then that way you wouldn't get feedback, which is really smart. Huh. I know. That's what this is. You can tell I geek out on things than Max. OK, before we leave the watch, I do want to say that having a longer battery life appeals to me because I have a four, I guess, gen four. And I love it. Two things I love. I love the rings lost forty some pounds since I started wearing an Apple watch. And I keep it off because the rings won't let me slack off. Yeah, I love this thing. I am so I don't, you know, Dave, I was like you, I have a dozen watches of various vintages and shapes and sizes and colors that I would wear a different one every day or, you know, wear one for a few days and then switch, but I was always a multi-watch guy. I'm not anymore. Interesting. In fact, they've all been in a drawer for like two years now. And every once in a while, I think, well, I'm going out fancy. Maybe I'll put on a fancy watch and I think, why would I do that? I'll just put the fancy face on my Apple watch. That's yeah. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So actually. Go, John. Yeah, you're good. All right. So I was intrigued because I'm not yet an Apple Watch person. But so some of the other things that I thought were interesting that they introduced is more of the health stuff. So they had an early heart attack thing, a lady stuff thing with your your cycles and all that. And that's great because I recall one of our listeners, I won't mention her name because I don't want to embarrass Allison. But she was. But she was going on about how health and just the Apple Watch in general, the ecosphere didn't really focus on. Lady stuff versus man stuff. My argument, my my retort was that it didn't really have any anything that was gender specific, but now they're moving in that direction. So that's great. The other thing is that I thought I saw them. So you guys help me up because you're watch people and I'm not. But so they introduce the GPS version and LTE version. I'm kind of confused. That's how it's been for a while now. OK, so that was nothing new. That's something that there are various technologies to determine your location. And it was just they broke it out. No, no, no. So there's this has been for several years. But because compass also, they mentioned compass that that seemed to be the thing that we're proud of. So compass is new. Educate me. Yep. There's essentially there's the Wi-Fi version of the watch and the LTE version of the watch. And and now they call them the GPS version and the LTE version because the Wi-Fi version also now has GPS, which is great. It didn't used to. And I don't think that's new. I think that was watch for Bob, but correct me if I'm wrong. I think you're right. But I don't know because mine's cellular. Yeah, right. So the cellular one always had GPS. But but that also meant you could make calls and use data from your watch without having your phone nearby. Otherwise, if you have just the Wi-Fi or as they call it now, just the GPS version, the only data connection that your watch gets is via your phone. So if you if you go out, say, for a run and you don't have your phone with you, all you have available to you are the things that are on the watch. So you won't get phone calls. You won't get notifications. You can only stream music that you've offloaded directly to the watch as opposed to correct. If you've got a data connection, it can do all of that. Or if your phone's nearby, it can do all that. So just to paint that picture for anybody that wasn't aware. There you go. Yeah. No, it was a good question, John. Yep. Yeah. All right. So yeah, a little said they have ambient light sensor. Is that new? I don't know. No, I don't think so. No, we'll close that out. OK. I don't think so. I think we're done with the watch, but it's evolving. Maybe I'll maybe I'll get one. I don't know. There you go. You should. You should, John. I think you would like it, John, to be perfectly honest. It's a life changer. Yeah, it's a life changer. It's one of those things, you know, when I don't have it on, there are things about not wearing it that I miss. I just also happen to enjoy wearing different watches. Now, I know people that wear an Apple Watch on one wrist and then, you know, whatever else they want to wear on another wrist. And, you know, I never thought of that. There's there's a thought since I like my other watches. I just don't wear them. Our mutual friend Maria Bob is one of those people. She wears two watches all the time and sometimes even wears two Apple Watches because she'd like to have extra tracking and sleep tracking and all that stuff. So she is, but I know she is, but I know Dave, you like classic mechanical, finely crafted watches. I like the idea. So a mechanical watch and really an automatic watch, meaning a self winding mechanical watch is, to me, a very it's a work of art. Right. I mean, it is a piece of technology. It's just not a piece of electronic technology. And there's something very elegant about a very finely crafted piece of technology on your wrist that doesn't require a battery, right? Like it's self contained. It does its own thing. I really like that. And you can I mean, you can you can pay as much as you want for a mechanical watch. You could pay hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars for some tourbillon or something. But you can also get like I have a swatch mechanical watch that's like, I don't know. I think it cost me 99 bucks or something. And it's it's actually pretty accurate and all that. So yeah, I mean, but I like them all. So yes, I do. And for a while, I had a Seiko. Seiko is a good brand. So yeah, it sure was. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I have. I was funny to see the devolution of so, you know, for a while, it was like Swiss watches, mechanical watches are the thing. And then all of a sudden, you had these quartz watches come into the scene and it's like, what? You and Brian should Brian Chaffin should have and maybe the four of us should have this conversation. You know, Brian is I thought I was well versed on the history of horology. Brian is he is a real student and perhaps a master of of all that went on. And there was a very interesting thing that happened with the courts revolution. Yeah. But I want to talk about TV plus because I think this is really interesting. It, you know, Apple TV plus prior to today was a curiosity for me. It was like, OK, so Apple's getting into the content another streaming thing. Exactly. And it was like, how is Apple going to differentiate themselves? How do you go up against Netflix? And the answer is exactly 99. No, the answer is free, Bob. They are basically giving this to anyone that buys an Apple product. Right. So you get a year. I saw that. Yeah. Family plan for free for a year. With any with any Apple Mac iPad iPhone, right? Think how many Apple products most of us buy every year. You know, I mean, at least one of the three, maybe. Right. So boom, like they instantly will get, you know, millions of customers. It's really, really smart now. Well, and announcing four ninety nine, I think was brilliant and not calling it an introductory price, which it probably is, but not calling it that. I don't think it is. I think four ninety nine is the right price for a video service. Honestly, I think their music services over. I think all music services are overpriced. I think I think music services should be somewhere between three and five dollars a month. But but that's a whole other. Boy, you're a musician. I'm surprised to hear you say that. No, this isn't my desire. This is a market reality, right? Like that's what that's the price at which these services actually start to make sense for consumers. I think I think I think they're overpriced right now. But there's no money in in in that for musicians. You have to make your money a different way. Right. It used to be it used to be that people made mostly labels. But there was lots of money made on the sale of recorded music. That is not happening. You know, I just saw what was it? I think Billboard, maybe it was Rolling Stone, published an article that said in, I think, 2020, they maybe even 2019, they expect LP vinyl sales to eclipse CD sales. Well, well, because who's buying CDs, right? Vinyl is a thing it either is a throwback thing or somebody likes the experience of using vinyl. I'm not going to get into the sound quality. It's, you know, there's a lot of confirmation bias that goes on there. But it but, you know, people like a vinyl experience. No one likes a CD experience in a different way from a streaming experience. So if you're a CD person, you're just going to buy you're just going to sign up for streaming music or buy it, you know, as a digital download. That's it. So yeah. All right. It's no great surprise. But the only thing, Dave. Go. All right. Apple TV Plus. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to shake my fist. And if you're receiving my fish shake, good for you. But there's too many fricking streaming services now. So you got Disney, you got Apple. I I'm with Netflix. I pay Netflix, what, 15 bucks a month for what they have. And I upgraded to the ultra HD because I got HD stuff. But while what Apple is offering seems to be a good value, I'm just not comfortable with the whole ecosphere of we have premium content that you can only get from us. But it's only five bucks a month. The thing is, you're you know, it's a dying by a thousand cuts, right? Or whatever. No, you say there's everybody is offering their, you know, like, for example, I actually, even though I'm a Trekkie, I do not have CBS all access. Sure, because they offer premium Star Trek content and I like Star Trek, but I don't know if I'm the thing is I already pay my cable bill and I get CBS, but I don't get CBS all access. It's like, well, why not? I mean, I'm paying my cable company all this money. Well, and so I'm just said to me that the the the the the universe of streaming content and exclusive exclusivity. We call it exclusivity. There you go. Yeah, is not good for it's confusing. Well, that I think we're saying, you know what? I think we're saying the same thing because Apple by effectively giving this away for free to not all of their customers, but many of their customers, essentially by doing that, they get to shortcut to the front line, right? In terms of a listener or viewer numbers and all of that stuff, whatever content, they are finally taking this war chest of money that they have stockpiled and effectively buying their way into this business because they don't have to charge customers. They don't have to turn a profit with Apple TV Plus for a very long time. And so they can wait everybody else out and and move things on. Now, will they get rid of Netflix? No, I don't think so. No, but they'll buy Disney. Will they get rid of Disney? Yes, they'll buy that. Right. Will they get rid of HBO? That's an interesting one, right? Because HBO it like Apple part of well, but HBO has a few shows that people pay to watch similar to CBS All Access, right? There was Game of Thrones. There was was the one with Kevin Spacey that was fantastic. I can't remember the house of cards, right? Like, there were, you know, there were a few there are a few things on HBO that that were blockbuster hits. Apple TV Plus needs a blockbuster hit, but they have a much better chance of getting there if they give the service away to millions of people. And it can become like, oh, hey, I'll watch that. If it's good, now you've got people that already subscribe and they're talking about it. And Apple has been betting on their betting their future on their services business for a very long time. And I this is. Oh, that's only because it's a cow. It's the long game. And I think that they're playing it smartly. Yeah. Yeah. They'll end up buying. They'll end up buying a movie studio or one of these big conglomerates that's got a big vault full of content. You'll see. Oh, I can afford it. They're going to buy, you know, whatever's left. I don't know. Paramount, Fox, they they've all bought each other. And then some of them are part of maybe they'll buy Comcast. I don't know. All right. They will acquire a library of content in the next year or two. Mark my words. Yeah. No, no, Apple TV is is awesome. Apple TV Plus TV Plus TV Plus is the most to be awesome. But I still see gyrations, if you will, in the streaming entertainment marketplace Well, I have to say, remember, remember the old days when all we had was cable and all we screamed about was we want to buy it all a cart. Right. Right. Now here we are. Be careful what you wish for. You got it. I will say one thing when Apple announced that they were giving away Apple TV Plus with, you know, any new purchase of a device. It made me wonder if perhaps Apple could be so kind as to, you know, carve out a portion of their their war chest there and maybe give us all a few extra dozen gigabytes of iCloud storage for free with our devices or at least let us, you know, if you buy a device, you get five gigs per device, not per account. Something because five gigs of iCloud storage. You know, we deal with this all the time here on the show. Right. Now nobody gets enough storage to do really much of any. If you're going to use your iCloud storage, you must buy more than the default. And I feel that's why that's why they do it. They can afford not to. But that is why that is. No, you're totally right. Yeah. And never mind. Yep. It's easy answer. I answered my own question. Yeah, you just had to point it to me. So all right. The iPad, I I always I've been a huge iPad fan. I was glad to see them refresh the mini. And I like that this seventh generation iPad goes from nine point seven inches to ten point two inches. I think that's pretty good. So I'm excited about that. Any any thoughts on that? Mr. Bob, Dr. Bob, sorry. My apologies, steamed sir. No, I'm a big iPad fan. I'll look at this when I need to replace my iPad someday. I'm just, you know, I don't know. My iPad nine point seven inch night iPad pro. So it's first generation, but it works, you know, it's like, I don't feel like I need faster or it doesn't have faster Wi-Fi. So it's not something I'm looking at, but I'm not looking at any iPads this year. Sure. I'm I'm thinking iPhones. And I think maybe a MacBook Pro now. That makes sense. What about you, Mr. Braun? I still have an iPad Air, but what did pique my interest? So, you know, there were incremental changes, but. Three twenty nine starting price. And then they even announced the education thing to ninety nine. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Those are some seriously low prices. Yeah. The only thing is I would say for for any iPad, at least me personally, I need a keyboard or a keyboard case in order to make it useful. Otherwise, it's just that new smart that that full size keyboard on the iPad and Apple is not the only one that offers one. Right. Like I've reviewed the the bridge keyboards here. Those are amazing. They're fantastic. That's changed the way I use my iPad. Totally. So it's to be my concern. It used to be a consumption device. Yes. Now it's both right. And I'm with you, Bob. And I remember people shaking their fists saying, oh, the iPad's only consumption and out of productivity device. But at least for me, the way I work, I need a keyboard. Yeah. And and that's and they're an Apple makes one and Bridge makes them. No, you're that problem. That's a yeah. And and several people make them. So the the incremental boosts to the performance and, you know, separating iPad OS from iOS, which, you know, kind of makes sense because they're they're kind of two different worlds. Right. I think it makes a ton of sense. And I'm glad they did it because it means they can do cool stuff to iPads without having to either make excuses for why it's not on the iPhone or not do it because they couldn't do it in iOS. So, you know, I mean, it's obvious that there are two different use cases. You know, one is a phone and everything else. The other is a computer without a keyboard. Yeah, that's right. Right. As I remember the the ads, it's like, what's a computer? Remember those? Yeah, for sure. It's like, hi, honey, what do you do with the computer? What's a computer and the kids, you know, do whatever kids do these days on an iPad. So that was that was fun. So there were two quick tips that I caught in the in the event discussion today from Apple that I I'm not sure. Well, I certainly had if I knew them, I've forgotten them. So I wanted to share them. The first was that with iPad OS 13. A simple pinch to use. I believe it was Greg Jaws. We X Jaws is term. A simple pinch on the keyboard turns it into the floating keyboard. And that can be a really handy thing. But but getting between them, if you don't remember the gesture, you won't do it. So the simple pinch on iPad OS. And I'm sure we'll talk about this again when once iPad OS out. I'm trying this. No, I'm just trying it. Yeah, yeah, inch on the keyboard. Huh. So yeah, a pinch. I must I must have been sleeping when he said that. Oh, did did did Tim call him Jaws? It sounded like Jaws. I thought it said jazz. I thought it sounded like jazz and I had a number of people say that. Yeah, yeah. And then there's one that I really I'm sure I didn't know about. And that's with the Apple Pencil. You can swipe up from the bottom corner and they did the bottom left corner. I don't know if other corners do this, Bob. Maybe, you know, but you swipe up from the bottom corner of the iPad with the Apple Pencil to get into screenshot mode. And then once you're in screenshot mode, you can save a full page PDF of a web page, which is cool. So we're putting those in the show notes here. So if you forget the gestures that they are, I was going to say, my pencil is in the other room, but I can certainly try the keyboard pinch. Cool. And I'm trying to know. And and then there was Apple Arcade, which I think at four ninety nine a month for the family is a pretty cool thing. I have no doubt it was interesting that they chose Frogger or Frogger in Toy Town from Konami as the first of the of the games to highlight. That is definitely a game that will appeal to not just kids. You know, and certainly I played a bunch of frog. John, I know you and I played a bunch of frogger together when we used to go to Arnie's place. So yeah, right. So like I know that that was an intention. Nothing Apple does as an accident, but it was an intentional thing to say, hey, look, there's games for everybody here. That that's interesting to me. And the plan of a video. Sayonara, I never played that. Dude, my game was spy hunter. Well, that was the best game. There you go. So missile command, missile command. That was good, too. And Galaga and oh, man. So many classic video games. But I love spy hunter because when you started kicking ass, it would crank the music. So everybody around you knew that you were like an advanced geek. And speaking of cranking the music, it is time to do that here to folks because we've hit the end. And this went this went far longer than I expected. In reality, of course, any listener knows, I should have expected that this would go far, far longer than than the 20 or 30 minutes I thought it would, because it's not what we do. Well, what do you seem? Populous here. I mean, come on, Dave. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah. Bob, anything to any last thoughts to add before we before we before we leave people anything from the announcement or anything else before we go? Did you say feedback at MacGeekAb.com? We did say feedback at MacGeekAb.com. OK, did see. Hey, did he say feedback at MacGeekAb.com? And I think he did say that's right. Yeah. All right, folks, that's where you can email us. Of course, if you're a premium listener, premium at MacGeekAb.com. Come on, be like Bob, visit MacGeekAb.com slash premium and check that out. If you would like, it really is a no pressure scenario. You know, everything that everyone does here sort of makes this all work. Questions that come in, your tips. Yeah. Listening is a huge part of it. So, yeah, just keep doing what you're doing. And if you want to do more, that's what MacGeekAb premiums about. Honestly, you know, one thing that you could do, go to MacGeekAb.com slash sponsors. And there's there's I've sort of highlighted at the top of that page all of the active sponsors. Just go through and click on each of them and check out each of their web pages, whether you buy or not. That's between you and them. But I would love to know that each and every one of you went and and perhaps is a favor to us here. You know, you just go and check them out. Learn what it is they have to offer. And if it's if it's a value to you, then great. If it's not great, no problem. But that would that would actually make a huge difference. The thing is, if we like them, you may like them. That's it. Exactly. Cool. Because we have pretty good judgment most of the time. Well, most of the time, most of the time. Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, thanks so much for listening, Bob. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Bob. Yeah. Thank you for having me. You guys are awesome. It was so much fun being on MacGeekAb. Help me again any time. I'm always available for you guys. OK. And just a disclaimer here. You know, because the lawyers told us this. He's not a real doctor. Oh, yes. That's true. Hey, Bob. Yes. Is there any one thing that comes to mind? Perhaps, you know, we'd like to give advice here. Any lasting universal, perhaps the best piece of advice that you could give someone ever. Does anything come to mind? I've waited almost my whole life to do this. Don't get caught.