 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. That's you! Thanks to all of you, including Philip Shane, Paul Boyer, Brad, and our lifetime supporter, JCCIM. Thank you. On this episode of DTNS, was it Wunderlust or just 90 minutes of everything Apple? Or maybe both? We'll break down everything worthy from Apple's live event today. Plus, yes, there's other tech news, okay? We're going to talk about that too. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 12th, 2023. From studio, Aria Barales, I'm Sarah Lane. From just the edge of Atlanta, I'm Nico Montfort. And a little farther out in the suburbs of Atlanta, this is Terence Gaines. And on the other side of the country, on the show's producer, Roger Chang. Oh, the SnapOS team is with us. We're a few years strong going on here. We do our Apple events together. Nico and Terence, so glad to have you on the show. We are going to get to everything Apple. But as I said earlier, there is other news. And we're going to talk about those quick hits now. TikTok has rolled out its e-commerce business in the United States after months of testing. And a blog post TikTok announced that more than 150 million users in the US will now be able to see videos and live streams with links to buy items that they might see in their feeds. The new tool is designed for content creators and brands and also merchants to create shoppable content. It's official. Intel announced the Thunderbolt 5 specification Tuesday with promise speeds up to 120 gigabytes per second theoretical support of 540 Hertz gaming monitors, 240 watts of charging power and more accessories and PCs won't actually get Thunderbolt 5 until 2024. But when they do, it will be compatible with previous versions of Thunderbolt and USB. It also supports multiple 8k monitors, three 4k monitors at 144 Hertz and up to 240 watts charging. Meta recently added keyword search on threads, but the app is blocking searches for certain potentially sensitive words like vaccines, COVID and other words that have previously been linked to misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Adam Masseri, head of Instagram, who also oversees threads, says the company is quote trying to learn from past mistakes and believes it's it's better to bias towards being careful as we roll out search. At its Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle, Amazon announced a pilot test to let its 2 million merchant partners deliver inventory directly to physical retail stores and warehouses in addition to their online offerings. The service is called multi-channel distribution and is in addition to buy with Prime, which already lets merchants pay Amazon to deliver products to customers who make purchases on non-Amazon sites. A small number of iPhone 15 models manufactured in India could be available on launch day for the first time ever. Apple didn't mention this specifically in its announcement, which we will get to in a few, but the company has built iPhones in India since back in 2017. Now this time a small number built in India could go on sale immediately in some regions. This is all part of Apple's plan to diversify manufacturing in the face of supply chain risks, in part due to tensions between the US and China, which were ongoing. All right, we're still going to talk about that Apple announcement, but there is other news. We're going to talk about a little bit of Google first. On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice and Google kicked off a case. This is going to be going on for a while, so you might be hearing about it today, but you're going to hear about it more on the show going forward. The case was lawsuit rather was originally filed back in 2020 over Google's search empire. What is being argued at this point is sort of half of that initial case. The Department of Justice claims that Google has maintained its dominance unlawfully, making deals with Apple, Mozilla, other companies so that it was the default on nearly every search bar that a US, definitely US based user might see inside a browser, including Google allegedly paying big sums for prime placement in Safari in particular, Safari, obviously Apple's browser. Unsurprisingly, Google is denying that these deals are anti-competitive. Google says it's already published various rebuttals to the Justice Department's case, which was most recently in an overview that was published on Friday because a lot of the stuff is public record. The company argues that consumers are able to switch between search engines. It's not preventing them from doing so. They can do that easily. Companies just want to use Google as a default because it's the best search engine. Now, I tend to agree with Google on that, but is it anti-competitive? Like I said, we'll be covering a lot of this as the trial continues, but just around the horn, Terrence, we'll start with you. Do you think Google is in a antitrust situation? It has been compared to what Microsoft went through back in the 1990s. Anti-competitive, maybe technically word-wise, probably not, but two things can be true at the same time. I'm pretty sure Google has made sure to grease the palms, for lack of a better term, for all these companies like you mentioned Apple, Mozilla, and other companies to make sure that Google is the de facto default. Now, whether or not it's the actual default, I don't know if that's going to work simply because Google does say, hey, we just make it easier for them to do it. We don't default to it, but again, the person with the most money, they're not going to be seen favorably, but I don't know if that's illegal. Nika, what are your thoughts? I remember, especially when the smartphone world that we live in now was just coming into play. There was a lot to talk about. What's the default search engine? What are our options? I don't hear a lot of noise about that anymore. Yeah, I'm actually kind of interested that this came to a head with the Department of Justice because if you think about in our normal nomenclature, everyone says Google it. You could be using Bing. You could be using any search, but in our common lexicon, Google is synonymous with the search. I think for people who aren't getting the benefit from this, it may kind of irk them. I don't think it's necessarily illegal, especially when you have other large companies partnering with Google, so it's not something that's being forced for other companies to use. It's like, okay, we realize that this search engine is the most popular. We know we're not likely going to topple it, so let's see how we can work in that partnership. Companies that don't want to work in that partnership, they're kind of left on the bubble, so I think they're maybe the ones that are kind of pushing the song along a little bit. Yeah. Well, we will continue to follow the story. I think it's supposed to go about 10 weeks, at least this particular part of the antitrust, as it's being called trial, Google versus the DOJ. We will keep you updated as we learn more. But today is a big day for Apple enthusiasts, or even if you're not an Apple enthusiast, you might have just hated that announcement that they just gave us. The show is for all of us. So let's talk about everything that was announced at Apple's Wunderlust event today. It started at 10 a.m. Pacific time, ran just under an hour and a half. We had a kind of long sketch off the top that was a little corny, a little cringy, but some people liked it. Starring Octavia Spencer as Mother Nature. This was Apple's way to showcase that the company is becoming a carbon-neutral company and showcased what they've done thus far. Wind farms, figuring out how to use recycled materials in all of their products. That was pushed pretty heavy off the top. But let's get into the nuts and bolts. We started with the Apple Watch and then we went into the iPhone. So let's start with the Apple Watch. We'll go chronologically the way that they did in the event. Apple Watch starting at $399. In fact, all the prices that we're going to talk about, this is the starting price. So we got the Series 9 Apple Watch, got a new S9 chip in the Apple Watch. Some pretty cool stuff on device processing. We'll let Siri tell you your health data with the watch that you're wearing. Previously, this is something that would connect to, well, and it still will, connect to your iPhone and be able to get to the health app. But this is something that wasn't available on the watch itself before. Launching with English and Mandarin language at first, other languages to follow. And before I get into some of the other specs, Nika, Terence, what were your initial thoughts here? Not a lot going on. You know, it was pretty extreme. You were not wild, surprised and delighted. Not necessarily not wild. There was a couple features that we'll probably get into. But overall, it was like, yeah, this is what it is. I don't know if that's because of the rumor mill, you know, kind of not leaked, but we kind of knew all this information. But that's every year they leak enough information to where when the actual announcement comes, we're kind of like, uh, check, check, check. And it feels like that's another one of those years this year is kind of like, uh, check that off the list, check that off the list. Nothing to see here. Let's keep moving. We've got WatchOS 10 letting people more easily share data between each other. 18 hour battery life. So that's pretty on par with, you know, it's certainly not worse than the previous gen. This one actually was funny and, you know, somebody tell me if I'm crazy, the idea that you can find your lost iPhone more easily just by being able to look at your watch and see, you know, your 10 feet away, your 5 feet away type thing, you know, the whole, uh, make the, make the iPhone make a terrible noise thing. I use on my Apple watch all the time because I'm always losing my phone. That seems to work well. I suppose this would be great if you've got somebody in your house that's sleeping or just gives you more options. Or recording a super popular show. Something like that. Something like that. What I did think was pretty fun is the new double tap gesture. So they, Apple called it double tap. This is the idea that you can put your thumb and forefinger together to basically mimic using the crown on the watch itself to perform a variety of tasks. This is indispensable. I cannot tell you how many times I've been on the stair master at the gym. The gym is not the only place that you would need this, but, you know, your hands are full type thing and just been like, I can't screw around with my watch right now. I, you know, I, I can't do that, but I could, I could do the double tab until, you know, who to, to allow me to do something. Now it was, it was mentioned in our discord while we were doing the event, uh, our DTNS discord earlier that this has been an accessibility option for a while, at least in some sense. Uh, this is never anything that I've played around with before, but boy will I use it going forward. And I have to say, um, you know, I definitely, this was along with the precision finding for the iPhone. That was, that was pretty cool because like Sarah, I use the little ding noise all the time because I lose my phone. But for me, the, the, the, the, the, like pinching feature, the double tap is what they call it. That feature is definitely, um, you know, going to be useful in a mirror of cases, accessibility, um, for, for people with disabilities for sure. But to me, I think the thought behind it, I won't say sinister, but a little bit more clever is the indoctrination of vision pro because if you remember when they announced vision pro, most of the way that you control the vision pro is with the same feature. So, and Tim made sure to announce, you know, we're on schedule for vision pro at the beginning of next year. So this is kind of the slow indoctrination of, of using vision pro and using these gestures in the apple ecosystem. And when I saw, you know, the initial use of it, I, my mind went straight to, to vision pro and said, they're starting now to get folks, uh, in the habit of using this gesture. Yeah. That's such a good point. I hadn't even thought about that. I was like, this is going to be so great because I use my apple watch for all sorts of stuff during the day, but it can be slightly cumbersome, you know, to be fooling around on the face itself. This has a lot to do with vision pro, you know, instead of someone, I don't know, uh, let's say a developer gets their hands on one early next year is like, ah, the double tap. Hmm. No one's used to that. How do we do this? You're going to have, you know, at least some apple enthusiasts who are like, oh yeah, no, this is, this is very normal. This is not something I have to learn or get used to. And I'm assuming this feature is specific to the apple watch series nine because of the S nine chip. Is that a safe assumption or? Yeah, that's what they say. It's S nine chip feature only. Yep. Okay. Well, yeah, I was just going to piggyback that this is a dope feature because a lot of the times my hands are wet, whether it be from washing dishes or actually I use my watch in the shower to control my playback functions for podcasts. I'm taking a shower. So every time I go to take my fingers like, uh, it's not going to work because my fingers wet. So being able to do the quick little double tap, uh, probably the feature that, you know, stood out the most, you know, like I'm going to speak for myself, but I'm assuming for everybody else because your hands are so busy and to be able to quickly start and stop things, turn things off, whatever the case may be, I'm pretty sure that people will quickly, like Nika said, being dominated to that. I just hope we mentioned this in the pre show, um, earlier, um, I'm hoping that the it's a little bit better than the back tap accessibility feature on the iPhone. Like you mentioned, Sarah, you can go into the accessibility features on your phone and do the back tap and then do different things, you know, screenshots, whatever the case may be. I haven't had the much success with using that consistently. So I'm hoping you have to tap pretty hard to get it to, to, to do what you want to do. You have to give it a nice little some pressure to get it to do whatever you've assigned a double tap to. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Definitely hoping this is better than that. For all of our patrons, don't worry. The show is definitely going to run into GDI. So some of the stuff that we're, we're kind of scratching the surface of, we will talk about once DTNS wraps up, but just some other fairly big Apple Watch announcements. We got some new colors, pink aluminum cases, got some people that I saw and I was about to say Twitter, I guess it's called X now. It's still where I have the most fun with announcements like this. People being like, yay, pink aluminum. You know, it's a color people like. Big focus on sustainability. Boy, we saw this woven through the entire announcement, but because Apple Watch was the announcement out of the gate, a lot of talk of being carbon neutral using watch bands that are, you know, that flow exactly into what Apple is trying to do going forward with an emphasis specifically on no more leather. No more leather and Apple products, everybody. They have a new textile for the Apple Watch for the, for one of the band. They called Fine Woven. They have four new Hermes bands, none of them leather. And hey, you know, unless you're, unless you really want leather, Apple is no longer the place to get a band unless you're going third party. Were people really getting the leather band, the leather bands? I don't know. That was what I was thinking. Because it's such an exercise thing to me. I'm like, oh, leather is not quite right. A friend of mine has three Hermes bands for her Apple Watch. And we were chatting, you know, throughout the announcement and I was like, well, you know, because she was thinking about, should she get a new watch or not? And she was like, well, I think I'm going to stick with my series seven because I have the bands. I was like, yeah, if you want to keep those leather Hermes bands, you're going to have to probably stick with that because leather is out. She was like, they're still doing Hermes. I said, yes, they are, but no more leather. And she was like, I have to have my leather. So there are, there are people who are really, I mean, I used to feel that about my car. It's like, I have to have leather, you know, I mean, why do I even work hard? If not for leather? Now I have like some leather alternative in my Volvo and I'm totally fine with it. All right. Before we move on from the Apple Watch, we also got a, you know, a bit on the Apple Watch ultra to starting at $799. 99% recycled material. Apple's sticking with this whole sustainability thing. We got new band colors, a new modular ultra watch face that people are kind of happy about. Let's circle back to that, but because the interest of time is at hand and we have to talk about the new iPhones. But first, before we do just a reminder, sometimes we talk about Apple, but we try to be somewhat agnostic here on DTNS. For all you Android fans out there, we haven't forgotten you, Ron Richards, and when Tway Dao have a show just for you called Android Faithful and it's really good. It's a podcast devoted exclusively to Android news and information. Catch it Tuesdays at 8 p.m. East Coast, 5 p.m. Pacific, watch it live or subscribe to it right now at androidfaithful.com. In fact, recording a new show tonight. All right, y'all. Let's talk about the iPhone 15 starting at $799. We got the 15 plus that's starting at $899. All models now getting the Dynamic Island, which was introduced last year. That's kind of fun. That includes the SE model, which starts at $429. So that's a, that's a, I don't know. I mean, what are we thinking about these prices, folks? We had heard rumors that the iPhone 15 is they're going to jack up the price. And I think some people were pleasantly surprised. Yeah, they're keeping the prices the same. And not only that, they're offering what the 128 as the base model storage. Yeah. So that I'm pretty sure a lot of people are happy about that because anything under that is almost hard with photos nowadays, but that's just me. And the trading values too. I don't remember the trading values being that high unless I never trade mine in because I'm a hoarder of tech, but they were talking about, you know, what you could, the trading value and it seemed pretty high if, if I'm not mistaken. It's, it's more, but again, you can still I've been promised this before by Apple though. And sometimes when you go through, you know, all of the steps to tell them what you have and how it might not be in pristine condition, you're like, okay, it's not actually worth what you gave me. But you know, that's also saying like base model versus the model that you actually want, not always the same price. But as a notice, as somebody who does do a lot of trading and a lot of third party selling, put forth the effort and sell it third party because Apple's still going to try to get you. So you're better off. Yeah, it's like, you're better off in a Facebook marketplace offer up, even though those are a hassle. You, the extra money is worth it in my opinion. We've got new OLED screen. Also, Apple touted the 48 megapixel main rear cam, you know, of the, of the, the trifecta of cams. This is a big one. Also, and this I, I noted this right away because I thought it was interesting machine learning, creating auto create portrait mode. Now, Apple used a different term for this. I think it was computational tech. And I was like, it's machine learning, which is, listen, if you've got an issue with AI in your device, Apple is not the first company to roll this out, but other companies have really gotten flack for this sort of thing. Oh, well, it's, you know, it's not really the photo that, you know, they were promising you. The sensor isn't really that great. They're doing some, you know, device processing. I'm not personally upset about this. You know, good pictures, good picture. A good picture is a good picture. You said it. And let's be honest, no one can really complain about AI machine learning now, because it's literally baked into everything that we have coming out now. So, you know, this is, this is where we are. So take the really good picture that you're going to get out of this and keep it moving. All right. Let's talk about USB-C. This was one of the most highly anticipated evolution, I guess, that Apple was expected to announce. They did. USB-C. We're going USB-C going forward. Apple talked a lot about how, if you've got a variety of Apple devices, this makes, you know, data transfer between everything that much easier. Okay. Now I'm going to be a weirdo right now and just say, and this is probably because right now at my, at my DTNS desk, I've got a magic track pad, magic keyboard, both use lightning. I've got a couple lightning cables off to the side. I, you know, I've saved them over the years. However, I'm, you know, getting them. I don't have an issue with lightning in general. I understand why people want USB-C, particularly if they're thinking about changing OSs, uh, where they just have so many other devices that use something else. I feel like if you're already an Apple person, and I think we can all say that the three of us are, I, you know, it's, it's, this was not something I was like jumping up and down, sharing about, but maybe I'm missing something. To me, it was a natural persecution of the evolution of Apple devices. If we even go back and take a look at Apple Silicon, you know, how they eventually got all of the devices, all the MacBooks on Apple Silicon. They started with, you know, USB-C, um, back on the iPad pro. So, you know, then you got more devices using it. To me, it's just a natural flow of progression to get everything on USB-C, then add into what's going on with Europe and them forcing the USB-C on the iPhones. It, to me, it was inevitable and it was naturally going to come at some point. Yeah. You know, Apple does try to hype things up, but this is not necessarily a nothing burger. Is that what they, they, that word still makes me chuckle. But anyway, uh, yeah. What is that supposed to be? A burger that just has no meat? Right. I don't know. I don't know. I got it. I got it. I get the chance. I can't think of the last time I plugged my phone up to do anything really. Looking on my desk, I've got a wireless key charger. And then if I go to my work desk, I've got a couple of logic tech devices, mouse keyboard. And then at my nightstand, I've got it on one of those MagSafe chargers. So I really, I can't really think of the last time I plugged up my phone to do anything. Well, with the exception of maybe in my car, but I'm not even in my car that much. So, you know, personally, I don't, I don't think I'll realize the benefit of USB-C either. Yeah. I mean, listen, if, if you're at home going, here's why it's great. You're all missing the point. Do, do let us know. Feedbackadale.com. And I believe you. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I'm like, I, I want, I want to be more excited about that. I just don't want to be really using it. Yeah. I'm like, I got USB-C chargers. It's all good, but I have Lightning too for other things. All right. We also have the iPhone 15 Pro, 6.1 inch display starting at 999, $999, not 10, with that, that starts at 128 gigs of storage. And then we have the Pro Max. I already have the Pro Max. I am Pro Max 13. So I was looking for something that was something besides a 6.7 inch display for $1,200 starting at 256 gigs of storage, not because I don't have that. I do. I was hoping for something that made it, you know, that I just couldn't refuse to, to upgrade. Not sure I'm there yet. Not sure I'm there yet, but I'm, I also have a phone that's in, that's in pretty, it's in good shape. But the Pro Max and the Pro both have thinner borders. That was, that was going on in the rumor mill for quite a bit. So that's true. Lighter weight for those who like a larger phone, but thought that the previous phones were kind of heavy. That actually was a complaint. I heard quite a bit with some folks. Ceramic shield on the front screen for the Pro and the Pro Max help it be stronger than ever. If you, it sustained a fall, something like that. New titanium finishes. Another note that we got in our discord when we were talking about this during the event is like, does this mean that people need cases less? Now, if you're a case person, you're a case person. And cases aren't just about protecting your phone often at style, you know, or a combination of two. I've never been a case person. I've also shattered a lot of iPhones. So, you know, I'm interested to see how, how the titanium actually does well. Apple touted more repairability internally. The new action button that used to be on the left hand side to basically either go silent or not silent now is an action button, which mimics the watch in a way, I suppose, where you can say, yeah, we can still do that, but we can also assign that action button to something else that makes more sense to us. Kind of makes me wonder how you would mute the phone easily if that's not what the action button was, but I think choice is good. Yes, specifically for me because I am more and more and more trying to get into shortcuts and the ability to use the action button to run shortcuts, i.e. home automation, run lights, run any sort of quick actions that you normally do, like tell my kids to wash the dishes. I can quickly press that button and fire off that message real quick. Just a way to personalize the device. That's how I look at the quick button, the action button is a way to further customize your device to your liking. And I think a lot of people will, you know, I guess especially appreciate that now that prices are going up, even though the base for the 15 Max, 15 Pro Max, I think it's 256 base. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though that does, you know, drive up the price, you know, having the ability to personalize your device. I think people look forward to that a little bit. Yeah, Nika, if you were to program the action button to do something besides mute, what would you do? Honestly, I don't know. I think for me, the mute is kind of it because it's like, I don't want to hear all these noises that my phone usually stays on silent anyway. I don't like all of the extra noises. But maybe I guess, depending on the situation, so say if I'm at a concert, then maybe I want the photo because I'm taking pictures or if I'm at an event, I'm taking pictures here to access. So to me, it will be more situational based on the situation that I'm in, that I would need something where I would need a quick action. Like with the translate, if I'm traveling somewhere, then I'll like turn that on. So if I need to have something translated quickly, it's there and it's available. So for me, it's more situational than, you know, it being a static use for the button, it will likely change for whatever situation I'm going into. Well, real quick, I think with the action button, if you press and hold it, it does the mute. But if you just press it one time, that's when you can do the actions or customize it. So I think the quick action there, he's got to press and hold it versus just flipping it. Oh, that's right, because they said it gives you a haptic, it gives you a haptic when you do the, when you toggle silent and not silent. Right. So I think you're right. Yeah. We got the A17 Pro at ship and the Pro and the Pro Max, three nanometer process, got a lot of, well, I was about to say cheers from the crowd. There were, there were some people, this was a hybrid event. So there were actually some people at Apple. But when I say cheers, I mean people on Twitter saying, yay, we're so excited about this. A lot of emphasis on how much mobile gaming will be able to take advantage of this, being able to just, just support, you know, ray tracing and also USB three speeds. That's new. We've got a new macro mode for the pro and pro max in the photography side. We've got, you know, for folks who are doing a lot of creative work pro res to either a Mac or an external storage drive is, is a big deal. There's no degradation of quality. Spatial video to your point earlier, Nika, about getting people ready for the Vision Pro. This, this made a lot of sense to me. Again, here's what you can do on an iPhone. And when you get that Vision Pro later, you're already pretty used to the idea of immersive video or photos as well. These are both available starting September 22nd. All right. So we got some other stuff, some iCloud plus new options for those of you who use iCloud to your point, Terrence. If you don't have a lot of onboard storage, you might use iCloud for a lot of stuff. Apple's giving you some more options there. macOS Sonoma has gotten some release dates, September 26th, iOS 17, TBO 17, watchOS 10 are all coming September 18th. And Apple has quietly, because they never talk about this at their announcements, discontinued the 5.4 inch iPhone 13 mini, which by the way, many people, well, okay, not many people, a handful of people I know love that phone. Say that this is, that's the form factor. Why do you all want these huge phones? You're all crazy. Well, not enough people bought them. Apple will still be selling the iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 for time to come. Now I know we again, have some other stuff to talk about when we can dig deeper into some of our favorite parts of this announcement, what we think is cool, what we think, I don't know, was overblown or anything in between. But for now, Nika Monford and Terrence Gaines, the co-host of Snob OS podcast. Thank you so much for being with us. At this point, I couldn't do without you. Thanks for having us. It's always a good time to come in and talk with you guys. Indeed. Nika, where can people find some of your other work online? You can find me pretty much everywhere on social media at tech savvy diva. Yeah. So connect with me there. Indeed. Terrence Gaines, what about you? Of course, you can find me over the internet, i.e. Twitter. Like you mentioned, Twitter is no longer called X, but your mama called you, named you Twitter, I'm going to call you Twitter. So you can find me at Twitter at brother tech. You can find me and Nika at Snob OS cast where we talk all things Apple and we'll definitely get into a deep dive on tomorrow's show. And in addition to that, myself, Rob Dunwood and Stephanie Humphreys does a weekly tech from our perspective on the tech john. That's T H E T E C H J A W N dot com friend of mine just sent a thing over on Twitter. Terrence, I know you saw it about the word john was like, Ah, Philly. It made it to the dictionary. Exactly. May I introduce you to one of my favorite tech podcasts? So it's always good to bring that full circle. But reminder patrons, stick around for the extended show. Good day internet. We are going to expand on our Apple event discussion because there's just too much to do in 30 minutes. But just a reminder, you can catch GTN s live. We do a live Monday through Friday at four p.m. Eastern 20 hundred UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We're back doing it all again tomorrow. Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com.