658: Your First Mistake Phone
25 Sep 2025iPhone Air vs. iPhone 17 Pro in our daily lives… if Casey’s transfer ever finishes.
Episode Description:
- Marco’s AppleCare “Express” Replacement
- 🗣️ It’s St. Jude time again! 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- Auburn’s colors are UVA’s colors (via Tony Scida)
- You don’t need the trick new Apple charger to charge an iPhone 17 at full speed
- iPhone Air
- Why people are buying the iPhone Air / 15” MacBook Air
- Bending the iPhone Air
- Apple (via Tom’s Guide)
- JerryRigEverything (timestamp link to 6m35s)
- Same video, different timestamp (7m37s)
- Battery life
- Speaker (via Steve Troughton-Smith)
- Thermals
- iFixIt Teardown
- Thickness
- Visual comparison of thickness (via Ludwig Schubert)
- Thin iPhone future? (via Ian)
- iPhone 17 Pro
- iPhone sales
- iPhone setup advice
- Casey’s tale of woe (see also Upgrade #582: First Chance to Make One Impression)
- First impressions: iPhone 17 Pro
- Scratchability
- Telephoto camera
- Post-show:
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Anthropic’s $1.5B book piracy settlement
- The Verge: Settlement announced, 5 September
- Previously, on ATP #656: Anthropic asked for $1.5B/yr from Apple
- The Verge: Settlement paused, 9 September
- Ars Technica, 9 September
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Chapters
- Non-Express Replacement
- Donate to St. Jude
- 17 Pro sports colors
- Other AVS chargers exist
- Midrange, big-screen models
- iPhone Air strength 🖼️
- Battery-life tests
- iPhone Air speaker
- Air vs. Pro thermals 🖼️
- Air internal layout
- Air mass distribution 🖼️
- Thickness and camera bumps 🖼️
- Thinness vs. USB-C
- Sponsor: SKIMS
- Pro teardown
- Scratches?
- Sales breakdown so far
- In-box OS updates?
- Sponsor: 1Password
- Transfer tips and experiences
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- iPhone Air impressions
- 17 Pro impressions 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Ode to the M553
Non-Express Replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said in the last show how I had finally broken a phone. I finally broke
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back of my iPhone 16 Pro. I decided to go against Casey’s recommendation and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order myself an Express replacement through AppleCare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s great if you’re willing to spend the extra money, which I think in retrospect, I probably still would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have done it. I just felt a little bit hoodwinked by my own ignorance. Nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it did work out pretty well for me. So how did it work out for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Out of curiosity, how smooth was the process getting the Express replacement for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was fairly straightforward. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco can’t, I think I…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How fast did it come? A day or two, I think it was maybe two days at most.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it was very long at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s not the experience I had. Oh no. When it came, how easy was it to send the old one back?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure I just put it in the exact same box and then dropped it off at like a UPS store or FedEx store or whatever the case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may be. Because they included like a shipping label and they even included the tape with which to reseal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the box. Like genuinely, my experience was really good, as long as you can get over the fact that it was not as cheap as it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could have otherwise been had I gone into the store. You seem deeply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I ordered mine on the Friday. It said estimated, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one to two business days. I was like, great, maybe I’ll have it like Tuesday. By the following, like, Thursday,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it yet. And the online tracking status page still hasn’t, it still says it hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, if I recall correctly, I did it late-ish in the day, I’m going to make this up, on like a Wednesday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think midday Thursday it shipped, and I think I got the package, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you said, like two business days later, something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but it was something along those lines. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it did, that’s what it did, roughly. Mine hadn’t shipped for a week, and so I messaged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support saying, hey, you know, can you give me an update on this? Like, what am I looking at here?” And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after a lot of chatting, because like now Apple like support chat is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very defended by AI chatbot walls.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, they all are, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, but like you really have to like bust through a lot of AI support bot walls before you can get an actual bot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person talking to you. Anyway, after a week they hadn’t sent it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after I messaged support, all of a sudden it gets sent like, you know, the following day I get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I get it. And at this point it still says it hasn’t even been shipped on the status page, but a box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows up with an item. I’m like, okay, great. And you’re right, it had a little piece of tape to send the phone back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did not, however, have a return shipping label. Now, I’ve done trade-ins before with Apple, and I know the trick of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, you peel off the top label and below it is the return label. And that was not the case here. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like a single layer sticker label. There was nothing below it. There was no return label. I’m like, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go back to Apple support. The chat is useless and won’t get me anywhere. I finally call them, sitting on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold 40 minutes. After all that time, they finally like, well, I don’t know what happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but here we’ll dispatch you a new one and you should get it by email within the hour. Okay, bye. Never shows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I know you did, but can you just state, can you just state plainly that you checked all the spams,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco all the saves?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey course I did. But if you don’t say that, you know, somebody’s gonna be like, well, didn’t you check your spam folder?
⏹️ ▶️ John Also, when a support person says they’re emailing you something, you might as well stay on the line
⏹️ ▶️ John until you get the email. That tends to keep them honest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they sent me an email confirmation that even told me the tracking number on the label, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was no label. They said, oh, it’ll come in a separate email. It never did. So the next day I have to contact them again. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I have to call them again. And finally, they dispatch another one. Then I get that actual FedEx label email. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I now have FedEx box ready to go. I packed it all up and then about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an hour ago, I get an email saying my replacement has shipped. What? Nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Free phone. So I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. Like I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needless to say, Express replacement was not Express and I’ve now had to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like over, probably over two hours of total time dealing with it. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not at all a convenience. Meanwhile, like when I went to the Apple store to pick up my new iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did some logistics there, and the people in the store are awesome. I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bad staff experience at the Apple store. Like even when I do what I think is a little bit ridiculous, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trading in three phones for one, they handle it with grace. Like the people in the stores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are awesome. And dealing with the mailing part of this has been horrendous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, okay, I’m just, I’ll just go to the store next time. So I recommend everyone go to the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I will say that my experience was vanilla in the best possible way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It shipped the following day after I made the request. It arrived a couple days later. I shipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mine back. You know, sis boom bah, everything was fine. And yeah, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was hoodwinked by my own ignorance because I didn’t realize it was considerably more expensive than going into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store. And so because of that, I probably would have just gone to the store. That being said, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally recommend it. I think you had a uniquely crummy experience and I know everyone is firing off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey emails about how no, no, no, Marco’s experience was not unique because this happened to me and blah, blah, blah. I mean, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in my personal experience, if you’re willing to spend the extra money, I think it was convenient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and did work well as long as you don’t win the lottery, the nasty lottery that Marco seems to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we’ll see how this ends. Like, because, you know, once I mail this phone back, are they gonna know that they have it? Are they gonna charge me $1,000? I have
⏹️ ▶️ John is another phone on its way to you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. Who knows? Well, the email it said like old serial number so-and-so new serial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number and it was blank. I’m like, okay So something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has gone badly this seems fraught Anyway, the good news is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you know express replacement went great for Casey terribly for me but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple care one though. It went terribly for John I decided to do it for myself with all this new stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s worked great for me because I’m not touching my max with it. I’m only doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, and actually I did do one Mac, but it’s one that only my account is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. So phone, travel, laptop, and I believe that’s it so far. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still cheaper than what they already were, and it’s great.
Donate to St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me tell you, I had a great experience last week and that’s because I went to Memphis, Tennessee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go visit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I did that because we recorded the podcast-a-thon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is already over, but you can replay all 11 and three-quarters hours of it on YouTube.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll put a link in the show notes. I strongly recommend if you have 11 and three-quarters hours to kill to give it a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shot. I thought we did a great job this year. It was myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And let’s be honest, if you listen to this show, you probably have some time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re very right. It was myself, Mike and Jason from Upgrade, Kathy Campbell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Brad Dowdy and Stephen Hackett. And I hope I’m not forgetting anyone. I should have been counting, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am. Anyways, if I forgot you, I’m sorry. But all of us, all six of us, we did a basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 12-hour live telethon on YouTube at St. Jude’s campus in Memphis.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we had a really great time. We raised a little over $100,000 in that 12 hours or something like that, which I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely excited for and I am extremely thankful for. If you tuned in even for just a moment, thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we sit here, as I record on the evening of Wednesday, the 24th, for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entire month, we have raised $522,836. I think we can do better. I challenge all of us and you to do better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we absolutely can. And so how do you do, how do you help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us raise more money? You go to stjude.org.atp, S-T-J-U-D-E.org.atp, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey throw a few bucks our way. We’ve talked about the Marco offset. I’m not going to belabor it because at this point you should have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already paid it. But if you bought a bunch of new technology over the last week or two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and are feeling a little guilty about your rampant consumerism, you can offset that rampant consumerism by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to themarcooffset.com and calculate how much we recommend that you donate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to offset your rampant consumerism. I will just say we have another story for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe next week that we’ll tell about the importance of St. Jude, but I will tell you that when I was there, I got to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see a a couple of things I had not seen previously, including the Domino’s Village, Domino’s as in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Domino’s Pizza, and they donate an absolutely astonishing amount of money to St. Jude,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m very thankful for it. And they have sponsored or fundraised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or done something to get the Domino’s Village named after them. So what is the Domino’s Village? It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey housing. It is semi-permanent housing for families that are getting treatment at St. Jude. So, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, if you have a child that is getting treated, they will fly you and the child into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Memphis. They will put you up in Memphis, potentially at the Domino’s Village, which has one, two and three bedroom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apartments. We got to tour it and it is incredible. And the thought that they put into this place is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phenomenal. And I’ve been beating this drum for a while and I have a blog post that I haven’t posted yet that talks about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. But one of the things that’s so incredible about St. Jude is how much they really give a crap from top to bottom inside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. And an example of this is at the Domino’s Village. This is where, you know, you and your family and potentially your, your, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, sick child’s siblings, if necessary, can all stay and live in Memphis for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey however long it takes to get this life-saving treatment for the ill child. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as St. Jude has gone through the years and has had families not graduate—that’s not really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the word I’m looking for—but move on from St. Jude because their children are either maintaining or hopefully cured
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from their illness, they will still ask the parents of these children and the children as well, like, hey, what could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have made your experience better? And this is a great example of them just really caring. And one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey parents and families have said is, hey, you know, for some cancers, for some illnesses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have to get like a pill or an injection at like three in the morning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And even if you’re staying on campus, it’s not super convenient to have to trudge across campus to go to a nurse to get the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey injection, to get the pill, whatever. It would be so much nicer if we could just do that in the building in which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re sleeping. And so I’ll give you one guess what’s in Domino’s Village. They have like a nurse’s station. I’m sure they have a different name for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, where you can at any hour of any day get whatever life-saving medication you need. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re into things like this, if you are into getting rid of childhood cancer, if you’re into giving these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sick kids more tomorrows, and I certainly am and I know that you two are as well, go to stju.org.atp, S-T-J-U-D-E.org.atp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please throw whatever money you can their way. Just because we have big, huge mega donors,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we are so very thankful for, that doesn’t mean that your 10 bucks isn’t isn’t useful, isn’t worthwhile, isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting, isn’t great. So please, please, please go to cntu.org slash ATP. John, did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want to mention any new top donors?
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t have any new top donors, but I do want to recommend people check out the podcast on if only just by scrubbing around
⏹️ ▶️ John and looking for the parts with Casey when he does embarrassing stuff. It’s highly entertaining.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco If you enjoy this, like these
⏹️ ▶️ John things are more entertaining when you know the people who are there. And obviously we know most of the people who are in this podcast with
⏹️ ▶️ John them, but you’re listening to the show. You probably know Casey. Do you want to see him doing embarrassing things? Do you want to see him playing
⏹️ ▶️ John game shows and stuff? Check it out. There’s tons of good content there. Yes, you can just treat
⏹️ ▶️ John it as entertainment. But if you happen to watch some of the inspirational videos between and maybe donate a few bucks, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the purpose of the podcast on you can donate at any time, not just when it was airing live.
⏹️ ▶️ John So please do check out that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey link. Yep, I think ATP can give relay you know, because we’re part of the same community here we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can give relay that heave to get us to at least $600,000. I’d like to see even more. And thank you, by the way, to Captain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey America, Stephen Rogers, for donating $10,000. I don’t know if that’s via ATP or just in general,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not affiliated with ADP, I looked it up, unfortunately. Still, Captain America is into it, so why aren’t you? go to
17 Pro sports colors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I have possibly the most important follow-up that’s ever reached the Accidental Tech podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have sports ball follow-up. And I wanted to let everyone know that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had brought up a couple of times that the colors of the iPhone 17 Pro, the blue, the orange,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the kind of white-ish, right? What’s the third color? There’s blue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco orange, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one nobody cares about. Silver. There you go. The blue and orange in particular, everyone says, oh, it must be because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Tim Cook. Well, it’s not because of Tim Cook. And it must be because of Auburn, because Tim Cook went to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auburn for undergrad, if I’m not mistaken. Auburn’s colors are blue and orange. And I kept saying, well, what about UVA?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What about UVA? And Tony Sita, Skita, Skita, Sita, I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Tony. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey communicated so many times. I have no idea how to pronounce your surname, but here we are. Tony pointed me to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a link, which is admittedly the UVA magazine. So I mean, I will concede to consider the source, but it reads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as follows. An 1887 University of Virginia graduate, George Petrie, was the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey organizer and coach of Auburn’s Auburn’s first football team in 1892. In honor of UVA, Petri chose orange and blue as Auburn’s official
⏹️ ▶️ Casey colors. His contributions to Auburn didn’t end there. Petri was the founder of the school’s history department, graduate school, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey athletics department, as well as the author of the Auburn Creed. There you go, kids. They are UVA’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey colors. Boom! How about that?
Other AVS chargers exist
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along. We got something wrong because 9to5Mac got something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong and we just parroted it. We said last week that as far as we understood, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was true, that the iPhone 17 Pro fast charging requires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new dynamic power adapter that Apple’s selling that has that new trick USB power
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delivery thing where it’ll do like tenths of a watt or amp or whatever. I forget get the details now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we thought that was absolutely required in order to make it work. Whatever it was, a tenth of a something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, 95Mac has since updated that very same article and it reads as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey follows, an earlier version of this story said Apple’s new dynamic power adapter was the only way to charge the iPhone 17 as fast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as possible. This is not true. You can use any power adapter that is 40 watts or faster. It doesn’t need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be Apple branded. We regret the error. And so do we. Hmm.
Midrange, big-screen models
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I guess we can do some iPhone Air follow-up. John, tell me, why are people buying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Air or the 15-inch MacBook Air?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, last episode, we talked a lot, particularly Marco talked a lot about his doubts about
⏹️ ▶️ John how appealing the iPhone Air would be as compared to the other phones in the lineup. And we also strayed
⏹️ ▶️ John off into thinking about the 15-inch MacBook Air, which we’ve talked about in the past, and the Plus phones and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the 13-inch iPad Air, all these products that have the pattern of the bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen size that used to be only for a pro model, then they make a kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid to low tier model that has also the big screen size.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, and we talked about when those products were introduced on the show, all of a sudden, this is a great idea, it fills an obvious hole in the
⏹️ ▶️ John lineup, why should you be forced to get the most expensive product if all you want is the big screen, you don’t care about the other features,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada yada. And then again, Marco had doubts about the iPhone Air. What we got in response to that
⏹️ ▶️ John segment was tons and tons of people sending us email, writing us messages online saying, here’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m getting the iPhone Air, Here’s why I like the 15-inch MacBook Air. Here’s why these people like the 15-inch MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m here to say that we agree with all of you. There are great reasons to buy all these products, which is why
⏹️ ▶️ John we think they make a lot of sense. Even the iPhone Air. The question is, and the point of the segment was,
⏹️ ▶️ John will these products sell well enough for Apple to be satisfied? Doesn’t mean they’re bad products.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like literally millions of people will buy all of these products. That sounds like, well, it’s a success. Millions of people are
⏹️ ▶️ John buying them. Yeah, but how many millions? And so in the big numbers in the Apple ecosystem, our
⏹️ ▶️ John point with those segments last week was not that there’s no reason to buy an iPhone Air or 15-inch MacBook Air or 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad Pro or whatever. There’s plenty of reasons to buy all those products. They have a set of features that appeal to a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of people. Is it enough, people? Just look what happened to the mini phones. So there’s tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of reasons to buy the mini phones. People love them. People love them so much that they were sad when Apple stopped selling them. And why
⏹️ ▶️ John did Apple stop selling them? They didn’t sell enough. Same thing with the plus phones. A lot of people like
⏹️ ▶️ John those, but not enough people. So here we are with the iPhone Air, and our fear is not that the iPhone Air is a bad product that no
⏹️ ▶️ John one should ever buy. Our fear is that not enough people will find it appealing enough to buy, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it will have a difficult life continuing on. But we’ll see. This is only the first week or so that
⏹️ ▶️ John these phones have been out. We don’t know what the future holds, but that was our point. So thank you for everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John for sending in your reasons why you love these products. I see the reasons as completely valid.
⏹️ ▶️ John In particular, I think the 15-inch MacBook Air is an amazing thing, and we’ll talk about the iPhone Air in a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit with our experiences with it. But yeah, just because you love a product and think it’s great, doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John that it will have a bright future at Apple. See also the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, the sadness of the way you said that. Oh. Indeed. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey killing me. You know, you’re gonna have to move on. 2024 is running
⏹️ ▶️ John Remember the whole, I’m gonna buy a new computer in 2024. Just wanna see what they do with the Mac Pro. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How’s that going? It’s terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How’s that working out for you? All right.
iPhone Air strength
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about Bendgate, Bendgate 2025 edition. Apple via Tom’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guide has provided a video. We will link to both the Tom’s Guide article and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a direct link to the video in the show notes. This is showing Apple’s test harness for testing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone Air. And holy cow, this thing becomes concave, convex,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can never tell them apart, doesn’t matter. It becomes a arc and springs right back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to where it started. It is very, very impressive.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is something all the press got to see, apparently, or much of the press got to see at the phone introduction event.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple essentially took the press back into a room and said, here’s our bend test robot. And it’s like this rig. You’ll see,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can see it in the movie. It’s like a rig with these two little pressure points that press on the back of the phone while it’s suspended
⏹️ ▶️ John from its ends, and the phone bends. And they showed it applying 130 pounds of pressure and then releasing that pressure and having
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone spring back to be entirely flat. I think they must’ve done something where they took the phone off the
⏹️ ▶️ John bend ring and said, see, look, put it on the table. It’s totally flat. It’s not, you know, doesn’t retain any of the bend.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was the other impressive thing that Apple did to try to convince the press that this thing does not
⏹️ ▶️ John bend. But I think the real commitment, I said, well, we gotta wait till the YouTube people get hold of this. The real commissioner I think was JerryRigEverything,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I believe is the premier destroyer of Apple things on YouTube. At least
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s the one I’m the most aware of. On his channel, you know, he’s gonna break everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay? But what he did as part of all the various tests for the iPhone Air was he did
⏹️ ▶️ John the typical test you put it in your hands and you try to bend it. Unlike the press people who were caught by surprise and
⏹️ ▶️ John had a phone thrown at them by Jaws and said, here, try to bend this. Jerry Rigg is an expert
⏹️ ▶️ John phone bender. Like, this is what he does. On his channel, he takes phones and bends them until they break.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a thing. He’s a big, strong man who literally bends phones for a living.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay? He could not bend an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John Air in such a way that it maintained a bend. Forget about breaking it in half or cracking it. With his two hands
⏹️ ▶️ John holding the phone in the air, no putting on the edge of a table, no putting it over your knee, no stepping on it, just two hands
⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone in the air, he could not bend this phone in such a way that it retained a bend. You
⏹️ ▶️ John could make it like do an arc, but as soon as he released the pressure, it went back to completely flat. So the iPhone Air 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John passes the hands trying to bend test. And like Marco said last time, surely
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple knew this, which is why they could throw this phone to people and say, here, try to bend it. So the throwing was the dangerous part because it does
⏹️ ▶️ John break if you drop it. but anyway, the glass cracks. If he can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John bend this thing, there’s no way people caught by surprise were gonna bend this just by bending
⏹️ ▶️ John in the air. So amazing, the iPhone Air, do not worry about bendability
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re trying to bend it, which you shouldn’t be doing with your hands in the air. Then of course, Derek everything being
⏹️ ▶️ John the channel that destroys Apple hardware, it’s time to pull out the machinery. So he got his machine
⏹️ ▶️ John assisted bend test with like a force meter on it and like a two inch like PVC cylinder or something
⏹️ ▶️ John pressing on the middle of the phone with the ends pressed up against something. And it withstood 215
⏹️ ▶️ John pounds of pressure before it cracked. And the back of the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone cracked, but the screen did not. The screen was still on at this point. So yes, obviously you can break it in half,
⏹️ ▶️ John but do you think you can apply 250 pounds of pressure directly to the center of the phone while keeping the end still? I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John you can. Not without some mechanical advantages or some mechanical help.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you’re worried about anything with the iPhone Air, worry about the back glass shattering if
⏹️ ▶️ John it slips out of your pocket, if you miss your pocket, like Marco did and you drop it on your driveway. That will happen. The glass will still crack.
⏹️ ▶️ John But bending, I would say, do not worry about it. I’m trying to think about a scenario
⏹️ ▶️ John where how much would you have to weigh and what scenario would you have to be in where you would put this in your back pocket and sit
⏹️ ▶️ John on it and put a bend in it? It seems very sturdy. That’s a test that nobody did. But again,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just like, oh, well, what if I’m 215 pounds? This is 250 pounds of pressure pressed precisely in the center of the phone with the ends
⏹️ ▶️ John being held still by steel beams. So it doesn’t bend very easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I believe somebody posted the comparison to the iPhone 6, which was the one that famously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did fairly easily bend, especially the 6 Plus. Yeah, you could just blow on that one, it would bend. Yeah, I believe that was like less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than half of the force required for this. So they’ve made it very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 6 you could easily do with your hands. Anybody could bend it with their hands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah, good. I mean, look, this is like, you know, this is one of those things where like Apple really never acknowledged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, the iPhone 6 was bendable, but you can tell that this was definitely like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey, just so you all know, we know you think this is gonna be bendable like that old iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was. It’s not, look how great it is. Like this was very good, you know, design and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing by Apple about the bendability of the Air. Because that is like, as soon as you see the A, it’s the very first thing you think is, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it fragile? And that’s why Apple has been extremely, strongly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing the fact that it is not as fragile as it looks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and the other test that he did in addition to the million other ways he abused these things, he has the little
⏹️ ▶️ John scratchy little metal sticks of different hardness levels. They go through like one through nine or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the new ceramic coating, the second version of the ceramic coating, whatever thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John on all the iPhones, it goes one number higher than the previous coding. So it is in fact a better, more
⏹️ ▶️ John scratch resistant coding. In other words, I think it was like the number six or number seven that would have scratched the iPhone 16
⏹️ ▶️ John does not leave a mark on this phone. You have to go up to one level of hardness higher. So that scratch coding is also not BS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m super duper impressed by all of this. And so was Jerry Rigg everything apparently. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he seemed very, very into it.
Battery-life tests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about the battery life. There’s been a lot of tests done. We have a couple of YouTube videos we’ll link. Tom’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guide talked about it. What’s your conclusion here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Battery life testing is difficult. I mean, we just got done talking about Apple changing their methodology
⏹️ ▶️ John and having the numbers change, the numbers change just because they changed the methodology. What is a good methodology? What is
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote typical usage? Doing something like playing video or whatever is really not exercising the entire phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not realistic. People don’t just play a video all day long. What is representative battery life testing?
⏹️ ▶️ John The difficulty of doing this, I had to do this when I was doing battery testing and like doing laptop reviews for our technique or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I made my own tests, but I don’t think my tests were any better or worse than anyone else’s. I was just guessing. Everyone’s just saying, I think this
⏹️ ▶️ John is what a typical day looks like. Load a web page, copy a file, do this. Like you
⏹️ ▶️ John just try to come up with something that looks like this is what it would be like if I was using it. Do I throw a compiling software in there? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you make representative usage? And so if you look at all the different reviews that are online that
⏹️ ▶️ John tested the battery life of the iPhone Air, trying to answer the question everyone wants to know, hey, how bad is the battery life on
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone Air? Because it’s got a smaller battery than the other phones. Widely varying
⏹️ ▶️ John results. I’ve picked three sets of results here to try to give you some ranges, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even know if these are representative. I saw numbers that were all over the place, and it’s mostly down to, I think, the different
⏹️ ▶️ John tests that these people run. What do they think, what is in their test? What are they doing in their test? Are they playing a 3D game the entire time?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are they playing a 3D game half the time? Are they loading web pages? Are they playing audio? Are they playing video? What is
⏹️ ▶️ John the mixture of activities? So anyway, let’s start with Mr. Who’s the Boss, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is a fairly big YouTuber who seems to know what he’s doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John On his test on the iPhone Air, the battery life for the iPhone Air was 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John less than the 17, 25% less than the 16, 32% less than the 17 Pro, and 43% less than the Pro Max.
⏹️ ▶️ John One thing all the tests have in common is that the iPhone Air has the lowest battery life of the new iPhones that were introduced. Makes
⏹️ ▶️ John sense. It’s got the smallest battery. It’s got the A19 Pro. These, I think, are the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John results I saw. So like, how much worse is this than the plain iPhone 17? 30% less is
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty significant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although, like, if you look at the phone, I think you would assume it would have like half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the battery life. Like, even in these worst case, the worst case scenario here is actually not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad compared to like what you would expect by looking at and picking up the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but that’s what people are trying to say. Like what is, how big a factor is it? All right, so the next one is from The Tech
⏹️ ▶️ John Chap. In his test, he got only 3% less than the iPhone 17, 11% less than the
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, and 15% less than the Pro Max. And in fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John also in his testing, the iPhone 17 Pro lasted 1% longer than the 16 Pro Max.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just emphasizing how big the battery, how good the battery life is on the 17 Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Coming close to matching the Pro Max from the previous generation is pretty good. But anyway, 3% less than the 17, that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John basically like a wash, like that the Air basically has the same battery life as the 17, and a few
⏹️ ▶️ John testers came up with numbers that were similar to that. And the 17, by the way, he didn’t test
⏹️ ▶️ John against the 16, but the 17 has better battery life than the 16. So in that case, these people were saying, hey, the Air
⏹️ ▶️ John has better battery life than the plain iPhone 16. Again, Mr. Who’s the Boss didn’t find that, but some people did.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Tom’s Guide had the Air at 6% less than the 17 and 33% less than the 17 Pro Max. So it’s kind of all over the
⏹️ ▶️ John map, but it seems like if you get
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPhone Air, it’s conceivable that it could have for you, for your usage, if you have
⏹️ ▶️ John light usage, the same battery life as if you got a plain 17. On the other hand, if you’re doing whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the heck Mr. Who’s the Boss was doing, you’re gonna have maybe 20 or 30% less. I wish we could nail it down more than
⏹️ ▶️ John this to tell you, how much worse is the battery, but it seems really variable, which makes sense for current SOCs
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re so good at power management that they’re gonna shut off or clock down the parts that
⏹️ ▶️ John they aren’t using, and certain parts can use a lot of energy all of a sudden, right? And so it depends
⏹️ ▶️ John on if you’re like tickling those parts and getting them to burn up energy versus not doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So your mileage may vary, but I would say, you know, it does have a smaller battery than the other phones. It does have an A19 Pro with
⏹️ ▶️ John one GPU disabled. But it seems like, especially when you get it new, I think it will be fine
⏹️ ▶️ John for everybody. After three years, maybe it will be a little bit weak, but considering
⏹️ ▶️ John how battery life has gone up over the years on the iPhone, compared to like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, like an iPhone 12 or something, I think the Air will be fine. You know, the difficult thing for the Air
⏹️ ▶️ John is that its sibling phones are so good, right? The Pro and Pro Max have
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculously good battery life. 17, you know, whatever, it’s fine. But anyway, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the choice you have. Do you want the skinny iPhone Air? Don’t worry about it bending. If you can handle the
⏹️ ▶️ John battery and the single camera, this could be the phone for you.
iPhone Air speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John Tell me about the speaker then, please. Steve Trout and Smith chiming in to say that the iPhone Air
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker is so much louder than his 12 Pro Max speaker that he had to double check his EU volume limit
⏹️ ▶️ John settings. It must be double the volume of his 12 Pro Max at its loudest, he said. Now, comparing it to a 12, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not, you know, Apple’s. That’s a pretty old phone. But apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John the Air, even though it’s just got that one speaker, it’s still pretty loud.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, in one of the Max Tech videos that we’re going to bring up, Max Tech, or what’s this guy’s name? I always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco name. Is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, it isn’t. No, it’s Vadim
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey other guy. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Vadim. I think Vadim. Anyways, he was saying that he really, really finds it important,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the quality of the speakers in the iPhone, which to me, that is like very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey low on the list of things that I consider. But I guess to Vadim, it was very important. He was saying that the iPhone Air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaker, speaker, not speakers, is freaking terrible and like tinny as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything, which is exactly what you would expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco for the record. I have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thoughts on that that will come up later. Oh, all right, excellent.
Air vs. Pro thermals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, speaking of Max Tech, Max Tech did some heat related testing and it sure seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the, what you call them, the not thermocouple, the vapor chamber, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s called, that seems to be doing some stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so he’s got like a heat sensing camera that shows hotter areas as white and cooler areas
⏹️ ▶️ John as blue or black with like shades of red and orange in between. And one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John tests you can see that turned over an Air and a Pro to the backside of the phone. And
⏹️ ▶️ John boy, you can see where the SoC is in the air because it’s glowing white. When you look at
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pro, which has the same SoC that’s even hotter actually, because it’s got all the GPU cores enabled, instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of there being a bright glowing white spot or surrounded by orange and red, the
⏹️ ▶️ John whole back of the phone is like yellow. That’s the vapor chamber at work. That’s the aluminum at work. It’s taken
⏹️ ▶️ John that heat from the SoC and it’s spreading it over a much, much bigger area. Like in this picture, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom of the iPhone Air still like a cool, like reddish purple color, but the 17
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is yellow like all the way across. Check out the video to see the difference if you want a visual representation
⏹️ ▶️ John of what the vapor chamber and the aluminum body will do for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed, it is very impressive.
Air internal layout
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then we have a bunch of teardowns starting with I fix it. Uh, it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that our assertion from last episode, which we were parroting, I think other people, but here again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, we said it. Um, we, our assertion was that the entire logic board is in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera bump. And it turns out that’s actually untrue. It appears that the A19 Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the camera bump or under the camera bump, but everything else is actually hanging out below.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. It’s like a T-shaped logic board. So the A19 Pro is in the camera bump,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the whole rest of the logic board is below it. And speaking of the iPhone Air, iFixit also tore down the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John Air MagSafe battery pack. And inside that battery pack is the exact
⏹️ ▶️ John same battery as in the iPhone Air, like literally the exact like you can swap it into an iPhone Air. That’s a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John open it up, you’re like, like what they did, they swapped it in. There’s like, why is the battery shaped like this? Because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like rectangular. It’s shaped to fit into the iPhone Air with all the little, you know, bends and curves on it and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. It’s literally the exact same battery. So if you get that battery pack, no, you’re not doubling
⏹️ ▶️ John your battery life because you’re losing like 35% of it to heat loss because it’s, you know, the inductive
⏹️ ▶️ John coil or whatever, but it is literally the exact same battery, which is interesting.
Air mass distribution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, let’s see what else they have. Uh, the weight, the, uh, mass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey distribution. They, they have a pie chart of what is taking up all the weight in the iPhone Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I love those.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, this is such a dorky thing and I’m so here for it. The battery of course is, uh, 27
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a half percent. The enclosure, 19 ish percent. Back glass, another 19 or so. Display, 18 percent. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then basically everything else. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John shocked by the huge pie wedge taken up by the back glass. I’m not. The enclosure
⏹️ ▶️ John and the back glass are basically the same. Like the entire enclosure, the entire, like the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the titanium frame and everything. Yeah, the titanium frame weighs as much as the back glass.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, glass is heavy. Yep. And the enclosure and the back glass combined are
⏹️ ▶️ John more than the battery, but not by too much. The display, you know, that makes sense. That’s a lot, but yeah, check on that distribution,
⏹️ ▶️ John spending a lot of weight on that back glass. And that’s a thing that can break too, and it doesn’t conduct heat well.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder how much, well, I don’t know, maybe the back glass contributes to the non-bendability
⏹️ ▶️ John of it because it has like high tensile strength or whatever. Like when you’re bending it, you’re trying to essentially stretch
⏹️ ▶️ John out the glass. I don’t know. I don’t know if the glass is, if they couldn’t have replaced the glass
⏹️ ▶️ John with some other material that might’ve been lighter, but they’re spending a lot of weight on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John. Uh, Tom?
Thickness and camera bumps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about the iPhone Air thickness and camera bumps, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John This Reddit post is just for Marco. It shows the outline of some recent phones showing
⏹️ ▶️ John how the camera bump has gotten bigger while the phones have gotten thinner, kind of. I thought the most
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting thing was to see the iPhone 6, which you all remember is that bendy but also very, very thin phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John The iPhone 6 was significantly thicker than the iPhone Air, not counting the camera bump, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look at the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6’s thickness, excluding its tiny camera bump, the iPhone 6’s thickness
⏹️ ▶️ John extends into the iPhone Air’s camera bump. So like maybe a quarter of the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John Air’s camera bump, you can spend that quarter and still be the same thickness as the iPhone 6.
⏹️ ▶️ John And obviously the 17 Pro’s camera bump is huge, but I just thought this was a fun graphic that somebody did with line art that I’m assuming is accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll put a link in the show notes It shows the iPhone 5, 6, Air, and 17 Pro all in silhouette.
Thinness vs. USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ian asks, what do you think is more likely to happen first with super thin phones? No port
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or port in the camera plateau? That would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gross, but I do… I’m picking up what Ian is putting down. I think they would go no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port, but I don’t feel super strongly about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John IAN M. COLLINS-SUSSMANN, JR. The problem with the port in the camera plateau is, uh, you know, the charging port
⏹️ ▶️ John going from the top instead of the bottom, assuming… We assume that the camera plateau will always be at the top, but it would be weird at
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom. But yeah, I think it would really invalidate a lot of sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of dock type things But maybe Apple doesn’t care about that It could work it could work if they’ve got a bump
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve got a place to put it There’s always the possibility of just making a charging bump camera bump on the top charging bump on the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom We’ll see I think Just having the thickness of the phone be the thickness
⏹️ ▶️ John of a USB C port is probably gonna be fine I mean if you look at the
⏹️ ▶️ John the thinnest Android foldable phones, essentially each half is the thickness of a USB-C port,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, or one half will be just big enough to have a USB-C with like a piece of metal above and below
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and that’s it. That’s, and if you do that, and you have two halves that are that size,
⏹️ ▶️ John you get a phone that is a reasonable thickness for today. If that reasonable thickness for today becomes unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John in 10 years, then you have to see the no ports, or it’s a charging bump. I’m not sure they would put it in the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John bump, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I think to be so thin that you couldn’t fit a USB-C port, I think like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at the Air, you’d probably have at least another half millimeter you could shave off the thickness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still fit the port just fine. And like when you, if you hold an iPhone Air, which I’ll get to later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you hold an iPhone Air, you almost feel like it’s probably not necessary to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get anything other than this really, or at least to get much thinner than this, because you start to run into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like actual ergonomic challenges holding a phone like that or using a phone like that. It’s actually not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that desirable to get thinner.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I was talking about folding phones because what if that’s just half the thickness, right? When you unfold it,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I guess you could do a thing, this would be fun. Some Android phone maker would probably try it where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t plug a USB-C plug into it when it’s unfolded. Only when you fold it together does the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco USB-C port like come together. That’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult because of the way USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is. It has a port
⏹️ ▶️ John on each one. It has like a tongue inside the port so you couldn’t really do this, but someone could try it. But like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you, I forget what the name of this phone is, but I saw one very thin phone that like one, it really
⏹️ ▶️ John was, you can’t make this any thinner and have USB-C in it because it was as thin as you can make it and still pick a USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John port. And two of those together is still reasonable thickness. But I get what you’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said, when we were talking about the, on my blog post about the thin iMac, there is kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like an uncomfortable valley between barely thick
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to hold the USB-C port, which as you said, may be weird in terms of, oh, this feels too thin. Then there’s sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of like this no good area as you get thinner, but then you cross a threshold
⏹️ ▶️ John and you get to the sort of credit card thickness, which is not particularly ergonomic to hold perhaps,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it starts to become like unbreakable because if you drop a credit card, it flutters to the ground
⏹️ ▶️ John and lands softly and is not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John when it hits the ground. And that would be an advantage for the phone. On the other hand, who wants to hold something as skinny
⏹️ ▶️ John as a credit card in your hand? It would be like, you know, You’d hear round over the edges, it’d be weird. Anyway, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve got a long way to go before we get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The speaker would really suck.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve got a long way to go before we get there. People, I’d love for someone to get a credit card thick phone and put a pop socket on the back. That’d be great.
Sponsor: SKIMS
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco With Skims.com once again, Thank you so much to Skims for sponsoring our show.
Pro teardown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk iPhone 17 Pro and let’s start with Teardown’s, REWA’s technologies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Teardown, REWA technology. They commented many times about how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a lot of screws in this phone and that they were saying this in a complimentary way because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that means there’s a lot less adhesive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s part of the advantage of making the thing out of a block of aluminum, machining if you look at
⏹️ ▶️ John in the video they show the sort of the The chassis of the 17 pro versus the chassis of the 16
⏹️ ▶️ John pro and obviously the 17 pro because of the giant camera plateau That’s all aluminum and there are
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of places to put screws that are machined into the aluminum on the 16 pro There’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John there because the 16 pro basically has like a the wraparound kind of the shell around the outside
⏹️ ▶️ John But the front and back are separate pieces that come off So they took advantage on the pro of the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John hey that entire camera bump that’s solid aluminum we can put screw, whatever they call it, the little
⏹️ ▶️ John screw holes all over that thing. And so, so many more components are screwed in on the 17 Pro than they were
⏹️ ▶️ John on the 16, simply because it’s easy to find places to screw them in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s much easier to service and that’s much better for longevity. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of stuff in there though. Check out this video if you wanna see what’s inside these phones. There’s so many things, there’s so many
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny little things, so many delicate, tiny things, be very careful. Oh, and also their teardown
⏹️ ▶️ John was showing. So, the logic board in this, again, The logic board is horizontal, just like it is in the air.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s near the top, but it has almost nothing in the bump area. There’s so much
⏹️ ▶️ John camera crap and other things up there that, you know, obviously the front-facing camera, I think that one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker or some other component is up there, but the logic board in the 17 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is almost entirely below the bump with only a little tiny part of it sticking up into the bump
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area. Tell me about accessibility from the front versus the back, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the REWA tech people basically just said, just treat this phone as
⏹️ ▶️ John only being accessible from the back, or from the front, rather. You can get in through the back. Like there’s a big cutout in the aluminum.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a big, you know, there’s a way in, but there’s like a black sheet of something or other on there, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming you’d have to like peel that out and unglue it. They basically consider this a phone that is
⏹️ ▶️ John only accessible from the front, which is a disadvantage of this unibody design, but, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s trade-offs. And then they also took a look at the vapor chamber as well. If you want to see what that looks like inside
⏹️ ▶️ John there, it’s pretty cool. We’ll put a link in the show notes to a video that explains
⏹️ ▶️ John what vapor chambers are, how they work and how they’re built. And they can show one of the factories making them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it looks exactly like the one that you see in the iPhone and in tons of other Android phones before this, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty cool video if you’re curious about how they work. But basically there’s just water in there and it
⏹️ ▶️ John evaporates from the heat and then condenses and gets wicked back up to
⏹️ ▶️ John begin the journey again. It’s like a little miniature water cycle inside your phone. It’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. Like I really enjoy, I watched that video. I really enjoyed it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re so delicate. I love watching people tear them down and they’re just like, because you can destroy
⏹️ ▶️ John them by essentially just squishing them or piercing them in any way. Like they’re very,
⏹️ ▶️ John as you can, they’re very thin. That’s the whole magic. They’re very, very thin and very, very delicate. And they have to pull
⏹️ ▶️ John a vacuum inside them. So as soon as it’s pierced in any way, it becomes entirely useless. And it’s just amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John they can make something that precisely and that small that can maintain a vacuum. It’s one of the things I talk about in the video. How do
⏹️ ▶️ John you pull a vacuum? How do you pull the air out of something that thin without having it collapse on itself? Without having
⏹️ ▶️ John it just, well, it’s like, you know, if you put a bag on your mouth and breathe in, the bag just collapses on itself and the two
⏹️ ▶️ John walls of the bag just touch each other. How do you not do that with something that’s this thin? And the answer is tons and tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of tiny little divots that act as little like standoffs, like the little plastic table in your pizza box to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John the box from touching the pizza. It’s pretty cool stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right, going to MaxTek’s teardown, they talk about the speakers, as we previously mentioned,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they said, well, they talked about the speakers in the air, but we’re now talking about the Pro, and they said the speakers on the 17 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Max are a lot louder than the 16 Pro Max.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s interesting that they have a loudness delta year over year in the Max phones. I think they’re making a concerted
⏹️ ▶️ John effort to make them louder. How good they sound, who knows, but making them louder, just got to serve all those people who are on speakerphone
⏹️ ▶️ John walking down the street.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, not good. And then as we already talked about, the heat is indeed more evenly spread.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and this is compared to a 16 Pro. So in the 16 Pro, guess where the SoC is? Well, I can see it
⏹️ ▶️ John is the big white spot right there. And then the 17 Pro, it’s much harder to pinpoint. more of an even
⏹️ ▶️ John distribution of heat.
Scratches?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk scratches. There’s been already a bit of a scratch gate, if you will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s talk that the iPhone 17 Pro, people that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have gone to the store have noticed a lot of scratches, particularly on the Blue Pro and the Black Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reading from Bloomberg, the deep blue variants of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max exhibited scuffs after just a few hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of being on display, Bloomberg News found, from visits to Apple stores in New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London. The Black Air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also showed itself to be prone to scratching, the reporters observed. In addition, Apple’s magnetic magsafe charger can leave a visible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey circular mark on the back of the iPhone 17 Pro models Bloomberg found.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, MacRumors had a bunch more pictures of them. We had a couple people write in to say that they saw the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and send in pictures of the phones that they saw in the store. But here’s JerryRigEverything coming in to
⏹️ ▶️ John say, look, he’s the expert damager of phones and in particular, he does scratch them up and everything. What
⏹️ ▶️ John he says, and I’m inclined to believe him, is that the anodized surface
⏹️ ▶️ John on the aluminum on these phones is tough enough that if you try to scratch it, which he did
⏹️ ▶️ John with his various scratch hardness tools or whatever, you can leave a mark, but that mark
⏹️ ▶️ John just brushes off. Like that white dust, all these marks essentially will just brush. He demonstrates
⏹️ ▶️ John it in the video. He scratches it up and he’s like, well, this looks like it’s damaged. But then he just takes his finger, goes rub, rub, rub, and it just wipes off.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like he called it dust or something. I don’t know if it’s dust from the scratching implant or whatever, but supposedly it just rubs
⏹️ ▶️ John off everywhere except the edge of the camera bump. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John made a very sharp edge of the camera bump. Anybody who has ever painted something, like painted your house, knows that if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have a very sharp corner where two walls meet and you try to paint it, getting paint to stay there
⏹️ ▶️ John is very difficult. Paint wants to peel off the very sharp corner, which is why they have various things that will let you round over
⏹️ ▶️ John that corner. In the world of anodizing aluminum, there are international standards for how
⏹️ ▶️ John rounded over a surface has to be to keep an anodized
⏹️ ▶️ John finish on it of a given thickness and Apple has not paid attention to those. They made the corners
⏹️ ▶️ John of the camera bump very sharp and so the anodization on those corners
⏹️ ▶️ John will come off the phone, will flake off. If you take that thing that you were scratching on the surface of the thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the left mark, so you could just brush it off and it was fine, take that same exact thing, nick it on the edge of the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John bump and that will take a piece of that anodization off the phone And it will never come back you can look at it under
⏹️ ▶️ John a microscope and you can see ah this used to be dark blue But now I can see there’s a little divot and they’re shiny
⏹️ ▶️ John aluminum So that will get nicked up around the camera bump if you care about that the other thing I haven’t seen conclusive
⏹️ ▶️ John testing on is the Ceramic shield don’t call it glass back panel on the
⏹️ ▶️ John pro which also gets scratched up I’m not sure if that also buffs out But I went
⏹️ ▶️ John to an Apple store, and I saw these phones and they looked like the ones in these pictures But I saw that before I saw the Jerry
⏹️ ▶️ John everything video, so I didn’t try to buff them out The other thing is the magsafe like ring looks like a coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John ring kind of I’m assuming that will also rub out if you care about it. You see this a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of cases like if The phone itself, but also any case you put on your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John very often if you use magsafe a lot You will see sort of the imprint indentation or a mark from your
⏹️ ▶️ John the magsafe puck on the back of your phone That just seems unavoidable if you keep pressing a
⏹️ ▶️ John circular thing to the back of your phone. But this is on the actual aluminum back of, or the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John glass back, for example, of the iPhone Air to see that thing there. I’m assuming that will rub out,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know. But anyway, these phones are not impervious to marks, especially the dark ones, because if you get a mark on
⏹️ ▶️ John the dark one, if you get all the way down to the aluminum, the aluminum is shiny silver, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the dark blue finish contrasts highly with that. So if you want to show the least of scratches, get the silver
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone Pro, I guess, and the white iPhone Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did see Apple gave a statement to some news outlet, I forget which one, earlier today, saying that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a result of material transfer from the chargers they use in the store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that they would just clean right off. So basically what Apple was saying is that the quote, scratches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re seeing are not scratches in the iPhones, they are rubbed off scuffs of metal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever from the chargers. That’s their official position on
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Yeah, and that’s what Jerry Rigg was saying. He said like, anodized finishes on aluminum are so hard, there’s no way that like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what he was rubbing his tools on it. You’d see these terrible scratches, like, oh, you’ve destroyed it. But then he literally rubs it off
⏹️ ▶️ John with his finger and said, no, what you’re seeing is what came off the tool, not what came off the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if you’re scratching with your fingernail, like you’re seeing your fingernail,
⏹️ ▶️ John basically. But here’s the thing though, all that said, the bottom line is, if you scratch
⏹️ ▶️ John things against the back of this phone, it will leave marks that you will see with your eyes. So if your complaint is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want ugly marks on my phone, and you use this phone without a case, it may have ugly marks
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. the fact that those marks will rub out is only a comfort to you if you routinely clean the
⏹️ ▶️ John back of your phone to get rid of the marks. And like I said, around the edges of the camera bump, that will
⏹️ ▶️ John actually take off the anodization because the corner is too sharp, they didn’t round it over enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also like if you are concerned about, you know, how scratches, how noticeable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scratches will be on your aluminum devices, the best thing you can do is get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco silver ones. Because, you know, if you scratch silver aluminum and you expose silver underneath
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it’s a lot less noticeable than if you have like a dark, bold color and you scratch that and you see the silver peeking out. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if that’s a concern for you, I suggest maybe just getting the silver one to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ John And same thing with the white air for like, if the MagSafe pucks are leaving like white dust, you’re not gonna see it on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can tell you that I got a blue iPhone 17 Pro and sure enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a little baby mark on the ridge of the camera plateau, exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as Jerry already described in that, you know, there’s a little teeny tiny mark of silver, The rest of it looks pristine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks brand new. I don’t know. I mean, I did it. I’m not arguing that I didn’t do it, but, um, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how it happened, but it, yeah, it’s right on the corner off the corner. It’s fine. It’s just right on the corner there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest. And maybe I’m just convincing myself to make myself feel better. I actually do feel like it’s kind of a lovely little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey patina there. Um, if it was like, you know, a scratch clear across the entire aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back there, like on the Mesa or plateau rather, I think I would be less enthusiastic about it, but I kind of like that it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little patina there, if you will. I don’t have that same admiration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for screen-related scratches, but this one doesn’t really bother me, but it absolutely is a thing, And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right on the corner, just like JerryRigEverything said.
Sales breakdown so far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Talk to me about iPhone sales. Apparently, the information, as summarized by MacRumors,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said that Apple’s increasing production of the standard iPhone 17 due to unexpected demand for the device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Following a strong pre-order weekend, Apple told two suppliers to increase the daily iPhone 17 output by at least 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey percent. Apple allocated 25 percent of its iPhone 17 production to the standard model, 10 percent to the Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 65 percent to the Pro and Pro Max, as those are typically Apple’s best-selling devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is all from from the information, which is paywall, but I’m assuming they have good sources here. And I was just really
⏹️ ▶️ John interested to see what Apple allocates on like launch weekend. Obviously launch weekend for the phones is not representative
⏹️ ▶️ John of their lifetime sales. It’s all the early adopters, all the tech enthusiasts, all the people who even know the new iPhones are coming
⏹️ ▶️ John out. But I was surprised to see such a huge bias towards the Pro. And then the
⏹️ ▶️ John percentages are again, 25% for the plain 17, 65 for the Pro and only 10 for the Air. So Apple’s confidence
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Air more or less matches Marco’s confidence in the air, which is, it’ll be okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people will want it, but it is by far, it’s less than half of the next nearest one. It’s only 10%
⏹️ ▶️ John of the ones they’re allocating. And the 17 selling well doesn’t surprise me because as we said in the earlier shows and the event show that
⏹️ ▶️ John we did, 17 is a great phone. Like it just, it has caught up to the pro
⏹️ ▶️ John in so many ways that people care about. It’s just a really good all around, even though it doesn’t have 12 gigs of RAM. But other than
⏹️ ▶️ John that, right, it’s a really good all around, and USB 2, it’s a really good all around phone, so it doesn’t surprise me that they had to up their
⏹️ ▶️ John percentage but again, 25% for 17, 10 for the Air and 65 for the Pro and Pro Max
⏹️ ▶️ John because people who want iPhones on iPhone day want the best, most expensive ones And that’s the Pro and Pro Max.
In-box OS updates?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then finally Faisal writes, a while back we heard about Apple being able to update new iPhones in their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey boxes at Apple stores and then didn’t hear anything again. Is it actually live? Is it working? The day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one patch for the new iPhones reminded me of this and how Apple supposedly was able to update phones while they’re in storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My guess is the volume was just absurd to try to do that. It’s like, when you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to an Apple store and you see how many iPhones they’re selling on launch day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the idea that they would be sitting back there with these, you know, with the big pizza box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updaters that update the phones in the boxes. Like, I just don’t think they could keep up the volume on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a launch day. Like I’m sure, you know, months from now that’s probably going to be happening, but I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s unrealistic for the launch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. These boxes do exist that are real, they are being used, but it doesn’t make the update go any
⏹️ ▶️ John faster. If you’ve ever updated your phone, you know how long it takes. So multiply that by however many
⏹️ ▶️ John phones like the end of the pizza box things can host. I don’t know like a dozen two dozen phones at the
⏹️ ▶️ John same time, but they’re selling so many phones during launch weekend that the the
⏹️ ▶️ John presto pizza box OS update or things aren’t absolutely a non-factor on
⏹️ ▶️ John launch day probably in launch week because there’s just there’s so many phones flying through that store. There is no time to sit each
⏹️ ▶️ John one in the pizza box and get it updated. But but yeah, they’re real. We had some follow-up about it a while ago
⏹️ ▶️ John where they have it for phones. I believe they also have new ones coming out for Macs, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a factor on launch day.
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Transfer tips and experiences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So let’s start with some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actual topics and let’s begin by answering the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question we should have answered last week. How
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you set up a new iPhone? And a lot of people have asked this and my personal experience with this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was use a cable, always use cable. And the reason I did that is because it was like the more modern version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of doing an iTunes backup. And the guidance years ago was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you if you do an encrypted, and that’s the key, an encrypted backup to your computer, And that’s the key, an encrypted backup to your computer, which you can still do in Finder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. That will save all your Wi-Fi passwords. It’ll save basically as much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as possible. And then you can do the restore onto the new phone once it arrives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so you can back up your phone maybe the morning of delivery, if you will, and then restore the new phone from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that backup. And that was the guidance for years. And then they started being able to do the whole thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without involving a computer at all. time, what I decided to do for the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two or three years was use a thunderbolt cable between the two phones. Now, this becomes dodgy because then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one phone’s trying to charge the other and you need to get power into the source phone or maybe into both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones. And so that’s a little squirrely, but you can use MagSafe and get around it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s what I did for this phone. But before I get derailed in my tale of woe, what is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your guys’ approach and what do you recommend?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what I used to do. I used to do the backup to the computer and then with the encryption thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud Keychain made that a lot less necessary because again, it used to be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do the computer encrypted backup used to be the only way to transfer keychain entries. So that would be things like your logins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and passwords. But once iCloud Keychain launched and became
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well supported by everything, that now includes your passwords that are stored in Keychain. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not all passwords. Apps can set basically like their storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco class for, if you have a password stored in an app in Keychain, you can say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, this should persist between boots, this should be only after unlock, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can say this should basically be included in backups or not. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many apps don’t. Slack, I’m looking directly at you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any app that you have to log in every time you change your iPhone, That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a choice those apps make. They can choose to not suck and they don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Brief sidebar on Slack. Slack, yeah, okay, so it doesn’t store your password stuff. The worst
⏹️ ▶️ John thing about Slack, it doesn’t even store all the Slacks that you’re in and
⏹️ ▶️ John the order they are in in the sidebar. Now granted, I’m in a lot of Slacks. You don’t have to store the password, just at least
⏹️ ▶️ John keep my Slacks. Make them fine, make me log into every single one of them. Don’t make me remember what they all were.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, every social network app, the banks, everything. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so all that said, I just use iCloud now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason why is because I have had the phone-to-phone, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direct transfer thing, I’ve had that thing fail a lot, Casey. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had that fail frequently. It just failed for us this weekend when I did Tiff’s phone, because we did hers that way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it failed. I always do mine with the option of, I have the phone paired to set it up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the other phone, but then when it asks you, do you wanna do iCloud or direct transfer? I pick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud now, because it works a lot better for me in practice. That being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are some things that never transfer. I’ve never once had it properly pass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple Watch to the new phone, ever. I’ve heard- Is it even supposed to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that? Yes, it even, it says it’s doing it. I’ve never seen that work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either. Yeah, it even says it’s gonna do it for you. And I’ve heard of other people, the HDMI CEC unicorns,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s somebody out there is having this work for them. I’ve never seen it work. It worked for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, there you go. It worked for me. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John about the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that worked for me. I don’t have a watch, my wife does. I literally never worked for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco her. Yeah, exactly. In the same way, I’ve never seen a watch transfer a cellular plan to another watch either. Like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John also never- Oh God, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John asking a lot. Yeah, exactly. But it works for Casey, so I didn’t even know it was supposed to work, honestly. I just always assume
⏹️ ▶️ John it won’t be paired and sure enough, it isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, ostensibly they added that, I think like three or four years ago, and it’s never worked for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, not even once. That being said also, before we get to your tail of a lie, because I don’t have any woe, mine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked fine for the most part. However, since I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which iPhone it was, it’s been a while now, Apple started a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back trying to, I think, maybe boost their initial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery perceptions of the iPhone by this annoying behavior that whenever a new iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not been set up and migrated all your stuff over to it yet, the screen turns off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after effectively three seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, and there’s a lot of steps in the process where you have to like alright hit a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you see a spinner for a while while something activates against some server somewhere and the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just keeps turning off the screen. And then you wake it up again to see where, because you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check to see and is it waiting for me for the next step. So you have to to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waking up the phone, and this is before any stage where you can actually go in and change the sleep setting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you don’t have access to settings yet. The process is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user hostile and tedious, because you have to keep waking up the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, because the screen keeps going to sleep after two seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ John You basically have to babysit it, because I only set up phones like once
⏹️ ▶️ John a year, either I’m setting up my wife’s phone or I’m setting up mine. There’s just no way to remember all the steps
⏹️ ▶️ John and they change from year to year anyway, to answer the question, can I leave now and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco come back and it will be done?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because there is a step that takes like hours in the middle. Right, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t leave. It’s gonna ask you something else later. It’s gonna say, okay, now what about this? Okay, now what about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, now 45 minutes, now what about this? Okay, 30 minutes, now what about this? And you’re like, you can never leave. You just have to constantly be checking.
⏹️ ▶️ John How’s it doing? How’s it doing? How’s it doing? It is way too, I understand there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John steps in the process, but they really need to have some kind of messaging that says, now you can go away
⏹️ ▶️ John and come back. And when you come back, it will either still be going or it will be done. We require nothing else
⏹️ ▶️ John of you. But I don’t even know if there is that step because there are just so many phases. And my
⏹️ ▶️ John advice for like to answer the question, how should we set up the phone? As you can see, people have varying experiences.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people have lots of success with one way, less success with another. I started to have less success with
⏹️ ▶️ John the iTunes backup slash Finder backup way. So I switched to the device to device transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John but wireless and the reason I was doing it wireless is because I was transferring mostly from phones
⏹️ ▶️ John that had USB two speed connections to phones that don’t and
⏹️ ▶️ John USB two speeds are slower than wifi. So I was doing the wireless device to device transfer that
⏹️ ▶️ John is still sort of my go-to default. I would say to characterize them, the iCloud one is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the one that has the highest success rate, but I think it is also has the lowest fidelity
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of what it will copy. The finder, I’m not sure if the finder copy
⏹️ ▶️ John or the device to device with or without the wire are tied in fidelity or if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the- I think so. Assuming that you encrypt, assuming you encrypt, then I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John they’re tied.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I would say the finder one has lost its, like using your Mac has lost its dominance as the highest
⏹️ ▶️ John fidelity in terms of we will keep the most stuff. So I would say, if you want to do it with your computer, fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully you have a fast wired connection on your phone, But my default,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think the default that Apple pushes you towards is device to device wireless. You can keep phones plugged into
⏹️ ▶️ John power the whole time. You don’t have to do the thing where you have MagSafe on the back, plus the cord and stuff. You don’t have to have a cord. You don’t have to know,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, does this phone have a slow connection or a fast connection? Oh, I need a lightning to USB-C connector. Device to device wireless
⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of the default, but I do feel like iCloud is going to have the highest success
⏹️ ▶️ John rate. It’s not gonna be as fast. It’s not gonna be as high fidelity, but it will slowly trickle stuff over
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud, assuming you have a good backup. So like there’s, there used to be a good answer. Was that easier back in the years when
⏹️ ▶️ John we could say do an iTunes encrypted iTunes backup, just do it. That’s the number one thing yet, because the other ones were so low fidelity
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of like, they would leave so much of your crap behind, but that’s not the case anymore. Now the fidelity of all of them is
⏹️ ▶️ John similar. So yeah, I would say do device device wireless as your first choice. And if you have bad luck
⏹️ ▶️ John with that, iCloud is second choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. The problem with device to device transfer of any kind, wired, not wired,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever. The problem with that is you’re losing both devices for anywhere between 15 minutes and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literally three hours.
⏹️ ▶️ John why I tell everyone in my family, hey, if you’re going to get a new phone, just assume you’re not going to have any phones for four hours.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but honestly, and this is why I like the iCloud option because the iCloud option minimizes the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that both phones are out of commission.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It very much does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the new phone still has a lot to download, but you can at least start using stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John and by the way, I think we are still in the phase, this is only a relevance to maybe us and other developers,
⏹️ ▶️ John but are we still in the phase where no matter what you do, your test flight apps will not
⏹️ ▶️ John make it to the new phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, yeah, test flight apps do not make it, period.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which, like Apple owns test flight. It’s not a third party app anymore. I don’t know why they can’t, I guess they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco who cares? Yeah, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care. There’s only a few million developers, who cares?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have a large to-do list that is above that.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you are a developer, take screenshots of your home screens, because you’ll forget where that test flight app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just refer back to the old phone if at all possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do not erase. They’ll say, okay, my new phone is set up, now I can wipe my old phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John They prompt you for that. Especially if you do device-to-device transfer, when you’re done on the old phone, they’ll say,
⏹️ ▶️ John great, you got your new phone set up. Do you wanna erase this one? Pay attention. Don’t get prompt fatigue.
⏹️ ▶️ John You do not wanna erase your old phone as soon as you set up the new one. Wait a week, find out what you’re missing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, speaking of prompt fatigue, There are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many steps to go through now, after a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John migration or after a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new install. So here, yeah. So I actually, I wrote it down because I was like, this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I’m going through this, and for reasons I’ll get to later, I went through it a lot. So here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea, you have to go through location services, Apple ID, Apple Pay, okay, those seem
⏹️ ▶️ John But then. But before you move on, Apple Pay. Apple Pay is not one step. Let’s say
⏹️ ▶️ John you have five credit cards in Apple Pay. You need to enter the little three digit code for five credit cards, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to wait for your phone to connect to whatever stupid server that is run by whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John card you’re trying to use and hope that thing responds and decide, oh, I’m just gonna do setup later. Am I gonna remember
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this one card setup? Just getting through the Apple Pay part can be incredibly, and you gotta have all your cards
⏹️ ▶️ John on you unless you’ve memorized all your three digit codes. Just that one step frustrates me to no end because
⏹️ ▶️ John I do want all the cards and sometimes the servers don’t respond, but then you skip it, forget that you skipped it until you’re trying to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John with it in a store and realize oh I never finished the setup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway gone yeah and so that’s but like even that I feel like those things like I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see why those are required okay but then Apple intelligence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why why do we need to what is turn this on it’s it says like it’s ready and you there’s only the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option is next or whatever that you can’t not turn it on so it’s just advertising to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you then it says you are set you want to summarize notifications do you want priority notifications. These are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three different screens. Then the camera control thing, which interestingly enough, the default state
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is no swipey actions, which is pretty clear that that’s where they’re going. Ok, good. Visual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intelligence. After that, explaining to you how to use visual intelligence. Again, this is just promos.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The action button. Four screens of Siri. Emergency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SOS. Welcome. Then a liquid glass show off and a liquid glass tour,
⏹️ ▶️ John like four screens. The four screens of Siri, I believe, do not ask you to do anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? No. They’re just telling you about Siri. They’re not saying, like, they’re just, sometimes they make you say
⏹️ ▶️ John things like, hey Siri, what’s the weather? These are tutorial, this is like the tutorial level in a video game, where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just like, we wanna teach you how to use your phone. You’re like, come on, come on, just get me to the game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, come on, yeah. Like this is showing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of thing that we used to make fun of companies like Microsoft for back in the day was like when you could kind of see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the org chart coming out of the products in user hostile ways, but it’s like, oh, every one of these departments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants their own promo screen in the setup. And the problem is what we’re seeing is like, it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every division has their own pet projects that are spamming the user here without considering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the like substantially ever growing burden of this entire experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a brand new iPhone setup and for the customer. Like the customer going through this, it just feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we’re just going through the motions And we’re like, yeah, come on, come on. Why is this so many screens? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really, it has reached a point where it is beyond ridiculous now. It’s just a slog.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s the last thing you want when you’re a customer setting up your new phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is supposed to be a happy, awesome time. You’re excited. The last thing you want is to feel like it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slog. And there’s enough steps involving setting up a new phone that are kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just technically or realistically required. things like logins and activations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I understand that part. All this other crap on top of it is not actually necessary. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just like promos and BS from Apple. They shouldn’t be adding to the burden. They should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be trying to get you into the experience of using the phone faster, as fast as they possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can, because that’s what you’re there for. And instead, they’re just loading on more and more stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking each one of these pebbles is not gonna break our backs, but it’s too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they did have a year where they said, we simplified the setup process. And then they added the first one of those things, which
⏹️ ▶️ John I think might’ve been the action button, or maybe it was Siri. And then they added the second one, then they added the third one. Like when they streamlined the process,
⏹️ ▶️ John we were like, wow, setup is so good now. And then like the next year, it’s like, all right, well, you have some new feature. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine to put that one new feature to have some flashy screen, because it’s just one new feature on top of the thing. But like you said,
⏹️ ▶️ John fast forward a few years, and now everybody has one of those things. I think the thing I would suggest that maybe you can get past the MBAs
⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple is, At the very least, when doing a phone to phone transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John or an iCloud backup restore or something, figure out what OS
⏹️ ▶️ John the old phone was running. I feel like this information is available during any kind of phone transfer or even an iCloud backup.
⏹️ ▶️ John And do not show me anything that’s already on my old phone. If my old
⏹️ ▶️ John phone had Apple intelligence, never show me those screens. I know what it is. I set up the old phone somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was presented with this. Like in other words, don’t show me things I already know. Camera control, does my old phone have a camera control?
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t show the camera control stuff. Assume I know what it is. Assume that I’ve used the old phone for some period of time. You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need to show me anything that was on the old phone. And that would save so much time because so
⏹️ ▶️ John many people are setting up a new phone to replace an old iPhone. Now, if you’re replacing an iPhone 10 or something with
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPhone 17, by all means, show me visual intelligence, show me, because you don’t know about these features.
⏹️ ▶️ John You never had them on your phone. Like tutorial levels serve a purpose. You’re not gonna get them to stop them. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say A, streamline them, do not show things that were already on the old phone because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that just doesn’t make any sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they need another one of those big flushes like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did, like you gotta flush those toilet again, it’s full.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, or like even better would be only to show the essential steps during setup and then
⏹️ ▶️ John on essentially like first launch into Springboard through the tutorial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface. No, they already do enough, they already spam us enough with enough dialogues and red dots.
⏹️ ▶️ John Separate the tutorial stuff from the stuff that’s essential and when the tutorial stuff comes out, have a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that says, skip all and never show again. One button gets rid of all, because you know what you’re dismissing
⏹️ ▶️ John is not something you need to set up, because you did the necessary setup things before you got to Springboard. But once you get to Springboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John throw the tutorial in our face and have us say, nope, don’t want to see any of this crap. Even the
⏹️ ▶️ John that I don’t know about and just have it never appear again. That would be my second choice. First one, just don’t show me stuff that was in the old phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Second one, separate essential from non-essential and make the non-essential dismissible en masse
⏹️ ▶️ John with a single button press.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so before I tell my tale of woe, I have one additional question about this. So Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the best that you can recall, and I know this is very unscientific, when you did the iCloud transfer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it took roughly how long from the start of that to you being able to at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use and interact with your new phone? Which new phone? Oh gosh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take your pick. I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. Okay, well, I will say that I bought two new phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought the 17 Pro and I traded in three old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco test phones for one new iPhone Air to be an iPhone Air test phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone Air and an iPhone 17 Pro. And I first transferred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything to the iPhone Air because I wanted to actually transfer to it, make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it my phone, move into it, and live with it for a little while, which is exactly what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did. I will say I later transferred everything to the 17 Pro and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I spent some time with that as well so I could talk about both of them. The process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go to the iPhone Air took substantially longer. In both cases,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did the same iCloud transfer. The iPhone Air was substantially longer in large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part because that day one software update on the iPhone Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took almost 20 minutes. And on the iPhone Pro when I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it later, that one took about two or three minutes. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thermal throttling.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe, but was it on, was the Air on launch day and the Pro not on launch day?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They were both on launch, well, I didn’t set up the Pro on launch day. However, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the process that took so long was quote, preparing update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not getting the update, not downloading the update, it’s preparing update. Now my understanding, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the preparing update step of an Apple software update, I think it’s basically like decompressing it or whatever. Like it’s, I think it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like a local operation on the phone, I think. I could be wrong, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone Air took a very long time on preparing update that the iPhone Pro did not. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was very warm during that time.
⏹️ ▶️ John My wife’s 17 Pro took forever on preparing update on launch day. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what it’s doing. I could be wrong. I will say it was very warm and it took almost 20 minutes to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the update and the Pro done like a day later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did it in like three minutes, it flew right through it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I did errands earlier today and it did not take three minutes, it took a fair bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of time. All right, so I think we got distracted. So you said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. So ballpark in summary, it was about how long from start transfer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to I can interact with either the Pro or the Air?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Air was over an hour, The Pro was about an hour, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then subsequent to that hour being up, so you’ve waited an hour-ish, give or take,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey roughly the same for both, you are now, and you’re doing the iCloud restore, and then you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are, the phone says, okay, I’m still doing a bunch of junk in the background, but you can at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use me now. Was everything there? Were some things there? Were Wi-Fi passwords there? Were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photos there? Were logins there? Or were apps there? Or was it basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey useless, even though officially, strictly speaking, you could interact with it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most things were, and now both of them I ran overnight, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like completely. Like, you know, I started using them a little bit and like before I went to bed, just to check to make sure everything was there or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything had worked and it was fine. Both transfers went very well overall with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big exception that when I did the second one from Air to Pro, I lost all my Safari tabs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m a little annoyed about that, but otherwise everything else went fine. you know, passwords,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco passwords were, you know, things like wifi passwords. Yeah, of course I had those. I believe that’s iCloud Keychain.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything that seems to be in iCloud Keychain, that all seemed to be just totally fine. The only things I lost with each transfer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are things I mentioned earlier that I lose with every transfer, like Slack or Ivory logins.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, I mean, give me my timings on my thing. I, like I said, I always tell people four hours,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it’s a conservative estimate. And part of the reason is I’ve just been on a streak, as you know, from
⏹️ ▶️ John listening to past years of the show, I got a new phone, whether it’s mine or my wife’s or whoever’s and set it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Takes a couple of hours to do the transfer, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone number never transfers. That’s never gonna work. And so you always have to call Verizon on iPhone day. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this year we had to do it again. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t have that problem either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you never do. And I always do. And guess what? We did again because it said, did you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey want to transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John the number to this new phone? And I said, yeah, totally transferred. It’s like, sorry, you need to contact Global One.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, okay, global one, what? What?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See that step also, that step works for me with AT&T every time, no problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so in this case, our suspect is we’re Verizon customers, we’re not global
⏹️ ▶️ John one customers, but my wife has traveled to overseas and has gotten various
⏹️ ▶️ John overseas eSIM slash, I don’t know if she got physical SIM, probably just, yeah, just eSIMs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And apparently if you have ever used one of those things, the transfer process flips out and says,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, talk to global one. It’s like, I don’t care about the global one thing. Maybe if we had deleted the, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the overseas eSIMs before we had done the transfer, we would have said, but we didn’t think of it. It’s always something this year.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what it was. We had to call Verizon on that. And I forgot, if you listen to the older episodes, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, didn’t you learn last time that there’s a webpage of Verizon where you can do this transfer yourself? I think I did learn that. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot it. And then I remembered it again after we’d already been on the phone with Verizon. So factor that into the
⏹️ ▶️ John setup time. That’s why I say four hours. That’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So the reason I ask is because I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my personal experience in years past, and I haven’t done this for at least a couple of years and iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backup. Doesn’t bring that much back in. And I think that that, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey information that I just stated as fact, I think that’s outdated. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Like Marco said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, wifi passwords are now coming in. Um, a lot of this stuff is coming in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And even if photos don’t come in, you know, like as in they’re not the originals aren’t on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the device If you use iCloud photo library as I do I would almost argue that’s a benefit, you know And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, it will now recash only the stuff you’ve used recently nevertheless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m in Memphis, Tennessee. I’ve just spent 12 hours doing the podcast a thon. I am on something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five or six hours sleep It’s now Saturday. We wake up we go to the Memphis Tigers football game where it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was approximately 17 billion degrees We lasted through the first half and then bailed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey went and got some incredible barbecue at Central Barbecue, which I loved. I’d been a couple times before.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we had all colluded in a happy way to do a 6.30 p.m. pickup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the Saddle Creek store in Germantown, Tennessee. We go at about 6.30, give or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take a little bit, and I got my new AirPods Pro, I got Aaron’s orange iPhone 17
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, I got my blue iPhone 17 Pro. Very quickly to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go on a tangent and interrupt myself, this blue is way more purple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than blue in my eyes. I don’t dislike it, but in most light, I view this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as more purple than blue, which is a little bit disappointing. I really wanted like a true to form blue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That being said, Erin freaking loves her orange phone in a way that she has not ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really been enthusiastic about any of the phone colors she’s had before, even pink, which is probably her favorite color,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but she really, really likes the orange phone. And she said to me, and I’m quoting, the orange is really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I want a clear case, which is again, not something she’s ever been into. I’ve only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey held her phone briefly, but the orange is very, very, very good. And I’m really glad that Apple did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an honestly bold color. So anyway, so it’s 6.30-ish, maybe seven o’clock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the time we are on our way back to the hotel. And I have a decision to make.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is seven o’clock PM. I have a 3 45 AM wake up for a four 30 departure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a six 30 flight to get back home. I am a strong and strong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believer in online, you know, electronic boarding passes. I’ve already received one on my old phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t want to travel with the old phone. I want to travel with the new hotness. And I had had,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because why not, man, I want to have the new thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you hear me in your ear saying, do you have four hours to spend on it right now, or do you not have four hours?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t, but I thought to myself, it’s fine. It’s fine. Cause here’s the thing I brought with me in the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the way back from the Apple store, I immediately opened the phone and I brought with me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A USB-C like, I think it’s a Belkin Mophie. I forget what it is, but one of those, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, 3d rectangle, uh, battery packs that like John Voorhees loves. I forget the model if you actually care,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ask me about it, but anyways, aren’t all battery packs, 3d rectangles. Or would you know what I’m saying? they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, not, not, um, not cylinders, but like a round rec cylinder, if you will. Yeah. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing a terrible job describing it. You know what I’m thinking of? I’m doing a poor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bar form factor. Can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, no, no, no, not a candy bar. That’s my whole point. It’s more of like a, like a square that’s been extruded upwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, anyways, like an airport extreme.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually. Yeah. Uh, so I have that. I have my, I believe it’s Mophie,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, three in one travel charger, which is MagSafe and charges really fast. Then the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second edition charges quite quickly. And I have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Thunderbolt. I think it’s Thunderbolt three or four. I don’t recall now, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe two-ish feet long. So like two thirds of a meter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This thing cost me $110 million when I bought it. It’s seriously like a $70 cable or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And actually while we were there at the Apple store, Mike Impulse bought, I think a one and and a half meter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thunderbolt 5 cable maybe was for for literally 150 bucks or thereabouts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was absurd. This is an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable. Cable transfers are not this good. Like this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem, Marco. I had convinced myself and this is 100% my fault. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not trying to blame anyone but myself. Only the guy in the mirror is at fault here. I had somehow convinced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself that these things support Thunderbolt and these things have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immensely fast transfer speeds. The pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specifically. Isn’t it just USB 3 at best? I don’t think the phones have ever supported Thunderbolt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is my question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The iPads do. I think I have convinced myself of something that is patently untrue. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey owning that top to bottom inside now, but I thought to myself, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco this has got to be the year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a half terabyte phone of which maybe two thirds is full or something like that. And I think a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that is just photos that can be, you know, they’re cast photos. I’m not trying to keep my whole photo library on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phone. This has got to be fast. It’s got to be. So I get in the car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m in the passenger seat, I’m riding shotgun, and I start the transfer. And I do this from phone to phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the middle of the car with no Wi-Fi available, and only one of these devices can get on the internet. I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, and it asks me, do you want to do the cellular transfer? Hell yeah, I do. Why not? This this is going to be great. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I immediately transfer my cell plan from the old phone to the new phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John You did this in a moving car, and I can never successfully do it from my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yep, I did it in a moving car. While
⏹️ ▶️ Marco traveling, by the way. And what, eight hours before a flight?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Something like that. I can’t do that mental math without distracting myself. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yes, something like that. Okay, great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is so many good ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is just a litany of excellent ideas,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like I said.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, you just got through saying how you were probably mistaken about the transfer speeds of the wired connections
⏹️ ▶️ John on phones, because you were misremembering about the iPads, blah, blah, blah, but I just wanna throw this out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not even gonna be able to saturate the USB 3.0 whatever speeds of the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John when transferring thousands and thousands of tiny files, when creating
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey thousands and
⏹️ ▶️ John thousands of tiny files. Because you will get swamped by the file IO. You will not saturate that bus
⏹️ ▶️ John unless you’re transferring large individual files. Like just the SSD speed and the file
⏹️ ▶️ John system speed alone will kill you on that. Like you can see it yourself, like even just in your house,
⏹️ ▶️ John on your 2.5 gigabit per second ethernet connection, copy a 20 gig file from
⏹️ ▶️ John one Mac to another, and then copy 2 million 1K files. And see
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco how long it takes.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ll get slaughtered on the file system I own. That I feel like is what is going to cause
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone setup to be slow because every application is a bundle of tiny little files.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I mean, again, looking back on it, I think that this was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a litany of poor assumptions and even poorer decision-making, but here we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were. So in the interest of telling the story, oh, and I should also interrupt myself and say, well, no, I’ll get there actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll get there. So I’m in the car. I’m with Mike and Jason. Steven had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gone back to his house. So I’m with Mike and Jason and Jill from St. Jude,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who was kind enough to travel to bring us to and from. And I’m doing this transfer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s going. It’s not going quickly. quoting two or maybe three hours, but it’s going. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get to the lobby of the hotel is a very trendy, very not fancy in the traditional way, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fancy in the like, you know, look at me, I’m hip and with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a reference, John. Anyways, so we get to the hotel lobby and Erin is there because she did not go with us for this adventure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Brad and Kathy. And I think that was it. And they basically said, hey, let’s all have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drink together before we all go our separate ways. I say, okay, sure. And I’m still allowing this transfer to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should note that while this hotel was very nice, and I liked it quite a bit, the Wi-Fi at the hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was hilariously bad. Hilariously bad Wi-Fi.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TDG Now, how could you have possibly known ahead of time that hotel Wi-Fi would be not amazing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. And what really chaps my bottom is that I always will go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, I was going to say rent, but borrow a hotspot from one of two different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, county’s local libraries, cause there’s reciprocity in the whole rigmarole. And for this one trip,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for some reason, I didn’t do that. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking, but I didn’t do that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now granted cellular wifi is still not stellar, but I guarantee it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heck of a lot more stable than the crappy hotel wifi was. So we’re all sitting around. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason, me, Mike, Aaron, Kathy, Brad. And I think that’s it. We’re all sitting around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’re watching my transfer happening and all, everyone there is making so much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun of me and deservedly so. What are you doing? Why would you do this? Why can’t you be an adult?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why aren’t you patient? You will be home. You will be in your house in like 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours where this will be so much less stressful and so much easier. Why did you not do that? In
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all logic, every ounce of logic on the planet says that’s exactly correct because it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’m me and I’m impatient and I wanted my new toy. How well did it go? So as we’re sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the bar, all of a sudden the wired, you know, direct phone to phone transfer fails.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have a red triangle on one of the phones and it says this didn’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I’m in a bit of a, a bit of a pickle because the old phone is still the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old phone and it has the boarding pass and all that, except it now has no internet whatsoever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because the cellular, like a dummy, I moved over to the new phone. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not good. Not good at this point. Everyone around me is basically in hysterics and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike and Jason have this unbelievable glee. Their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes are shining. It’s it’s eight o’clock at night or thereabouts. Their eyes are like lighthouses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because they know not only can they tell this story on upgrade,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they’re recording upgrade what was at the time. Tomorrow, which is I sit here now was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four days ago and they look at me dead the eyes and they say to me, we’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to tell this story and we’re going to do it before you can. We’re going to tell it on our podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before you can and this is going to be delicious. And they’re basically like cackling. If I could do an evil
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laugh, I would do so. I’m not capable of such things. They are beside themselves with excitement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And sure enough, if you listen to the latest episode of Upgrade, number 582, First Chance to Make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One Impression, you will hear their retelling of the story, which I am very disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say is pretty accurate. Actually, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little sad about that. I feel like, by the way, I feel like this now settles the debt of us stealing AskUpgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s true, actually. I think that’s fair. See, I took one for the team, for you two. I took one for the team.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re welcome. So at this point, I realized, okay, this is not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I decide to, if I recall correctly, I should have taken notes, but I was in such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a tizzy. Geez, I wonder why. I believe at this point I did the direct transfer. I’m sorry, the Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey direct peer-to-peer transfer. So I’m not using a cable anymore. I plug both of the phones into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall and I let it run overnight. At 1.15-ish or thereabouts, I woke up and was like, oh my God, what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening with the phones? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. COREY Did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you sleep at all? LEE
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did. I did. I was passed out at like nine, but at about 1.15, I woke up and was like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m done because now I’m stressing out about the the phones again. And so, uh, I tossed and turned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until basically three 30 when we, or no three 45, I think it was when we needed to get up to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the four 30 car. Uh, but that being said, everything did transfer except,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey except curiously, my entire iMessage history disappeared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the new phone. It was on the old one disappeared from the new phone, which was annoying, but fine. And I’m going to come back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this in a second. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to hold Justin Perdue here
⏹️ ▶️ John from the new phone, it was just never on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new phone. Okay. Sorry. Yes, yes, that is fair. Uh, and I’m gonna come back around to this in just a second, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, this at first I was like, oh, that’s a bummer of like, I mean, there’s times I’ll refer back to old messages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but in the grand scheme of things, this is probably fine. And then I realized, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh no, this isn’t going to work because I’m in a handful of group chats. I wouldn’t say it’s an immense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number, but enough. And most of these group chats have images that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey represent the group chat. You know what I’m saying? like the icons or whatever that have been stable for years, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means I basically have the mental equivalent of muscle memory, I guess, mental memory, whatever, memory, memory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have some sort of memory where I cannot find these frigging group chats unless they have the particular icons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m used to and I’m screwed. And so at that point I realized, all right, I’m going to get home with this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way it is, but I’m going to have to handle this differently. So as an aside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this tale of woe, which is not done yet, do you guys use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMessage in iCloud or whatever the heck it’s called because I don’t. Why don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you? Why not? Well, because… I guess we just got him to use iCloud photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I was just going to say, well, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be a problem because of course he uses messages in iCloud and it’ll just eventually sync. Sometimes it takes a long time, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t for two reasons. Number one is uniquely me, which is that I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you two have ever exchanged a message with me, but I tend to lean heavily on GIFs and other pieces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of media. And over time that adds up. And so I think I have something like 100 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of messages on my phone right now. And I don’t necessarily want to take up 100 gigs of my iCloud account
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my stupid gifts. Like as much as I love my gifts, I don’t think I need 100 gigs of the same five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco rolling around in iCloud.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the other reason was I believe, and I’m probably gonna get the details wrong, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you use messages in iCloud, Apple does have an encryption key to it. And even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really genuinely have nothing to hide, that just kind of creeps me out. And it creeps me out that I’m also making a decision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your behalf, you, Marco, you, John, who might text me or I message me that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever you send me, Apple could see. Now do they care about me? No. Would they ever bother?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. But it’s something that could happen. And so I’ve always been a little scared of it, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should just go ahead and start using it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, you should. All right. All right. So that’s all that. I decide,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all right, this is not going to work. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do a backup from the old phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I’m going to do a restore to the new phone. I’m going to do a whole new restore. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to do this from home where everything is calm. And by the way, I made it home no problem. Everything worked great, except my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMessage, you know, snafu. And so everything will be fine. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I take a backup of the phone, and then I have a brainwave. And I think, oh, you know what I should do just to make this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey easier and safer since I’m messing about with with everything now, I should unpair my watch from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new phone and get it prepared for when I re restore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I didn’t think about though, is that I now have rings from that day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have some other stuff that I had accumulated that day that never got backed up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I made the most recent backup, because the most recent backup was from the old phone, which was no longer paired to the watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m such an idiot in some way, but here we are. And so I did my backup, I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my restore. And I also thought to myself, you know what? Maybe this Thunderbolt 4 cable that I’m using that cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me $11 billion, maybe that was the issue. So I took the Thunderbolt 5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable from my brand new CalDigit TS5 Plus, and I used that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey directly plugged into my laptop to do the restore. Do you wanna guess if it made any difference with regard to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speed? No, it did not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course not. Just to give stats on this, your new phone has 10 gigabits per second,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, out of that port, Thunderbolt three and four are 40 Thunderbolt five is 80 up to one 20.
⏹️ ▶️ John So no putting a faster than 40 gigabits per second thing into your 10 gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ John per second port is not going to help you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So this, this was a disaster through and through, but I did that up to, I did the update or the restore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my iMessage stuff came back, everything was good to go. And so now I think for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I think, and I can’t decide what’s the right answers, but I’m starting to wonder if I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this again, if I do the old school back to, you know, not, I almost said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iTunes, but do a backup to Finder and then restore from Finder. I’m really wondering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if maybe I’ll do that next time. I got a noodle on it, but the right answer is probably what Marco said, just use iCloud. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m wondering- Yes, it’s so much more
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco reliable. But you
⏹️ ▶️ John can only use iCloud if you do messages in iCloud, because otherwise your messages are never coming back on that phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good point. That’s a good point. All right. So I got a lot to think about, but anyways, so I did all that. I restored just great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It, I got the watch repaired, but then I realized, Oh no. Oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My rings for the day are gone and I’m not above adjusting the rings on a day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you can now do like bring, bring your ring back for one day, but I’ve got some streaks to maintain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I really try to be honest about it. I really, really do. And so for several hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, whatever background magical process that you can, Of course, not just kick off by hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have to wait for Apple to decide. Now it’s the time to do it. And for many hours, like five hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it didn’t ever re compute the status of my rings, but I’m happy to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that eventually it did and all as well. So I’m telling, I have a monthly FaceTime with our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dear friend, underscore David Smith, and I’m retelling the story. I don’t want to say it’s like yesterday, the day before, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was yesterday. And I’m telling him about this and he says, you know what you should do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because you have the situation where you want to do a wire transfer, but you want it at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey highest speed possible, and you want to provide power, here’s what you do. Disconnect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your computer from the CalDigit when you do Aaron’s phone. Plug Aaron’s phone into the CalDigit as like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey source. Or I’m sorry, the old phone into the CalDigit as like the source. Use your other Thunderbolt cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also into the CalDigit as the target, and see if that works any better. any better. Let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me tell you, do you want to guess how much better that works? Made no difference whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot saturate that 10 gigabits
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re transferring millions of tiny files anyway, only when you’re transferring a few large files will you saturate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It made zero difference whatsoever. I’m a disaster. This is all waste. So I guess the official
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP guidance for the future, which I will forget. So it’s all it’s on you guys to remind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, you folks to remind me in the future. I think the official HB guidance is turn on messages in iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just do a damn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John be done. I still
⏹️ ▶️ John say device to device should be your default, iCloud is the second fallback but you know it Depends on what you’ve had success with in the past.
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iPhone Air impressions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Marco, tell me about your iPhone 17 Air. Okay, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, iPhone Air. No, I’m sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco not iPhone 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. iPhone Air. Saved us from a lot of angry people. All right. Easy peasy, yeah. All right, so I first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moved into the iPhone Air. It feels incredibly light
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me just quickly interject. I did briefly hold one in the Apple store when I was picking up my iPhones. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. feels incredible. It is incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how good that feels in the hand. Now, yes, it is big, but it’s so thin and so light
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and oh my God, I want it so badly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s almost like, like when I, so I, in order to get the iPhone Air, I actually, I ended up paying like 50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks for it because the, like I had, I had test phones that I traded in to get it. As part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my pile of test phones I brought in, one of them had a case where I’d pop the case off of it so they could process the trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and holding the empty phone case For my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was it was a 14 plus the empty case for that and I picked up the air. I’m like this
⏹️ ▶️ John it really have a dissenting opinion on the feel of the air I did also visit an Apple store to check out the new phones
⏹️ ▶️ John and Here’s the things that I was surprised by feeling the the air enough for very long
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, but just you know playing with on a table It was nicer looking in person than I thought it would be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I already liked how it looked, but I felt like the ugly camera thing at the top didn’t bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me as much, especially on the white phone, because it kind of blends in. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of the whites?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and it looks real good. But also what I realized is just how
⏹️ ▶️ John much I hate big phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although this phone was light and it felt very thin, all I could think was this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John feels too big. And I know, it’s like, how is the iPhone Air too big? It’s not too big thickness wise.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s too big for me personally width wise. So all I could think of was staring at this phone was like, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John man, can you give me this phone and an iPhone 14, let’s say,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause that’s my favorite size probably. Not the 17 is a little bit bigger, but you know, like the normal non-Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John size, not the areas in between the Max and the Pro, right? So give me the normal
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro size, maybe a little bit smaller, but this thin and with three cameras on it, someday
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future, that’s gonna be an amazing phone. what I can say right now for the air, despite me really liking how it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John and it being nicer in person than I thought, it’s just too darn wide for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, you are spoiling my review.
⏹️ ▶️ John So mad. But you use big phones though. I thought you weren’t against them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, I’ve never been into like the Plus and Max. Anyway, so let’s go back to a second.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna go over this Plus a little more. All right, so let’s first start with color.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the blue one. No, I didn’t. I got one of the white ones. What do you mean blue? There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no blue one. This phone is available in black and three whites. They’re all white. Like nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this looks blue at all. If I didn’t know I bought the blue and see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the box that it said blue, I would never have guessed this was blue. This does not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come in colors. It comes in black, white, white, and white. It’s comical. This is the- Is there a
⏹️ ▶️ John there really is. Okay, so maybe I was holding a white one and maybe I wasn’t, but there is in fact a white
⏹️ ▶️ John one. There’s no way to know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even when you see them side by side in the store, you can barely even tell. It’s comical.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are the most homeopathic colors I’ve ever seen in Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lineup. It is comical. There is no blue in this blue. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does, it feels very thin, light. It feels like shocking. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you were right, Sean. This is not a thin Pro. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a thin max phone. It is noticeably bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in length and width, noticeably bigger than the mid-sized Pro and base 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lines. It also, it behaves like them software-wise. If you ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used a Plus or a Max phone, if you turn the phone in landscape, a lot of apps will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give you kind of an iPad-style sidebar layout. This phone does that. Like, even Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software considers this a Plus or a Max phone. If you’re coming from an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini, thinking that you might want an Air, I don’t think you do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I think that’s gonna be a big jump in hand size. And for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have found that the Air, the ergonomics of it are not a great fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. And it comes down to some of those little differences about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it being a bigger phone than the Pro. It’s like one of the simple things is like the sleep wake button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a little bit too high for me to hit comfortably with my regular way I hold a phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also the exceptional thinness of it I find actually makes the ergonomics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of using the phone a little bit worse in some ways and this is what I was saying earlier about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I would want a phone to be any thinner than this and you start running into like usability challenges so there’s a couple things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one the combination of the thin the thinness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also the very thin screen bezels that modern phones have caused me to actually have a lot of accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco input on the touch screen around the edges as I would just handle the phone. More than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pros do. Like, you know, I’ve been using my phone without a case for a while, or using at best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those leather magnetic backs that just is the back only and no sides. So I’m used to staying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away from the sides holding this phone. And I should clarify, I was using the Air without a case. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also without its battery pack, just the regular, the phone by itself. It is actually, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thin that it is hard for me to operate without causing error input on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sides of the screen. It’s also, because it’s so thin, it’s harder to pick up off a table.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s little things like that. It also, if you lay it down on a surface, because it has that giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera on one end but nothing on the other end really, it wobbles a lot more than the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones on a flat surface. And so all these things, like the way it handles by being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so big and so thin, it even Like when you put it in your pants pocket,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s nice that it’s super light, but even just the additional size of it made me feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was putting like a dinner plate in my pocket. Like it’s a big phone. This is not, again, this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a thin Pro. This is a thin Plus or Max, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s closer to that in feel. I think if I were to use this phone long-term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I would want a case for it to just to improve the physical handling of it. but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would also very much defeat the purpose of the Air. So the ergonomics alone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided after about one day, like I don’t think I’m gonna stick with this phone, but I was curious to try anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As for the other aspects, the battery, I didn’t get enough chance to try it. It seemed fine to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure it’s not amazing, not awful. We saw the test earlier. It seems like it’s actually not as bad as people thought. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna be great, it’ll be fine. Camera and speaker. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaker volume, as discussed earlier, is not as bad as I expected.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 17 Pro speaker, though, is way, way louder. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the volume out of the air speaker is not bad. It does have a bit of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rattling to it. Like, if you turn it up all the way, and like, oftentimes, I will be listening to podcasts out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loud when I’m doing something like, you know, I’ll have the phone on the counter when I’m doing something in the kitchen, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll prop it up on a shelf if I’m taking a shower or I wanna listen to podcasts, like stuff like that. When you crank up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speaker that loud in the air, it’s very rattly and tinny. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear like little bit of distortions at the very top of the volume range, almost as if you had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a little speck of dust in there or something, but also just like the tone of it, it’s very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sounds like a very small speaker. It sounds like the way phone speakers used to sound before they got less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crappy. Modern iPhone Pro speakers, and even the base iPhone speakers, Like modern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone speakers in other models sound remarkably good for how small they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Air does not. The Air sounds like a tiny, crappy, old style phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaker. It does not sound good at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John And last, do you think Marco had like a broken one or something? Lots of reviews have said essentially the same thing. They said
⏹️ ▶️ John basically the Air speaker gets really, really loud, but if you put it at max volume, it basically there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like distortion of some kind and you have to back it off a little bit. So even when it’s backed off, it is still louder than
⏹️ ▶️ John people expected it to be, but max volume becomes less usable due to these issues.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s very tinny and harsh and generally it’s an unpleasant speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well camera, I did, again, only a day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I missed macro focus distance. You know, you get macro focus distance from the wide angle lens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I missed, I mean the ultra wide, I missed that. I did try a test of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let me try to read that tiny stupid gray on gray text on the Apple power adapters to see like what wattage this power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adapter is. I did try that test with this phone and the other phones I had. And it was good enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I could digital zoom, I could pinch in and I could read small, like tiny little text
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on things using the regular camera on the air. So that’s fine. But generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like macro distance stuff, it’s much nicer to have the macro lens. And I did miss the telephoto
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reach, even in just one day. And then when I later went to the pro, I’ve been taking photos of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pro the last couple of days and it’s like, oh wow, I’m so glad I have this reach with the telephotos. So generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do miss that camera a lot. Let’s talk about heat. The Air does seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overheat and thermal throttle itself very easily and very frequently. I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier how long that preparing update took and it was really warm the whole time, so it could have been that, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could have been something else. If you look at benchmarks of the Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the benchmarks often show the air being a little bit slower than the 17 and 17 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in certain tests. My guess is that it’s throttling during benchmarking. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems very likely because doing almost anything to it if you feel that camera bump, it’s warm. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you won’t know if you’re holding the phone, using it regularly, you might not realize this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the heat doesn’t travel down to the middle of the phone. Like the heat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stays up in that camera mesa or camera plateau area. In some ways that’s nice in the sense that it’s not heating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up your hand uncomfortably, but it also makes it hard to dissipate the heat. So for instance, my MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fans that I have, they don’t work on the air. They don’t do anything because they’re cooling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MagSafe area, but the MagSafe area doesn’t get hot in the first place. The heat doesn’t get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all in the camera plateau. You
⏹️ ▶️ John need a camera bump fan. Yeah, I know. And speaking of throttling on these phones, the people who’ve done the tests
⏹️ ▶️ John on them, like all the phones throttle, all of them thermal throttle, but what, interestingly, what they found when doing like air versus
⏹️ ▶️ John pro tests, obviously the pros come out ahead, but looking at like the graph of how they throttle, what happens
⏹️ ▶️ John is that like a lot of these benchmarks would give like a stability score of like how even is like the
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate in this game or whatever, you know, this benchmark. And the air would get a really high stability score.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is what would happen in the air is it would start off real high, immediately throttle way, way, way, way
⏹️ ▶️ John down, and then stay at that way, way, way down for the whole thing. So it had really good stability because it maintained its
⏹️ ▶️ John really low thing the whole time. but then on the Pro, it would start up really high, go fall
⏹️ ▶️ John off a cliff after the first, you know, 30 seconds or something when it starts to thermal throttle, and then for the next 10 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would slowly get slower. It would like a slow downward graph, and like
⏹️ ▶️ John it never got as low as like the Air did, or maybe it met it at the end after like 30 minutes when it got heat soak, but that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John magic of the vapor chamber. Like all these phones are gonna throttle on like a really high like
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU, GPU benchmark type thing. Like they’ll run really fast for a short period of time, then they will throttle.
⏹️ ▶️ John The question is what happens after that? Do they, after that initial drop down, the Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is able to dissipate the heat for longer and it takes a longer time to essentially heat soak the whole phone because
⏹️ ▶️ John the heat is traveling down the whole phone, dissipating into the aluminum, dissipating into the air. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so it slowly gets slower and the air is like, as soon as I have to throw it all, super slow for
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole time, that’s it. This is nowhere for the heat to go, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s the problem. Like the Air’s thermal design, it just doesn’t move the heat anywhere. it just keeps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it right where it is, like in the top. And so it just has nowhere to go thermally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So my time with the Air, I think it makes a really good case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the base iPhone 17 because what I ended up ultimately wanting after using the Air, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, you know, there’s some goodness here. I wish the phone was not as big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I wish it was a little bit thicker to have a few fewer trade-offs, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep a similar light weight. And that’s very close to the regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 17. Like what I’m describing is basically the iPhone 17. Like the iPhone 17 is-
⏹️ ▶️ John ultra wide camera too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you get the ultra wide camera, you get fewer trade-offs really. So I found myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco appreciating that the Air is an interesting experiment, but the thing is, there’s so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trade-offs. And you hear a lot of the reviewers saying, this is the obvious path of the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope it’s not. Because what that would be like is like saying that the 12 inch MacBook was the obvious path
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the future. It wasn’t, and thank God for that, because I hope the future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more like what we have now in the present, a lineup that has different products that serve different needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The MacBook Air is not the only MacBook. Hopefully the iPhone Air will not be the only iPhone in the future,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will all be better off continuing to have different product lines optimized for different needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPhone Air has a role, it’s like a two-door sports car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like a fun, totally impractical, and unjustifiable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on paper choice. But some people will just look at it or pick it up and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will fall in love with it. And they will buy it as a consciously irrational
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchase for love. And that’s okay. But keep in mind that when you hear reviewers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying that this is a great phone, they’re saying this because they’re testing it for a week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not buying a phone to keep for years and live with it every single day for years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can’t quickly and easily switch between multiple phones all the time. You can’t be like, oh, I’m gonna take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out my day phone, night phone, because switching phones with phone numbers and data transfers, it’s a pain in the butt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when you pick a phone, you’re making a much bigger commitment than just I’m gonna review this for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week. You’re saying, I’m gonna have this same phone for one, two, three,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four years, and you need that phone to serve you in as many circumstances as possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for as long as possible. The Air is not gonna be that phone for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people. And you might go into it saying, you know what, I love it so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much, I’m gonna choose those trade-offs anyway. But make sure that you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re getting into and make sure that you really love it enough to accept all the trade-offs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I just don’t. I went back to the 17 Pro after one day and the
17 Pro impressions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Pro feels like home to me. Like, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, I’ll just give some quick impressions here because I know we’re running long and you guys want to talk about the Pro too,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine. The Pro is the safe purchase. It is the phone that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything I was just saying, like you make all those trade-offs with the Air and you’re like, well, if it’s in this situation, it’s not going to be great, if it’s in that situation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not going to be great. The Pro is the phone that I know I can have in any situation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I will never regret the choice I made. never have to pro in something I wish it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have which would charge faster but it’s overheating or I really wanted that wide camera or that telephoto camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or like whatever it is the pro will always handle what I want to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has the familiar size and shape and ergonomics if you know my hand knows how to handle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pro yes it is substantially thicker and heavier than the pro and a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thicker and heavier than the outgoing one but after my experience with the Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I more willingly accept the Pro’s size and weight because I want the utility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it offers and I’ve come to now appreciate better that utility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The sides are curved again and everything has kind of a little bit more slippery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finish than the previous phones which makes it a little bit less pleasant to use without a case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. It’s a little bit harder to hold and feel secure in my grip. I ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Nomad leather back for it, which I expect I will probably end up liking a lot, like I did on the 16 Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new thermals have been great for me. I didn’t even need my MagSafe coolers during setup, it never got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that hot. New cameras seem very good, I think. You know, it’s a little early,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve only been using them for a couple days, a little early to say, but I think the new cameras are very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. The telephoto, the 4X, is a much better range reach than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 5X. The 8X digital cropping on that is surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decent. It’s nowhere near the quality of the 1X lens, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is less of a sacrifice than it was in the previous generations. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that telephoto lens is always a trade-off. It’s always a sacrifice in optical quality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s better this year than it has been.
⏹️ ▶️ John I took two test photos of this because I wanted to test the same thing with my wife’s pro phone. and I tested the 16
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro 5X, which is my phone, versus the 17 Pro 8X. And obviously the 5X, that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John optical 5X on the 16 Pro. And the 8X, it’s a sensor crop of the optically
⏹️ ▶️ John 4X lens. And I stood, it was a worst case scenario. I thought I was indoors, it’s dim lighting. I stood a pretty far
⏹️ ▶️ John distance away from a wall, took a picture of like my wife’s diploma on the wall. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll see a link to the picture in the notes. I was shocked at how much better
⏹️ ▶️ John the 8X, which is again, not optical 8X, it’s an optical 4X lens cropped to 8X.
⏹️ ▶️ John How much better that was than the 16 Pro 5X. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you looked at the teardowns and see the difference in the size of the sensor on the 5X versus the 8X lens, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, this makes sense now. But even just looking at the sensor size, it’s still pretty shocking. I took this picture several times,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, is this wrong? Is it out of focus? Are the settings wrong? And like I said, this is the worst case scenario,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s dim lighting, it’s indoors, but the noise was out of control. and the 8X just looks
⏹️ ▶️ John so much better. So, you know, obviously, like I said, it’s nothing compared to the 1X, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I was thoroughly impressed with the 17 Pro’s 4X optical 8X
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor crop lens, and I can’t wait to have a camera like it on my phone next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A couple of quick notes about this image. I have problems here. Number one, I forgot that Tina went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Bad Tech. She could have gone to Virginia Tech, but she went to George Tech. I’m very disappointed. Number two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m even more disappointed with you Because you know how so many people, I feel like we just went through this recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how so many people can see curly quotes and when, and straight quotes, just drive them crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have the problem. Straight quotes. Don’t bother me at all. You know what bothers me?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actual letter X instead of the act, the multiplication sign
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John drives me daddy. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to have to live with it because the multiplication symbol, lots of fonts looks weird. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it drives me batty and I’m disappointed in you. I, I disappointed in you. I thought you would have handled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this better, but here
⏹️ ▶️ John are. You fought me on the curly quotes in the titles and you’re complaining about the X versus multiplication sign. I’m telling you, the multiplication
⏹️ ▶️ John sign is weird in so many different fonts. I just don’t trust it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, anyway, the telephoto lens is a nice upgrade and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m happy to have it. Again, it is still an optical compromise, but it is substantially less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromised than the previous ones have been. So that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Before we move off cameras, the selfie camera. I don’t take a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tremendous amount of selfies, But a lot of times, I am a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey religious, if you will, day one user, I think they’re a former sponsor, but I use day one all the time. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try to make sure I make at least one entry of what I’ve done every single day. And oftentimes that involves a picture of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the family or family and friends eating. And I will typically do that with a selfie camera
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’ll just hold it up high and try to get everyone in the shot. And I’ve gotten pretty good at that over the years because I do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey semi-often, but the images in years past, up until this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone, always been pretty bad. Like they’re, they’re serviceable. They’re not, they’re not unusable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they’re not great. And, uh, we went, I am happy to report my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long national nightmare is over. Instead of the nearest Shake Shack now being, uh, or instead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it being like 15 to 20 minutes away, it’s like 10 minutes away and I’m very excited about this because a new one opened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I took a selfie of myself and some friends that were all out to eat and the, and the family and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this selfie picture looks incredible compared to the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the old ones looked. So I am really excited about that camera as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it’s I haven’t had a lot of chances with I literally have taken one selfie since I got the phone but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah it it does look like a pretty big upgrade. Yeah. Otherwise battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again I’ve only had it for a few days. It seems good so far. The orange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good orange. I’m really happy with it. It is a bold color choice. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonder if I’m going to be this happy with this every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day of the at least year I’m going to have this phone, but I think yes, I think I am and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ready for this. I do worry a little bit about scratches over time, but again, it’s fine. I buy my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones to use them, not to preserve them forever. I will take whatever happens to it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scratch-wise. It does, especially the orange, it does draw a decent amount of attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think that’s and I don’t love that kind of attention. But I expect that’s only because this is like the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week it’s out. And I’m sure there will be so many of these out in the wild by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week that I’m sure that over the over the coming weeks, this will no longer be a noteworthy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco visual thing that people will ask me about. But that is something like if you try to be discreet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out in the world, this is not the phone to get, you know, or at least get the silver or blue one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But otherwise, I’m very happy with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John One thing I noticed about the orange at the store was that the so that the orange bat, the you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the orange cases, the anodized orange aluminum. And then there’s the back panel that is glass or ceramic
⏹️ ▶️ John shield, whatever. And if you put the camera or the phone flat on the table
⏹️ ▶️ John screen down and look at it from directly above, the back panel matches the orange of the
⏹️ ▶️ John anodized aluminum very, very well. Obviously it’s two different materials, it’s glass, whatever, and aluminum,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they look different. The aluminum is more like metal flakes, sparkly and car parlance or whatever, and the
⏹️ ▶️ John glass back is not, but the colors are matched as well as you could hope to match them. Kind of like those old things that you used to calibrate
⏹️ ▶️ John your TV and like make this green thing match the green background, right? Yep. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the second you look not dead on at the back,
⏹️ ▶️ John glass panel is no longer the same color as the case, and they can’t help it because it’s just the way the light glints off the materials.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, that’s not bad. It looks kind of like a creamsicle, but basically the back panel gets lighter
⏹️ ▶️ John the more you tilt it. It’s so much so that at certain angles, the back panel looks practically white next to the
⏹️ ▶️ John orange case. So be aware of that. Go to the store and check
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John these out. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that the back panel gets lighter when you tilt it, it’s the aluminum gets darker.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or whatever’s happening, the contrast between them increases dramatically, which is really interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s so clear that they color match them exactly dead on and not exactly not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think, and maybe this, like having the glass-ish inset,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that kind of shows why they didn’t make bold colors of the previous designs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of phones, because it doesn’t work that well on that kind of material.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, didn’t they do like one really deep red glass back phone? I think they can do dark
⏹️ ▶️ John colored glass, they just didn’t want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, maybe. Anyway, very, very happy with the orange. And I do think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have my Nomad leather back, I have it for my 16 Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is now in a box waiting to go back to Apple. And I tried putting it on the 17 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by just cutting off the top of the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because like where,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, just right below the MagSafe, I just cut it across. So it’s now it’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat cut across the top so it can fit below the camera Mesa. And it doesn’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit because the actual, like too much of the leather back hangs off the bottom of the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the alignment of the circle has actually moved down on the phone back. But I have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it that way for a few days to see how it feels, and it feels great. So once I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get my real one is scheduled to arrive early next week, so I’ll have a report on how much I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoy the new leather backs. But I think this is gonna be a nice combo.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And certainly I think the phone looks cool with the black leather back. I originally had ordered the brown, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided to go black because the reality is that the iPhone is black and orange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already, because the screen is black and the camera lenses on the back are black. So it’s already black and orange.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you might think brown would go better with orange, but I think in practice, I think black’s gonna also be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really nice option.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think brown goes better with orange. I think you need a neutral color with that orange.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably, yeah, because that’s the other thing. Orange, having a bright color like this, it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be fairly challenging to pair a lot of accessories with it. And I think it’s one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those things that you kind of have to see things in real life to know how they work together. And even though brown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just desaturated orange, that it could be challenging to pair those. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, good luck with that. But yeah, that’s it. That’s all I got for the Pro so far. Love the Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Air, I find it so disappointing, I might actually return it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. A couple of comments on the Air. One thing to note about it is both you noted and I noted,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not big phone people. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John about the phone feeling too wide for us, we just don’t like big phones, period. So if you like big phones, that may be a plus
⏹️ ▶️ John for you and not a minus. I know a lot of people do like big phones. And so, you know, there’s that. Second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John why is the air so big? Why do they make it big? The I would love to see the math on this
⏹️ ▶️ John if someone who actually knows these numbers, but I would imagine that the back of the envelope math says that
⏹️ ▶️ John every, you know, every little bit that you make the phone wider gives
⏹️ ▶️ John you enough additional battery that it makes up for the new pixels you have to light up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I think the screen technology, especially the ones that drop down to one hertz with like modern OLEDs are such that The
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger you make that phone the better the battery life like in other words, you don’t you don’t the battery outruns the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and so to get Acceptable battery life which seems like the air has acceptable
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life out of the air You kind of have to make it essentially this size because if you made it smaller,
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, you’re having a smaller screen but you’re also getting much less battery and now you’re you’re sacrificing battery life because
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen you sacrificed doesn’t make up for the battery that you sacrificed. And so I think when people say this is the future of
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, I hope what they’re envisioning, well, two things, I hope what they’re envisioning is, hey, wouldn’t it be great
⏹️ ▶️ John if the, something with 17 pro features and 17 pro battery life was as thin as
⏹️ ▶️ John the air, but not as wide for the people who don’t like big phones. That would be cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, and in terms of like hitting the screen with the fleshy parts of your hands overlapping,
⏹️ ▶️ John since most people use cases, I imagine it’s not that much of an issue, but honestly, I have that issue with phones in cases sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not sure what the solution is there. A little hint to bring back bezels. We’ll see if we ever end up with that thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, the rumor is that the 20th anniversary phone is gonna have screens that wrap around the edges. So they’re gonna have to do some
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like, you know, advanced touch rejection, like they do with like a palm rejection on
⏹️ ▶️ John the, I think they still already have that in iOS anyway. I’m not sure how it’s tuned these days, but there is
⏹️ ▶️ John code that rejects your touches if it thinks they’re accidental touches, both on iPads and on iPhones, I believe. So hopefully they work
⏹️ ▶️ John on that. And the other thing, obviously, that everyone’s talking about, which is true, and we kind of alluded to it before, talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John making the thing thin enough for the USB-C port, when Apple comes out with their foldable phone, all the lessons they learned about
⏹️ ▶️ John how to make thin things with the Air will be used there. And people are like, oh, the folding phone’s gonna be two Airs put together.
⏹️ ▶️ John Geez, I hope not, because modern folding phones are thinner than the Air and the
⏹️ ▶️ John two halves, because you have two whole halves to get together. Like, I mean, if Apple’s first folding phone
⏹️ ▶️ John is the thickness of two Airs put together, it’s gonna be a pretty thick folding foam when it comes out next year. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John hope the two halves of the folding phone are each thinner than the Air, or at least
⏹️ ▶️ John one of them is thinner. I don’t know if they would make it asymmetrical or not, but keep that in mind. But yeah, so like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the Air is an important design experiment. It will work for a lot of people. Oh, and the other thing is, so many people,
⏹️ ▶️ John when, you know, I’ve talked to in the real world and seen other people interviewed about them, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John ever change cameras on their phone. They just use what they think, Well, you know, maybe they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t realize pinch to zoom. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then maybe they don’t realize that they’re switching to macro when they go up close. And like, oh, I never change cameras like they never tap like
⏹️ ▶️ John the two X, four X, eight X thing. They always just use one X. But even if you just use one X, when you put the
⏹️ ▶️ John camera real close, it switches for you in its default mode to the macro thing, which is using the ultra wide.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think a lot of people will be satisfied and happy with the air. But it is a compromise. And these are
⏹️ ▶️ John the compromises. And keep that in mind. And and I think what you said about it feeling weird
⏹️ ▶️ John to have something that thin. I don’t think the air is at the threshold where it’s too thin and it feels uncomfortable. I still think for
⏹️ ▶️ John both of us most of the issue is the width. I really do think if I had something the size of a 16 or a 17 that was that thin I
⏹️ ▶️ John would enjoy it. But please do go to the store and try it and
⏹️ ▶️ John see how it feels. I mean I and I get the falling in love with the thing because when I was there I had no interest in this
⏹️ ▶️ John phone. It it was more attractive to me in person kind of like a two-seat sports car was more attractive to me in
⏹️ ▶️ John person than logic would dictate and then how I I thought it would like it because it is very pretty and it does
⏹️ ▶️ John feel very cool. Um, yeah, I did like it, but I also would not buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, if you do return it, you should get a 17 as a test device. Cause it’s really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Cause like, honestly, like, I don’t, I think my, the question remains and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see this over the coming year and you know, what happens that, you know, how many more errors do they end up making in the line?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does it stick around? Does it go away? I don’t think we know yet how willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are people to buy a phone for love that that that suffers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the practical side of things. You know you see that in certain products people are more willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than others but I think the nature of phones is such that like the sacrifices that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to make for the air are things that people do seemingly care a lot about namely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life and camera like that like those are things that people do like a lot about their phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and typically it seems like phone sales are often driven by those very strongly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think the biggest factor is whether the consumer, whether the consumer that is considering
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone has been burned before in their life buying a phone for love,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? If you’re only an iPhone customer, maybe you bought a 13 mini because you just loved it but then the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life was terrible and it spoiled your
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, but if you’ve only been an iPhone customer and you’ve only bought the mainline phones, maybe you’ve never bought a phone because of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just love how it looks. Maybe this will be your first. I think when you get it, then you may say, oh, actually it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John worth it for the sacrifice in battery life or I missed the camera or whatever. And that will change your opinion going forward. I just wonder
⏹️ ▶️ John how many people in the market for iPhones have never been burned by a phone that they bought because they
⏹️ ▶️ John thought it looked real cool. And if there’s enough of them, the Air would be a great first phone to
⏹️ ▶️ John learn about those compromises. Because if you just buy mainstream phones, like you know the people who are like, they become
⏹️ ▶️ John like, like people who lived through the depression who were like saving string and stuff like that. like give
⏹️ ▶️ John me the phone that’s the size of a brick because I know that I need all the battery in the world. I need a battery
⏹️ ▶️ John pack, I need a battery, my phone just needs to be a gigantic, huge, brick-like battery because
⏹️ ▶️ John their entire history with phones is my phone is out of battery, my phone is out of battery, so they just, they get in this mindset where they need massive
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. Those people are never gonna look at the air. They just look at it and they say, nope, not a brick, not enough battery, I don’t care how it
⏹️ ▶️ John works, I don’t care if it’s magic, I’m not even gonna look at it, right? But if you’ve never been burned and you see this beautiful phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t know whether or not you’re gonna be disappointed with one camera. You don’t know whether the battery life’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be, you’re gonna buy that as your first mistake phone, your first like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone you bought, you know, impulsively bought. And presumably Apple knows
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Again, looking at the numbers on launch week, 10% of the allocation of what they were manufacturing were errors,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s launch week. So this phone is gonna have to, once the early adopters clear
⏹️ ▶️ John out and regular people start wandering into the store and looking at the phones on the table over the course
⏹️ ▶️ John of the next year, how many of them will be lured over by the beautiful air and how many of
⏹️ ▶️ John them will go to it and say, I’ve been there before, I got burned by that, I dated a musician
⏹️ ▶️ John once, I already did that
⏹️ ▶️ John Never, sorry musicians, I’m trying to think
⏹️ ▶️ John examples, hard not to insult somebody, but like, have you been burned before?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you should do it once, you should date a musician at least once, you feel better musicians? I’m trying to get you on dates here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t need, they seem like they don’t need the help.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because even you bought a Mini, right, Marco? Yes, I used a Mini for a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ve been burned once before. I wouldn’t say, I didn’t feel burned by it, I should
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t buy one again, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, we had our time together, and I don’t regret it. Right, and
⏹️ ▶️ John now you get the air, you’re like, oh, I know this feeling, no thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, the Mini was great for its time. I believe the Mini preceded the Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I went back up for the proness of the Pro. But, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the 12 Mini, I didn’t get the 13 Mini because I believe the 13 was the first pro. I think I lost track, anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think with the Air, the trade-offs with the Air are significantly more extreme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than they were with the Mini. And I think the Love will also be significantly more extreme.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I think we will see people in non-trivial numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying the Air because they just love it so much. But-
⏹️ ▶️ John like an influencer thing like as you know, like a fancy tote bag or like because it does have that not just a
⏹️ ▶️ John fashion terms like oh doesn’t it just comes in boring colors right but it is very shiny it is a shiny attractive
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of luxury looking object I can’t predict whether it’s going to like catch on and all the big influencers
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to be like well of course I have my bedazzled iPhone air because everybody does like that could happen with the air
⏹️ ▶️ John but all it’s going to do is lure more people into making their first mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again I’m not saying it’s a mistake. The Air is a good, like, like I said at the top of the show, I’m not saying there’s no reason to buy an Air. There’s tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of reasons to buy an Air. Like, it’s just a question of whether enough people are going to be happy
⏹️ ▶️ John enough with it to make it sustain. Because Apple has had real problems with this part of the lineup, with all of its products, putting
⏹️ ▶️ John out products that we all think make perfect sense and have, you know, are great for certain people, but Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John gives up on them. And I’m not saying Apple’s right. I’m saying Apple’s probably wrong. They shouldn’t give, I think they
⏹️ ▶️ John should still make the Plus phones, but they just, the numbers don’t bear out. I said, we can’t, it’s not worth it to
⏹️ ▶️ John us to sell X million phones. It needs to be, you know, three X million phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. A couple additional thoughts about the 17 Pro. I really do like this phone a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really like the cameras. I already talked about the selfie camera. I like that, maybe I’m bananas,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I feel like the sides are a little bit more rounded than they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John were last year.
⏹️ ▶️ John The sides are still flat. It’s not like an iPhone 6, but the rounded corners have a higher radius than they used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually think that makes quite a bit of difference in how pleasurable the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco hand feel is. I like it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do like it. Yeah, I do too. I have had a couple of weird issues and one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very well, well, both of them could be my fault. And I’ve jumped on enough swords this episode that I don’t think these are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my fault, but they might be. First of all, I have a carplay, wireless carplay dongle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve used for many, many years, probably almost eight years now or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are many newer versions of the same dongle made by the same people. I think it’s CarLinkIt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. I will probably forget to put a link in the show notes, but it’s something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And anyways, I’ve been using it for years and I don’t know if the dongle is upset or what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, but I feel like, or I can tell you, it’s not I feel like, the 17 Pro frequently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loses the connection to the dongle. Now, again, it’s not first party, it’s its own weird hack,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s been a consistently working hack with every other phone I’ve had. And I know that some people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have been seeing other Wi-Fi related issues too, that have nothing to do with CarPlay. So I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if maybe this is something that’s wrong with the phone or perhaps wrong with the software.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll probably end up using this as an excuse to get a vastly newer and presumably upgraded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wireless CarPlay dongle, but we’ll see what happens. But if you have similar issues and especially if you have a fix, let me know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on like Mastodon or something. Additionally, if I were to go and look at the phone right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have John Syracuse, a red badge over settings, and it says renew AppleCare coverage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I tap on that, it’s giving me the chance to, every AppleCare plan provides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one stop service for your Apple product. I can choose AppleCare one at $19.99 a month, or I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choose AppleCare plus with theft and lost from $13.99 a month. And then I can elect to do $13.99 a month
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or $139.99 a year until canceled. this shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be interesting or news except that during the purchase process, I already purchased the $140
⏹️ ▶️ Casey package for one year of AppleCare+. So what is going on? Like I have, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been emailed the proof of coverage thing that they give you. What is happening? Why am I getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prompted to do this? I don’t understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it’s worth, I have the last few years, um, when I’ve bought AppleCare either for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my phone or for Tiff’s phone, I have bought it in the purchase process of buying the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and every time I would get that email like the like the day after Saying like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t go through sorry when the phone arrives do it on the phone And so this time I just I didn’t even try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just did it on the phone when the phone arrived in that and it worked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fine, that’s what I should do for next year. However, I’m almost positive I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already been dinged the hundred forty dollars on my credit card for this service and I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the proof of coverage So I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s not making me confident
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John at all. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John dismiss that and go to settings, general, AppleCare or warranty, and you should see your phone listed in the list of covered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on, slow down. Settings, general. Let’s do this live. AppleCare and warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Wait for the spinner.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thinking, thinking, thinking. All right, this device, KC Phone 17, AppleCare Plus with theft and loss.
⏹️ ▶️ John There you go, you got it. So what the what? That’s just bad. You know, they don’t have, they’re not checking for that before
⏹️ ▶️ John I show you the thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ John hit the like dismiss and don’t show me this again. There is a button for that. It should make the badge
⏹️ ▶️ John go away if you’re lucky.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s try that and see what happens. Well, thank you, John, I appreciate it. But yeah, very, very frustrating. More frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the CarPlay thing, which could be the dongle. I mean, it is possible it’s the dongle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like you said, there have been reports of issues with the iPhone 17s with the new
⏹️ ▶️ John N1 chip with doing Wi-Fi in particular CarPlay stuff, but they’re still kind of scattered.
⏹️ ▶️ John My i7 Pro hasn’t had any issues yet, but who knows? It could be an issue with the N1, it could be an issue with the drivers,
⏹️ ▶️ John could be a issue with the iOS 26 itself, we’ll find out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we’re running really long and sorry, not sorry, but also on the list of things that we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will discuss, but we’re gonna have to save it for next week. Tech woven cases, silicon cases, potentially,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 17 regular, AirPods Pro 3. I was able to use those on a flight,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literally the day after I got them, less than 24 hours after I got them, maybe even less than 12. Anyway, so I have thoughts about that. iOS 26, when I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at St. Jude, I asked a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regular humans instead of nerds what they thought, so I have some reports about that. Also, Erin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finally got upgraded today when she got her new phone, so she has some thoughts as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. So we’ll talk about all that. We do desire to talk about it, but we’re trying to have a less than seven hour show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so we’ll talk about that all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week. Yeah, thank you to our sponsors this week, Delete.me, 1Password, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Skims, and thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the many perks of membership is ATP overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week on Overtime, we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be talking about Anthropic’s $1.5 billion book piracy settlement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So tune in to hear that. You can become a member for a lot less money than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP.fm slash join. everybody. We’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at atp.fm And if you’re into Mastodon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental Check podcasts so long
Ode to the M553
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have to do a quick ode to a device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think most people who are computer nerds would be surprised to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear that I would do an ode to such a device. It is a printer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, is it the brother printer that everyone and their mother
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s the one that Marco has said wonderful things about for years, but he can say wonderful things about it again
⏹️ ▶️ John because not everyone’s heard those shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The giant one? Yeah, the giant one. So I will just go over quickly the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant printer is the HP Color LaserJet M553.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This print I was inspired to get this printer nine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago I believe or nine or ten years ago. Okay I’ve been a laser printer person for a very long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time because laser printers are just awesome for everything except photos but everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else they’re amazing at and And since good photo printers are amazing at photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but terrible for everything else including text or return labels or anything else that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to print, I love having honestly one of each. I have a photo inkjet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have a big laser printer. The problem with laser printers and generally speaking like home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laser printers, they’ve gotten very cheap and alright over the years, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just alright typically. They are often times very slow to get started,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on that first page out, they’re a little bit slow on that, because they have to like warm up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just start the entire world before you get that first page out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, their toner cartridges, while they’re better than home inkjet printers, those toners are still pretty small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you still have to replace them a lot, and they’re a little bit finicky, you know, with some of that stuff. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought this giant HP M553. I got it on sale at some point in the past,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like almost a decade ago. And it’s like a computer lab printer. And what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so satisfying about a giant, like pro business laser printer like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you can hit print at your desk, and when you stand up and walk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over to the printer, it’s there waiting for you, it’s done. They’re so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast. And I had this printer for almost a decade,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have never changed a toner cartridge. Really? Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the cartridges are made, they’re, you know, the cartridges for one of these, the printer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I bought it was like $600, which was on sale, I think they’re usually closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a thousand in this kind of capability range. But the toners for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are like 200 to $300 each. And as you know, the black and then the three colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So to buy a whole set of toner for this printer would have been like a grand. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s substantial, but those also are made to print like two or 3,000 pages, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just never went through them all. And so this printer has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been amazing. However, this printer has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving with me throughout all the logistics of changing houses over the last couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of years. We had some apartments in the middle where we stayed briefly or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a rental house that we had to move into briefly While things were getting renovated like we’ve this printer has moved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around a lot and the last year I started getting a little bit flaky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain times like you’d send certain print jobs to it, and it would just crash and reboot and not print it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Sometimes you like certain PDFs would be like it just you would never get it to print You’d have to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco print it to a different PDF and like it was a whole thing thing then we started getting some parts going a little bit bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it like there’s some giant transfer belt that runs through the whole printer and if things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go wrong there you start getting like giant streaks across the pages you’re printing and I tried taking it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey cleaning it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and eventually it was it would be it became apparent I knew the new one of those that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco $400 and then I ran out of yellow toner and that’s $250 and I’m like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what with all this stuff I think it’s time that I replace this printer. After
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 10 almost 10 years, I had one bad year at the end I’m like that’s really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I feel like I got my money’s worth especially considering how much I moved it around it should have broken long ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it didn’t. I look around the printer landscape and I look at what’s available now and you start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing the math okay this has this ton of cartridges and that you know that’s rated for this many pages and you divide it out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what are you paying per page and you start looking around not a lot else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there makes a lot of sense to get almost everything on the market was for my purposes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse than what I bought almost a decade ago and if you look at HP’s current lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost every entry in that current lineup is worse you know bigger plastic year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller cartridges that cost more money and then you see that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem to have replaced my m553 from a decade ago ago with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M554, which is almost the identical printer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is almost nothing different about it at all. They upgraded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the internals, they upgraded the screen, like, but it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost identical. And in fact, because of my good experience with the 553, the 554
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the one I bought for the restaurant this spring. Cause we needed one there and we print a lot of stuff the restaurant and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know from menus to you know just other invoices we print a lot of stuff at a restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so I bought the 554 for that and it is perfect it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything I wanted it to be because it’s just a slightly modernized 553
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the point where even like the the extra paper tray that you can buy for the bottom of it it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same tray between the two printers like that’s how little they have changed and so I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself that for home. I have replaced the 553 with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its exact clone basically and I think it’s remarkable that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a printer for almost 10 years that I liked so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I just bought the same basically the same one again. I’ve never had an experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a printer that good any other time in my entire computing life nor have I heard of anyone else ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having one. No one loves their printer that much, but I’m telling you, if you get this printer, you will.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, so that’s my experience, except I usually have to go on eBay because they don’t have, they don’t make the thing anymore. It’s nice that they still make
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I guess they probably make printers for a longer period of time because it’s just not much innovation in that space, except for how to, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, screw you out of more money by making you subscribe to ink or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to be clear, and this printer was like $900. Now, granted, you know, I bought the first one for like six, something that was almost 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago. There was some inflation that one was on sale. this one wasn’t, but also like when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at like, you know, putting in six or $700 worth of parts to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old one, or I can get a new one with brand new full toners for 900. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, yeah, that’s actually, and if I can expect to get that decent of a service life out of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s great. And I ran the numbers too. Like if I bought like the, one of their newer models, that’s like, you know, a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rated, you know, smaller volume rated printer, you know, what did I get toner wise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that? and how much do you, and like, basically what it comes down to is, the moment you have to buy another toner cartridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for any other alternative out there, you’ll come out ahead just by having bought this one in the first
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I’ve replaced my dehumidifier with the exact same model because I couldn’t find a better one. I just replaced my toaster
⏹️ ▶️ John with the exact same model because I know I couldn’t find a better one. I would keep buying these stupid mice on eBay because they don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John it anymore, but if they did,
⏹️ ▶️ John new ones. I’m very familiar with this phenomenon. I mean, when I look to get a new printer,
⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about this on that show when I was discussing my new printer. I would love to get something like yours, I just don’t have the space for it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife demands a scanner as part of it too, which is makes,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, so anyway, I’ve got an Epson EcoTank thing with a scanner on top. And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we print so rarely that I don’t mind how terrible the printing is. And we use the scanner probably more often than that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, maybe when I get a bigger place someday or have more room or take over one of the kids’ rooms someday,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll get one of these big printers. Because I do wish I could have a big, like business style laser printer, even if it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John black and white, but not there yet. But I’m glad they still make your model. I mean, or the one number higher,
⏹️ ▶️ John more companies should do that. When you have a product that works well and there’s nothing really to change in the space,
⏹️ ▶️ John why not just keep making it, Microsoft slash Incase.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m glad you’re happy and I’m glad you could find a new old printer.