Gaming on Apple Silicon Platforms

Hello. Welcome to the A inssider podcast. I'm William Gallaggh, our sponsors this week are Clean My Mac and Nord Stellar. More about them later unless you're a subscriber to App and inssider Plus in which case you said that? Whichever way you listen to us or watch us and I've just realized if you're watching, I look like I'm wearing jama top with a really, really big button that's the microphone. I might get a jacket later before Apple Insider pllus. Whatever you watch, whatever you listen, I am joined this week as ever by Wesley Hilliard and there's so much to ask him about this, but first where's This is the obvious question, I'm sorry. You're on beaters everywhere. Can you hear me? Is everything working Oh yeah, no, everything's going well. Boot loops on iPad daily, otherwise, fine Nothing really catastrophic. I think the betas have been really stable, especially on iPhone The only thing that I've noticed is a few apps just slowing down or acting like There's a compatibility issue, but there's updates coming in every day that fixes a lot of this. evenven though the developers can't target IowS twenty seven yet. they can find bugs and correct them So I expect this will be a really smooth beta period, but that can always be blown up by beta two Well, yeah That also I didn't expect this. You've mentioned boot loops before I've had problems with the beetus, I've had problems with Betus in years before and I've even bricked a device a long time ago. I have not had this recurring boot loop thing that you get. So here we are on similar devices, same updates, and it can affect us differently. So I think this really is It's important that people do not install. I saw someone today to say U their CRA AI cannot search their mail for whatever reason. and it's they're still indexing, but the index seems to be cur in such a specific way that like it can be random. what's indexed first or last This person's mail just isn't appearing in search at all. So be patient. It's beta one. I do find it funny when people run to the internet to post what's broken in beta one, as if like Apple's failed when you're beta testing a developer bet this isn't even public. doesnn't even want this on your everyday iPhone. They warn against it. It is actually a problem to run this on your personal devices. We forget that because The betas have gotten so good But they are still betus. and you are going to run into problems. It's not going to be perfect I believe William has a few things to complain about Siri today All right We'll get there, but I do want to say A few things first Gemini frrontier models was what I was trying to pull out last week. in my brain that was projected. Yes. Yes So the frontier models are what so Google made a specific version of its frontier model, handanded it to Apple, said G nuts Apple can tweak it for what they want and they use that to help build their new Apple foundoundation models. Again to reiterate here There is no Gemini asssistant presence, no Google search, no Google code, no Google server and like anything in Apple intntelligence. Yes, Apple is using Google servers for private Cloud compompute. It's an Apple server and everything but where it's located. So none of your data is going to Google. Just wanted to reiterate that It almost feels like Apple didn't get enough out of Google for their billion a year. You know, they should get something more I think they got a good deal actually. I think Google Frontier access on this level is worth way more than a billion dollars, but Apple got off pretty cheap Um On top of that, I said at least two, maybe three times the word cabernet. whichich is a wine I was referring to cabaret this Oh Broadway music I just William not had heard of it Yeah. Well, I heard it and I thought, Oh, I don't know that one Yeah just one of those silly brainworm things that like I happened in a typo when I was writing it And I had to go back and correct it, but it got so larodged It got so lodged in my brain that it just stuck. That is the name now I was saying Cabaret in my head. It came out cabaret. That's just how it works. This is a podcast people. brains are silly sometimes Well, I'll tell you what, I would have I should have caught that except This is interesting. you think musicals are everywhere. But in America you have everybody knows a musical called something like our tone And the only way anybody in the UK has ever heard of it is that it comes up in American TV shows every now and again, like Veronica Mars mentioned it somewhere or something. So I just assumed there was a wine drinking musical that actually sound quite good. But tell one thing, if speaking of things we've said in the past, because obviously anybody listening must be keeping notes. One thing I said was as a joke, Right, Well, that's it. that's WWDC out the way. no more rumours. but coming up next year there will be go straight into the next rums but actually I kind of want to because a rumor that's come out in the last few days concerns the iPhone air and I know and we must have heard this before that this was time There'll be two cameras instead of one A I reading this right or is it just wishful thinking since I was on the fence about Buckingwood So We've since before the iPhone air was revealed. We've known kind of what it looked like and Everyone just made the assumption, well, there'll be two cameras next time And then it came out and the battery life was On par with like an iPhone fifteen P an iPhone sixteen, but it was not on the same level as iPhone seventeen. So everyone jumped to. it's worse, it's actually really good battery life in day to day use. My wife, Natalie, she has an iPhone air No issues. She gets toose a day. She has a Magafe battery pack. she literally is never taken out of her purse. so It's it's fine. And I mean, she's u driving sometimes at work so she's on a Magsfe charger in between stops. So it's not like she's not charging all day, but even in circumstances where she goes like the whole day without a charge. It goes pretty well. So And again, that Magafe batteryies there If she needs it Um But people are like, well, it's not as good as the iPhone seventeen Pro, whatever. it needs to have better battery. So The report here is that the iPhone Air two, whatever is expected in spring twenty twenty seven and it will have better battery life and two cameras. And that's all we got. And on top of that, the report was like, and this might all be wrong because Ting internals, Apple are always changing and it's just like Way to hedge your bets there, bud Okay, I didn't know that bit. All right. well we'll see when we see I suppose. So I took the opportunity talking about the iPhone air because you covered this next one so I'll let you let you talk on that. But I took the opportunity and talk about the iPhone air to discuss the iPhone fold as well because as far as we're Understanding The iPhone Fold is a premium device above the iPhone air. It's not above the iPhone Pro. This isn't everyone keeps calling it iPhone Ultra, which you would assume iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone ultra I don't think that's what this is that Apple's not going to market it this way It's going to be too compromiseed. It's not going to have a pro camera system It's just not going to be a pro phone. So it's going to be an iPhone, iPhone air, iPhone fold. some kind of name, they'll give us a name Because of that though, I'm curious. IiPhone Fold right now is expected to launch in September. It's not in mass production yet and That means that it's most likely not going to launch Like it's not going to be available to ship very easily. att the very least, they might ship five by October be again Yeah. Yeah, but if they're shipping that late and they're getting the roll up into December, January. And then they're and then they're releasing the successor to the iPhone air a couple of months later. Does't that seem odd timing for that cycle to happen that way? And then another rumor, which I'll let you now speak iPhone Fold two in the fall of next year after struggling to even get the first one out the door if it even is launching at all this year. Well I know why you're asking me obviously I know thiss error, but I just want to go back on this thing of that it won't be the ulter or some higher version because Previous rumors have said that it will be priced as if it's going be one of those. Do you think?, it's two thousand dollars easy Right, Can Apple pull off the most expensive iPhone ever and have it be worse than previous top of the red. That's a problem Mind you you could argue that about the iPhone here, couldouldn't you that it's more expensive than other iPhones around it for what better You get that than the base iPhone though. It's prrized higher than the base iPhone, but it's also better than the base iPhone in almost every aspect except maybe the base iPhone having that second camera is useful, but's I don't think that's enough to put it down. I think itss thinness and its design takes it higher than the base iPhone and functionality and usefulness too go back to the your point, what I wrote about what I wrote about it twice. You know, if you're going to do this, do this twice. The first one was I thought this was notot wishful thinking, not interpretting reading too much. There was something iffy about this. The first report a few days ago was that a someone in the supply chain had revealed That's the iPhone fold wouldood had been delayed till early next year. Okay. That was inferred from the explicit thing he or she said about a new device moving Okay. could well be true, but then a couple of days later, I think it was fixed focus digital I read the headline for this and I couldn't think of another word for this other than strident. becausecause this leadaker didn't do the usual thing of saying No or I disagree. It was no, fake, ridiculous, rubbish. It was like four different things over it and it was definitely Pchland might have been a good word as well His or her argument is that, well actually it sounded ridiculously the same when he brought it down that it will definitely be announced in September. No question, absolutely certain, everythingthing else is ridiculous, but it might not stip straight away So one of them saying it willll be announced in September, the other one saying announced in September, one of them saying December, January launch, one of them saying maybe later I wouldn't believe this because Apple did it before with AirPods. You know la they announced and they launched right at the backke end of the year. Would that be twenty eighteen? It remember that Pay sixteen, maybe it could happen and Yeah I think fix focused digital might be making stuff up at this point They've got some Rumor history So don't get me wrong. I don't know if the rumor history has always been exclusive. I don't know if they're taking from other sources. I don't know anything about this other than We've reported on them The stuff that they provide seems to be original for the most part or piggybacking off of Ming Chi Kuo usually But I will say in the last year, Fixed Focus Digital has had a very weird situation where July, August, November, December, January of last up till this year It was the iPhone Air two that they were adamant about coming out in September of twenty twenty six And then without any word or reasoning or any any dinction, Nothing to say oops, my bad. They just shifted to iPhone Fold is coming out in September of this year and they've been adamant about it ever since about March April of this year. So I don't know if they're just be because Theyre either running away Fold. is more of a click bay title now than iPhone Air two Well, that couldn't be the reason at all. couldould it So this is where it gets weird. The reason why they were saying last year that there would be an iPhone fold in this September was I think, to be a bit contrarian to the other rumors which is saying iPhone Fold is not annual. I mean, we were one of the first publications just to say like, hey, it's obvious. iPhone air doesn't have a seventeen next to it. This is probably not an annual phone Um And then I think Mark Erman came out with a report after that. then we saw like, yeah, actually, iPhoneir is not planned for september twenty twenty six And then fixed focusus digital comes out and says actually it is And then they kept repeating that for months until It became about the iPhone Fld. and it was clear the iPhone Fold was definitely comoming in twenty twenty seven, at least Apple's goals internally seem to be twenty twenty six, I'm sorry Um, And so he was just like, actually yeah, that's it So one or two things happen here It looks like the iPhone air because it is a successor to the iPhone air. It's a more premium version of it. So maybe their supply chain stuff was mixed up And it looked like an iPhone air until it actually looked like an iPhone fold. That's understandable. It happens My thinking here as though maybe they were just being contrarian, getting into the news reports and now This is the best way to get reported on is just to continuously say the iPhone foolds coming because guess what? justust like Mark Grman did in the Sloomberg story that I mentioned earlier All you have to do is say, their planans changed. I just smacked my microphone Their plans changed U and oops, I got it wrong not because I was wrong or my sources were bad, but because Apple changed its mind And now everyone's doing this And I'm just going to go ahead and say no, you were just wrong Sorry. whatever your source was Whatever your thing like you were so adamant about it There was a change. You're not finding out about it in September on release dayay. You have sources, remember? If there was a change, you would have known about it and leaked that change. That's that's what I'm getting at here. So Getting back to this. it's little on thing there. I'm sorryhead. You said everyone's doing this and clearly we're not therefore. We are missing out. so let's do it. My sources tell me The iPhone fold will the iPhone fold will be free Okay, you heard it here first and only. Okay, just mark your calendars when that was We'll talk about iPhone for. sayay something more sensible though Yeah, so u bringing it back aroundround, I'm just gonna to go ahead and put my Just stak here We've been talking about Fix Fus Digital for a while. They're the one who's been most adamant about this phone coming out in the fall. No one else is really saying that so much. German finally put his flag in the ground of saying U It's being announced in September, but could be a delayed launch. That was the last thing we heard from German was that like it'll be revealed in September But the initial units won't be out until October and the full run won't be ready til later in the year. So it will be a very slow launch, which if that is how it works Fine G you know, that That's either a very easy thing to predict given what we're dealing with or German's sources are actually telling him this. Either way, I think it's accurate What we're dealing with Yeah, you were saying earlier about the run into next year, if it does, how that affects next year in the twentieth anniversary in two full versions. Can I putull it back to this September Let's say the fold Do doesnn't launch but it is announced We know the iPhone eighteen range will be announced. fine. So there's I am reasonably likely to upgrade to an iPhone eighteen pro Max But will I do it if I know a much better phone is a few months away, will it be like when the iPhone ten came out that the iPhone eight seemed a bit pants really in comparison Who's that printer company that put themselves out of business because they pre announceced? Oh, you're thinking of Osborne Yeah, the Osborne John Osborne. Yeah Now, all right. the thing is this is going to be called an iPhone. It won't succeed if it's not an iPhone. and Apple's not going to announce a better iPhone early The way this worked before is they just didn't announce it in September Remember, this was the pandemic and Apple announced their base models first pro model second or am I remembering that wrong I remember it It was late it was a month late but I think Yeah So in Octo No No, they didt no phones. That's right. In September, right? They had an event announced like AirPods and stuff. I don't remember. I'll have to go look, but In any case They announced it late and launched it a week later like they always do I can't see them announcing it early. and then potentially impacting the sales because people are going to be like, well I might buy an iPhone eighteen Pro. prefer wait for the reviews of the fold. So I'm so Apple's potentially, even if people still don't buy the fold, they're potentially punting their sales a couple of months as people wait to see what the foldable is like I just can't see them doing that. That's a terrible strategy. Apple is a very good strategic company And John Turnis is not going to come out the gate with terrible iPhone season. Like imagine if his first quarter as CEO is one of the worst in recent history just not going to do it So Germman's report here is awkward. Again, so I want to get back to Let's forget fixed focused digital. We're going gonna continue reporting on them. But I want to ourur listeners here to understand that Maybe they're not the most reliable source on all this. So let's just ignore that source for a while until we see what happens in September But what Germitt is saying is not only is the iPhone foold going to get announced in September of this year, there's going to be a successor a year from now and in between there's going to be an iPhone air two in the spring So is a lot. Even for Apple, that's a lot Yes, we expect Apple to eventually get to six iPhones a year Right, The iPhone Base model, the iPhone, air, the iPhone Fold, the iPhone Pro and Pro Max, and the iPhone E, right Okay yeah, sppring, fall releases This all makes sense. But that's quite enough now, Apple. Thank you. Yeah. But are they capable of getting there now amongst everything else going on in the world? The market conditions, the pricing issues, which we'll get to in a minute, the The fact that components are hard to get a hold of memory and storage shortages, is Apple really about to launch not only its most expensive iPhone ever, but two of them within a calendar year of each other Here's my thing. is my this is my conspiracy theory I think what German reported on the other day as the iPhone fold second generation is actually the first generation And this is the first signs we're seeing that Apple has punted the device to next year. to next fall and that it is not going to come out this year period. They're setting up the OS for it. It's showing up in code. Absolutely The conditions, the market, the fact that it's not in mass production yet, the fact that it continue to run into issues in testing. I cannot see it coming. and I could be totally wrong. abbsolutely. They could walk out on stage and prove me totally wrong. I am fine with that I am just U using the data I have available right now to say, I feel like It's still there's no way. This year more than ever, I mean, we've had rumors about a fl since twenty nineteen where Samsung did its first one. This year seems to have been so much more so many more repuss. It's all ramped up. to the extent that if Hper comes out in September and does not reveal a fold. wouldouldn't that give John Turnas exactly the bad start that you're saying that you would want to avoid? Those nerds are always going to be nerds. They're always going to be mad about something that they thought was coming that didn't Um the people that don't pay attention to that stuff that aren't sitting in Reddit all day, they don't care. They don't know. I mean, they they might have been like, well, why doesn't Apple release a foldable? It's like, well, they were working on it. Here's the thing In February, when I was adamant this thing wasn't coming, it was more likely to come then than it is now. That's all I'm saying. L it's okay It's because of the tim scale for manufacturing. Okay, I can see that. It's worse now than it's ever been. It could still arrive, but the thing is is If you release that device and no one buys it or no one can buy it and it's also cannibalizing your own sales They're asking for trouble They're asking for trouble and I donon't see them point. like it would make more sense. to wait a year. let the iPhones do their thing in the but ball here Let them do this cheap models in the spring and them really come all out twentieth anniversary, iPhone foold, curve display twentieth anniversary Edition phone reallyally just firing at all cylinders. John Turnnisays a victory lap like That would be the way I would do it instead of pushing this thing out that clearly is not ready to be out there, that clearly the supply chain cannot supply So what are we doing Well, you're very persuasive. I was thinking dramatically the structure of next year you want to build to the anniversary and this felt like it would dilute it.. So okay, I could believe that you've gone from it's not coming to it might come to it's not going to come to it's coming later But there's been a consistency And all that So come September. You're either going to be you can't be very right, William You're right or you' wrong. There's no gradations of rightness. You will be right. And I was going to say one of us to be right, one of us to be wrong, but actually I just don't know. So one of us will be right and one of us will be still don't know I just had thought about being a It's not about being right or wrong. I just want someone to be in the Tch new cycle saying that it's not that there's a potential because it seems like everyone's just like, oh yeah, Mar German's right Like If I'm wrong I'm wrong, I don't care, right? Like this is part of the job. I have to use the data I have available to try and help inform our readers, our listeners and If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but the thing is is want to point out the evidence that's present that says it's not coming If it does Great, I don't care. I'm probably not going to buy it. It's not for me. I'm happy for the people who are going to buy it Maybe I'll get one to review. I don't know, but like This doesn't feel like a advice for me because I really need my cameras to be as good as they can on my phone But in any case We I just feel like nobody even has the inkling to say, o, maybe it's not coming. and That's kind of silly to me. Like everyone just takes everything so absolutely when we can look at Mark Germman's especially recent history as being very poor. So other than him having IOS twenty seven in his hands and a beta form leak out everything that was coming and Um still miss on some things because he was reporting on things that weren't announced yet. so they got pushed back probably like the pro camera with widgets. Right, but beyond his IS twenty seven reporting, it's been pretty poor lately. Like everything about AppoVision P has just been wrong. And yet we can just look at this iPhone fold stuff and be like, yeah, he's right, it's coming, just because people want it to come so badly you need to understand it is about being right or wrong. Sort yourself out there. This episode is brought to you by Clean My Mac by Mac Por. and yesterday, as I was yet again struggling for space on my Mac studio, Clean My Mac a little unobtrusive message in the bottom left of my screen, pointing out that I had some gigabytes sitting there in the trash Obviously now ass how as that was. He didn't just tell me, William, there it is, trash. The message also included a button to let me click once and empty the trash right then and right then. You get a similar message popping up when an app has frozen. and I seem to be having some problematic apps now that I'm using the beaters, but there's the message including a force quit button There is so much like this that Clean My Mac does to help us get on with our work inst instead of having to think about your Mac and how it's working Clean My Mac runs maintenance programs, it looks at performance. it's just an all round useful tool, but what it is absolutely best at is reclaiming storage space for you I am forever running low and CleanMMac is forever getting back gigabytes of storage space for me. It does that for me all the time. It has been doing that for everyone for so long, but more recently It added the ability to Exactly the same thing Cloud. Now I use iCloud, but whether you're on that or Microsoft One Drive or Google Drive, it handles them all. It scours your cloud storage and points out to you things like large files, duplic good files, all sorts of things it will find. It willll find so much that you and I can then either choose to delete them right there and then to save space or maybe archive them off somewhere else We get the decision we're in control, but we save space. And if it does this for me constantly England for you too, of course. tidy today. Try seven days free and use my code for twenty percent off at cleanm. com slash apppple Insider with the code Apple Insider two zero. So that's cleanm. com spell C L n m Y cleanm. com. So it's cleanm. com slash Apple Insider. And then Apple insiders in all capitals and that code again is Apple Inider twenty, Apple Insider two zero. You can tell I really wanted to get this as well, can't you? Have a look at that and please, let me just say thank you very much to clean my Mac. For the help you give me all the time and for supporting the Apple Insider podcast But okay, let's just do this We started by talking about what was just happened WWDC, if only very briefly. We then looked at what could be coming at some point, the iPhone filed. I want to go somewhere in the middle, because there were also this rumors about a phone we do know is coming presumably the iPhone eighteen range in the iPhone eighteen Pro Max because there have been rumors about that as well. And I think it's just a possibly obvious one The whole range will come with twelve gigabytes overver in order to facilitate Apple intelligence Um This is going to be the thing with the A twenty processor Okay, so between us have we discovered that hed story? What are we there? Okay. Right So that comes is when it bres the iPhone seventeen Pro has an A nineteen. Okay. Okay. well yeice chapter so far. Well, I think the iPhone eighteen cycle is pretty well known at this point. They're going to look the same. They're going to have the camera plateau There's going to be camera improvements with the The variable aperture is still rumored. that's been rumored a couple years now. Maybe it'll finally arrive. uh, the camera control button apparently may be less functional as Apple turns it more into a button instead of a slidy thing There's rumors. We'll see what happens in September Before we move on to the rest of the show, we talk a little bit more about our OSs Wait a second. can you possibly not talk about the colour The red color. I mean, we've got a good half hour's chatatter. I want the red color I've decided Okay, Dpends on what it looks like. There is I think the one thing that It now seems to be known we have had a warning from Tim Cook that everything's going to be more expensive at last. I have thought they might hold on or hold out a bit longer But it doesn't look so can you any idea how much more expensive this stuff can be The thing is we don't know and Tim Cook's not telling us, but he did want to say ahead of announcing the stuff that the iPhones could be more expensive. He didn't say iPhones. He just said, in general, things could get more expensive.ue Apple has been Keeping the price is the same because as we've mentioned before, their price is basically a feature of the product The MacBook Air costing eleven do ninety nine cents is a feature of the MacBook Air, right So That is something they change very slowly, very rarely over time, right? The iPhone Pro was nine doll ninety nine cents forever They changed the prices outide outside of the US and China. and since I am outside the US and China, that's they needed to no time becausecause of currency exchange rates and stuff. But like it was fifty dollars, I believe. like we're not talking about major money here U I think the u Maybe you' buy it, so I don't know. but yeah The The problem here is is Apple has been working really hard to make the supply chain absorb the costs of memory increases. by basically renegotiating contracts for this process, like this substrate, this board, this material. and they can take the cost down. on those things to buoy the rising cost of memory, they can't do it anymore Memory is so expensive, storage is so expensive You can't do it So Cook is saying we've protected them as long as we can unless something changes, we're going to increase prices. Now what does that mean I think the next lever they can pull is not everything is now two hundred dollars more expensive, which is what Angle the Wall Street Journal seem to have taken I think the next angle here is Base models stay the same If you add more storage That's how you get more money. That's that's that's when things get more pricey. So base prices of iPhones, Max are all going to stay solid the minute you start adding storage You're getting a hundred dollars more, two hundred dollars more, three hundred dollars more for each tier that you go up making those devices more expensive, but because That will subsidize the base price staying the same So what happens to someone like you who's on the iPhone upgrade program and you normally just roll love into the next one Will your terms change? Will your month? Oh, that's not helpy than The way the way I from upgrade program actually works is You're basically signing a two year payment plan every year And at the end of at the end of one year, you've paid off fifty percent which meets the terms of your agreement to cancel the contract, which is what you basically do. The contract ends, you return the device which is the end of your contract. and when you're ordering the new iPhone, you're actually signing a totally new different contract So Last year the last couple of years, my price increased by a couple bucks each year because of taxing and stuff like that. Like that's just how it works. So this year, If the prices go up on my one terabyte model My payments will be a little bit more. I haven't prenegotiated like a ten year contract with this. It renews every year. It's a new contract Sorry side point, mine goes all over the place when we talk about specifications. you will go for a one terabyte thing again Probably. I mean, I'm assuming, especially with these price changes, if that's how it goes. I probably won't want the two terabyte twenty thousand four hundred dollars model. That's what we're talking about here in terms of price You've now had your current phone long enough to know whether or not you're actually using that storage Oh, I have to delete it's not that I'm deleting things, but like I deleted Resident Evil because that's like a twenty gigabyte game Right. Okay. or u They they're Brushing that upper limit, but not in a way that's dangerous. Like if I I have things I can do I still have all of my photos saved to device So so if I wanted to save like six hundred gigs at once, I could just Turn on cloud. the cloud version of that, which has gotten so much better and faster and cellular data is better. I honestly probably wouldn't notice if I did that, but I like having everything local. so I'm still utilizing that in a way I might jump up to two terabytes when it's reasonable, but We'll see Okay Interesting that you were near the limit then. I do think we expand to fill the space we've got though, so. Yeah, Oce terabyte's fine. I think and I can pull that off for at least another couple of years, I think We've talked in last week or so about different OSs, but since we spoke last time, I wrote a lot about MacOS Golden Gate And the review is out for it on Apple Insider. there will be a link to it. But I think the headline I want to discuss with you is the fact that If it weren't for Siri AI ically nothing In this it has gotta be the least update ever made to the. We're talking about features though. like User face chang. What else is there? I mean, there's wallpaper. And I know this performance and I do find bits of it snappier evening in beta. And I do like the I feel the icons in the dock are brighter. although interestingly, if you turn the dot clear, Everything goes clear except Fantastical. Even other third party ones go clear. Fantastical holds out for me and I don't know why. It looks weird. It's like a toothless grin. in the middle of the dock, so I turned it all back. But actually when we first got the clear thing, I thought it looked gorgeous. I just couldn't find anything on it. everything looked the same. Now it is clearer. so maybe I'll go. it went fantastical its finger out and does what it has to do. But yeah, features in it, the phone is exactly as bad as it was You know, people can't hear you when you phone people. That seems pretty fundamental. There's a way around it, you can fix it, but it's ludicrous. You cannot find it by accident. You have to be told How So why am I not telling you? Ah let's make it a mystery And Siri, you said about indexing and that's making me more forgiving for a while because I thought you made a good point There what Siri AI does well, it does brilliantly. earlier today, I'm involved in For some reason, I'm involved in six different book projects at the moment and I had to report on one of them and I got two people mixed up. So I actually used I said Who is the one to do with this book and it told me. So, you know, nice. That was good. I liked that But then other things, you know, you mentioned that I have problems with it. Some of the stuff is as bad as it ever was and that's a bit disheartening, but we'll cover that ater. I just there's nothing else to say I think about MacOS Goldenat except A, there's only Siri and two, for some reason I cannot get the beota onto my MapBook Pro fourteen inch M one, it will not go on it and I cannot fathom out why So if you have any ideas for that, that would Yeah, I think that would be I think that's when you put it in the shredder and a new one pops out for about two thousand dollars I think Riot. Yeah, I'll get on that Okay I think the MacOS being an optimization update, that make that rings true. The keynote itself even was very focused on corner radiuses and spotlight interactions and speed And MacOS for me has never felt very feature rich so because it feels like an old computer to me. So I like MacOS When you say this Yeah, too late now. I just don't know what we what they do Now the menu bar is different. I don't know. likeike what do you what do you do with a platform that's fifty years old? So You do everything with it instead of this three and half thousand pound headset that doesn't have any native apps, you know? I mean, come on. Yeah Get on with it with the m I do like the Mac. The So I think it makes sense that and honestly deserved.'s a it's a good year for Apple to take a step back and focus on optimization, speed, design Because if it wasn't for SiAI, it would be like a nothing burgary year. Why even call it an update? There's nothing here. But at least there is something here saying, hey This is new, you're getting something different. This does change how you work. This is fully integrated. X code is improved. like there's a lot here But it's all those SAI stuff. So I'll forgive them that because from the people I have heard and from your review. The optimizations and the design and everything, it is better. and that's what people wanted. So Apple listening to the people here. Yeah So ye the other I was going to say I have no problems with it, but I do But in general, they're looking working on the mac. This episode is brought to you by Nord Stella Nord Stellar monitors the Dark Web to uncover targeted attacks against businesses of any size. It protects your firm, your brand and your executives Nordthstellar is a threat exposure management platform for businesses of any size, any scale for all of them. It detects cyber threats against the company and it helps you take control before those threats can escalate. It gives you faster detection and prioritization, it offers real time visibility of risks and It also strengthens your firm's compliance posture For your security teams as well, there's more because Nord Stella can provide contextualized insights. it can track adversaries and it can provide malware logs. And then for your whole company, using Nordstellar means safeguarding both employees and customers from identity abuse, account takeovers, from phishing May by the team behind NordVPN, Nord Stellar is about proactive otection Do not wait until your company's data is alady for sale on the Dark Web Your business today with Nord Stella Norell has flexible plans at scale with your business size, of course. and right now you can get you can unlock a ten percent discount at nordstella. com slash Apple Insider Get this exclusive offer. unlock your ten percent discount on Nordsteller with the coupon code Nord, Apple Inider Dash one zero dash Nordstellar. orr just mention it to Nordstellar And thank you to Nord Star for supporting the Apple Insider podcast. The reason for wanting to put it on my MacBook Pro is, well, this isn an inside baseball thing, but my Mac Studio has an incredibly wide display. so whenever try to check screenshots, it's ludicrously hard to get you to see anything for it. Yeah now the resolution is better Yeah for utra wide. alsoso the fact is I like MacOS Golden Gate enough that when I turn back to MacOS Taho, it's a hu thing every year, something happens and you think how did we work on that This time it was Siri AI, and I do keep reaching for it even though world knowledge is atrocious in it, but that's not the story. We've talked in between sessions about the different OSs and obviously I'm I'm very pro Mac. I' Mac first really, but then also iPad second. Y visiono best first then iPad second, I think. Just talk about iPad because I don't think there was a lot in the iPad either, but it is a gorgeous device. It got some things Yeah, so the other OSs in general We're similar to MacOS Lots of polish. Maybe a feature update And then S AI TVOS got stuff like H Reds lossless playback on Apple TV. U, which It's cool for if you have a highi fi system and you're connecting it through a Hi fi receiver you. speakers that can handle that. you can now Do it. great. Like there's stuff like that everywhere U Homepods obviously getting the auto mix feature, which I'm excited for it is better In this version, they've tweaked the algorithm for transferring between songs and they've improved Oh good. Ging between songs between certain genres. so There's no longer that awkward You're listening to Rp Nni, you're listening to metal, how does it handle that? It does a lot better. So I found that wincingly bad, even within the same genre, even within, you, your essentials list It's interesting It's a different Way to listen to music because sometimes in order for it to mix, you're skipping almost a minute of the next song to get to the part where it mixes properly, which for some songs fine I still want to mode that says eliminate all skits, but I don't know that that's ever going to come Um Skits are fine when I want to listen to them, but Maybe I just want to listen to just the music, okay guys know I used to do this in local radio by hand with vinyl matching. There's a particular track. I've forgotten the name that's so long. It's on two sides of a single. and so I had two copies of the single and I got them perfectly aligned. It's just rebir for was with me that day. And now Apple's doing it for me We've lost something get back on physicality of getting up to cross the room every three songs. I'm sure we're all very much missing it So The u The other OS is, so watch OS got its new grid, right? We talked about this last week. I don't want to belabor the point.. There wasn't a lot and everything. Use that. I haven't updated anything except iPhone and my Mac stududio and I'm curious about the grid because I used to like that kind of honeycomb Thank so Understanding that that's gone So if I can get it on screen without smacking my microphone. so we're going to do a little So the grid is much larger when you press the button and all these icons, they are random, not random, but they're chosen based on what you use the most. Mine right now is music, workout, maps, podcast weather and fitness, which sure Okay. Yeah, like I feel like the Siri icon should be in there somewhere because but I haven't really used it on the watch yet. so that's fair Uh I would like to be able to set those maybe or at least set one of them as a permanent spot. That's a different story. But yeah, watch I gotot a thing and they changed the grid for the fourth time But IOS, we, as we talked about feature updates across certain apps, right don't need to get into it again. iPad OS though. I wrote a review that's going to be coming out. So It's interesting. It's like you said. U I think MacOS and iPadOS are similar in this way. It's veryer much the optimization desesign details and Siri AI. That's the three pillars of iPad OS. There's no major feature. They didn't change stage Manager or multitasking again But one thing I get into in the review is iPado has fell into this pattern for years now It's an talk cycle One year is amazing, one year is nothing, likeike literally nothing. The iPhone would get a feature The iPad would not. like it would just literally not get it The journal would come out, not on iPad So This year It's still the off talk last year. We got the whole complete redesign of iPad OS basically. It was a huge year for iPad This is the off cycle And it doesn't feel like an off cycle because Now on top of the redesign and optimizations did get Siri AI, which does add on to workflows and improve how you use your device The grammar checking live thing like that's great My proofread's still broken. I can't use it. I don't think I've had any major typos. I did I did do a push notification yesterday. I'll share it here about the whole cabinetet cabaret thing. That's my brain more than Si AI. I switched a word in my like literal lexicon and I could not switch it back I The Pofreed thing is fun and it's useful. but it doesn't and it's not gonna to always catch everything. I think it might have caught this But some of you might have got a push notification on your phone yesterday if you're using the Apple Insider app on your iPhone that said AI ship shortages Right instead of chip. Oh, okay, right. I wouldn't change itmedate. I saw it immediately and I was just like, oh, this is stupid. how did I do that? It happens and that's Further proof that we don't use AI to write for us. We are humans writing things. We do make mistakes make a virtue out of it. I. Yeah Yeah. I mean tyyp those happen, they're going to happen. evenven in headlines, they're going to happen Um I u I do think though, that with the grammar checks and the inline spell check, that that's enough. the proofread helps find a couple of things. I have been double checking myself by asking the Siri app to proofread for me, which is a hacky way of getting around not having the writing tools available But In any case I think the highlights here are definitely like speed optimizations ground stuff, pro users are going to notice this update Raw format processing is much better if you're importing from certain cameras, like my Sony RAWs should be improved when I'm editing them The file transfer speeds are much five times faster when coming from an external storage device Well I kind of ignored that when Apple said it because they mentioned about AirDrop and my thing with AirDrop is will it work or won't it brilliant when it does? Why doesn't it sometimes? don't know. The fact that it will not work But it's five times faster, it didn't hit it for me. But ordinarily with a beta, everything is slower because the last thing they do Optimization and performance. you're saying even now on the iPad bea one one. You can feel the de right sold. That's it. It's really good the sign That's what it's crazy This is what I'm trying to emphasize to people. This is beteta one This is not. the release candidate And this feels like a release candidate minus writing tools disappearing. L there's there's some obvious beteta one bugs. But the. Yeah, I'm holding out for that getting better. but youah I don't know I've had no problems with world knowledge, but I don't know what you're searching. J just tell me total nonsense like every other AI, you know In fact, just one example, I do want to keep this for later, but I asked Siri AI for direction to somewhere and it confidently not only gave me the wrong place, but started up on apps going. And when I you lightly say you're using it wrong? No. And I will disagree because explain to me how I did this. When I said to Siri AI, this is not the right place It gave me the usual AI thing of, oh, I'm sorry, you're right. I meant to do this and Biography of a band I've never heard of. Tell me how I did that. That is a sere. That is a dumb hallucination. It's an AI.s it's going to hallucinate But I don't think you can blame it on me and then say ah, it's a. I don't think it' you. I was just joking. I'm saying world knowledge is bad at and I I don't think world knowledge maps though. That's what I'm getting at. That's a separate tool. I well, it got the ban from Wor knownowledge the direction from it The whole knowledge is not a map. I don't know why you would go to Siri AI, the app and ask for mapping directions instead of going to maps and asking for mapping verbally takeake me to So that see, that's another problem. I think I in the last episode. I asked Siri take me somewhere on Apple Maps. So it took me down somewhere at Apple Maps but the wrong place. Yeah. How that be me? No? I don't think it's you, R. I was joking. Wh Shouldn't I do it exactly that way? And again, let's not let go of this Where did the world's knowledge about this band, this country music sure is great How did that come in if world knowledge is not at the moment What I'm going to sayious is I mentioned this last week. I think that for whatever reason Um the speaking to seri version or like the spotlight version versus the one in the app. For some reason there's a disconnect there. It seems to this is this is My indication. this is getting a little bit in the weeds here. We have five models that it can use Right, O's for images, one's for agentic actions. So technically speaking, when you're speaking to Siri that way, you're talking to one of three models Onvice C we decide on device strong If I ask Siri to open a certain spreadsheet That's aentic for it. No, no, that should be the weakest model because that should be It very straight forwardy. Yeah And so So what Apple's doing is there's three models that's addressing two one device one in the cloud for those types of general queries. Pblem is is when you're in the Siri app, when you open the interface and type to Siri or speak to Siri that way I believe it defaults to higher end models first because it knows that you're interfacing in a way that you can wait a moment Whereas so you're going to get the better model. Whereas if you're using the voice only model, you're holding the side button or're using the wake word I believe it defaults to the weakest available fastest model because it's like this person needs this information right now, let's go And that's where you're going to run into the most problems And that's not an excuse. I'm just explaining why something so stupid might have happened when you ask for gr.s like what you're saying is W knowledge is fine, but it can't use it. So to me, that means world knownledge is useess No, I I'd only ever go into the app when it's not knowge still this conversation. Yeah. What about when you swipe down and start typing in then, which by the way is also problematic because sometimes you swipe down, you start typing and it throws away the seri prompt before you get to the end of it Is that using That seems like a bux. I think well it's doing the same voting system It has a has a I forget the word they had for it, but it's like concierge or something. It has a program lookooks at what you're doing and decides who to give it to. U so That's happening no matter how you're interacting with Siri. It's just I think it's using different weights based on how you're interacting with it because it's like, oh, you have more time or you have less time Um Getting directions in Apple Maps is not an agentic or world knowledge model. It is the very base model fetching information from Apple Maps The problem that you ran work. I don't find that a very convincing argument, but okay, has this I asked it to identify a building and it got it totally wrong That surely is well known. That's visual intelligence. I mean, I wonder what because then that's using the image structure But one thing at a time I think the reason why you ended up with a weird band name is because you started with directions, which is one model U and got the wrong directions because again, like if that model just went the totally the wrong direction and fetch theong information. mayaybe it didn't grab the location correctly. Wh knows what mistake it made. But then your follow up question The somehow the agent in charge of passing along the knowledge switched to world knowledge. Med interaction And that, yeah, and that's a problem So like that wast this one thing you don't know. I said to it Why have you given me this band when I'm asking for direction somewhere? and it denied that it ever did So you know, so much for the continuous conversation thing as well. I mean, I feel like you're splitting multiple hairs at the same time and think it's just that's that's such a specific example. I' I'm trying to reason why it went wrong because Um in my experience Like I'm that's not every query. That is not my experience with Siri AI at all. And and again, this is a beta, but I'm just trying to reason where It might have gone wrong. And again, this stuff is the weights are going to change. A lot of the stuff that Apple is doing here. Even the models might change before release. Apple's going to update these as we go and we'll see how this interacts U And I understand that like you're having problems with everyone is it's not perfect by any means U But I do want to say how good Yeah, how astounding it has been in certain areas. like The world knowledge aspect, I've noticed how it works It's not summarizing world knowledge the way other AIs do. it's giving it to you verbatim, which means As long as the source is correct, that world knowledge is correct. And that I think is key. My argument has to be it isn't So I've done the same query on another AI use claword for the same thing T gets it right Si AI It depends on what source it' pulling from and what question you're asking. Yeah so I don't know. I can't I cannot ask Apple which questions am I allowed to ask, Which ones the answers for? And that one with the wrong building, I said no, it is this building. and then it went off and said, Yo, yes, you are right, aren't you? That AI thing of you're so brilliant how did I get it wrong? I don't know. means Siri AI is very, very similar to every other AI in that respect So I'm disappointed in that. But like I say, the bits that are good. Do you have That sounds odd to me. Do you have the chat GPT function still turned on Okay, because it Well, you have to go physically turn it off if it was ever on. Um because it's still an extension available in settings U Okay, that is an interesting experience. I need to do more testing. I have not run into that personally of the Siri being sycchophantic or ident I haven't run into it going wrong. and even before the new version, You were fine with it and I was finding things I used to do. was Well that was different and I was using Siri very specifically. Yeah. Well, I was as well and it used to work and it didn't. and now actually it still doesn't. I find Apple music stuff in Siri is deeply frustrating. So I'm very roller coaster on this, but again, you know, when it's good I can't stop saying this when it's good, it is absolutely great. And I think it has changed how I work. I just So many times, it's very frustrating. The Apple Insider Plus segment will be about us testing Si AI. So we will actually get a little bit into what we're asking and interacting with and as so you've had a little taste of it here of course, but we'll be getting into it a little bit more in the post show. I was going to save the whole this country music band thing for then, but instead let me pr ahead and say Make a non mistake That's coming in Apple and' Her pllus. also easy But how about this because we're getting quite heated about Apple here? How about we go a totally different direction? Be there are other things in this world. And also yet again, it's something I know absolutely nothing about but I've been saving up this time to ask you about because you do know About is it called Snap glasses? Snap AR? Spepectacles? Sles was't Spectacles. There you go Um totally replaced totally better than the Apple Vision Pro or something or maybe not, I'm not sure I don't even know what to think of these things. They look like the goofiest things I've ever seen and I've wear Apple Vision Pro. They' Inredible So they took some very specific angled photos professionally with models wearing them Literally any other angle or in real life, they look awful. So ignore those professional photos I will use this for the show art probably the CEO Evan Spiegel is on CNBC wearing these glasses live. First off Maybe his ear looks like that, but maybe it doesn't and it's being crushed slowly by the arm of these glasses. That wayigh a third of a pound. A third of a pound of glasses. Again, I understand Apple Vision Pro, but they're not restesting on my ears either Um bridge of my note. So these glasses are huge. They're bigger than the ones I'm wearing now. They cover your eyebrows completely is how big they are. Very thick frames They look like medical not just prescription corrective lenses, they look like medical like bottle like literal bottle cap thick lenses. so thick. You look like they're fogged up from a steamy room all the time Like the him on television this might. I don't think this is a trick of the camera This is just what the glasses look like. You just have this hazy thing over your face. And I suppose when you're looking at a video, There's now light just blaring out of the sides of your glasses into your forehead and cheekbones, right? So Cool. They didn't they didn't show anyone using this from their face During the keynote for obvious reasons that I just explained Interface though, it looks like Android XR It's fine. There's a lot of transparency in a lot of the objects you're interacting with. I see that they have some opaqueness for when you're watching video. Cool, I guess, fifty one degree field of view, which is half of Apple Vision Pro, which means you're looking at it like through a little postage stamp on your glasses All fine. I'm sure they're interesting. I very skeptical of the demos they showed of like it perfectly lining up a shot for a golfer showing a golfing line Um First off, I don't know how it's calculating any of that because like this isn't a video game. So it doesn't know what the golfer itself is about to swing or how hard it's going to hit anyway Um how it mapped that, I guess, using maybe the cameras. I don I don't believe it has LidDAar. I think it's literally just the cameras For them to show the interface not trying to locate surfaces constantly tells me either these are really good. Object permanence. or they really B step the video of the demos. I don't know, but there's there's what are People are trying these out now. We'll hear about how they actually work later Oh no twenty one hundred So twenty two hundred dollars Oh really? I didn't realize it was that much. Okay heavy glasses they have Things called lenses, that's what their apps are that developers are making The guy went on stage, compared himself to Steve Jobs, said he was about to announce the greatest change in humanity, announce these glasses said they were two thousand two hundred dollars and talked about the Apple Vision Pro the entire time. Clearly they have something to target here Every app they showed looks like a toy. and that's because it's Snapchat. The Snap specs have always been toys and this is very much a toy product. Neat proof of concept This, I think is proof of why Apple hasn't done this yet because Today This is as good as you can get This is throwing all the money at the wall, all of the technology at the wall. This is as good as you can get and it's bad. So we'll see what it looks like in a couple of years Well they a positive thing toin on. Snaps fetacles, the best you can get for now. Okay I need to point out we don't have any reviews this week, but if anybody would like to review on Apple podcast, we're delighted to read them. good or bad, we'll read them out. But since we have this moment, I know there was a thing about gaming A gaming toolkit. listen to me, you can tell I know anything about games, but Apple has done Improved gaming is a game kit twenty seven or something? Rcue me, make her sound more informed than I really am. What's somethinging new with this It's a big deal and there's nothing to say. Gaming toolkit for Yeah is it's it's really great because gaming ping the gaming porting toolkit for has made it easier than ever to take a Windows based game and transfer it to Mac. using Oh Okaykay. And the output will be a fully native Mat game that uses metal for rendering, neural processing and all of that stuff It's even better now. It uses AI systems to help you get it done faster. You don't have to know that much. People have actually been kind of taking like I'm sure it's somewhere in a license agreement not allowed, but people have been taking existing games, stripping them down to their code base and then converting it themselves as if they were the developer and it run fine. They like someone tried to do gaming toolkit Three with z zo seven first light which is a video game, William. Terrible fame rate to hgh Yeah Yeah, terrible frame rate issues, terrible problems to be had there U Gaming Toolkit four did it fine. So progress, it's improving and it should mean that developers should have a fairly easy time bringing games back natively And for these the millionth time I will say It would be really nice if this meant more game support on Apple platforms. Not just iPhone and iPad where it's Technically the most popular gaming platform on planet Earth Technically because of how many people play candy Crush because that is a game, Sadoku for you. Um But Mac as well will be able to share in the fact that it has Apple Silicon. It's powerful It's capable, and there's no reason why more AAA titles shouldn't come to max Except again, from the point of view of someone who doesn't happen to play games, the impression I've had All Mac using career is that Windows is better for games than Macs It's better for all more reasons Okay. and are they all gone now because they if the games would just come will play them for No the biggest issue is Apple and Navidia hate each other and evenven though they're begrudgingly letting Apple have some AI chipsec junk in their Google servers That's changed nothing on the Mac side. Apple Silicon cannot connect external GPU's You can't mount a GPU in any way. there's no circuit cards, there's no Mac Pro. There's nothing So the performance you have and the Mac you buy is the performance you have forever That's the problem as a gamer When you buy a Mac If you bought the best Max stududio with the M three Ultra And maybe soon the M five ultra M six ultra B they have. Max the ram out. A Windows computer with half the specs would still be better because it could connect to an Nvidia GPU and drive most of the game functions. That's the problem Yeah, but you'd have these in windows. ye, but yeah that's the problem that's there. The graphic processing of these apple silicon chips is really good. It can get most of the work done. it can run ApleA games. maybe at lower fidelity, lower frame rates than what these NvidDia processors can, but it's possible. But gamers want more control, they want more access to the system, it's not going to happen. For me personally, everyone keeps calling for the death of consoles They've been calling for it for a very long time It's not coming anytime soon. If it ever does, I will be having a real problem. Maybe I'll just play whatever console at the time is out then for the rest of my life because I just would rather never use Windows period for anything. Maybe I'll figure out Linux gaming. That's my path. Well listen, if anybody wants to contact you to say Windows games are much better than they think or Windows is better than you think, or in fact that you're totally wrong about Siri AI, just putting that out there. How do people get in touch with you You can reach me Hilly teech on Blue Sky, Hilly. tech on Macadon. email me Wesitppnsider. com. Always happy to hear from everybody Quiet this week I think everyone's busy testing the betas, no new podcast reviews, but we're always happy to hear from you guys I just hope it's not that people can't get on because of the booters It's fascinating to me that we are having very different problems on the same setup. So who knows what else is going on? Tell you what, if you're not having a problem Leave us a review. goodood about just so we know you're out there And in my for me reach me, William at Appleard. com is always the best way. I think'm I think I'm up to date with the emails there, but then there's also my fiftyo keys on YouTube, which as we record this has just cost over fifteen thousand subscribers. So nice up inside of it. Thankk you It means a lot. fifteen thousand of us writers gasing a way But now I should say Appin insspider Plus is of course about more heavy going arguments over Si AI. Wait till you hear. It's not an argument. It's fine. Oh wait ttill you hear the bacon n. Am I overselling that one? Let's find out. That's an App inssider Plus the moment. if you're a subscriber. and if you're not, well then of course It would be such a treat to have you and you can subscribe instantly through Apple podcasts, Connect or through Patreon. But that's up inside a plus. For now, let me just say it Wes, good talking to you. Thankks for all of this. Thank you very much too to our sponsors, Clean My Mac and Nord Steller and we will be back with more Beet' allowing This time next week Tockin