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The MacRumors Show
The MacRumors Show
Final Thoughts on Foldable Tech
From 195: WWDC 2026 Promises Apple Intelligence and Siri Upgrades — May 22, 2026
195: WWDC 2026 Promises Apple Intelligence and Siri Upgrades — May 22, 2026 — starts at 0:00
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Enrollment requirements, monthly, and other limits and terms apply. The stubble's good. You think ? Yeah. It's rugged. Yeah, that's a good change sometimes. That's the term that people use to describe me, rugged. Welcome back to another episode of the Mac River Show. I am Dan. We have Hartley here as usual. And uh today we're just a couple of rugged guys getting ready to talk about uh about WWDC and all the other news that we had from Apple this week. But let's start with the main, which is WWDC 2026. Obviously, this is one of those weird Apple events where we kind of know uh in advance before the media invites officially go out, what's going to happen? And and for most Apple invites we kind of know already, but you know, we have to speculate on the date and and things like that. But uh with WWDC, Apple announces the schedule , we know the week that it's gonna happen. So it's pretty easy to say, you know, June 8th is gonna be the keynote, and it's usually at 10 a.m. Pacific. And so we got all of that confirmed. Media invites went out officially. Um, I will be in attendance, which is always great. We'll be able to see all this stuff firsthand. Um, and we're expecting iOS 27, iPad OS 27, etc. etc. Now, my favorite thing to do is look at the media invites and see if there's anything we can pick out. Unfortunately, this was the same exact graphic that they used for the initial like announcement. There was no is that I I guess I never looked back. Do they always do that or do they usually spice it up? I can't remember. No, I think they're usually pretty similar. I think the difference this year is that the design they're going for is quite understated. It's um very monochromatic. Um it focuses on a sort of glow. We did see uh an animation for the Swift icon, which uh is kind of reflective and and mirrored, which is a little different to what we've seen before. It looks a little bit like liquid glass , but um if it's sort of metallic, which is interesting and it makes you wonder if that's maybe what they're going to lean into with the new Siri animation. Yeah, I mean that's kind of the rumor and everybody's speculation is that this glow that we see, the the ring around it is the dynamic island, you know, that's been the the heavy rumor that Siri would live in the dynamic island. Um I I just I I mean, I'm kind of always hit or miss with these. I sometimes I just feel like it's just is what it is. It's the design that they went with. Doesn't always mean anything. I guess you can always tie it back though. But this one I I can see it. It's the glow, you know, I it makes sense if it's all gonna be about Siri and Siri is just kind of this glowing light around your phone, uh well then I guess it makes plenty of sense. But yeah, there's really not much to that you know, artwork. It's very I don't want to say boring, but it's very uh minimal. Very minimal. Understated . Understated is nice too. I like that. We haven't really talked a lot about the other betas, like what we can expect with iPad OS 27, Mac OS 27. There's really hasn't been a lot. I mean, it's all in on AI this year. Um I don't know that there's going to be a tremendous amount of space for those other features. And I imagine that the majority of what Apple unveils will be cross-platform. So one of the headline features that we'll get into here is uh the Siri app. Well, I don't think the Siri app is going to be exclusive to the iPhone. No. Um I think it's a near certainty that the Siri app is actually going to come to basically every dice every device, probably with the exception of the Apple TV and the Apple Watch. I'd I'd love a Siri app on the Apple TV., you You know're just sitting there and you need to how many arguments do you have like uh you know, not just you specifically, but people out there, you know, you're sitting and watching TV with your significant other and you're like, where do I know this person from? And like, you know, imagine being able to go down a rabbit hole of like, I don't know, film like filmographies uh and and stuff and being able to get all that information right then and there. You don't have to pull the second screen out. I don't know. That could be nice. You could have a little chat bot there. Um but yeah, probably not the Apple TV. What was the other one that you said? Watch OS? Can't imagine. Yeah, that would make sense. It's it's we we've got to be getting next generation Siri capabilities on all devices, certainly in the long run. But when it comes to the specific Siri app and this iMessage style interface, that is going to be on devices where you are going to actually be typing with a keyboard effectively. And I guess that includes Vision OS one way or another. Yeah, that makes sense. Um Home OS for a tabletop wall-mounted smart home hub may also appear at this uh announcement for all the other software. Do you think that we will see the official home OS? And also do we think that's really going to be the name, or is that just what they've been kind of internally calling it? Aaron Powell No, I I think it's highly likely. I mean we've been hearing rumors about Home OS for years and they're not just rumors actually. We've seen this in official Apple job listings, we've seen it in um lines of Apple's code. So whether they they finally do launch with that name or not, I don't know, but I think it would make sense. I mean, what else are they going to call that? Something that um runs across um this array of new smart home devices. It wouldn't actually surprise me if this is just what TV OS gets renamed. I think that would actually make rather a lot of sense to consolidate those platforms. And it's gonna make sense to show off that device and home OS at WW DC because it is supposed to be so focused on Apple Intelligence. Now there's no way that they're going to be shipping this at least until the fall if they do um if they do unveil this product. But it it isn't unusual for Apple to do things like that. I mean the original home pod was unveiled at WWDC and then shipped much later. And considering that this is a product that relies on Apple Intelligence so heavily, if the focus of this event is going to be Apple Int elligence, that kind of goes hand in hand. But we're not hearing rumors of that specifically, but it would make sense because this has been on the brink of launching for so long. Yeah, I I think because we haven't heard anything , I just don't know. I don't know if it's gonna happen. It would be cool. That would make for, you know, we we're not expecting to get hardware this year, I don't think, but like even just the unveiling of new hardware is exciting, even if it's not going to be ready yet. I mean, you mentioned the home pod Apple also did it with, you know, not really the same area, but with the Mac Pro and the uh Pro Display XDR. I believe that was in WWDC 2018, and then it came out later the end of the year uh in December. Was it eighteen or seventeen? I it was eighteen. It was nineteen. Nineteen. Ah, okay. Yeah, I got a That's right. 19, and then that was it. That was the last in-person WWDC, right? It never happened again. That's sad. I you know, I know we've talked about this, but I really I really need John to bring it back. That that would be that would be epic if he can bring back. It doesn't have to be for every event, but it should be for at least well, there's only only two events. I was gonna say WWDC and and the iPhone. Those are really the only ones that happen on a regular but like those micro events, like when they did the Mac Neo and stuff, that's fine. You can do like a media, you know, small in-person, and then just have like a video that goes out. I think that would be okay. But for like WWDC where you're showing demos and things that you know need to work, um, that should be in person. And I think uh I think um the iPhone should also be in person. And I'm not just saying like I know the media still goes to this, like we're gonna be there, but you should be live demoing these things. Yeah, it's it's not the same. And it's not we we're not just saying that from the perspective of people that work in the media. Um I mean the in-person events were actually before my time working at Mac rumas, and I considerably preferred watching those events because you could feel the energy of the crowd, you could hear crowd reactions, which was very sincere . And also you knew that these demos were live and things would not always go to plan. Um and Yeah, like when Steve Jobs had to tell everybody to turn off their Wi-Fi . And like things like that happened plenty over the years, which are they're entertaining, but also yeah it it's so much more compelling if you are showing off something that really works in real time. That impresses people. Whereas a pre-recorded video, you can never be sure how much of that is edited in post um and how much of that is actually ready as we have learned about Apple Intelligence specifically. Um whereas I don't think that that would have happened in the world of inerson-p events. And even the way that um speakers at those events, those events were not scripted. Very often the little ad libs that individual speakers would add would add a lot of personality . And I think that that's what's lacking. I don't know if they'll ever come back in quite the way that they used to be held, but I would like to see more of a hybrid format, at least sometimes, to inject a bit more energy and personal ity. Personality does not mean having cool music and drone shots and jokes about um jumping out of Craig Federiki's hair. Like that is character. I think that um certainly I at least I can only speak for myself in this regard, I'm a bit over that now. And I want sincerity and authenticity, um, which is something that I feel is become a bit lacking and things have become a bit sterile, even though Apple's become a bit more willing to poke fun at itself in a very safe unmanaged way, which isn't quite the same thing. I thought Craig was funnier during the live demos than him doing these pre-recorded videos, because then it just becomes too try hard. It's like, you know, we got it. You got good hair, dude. I get it. Like let's move on to a different joke. Um but I just thought they all had way more personality on stage, especially when things didn't go right. You know, you were right about that. It's like, okay, what is this how does this person react under pressure when you've got thousands of people watching you in person and potentially hundreds of thousands of people watching live online? Like, how do you get yourself out of this? How do you showcase that this isn't, you know, a failed product, but just stuff that happens? Um yeah, I just I go back to that Steve Jobs, like when the Wi-Fi wasn't working well in the place that they were at, he's just like, all right, everyone needs to close their laptops for a minute so that we can get this to work. Like, could you imagine that now? I cannot imagine that happening now. People I I don't even know if people actually did that. I don't remember. Did they even listen to him or were they just like, yeah, no, I'm not sure. No, I think so. You think they listen ? See, that's that's some power right there. Um so uh obviously you know WWDC 2026, it was official, but it's now confirmed June 8th, 10 a.m. Pacific. Uh then the rest of the conference runs from June eighth through the twelfth. So if you are a developer and you're lucky enough to have one, if you haven't checked yet, but I'm guessing by now you probably know, uh the in person lottery winners have been notified. So you should make sure you check your em ail. Um and uh yeah, if you're look take advantage of the developer, I mean we talk about this a lot, but take advantage of the developer um offers that Apple gives you with this because it is entirely free. And it used to cost like thousands of dollars, I think, to attend in person beforehand. And now, because of all this, one of the greatest impacts of COVID and going to this non-in-person is that uh you get this information for free. So if you're up and coming developer or even if you just are in the industry and you need to learn some new stuff, like take advantage of it. It is um free if you are a developer. So technically it's 99 bucks. You know, you kind of have to sign up for it. But then you get access to the betas, which by the way, will drop on uh June 8th after the event. You'll have all of the developer beta previews so you can try out the new Siri in theory if it's ready to go. Um, I will be doing videos, a bunch of them. Hartley will be writing articles, so stay locked in the Mac romers. And uh yeah, let's take a quick minute though, uh, before we jump into our next topic, uh, to hear from today's sponsor. I've been using Claude a lot lately in a way that honestly goes beyond just, you know, randomly asking AI questions. For Mac rumors, we're constantly juggling news coverage, podcast prep on my end, scripts for my videos, research, and just trying to stay on top of dozens of dozens of leaks and reports all happening at once on a daily basis. And what I found really useful about Claude is that it actually feels like a thinking partner instead of just a chat bot that's spitting out surface-level answers. A good example is when we're preparing for a big Apple event and we have WWDC coming up right around the corner. So I'll dump a bunch of reports, rumors, analyst notes, and my own thoughts into Claude and then ask it to help identify patterns or contradictions across everything. It's surprisingly good at connecting the dots and helping me think deeper about a topic instead of just giving me a quick summary. And honestly sometimes I'll tend to just ask it from my phone while I'm out and about and come back later to a find a full outline of research documents waiting for me on my Mac. 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Oh, I had a question and our host replied super quick. Premier move. Wish I had a premiere group chat. They won't even write me back. Book a top-rated stay with a premier host. If you know, give her bo. So, uh we mentioned WWDC obviously, the invites are official. It's a few weeks away. One of the things that Apple likes to do recently is um before the event, you start to see some official iOS 27 features uh be released. And it's usually in the accessibility area. We've seen this in years past. We get kind of some previews of new things that are going to be coming. And it's kind of cool to see. And unfortunately, they can't really spend a ton of time talking about this on stage. So you get a lot of the the stuff that's really cool but didn't quite make it. Um they get their own videos. And so uh we had an annual tradition of the you know Balls on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. And so we saw previews. And one of them will start with VoiceOver Image Explorer, which uses Apple intelligence to describe images, can uh scan your bills or personal records throughout the system. Just makes voiceover a lot more powerful , which is kind of cool to see. What were your thoughts on that, Harley? Well I think it's interesting, first of all, that almost all of these features are Apple intelligence power ed, which is good to see. Um finally adding some meat to the bone of Apple intelligence. And really in places where it it seems kind of obvious and particularly useful. So with Image Explorer, what this will do is it will describe what is actually on screen. Um so if you're a a user with low vision or vision issues, um then now your device can actually describe to you the the picture you were just sent on iMessage exactly what you're looking at . So that is a very powerful feature day-to-day for people who need that. Yeah, absolutely. There's a ton of honestly really good features for people who need this. Um, the app sh the action button can now prompt questions about what your camera sees. Basically it kind of seems like a lot of these features, especially the ones where you're looking at your camera, it's like what Google uses with Gemini where you're saying, hey, what am I looking at? And it gives you that. But specifically targeted for those who can't really see those things in real life, which is great. Um I I like a lot of these features and the fact that, you know, even Magnifier is getting Apple intelligence powered visual descriptions. I mean, like it's crazy. So now you can point your iPhone at what you're seeing and have that described to you. So if you're a blind user, that is incredibly powerful. You receive a document in the mail, you want to know what it is, you can point your iPhone at it and have it read back to you with a sort of vivid, detailed description. It's not just transcribing. I mean you can point it at anything and it will describe it for you. Do you think any of this kind of points to what we're expecting with Siri? Like do you think from a non-accessibility point of view, are we going to get some of these features? Some of it- some of it does. I mean, it's it's all related because the interesting thing about Apple's accessibility features is that very often people who um actually don't need those features tend to find them useful in one way or another, or there is some kind of crossover. So obviously image recognition is useful to all users. And um we've seen hints of this. Say like uh if you receive an image um and you have your AirPods in and you have announced notifications, then Siri can describe what that image is for you. So that is just one example of that sort of feature being particularly useful. Another one that stands out is voice control is getting a lot more powerful with natural language interactions. So previously, if you wanted to control your iPhone using voice only, that feature has existed for years. But you would have to be very precise about what exactly you were talking about. And there were labels for individual buttons on the screen and you would have to give um pretty much the exact names of what you were looking at. But with natural language, now users will be able to just speak freely and describe things as broadly as they can and the device should understand, which makes that an enormous amount more accessible. And that does relate to mainstream use of Apple Inellitgence because of course we are expecting it to get on-screen awareness. And there may be times like when you're driving with CarPlay or um when you're controlling a device from across the room where that kind of application does become particularly useful. Yeah, absolutely. And it makes me really excited for the Siri stuff, honestly. I know we've talked about it quite a bit. Um, but it's gonna be the big news for uh the foreseeable future because not only do we have a lot of speculation right now, but in a couple of weeks we're gonna have confirmation, which is really great. And then we'll have demos and things that we can talk about even further. And then a few months after that, it's gonna be coming to your phones. Fingers crossed, hopefully. Um, you know, there's some things that are potentially going to be delayed, which we'll talk about later in this episode that I'm not super thrilled about. Uh, but let's just jump back into the Siri aspect of it all because yes, we have a lot of these accessibility features are using Apple Intelligence. Um what part of that is going to be going into Siri? And I don't know when was the last time we've mentioned Siri on this podcast, but there's been quite a bit of new information coming out. Um I think we've mentioned that it is planning to be overhauled into a full chatbot to compete with ChatGPT Claude and Gemini. Somebody asked me why we don't use Grok in that uh like when when whenever we talk about you know chat GPT I use grok sometimes. I do use grok sometimes. Of Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. And I use them all for slightly different things. What do you use grok for? Because grok is plugged into X, so it can provide you with a lot more real-time information and what is trending in real time. Um and I also think that s occasionally you do hit walls with other chatbots about what they won't say. And because Grok is a lot more unfiltered, if you find that you're hitting those walls inadvertently, which does happen from time to time, um it can be useful to use something where it's just a little bit more hands-off. you use the Grok standalone app? Yes, I do. It's not a it's it's not often. It's probably my least used of those four. But there are occasions when I'm not getting a great response from ChatGPT. Um and if like if I want s an analysis of I don't know my journal or something and it's it's personal information, um I might hit those walls with Chat GPT, but um you would not hit those with Grog . And I also hear that for things like um uh for like personal therapy, which is a really big growing use that people use chatbots for, the Groc is quite useful for that because it's willing to discuss um those kinds of personal topics that sometimes ChatGPT and Gem and I get a little bit cautious of the Peter Yeah, I mean that I definitely know. So I've used um yeah grok could get kind of kind of freaky sometimes . I've seen some clips online, which you know, you're bringing up a very serious point. And and I do think it is good for that. But then there are some just wild things that I've seen online. Then I was curious, I'm like, this is this real ? And uh yeah, I mean I've tested it in my car. It's willing to just talk about whatever you want to talk about. Um I have never used the standalone app. I don't think I've ever used it aside from in my car, which it has potential . I don't think it always works super well, which is a little frustrating. But um I just don't know that I would ever use it. I'm gonna be honest with you. Aside from literally when I'm on X, I'm still gonna call it Twitter. When I'm on Twitter and because I'm too embarrassed to at grok and ask if it's true, uh, I know someone else will do it. And so I immediately read the comments and then just see if it's true, because nowadays I have to question everything on the internet. Um anyways, it it's Gasiri is supposed to be another one of these next in line. Uh hopefully. I don't know why I have such skepticism about it. I just I just don't like in my mind. Well, exactly Gemini. Even then, I'm like, mm, I don't know, man. Siri has never been anything close to what Google has put out and now what we have with OpenAI and with Anthropics Claude, which by the way, I have never used I'm a really bad AI person. I think I'm I think this is the most boomer thing I have about me is that um I just I use AI and I use it for very specific elements of my job. And I'll definitely use ChatGPT as like a another way to Google things and like organize stuff for me and stuff like that. But I don't really dive super into what you can do. There's a lot of really good stuff you can do. I just now hooked up Claude to my Mac to like use for things on my like have it control things on my Mac. I've you know, I've been using it before for the same way I use ChatGPT, getting information, having it generate images and stuff like that. I just now had it go through my downloads folder and organize stuff and like put it in folders and have it review for deletion and all that. I felt like such an old person being like, wow, this was great. What have I been doing my whole life? Like why haven't I even tried to do this before? Do you think Siri's gonna be at that level and be able to do all this? I would hope so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that one thing at a time, and that has got to be a basic chatbot first. I mean what we're seeing um in terms of actually integrating with the file system and it being able to do that destructively as well. Seems to be a preserve of clawed code and more recently of chat GPT's codecs. Um but I think the considering that Gemini is not quite that capable yet, and this series going to be based on Gemini, uh, it is going to be far more in the realms of conducting search and sort of synthesizing those results and being able to answer a far wider array of questions. And hopefully it's easy to forget in all of this, the basic functionality is also quite important. I really hope that it will work with the maps app better when I am driving. I hope that it will work better with controlling the smart home or adjusting settings. Things that I actually do try to use Siri for, and often to not a huge amount of success. But like the chatbot stuff, I'm not at all dismissing it. Like I want that. But I think where it makes the most sense is for you have this entire ecosystem, you have macOS, you have iPad OS, you have iOS, and T like the ability to be able to go in there and control things that are probably harder for basic users to go in and write a script for. Like I don't, I don't know how to do it. I don't have the patience to do that. I can probably figure it out, but I don't want to. And the fact that I can ask Claude, a third-party app, to get in there and do it for me, is great, but wouldn't that be something that I should just with natural language be able to tell Siri to do on your own platforms. I think that would be the goal first. Chatbots are great, but being able to make your life even easier with the devices that you're already using to me makes more sense than anything else. But one step . I think that that that will come. Um but I think ordinary users um only just discovering the utility of chatbots. And the power of having an app called Siri that comes preinstalled on your device is what will actually be useful to the vast majority of average users. And I mean I could see for example this replacing my use of Gemini . Um I don't know why I would necessarily need to have Siri powered by Gemini and Gemini on my device if Siri itself is plugged into more context. So that is that is progress. That would mean I have a a better sort of AI um selection of tools than I have today. Because undoubtedly this will be Apple's take on that. It is not just a reskinned version of Gemini . There will be unique integrations with first party apps. I mean, I'm I'm certainly expecting a lot from its integration with calendar, reminders, Apple Music, activity rings. I want to be able to really make any query about I want to be able to say, what did I discuss with this person yesterday over message? And for it to be able to summarise that answer quickly. Nothing else can do that right now. And that would be the unique place of um a Siri chatbot in the first instance. Yeah. And uh it'll be interesting to know what this app looks like or to see what this app looks like. And we have some idea or at least one. Um, and before we get into that though, let's take another short break to hear from another sponsor. Hey there, campers! It's Jan from Toyota. Time to pack your bags and buckle your seatbelts, because this summer we're headed to Camp Toyota. And the fun starts . Now we're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in, campers. We're going off-roading in a powerful new forerunner. Next, we're taking RAV4 to go fly fishing. 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Together, we're more So one of the rumors that we saw, and honestly, I did you see the like patent from years ago about Siri kind of looking like it's supposed to look like a messages, basically an iMess iMessage style chat bubble app, you know? Um and there was a patent years ago that pretty much outlines the exact same thing that we're expecting . So that's kind of cool that I I don't remember how many years ago, but I feel like it was nearly 10 plus, right? Or was it when first Siri came out? I don't know if it was that far back, but I'm not sure, but it it makes sense because iMessage is such an iconic, well receiv ed app and its design is so familiar. Um I think that it's very easy for users to be able to engage with that because of its familiarity. I think it's it's the obvious place to start but we've had some other details here. Um some of them relate to Siri actually moving to the dynamic island , which to me makes perfect sense because that way it's always kind of up there and it can expand from the dynamic island over the content that you are looking at. And then you can go apparently and tap into that and pull it down to get a more more complete selection of results and also the actual the chat feed. And the actual Siri app itself will store all of these chats pretty similar to any other chatbot app. But one of the sort of unique points that we've heard about just last week was that um Apple is apparently going to really tout the ability to have these chats auto expire. And I imagine that will be on by default that after a month, these chats will automatically delete. And you can turn that off. But as a security and privacy feature, I think Apple wants to say, well, Google and ChatGPT might be harvesting all of your data from your chats and keep these things forever. But we are Apple and we don't need to do that. Um and we are more secure and more private. So while we'll use your most recent chats to provide you with memory on context. We don't need to be looking at what you were looking at six months ago, so we're just going to have that to delete by default Yeah, but I don't know. I like the ability of having it go back I like it. So like how does it store how does it store can it store maybe memory of it, but not like the actual conversations itself? Like if I tell it that I was recently diagnosed with I don't know something and that was six months ago. And that that chat was deleted, but then I'm like, hey, I just got a new test result. What is that? You know, just I don't know if you can even do this, but just from that perspective, like how I would use ChatGPT and go back that far, that would be helpful. I don't want to have to teach it again, like, hey, this is what I have got a user configurable setting. And I think Apple is kind of ultimately grasping at straws here to come up with some points of differentiation from its competitors. And this is one that I think that they will they will have this in pretty big letters in the iOS twenty-seven preview on the Apple website and these chats are auto-expiring unlike every other AI chatbot app . So uh we're expecting it in the dynamic island. We're expecting it to trigger a like search or ask prompt with the glowing cursor. Um, and then translucent cards. That's an interesting design choice. Um, you know , I'm guessing if you interact with the card, you'll be able to see the full kind of ordeal going on ? Yes, I would imagine so. I mean, I think that it actually it's not really surprising because Apple's playing catch up here, but a huge amount of this does not seem all that dissimilar to what other competitors um are offering. I think that one other interesting aspect is that apparently this app will actually still launch in beta in September. Yeah. Um it will still be considered a beta. So I do wonder how far things like this are going to be in beta one immediately after the keynote. I actually would not be surprised if the Siri app itself was not there . Maybe there'll be the other Apple Intelligence features and we don't get that till beta two or beta three. But I I'm a little bit like you where I feel like we've been gas-lit for so many years. Um we've had so much kind of um trauma from this delay that we just don't believe that it's ever going to happen. Well here's the thing though. You I don't know that you can't like not include it in some way, shape. If it's in beta, that's fine, but like if it's replacing spotlig ht search and then like the end game is like if you but those features might be there. It may just be the individual app that is not initially present. I mean we we don't know. So it'll still power it'll still power the this new spotlight because it's supposed to be like a whole new thing when you swipe down from the middle. But like if I need to get into something that should offer that, right? You might not be able to go and check that in the in the Siri app and that's fine, I guess, but I don't know Yeah, I agree. Um I think that uh it's going to be very interesting to see how immediate this rollout is because the rumor is if this still launches in beta, it's definitely not going to be totally ready by September. Um and with these other features you've mentioned, with some of the capabilities of clawed code, um clawed co-work, um there's no way that Apple's going to be able to do things like that out of the gate. So it then even makes I know we're only looking at WWDC this year, but it does make one wonder about well, where will we become iOS twenty eight next year? And will we will then once Apple's had a bit of footing and time to iterate on these features, will there be serious catch up going on ? It'll be interesting to see. All we know though, it's uh powered by Google Gemini and Apple probably won't talk about that. Or they will? Will they mention it once? Or are they legally allowed not to? That's crazy. I mean they may say, oh, you know, uh the new Siri app is powered by Apple's amazing foundation models and all of the uh all of the power of Google Gemini. And there will be some throwaway line. But I can't even think about it'll never be talked about again. That's interesting because I think Google did confirm that this was happening, but Apple never did, correct? No, Apple did, yeah. Oh okay. Both Apple didn't remember which ways made separate announcements . Okay. Then I feel like that's it. I feel like Apple will never talk about it again. They're like, we did our job. We're not we're not gonna mention that. But maybe they will. Who knows? It'll be interesting to see. Um all right. One last thing that we need to talk about. Speaking of potential delays, the iPhone Ultra, iPhone Fold, whatever you want to call it. We're seeing some things out there. Now it is coming from uh, you know, Weeber Weeb Weeber. Weebo Leaker, instant digital, who uh has, you know, a track record of being right, but also sometimes it's not always correct. And uh basically saying that trial production has hit a serious problem and that here we go, the hinge is not up to par with Apple's uh quality control . That's a pretty important part of the fold , I would imagine. So uh how does this make you feel? I'm fully expecting this to just now. If this is true , I don't think we're seeing it this year. But I hope it's an overreaction. I think we are going to see it. Um still good This explains some of the rumors we've heard about production difficulties and some amount of delay. But of course, a launch delay does not necessarily mean that it will be an announcement delay. This is a whole new iPhone, so Apple can very easily announce it and then not ship it for two months. And um Mark German did push back on the um Nikai reports that said that uh it would not launch till twenty twenty seven and ultimately I I trust Mark German. Um everything has been moving toward this fall twenty twenty six announcement and launch for so long that I would be shocked if that didn't happen . Um but what I would say is that if this is a quality control issue, that doesn't mean that that necessarily affects every unit. So um it may well just reduce supply even furt her. And some of the rumors that have been coming out also seem to, when you really dig into them, they don't as such say that the phone won't be available, but it says that Apple won't be shipping very many of them. And some people have interpreted that to mean well, they're not going to sell very many of them. And that's true. But that doesn't mean that it's not popular. It just means that it'll get dragged out. A little bit like the MacBook Neo, where there's very high demand and Apple can't make them fast enough. It is conceivable that this could be a very similar situation, that there'll be such tight supply of them when they launch, um, that they'll just be very difficult to get hold of. But it doesn't sound great, but it isn't surprising. Apple hasn't made a hinge like this before. It has no experience of doing that. It is for a device that needs to be incredibly durable. It's a completely new mechanical design , very unlike anything that they've done before. Um so it's not hugely surprising that they're having difficulty with this. I think there are also rumors about it being made of um liquid metal, um which is something that Apple's experimented with in the past. It's done sim ejector tools in that material, but it's never manufactured anything like this, if indeed it is made out of liquid metal. So there's a lot of firsts going on here. Um and I think it would not be hugely surprising if this is what is contributing to this delay. My current expectation would be that it still gets announced in September, but probably does not launch until October. And when it does launch, it is in very limited supply. But maybe that won't really matter considering that the starting price is going to be north of two thousand dollars anyway, which is going to put a loss of potential customers off . Yeah, I mean we have over two thousand, one report citing twenty five hundred, which is just insane. You're just you're making it DO A. Dead on arrival, right from then on. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot do that. Yeah. I mean, Apple will probably do that, but like if you want it to succeed, I don't think you should do that. Because again, it's Vision Pro. It's just all over again in my eyes. And I really hope it's not, but I just think you're you're pricing out people who would genuinely be will be willing to try this, but not for that price point. I think $17.99 is the sweet sp ot. It's not going to be that much. Maybe the next generation will. We have to remember that um Samsung's first gen was two thousand dollars, I believe. So uh, you know and it's still two thousand dollars today. Yeah, but at one point it did hit $1799. And the Samsung is very, very good with uh d deals and discounts almost immediately. Like if you in some way, shape, or form, you will save at least like $300 just right off the bat. They're very good at incentivizing. And then, you know, you do have carrier deals that'll happen. And so you you won't likely be paying that full price just depending on how you pick it up . But yeah, I mean I'm expecting this to be one of those if you're not online at eight eight a.m. Eastern to to pre-order, if you think you could just roll out of bed at you know two hours past due and be able to order it for launch day, you're gonna be sadly mistaken. But um I l will reserve my doom and gloom and I will stay in the sense that I agree with you, and I think it will most likely be like that, considering that that's kind of the reports that we've heard for the last few months, anyways. But I'm a little nervous. I mean, if Apple's trying to do liquid metal and use things that's never been done before, a dual-layer ultra-thin glass to minimize the crease, which if you asked me last year I would have said, well wait a minute. I thought this was supposed to be crease free. Now we're minimizing the crease. I still feel like we got duped by this whole thing and I'm really upset about this. I want this to be crease free. What is the point? This is this just like every other foldable then. What's the point? I feel I feel like every single time we now mention the iPhone Ultra, it actually sends you into a staze of pure rage every time. I am very upset about that. Because I've wanted a foldable for so long. I've just I've been using them for seven years now with Samsung. And I'm the only thing that I sit there thinking, and this is no disrespect to Samsung, it just doesn't run iOS. It doesn't fit into my ecosystem and what I use on a daily bas is. And if I'm gonna make the switch , I I need it, I don't know. I just I'm not going to make the switch, and I'm not doing that right now. So
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