What to Expect at Apple’s iPhone 17 Event, Tech Influencers vs Journalists, iOS 26 on Daily Driver

Stephen Robles

Those aren't mountains. They're waves. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We have an official iPhone event happening on September 9. We're gonna go through what to expect and some updates to iOS 26, their invites app.

I'm running the beta on my main iPhone. OpenAI has several lawsuits. Nothing Phone three got caught using professional photos trying to pass them off as their phone, and we're gonna talk a little bit about charging in our personal tech segment. This episode is brought to you exclusively by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your host, Steven Rogles, and joining me on his birthday, which I just discovered before we started recording, Jason Aiten, happy birthday.

Jason Aten

Thanks. Also known as the day your Facebook notifications blow up with messages from people that you haven't talked to in twenty five years.

Stephen Robles

I always thought it was funny that the like, eventually, Facebook started compressing all the happy birthday messages into, like, you have 83 happy birthday messages. Like, you would have to click in to actually read each one now.

Jason Aten

But you don't actually have to click in to read each one because, literally, they're just the auto reply things. It's like, wish Jason a happy birthday, and there's two choices, and no one actually types you a message except for maybe your mother. But she sends it in a text message. So

Stephen Robles

Do you do you follow Hank and John Green?

Jason Aten

I mean, I know who they are.

Stephen Robles

So apparently it was Hank Green's birthday recently, and he made a video about the text message that his brother it was John Green's birthday. He sent him he talked about in a video the message that Hank sent him on his birthday, which came in at like ten something PM, and all it said was happy birthday with two exclamation points. And so it was funny, two, because he talked about how it should be more verbose than that. But then he looked at his text message to Hank on his birthday, he sent the exact same thing. Happy birthday to us, Asia Points.

But he also said, and this is what really got me, CGP Grey remembered to text John Green on his birthday. And I was like, that's a name drop for me right there. CGP Grey.

Jason Aten

Yeah. But I mean, Hank and John Green. Yeah. They're pretty big.

Stephen Robles

I mean, they're bigger than CGP Grey.

Jason Aten

Right.

Stephen Robles

And I guess name drop, I still don't know what CGP Grey's real name is. But anyway, happy birthday. Spunks, thanks for doing this on your birthday.

Jason Aten

Of course. I mean, we didn't we've rescheduled for a lot of things, but this I mean, there's no one at my house. So there's nothing that I already opened the presents, had a cup of coffee, and got every all I wanted for my birthday is for everyone to leave. Go to school.

Stephen Robles

Like your your family.

Jason Aten

Go to school.

Stephen Robles

Yes. Just let The podcast was finished because Yeah. All of you,

Jason Aten

we're glad you're here.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. Everybody else get out of here. That's that's hilarious. Well, we have a exciting show because, Apple sent out invites to their official event. They don't say it's the iPhone event, but it's the iPhone event, September 9, and we're gonna get all into that.

But we had some other things I wanted to mention. Number one, every September, relay.fm, the network with Mike Hurley, they do the Relay for St. Jude and Stephen Hackett, and they've been doing it for years. They've raised literally millions of dollars for St. Jude.

And last year, we joined on. You can, like, piggyback onto their St. Jude campaign. And so we have a primary tech and relay for Saint Jude fundraiser. And I just wanna throw it out that last year, you guys raised over a thousand dollars just from primary tech, which is amazing.

And so we have a new campaign for this year. It goes all through September. I set a goal. This is a reach goal, $5,000. So that's five x what we did last year.

But, I mean, if every listener gives at least $2, we would blow past that goal. And so I feel like that's you know, we can we can do it. I've already done my donation. You could see it down there in the live donations feed. And so I don't know who CoinDaddy is.

I I don't imagine that's

Jason Aten

It is not me. I'm just now seeing this, link, so I'm gonna have to

Stephen Robles

I know.

Jason Aten

Also do a donation.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. I don't know what, CoinDaddy is, but anyway, I'm down there. So that's gonna be the top link in the show notes for the next several weeks. We would love if you would, support St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital for cancer research.

They help cover, like, flights and meals and basically cancer treatment for children, hopefully, at no cost or very little cost to families. And so it's an amazing cause. And so we we enjoy being a part of it too. So that link will be in the top of the show notes. And another fun thing, trying this thing here.

I met someone at Podcast Movement last week when I was recording, and they have a service called Podgaugement. But one of the features is you can, send out a link where listeners and viewers of the podcast can send you a message or send us a message either written or recorded. And there's lots of ways we could have done this. I mean, we could use Dropbox or whatever, but this this system is actually pretty slick. And so I'm gonna put this link in the show notes.

Let us know what you are excited for or what you're hoping to see at the iPhone seventeen event in a couple weeks. You can go to this link. You can record a message. You have to allow them an access. And then, you can record a little thing.

Send us your name. Give us your email. You can just put your name and your message. And then when, maybe we can play some sound bites on the next show. And so we'd love to actually hear literally hear from you.

What are you excited about for the iPhone event? That link will be in the show notes and reach out. Send us a message. I thought that'd be, thought that'd be fun. So anyway

Jason Aten

It'll be great.

Stephen Robles

There's that.

Jason Aten

I'm I'm I'm looking forward to Steven listening to these.

Stephen Robles

I'm gonna I'm gonna play I'll play the best ones on the show on the show. A couple five star review shout outs, J David Hunter from The USA and Ralph Owens from Houston, Texas, Edward's go to tech podcast. Thank you for that. And had a couple follow ups because we talked about deleting messages. Was it last week or two weeks ago?

Jason Aten

I think it was last week where I asked you why you don't delete your messages.

Stephen Robles

So we had some interesting feedback, and if you didn't hear last week's episode, it was the settings in iCloud messages. You can have your messages auto delete after a month, I believe, or you can keep them forever, or maybe it's after a year. I forget what the setting is. I keep mine on forever. And then I met some people at Podcast Movement, and we got some listener feedback.

One, Justin Jackson, who is the founder or cofounder of transistor.fm, where we host our podcast. Justin is the second from the left guy over here with the with the hair. That's how I'll describe him. With the hair. Good hair.

But he said so he's from Canada, and he travels into The States very often for different conferences and events. And when he crosses the border going from Canada to The United States, the security, especially around mobile devices, has changed in recent years. And he said it is not uncommon for the TSA to ask you to unlock your phone, and then they will literally take it and not just not like go through it, like flip around and see what's on your phone, but literally like image it. He said he has had his phone connected with a cable, and the TSA or whatever will download the information from his phone. And sometimes if you want to fight that, you basically are stuck there in security for a long time, unless you just let let them do it.

So he has his messages delete every thirty days and has even considered getting a second device for travel because he's so often going between Canada and The United States. And so that was a use case I had not thought of. And so that was interesting. I'm curious. We have lots of international listeners, in Europe and all other countries in The UK.

I'm curious if you guys have experienced that, if you've ever flown into The US, gone through security, and they require you to unlock your phone, especially if it's happened recently. So reach out. Let us know. I'd I'd be curious. You can use that same link to send us a little, text type message.

But also listener David, he sent us a screenshot, deletes all messages every day. Inbox zero for messages. And I was like, that that's a strategy. That is a I don't I wouldn't wanna do that though.

Jason Aten

Well, and the question that I asked Steven last week was really more about the attachments to messages

Stephen Robles

Sure.

Jason Aten

Because of the amount of space that they take up. Sure. And here's this is actually interesting because if you delete your messages, it's still not clear to me what that means. Does that just mean I've removed them from my phone or are they removed also from iCloud? Or do you so, like, I think if you delete an attachment from your phone, I think it still exists on iCloud and you could because here's the so think about it like this.

If I text you a photo right now, Steven, it appears in the messages, but I could also download that photo to my device.

Stephen Robles

If you do that

Jason Aten

notifications to photo. Yeah. And then it saves it to photos. Right. And then if I were to just delete all of the I would obviously still have it in photos.

But, also, like, is it still an iCloud that I could read like, would it read? It's just not entirely clear to me what's happening with messages because an email if I delete an email, an email's gone.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. I don't think if you delete again, you send me a text message and then I delete our entire conversation, I don't think or if I delete just that attachment, I don't think that there's a way to retrieve that in the message specifically. If I saved it to my photos app, it's there and it's saved and it's in my iCloud photos. But I think if it's deleted from the message conversation, it's it's gone. And

Jason Aten

But if you just delete the conversation, nothing is gone because the second I send you another text message, the whole conversation appears again.

Stephen Robles

I don't know if that's

Jason Aten

because I have the whole thing.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. But I don't think the attachments come back. Like, I don't think photos that you sent me a year ago are gonna be available there. But I don't know.

Jason Aten

That's if anyone It's all just it's a little bit nebulous for me. I'm a little bit confused about what's happening here.

Stephen Robles

If we maybe we could ask Apple or if someone from Apple is listening. What what

Jason Aten

That would be a good idea, actually. What actually happens? I'm actually gonna talk to Apple today. I'm gonna see if I can work that question in.

Stephen Robles

Oh, interesting. Okay. Is it about maybe the biggest Apple announcement that's happened in the last week, which is Apple invites now has widgets?

Jason Aten

I really hope not.

Stephen Robles

That was was a tongue in cheek moment. But, yeah, Apple invites, it got widgets. Just wanna throw that out there as a joke.

Jason Aten

Speaking of messages, I dropped this in there because we didn't talk about it, but I just added a link to the bottom of our list. But did you know see that the if you now live in the well, not if you now. If you live in The UK, The UK has now dropped its requirement for Apple to give them access to encrypted iCloud.

Stephen Robles

They dropped

Jason Aten

chance to see that. Yeah. They've The UK will no longer force Apple to provide a backdoor access. Because if you if you remember, The UK passed this law of the Snoops law or something like that that allows them to require tech companies that operate within The UK to provide access to data worldwide. Right.

And Apple so Apple turned off advanced data protection in The UK and told users in The UK that if you don't do something, I don't know, turn around three times and spit or something, your entire iCloud was gonna get deleted or some you know, I can't remember exactly what they told them. Right. But now they have actually The UK has dropped that. And the funny thing about the whole thing, you know, we were talking about this, but it was also illegal to even say Right. Not for us, for for, like, Apple to even say that this that they've been given this notice.

And so so now your messages, you can encrypt them in in The UK. Whether you want to delete them every day or not, that's, I guess, totally up to you.

Stephen Robles

And so if you're in The UK, technically you should be able to turn on advanced data protection now.

Jason Aten

Yeah. I was listening to, I think, upgrade and and that ability had not yet rolled back out, but, yeah.

Stephen Robles

So Okay. Alright. Well, let's talk about the Apple invites. Actually, one other thing. We have a listener whose spouse works for PopSocket, and I just wanna say they sent me a little package here, I just wanna shout out because I didn't realize PopSockets went super hard with Star Wars stuff.

Not not just that, but this is a MagSafe battery with a PopSocket. A Death Star PopSocket. Look at that. Death Star PopSocket. They have MagSafe wallets now with a PopSocket.

This is not sponsored. I just this was I thought this was cool. And you can even get, like, a Darth Vader head as a PopSocket.

Jason Aten

PopSocket? Wow.

Stephen Robles

Although, I don't know if that was

Jason Aten

Are you a PopSocket person?

Stephen Robles

No. But my wife is. She's all about the PopSocket. So, anyway, I thought that was cool. So thank you to who sent that.

And, yeah, PopSockets go hard with Star Wars stuff. Just throwing that out there. You might also wanna get a PopSocket for your new iPhone 17, which comes out in well, announces in two weeks. We're two weeks away. A little less than two weeks from the Apple event.

They announced it, sent invites out to some people. We didn't I didn't get an in person invite. And I and I I don't know if you're coming.

Jason Aten

They don't send a lot of in person invites out for the Apple I mean, for the iPhone event because it's in the Steve Jobs Theater. It's limited capacity.

Stephen Robles

Right. The inside baseball is WWDC. It's held outside. They can invite way more people. It's just an e a quote, unquote easier invite to get.

Like, just more people are invited to WWDC as opposed to the iPhone event.

Jason Aten

Also, though, the scale of importance to Apple of the things that get announced at WWDC is zero compared to the iPhone event. Like, they could literally not do WWDC, not release new software, and we would care a lot. Right. But the general public would care zero.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

But if they didn't release an iPhone, like

Stephen Robles

That'd be

Jason Aten

a problem. IPhone is the single most important consumer tech product in the world.

Stephen Robles

Listen. Are you telling me that Apple's iPhone release is more important than the shortcuts update in Iowa?

Jason Aten

Steven, I'm telling you that Apple's iPhone update is more important than the birth of your first child. That's Yes. It is it is a monument. No. But and so most of the people who are invited to the I I've been to a couple iPhone events.

Yes. But most of the people who get invited to them at this point are the, like, highest profiled journalists. Right? So you'll see the verge there and in gadget and all of them and that kind stuff. The high profile, like, MKBHD, iJustine level YouTubers.

And then it and then a lot of international press, like a lot of international press. And then, like, people, I don't have a clue who they are, but they're famous on TikTok.

Stephen Robles

So that last part. So I'm very happy for a number of people. There there are YouTubers in, like, the two to 300,000 subscriber range. NBT Jacqueline Byte Review. Tom at Byte Review got his first invite to an iPhone event ever, so happy for him.

He's a YouTuber mainly. But I did see a lot of TikTokers specifically that I also follow on Instagram get an invite to the iPhone event. And I do I do wonder, before we get into, like, what to expect in the devices or whatever, as Apple is looking for market share and reaching new audiences, I feel like it probably makes sense that they want the TikTok audience paying attention. And those would be the people to invite if you want to reach, like, people that are teenagers or young twenties, even if they're not the ones making the buying decisions just to, like, take up the mind space of younger people and be on the news. I don't know.

Does that I mean, it makes sense, right? That's a stretch.

Jason Aten

Yeah. But I think there's another piece of it that makes a lot of sense. And during our pre show, mentioned there was the recent episode of the talk show, friend of the show, John Gruber That's right. Had Matt Panzarino, who was the former editor in chief of TechCrunch. They were talking about this very thing.

And I think I think they made a good point, which is people who developed a massive audience on TikTok but are have never had any who who have never had any experience working in, like, a journalism job have a very different, like, mindset when they attend these things.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

And, like, the idea for them is it just gives them credibility with their audience that they're even there. They're not necessarily there to review the products. Apple's not reaching out to these people to, like, give a review of a product. It's just creating buzz. And those those individuals are often, and I don't mean this to be because I can't don't I'm not on TikTok.

So I'm not this is not directed at any individuals.

Stephen Robles

Sure.

Jason Aten

Like, don't even know who they are. So I'm not and I don't mean that to be rude. I just whatever. TikTok, I'm too old for TikTok. It's my birthday.

Stephen Robles

It's your birthday.

Jason Aten

I'm giving up TikTok for my birthday. But, anyway, like, they tend to be a more favorable audience, and they're spreading that message. They're not going to try to see how hard they can bend the phone. They're not going to point out all the flaws of liquid glass. They're not like they're gonna their whole thing is like, look at me.

I'm at the iPhone event and here's a bunch of iPhones and over there's Tim Cook and let me go get a selfie kind of a thing as opposed to did anybody notice that the iPhone 17 air, like, scratches super easy? Like Right. Do you know I

Stephen Robles

don't know. Looking for that. Yeah. It's and I think so last week, I didn't get to watch the Made by Google event, before talking about it. I've just read articles.

And so I've now, since last week's episode, seen clips of Jimmy Fallon. And and I wish The Fallon

Jason Aten

the Fallon debacle?

Stephen Robles

I wish I wish I don't wanna discuss it at length here, but I wish I had watched it last week till we could talk about it because it it was super it did feel super weird. And like seeing him hold a Pixel Fold upside down excitedly was kind of hilarious. Like clearly

Jason Aten

But in his defense, the screen would have been it would have rotated.

Stephen Robles

It would have rotated. I know.

Jason Aten

So he would not have known.

Stephen Robles

I know. But it's also like, I mean, Jimmy Fallon is not a tech person, and it's clear, and and Gruber and Panzarino talk about this. Like, Google has really leaned more into the celebrity sales factor of their devices. And Andrew Edwards, the YouTube creator who was at the Made by Google event, said that Google had an applause sign that they would light up. And it's like, first of all, if Apple ever did that, I would be like, alright, guys.

We've crossed the Rubicon here. It's too far. But, also, like you're saying, the people who are I will say traditional journalists who are working for even I I will put the verge in that category, but also, like, The New York Times, like, Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal, likely gonna be at the iPhone event. They are there as journalists to see, like, what is the story, not what is the hype. And that is not a shade to any TikTok or Instagram creator because while they are great at communicating the hype and the excitement, many of them also do great work after the fact doing videos about details and tips and how tos and things like that.

But they are not held responsible by, like, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Verge to then give it a rating and review later. You know what I mean? Like, The Verge is gonna put a number on the iPhone 17 Air. It's gonna have a pros and cons list, and that's just not something you would expect and even maybe want to see from your favorite TikTok creator. You just wanna see what are the, you know, the device and and is it exciting?

So I get like, I personally don't fit into either category. And even as I was listening I don't know. I I thought about texting. But I was like, I'm curious how people like Gruber, Panzarino, or you know, traditional journalists would view my content specifically. Because I don't think of myself as an influencer, but I also understand I'm not a journalist.

And I don't know, like, where on the spectrum I would land, honestly. And you know what I mean? And and you you write for inc.com, which I'll I'll be curious how you would think of yourself. But I would put you more in the journalist category than, obviously, influencer. I mean, would you

Jason Aten

I have no influence.

Stephen Robles

I'm not an influencer. Sure. Right. And there's also this weird dichotomy of like, I don't know if anyone whose writing is the primary medium for their communication would be put in the influencer category. Like, I don't know of any writer influencers.

You know what I mean?

Jason Aten

Well and I think that I would say an influencer, that is a person who is able to, quote, influence an audience simply because of who that they who they are, not because of the substance of what they create. And that doesn't mean that they don't create things of substance, but it just means that their their audience is based entirely on whereas someone like Joanna Stern influences a whole lot of people's buying decisions.

Stephen Robles

For sure.

Jason Aten

But it is and she's very, very good at what she does, but it is because of the platform she's, which is The Wall Street Journal. Right? Now Right. Joanna Stern could go somewhere else. She could even go out on her own, and then maybe she would be more of an influencer because of her own personality or whatever.

Right. But I think there is a difference. I think for like, I've said this many times. There are a lot of people who read my articles and recognize my byline, but would have literally no idea. Like, I remember I I've told this story before, maybe not on the podcast, but there was a time when I was sitting down to interview a CEO of a very like, a company you would recognize.

Not a tech company, but a company you'd recognize. And they were wearing their Apple Watch, and they were wearing it with the crown pointed on the inside. And and I wrote I've written it a couple times, but one of the still most read articles I've ever written is you're wearing your Apple Watch upside down. I mean, you should be wearing your Apple Watch upside down because on the not on the Apple Watch Ultra, it's weird. You can't do it.

But on the other Apple the series Apple Watches, I always did that because I found that I was always activating the voice assistant before changing the volume Yeah.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten

With this. So I wrote this article. I noticed that the CEO was wearing his watch that way. Was like, oh, look. I do that too.

He's like, yeah. I read this article one time, and it was talking about how you should do it. So I tried it. I was like, oh, yeah. I wrote that article.

He's like, no. No. I don't think he literally had it saved because apparently he'd shared it with some people. Wow. And and I was like, oh, yeah.

You did write that. But, like, the point was we could have had the entire He would have never known that. Right? And so, like, that I'm definitely not an influencer. I also am not a like, I'm a columnist, so I'm not just reporting things.

I have to have a take and an angle. So in that sense

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

The things that I'm going to cover and write about are different than just Apple introduces for phones. Here's the specs. Right? It's more like, here's how they did it or here's why it matters. Or I usually try to just pick, I remember one year when the Altra came out.

I'm pretty sure the whole I wrote an entire article just about the orange button because it's like, you now have an action button on your watch, which is amazing. So yeah.

Stephen Robles

When I and I will also say because I met a lot When I was at WWDC, I've met some of the TikTokers that I personally follow and really admire their work. They're awesome people, and they are tech minded, at least the ones that I met that were there. And I think that you can make both kinds of content. Like, when I so I have the iPhone 16 e here. It's been the one iPhone review unit.

Hopefully, I get more iPhone review units in a couple weeks. But, like, when I went to pick this up, I did a little video about, oh, shoot. The USB C port inside iPhones are color matched to the phone. Did you know that? I didn't know that.

Yes. Okay. Well, I didn't know that. So I made a little video about that. That felt very much like an influencer piece of content.

Like, that was not maybe a journalist piece of content. But just the other day, I was testing a new charger, which we'll get to in the in the personal tech segment. And I was, like, testing how fast it charged my 16 Pro Max. I tested how fast it charged an iPhone 14. I tested with cooling on and cooling off.

And in that moment, I felt I was more in the journalist category because I'm, like, I'm testing, I'm researching, and I'm going to provide my findings to viewers on YouTube. And so I do feel like no category should be all encompassing. I think people can do different kinds of content, and it's just it seems like the people, like, who are invited to the iPhone event, at least the ones I saw, many of them, like you're saying, are in those two categories, the top journalists in their field for major publications and TikTok influencers who are great at that in the moment content. And I'm a 100% sure that's what Apple wants. Apple wants a bunch of people posting the iPhone 17 Air in all the different colors in excited ways in that big hands on area and just flood social media on the day of the event.

And that's why they invite who they invite.

Jason Aten

Yeah. And I think though what you do in general and what a lot of YouTube creators do are almost more like like, I always think of what I do as actually closer to, like, blogging because I'm, yeah, I'm an opinion writer. Like, I have an opinion about a thing that's interesting to me, and so I write something about it. And I have to keep in mind a specific type of audience. But in that way, it's not it's more similar to, for example, what Gruber does at during fireball.

Mhmm. Except for he can post, like, four words. I'm not allowed to just post four words. I have to write an actual article about that. So I'm super jealous sometimes that he can just post a link in a couple of words.

Stephen Robles

He says this is great.

Jason Aten

I have to have an actual article about it. But, anyway and so what you do is sim more similar to that. You have an opinion. You're more like a columnist whose platform is video. Right?

And I think that that a lot of YouTubers are like that. When I think of an influencer, what I think about is, like, whole point of inviting influencers, purely influencers, and I'm not again, I'm not thinking of anyone in particular, is their video content is going to be, hey. Look at me. I'm at the iPhone event. Look at how cool it is, and look how cool I am.

Not let's dig into the orange button on the watch.

Stephen Robles

Right. And none of them are running a shortcut. I'll just say that.

Jason Aten

Right.

Stephen Robles

But that's great because that's my job after the fact. I'm gonna do all the

Jason Aten

shortcuts stuff. Leave some space for Steven.

Stephen Robles

That's it. Just leave me some shortcuts. That's all. And some charging stuff. Alright.

What can we what can we expect? So the event on September 9, the iPhone 17 lineup, pretty much, it's a sure thing. From all the models and cases, it really looks like the iPhone 17, the 17 plus will go away and make way for the 17 Air, a new body style that's ultra thin, and then the 17 Pro and Pro Max. I feel pretty confident in the body style that we've seen from the models, which I really don't know how I feel about. And to remind everyone, I do even have, like, the supposed case of the iPhone 17 Pro with that big old camera bar.

I don't know how I don't know how I'm gonna feel about this, Jason. I feel

Jason Aten

like weird. Well, I feel like I feel terrible about it. It makes me sick to my stomach. And then I think about it logically and I realized that the I mean, honestly, like, this case looks weird just by itself.

Stephen Robles

Sure.

Jason Aten

But then you put it on the phone and it makes sense. I think the phone will look weird by itself. I think the case will look weird by itself. I think that if you put the two together, it'll be fine.

Stephen Robles

It's like, chocolate and peanut butter. Who would have thought?

Jason Aten

It's definitely not chocolate and peanut butter. It is way worse than that. But

Stephen Robles

Well, this is, again

Jason Aten

It's like sodium and chlorine. They're both toxic, but you combine them and it's table salt.

Stephen Robles

Ah, okay. Well, that's good. That's a little chemistry. This is another look at it. It just looks like there's so much, like, open space.

You know what mean? There's, like, there's, a no man's land between the camera lenses and the flash and LIDAR sensor.

Jason Aten

I don't okay. Looking we're looking at a photo if you're not watching this on YouTube, and this is on nine to five Mac, and it's showing, like, a rendering, I guess, of the what the phone pro reportedly will look like.

Stephen Robles

This is a chapter artwork.

Jason Aten

So this doesn't actually make sense to me. This only makes sense to me if they somehow move because isn't it like spatial video? Like, they've it only makes sense if our spatial photos and video, like, if they move two of the cameras farther apart so they can get a better Spatial. Spatial recording and stuff. Like, it I don't understand why if all they're doing is moving the flash in the microphone and the LiDAR sensor over there, what are we gaining other than the minion case?

Stephen Robles

Minion case. It does look like the flash and LiDAR sensor are literally running away from the lenses. That's the visceral reaction I get.

Jason Aten

But I don't know what we gained. Like, what more do we get from moving them over there?

Stephen Robles

Wouldn't it be

Jason Aten

I mean, there's nothing.

Stephen Robles

Wouldn't it be wild if all of these renders and models are tricking everybody and Apple puts the three lenses just in a row? It's just tic tac toe right in a row.

Jason Aten

Oh, that would make some people mad.

Stephen Robles

I don't know how I would feel about that. Or anyway, well, we're gonna see. We're gonna see in two weeks. But the rumors supposedly we don't talk about rumors a lot, but we're pretty close to the event. And so if you wanna know what to expect, the camera bar redesign is going to be a big change.

Aluminum might replace titanium as the metal of choice, which also means new colors, including an orange, dark blue, black, and silver. What color would you go for if those are

Jason Aten

the colors? Silver.

Stephen Robles

I might go silver this year also. I'm not gonna do an orange phone. Know this

Jason Aten

did the titanium last time because I want the Yeah. Most neutral phone that there is.

Stephen Robles

I I don't regret doing the desert titanium, but I kinda wish I had a I never did the natural titanium because I did the the dark blue for the 15 Pro Max, and then I did the desert for the 16 Pro Max. I never got a natural. But anyway, so

Jason Aten

So do you think I'm hopeful that the because the one drawback to the Pro phone is it is heavy. Right. And you don't realize how heavy it is until you pick up just like a iPhone 16, and you're like

Stephen Robles

Yeah.

Jason Aten

I just wanna use this.

Stephen Robles

It's it is nice. I mean, the aluminum should be lighter. The titanium was lighter than the stainless steel before it, but aluminum should be even lighter.

Jason Aten

I feel like they artificially inflate the weight of the Pro phone so that it feels more. No. I'm I'm serious. I think they wanted so I'm wondering how much of a difference there will be, but there should be zero difference, except for there's one more camera.

Stephen Robles

There should be. And it depends on what the rails are made out of because this the you know? Well, anyway, we'll see.

Jason Aten

That's the aluminum. That's the part that's aluminum.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. That is true because it's just glass in them. But, yeah, that's a good point. I don't know. I don't know.

But, also the a 19 pro chip should make its debut with the 17 pro phones. 12 gigs of RAM from the eight gig that's been available the past two years. Again, with LLMs and Apple Intelligence, it'll be easier to run on device. You have more RAM with that. Also, some improved cooling system like a vapor chamber, which I'm curious.

Okay. Like, for gaming and stuff like that. Some camera improvements, which happens every year. And, yeah, we'll see. Changing the the scratch resistance of the display.

Oh, and the other big rumor was reverse wireless charging. This has been a rumor for years. Maybe this year, you can actually put your AirPods on the back of your iPhone and charge them. Some rumors said Apple Watch, which doesn't make sense to me because you need to have a curved puck in order to charge the Apple Watch. But yeah.

Jason Aten

That's why the the camera bump is gonna be shaped like that because they're actually building an Apple Watch charger into the camera bump.

Stephen Robles

Brilliant. Brilliant. That's it. Nailed it. Also, and I'm curious what you think.

We're we're definitely gonna see a new Apple Watch, of course. We'll finally see a new Apple Watch Ultra because we've had the Apple Watch Ultra two model basically for two years now because they just added the the color last year. So Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch series 11. Right? We're on series?

Yeah. Series 11. AirPods Pro three, good chance we'll see an update of those. Might have some health features that are upgraded into the AirPods Pro three and a couple wildcards. I'm curious you're you're over under about the the wildcard devices.

Maybe an updated HomePod mini. I don't know what they would update, but some some update, maybe just a chip, and new Apple TV four k. Those are the wildcard rumors. What do you think?

Jason Aten

Well, okay. I don't think we need either of those things, but I do think Apple has to update them because otherwise people just make fun of them for the products being seven years old or whatever. Because, the HomePod mini, I can't remember when it came out, but it the only thing

Stephen Robles

They've got eighteen years. Eighteen

Jason Aten

years. Yeah. The only thing that's been revised is they made some new colors for it. Right? Like, they they changed and they didn't even really.

It's just like they did a blueish, a midnight blue or something. I can't remember what they called it. Right. So they have to eventually do something to it, but that is not really a product that needs much of an update unless it's gonna get more processing power for future potential things. But, I don't think you should be talking.

Did it just, like, get dark in here real

Stephen Robles

quick? It did. It's just flashlighting. Happily.

Jason Aten

I raised my arms, and then all of a sudden, like, You're

Stephen Robles

summoning the lightning.

Jason Aten

Hold on. I felt like Moses for a second there. I don't even know what happened. But I don't like, I don't think anyone should be summoning the voice assistant on their HomePod. That's like a rule that if you don't learn anything else from primary technology, it's that the only place you should talk to it is on your watch, which can't actually process anything.

Maybe that so that would be nice if that was the case. But but the same thing with the Apple TV. Like, it is a no no one's needs more power from the app. Like, no one has ever I have a seven year old Apple TV in our house. It's fine.

Stephen Robles

Well, what's interesting, though, is the there are some Apple tvOS 26 features that are only available on the latest latest model, which is the Apple TV four k third generation, namely the karaoke feature, which I did a video about the TV features. And the karaoke feature is now, like, Apple Music. You can pull it up, and then you can literally connect to iPhones by scanning a QR code on screen and use the iPhone microphone as a karaoke mic. And you and whoever else's voices will come through the TV, and then other people can connect and, like, send emojis that show up on the TV screen. So, like, full on karaoke setup now, iPhone and Apple TV.

And that feature is only available on the latest one. Is that some kind of processor gate require I mean, I imagine that could probably run on the generation older Apple TV, but maybe a new Apple TV four k with more headroom allows for more features like that. Maybe they do more in gaming. Man, I don't know.

Jason Aten

But if you think about it, the only reason to to upgrade the Apple the only reason for them, for Apple Yeah. To improve the Apple TV is, a, to get people to upgrade who already have an Apple TV, but you no one needs to do that. Like, seriously, Steven, I was somewhere that had a Googled TV, like a Hitachi with but it had AirPlay. Right? And so I was trying to stream a video to it to share it with a room full of people.

Yeah. And it did okay except for that it the audio and the video were, like, two seconds out of sync Yes. Streaming it via AirPlay. I figured out that if I did a if I Chromecast it, it was fine. Right.

So there's something weird going on there. But I will tell you, I have, like, an I have a ten year old Apple TV, and it does it perfectly every time. So it's like these things are more than powerful enough. So no one needs to upgrade their Apple TV unless you don't have a four k one. That's the only legitimate reason to do it.

Yeah. But there's a lot of people with the four k ones. And then the other thing is, like, new people right now are not buying I don't think there's a lot of people buying Apple TVs as their streaming box because literally every television has streaming stuff built into it, which you should turn off by the way and just use an Apple TV. But, like, Roku will give you a box for free.

Stephen Robles

I know.

Jason Aten

Yeah. Amazon will give you a Fire Stick for free. Like, they will just throw them at you if you order toilet paper from amazon.com.

Stephen Robles

Well, let me let me ask you this. If, because it is your birthday, if they release a new Apple TV where the remote has precision Find My and you can make it make a sound, make it beep through the Find My app. Would you upgrade for that?

Jason Aten

I'd buy six of them.

Stephen Robles

See. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's the upgrade.

Jason Aten

But, also, maybe I could just buy the remote, please.

Stephen Robles

Right. Which that would be you know, we asked a couple weeks ago, who just buys Apple TV remotes? That would be a reason.

Jason Aten

The single best thing because the most recent Apple TV remote is by far the best Apple TV remote. Yes. But the thing that's the bet besides the fact that, you know, it actually has buttons and stuff Yeah. That's fine. The lightning one is fine.

I don't care about that. We still have some US or lightning phones in our house, so we still have to keep cables around. But what I've noticed is the new remote is just thick enough, more more thick than the previous versions that it gets lost way less often.

Stephen Robles

Sure. Sure. That is true. And I have the big old silicone case with an AirTag in it, and that gets lost even less. Would you?

Might be overkill. I'm gonna link Mac Rumors buyer's guide also in the show notes because this is the place to go to see how old an Apple device is. And so looking at the music section, AirPods Pro, the last model was released seven hundred sixteen days ago, September 2023. That were the the AirPods Pro two with USB C charging, which was a slight refresh over the AirPods Pro two. The big HomePod, nine hundred fifty three days ago.

No rumor that that's gonna get updated. The HomePod mini, one thousand seven hundred eighty days ago. October 2020 was when it was five years old. So, yeah, I think maybe a new one with at least a refreshed processor.

Jason Aten

I am looking forward though to adding to my AirPods Pro collection. I have one of every version here. Have the originals. Yes. I have the I have yeah.

So I then, you know, the funny thing is the only way you can tell the difference is how many how many speaker holes are on the bottom. That's how you can tell the difference between those. And then then they had to add a lanyard thing for the ones with USB c.

Stephen Robles

So Exactly. Yeah. But but the AirPods Pro two is still the only ones that have like the MagSafe charging where it'll actually snap in place if you put it on a MagSafe buck, which is nice and Precision Find My. This is the AirPods Pro two, only Precision Find My ones.

Jason Aten

And the something with your Vision Pro that you don't use. Oh, yeah. Like a

Stephen Robles

I use it when I travel

Jason Aten

to it is. It's What is what is the feature?

Stephen Robles

Lossless audio. Right?

Jason Aten

Lossless audio.

Stephen Robles

You which I mean, anyway.

Jason Aten

Why did the adding the USB C port instead of lightning result in lossless audio?

Stephen Robles

Well, it's a faster port.

Jason Aten

But you're not plugging.

Stephen Robles

I know. I know. I was just just like, this I don't know.

Jason Aten

Yes, but I don't think that's it.

Stephen Robles

I don't know. So listen, we're gonna do we're gonna cover the iPhone event. We haven't talked about it yet. Maybe we can do an episode that day. We could talk about it offline later.

Jason Aten

We'll have to talk about it offline.

Stephen Robles

We'll talk about it offline, but we'll we'll be covering it. I'll be making a video about all the things that are announced, so stay tuned. You can watch the event also live on Apple's website and on YouTube. That event's already up. So coming soon.

It's iPhone season, tech season, and, but we got some other little tidbits of news before I get to iOS 26 on my main iPhone. Nothing, the phone company, was caught using professional photos and passing them off as nothing phone photos. The Verge confirmed this from several photographers who were like, actually, I took that picture with a Fujifilm something, and they looked at the excess data of the photos. Nothing claims that, oh, those photos were just placeholders, and they intended to switch the photos out, with actual phone three photos, but, not a great look for nothing.

Jason Aten

Also, maybe what that maybe that's entirely true.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

But once you hit publish, I mean, something's wrong. Either you Yeah. Intended to pull off, you know, passing off professional photos as being taken with your camera

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

Or you just didn't have the process in place to make someone should have been like, hey, guys. I think for sure we should change these photos. But here's the thing. Why did you license photos from a stock agency as placeholders?

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

That makes no sense. You wouldn't pay money for like, you literally would go to Google images and just take a bunch of screenshots

Stephen Robles

and put

Jason Aten

them in there. Go to unsubscribe. By the way, like, the reason that you use crap for that kind of thing is so that it's very obvious later that you need to replace them. When I come up with a headline and I don't know for sure what it is, I use TK, TK, like, so that

Stephen Robles

I know that when I

Jason Aten

go back later, I'm like, oh, I probably should put words there instead of publishing this article with no headline.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. So that's that's not not a great look.

Jason Aten

Yeah. Bad.

Stephen Robles

Not a great look. But speaking of Android phones and photos, I have a Pixel 10 Pro coming tomorrow.

Jason Aten

Okay.

Stephen Robles

Excited to try it because I wanna try the camera, a 100 x zoom, but also I wanna make a video where I just attach every MagSafe accessory I have to it.

Jason Aten

That's gonna be good. I'm here for that, Steven.

Stephen Robles

I thought that would be a fun, experiment because, yeah, it's got MagSafe now. So I'm gonna try that. OpenAI is facing many lawsuits. It has faced lawsuits in the past, like from New York Times, which is still ongoing. But there was an unfortunate situation where a teenager unalive themselves.

I say it that way just because sometimes YouTube will censor that word. But using ChatGPT, he supposedly communicated with ChatGPT, and ChatGPT might have even offered ways to accomplish this. And, also, the change in GPT five that became less sycophantic might have also contributed to this teenager's tragedy. And so the family is suing OpenAI, and OpenAI said they are likely going to be implementing parental controls for ChatGPT and being more aware of situations like this. This is a really unfortunate story, but, also, I think just with the pervasive use of ChatGPT, I mean, this is not not as an excuse, but stuff like this will happen.

And and, and, you know, we've talked a lot about is ChatGPT like a mainstream product and, you know, how many people are using it. I don't know about you, Jason, but I see more and more I'm on TikTok and you're not. But I see a lot of people on TikTok and random people just saying, like, they're just using Chatchipie Tea like in day to day life and asking it like random things whenever. So yeah, that's the thing. Parental controls.

Jason Aten

Well, yeah, it's tough because I do feel like the more you try to moderate something like this, I'll use I'll use that phrase moderate,

Stephen Robles

like Yeah.

Jason Aten

Control outputs. That's tough. Right? But I do think there are probably some things that for sure Yeah. It should be very clear that, like, we should be like, a red flag should have gone off somewhere because clearly the the language the LLMs are just not cape like, it's it's sort of like, if you you could read a lot of books about medicine and you could spend a lot of time on WebMD and you could even talk to chat GPT about your symptoms like I did and all this, but you're not a doctor.

Right. There's, like, nuance to this kind of thing. And once people start using you in that way and you're just convincing enough that it feels like you are or you're the conversation is just personal enough, that's very dangerous Yeah. Because you aren't designed for that. And so I think that there are a couple things where we should be like, there should be some safeguards built into the system to in those cases because you need to have I just don't think anybody this is like the whole the reason that in Apple you know, or the reason that Apple is not great at certain things is because everybody there lives in California where it's gorgeous weather all the time.

Right? The reason Teslas don't handle very well in the snow is because they

Stephen Robles

Made in Texas.

Jason Aten

All in California. Well, in Texas now. Right? So it's like, oh, we never even thought about the fact that most of the country that might use these products don't live here. Right.

I think the same thing is true with JEDDPT. Like, not no one who's building it has has encountered these types of things. And I think they that it is incumbent on them. I don't know if they should be liable in a lawsuit. I don't know.

That's real complicated. I'm glad I don't have to be the person to figure that out. But I think that there is a responsibility.

Stephen Robles

Yes. So that is an unfortunate situation. The the other lawsuit is much more silly. This is we talked about it last week, but Elon Musk saying he was gonna sue OpenAI and Apple for the placement of AI apps in the App Store. And now it's an official lawsuit.

He has, I think, filed, yeah, filed a lawsuit on Monday, so earlier this week, both against Apple and a and OpenAI about deprioritizing rival chatbots. You know, the the lawsuit is silly because to say the App Store is required to feature all the AI apps, I mean, it was an editorial section of the App Store. So it's Apple's choice.

Jason Aten

They can literally do anything they want.

Stephen Robles

They literally do anything they want. And the argument about what is the top app in the App Store, know, Elon Musk doesn't have any data to say whether or not Grok is more popular than ChatGPT. But, again, anecdotally, I think it makes sense that ChatGPT is one of the top apps. And DeepSeek made it to number one. Apparently, Grok had made it to number one in months past.

So clearly, Apple is not restricting Grok from being number one in the App Store. But I do the only, like, curious thing about it is, obviously, Apple has chosen OpenAI to have a direct integration with the iPhone. Namely, you can like, ChatchipPT has its own settings pane in the Apple intelligence settings where you can sign into your OpenAI account. Or even if you don't have an account, you can use Chatcha PT for free through Apple Intelligence. I mean, that is a partnership.

I don't know, like, the legal implications of if they should be allowed to then like, if they have to allow other AIs like Perplexity or Claude or Grock to have that same access. But I do wonder, like, you know, thinking about the EU and the Digital Markets Act and the noncompete kind of stuff there, is that something that these companies could pursue Apple and say, you can't have this special relationship with OpenAI and not offer that direct integration with, like, Perplexity and Anthropic?

Jason Aten

I don't think it again, not not

Stephen Robles

Not a lawyer.

Jason Aten

Super not super not a lawyer, but I I think the issue would be if, like, Apple does not no one can compel Apple to do business with anybody that it doesn't want to do business with. And it would be different if Apple so like, for example, take Google. Google couldn't buy OpenAI because Google already has a service in that, and they would be eliminating competition. Right? But Apple is free to deal with whoever they want to.

Now I don't think Apple could exclude other, like, ChadGPT. If they allow ChadGPT in the App Store, don't think they could be like, Grok can't be in the App Store just because we wanna favor ChadGPT. Right. But I don't think like, they have no duty to deal with anybody.

Stephen Robles

Right. And the direct integration, I mean, these kinds of deals have been going on since, like, Google Maps was the default Maps app and YouTube was preinstalled on iPhone. But

Jason Aten

Right.

Stephen Robles

Anyway, it's I installed iOS 26 beta eight on my main iPhone for better or for worse. I got back from my trip, and I'm like, I'm not traveling between here and the official release of iOS 26. Let's do it. And so I have I have it on my phone. I have liquid glass everywhere.

I will say using it on your main device, it is a different experience than just testing it on like a side piece on a side device. And you know, for the most part, if you just use your phone like normal, the few places that you see Liquid Glass, you know, the control center, I think, is still debatable. Like, is this good visual language or not? I don't know. There are the options to reduce transparency and accessibility.

So you can, like, turn off that transparency. But you go to accessibility, display, and you do reduce transparency. Now, like, if you swipe down to control center, there's just nothing behind the control center stuff. So if you prefer that and you don't like the glass effect, I mean, you can just turn it off. It's been fine for me.

I'm not bothered by it. I think there are a couple features that I really like. I feel like the messages experience is fun, like with wallpapers and stuff, been changing that. The Safari change took me a second to get used to. I don't know if you've used Safari a lot in the on iOS 26, but it they changed the tab bar so you now have, like, multiple options for the thing at the bottom, basically.

I'm curious I'm curious how you use Safari. But, like, the default in iOS 26, this is like the minimal tab bar. And you have the search on the bottom. You have the back button. And now you have the three dot menu, which under that three dot menu, then you have things like show me all my tabs, new tab, private tab, and bookmarks.

And I had the muscle memory of whenever I wanted to, like, close tabs or see all my tabs, just to quickly tap that bottom right icon, which is the show all tabs button. And I was like, I don't like that I can't quickly access that. It's now two taps away where it was previously one. But then I discovered you can change it to the larger bottom tab bar like this, and now you can have just one tap away, the show all tabs button, which is right there. So that's what I did for Safari.

I like that now. The search bar in all apps is now on the bottom, which I I think is good. Like, you know, having to reach at the top or, like, reveal the search bar because it was hidden before. I think it's more discoverable in the way it is in iOS 26. Like in settings, previously oh, it's too bright.

Previously, if someone didn't realize you can search in settings, you, you know, you had to swipe down to reveal the search bar up at the top, and most people probably didn't know you could do that. Now the search bar is just persistent at the bottom. And so even users who didn't know search was even in settings, now it's more discoverable. So overall, I'm I'm liking it. It's not been buggy.

Battery life has been fine. And, yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Jason Aten

I think

Stephen Robles

Yes. You there.

Jason Aten

I think about this every time I unlock the iPhone 16 or my iPad. I think that liquid glass is gonna get old for people.

Stephen Robles

Get old?

Jason Aten

I don't like the even the type in your passcode screen anymore.

Stephen Robles

It does look different.

Jason Aten

Think it's like a novelty that eventually you're like, okay, this was cool for a while. Can we just go back to the way it was? I just, because I'm like, I've been using it on this iPhone every day for a while. I've been using it on my main iPad, which is where I really notice it. And I actually like most of the things about iPadOS 26

Stephen Robles

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten

Except the liquid glass part. It's like, give me the other stuff, turn off the extra liquid glass pieces. Even the stuff you described about, like, the placement of things, all of that is fine, but none of it had to be the glass. Like, none of what you described about where

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

Search bars are, where thing how tabs are I don't love the Safari. I can't look at it right now because I'm using that phone as a camera. So I don't love the fact that there's extra taps to get to certain things that used to just be there. But I actually think that the the visual of liquid glass peep I think people are gonna it's gonna grade on people after a while.

Stephen Robles

Really?

Jason Aten

You don't think so?

Stephen Robles

I don't I mean, I don't know. I will say, you know, if you wanna make your phone look like this is clearly iOS 26, it's to make all the icons clear, which, you know, on the home screen, I could go But either

Jason Aten

this screen is so much better on the current version than it is on the new version.

Stephen Robles

See, I do an alphanumeric passcode, so I can't I don't even I can't show that screen quickly. The one thing about if you make your icons gray is the settings app looks really meh. Like all the icons in the settings app

Jason Aten

Yeah. That's terrible.

Stephen Robles

You can't

Jason Aten

do that. Why though? Why is that screen like that just because you make the actually, that's gotta be a bug that they have to fix.

Stephen Robles

I don't

Jason Aten

There's no reason for those icons to be gray just because you're on your home screen, you wanted your icons to be whatever.

Stephen Robles

Well, also and this was a thing I discovered only when I put it on my main device. If you gray out the icons or make them glass on the homepage, it also applies to the share sheet.

Jason Aten

Yeah. It it applies universally. And it's like, wait. I didn't say every icon everywhere. Just take I'm on my monochrome phone with no color for anything.

That's not what I said. I just said make those transparent on the home screen.

Stephen Robles

And honestly, the the monochrome in the share sheet, I don't think is good because, you know, I use the share sheet often, and visually, I might just see an app via its colors and icon, and I know that's where I wanna share it. And this this just visually takes now a few more seconds to say, like, oh, what is that? And, also, I didn't realize whatever quick actions you had at the top of this list, which I have mostly shortcuts, those become large icons now. And you can now move icons from down here to the big ones in the top four. And it's like it took a little bit to get used to.

That that might just be, you know

Jason Aten

But that's fine.

Stephen Robles

That's fine.

Jason Aten

All that stuff is fine. It's the fact that someone at Apple knows. I promise you. Someone at Apple knows that color is one of the single most important aspects of an icon.

Stephen Robles

Yeah.

Jason Aten

Maybe the most important aspect of an icon. And the way you could prove that is you could take YouTube's red and you could just put it on some other random icon and be like and put use the font that YouTube uses and be like, that's super gotta be the YouTube app.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

I don't understand why it looks different, but that's definitely the YouTube app. Like, same thing with Facebook, same thing with Instagram. Like, those colors, it doesn't matter if that in the way you know that that's true is you can use the larger icons and get rid of the words, and you still know exactly what the stuff is.

Stephen Robles

You still know exactly where it is. Yeah. I I did the clear icons for, like, five hours, and then I was like, no. Can't. I'm not gonna do this.

Jason Aten

Just because I'm gonna write an article saying updating your phone to this, don't do this part.

Stephen Robles

Are you gonna write that article?

Jason Aten

Are you gonna write about I I think I am. I gotta write it down because I won't remember.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. You can write it down. I think I think that would be good because but I'm just showing, like, all the places it changes. It's I don't know. Settings, the share sheet.

It's not great as monochrome. But, anyway, I'm gonna keep using it. I'm, putting together some thoughts for an actual iOS 26 review, which I've not really done before, just actually reviewing the change. So we'll do that. But one other, last quick feature before we get to personal tech.

IOS 26, they introduced the Wallet app is going to get a new settings toggle where you can disable promo notifications. So that f one movie ticket promo and other promos you might have come through the Wallet app, you'll be able to disable those completely. It's on by default, but in iOS 26, you'll be able to turn those off, and you won't get any f one ticket notifications or future Apple TV plus original content notifications through the Wallet app. So they

Jason Aten

You just reminded me. I need to turn off notification for the App Store because I get stupid, like, new game in arcade. I don't even I didn't here's the thing. I probably never thought to turn off App Store notifications because what would the app store send me? Turns out they'll send you every time there's a new arcade game released or there's whatever.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten

So that's I solved that problem Alright. Right

Stephen Robles

Personal tech. Let's talk about charging because you have a Yes.

Jason Aten

This is our favorite.

Stephen Robles

You have the I can show that picture you sent me last week. Right?

Jason Aten

Yeah. Definitely.

Stephen Robles

Okay. Let me pull that up. But I got the Belkin UltraCharge Pro, which is a new three in one that features Qi 2.2, which is officially named Qi two twenty five watts, and it is offering 25 watt wireless charging to the iPhone. And, I love if you go watch the video. I'll put it in the show notes.

It does charge fast if, here's the big caveat, you have to have cooling enabled. So all these Qi two twenty five watt chargers that I talk about in the video, all of them have some kind of cooling feature, which I thought was interesting. Like, wireless chargers have had that in the past, but all the three in ones from people like Belkin and Ankur usually didn't have some kind of cooling feature. But this one, they do. That's like the actual cooling switch that I'm showing in the video there.

And if you don't have that cooling on, you do not experience the faster charging speeds, mostly because the phone is gonna get hot and the phone is going to slow charging down because it dictates how fast it accepts that wireless charge, not the three in one. So with cooling on, you can get a faster charge. With cooling off, I do not find it provides much faster charging. That also means that cooling, there's a fan in this charger. It is not silent.

Jason Aten

That's no bueno.

Stephen Robles

Like, if you see the back of this thing, it looks discreet. Like, you don't see the fan very much, but when it's like, when your phone is low, like one or 2%, and you put it on this charger with cooling enabled, that fan kicks on, and it is fanning. It is it is audible. And it also makes I try to capture this in the video, but it makes this, like, high pitched whirr kind of sound. Not something I wanna hear on my nightstand.

Not something I want on my desk if I'm trying to record a video. So I am a little skeptical about the future of the faster charging on iPhone. Supposedly, you need to run iOS 26 to enable a faster charging. Supposedly, the iPhone 17 Pro will have this. Maybe that vapor cooling chamber will also help the charging aspects.

Who knows? I did get Ugreen. Has a 25 watt g two MagSafe battery pack. So I got that. It's actually coming today.

I'm gonna test it. The problem is if cooling is really necessary for faster charging, then that MagSafe battery is not going to really perform that much better either. So I am not as excited for the faster charging. I mean, I'm glad it's here and the standard is now here. But I don't know.

I don't want to have to run a fan to do it. And my '12 South HiRise three Deluxe is probably just going to stay on my nightstand because it's great. And it's on sale now. You get it for like $70, $80.

Jason Aten

I don't know what I have on my nightstand. It's whatever you sent me.

Stephen Robles

Oh, And

Jason Aten

it's fine. It's fine. I'm not changing it.

Stephen Robles

Well, that's the thing on a nightstand. You're charging overnight. And so charging speed doesn't matter. And so

Jason Aten

The only thing I need from a nightstand charger is that I can just put the phone in standby mode. Like, it's it's my clock.

Stephen Robles

That's the thing. Nightstand mode. Okay. Now you also have, some charging, paraphernalia. This thing thing is a beast.

What is this?

Jason Aten

That is charging a 164.6 watts, but that's because I had a MacBook pro probably plugged in an iPad and it was This is this is from eco flow, which is a company I had not previously heard of, but they're like a competitor to anchor. Right? And they make batteries and chargers. First, I will say, we'll talk about that in a second. In my mind, so far, best 140 watt USB C charger brick thing I've ever encountered.

It has three USB C. I could not care less about the USB Yeah. It does even tell you right on here what they will what speeds each port will charge at.

Stephen Robles

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There it is.

Jason Aten

So you you'll know exactly what they can charge at. That's nice. And so it's a 140 watts. And this thing is like, my favorite charger before that was this one from Anchor Yes. Right, which was only a 100 watts, only had two USB C ports.

But, like, thing is, like, it's it's pretty small.

Stephen Robles

Pretty compact.

Jason Aten

For, yeah, and I'm so I'm real happy with this because I had a Nomad 135 watt charger maybe it was, and that thing is, like, chunky boy. Yeah. Anyway, so real happy about this one from EcoFlow. Has not melted or burned anything down yet, so we'll find out. Like, I mean, let's be honest.

This charging stuff, by far the highest recall rate, not this particular brand.

Stephen Robles

Right. There's been a

Jason Aten

lot of recall. So we'll we'll see how it goes. But the thing you just were talking about, you have one of these from Anchor. Right?

Stephen Robles

I have a one for two. Oh, yeah. Have the Anchor Prime.

Jason Aten

This one has a face on it. It makes, like, little face things at you.

Stephen Robles

It's kinda cool.

Jason Aten

It's awesome. But it it's at 99% right now. This I don't know what the thing is with the screens. Apparently, charging stuff should have screens, but it is kinda cool that if you plug in let me see if I can make it do this real quick if I plug it into something. But, like so it has a retractable cord, which is kinda nice.

Right? The anchor one

Stephen Robles

is And you

Jason Aten

you can use it to charge with it or you can use it to charge other devices, but it will tell you hold on. What it is charging at. It's not gonna charge very much because it's at 99%, but, like, it'll tell you, like, how many watts it's drawing to charge up, what percentage it's gonna be it's at, and how long it'll take you to do it. And since it has four ports, each one of those ports has its own so you can see, like, I plugged it in, and my iPad is drawing 20 watts. I plugged it in and my Mac is drawing whatever.

I I think it's kinda cool. I don't I don't you can also, like, load pictures onto the base or something. I'll show you pictures and stuff.

Stephen Robles

It's a digital picture frame too.

Jason Aten

But the bottom half of what you're showing is a One, two, three, four. Five port desk stand that you can charge other things in and then you set this thing on top of it.

Stephen Robles

Right. Then it charges magnetically. Yeah.

Jason Aten

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. It is insane. I this is huge.

I am going on a trip soon, so I'm gonna take this. We'll see, like because in the past, I had just been traveling with I think it's an anchor battery, like the long, you know, brick thing that was 20,000 milliamp hours or whatever. This one is 27,000.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

Yep. And it's, and it'll put out 300 watts, 300 watts, Steven. Three.

Stephen Robles

That is nuts. I mean, that is exciting. The one from anchor that I have well, so I have two from Anchor. One is like this tower style, and it has the retractable cable, but it doesn't charge wirelessly on a

Jason Aten

base. Okay.

Stephen Robles

I have the one that charges wirelessly on a base. That's the Anker Prime series, but that doesn't have a built in retractable cable. So this is like the best of both worlds in a single device. Retractable cable, it winks at you. Yeah, it's great.

Jason Aten

Yeah. This is replacing was one of these basically just simple things that had

Stephen Robles

That's the old school.

Jason Aten

Top. That's old school. But I mean, this thing still worked. It was great. And I bought this one.

I used to have a mophie version of this.

Stephen Robles

Yep.

Jason Aten

And the third time that one died, I stopped bothering with the warranty replacement. It's like, you know what? This is a bad product.

Stephen Robles

Right.

Jason Aten

So I bought the anchor one. This one has never died. It's great. It does have the little indicator on the button that tells you how charged it is. That's great.

But it doesn't wink at me. This guy, it'll wink at me. I could take this on a trip, and it's like I have my own oh, you know what? This this is probably the thing that, OpenAI and Johnny Iver built in, his little companion.

Stephen Robles

A power bank

Jason Aten

Companion. A built in that'll talk to you.

Stephen Robles

It'll talk to

Jason Aten

I could talk to this all the time

Stephen Robles

You would talk to that?

Jason Aten

And power my devices. I mean, they said it's gonna be on your desk. The third thing on

Stephen Robles

your desk That is true.

Jason Aten

Charges all the other things. That's definitely not what they're building.

Stephen Robles

What if it said happy birthday to you today? Aproposal.

Jason Aten

Did not. There were no balloons on this thing. I'm super disappointed.

Stephen Robles

I want that base, though. That base that has, like, would you say 300 watt output? I want that.

Jason Aten

The base has gotta be more than 300

Stephen Robles

don't even have a MacBook Pro anymore, but I just want it. My MacBook The

Jason Aten

nice thing is you could plug in four different things, and it'll show you what wattage you're getting at all those different things, which is kinda cool.

Stephen Robles

That is nice. I do I've had this, GitRine thing. I don't know if I talked about it on the show. I did a video a little short video on it. But the, GitRine retractable cable little charger box, and they sent it to me.

But I like it because now I don't have to, like, ever think about pulling out a USB C cable. It actually has four retractable USB C cables just like there all the time. Yeah. Plus it has USB C ports if you needed to charge eight total devices, but each cable is only 40 watt output. So this would not be enough to charge like a MacBook Pro under heavy usage.

Jason Aten

Yeah. I mean, it would be enough to charge your MacBook Pro just not while you're transcribing an hour long video.

Stephen Robles

Exactly. But, you know, it's nice just to have the cables there all the time, and they retract back. So I'm all for this retractable cable future. I think this this is where I wanna be. This is Yeah.

Jason Aten

The only downside to a retractable cable is it's kind of like an iMac. IMac is great. The screen's beautiful, but what happens when you don't need the computer anymore? You just got a really nice screen that doesn't work. The retractable cable is just one more point of failure, but it doesn't take anything away because, like, this one still has three, and you can charge in at the top.

Stephen Robles

In or out. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. That's why I still have my 21 and a half inch four k Retina iMac in a closet that I I don't know what to do with.

I guess recycle? Bring it to Apple to recycle? I don't know. I don't even wanna turn it on because then it's gonna try to connect to my iCloud account, and it might screw things up. Like, I think I just wanna, I don't know, I don't wanna throw it in a fire.

I don't even know if it would die.

Jason Aten

Buried in the backyard.

Stephen Robles

I'd have to do, like, Terminator. Just throw it into lava. Whatever the you just have it slowly melt down and be done with it.

Jason Aten

Careful. It might turn into Darth Vader if you do

Stephen Robles

that. Oh, you were the chosen one. You were supposed to bring anyway. Alright. I want this is gonna sound funny, but I wanna talk about Cracker Barrel.

And so we're gonna we're gonna go to a bonus episode for Jason's birthday bonus episode. We're gonna go talk about Cracker Barrel. And so if you wanna listen to that bonus episode, if you wanna hear our preshow and get an unedited feed, we have more and more listeners enjoying that feed, and we have more and more preshow now. Think we have twenty minutes of preshow. So if you want everything altogether preshow, want the unedited feed, You want bonus episodes, the Primary Tech Daily Show, new episode every day with the top headlines.

You can support the show directly in Apple Podcast, $5 a month, $50 a year, or you can go to join.primarytech.fm. You can support us through memberful there lots of people support us that way thank you to everyone who's doing that we'd love to hear from you check out that link you can send us an audio message or a written message what are you hoping to see at the iphone seventeen event and I do want to hear if you travel internationally into The US and you've ever experienced that whole TSA security unlock your iPhone thing. Would really be curious to hear, from those as well. You can also leave us a five star rating and review an Apple podcast. Get a shout out at the top of the show.

As always, thank you for listening. Thanks for watching. Wish Jason a happy birthday. We'll see you next time.