TikTok nonsense, iPhone 17 rumors, and the Blackmagic Camera on the AppleInsider Podcast
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Hello, welcome to the Apple Insider podcast. I'm William Gallagher. Our sponsors this week are ZopDoc and 1Password. More about them later. And I'm joined by Wes Hilliard, as ever, who, well, no, not as ever, because this is new, this one. He's entirely confused me by giving me a chart of the best things Apple's done during the year. There was like a grading of charts and things, and I understand A to F.

but he's preceded it with S. So, well, first of all, you know, hello, but S? What am I missing here? Is this an American thing? Funny enough, no. I think this comes from Japan primarily, but maybe Americans have adopted it over time because it definitely showed up initially. I've seen it personally in video games. If anyone's played rhythm games, you've...

You can score, you know, alphabetically, how well you do. And then you can get an S, which is like your S tier super supreme, depending on who you're talking to. Or you can even get a double S or a triple S, depending on the video game you're playing. I call back to Devil May Cry. That's a favorite of mine. Anyone who's played that knows what I'm talking about. But yeah, it's just meant to be a tier above A. This is the...

more difficult than ever to get into and leave it to Japan to have an even higher grade, of course. I once went to an Ofcom talk. Ofcom's Office of Communications and things. No, Ofsted. I don't think of the education. The UK government's education thing, Ofsted. And it was an explanation of their...

systems of how they were grading something. And I'm staring, looking at this screen, and I promise you, they were rating something. It wasn't scores, but it was a particular thing they were rating, and it was something like 1, 2, 7, 4, 9, 3. In that order. And I spent the whole day trying to find somebody to explain to me. So when I saw that with the S, I thought, basically, you're messing with my head, and you're all against me. That's the chronological order of the Devil May Cry series, if you play them. No, I'm joking.

I believed you! Apple Insider Plus

Oh, goodness, of course, we've got App Insider Plus, the extra added bit for subscribers who join us via Patreon or via Apple podcast subscriptions. And either way you do it, it's great to have you there. And you get a set of the kind of news of the week with extra bits. You get all extra bits where we explore the fact that.

We use this technology, I think often because we have to, but also we did choose it. We do mostly really like it. And there are things beyond the news of the week that are worth discussing and examining. And sometimes maybe just because it's the time of year, we can go really far away, ridiculously far away. In fact, this time I thought we were going reasonably far away. But Wes, you had an idea to go further.

incredibly far in fact is this a way that i can work in an s we've gone s far away um what's the idea for this week's apple is that a plus please well it's i guess you'll have to listen and find out because it's a little it's a little um maybe i'm making it too complicated i wanted to discuss so if we have an attitude towards apple as a brand right we think of all right we're going to buy apple products because we appreciate them we know that they're going to work

Do we apply that anywhere else in our life? Is there brands that we specifically avoid? You know, is there is a T-shirt ever done you wrong, William? No, but I want to discuss maybe we can keep this tech. We can go a little bit further into different other brands. But is there a go to thing? Do you only buy Nike shoes? Are you an Air Force One wearer? You'll have to find out.

in the after show this week. Although I can reveal now that there is one T-shirt I have that for some reason no longer fits me, and I think it's its fault rather than anything else that's going on, and I will not be persuaded out of that. Yeah, there's not enough World War II fighter pilots to terrorize these days, so they just go into closets and slowly shrink clothing. Yeah, so when I said this goes a little far away...

If you're an Appetito Plus subscriber, you get the ad-free version as well as the extended extra, frankly, madness. But that extra madness comes at the end of the regular show. And this is the regular serious show. Yes, I'm sitting up straighter now. In fact, I've combed my hair because we need to talk serious things here, such as...

We brought up the chart. We didn't discuss it. I wanted to... This mysterious chart with the S-A-B-C-D-F. Yeah. Very straightforward. I didn't want to go all the way... This would be the whole episode if we did. I just wanted to...

Let you look at this chart. I modified basic Apple guys chart poorly. I didn't do the gradients properly. I just kind of shoved everything around in a image editing application, but I wanted to kind of capture how I felt about Apple products this year and see if at a glance you can agree or disagree or challenge me on any of this. So real, really quick. I said that, uh,

The Mac Mini, which I agreed with BasicAppleGuy, was an S-tier product, meaning it's just excellent all the way around. Excellent redesign, product, M-series chip. For me, though, I added the M4 iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard redesign, A-tier products. So any problems there so far? I would say for you, you're not going to agree with me on iPad stuff, right? No.

I'm surprised to say I am. I mean, I think there's an issue of price for things and that's stopping me doing it. But as a product and things, I would still say the Mac Mini is the best thing of the year. But the M4 iPad Pro, I do think is a gorgeous thing that I secretly lust after. So now I'm with you.

on that those two both of those yeah so this one's the controversial one uh not so much for the iphone i i of course love my iphone 16 pro max and the cameras so that's a tier for me not quite s i i feel like

The camera control could be a little bit better, more well thought out. Maybe we'll see that in a future software or hardware iteration. But there's things that can be done, as always, to improve these devices. Apple Vision Pro, for me, is A-tier, which I believe is controversial because I think it's either you love it or you hate it. And the people who own it pretty much love it. Maybe it's buyer's...

People who actually spent the money are deluding themselves to convince themselves that it was worth it. I don't know. But for me personally, I really do enjoy it.

But even you are using it less than you did at the start, aren't you? Just out of time. I just don't have time. I don't even have time. I barely played a video game. There's like 17 video games I want to play. I don't even know when I would fit Vision Pro into my life, let alone anything else these days. But I use this thing whenever I can. I'm wearing it right now. And I hope to wear it more as Apple does more. I'm actually writing a little bit about that.

we'll get into that later but uh b tier the os releases apple intelligence which is another controversial choice by me um ipad mini i love ipad mini uh seven it some people said it was a poor upgrade because all it was was a chipset the chipset new battery is exactly what i needed and of course uh just squeeze iphone 16 in there it's an okay upgrade b tier

And then just to run through the rest, C tier, Apple's Mac lineup, I don't care. Just for me personally, whatever. Here's some Macs, here's some MacBooks. I need a moment. Okay. Deep breath, William. Right. You just dismissed the entire thing. I see he's a passing grade. Well, wait a minute. How can you make the Mac Mini an S grade and then just dismiss all of it?

The rest are just chipset bumps, which are fine. They just, you know, it's the same product that, you know, if you already had the M3 or M2 version, you probably didn't need the M4. They weren't revolutionary in any specific way. They didn't get new display technology, any new hardware. It's just, you know, chip bump, which is fine. If you need it, go get it. That's why it's kind of middle of the road. It's a take it or leave it. Okay.

don't always know why i talk to you but all right fine this is a personal chart i didn't say this was my opinion for the world that you have to adopt my opinion um of course d tier usbc magic accessories i still have my lightning ones i don't know i might buy a c1 if i get bored um and then all the way at f tier airpods max with usbc what utter garbage

Every time the AirPods Max comes up, you hate it more. It's like, how low can you go with the AirPods? They're fine. I mean, I know they haven't been updated, but even you will eventually admit that they sound good. So this would be a good segue before we get to TikTok, just to tease it further. I did write a four years later review of the AirPods Max series.

Stating how much I love these headphones. I love them. Okay, listen. I mean, is this a cry for help? You know, the way you're for it and you're so against it at the same time? You can hold two opposing opinions, William. We have very complex brains. So I love the AirPods Max for the fact that they are great, powerful headphones.

in the Apple ecosystem features amazing sound, amazing bass, great for movies and video, spatial audio, all of that, excellent. But the upgrade Apple gave us this year was an expletive. Yeah.

I will not say because it's just four years and we could have gotten so much more and they they you know gave us the short end of the stick and USB-C cool I would very happily have another universal charger and get rid of lightning completely for my setup I get it but that is not enough and right now writing this review read it the AirPods Pro 2 match the AirPods Max almost

almost on beat for beat except for bass and certain use cases like i would prefer to listen to music on the airpods pro which is a weird thing to say considering airpods max are over the ear huge heavy bass like lovely headphones but honestly they're better for movies and entertainment and i use and for like apple vision pro spatial video viewing that kind of stuff

Apple could have done some more. Where did you put AirPods Pro 2 in your list? They didn't release this year.

Of course they didn't. No, you're right. I just I bought a new set this year. So, OK, I feel just after I bought it and I resisted for a long time because my old pair had gone horribly wrong and I couldn't get them repaired and all this stuff. It felt like an awful lot of money for something I thought I maybe wouldn't be using a lot. And then they were on sale and I did buy them and they are great walking around. Shortly afterwards, I found I was trying to edit something and I found I didn't like AirPods Pro for editing audio. I switched back to some Sony over the ear wired headphones.

headphones that I like for that stuff. So a bit of me is thinking that was a lot of money, but walking around my kitchen, cooking away, taking phone calls, playing music, listening to podcasts. I love my AirPods Pro 2. AirPods Pro 2, honestly, if I just gave it a place in the lineup,

year after year, the AirPods I have in my pocket are S tier. They are just part of my life and they are attached to me just like the Apple watch in a way. So honestly, S tier just, they sound great. They are so easy to access. They are, it's, I can take phone calls without having to hold my giant phone to my head. Like there's just so many reasons to love AirPods, not to mention the new health features. So if I had, so if it just to make it on the chart,

is new this year because of the health features yeah airpods pro 2 with uh hearing health features s tier absolutely but but do you do the nodding of your head shaking of your head thing when calls come through it's never come up um i've done i i usually i have an apple watch i mean i suppose if there was a situation like it it feels like you'd have to

be in a very perfect situation where your hands are full you're carrying groceries in you have airpods in your ears and you get a phone call you don't want to answer at the same time and you can you know shake your head but even then you'd have to be in a you'd have to be surrounded by people you don't want to hear talking i don't know like you can just say out loud you know donate you know hang up or whatever so um sure i it's just not a feature that's come up for me in my life

I was thinking I didn't tell you what my tiers of S of all this stuff would be, but I didn't really make notes during yours. So I'm just going to go with, I mostly agree with you, except you're totally wrong about the Mac. Does that seem fair? Yeah. No, I mean, for you, if I was writing a chart for you, I'd say you'd put most of the Macs in A or B tier, depending on which one you liked more. But like I said, passing grade, like they did fine. M4 chip is great. M4 Max is really amazing, but these are not products for me.

um but yeah moving down the airpods list i did write about airpods max and i wanted to kind of use that as a segue to talk about apple vision pro of course um you wanted to talk about apple vision pro uh okay um haven't you said everything you've covered everything we know it all i live vision pro vicariously through you and how do you feel about sharks

I can't say I've thought about them a lot, not since I saw Jaws. They don't come up. No? You don't want to go diving off of an island and go swimming with tiger sharks? It's not really on the top of my list, no. Well, now you can in the comfort of your home in Apple Vision Pro. Oh, okay, right. So now I can and I might want to. Okay, well, sorry, doesn't Apple Vision Pro...

Shark Week kind of thing. It's a part of the television, well, the Apple Vision Pro immersive video series, Wild. Episode three is sharks. And by far my favorite episode. My goodness. I've just really cool. Just really cool seeing like, you know,

I don't really do a lot of shark stuff personally. I find them fascinating, but I don't like to watch Shark Week. So I don't really see a lot of them in the wild or how they interact with humans outside of, oh, scary cage, whatever. But this was just a totally different tonal shift. It was these beautiful creatures swimming around in the water and these humans just kind of batting them on the nose and telling them, no, don't bite me, eat this fish. And it was just, it was fun. It was really nice. And I recommend everyone go watch it if you can. Yeah.

Okay, but how long is it? Because I had the impression that Apple Vision Pro experiences or videos or whatever you can call them tend to be rather short. Usually, yeah. I think if I recall, it's 8 to 10 minutes, like the usual length of these short programs. It can always be longer, but it was appropriate. I enjoyed what I got out of it. It didn't feel drawn out. I don't know if I could or would be interested in watching a 30-minute version. It's a nice bite-sized bit.

If there were more of them, short is fine. It's just you can't have short and few, like pick one. But yeah, I think the length was fine. Are they coming out to a schedule now? Can you predict when the next? No, okay. We don't know when the next ones are coming. This just literally just dropped. If we knew it was coming, I didn't know. But maybe we'll get more soon because we got a $30,000 camera is now available to the market.

Yeah, but, you know, it's kind of in black and I was crossing my fingers for a blue version and I feel personally let down. I mean, OK, this is the Blackmagic one, isn't it? And I only know Blackmagic as the makers of the video editing app and things. So is this like a branding or are they actually incredibly well known for cameras?

They're known for cameras. They make fancy studio-grade cameras that consumers generally don't buy. I mean, no one really is going to spend $30,000, except I honestly, MKBHD probably already has and is currently filming his next video for Vision Pro. Yes.

And good thing is, is it, you can distribute these types of content on Safari now and watch it in vision pro because of the latest updates in vision OS. So I think even though, yeah, general creators, no, no one's really going to do this, but filmmakers and like studios, Disney will have these and start making them hopefully, or Apple will spend the money, give them to the studio and say, we will give this to you, make a film and,

I'm putting money on it right now, William. If we do not have a Disney Pixar something by the end of 2025, Apple's doing it wrong. I don't know. Like, what are they doing? No, no, no, no, no, no. I know it's unrelated to the camera. It's just make a Pixar-esque film. But also, yes, like, maybe Star Wars or just something Apple Disney-ish.

2025 Vision Pro immersive video. If it doesn't happen, I don't know what they're doing.

There was a story last year, maybe even the year before, that all Apple TV Plus shows were being shot in spatial video. And most of the producers are going, what? Nobody told us. What's going on? So you knew this wasn't real. But would you want slow horses in spatial video? Well, yeah, actually. I think I've just talked myself into that. I'd watch anything as that shows. I think...

There's a yes and a no here. There's an argument to be made. The show as it exists, no. We've discussed this before. I think...

That we need to learn how to make content for immersive video and submerged is one of the best examples yet of how that works. Even the sharks one was good, but it was still just kind of camera on a tripod. Look around sharks, but submerged as a directional you're looking here. A director is telling you where to look.

it worked really well and that director should you know do a master class on how to actually do this or something because they i think even for a first attempt they did a really good job get tom hanks out here and uh the next greyhound movie or something uh in vision pro that could work

because like think of Greyhound. Do you remember? Did you watch that film? No, I didn't. But I know what you mean. Excellent. I obviously missed out. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent movie. Turn your volume way up. If you have a subwoofer, I don't know, just go nuts. It's an absolutely phenomenal Tom Hanks little vehicle. But yeah,

That movie actually would work in Vision Pro, even almost as shot, because it's a lot of tight close-ups of Hanks and the... Gosh, words are escaping me. But on the ship,

giving commands, doing these things, a lot of stuff happening, but you could sit in that room and watch these people move around operating equipment with Hanks in the center, calling out orders and then jump outside the ship to the wide view of the ocean as the ship is sailing. And you can see the submarine in the distance and maybe look around and you can like try to find the sub yourself and make it into almost an interactive kind of thing. Or maybe the camera would direct you to where the sub was, but yeah,

Like that movie actually would work very well as a vision pro experience, just even how it was shot. Um, if anyone has, hasn't seen it, I highly recommend it. And just think about it of, if you were in the perspective of the vision pro, they would need less cuts and longer takes. Of course it would be shot. It would need a slightly different script, but the same story could be portrayed, I think through vision pro. And I think that that would be really interesting. That's the kind of stuff Apple needs to be thinking about.

I need to watch something on Apple Vision Pro because I've had this assumption that most because I think we're in very early days that it would all be very showy. Look at me stuff. But then when you were saying, you know, close up on faces and things there, I don't know why this pops into my head, but a very, very long time in the UK, there was a documentary series called Face to Face, and it was just extreme close up.

of a celebrity and the interviewer. It cut between the two. And the facial expressions you were seeing as they were trying to lie, basically, or try to put on the best face, it was utterly riveting. And I unthinkingly assumed you couldn't get something like that on Vision Pro, that necessarily the type of drama would be different. So I'm quite encouraged by that.

You mentioned that my mind goes to two places and then we can move on. First place it goes is M. Night Shyamalan, Servant. His entire way of shooting that was claustrophobic. He got in close to the actors and their faces.

And a lot of it was shot in the same house. Like, the whole show takes place inside of this house, and each season adds a new room to the house, as funny as the gimmicks that sounds. It works. It really does. Like, season two, you get to go into the garden. And season three, you get to go to the park outside of the garden. But, like, it's all within the same confines of this building and the neighborhood around that building. Yeah.

And it's all very claustrophobic and it's a lot of single cam, not moving around much. It would also work very well as Apple Vision Pro. And maybe they shouldn't reshoot that exact show, but they should consider talking to M. Night Shyamalan or one of his kids about, hey, why don't you come back and produce something for Vision Pro? I think a thriller or a horror would be amazing in this headset. We've yet to see that. But place two, my brain goes, is there's a video game that...

Rockstar made ages ago. Oh, my gosh. L.A. Noire, I believe is what it was called. And their gimmick was they had this sophisticated facial capture technology. And you played a 1950s-esque detective. And you would drive around and improvise.

interview people as crimes were happening and your job as the player was to determine if the person was lying or telling the truth based on their facial expressions. And this was on a PlayStation 3, so archaic by today's standards, but they did a really good job. And that would be a cool game in Apple Vision Pro, I think.

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I thought the whole... We're going off on one here. But we could leave that up inside the Plus territory. But there was a detective show called Lie To Me that was entirely based on micro-expressions. And after the show was done, most of that stuff was debunked, I believe. But it's still a great show. You've put me off for so long on this, and I've got to know the truth. I turn to the truth as only told on TikTok. What has TikTok told us this week? Please.

Oh, the service. I'll start from the top. If you enjoy TikTok, I have no problem. Like, that is fine. Go nuts. Enjoy it. It is an entertaining platform. I've seen videos produced and shared on TikTok that are entertaining. I have no problem with that aspect of it.

My problem with TikTok is mostly its business model and how it targets, you know, these algorithmic, like trying to capture people's addictions and monetizing that. Like, ew, just that. My problem with TikTok is purely on the technological side. Not because I like, you know, Vine is fine. Vine, six second videos. Cool. Like that produced a lot of fun stuff back in the day.

It's how they do business and how they get people. Like I've seen people turn into zombies because of TikTok. And if they stop moving for a quarter of a second, their phone is in their hand and TikTok is open and they're just swiping, swiping. And it just maddening to me. It feels like a disease and a,

Anyway, that's my opinion on TikTok. Intentionality, man. We keep coming back to it. Use it. Just know what you're doing. Do not get sucked in. But what we're talking about here is misinformation being spread on TikTok and specifically technology. We've talked about it before. It's come up a while ago about how iOS 18 was going to be a cheater's paradise. Right? You remember that?

Cheaters, parrots. Oh, sorry. You know, because you're saying I'm thinking game cheating levels. You mean adultery and stuff like that? Yeah, because obviously an iOS update would in some way enable adultery.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It created a narrative around a lot of fake features that weren't coming and a couple of real features that were coming, but they twisted them into like, because of this feature, hiding apps and locking apps behind passwords, people are going to be able to have dating apps secretly on their phone and,

Just whatever. I don't know. But TikTok spread that and we debunked it. And obviously that's not how this works. And trust your partners, people. But the newest ones we've seen, we have two this week that relatively small trends, but trends nevertheless. First off,

Apparently, videos going around the airdrop could let you just steal anything you wanted off of someone's phone. Their money, their contacts, their photos. Just picking up someone else's phone and pointing it at your phone. You could just get whatever you wanted off of that other person's phone just with a tap. Right. I can think of people I will walk up to now and try this out on. But Apple's got to sort this out. That's the truth.

That's not how this works. There's so many levels to this. First off, you can't just share a contact because even that requires Face ID. If you initiate the contact sharing feature, the name drop will show up.

I believe you can send your name drop to them. So maybe that's, maybe you're being nefarious there and just sharing your contact with people that don't want it. That's a weird thing to do. But getting theirs back, I think still requires authentication. Yeah.

If it doesn't, that would be something maybe Apple should look into. But I do believe the whole thing is Face ID oriented. Just like everything with the NFC chip is you have to authenticate for payments and everything else. Tap to cash is a new feature. And people are saying that all you have to do is initiate tap to cash and steal all their money off of their Apple Cash card. It, again, just does not work that way. So, yeah.

weird thing to do yeah except i think you were very generous calling that misinformation that sounds like basically a lie well it's a fraud people to watch a video yeah well okay it's i think there's a different word for it nowadays like trend jacking basically uh people say something that is just wrong and

And so we felt we fell for it, but we're a news organization. So I suppose we have to fall for it. But the idea is it's, they say something so outlandish, so dangerous, so bad that it gets people to react to it, to comment on it, to share it and say, look how wrong this person is. And then they trend more because of the wrong information. And then they can turn around and turn that into monetization, which again, is,

just those platform is hot garbage, but yeah, whatever. I it's, it's, it's such a silly thing. Anyone who listens to the show would know instantly that this is fraud, but maybe don't,

don't give them the time of day is my answer to that just uh you're right like we're doing now i shouldn't have asked this i take it no this is this is kind of the conundrum do we talk about it or i don't know we're supposed to be educating people so i suppose we have to talk about it say this is what happens you know maybe we don't link to the

I don't know if we linked to the TikToks, but we embedded it. So I don't know if, how you handle this as a news organization. I think we did what we had to because we have to get the information out there. But again, as a human being, an individual,

Yeah, don't clip this and share it and post about it. Maybe screenshot it. You know, don't give them a link to it. Just say, hey, this is going around and it's wrong, but don't, like, give them the attention that they're asking for, which is also what happened with the second story that... Oh, there's more. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay.

two people are wrong on TikTok. I'm finding this hard to believe. What's the other one? Okay. All right. Um, no, tell you what, don't tell me. Um, Apple is, uh, invading my privacy in some way. Um,

No, I've got nothing. Oh, that was last week where they told you to turn off everything that Siri can do because it's stealing your information and training. That was a real thing last week. No, this one is if someone picks up your phone and looks at it and you have photos of them on your phone, the widget, the photos widget, will feature their photo. So you will always know who was the last one to look at their phone. Okay.

Okay. Right. Let me try to take that one apart. Why? And a little bit of how, but also when? Let's cover all of them. Really? Okay. This is one of those situations where it's like, guys, did you know that when you open the refrigerator door, the light turns on, but you don't see it happen?

It's a coincidence. It's basically the photo they have of this person happened to be the featured widget, and they probably saw it one time, did no research, and then made a video about it and went viral, which sounds about right. This is what happens in 2024. So...

Someone I am happy to allow to pick up my phone is presumably someone I know. It's not unsurprising that I have photographs of them and that they would pop up in my what's the thing called the memory? I think photos memories. So right. So, yeah. Yeah.

I'm not built for the TikTok world. I couldn't have thought of that. I tried thinking of that and I couldn't. My only problem with TikTok is that every time I've tried to use it, it's offered me some really quite disturbing first videos. Like, what does it think I'm into here? So it's kind of genuinely put me off going further to explore the things that I imagine are good there. But

Again, I'm not against TikTok. I've even considered downloading it just as a research tool to see what people are talking about, to utilize myself, to share stories.

Here's my desk. Here's what I'm doing today. Just getting into – because I'm trying personal blogging and more Apple Insider stuff. There's ways to use TikTok. I could use it, and I've considered it. And this is not to say I will never use it. There's a future me that could use TikTok.

My hate for it is not, again, about the platform and what it offers, the content it offers. It can be informational. It can be useful. And I don't even hate the users that use it. I hate what it does to people when they're not paying attention. And maybe me saying it out loud, maybe next time you pick up TikTok and you're like, oh, 45 minutes just went by. What was I doing? Maybe that'll help you get some intentionality back in your life. But that's what I hate. I hate seeing my family members...

feeling like they can't stand in line at the grocery store without swiping through 10 videos that are useless and provide nothing for them other than five seconds. But I would disagree because I used the word intentionality last week and I've been using it ever since. And I completely agree with you. I get it. But if I'm in the grocery store, I'm not using TikTok, but I'm checking news feeds. I'm reading a book.

Um, this is a podcast. So it's just a different thing. I'll, I'll check my phone if I'm standing in line, but also it's okay to sometimes allow yourself to be bored. Uh, look around, look at the people, look at what's on the shelves, you know, maybe don't pick up that stupid magazine, but, uh,

Right. Like sometimes just let yourself be bored. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. But I think a lot of people are about to get really bored because we're still talking about a potential ban going in effect. Well, I was going to say, actually, there's a solution for you. Destroy TikTok. Take it away for the good of all mankind, or at least that part of mankind that's in continental USA. Yeah.

You don't feel that's a heavy-handed solution at all? I don't think TikTok needs to be banned. I think humans need to be better educated and take more control and...

I keep saying it be more intentional in their lives and be healthier in the way that they use technology and healthier in the way that they view media. You know, this, this spreads to Netflix and other things just be, be better. But, uh, banning tick knock it. I'm sorry. Banning tick tock is not the solution. Um,

But they're not banning it for the reasons that I'm bringing up. They're bringing banning it because there's a bunch of people and government who is afraid of China and thinks that everything from it is here to harm us or steal our information, whatever they're. What is it? Xenophobes is the word that they're doing terrible things to just be aggressors, I suppose. And

It's a, we're in a weird place in our country right now because the administration that is going out has continued the ban that was started by the, like the idea of the ban started in the previous administration, Donald Trump. And, and,

Went through and got denied and it came back and it got denied. And it keeps going through these cycles because the people who want it to be banned have never left power. They're still in Congress. Those people never go anywhere. So the people who want to get rid of it are still there. And it carried over into the current administration, Biden, and they continue to carry it out like, well, they're bringing up good points. Maybe we should get rid of it. That's a national security concern. Yeah.

Maybe it needs to be owned by a U.S. company, whatever. I'm not going to debate whether they're correct or not. I still don't think a ban is the right answer, but they continued that process. And now here we are. January 19th is the final day for them to divest from a Chinese company into an American company in order to prevent getting banned. And then inauguration of the returning president, Donald Trump, is on January 20th. So he could very quickly...

swear in walk off the stage and sign a document saying TikTok is no longer getting banned we don't know if he's going to do that as is his usual capacity he's given very mixed messages on TikTok he really likes that it's full of his supporters but he really doesn't like that it's from China so we don't know what's going to happen

I think before we go too far down a political line there, can we just settle on the fact... I'm not trying to be political. If everyone's listening, I am not trying to be political here.

Congress and the like have been considering a ban then for eight years and nothing's happened yet. I think that undercuts the whole it's a national security emergency argument. And I thought maybe TikTok was in trouble, but now I'm thinking, no, it'll just go round and round. I think the incoming administration will not ban it because they're more... They would be happier with brownie points with the people and the voters than getting rid of it because...

you know, it's only two more years until another congressional vote and all the angry ex TikTok users could vote everyone out of office that decided to ban this. So maybe it just won't happen. I'm just saying we're in this weird space. I wanted to bring it up on the show because we were talking about TikTok. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't think a ban is necessary. Maybe some kind of regulation is necessary. This is, this is where, this is why I wanted to talk about it. And I think you agree with me.

It's not that TikTok is from China and that's the problem. It's that these companies, these social media companies are taking too much and asking too much and have too much of our information. Do the same thing to Facebook or Meta. They should not be gathering. If there is a national security risk in the United States, it is Meta right now and how much information they have. Allegedly. Let's just throw in allegedly there.

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I'm rather glad you took us to this point because I wanted to bring this... I wanted to get to this point as well because I've been writing about this

Well, can I say this? I actually wrote about this a couple of weeks ago and it didn't get published until now. The EU was about to make an announcement to do with interoperability and the need for, well, basically for Apple, I suppose officially everybody, but really it's Apple, to play nice with everyone. And for some reason, it was all delayed and things. So finally it came out this week. And so therefore we were able to write about Apple's response. But Apple's response has kicked off all sorts of things because Apple

What the EU says it wants is for companies like Apple to work better with other companies to allow rivals access to the technology. Things like the NFC technology in the iPhone shouldn't be confined to Apple Pay, should be allowed to others. And I think there are arguments both sides on there. But Apple's point is, yes, except some of these rivals are.

are really trying it on. And they singled out Meta. They published a list of all the things Meta has asked, not really permission, but has told Apple it would like to be interoperable about. And you look at the list and Apple's stance is, what has this got to do with Facebook? What has this got to do with MetaQuest? And it doesn't. There's so many things there that are just like land grab more than anything else. And Apple's

Apple's stance is this is what happens if you force us to open it up. You create problems for everybody else. Now, Meta's point of view is actually, well, they would say that, wouldn't they? And I don't know if Apple's going to respond to the response and things, but it's left with the usual thing that we've had so many times. Apple accuses somebody like Meta of privacy issues. Meta doesn't actually deny it, but deflects back as much as we can. And we go round and round and round. And

I don't know that an end result is even in sight. If the end result is that the EU tempers its laws in some way, great. But will they? I don't know. We're still waiting to hear what happens with some of the more ridiculous EU rules to do with location issues.

Geolocation on apps and things like that. I am very, very pro-EU, but there are certain things they're doing like that which just demonstrate a lack of practical awareness. And I think this is another one. And I think Apple is trying to put a spotlight on that and Meta is trying to dim the spotlight a bit or maybe point it somewhere else. I feel I should say end rant now about this. Have I got this wrong? Do you disagree with me? No, I mean...

It's just, it's honestly these big corporations playing the petulant child who doesn't get their way. Yeah. And Meta is taking the place of Epic in this kind of argument. Epic's thankfully taking the backstage because I think, well, maybe we'll see. I'm sure they'll have something next week to say. But because they've almost gotten everything they wanted anyway. And Epic and Spotify really convinced the EU that Apple is a problem. And they've said,

thankfully taken a backseat while the EU wreaks havoc on Apple's ecosystem, I suppose. And now Meta is stepping in saying, but we want our way too. And their way isn't, oh, we want control of the app store. We want to install our own apps. They'd love that too. But their way is we want every drop of conceivable information about every customer that we have on the planet. In order to do that, we need to be able to dig into the operating system and see everything everyone does ever, period.

We want to know their contacts, their purchase history, which cards they have on Apple Pay, the games that they're playing and how long they play them for. They would like to know which dating apps you're using and how often you're using them. They want to know everything about you in every conceivable way.

Just so they can show you worse and worse ads filled with AI garbage, apparently, because that seems to be their MO lately. And I just don't know what Meta's doing. I don't anymore. They were Facebook, the social media company, then they changed names to Meta. The Metaverse failed, but they kept the name. And...

They're an advertising company again, but they don't have enough data even after harvesting the entire internet's information. And they're still throwing spats about, oh no, Apple turned on a privacy control. And even Meta's response to this situation was Apple's just hiding behind their valiant act of privacy in order to maintain monopoly control of their platforms. Give me a break, honestly. Yeah.

I should say, in the past, Mark Zuckerberg has made the argument that Apple is being glib by doing all this privacy thing, that in fact Facebook is the champion of the underdog, you know, that usual stuff, because it has a service that anyone can use. They don't have to pay for it. They don't have to be rich, he said. And the only way that's possible is through advertising. But then Tim Cook was talking at...

a European conference on privacy, and he pointed out that for decades, advertising has worked very, very well without being able to scrape all of this data. I'm okay with billboards. I'm okay with passing a billboard saying, hey, did you try this new denture cream? That doesn't affect me. But I do not like being on the internet saying,

And clicking on something and then seeing that thing on every website I go to because Facebook had a cookie embedded in the page. And now they've passed that information through their services. Google has seen it. And then everything's being sold through a data broker, which sounds evil. We've gotten into this. It's just so...

Facebook ruined the internet and I am not exaggerating. They, their business practices and what led to Google's AdSense, like I put them both in the same bucket. I know I'm talking about Facebook and Google in the same turn of phrase because they're both doing it. They want the world's data to quote unquote advertise as much as accurately as they can. Their ads are garbage. Yeah.

It's all weird things and women's underwear. I don't understand what I see anymore on the internet half the time. And that's why ad content blockers and ad blockers have gotten so prevalent because it's

They're bad at it. And that's why I like going to websites. Our website actually does a pretty good job with advertising, I think. It keeps it to a minimum and you can get to the content. You're reading the article and you're not being inundated with, please sign up for this and do that and email and all that. And then here's 15% off your next pair of underwear. And it's just like,

I came here to read an article, please let me do that. You know, and I, and I'm, I'm happy to see when blogs just have a paid sponsor in the corner, or maybe they do a paid article that stuff works. It makes sense. You know, when I open a YouTube page and it, other than YouTube's ads, because they're again, hot garbage, but if they talk about a product in the middle of it, or a podcast mentioned something that they like,

It works. It makes sense. Those are billboards. That's what I'm talking about. Those are billboards. They're not targeting you. But these things that Facebook and Google are saying is how they monetize the internet, how they make their money, I think it's wrong, and I don't think we should be doing it that way. Maybe this is like BBC News training here, but given I was so strident about anti-Facebook, anti-meta stuff at the start, I feel there is one point I should make here,

that you can argue is in their defense which is apple is very reluctant to pass on useful information so if you are a developer of an app or a publisher of a magazine or something it's incredibly hard if at all possible to get any information about your customers if they bought it through the the apple news store if they bought it through the app store or something like that apple

blocks developers do. I mean, I think it does it less than it did before, but it's still not as open as other vendors, other platforms would be. And I get that that is a frustration for developers and publishers, of course. I get the argument that it helps developers

preserve some of the privacy for the reader or the user, but Apple appears to be using that information, and that's a bit that seems wrong to me. So they're not saints on this. No, no, no, no. And we've talked about this before. Apple does some dirty things too, but they're also not meta. And I'm not directing this at you specifically, William. You brought up a good point, but I think...

This gets back to whataboutisms and the... True. It's impossible to talk about something without someone stepping into the room. But did you think about this first? It's like, we're talking about this. Like, yes, I... And again, that wasn't directed at you. It's just, this is what I hear on the internet a lot. And...

Yes, Apple does have some weird business, dirty business practices. They're not a perfect company. They have a lot of money for a reason. They have, they strong arm the competition. They do sometimes abuse their position in the market and they need to be regulated just like everyone else.

I wish the regulators knew what they were doing better, right? This is what I was talking about earlier. You can hold multiple opposing opinions. It's okay. We are complex people. We have brains. We can use them. I think the EU has proven that it is not fully understanding what it's asking for on multiple bases and, well, way overstepping its boundaries. And you know what, William? I have a proposition for you.

Okay. You know, it's a while since I've been propositioned, but okay, I'm up for it, yes. I think that we need a regulating board that regulates the regulating board because the EU has abused their monopoly power of government and they need to let the government be contributed to by more than just their government. You know what I mean? Maybe a checks and balances system...

Have you heard of democracy? I'm joking. No, but seriously, I think this is one of those things where they really need people who know what they're talking about advising them. You would assume that they do, but the way that they write these laws and what they're asking for appears that they don't. Or maybe they do and they ignore them and they just write the laws because they want them to act a certain way anyway. Hard to say.

You should put out the EU is a collection of 27 member states. So you would have thought there'd be checks and balances in there. So you're saying who watches the watchers?

For it. Again, let's give the EU a lot of credit here. They are enacting laws when so many other places in the world have not managed to do it. So, you know, they're getting things done. And I think the intention is good. They are intending to help their members. It's just you're right. There is a across not just the EU, but here in the UK, certainly at times in the US, there are times when technology is.

Technology is so persuasive, pervasive, I mean, it's in everything. So naturally it crosses all sorts of laws. But there are so many laws where it is quite shockingly apparent that the lawmakers do not understand what they're talking about. And you would hope that maybe their staff do, but still things get through and become law that are...

Show us. I mean, I said bad things, so I'll say a nice thing. I applaud them for their efforts in certain places. Like, I love the fact that they're...

Regulations have led to things like Delta existing on the App Store. I love that because of them and even the U.S. government's attention to these monopoly states and their practices on their businesses has led to now we can have Patreon links for supporters and benefits. Delta just implemented that in a recent update. That's cool. That's really cool.

These kinds of things should be available. Apple should allow competition. I am not a big fan of the idea of alternate app stores because I think it leads to a lot of other issues, but I do believe that Apple should be a better steward of its app store and providing access to

So people make the argument of Apple needs to open up and give access to these private APIs. Funny enough, it does eventually a lot of times. What's a private API three years ago becomes a public API. It's like they're dogfooding it.

But how do you do it without doing it publicly? But they release something and people are mad that they don't have access to it. So they go to the lawyers, I suppose. I had not thought about that, of course. How many times have we seen a feature be Apple exclusive and then spread out to developers? Yeah, we just all need patience. I think we're in a weird space right now. I'll conclude.

I think we're in a weird space right now with these governments and regulations and what the EU is doing, what the US is doing, and even Australia. It's coming to a head in a good way. We need these trials, tribulations, these growing pains, because I think it will end up in the end, getting to a point of equilibrium where the regulations will work in consumers' favor and benefit consumers.

everyone as a whole and the companies will survive. It's just, they're betting big and then pulling back. And that's annoying to a lot of us because we're seeing what if they do try to force Facebook into your iPhone, right? Like that's nasty. And I hope Apple wins that argument. But because of that, other things can step forward and seem more reasonable. And that's where we are right now. And I think we just all have to be a little bit more patient.

So would you say that it'll all shake out in the end? Will it shake out in the end in time for the iPhone 17 range? Yeah? No? No. This is a decade in the making, I think. We're going to be talking about this for a while. But the iPhone 17, right, I mean, revolutionary changes, possibly, with completely different cameras or completely the same cameras, right?

And things. You're the camera guy. What's going on with the iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Slim and the iPhone 17 Thick and all these cameras? I think this is the first time anybody's ever said the iPhone 17 Thick. You heard it here first and possibly last. OK, but news this week about cameras. Yeah. Yeah. You have to spell thick with two C's. That's a...

that's an old i'm such an old man no so um this is silly well i don't know an unreliable source said hey the iphone's going to switch to a bar with three cameras across the top was this an unreliable source on tiktok by any chance no i i think i i'm not going to put a name to it because i don't remember who it was but i just remember it not being particularly a good source but um

Now, this week, of course, someone else is saying that's not true. Yeah, that was never true. Apple isn't going to do a radical redesign of the iPhone 17. The only device in that lineup that will be different is the iPhone 17 Slim with its single camera design.

setup. We'll see what happens with that. It's not a redesign. It's a new product. The rest of the lineup is going to be basically the iPhone 16 lineup. Just new internals, better cameras. Same thing that we've gotten multiple times before. Do you remember when the iPhone added a second and third camera? Yeah. Well, we had one camera through the iPhone...

Let's see. Yeah, you see it blurs, doesn't it? Well, iPhone 10 had two and the iPhone 7, I think it was the iPhone 7 with computational photography. We got portrait mode and two lenses on the pro phone. The 6 had one camera and the 6S had one camera.

So was it when it went to more than one camera that we got the camera bump? Because I still think about that every time I put my phone down. We've had a bump since the 6. That was one of the controversial things. Oh, it's so thin, but it needs a bump, right? People were very mad about that. That bump is quaint by today's standards, by the way. Yes, it is.

So you understand that the iPhone 17 Slim, if it happens at all, of course, and if that's what it's called, is going to go back to one camera, presumably because of the physical dimensions. It would be ridiculous, wouldn't it, to have a much, much slimmer iPhone, but still with exactly the same size camera bump. I don't know if it's a dimensional savings or if it's just we're making a slimmed-down device that has only the features people need. It's kind of a mixed bag of...

We want it to be futuristic in a way, but it's going to be cut back in another. So to keep it inexpensive and thin, they're going to go with a single 48 megapixel camera. And I think that makes sense for most users.

When you say that, that makes me think like the Slim will be a replacement for the Plus, which we've heard before. But we've also heard from time to time that it would be like an iPhone 17 Ultra, that it would be above the Pro. Apple's going to price this in some way, high or low? There's no way it's an Ultra, and I think the Ultra is dead. I don't know why that rumor keeps coming back. But the...

This is going to fall into the plus category. It is not an iPhone Pro, and it's not going to have Pro capabilities, but it's also not a standard model. The standard model is now a size that people enjoy. And then if you want to go smaller, you're going to have the iPhone SE 4. So that's kind of where the lineup is. Apple's going to have five iPhones for sale. SE Entry is

Uh, the kind of a smaller form factor, uh, the iPhone 17 will be this, um, mid tier price wise, mid tier specs wise phone and mid tier size wise. And then you have the slim, which will probably have a similarly sized display, but thinner body, lighter weight, uh,

and a single camera less features overalls and again so the price might actually fall in line with the plus it'll be more expensive than the base model because of its premium design but it won't be that much more expensive and you'll still have a pro above it so i think it fits perfectly in the slot of the plus will you buy one now i'm all i need all the cameras

Right, that's why I was wondering, I was a bit torn there, because you do buy new, you bought the Vision Pro, but you are more of a photography guy. I feel like I want to use one rather than own one, but you'll see what happens.

I'm still in the, I've been forced to think about my setups and how they're evolving because we are, spoilers, writing, each of us are writing about our desk setups and gear that we use and our just general tech lives and how we work at Apple Insider. Those pieces are, I think, going up over the holiday break. But it's forcing me to think about my technologies and devices and

Can I eliminate anything or can I, can I manipulate this to be different? And honestly, I'm happy where I am now. And it, and I think a lot depends on Apple's future technology decisions. I've mentioned before, if there was an iPad mini with OLED and M series chip and cellular, uh,

I could probably replace almost everything in my lineup with just the iPad mini. If it had stage manager to an external display and could like show itself inside of the vision pro, it would just be this ultimate little computer. They're not making that, but I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm happy having these multitude of devices and each one serving a specific purpose. And, but I'm also okay with shrinking down and focusing on a specific, like getting, um,

less devices in my life but right now they're just not set up that way there isn't an availability for that maybe when we can fold a phone or an iPad that will change

Well, it's so funny you should mention that, because apart from the fact that I don't want to admit I have to tidy my office before I can write my version of that feature, there is the rumour... I'm very ambivalent about rumours. There's actually a little bit of me that would rather not know anything, so there's a nice surprise when it all comes out. But then there are other bits that get me quite excited. And the iPhone 17 Slim intrigues me rather than excites me. But the folding iPad Pro...

Now, without it even existing, I want one of those. You're the iPad guy. Can you explain what the benefits of the alleged rumoured benefits of the new iPad that doesn't exist could be?

none it's all garbage i don't think foldables are going to happen they're still not good the technology's bad the screens are easy to break but maybe that changes and maybe apple releases this ultimate perfect foldable that has no creases and oled and beautiful and touchable and doesn't destroy itself over time i don't know if that happens and we get an actual apple foldable uh

Fine. I will be intrigued by it. Like, I like the idea of the technology, right? The concept works on paper. It does not work in real life because physics are mean and the screens will destroy themselves. You shut them, stuff gets trapped between the wedge. Now you're just smearing sand into the glass while you're walking around, right? Like, there's just so many ways that these can break. But...

If Apple figures out a way to make it perfect, great. I will be interested, and honestly, I would probably be one of the first in line to buy it. I'm still... The only reason why I'm opposed to the idea is because I just don't... I think it's a fad, and I think it's passing. It's increasingly getting less and less in people's minds. It was never a high seller anyway, and now we're just seeing them just drop off the face of the earth. Like, other than enthusiasts, when was the last time you heard or saw anyone really talk about a foldable? But...

What's intrigued you more, William, a foldable iPhone like a flip phone or a foldable iPad like a big notebook? I want them all. I would have been parroting what you just said there, except for that Huawei Mate XT, something like that, that's a tri-folding. No, it's two folds, but it comes out to three times the size of it. And watching videos of that. Yeah, that actually...

That looked really good to me. I mean, it seemed quite thick, and I take it, of course, about the screens destroying, but suddenly seeing that reinvigorated my interest in the whole foldable thing. We're getting there. Like, it's close, and I'm worried that by the time the technology matures...

It will be past it. That's what I'm getting at. There's better ways, right? So this gets back to my conversation about I have – in my write-up, I say I have four screens in front of me at my desk, and then I put on my Vision Pro and they disappear, and I can have 500 windows in front of me. That's the future. That's where we're going. Vision Pro may be early, heavy, and expensive, but it will soon be lighter and cheaper and cheaper.

more prevalent right instead of having an ipad an iphone an ipad mini and a studio display i can just have windows floating in front of me on a device that i wear on my face and then a keyboard and mouse attached over bluetooth and that be my computing platform that's where we're going so the the problem foldables are trying to solve is i need screen but bigger

That's solved by a wearable that can just make a bigger screen in front of you virtually. I think the tactileness of a touchscreen and of a device is still important. So I don't think we're ever going to be without these computers, right? I think a Mac is still going to be here. I think an iPad is still going to be here. Even when the glasses are, I think we'll still have a multi-device lifestyle for a very long time.

But I think by the time foldables get here, their relevance will have completely disappeared because whatever usefulness that they would have offered will be replaced by what you can do with the wearable headset. Well, at least you praised the Mac during that. So let's stop there on that high note and say if people agree or disagree with you, Wes, where can they find you this week? Well, I'm...

On Blue Sky, not very active. I've been very busy. I don't even know how I'm busy. It's just things keep happening in a rapid pace. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I'm still trying to think of ways to actually utilize that blog. I have it. I intend on continuing to renew the blog and the URL and everything. I just need to find something that I can write about regularly so I can actually, like...

use it because that's my problem i'm kind of running into this writer's block i i can't write about necessarily what i would on apple insider because then i'm kind of just stealing my own content so it's it's such a weird place but yeah active on blue sky and trying to be active elsewhere and just you know email me if you want to talk about anything on the show or yell about yell at me about something i said stupidly about politics today um wes at appleinsider.com

And, yeah, I'll be around. We did not get any podcast reviews in the last couple weeks. I'm still looking for those. If you guys want to say something about the show, you can go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review, and we'll talk about it here. But we won't be talking about it for a couple weeks, will we?

Well, no, because I was very careful to say this week because there won't be an Applesider or Applesider Plus even next week. What are we doing? Are we shirking and things? Yes, basically, for that Christmas thing. We'll be back very early in the new year with more. And in the meantime, well, I do have a blog that...

I think I've missed one week in more than 10 years or so. It's a blog called Self Distract, but I won't link to it this week because just between us, it's a depressing entry this week. Come back for comedy a week on Friday or something like that. And in the meantime, reach me on William at Apple Insider.

is the best. But so that basically Wes and I can just disappear off for our Christmas meals and all that stuff, let me just say thank you very much for listening. Thank you to our sponsors ZocDoc and 1Password and we'll be back with a regular episode next week and the Apples are the Plus episode in about 10 minutes.

10 seconds would you say was 10 15 seconds you say next week but uh you missed that i think it's two weeks we'll be back in 2025 so all right and okay you know i i just want to wish everyone uh merry christmas a happy new year and i hope you guys have a great holiday