Google's Foray into Better Together Ecosystem

Google has recently announced its plan to integrate various features from Apple's Continuity and Handoff technologies into its own ecosystem, dubbed "Better Together". This move is seen as an attempt by Google to compete with Apple in the realm of seamless device integration. The announcement comes at a time when Google's messaging services have not been quite successful, with services like Hangouts experiencing a decline in user base.

The Better Together initiative aims to bring together various features such as text message syncing, continuity, and more. This is seen as a positive step for Google, especially since it will enable users to have a full ecosystem experience across different devices. However, this may prove to be a challenging task, given the fragmentation of Android devices on the market. Most Android phones are not Google Pixels but rather Samsung Galaxy phones, OnePlus, and Huawei devices. Therefore, Google would have to work closely with these device manufacturers to support this new ecosystem.

The announcement has left many users puzzled, including the author, who wonders how Google plans to implement this technology across its vast array of Android devices. The author notes that Google's history with messaging services like Hangouts and Google Messenger has not been great, and it is uncertain whether they will be able to overcome these challenges. Moreover, the author questions how users will access this new feature and what devices will support it.

Moreover, the author wonders about the update process for this technology. They ask how people will get the latest version of Android 16 and which devices will support it. The author notes that Android is a fragmented operating system with various versions and devices, making it difficult to implement such features across all platforms. This makes the author curious to see if Google can pull off this ambitious plan.

In conclusion, while the announcement of Better Together seems like an exciting development for Google, many users are left wondering about its feasibility. The author hopes that Google will be able to overcome the challenges and deliver a seamless user experience across different devices. However, with the current state of Android and its fragmentation, it is uncertain whether this technology will become a reality in the near future.

Google IO: A Hope for a Better Experience

The announcement of Better Together comes at a time when Google usually holds its Keynote event shortly before Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The Google I/O event usually takes place in May, and it is expected that this new feature will be showcased during the conference. However, the author wonders whether Google has finally figured out how to implement this technology across its vast array of Android devices.

The author notes that observing Google as a company can be frustrating at times, given their history of announcing features but then ignoring or not implementing them properly. This is particularly evident in the context of messaging services like Hangouts and Google Messenger. The author hopes that Google has learned from its past mistakes and will be able to deliver on its promises this time around.

The author also notes that Apple's Continuity and Handoff technologies have been a major factor in their success, allowing users to seamlessly transition between devices. This has led the author to wonder why Google did not adopt similar features earlier on. However, it seems that Google is finally taking steps to catch up with its competitors.

CES 2022: A Hope for Better Things to Come

As we move forward into 2022, many users are eagerly waiting for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to take place. The author hopes that this year's event will bring some exciting new developments in the world of technology. However, given Google's history of making announcements but not quite delivering on them, it is difficult to predict what CES 2022 will bring.

The author notes that Android is a fragmented operating system with various versions and devices, making it challenging for companies like Google to implement features across all platforms. This has led the author to wonder whether Google's plans for Better Together will become a reality in the near future.

In conclusion, while the announcement of Better Together seems promising, many users are left wondering about its feasibility. The author hopes that Google will be able to overcome the challenges and deliver a seamless user experience across different devices. However, with the current state of Android and its fragmentation, it is uncertain whether this technology will become a reality in the near future.

Supporting the Show

The author would like to thank all those who have given a 5-star rating and review for the show on the Apple Podcast app. This greatly helps the show, as it allows new listeners to discover the content. The author also invites listeners to support the show with $5 a month either directly in Apple Podcast or at Patreon.com/Inssider. This will provide access to an ad-free version of the show and Early Access.

Moreover, the author would like to encourage listeners to tweet them about any questions or topics they would like to discuss on the show. The author and co-host Wes are always eager to engage with their audience and hear their thoughts. So, go ahead and tweet at us, and we will do our best to respond.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven roblas and today we're going to look at what Apple will be bringing this year in 2022 there's some new accessories for iPhone and mac and more this episode is brought to you by true bill and masterclass and for this very first episode of the Year my friend Wes hillyard's joining me what's going on Wes Hey Stephen uh just dealing with whatever sickness is going around that isn't Co so oh my goodness yeah it's all over the place it's all over just been coughing you know that fun stuff yeah and it's like getting a cold is now hyper stressful cuz it's like is it a cold or is it co that's that's the game show we're all playing now you can I mean you can still get colds you know what I mean it's like it's not this all Co or nothing I saw some news article saying something like uh first person with Co and the flu and they're calling it like like it was some combination of words of Co coronav virus and flu or some nonsense and I was just like get get out of here I don't want any of this I thought you were going to say cthulu cuz it's like kofu yeah yeah there we go that's that's probably what it was well this is not a CO episode and so we're we will try not to cough well I'm going to edit all the coughs out so you know we might have a 2-hour recording edited down to 45 minutes so we'll see but I wanted to say if you missed our 2021 year interview episode special guest Jason Aton joined me it was the longest show I think I've done an apple Insider yet it was like 2 hours but it was a lot of fun we went through everything Apple announced in 2021 kind of our favorites from the year looking back at those things and now in this episode we're going to look forward to see what Apple will be bringing this year mark Gman had some leaks and rumors that he believes things we should be looking for in this next year and apple actually announced some things that are definitely coming so we'll talk about that as well I do want to mention that it's CES this week and so CES is over as you listen to this recording Andrew O'Hare was actually there in person and so we do a big Roundup on The homekit Insider episode that comes out this Monday so check it out there was some awesome homekit announcement and devices but you know there's not a lot of other Apple news aside from smart home kind of stuff I have a couple bullet points just cuz I think this stuff is funny because just there's just wild stuff that gets announced at CES which if you didn't know is the Consumer Electronic Show happens I was going to say every year in Las Vegas but it didn't happen last year because of Co so this was kind of the the first one back it was in person even though many companies dropped out last minute CES is one of those shows that's been around forever I remember I don't know maybe a decade ago when this and E3 and everything was all happening back to back to back like the first 6 months of the year was just convention time um for for nerds you know video games on electronics and just like E3 kind of has died off over the years so has CES it's turned into fancy smart lights and cars and the the cars have become more and more part of the show over the last few years and I actually kind of excited by that I I really like the idea of more technology getting to vehicles did you see any of the cool cars before we get into the tech stuff I did I mean I did see that there were some EV cars announced which is cool I didn't see any specific technology there was a a BMW you'll have to look up this this video maybe we'll put a link in yeah there's a BMW that is covered in E Ink so you can change the color from black to white on command what the entire car is e ink yes all right that's prettyy it's really fancy yeah you can see it in action and it's it's it takes about three or 4 seconds for the whole thing to change so it's not onof it's kind of like a like Smooth transition it's really fancy it's like the it's like okay I don't know why I would need this other than hiding from the police but this is really cool that's amazing now if you could change your license plate while it's doing that especially while I go through a red light but I'm sure that's not the intention you know that actually made me think this was not a CES announcement but if you've never heard of this technology it's called vanta Black and basically it's this material that I don't know I don't know if it's absorbs all colors or absorbs zero colors but it is a a compound that is like 100% black and I'll put a link to this website the website is Serano systems and they have kind of been developing this technology but you put this on anything and it literally looks like a hole whether if you hold a piece of it in your hand like they have a picture of it I'll put this as the chapter art of course so you could see it but you can put this on your hand and it literally looks like there's a hole in your hand like no light or color is reflected in it and they actually have a BMW which made me think of it covered in this vanta black material and it looks amazing because there's just nothing blacker than this you know it's just kind of a pretty cool material whatever it's called so I'll put a link to that website if you're curious but I'm down for cars being covered in E Inc and stuff that's pretty that's pretty sweet all right and last thing on cars we can move on Sony announced their electric vehicle what I missed that so yes Sony entertainment announced their electric vehicle so that gives me hope for an Apple car if Sony can do it wow I mean come on Apple's right behind them Sony is gearing up to make its own electric cars yep I will put this actually doesn't look half bad either that's interesting yeah you know S sedan what is that like a crossover like a sedan ate a SUV and stopped halfway kind of thing yeah it's like my Kia of Soul it's one of those crossover terrible things but anyway I will put that link chonas it's prettyy slick so some other things announced the CES thought I thought was hilarious LG announced a 97 in 4K television it's rumored to come out at $40,000 so if you just want the biggest TV available TCL which is a technology company you know they make TVs if you've heard seen them in like the stores they're working on some AR glasses which I think was interesting just because you know all the rumors about Apple doing AR glasses they actually are also working on them using some kind of micro LED display using optical holographic wave guide technology I don't know what all those words mean but cool they're working on it tplink has a Wi-Fi 6E wireless router with motorized rotating antennas this thing looked wild like I guess it would follow you around the house to optimize the Wi-Fi connection to your device I guess that was interesting next up is a drone that shoots Wi-Fi at you with lasers and wireless power that has been developing and did you did you see the Samsung TV remote that charges using Wi-Fi oh my good was this a CES thing yeah this was yes yeah are you watching the same conference well I'm watching our coverage on it which was mostly smart home stuff so okay so a Samsung remote that charges over Wi-Fi is that it yeah it's like a TV remote you never have to charge because it's all like whatever Wi-Fi radio signal it's getting is enough to keep it alive to keep it whoa that's wild yep I found that too this last thing I thought was hilarious was Coler which makes kitchen and bathroom like fixtures and stuff they have a self filling tub which I guess you can uh it hey fill the tub and it will fill it and you don't have to worry about it overflowing which there's some actually some smart home faucets like that like pot fillers where you can say fill this pot or fill one cup of water and it will do it based on just your voice command which is pretty sweet and now uh you can do a whole tub well Stephen I mean didn't you grow up seeing all the same cartoons I did where uh many of them featured a tub overflowing this was going to be a real problem as an adult and now it's fixed and we have we have the solution it's technology we have the technology very good I I do want to point out one not CES announcement um linkis did do an update they updated their logo for their app they still have not given us homekit router support for uh minus Steven's very specific router for whatever reason this router that we have ax whatever the 5300 yeah yeah 5300 does not have all the other ones do every other one but our router they just they heard us talk about it on the podcast and decided you know what these guys aren't getting homekit routers support so but they have a new logo so that's great Wes you're really put me on an emotional roller coaster in 5 seconds cuz well the reason why is where I'm living right now we actually switched to a fiber internet connection gig service which a is incredible I get like 900 down and up which is amazing but they gave free like ero Pro routers and the person's house like he wanted to go ahead and switch to those so they can sit here even after we move into our new house later this year and so we've been using the ero pros and my lyus velop system has not been hooked up so an update could have come through and I wasn't aware of it and as you went into that I I thought is it true could it have happened and then no you crushed my dreams once again I'm here for you Stephen yeah thanks a thanks a lot anyway you should check out all of our CES coverage on Apple insider.com and homeid Insider check out Monday's episode we talk a lot about smart home stuff that was announced at CEO so that's pretty cool first thing I just wanted to mention quickly apple is now officially the first company to pass a a $3 trillion market cap their stock briefly hit $182.8 which made them the first $3 trillion Market valuation company ever which Mike Peterson on Apple Insider had the article and he like he threw in this little like jab and says it's bigger than the economy of the United Kingdom I guess $3 trillion is bigger than the entire UK economy which is it's insane apple is just worth a ton of money it's actually dropped since then as you listen to this episode so they're not 3 trillion anymore but they hit it first they were also the first to hit $2 trillion so and $1 trillion yeah oh and $1 trillion yeah so listen if you didn't realize it Apple's pretty successful and they make a lot of money that's what that means remember when everyone was fussing over Microsoft overtaking Apple uh for like briefly last year and now now they're at $3 trillion remember though uh market cap is a meaningless metric it's multiplying the number of stocks available to buy by how much they're worth basically and it it's a total total arbitrary number but for some reason people who watch the stock market really like it but yeah like three it's worth $3 trillion buy at stock value so it's not like how much money they have to spend or whatever but they still have what uh $25 billion just sitting in a bank account in Switzerland so I think it it might even be more than that supposedly I just searched and there's some articles here from 2021 that they might have close to $200 billion cash on hand this was I guess almost a year ago so I mean it could be very different but yeah they they have a lot of cash on hand like they're doing fine we don't have to worry about Apple going anywhere anytime soon well it's it's just when you think about these numbers it's it's good to put it in context so yeah uh real real quick I wanted to look up how much was the Apple campus worth was it like $4 billion this one is from 2019 it says that Apple Spaceship Campus valued at over $4 billion which in the current real estate market in two years after this or three years almost 3 years it might be who knows 6 7 billion a lot so yeah in my well yeah who who knows how inflation works the Apple Park page we have on Apple Insider uh inside Apple Park is $ 4.17 billion is the main building that doesn't include the campus or the glendining barn that they restored and put in a corner so yeah n just think about it though 4 billion is the entire Spaceship Campus the largest office building in the world kind of thing well one of them yeah I'm sure there's a bigger one in Dubai but um it's just like 4 billion and then you said what they had two over $200 billion so they could build just 50 more of these things and have money left over that's an interesting way to think about it yeah they have a lot of money like just sitting around so they're doing okay so I want to look forward to what Apple will be releasing this year or what possibly they'll be releasing this year mark Gman you know he's got his weekly power on newsletter he's usually pretty accurate when it comes to Apple leaks and device and a lot of these things are just kind of no duh like Apple's going to be releasing these this year first thing I want to talk about is the redesign MacBook Air with M2 Chip which we've had rumored MacBook Air renders and redesigns John prer leaks some renders it's been floating around it seems like this might be the big MacBook Air redesign Mark Gman said in his newsletter this past week that it's probably the biggest MacBook Air redesign which to be honest the MacBook Air hasn't changed a ton since it was launched I mean even the M1 MacBook Air still matches the design pretty closely so I think it's due for a big redesign yeah and it it launched in 2008 and it had aluminum unibody this whole time it kind of shifted from that early MacBook plasticky screen to the retina and that changed the look of the Interior but overall the design has been pretty much identical and this this thing whatever they're about to announce is going to be a huge shift um specifically like uh the slope that's always marked the MacBook Air and the chassis is going to be gone apparently it's going to be so thin that making a slope probably wouldn't leave enough room for the trackpad to exist so it'll definitely be an interesting device we're actually working on renders right now our uh render person is putting together some M2 MacBook Air renders and we'll have a article on that sometime on Friday so whenever you're listening to this keep an eye on Apple Insider will have some renders for you to look at that's awesome yeah I'm very curious as the rumors are saying no more tapered design like you were saying that slope or teardrop shape however you want to call it which has been iconic to the MacBook air I'm really interested if they're going to get rid of that just make it flat a how thin is it going to be I mean it has to at least have a USBC style port on the side which if you look at a current MacBook Air is pretty close to that thickness I guess you could make the lid thinner and then the bottom chass he thicker fun facts the thickest part of a MacBook Air is actually thicker than a MacBook Pro so they have some space to wiggle here okay if they bring it down to a thickness that's slightly thinner than the MacBook Pro I believe that they'll be fine and of course this will mean less battery space which means a lighter overall design I I think this thing's going to be stupid light blowing the way in the wind kind of thing so we'll we'll see did you ever hold the 12-in MacBook I did I had a 12-in Macbook for a little while actually super light and it was it was amazing how portable that thing was I did love it yeah so think that's what I'm thinking I mean yeah it had a slope design as well I I'm thinking we're going to see something kind of like that just the same thickness all the way through that thing was amazing so imagine that body with a bezeless display with a notch and that's pretty much your MacBook Air is is my guess yeah that'd be pretty sweet I'm also very curious about the whole M2 naming convention it makes sense because the M1 went into the MacBook Air Base level MacBook Pro which German says will also get a refresh most likely with the M2 Chip and you know I understand pros and prosumers will understand the difference between M1 Pro and M1 Max Max but I feel like there is going to be some discrepancy when we get to an M2 Chip which is out and is really part of the advertising you know even when a12 was in the iPhone but the iPad Pro would have an a12x apple usually didn't promote or Market the chip names as much I mean it would be on the website and you''ll be able to see what it is but it wouldn't be like a selling feature I feel like the M1 was such a big part of the marketing of those initial devices and now M1 Pro and M1 Max are a big part of the MacBook Pro lineup assuming that will also be a big part of the Mac Mini and larger iMac so I'm curious are they actually going to do M2 while the M1 Pro and M1 Max are still out there or are they going to do something different you think so well I mean I don't know how else you're going to name it is it going to be N1 are we going to just move to a new letter the numbers M1 a I I I don't know Apple's painted himself in a in a corner naming wise it's it's going to be an M2 if they come out with any other chip name I would be very surprised they could though do an M2 in the MacBook Air and at the same time announced the larger iMac or even Mac Pro and then put an M2 Pro and M2 Max in those and then the whole lineup will be on M2 the problem with that is is we're not there yet I mean like listen to the ATP guys talk about this they go way into detail but it's it's just one of those things where it's a cyclical nature the people buying these computers who care about chips understand the consumers who are going out here and buying a MacBook Air probably don't even care what chips inside of it they they probably don't even know if it's not Intel but Apple's going to advertise that M2 the people buying the iMac Pro or 27in iMac with an M1 Max in it they know what they're getting they know it's more powerful than the M2 it's it's one of those things where you got to think about who they're selling it to the the the prer or high-end professional any of those people should know better um and even if they don't they can easily be told oh M2 just means it came out more recently doesn't mean it's faster it's faster than the M1 because the M1 Pro and M1 Max are basically multiples of the M1 if you want to go super Layman STS here so the M2 I don't think the technolog is going to be there at least not for I I think Apple's just going to try these out slowly year by year uh like the M2 Pro and M2 Max won't be until 2023 and that's fine we don't need it yeah no that's true well and also German mentioned in the same newsletter that an iPad will be released this year with wireless charging and man I've been thinking about this since I read it and it just doesn't make sense to me I mean I have an iPad Mini I've had an 11-in I also have the 12.9in iPad Pro and I just can't imagine a kind of wireless charging that would be desirable for these devices you know speed aside you know obviously it would take much longer to charge those devices over mag safe even and just the Practical implications of lining up a wireless charger to an iPad size back you would either have to have a dinner plate size mag safe Circle so it lines up easily or if you have the same size mag safe Puck as with the iPhone but an iPad is compatible I feel like that would be a lot of fishing around for the area for mag safe charging so I don't does this make any sense to you I think this is Mark Gman fishing for things it's possible that we could get wireless charging on an iPad I mean technically we've had it before with the SMART connector and that didn't work out too well just because the SMART connector is not great at charging it's just a good for providing power to a keyboard and apple obviously gave up on that very quickly I could see like right now I'm using a stand for my iPad Pro that mag that uses the magnets that would that would be used for the magic keyboard but it's for this stand and it's right it makes it look like a little iMac kind of thing a little foot sticking out from underneath it I could totally see like a a conductive surface on the back of this just providing power to the iPad but again it's what's the use case for it because if I'm using it this way I'm using it at a desk with a cable connected with a keyboard or whatever like this is Apple leaning heavily into Wireless and unless they plan on coming out with a portless iPad I don't really see the reason for it yeah and I mean they just put USBC on the iPad pros and the iPad mini and like you were saying we kind of have a SMART connector that's Wireless now you know I guess you consider the magic keyboard you can plug the USBC charging cable into the magic keyboard itself and then the iPad charges through the SMART connector so yeah that's like kind of a wireless but well Wireless is a misnomer anyway so a wire is coming in from somewhere if it's the stand or the iPad you know where where's the cable but I could see a use case where something iPad Air iPad Mini uh could definitely use the iPhone version of the mag safe Puck and just slap it on the back the batteries in those are huge but they're not so big that I don't think that the current it's not going to be an issue espe at 15 watts it should be enough to float the battery I don't think it's going to be anything amazing but could just be a convenience factor if you're filling your house with these mag safe things why not be able to just slap it onto an iPad 2 keep it alive or charge it when it's not in used kind of thing yeah my my other thought though was like mag safe accessories like I'm going to talk about it in a little bit the new Belin 3in1 that I got you know you wouldn't really be able to charge an iPad even an iPad Mini would obstruct the other charging uh pads or charging are is of something like a belon 3 in1 or even a nomad type wireless charger those are definitely designed for iPhones I think we'd have to see a rethink on if if we wanted it to be truly Universal belcon would have to rethink how they position those but I think apple is doing what it usually does and isn't thinking about what other companies are doing and they're thinking about what Apple's doing and what Apple does is they sell a Mac safe thing connected to a cable and that's it ignoring the existence of that little folding guy that they pretty much got rid of already but um what was it $130 for the max saave duo duo that's it now I will say the max saave Duo I actually went on a little road trip recently I bring those mag saave Duos for my wife and I because if you have iPhone airpods and an Apple Watch it is pretty convenient I mean a good travel charger travel charger yeah not for like a desk or nightstand it's not not great for that but definitely like it for travel this episode is brought to you by our friends at masterclass guys you've heard me talk about masterclass before I absolutely love master class with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn about music composition for film with Han Zimmer acting from Samuel Jackson and cooking from Gordon Ramsey with over a 100 classes from a range of worldclass instructors the thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think I love master class because you can do it on any device you can watch their videos on your iPhone iPad they have an incredible app even on the Apple TV or just stream it in the web each lesson for a course is about 10 to 15 minutes long so you can do it on a lunch break or binge an entire class in a few hours it would be worth it one of my favorite classes is the art of negotiation with Chris Voss I read his book I've seen his Ted talk but his master class really gets 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slapple Insider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode all right well Mark Gman also had some other things in the same newsletter he said we should be seeing an updated iPhone SE with 5G there will be three new Apple watches this year which we've heard this rumor before an SE Apple Watch series 8 and this rugged version that we' heard rumored several times what I think is interesting is the iPhone 14 rumors now actually just before we recorded also leaker Dylan dkt on Twitter corroborated this whole hole punch style iPhone 14 and that's the big change that's rumored is instead of a notch on the iPhone 14 lineup will now go to a hole punch that just has the camera sticking out of this hole and instead of a round like a complete circular hole the rumors now say that it'll be kind of a pill-shaped or elongated hole punch for the ca camera and most likely I would think the face ID dot projector that actually you need for the face ID thing so it's an interesting renders we have renders by our guy Apple tomorrow on Apple Insider as well so it seems like it's been corroborated by several sources about this hole punch in the screen yeah the hole punch is probably happening centered on the display that's all fine I don't know about this uh pill shape I think that image I did see it it I think that's just the casing without a display over it and the display cover will actually just make it uh cover like show only the camera infrared is weird I I think it can go through without I don't think it's going to be obstructed by class or they can at least code it or whatever uh in a certain way to allow it to pass through so I I I could still see this just being a simple circular hole but you know we'll see well actually and as you say that you know if you have the attention aware face ID unlock which if you didn't know if you go into the settings face ID on an iPhone you can choose to have to be looking at the phone to unlock it or you can turn that off and that's called attention aware your eyes actually have to be on the phone and that works through glasses I wear glasses and so face ID Works through that so we can see your eyes through the glasses in your eyeglasses so yeah I would think a glass screen would be the same it would be able to project through that without an issue they would just have to adjust for the refraction I guess but yeah I don't I don't think it would be an issue and then finally from Mark G's newsletter the Mac Pro and Mac Mini should be updated this year as well these are are some of the final computers to move to Apple silicon the larger iMac being one the one model of Mac Mini that is still being sold on Intel chips that has up to 64 gigs of RAM and stuff like that still needs to be updated and of course the Mac Pro but Apple silicon version German is actually saying the Mac Pro version with apple silicon could include a chip with up to 40 CPU cores which is a 4X increase over the M1 Pro and M1 Max those have 10 CPU cores and a 28 core GPU so if you do all the math it would be very powerful especially compared to the new M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros I think he just took the number and multiplied it by four right it could very easily be just like a four CPUs uh thread it together here uh the M1 Max just I I I know the current ones don't have like uh their proper bus connections I know Mike's really into this Mike worly at Apple Insider he's really into this stuff and can just look at a chip diagram be like I know exactly what everything here does um right and he he described it basically as uh right now it looks like the M1 Pro and M1 Max don't have the connection points to uh basically put two of them together but Apple can always build those in so I I'm wondering if uh we get a new chip for the emac pro and they call it something else M1 Pro Max is uh my joking name here but uh yeah combining all the words but um they could also put a different letter I mean they could use a different letter for the Mac Pro level stuff maybe even a larger iMac yeah I I don't know I I think that would just complicate things again I like we said before the professionals who are spending $50,000 on an on a Mac Pro they know what they're getting they know what they're looking for the the name is arbitrary but Apple from a marketing standpoint I feel like they're going to keep it all the same m1's across the line m2s next year you know I expect this to just be more m1's with some sort of like M1 Ultra right an even bigger superlative name now Mark Gman is saying that we could see all of this stuff come out as early as WWDC this year most likely will be another virtual event probably not in person but even if it's announced at WWDC I am imagining like the last Mac Pro it could be announced then but be available in November or December time we'll see they could always surprise us and make it available this summer but I imagine that Mac Mini the larger iMac and this Mac Pro we're going to see all of these this year so you've been if you've been in the market for a higher-end Mac desktop you want that Apple silicon like myself I've been waiting for this larger iMac or maybe even the Mac Mini this is the year 2022 we should be seeing all this stuff it's going to be at least the 2-year transition that Tim Cook had promised at WWDC 2020 at the latest it would be the fall time November is when the first M1 Max came out and that's the 2-year deadline that Tim Cook set for Apple itself so yeah we should see all this this year that's pretty exciting well we could also see an updated Mac Pro with some uh more recent Xenon processors and what what not from Intel true uh just just because it's a the the final Death Rows of Intel giving uh those guys who still need to boot into windows and stuff something to have um on on that end because when was Mac Pro last really updated uh 2020 I think it was 2019 is the the last Model yeah right so I I could see apple throwing out just a maybe even like a subtext on a on a screen they don't even say it on stage it just says by the way there's also these new Intel Mac Pros but oh yeah I don't know did did you hear about Intel's uh Tantrums uh on stage I heard Intel had like a super powerful chip or something that they announced oh no it's not well it's the I9 but just uh the newer the another Lake version um Alder Lake I9 anyway this thing is supposed to alal Lake from X-Men oh no um it's just another Lake processor we've been again I don't fully understand the naming here but these guys have basically been just newer versions of whatever they released in 2016 or so and just overclocking and adding cores and overclocking and adding cores to try and compensate for you know this is why Apple dumped Intel finally because we've spent the last 5 years with essentially the same chipsets and here we are again this I9 processor from Intel and they're like hey guys look it's Peak power is better than the M1 Max but it's you know in the corner it says it takes the power of the sun to get there so I'm I'm just not sure what Intel's doing but every time they mention Apple in in a keynote or on an ad it's just shooting themselves on the foot they just need need to pretend Apple doesn't exist at this point because Apple's doing the same to them it's not great it's not a good look what also Apple like in their M1 Pro M1 Max event they didn't really mention Intel specifically they kind of just compared it to the top-of-the-line Windows PCS or they said gaming laptops kind of like kind of like a general thing because it's not just Intel that they're competing with anymore I mean AMD the ryzen chips you know there are other competitors out there just Intel and so I agree Intel should not be mentioning Apple specifically you know if they want to say this is the fastest chip in PCS or whatever which I don't know if they can say with all the AMD stuff out there but yeah they they as with the what is it the Jonathan long commercials that they those cringeworthy commercials that came out last year like just just don't just do your own thing Intel just try to innovate and don't worry about what Apple's doing it's hard to watch it's cring worthy I'm I'm happy Samsung is taking a break from those anti-apple commercials Intel stepped in I'm sure we'll see more from Samsung once they have something to talk about I mean I imagine when Apple releases the folding phone or anything with a ho punch display we'll get the we did it first thing you know sure the problem is is they're trying to be too serious about it it's like no no we're actually the ones that you should be thinking about when it comes to computers and it's yeah sorry guys not quite well especially as soon as someone gets real world experience with any of these machines I mean just something as simple as attaching an external display to an Apple silicon computer as opposed to an Intel computer the instantaneous on or like if you change display resolutions on Apple silicon Mac just seeing the speed at which that stuff operates that's what sells stuff to Consumers yeah and don't get me wrong there's benefits to using Intel egpus and such like there's a lot of reasons why they still exist and why they're they're a superpower it's just when you're in this apple World comparing Intel to Apple is it's just not going to work now yeah Windows side very competitive and they're they're very useful processors that are going to continue to exist somehow Intel's business model they've cut everything out except for building stuff for windows at this point um so let's just see where it goes but yeah they should just hush about Apple at this point yeah well and the last thing that we should be seeing this year in 2022 is a refreshed model of airpods pro we did get a magsafe case that's now included when you buy a pair of airpods pro so Gary GES he's VP of Acoustics at Apple he did an interview with the Hi-Fi or what Hi-Fi is the website I'll put the link in show notes but he did a lengthy interiew review about Apple's airpods and he didn't really allude to anything about a future product but he did talk about the constraints of Bluetooth when it comes to bandwidth and how that relates to lossless audio and so this was a big deal like when Apple announced lossless audio and then even the airpods max headphones that everybody loves like does not have lossless and it was because the Bluetooth connection is not sufficient to move that much data I.E a lossless connection and so there was some math I actually listened to the ATP episode the latest one they talked about these numbers specifically but basically it says when you look at a Bluetooth connection which is what all airpods now use to connect to your iPhone or your Mac you get about 2.1 megabit data transfer over Bluetooth even Bluetooth 5 and so it's not a lot of data that can be moved over that wireless connection lossless audio takes about 9.1 megabits per second so you would have to have almost a 4X faster connection to actually move lossless audio data from your device to your wireless headphones well the other Wireless technology that Apple has at its disposal is ultra wideband this is in the U1 chip that's found in air tag and the iPhones now use U1 to kind of help with air droping stuff and it would seem like apple could use this for other things and Ultra wideband can actually move data up to 600 megabits per second I mean that's a massive difference over Bluetooth and would be way fast enough to move lossless audio from your device to your airpods yeah but you're standing 3et away and there's no obstructions well I mean again if you listen to the latest ADP episode syracusa says even the distance for Ultra wideband is pretty good just if this is a what if scenario if Apple moved to a proprietary Wireless technology maybe it's not Ultra wideband but it's some hybrid between Bluetooth and Ultra wideband technically Apple could provide lossless audio to airpods it would take new devices because none of the current airpods have Ultra wideband or anything in it so it would be new devices but these new airpods Pro this could be one of the selling features and Not only would it be lossless audio quality for music and such but one of the things that is challenging as a audio recorder or podcaster is you can use wireless headphones for monitoring ing yourself live because of the delay there's a big delay as you talk into a microphone and as that audio goes to your computer and travels over Bluetooth to your airpods you can't listen to yourself because it's super delayed Wireless protocol as fast as Ultra wideband like 600 megabits it would be such a low latency that you could use it for live audio monitoring so you could use your airpods max wirelessly or your airpods pro wirelessly and monitor your own voice and the other people and it would make it so you can you know if you're on the road or you just want to use wireless headphones because you're doing a video podcast it would make live monitoring possible so I think this is an exciting idea and possibly might be one of the features that makes airpods Pro 2 desirable well generally speaking from the scientific side of this radio signals are all radio signals Wi-Fi Bluetooth U1 it's all just Gomen clature piled on top of radio frequencies so you know just getting past the weights of the naming it doesn't really matter what it's called um Apple could just come out with a codec call it whatever it wants and it's just a better bandwidth than Bluetooth I think I think a lot of people get caught up in the nameing because that's just what the world you know we call everything Bluetooth that's fine or Wi-Fi I think Apple could go Wi-Fi Spectrum here and give it a proprietary name AirPlay you know uh call AirPlay 3 and just have their own very specific chipset that they've built Apple could really disrupt this part of the industry for themselves this is the problem because once Apple does it yes other competitors could tap into that frequency and call it their own brand name and throw it out there make it compatible with Apple's uh airpl 3 or whatever sure but Apple I I I can tell you whatever chip they make whatever enhancements they do for these new airpods or beats products is going to stay locked in cuz we always hoped maybe this U1 this fast switching chip H1 used in the airpods would be used in other things or a game controller or a lot of a lot of people have talked about like different Bluetooth accessories being able to use Apple's for AR chipsets for switching and getting synced over iCloud and all of that and none of that's ever branched out and Apple's kept it proprietary so we have to be careful here uh it's a double-edged sword while I'm very much all in on Apple and will definitely buy whatever airpods Max or something can do these capabilities just wonder if Apple's going to play along with the industry and let anyone else tap into this or if it's going to remain proprietary cuz while these provide amazing Technologies to us Apple users I wonder what it preventing us from getting like that fast switching game controller and stuff it's just one of those things and supposedly you know Ultra wideband other companies can use things like the U1 chip I think it's actually licensable for the companies to incorporate it but if Apple went this direction and did some kind of proprietary Wireless technology like Wi-Fi like faster than Bluetooth but you know better than Wi-Fi which this is why homepods have lossless audio is because they pull it over Wi-Fi and you can get fast enough data rates to do lossless it would be curious if they continue to include a Bluetooth chip in airpods or will it just be this proprietary technology and that would be unfortunate because I know like my son who I got him a pair of airpods 3 for Christmas he will connect his airpods to the Nintendo switch CU you can use any Bluetooth headphones with a Nintendo switch you just pair it like any Bluetooth also cars use Bluetooth and many other devices use Bluetooth for audio it's a old technology sure but it's pretty Universal and so I don't see Apple getting rid of Bluetooth I don't I don't really understand how it's implemented as far as like you know size and taking up space power or whatnot but I can't see it being too complicated that they could just keep it on whatever chip that they produce for this new audio component I'm I'm sure it will be a combination of whatever Apple proprietary networking plus Bluetooth so yeah you could still get that because Apple knows they have the numbers uh how many people are buying airpods because they're popular even if they have an Android phone people are buying these things in droves and apple isn't going to lose that part of the market just cuz they want to you know be silly and lock the lock themselves into an ecosystem limitation I I don't see that happening for this device anyway that's true let us know listeners if that's interesting to you or would you be tempted by airpods with lossless audio again there's a whole other argument to be made of like can you even hear lossless audio difference but we won't get into that in this episod well we've we've we've established before and I'm with you on this that yes while maybe we can't hear the Mercury Rising in a thermometer we just can appreciate better audio quality and whether or not we can tell the difference the knowledge that this is the best possible quality that human years are going to get versus eh lossy Bluetooth I'll take the former over the ladder anytime even if I can't tell quite the difference there will be times that maybe it does come through and it's nice so yeah and it's not just music as an application because with spatial audio watching movies and TV show a better transmit rate a higher data rate for moving that audio from your device to your airpods could mean like a spatial audio to protocol that is better virtual surround sound or just a a better experience yeah this goes beyond even applications for headphones the we're talking about Apple glass and stuff here in a little bit and heads up displays augmented reality headsets headphones all of these things need information and the minute you have to connect a cable to get it uh diminishes that experience so Apple really needs to up its codec game as far as Wireless transmission of video and audio and I think we're probably going to see again I think it's just going to be called AirPlay 3 and that new system whatever Apple does proprietary or not might be a game changer could be could be really interesting to see yeah airpl through that that does make sense this episode is brought to you by true bill over the past couple years you probably like me signed up for some streaming services that you should probably cancel or other subscription Services you don't want anymore but it's 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storage company it's incredible true bill will let you know when subscriptions change prices will let you cancel those and help you cancel them for you true bill has over 2 million users and help save them over $100 million it's like Jennifer B Who Says with true Bill's help her family save $587 a year on unnecessary subscriptions so don't fall for subscription scams start cancelling today at true bill.com slapple Insider go right now to true bill that's T RB i l l true bill.com apppp Insider and it could save you thousands a year true bill.com apppp Insider our thanks to true bill for sponsoring this episode and I just want to mention these briefly some things that will be coming in the future now the Apple VR headset Mark Gman is actually pretty convinced that we're going to see a VR headset from Apple this year 2022 so we'll see if that actually comes true this is the year for VR headsets uh Playstation VR2 was announced this week not as a part of CES Sony just snuck it out okay well they've they've been talking about it for a while but they're revealing more information like each ey gets 4K highres 120 htz it's the specs are insane it's going to cost like $800 probably we don't know right as the industry moves you can kind of see hints of Apple creeping up in the background obviously Sony knows Apple's timeline here or can guess and they're trying to get out ahead of this thing because psvr isn't doing great Oculus Quest is cheaper and more accessible because you don't need a PlayStation to get to it and it doesn't have a cable attached to it and Sony knows this and coming out with a $500 headset right around the same time as Apple that's terrifying so I would I would expect to see something from Apple too and now I'm terrified because I want both of these things and I don't want to spend the money so right well some things you won't have to spend money on this year these are in the future if ever guing Chi saying a foldable iPhone which we've seen some rumors before that maybe we'll see it in 2024 that's two years away and then the augmented reality Apple glasses this would be different than the virtual reality goggles that could come out this year that Apple glass is probably 3 years away 2025 or even later you know I do think it was interesting like I mentioned before that TCL at CES announced that they're actually developing and have a pair of AR glasses right now so that kind of makes it feel a little more tangible that we could see this in the next few years but probably most definitely not this year at least from Apple I think people need to adjust their expectations they expect to get these AR glasses we we're dubbing them Apple glass John prer said the name I'm sure who who knows what it's going to be called but these AR glasses they're not going to be like you put them on in you're a different world that's virtual reality and you're not going to put them on and suddenly instead of seeing a a bench you see a couch you know it's not going to alter your reality which is called a mixed reality glasses these are augmented reality which as lame as it might sound it'll be a game changer because you can wear it on your face it'll be just like something like Pokémon go where right you can just stick digital objects in the real world it's going to be aware of your surroundings uh we're expecting Apple to use lar to know what 3D objects are nearby and can just adjust what is being shown to that so that you get the right size object like so you don't get a 25t Pikachu in front of you it's you know the right size but it's not going to replace or overtake objects in the real world real world that would require more processing more understanding more cameras and sensors this is going to be a little bit more rud com of uh Hey an iMessage just came in want to read it here's the current playing music overlaid in front of you there's a giant arrow pointing in the right direction for your Maps directions that kind of information overlaid on the real world not taking over the real world this this this distinction is very important because people seem to think wow Apple could come out with glasses like that can just put me in the Matrix like this is crazy and it's no not not quite yeah yeah or I wanted to mention some accessories that I gotten and that have been announced recently and also have some followup about iCloud folder sharing but first of all I got the new Belin 3in1 mag safe charging pad with it's this is the Belin boost charge Pro and so this is a 3 in-one charger for your iPhone airpods or just kind of a chi charger in the middle and then Apple watch now I've had the belon 3 in one that looks like a standing tree and I've used that for since it came out really love it still prefer it for some things but the reason why I got this new Boost charge Pro is it has faster charging for Apple Watch series 7 Apple announced 33% faster charging with the series 7 but if you use something like the older belcon 3in1 or anything but a proper brick and the USBC to Apple watch charging cable from Apple you don't get that faster charging so this belon 3 in1 supposedly gives you that faster charging for Apple watch and I will say I've used it for maybe 3 or 4 days now and I have noticed a significant difference in charging speed for my Apple watch I wear my Apple watch to sleep cuz I do sleep tracking and so it's noticeable to me because I charge it twice I take it off as soon as I wake up in the morning and charge it as I get ready brush teeth shower that kind of stuff and then I will throw it on the charger at night if I'm watching something real quick or you know like 30 to 40 minutes before I actually go to sleep and I'll charge it then so it's never really sitting on the charger for more than an hour at any given time and since I got the Apple Watch series 7 charging it with the older Belin 3 in1 like tree style Charger it rarely got to 100% it did sometimes if I took a little too long to get ready in the morning I would see it hit 100% because you get that notification on your iPhone but with this new Boost charge Pro this flat length charger it hits 100% almost every time I throw it on there and go get ready or throw it on there and go to sleep and so that faster charging is definitely noticeable now the design of this is a flat style so all three devices are in a row you got an iPhone magsafe Puck that's kind of elevated above the platform you have a little indentation for airpods then you have the Apple watch charger now if you wanted to travel with this or move it around it's definitely more compact the tree style Charger doesn't fold at all you know it's just kind of sticks up there but it does take up more surface area on a nightstand because it's laying in a row the tree style you actually had your watch and phone floating and then the base of that tree had the airpods charging Chi place and so when it comes to like functionality and design I did prefer that tree style charger also cuz you could actually see your iPhone cuz it was actually being held upright at a slight angle but it was being held upright and your Apple watch was being held upright as well like elevated so depending on how high your nightstand is I liked the tree stand for that kind of visibility and because it took up a smaller surface area but because I appreciate the faster charging and if I ever am in a hurry and want to charge my Apple watch as fast as possible I do like that faster charging and I have enough nightstand area where it wasn't too much of a a hassle and while I don't prefer because it's not elevating the phone or Apple watch I do like this 3 in one so it's 150 bucks from Belin it comes in black and white uh it took a little while to get in because you know it's a new product but I do like it and so I'll be sticking with it I go through these Chargers a lot sometimes review units I right now I have sat's new answer to velin 3 in one I don't have the brand name in front of me but it's just another another one of those Concepts where the mag safe's hovering in the air the Apple watch is at the base and the airpods can charge on a little mat pretty handy I I like this for my desk it has the reflective aluminum which is great cuz I have a black glass desk so it kind of Blends in at my bed right now I'm using I I moved my bedside Chargers away so I have to get up to access my devices I don't want to that's a that's a life hack you got to get up to turn off the alarm yeah uh because this this thing it's the nightstand NY night nightstand uh I reviewed it on Apple Insider a few weeks ago continued using it at my bed I I really like it it's just a very clean design and um I like how the everything's kind of laid out just very simply and it has a USBC thing that props the iPad up in the air um kind of thing and that's what I use for my alarm clock as the iPad so it's just nice to have it Blends in a little bit um whereas these things we're talking about belon and satti and stuff they're very industrial techy looking devices uh metal and aluminum uh stand out a little bit more I feel like those are good desk objects you know and like you said portability wise I I don't really have any portable chargers right now that I I go to I think uh my favorite is uh the one I I reviewed a few weeks ago it's a gan charger by uh charge ASAP it's or not Gan actually that it's even more ridiculous it's a graphine battery which can output like 210 Watts at once or something nonsense cuz you can charge you can charge a MacBook Pro from it and it has a MAG safe Puck for charging an iPhone it's it's insane anyway okay uh that Bon thing though I'm not a fan of the flatlay I if I'm going to have mag safe I want it to take advantage of the magnets throw it up in the air a little bit show off yeah I do like that uh speaking of Mag safe though my wife I upgraded her to the iPhone 13 when it came out and since then she has been missing a popsocket on the back of her phone now I'm not a big popsocket person I've actually never used them but I know they're super popular many times they're built into the case for the iPhone or whatever case you're getting and I got her an apple silicon case which she likes the case but no popsocket but rather than stick a pop socket like with a sticker onto the case I did find a MAG safe popsocket I'll put the link this is on Amazon it's like 30 bucks which is kind of expensive for a popsocket very very expensive but it is mag safe it sticks to the iPhone really securely and she really likes it you know you do have to take it off if you want to charge via mag safe or if you're going to put it on a car mount that's magsafe but that's the beauty of Mag safe it just pops off that's but I actually got my mom one of these as kind of like a Christmas thing cuz I got her I upgraded her to an iph iPhone 13 as well she got she has the regular size iPhone not the many it's big uh heavy kind of for her so I figured you know why not she's never had popsocket before let her try it out and got her the one of the mag safe ones and uh it's great and it sticks on it's a really strong grip um very surprising that like if you were like wondering oh well you know the point of popsocket is is it's stuck to the phone it can't come off this thing is on there unless you just try to sling it across the room or something it's that phone is not coming off it's uh really cool the only thing that you lose that other popsockets can do is uh I've seen other people use popsockets as like stands to prop a video up for like watching watching a video and uh or portrait orientation on the desk or something you you can't do that with this cuz it's centered perfectly in the back of the phone but it is cool uh I I would never use popsocket but I thought this was a interesting little accessory yeah I'm going to jump around here real quick Marquez brownley actually tweeted a USBC cable that he got that to charge device like your MacBook Pro it actually has a little LED screen on the end of the USBC cable that tells you how many watts is being used for charging and so if you plug this in to your MacBook Pro you'll see 60 watts or however many watts it's being delivered and you can kind of see like how many watts is it charging with right this second and this little LED numbers has it on there now it's like because he tweeted it out and then I think um snazzy Labs guy Quinn Nelson also tweeted it it is now out of stock you can't get it anywhere but I'll put a link in show notes in case it comes back in stock pretty nifty little feature I'm always pretty not skeptical but I'm very careful about the USBC cables I use to charge my devices because you never know but I figure if Marquez brownley and Quin Nelson and a bunch of other people are now using this cable that we would know about any issues so I think it's a cool idea and you could see you know also your iPad Mini or Pro or air you can see how many watts it's pulling as it's charged so yeah I thought it was a cool idea also my last Apple product of 2021 was delivered I think it was on New Year's Eve I got the Apple polishing cloth finally shipped you know it's still weeks out if you order one right now but it's a $20 polishing cloth it was a big deal a couple months ago and I don't know man I will say it's fine as a polishing cloth but after I heard John grber talk about this on the talk show I had bought some whoosh polishing cloths and cleaner whoosh like wh I'll put the link in show notes these were actually the polishing cloths and cleaner that Apple used to use in Apple retail stores I don't know if they now have to use the Apple polishing cloth because it's like their own now but compar the Apple polishing cloth to the whoosh especially for the cost I actually think I prefer the whoosh ones so I got it because it's an Apple product it's got an Apple logo on it and I kind of wanted to try it but when it comes to actually preferring a polishing cloth I think if you want to buy one I would look at the whoosh cloths and cleaning stuff I think it's a good meme you know haha funny Apple made a cloth and everyone bought it and it got sold out but it's it's a piece of cloth guys don't don't worry about it you're not missing out you're not missing out it's a piece of cloth you could go to Walmart and buy a similar cloth uh for it's true 10 bucks so don't worry about it don't get fomo don't get fomo over it I also wanted to mention as far as Apple devices over the holidays I've talked about the airpods I got my kids I actually got my parents their first homepod I got them a homepod mini they did already have an Apple TV they use that to watch all their stuff they cut cable a long time ago they have iPhones and an iPad but this is their first like smart speaker and so I set up the homepod mini for them on Christmas and they've actually been really liking it I showed them hey you can check the weather you can play music you can set reminders and you know a couple other things and they've been using I also gave them a smart plug I gave them a weimo smart plug as kind of their first smart home thing to try I plugged it up to a lamp in their house and they said they've been really like really enjoying it so I don't know if you don't know uh what to get someone who might not be super techy homepod mini apparently liked by uh by a lot of people so there you go they they really enjoyed it another thing I got my mother last year sometime it wasn't a Christmas present but yeah the home pod mini she she loves it she thinks it's hilarious she forgets she can talk to it but the fact that she can just walk up and touch it and it starts playing whatever she was listening to she's all about it so yeah exactly really really cool it is cool or I actually had one piece of follow-up I wanted to touch on because I was tweeting about iCloud folder sharing and I have been using folder sharing with a couple non iPhone users but someone tweeted at me and said you actually need to have an iCloud account to access a shared iCloud folder and I wasn't sure if this was accurate because I had been sending it to an Android user and they had been downloading the files without an issue what I didn't realize is they actually were downloading it on a computer where they had an iCloud ID like they have an iCloud account for something else I think they might have a Mac as well so I looked up the Apple support page and I'll put this link in the show notes as well but you actually do have to have an Apple ID to download even a shared folder that you share via link viewable by anyone someone without an Apple ID can't download it and I didn't for some reason I did not realize that this was a thing and honestly it's a big shame because I was really considering moving to iCloud Drive exclusively dropping Dropbox entirely but unless they allow someone without an iple ID to download files and folders if you work with other people who are not in the Apple ecosystem iCloud Drive is just not an option you can't share a folder with a bunch of files that you just need someone to download uh unless they have an Apple ID and so I'm really hoping maybe come WWDC or maybe in some update this year that Apple opens that up allow you to share an iCloud drive folder just via link not require an Apple ID to download like just put a download button on there don't require anyone to sign into anything and that would make iCloud drive then a much more viable option than it is right now without this ability so just wanted to correct that and hopefully they change it this year yeah it's just more evidence that um Apple Engineers collectively expect the world to live in Cupertino California with the same weather and only talk to people who use iPhones and that's their user base that's who they're designing for because if any of these people actually use these in um a lot of these iCloud features and sharing features in real world conditions it's a lot more messy and apple doesn't design for messy and I I wish they would start addressing these things cuz I mean I I don't have that much need for file sharing but yeah there's there are points where it sometimes just Dropbox works better because yeah you you need an account just to download an iCloud folder or you can't do specific uh naming or link sharing and stuff like that with iCloud and all these are such strange oversights especially with uh WWDC 2021 being such a big focus on pandemic related features and social sharing and all of that stuff and then you look over at I and and business and student applications and all of it's just still sitting there being ignored by Apple unless you're an apple consumer working with apple people it's it's super weird to me yeah well it's weird too because one of the big features was FaceTime you can now invite someone to a FaceTime call regardless of device they don't have to sign it to anything you can send a link to a Windows user to an Android phone user and you can join a FaceTime call without having any kind of Apple ID and yet iCloud folder sharing which has been out for sever years still does not have that ability all right well I want to touch on this last thing and this was announced during CES but Google actually said that they are working on a new campaign called Better Together to try and make their operating systems Android on the phones Chromebooks even Chromecast communicate and work better together hence the naming scheme and features like the google Bud switching you know right now airpods can switch from iPhone to iPad to Mac to even Apple TV pretty seamlessly and that's again part of because all these devices are in Apple's ecosystem well Google's going to try and make some Headway into that Arena also things like handoff and continuity on Apple side they're going to be trying to do things like text message syncing which again like Google's history with messaging services like aloe and Google Hangouts has not been the best so we'll see how they actually manage to to do all that but this is something that's needed especially for Google to compete as far as a full ecosystem I foresee some big challenges especially with a majority of the Android phones out there are not Google pixels they're Samsung Galaxy phones and OnePlus and Huawei and so they would have to really work with those device manufacturers to support all this Better Together ecosystem stuff but it's good that they're trying to implement more of this these things but what do you think about this Wes it's just a very odd announcement to me I mean looking at Android and chrome uh ecosystems Android Weare which I always forget even exists I'm surprised that Google's even bothering to announce this this feels Dead on Arrival uh especially from a company who kills a lot of their products before they ever release just because you have to look at the technology that they're trying to implement here how do people get this update is it going to be Android 16 comes out and you download it on what devices the newest pixel and that's it I mean you have to have the newest devices running the latest operating system and maybe you'll get these features and maybe they'll get updated to to work together it's just Android's such a fragmented mess that I I I'm very curious to see if they can pull this off I I hope because uh honestly continuity and a lot of Apple's features there is the reason why I jump ship from Android Windows back in like 2014 I remember that keynote when Apple showed off Universal clipboard and showed handoff of apps you know typing a message an email on your phone and it and the draft box just showing up on your Mac when you sit down at it that was magical and that was years ago and here we are Google I I think they've announced stuff like this before even and it's just quietly got pushed to the back because how are they going to implement this and I and that's just one of the strangest things observing Google as a company is every time they announce something they always seem to ignore or just hope people forget the fragment fragmented nature of Android and its operating systems how they're not going to they don't describe how they intend to get this done because it's unbelievable uh sorry get it's just one of those things where I want this technology to exist for everyone because it's amazing but I I'm just very curious as to why I even bother announcing it at this stage unless they're ready to ship it and I don't think they're going to be ready to ship it well Google usually does their Keynotes shortly before Apple uh the Google what Google IO usually happens in May yeah Google IO so hopefully we see this in May and hopefully they have something shipping this fall but again it makes me wonder how many Android users are actually going to have access to this technology and what devices will you have to own to even get to do it and that's kind of the the sad part here is a majority of users won't even hear about this technology probably for another decade and that's just how this ecosystem works so unless they can figure out how to get better updating systems for main systems yes don't don't tweet me I know how Android update Works they do security patches and such for every I'm talking about Android the operating system the top level UI and guy and all that stuff uh like ask ask everyone how material you is going um on the what five devices that have it it's just sad to me honestly anyway yeah well we'll see again Google IO hopefully maybe they'll announce something big who knows but we'll of course cover any of that that might come out but let us know what you thought of CES what you hope for for 2022 you can tweet at West and myself our Twitter handles are in the show thank you to those of you who have given a fstar rating and review in the Apple podcast app if you haven't done that yet it greatly helps the show so go to Apple podcast app on your iPhone iPad or your Mac hit the five stars and leave a little review just tell us what device you're looking for this year if you're not sure what to write and that helps out the show you can also support the show with $5 a month either directly in apple podcast or at patreon.com inssider you get an adree version of the show and Early Access and it's great to be back in this new year again tweet at us if you have question questions for the show we'd love to hear that as well thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven roblas and today we're going to look at what Apple will be bringing this year in 2022 there's some new accessories for iPhone and mac and more this episode is brought to you by true bill and masterclass and for this very first episode of the Year my friend Wes hillyard's joining me what's going on Wes Hey Stephen uh just dealing with whatever sickness is going around that isn't Co so oh my goodness yeah it's all over the place it's all over just been coughing you know that fun stuff yeah and it's like getting a cold is now hyper stressful cuz it's like is it a cold or is it co that's that's the game show we're all playing now you can I mean you can still get colds you know what I mean it's like it's not this all Co or nothing I saw some news article saying something like uh first person with Co and the flu and they're calling it like like it was some combination of words of Co coronav virus and flu or some nonsense and I was just like get get out of here I don't want any of this I thought you were going to say cthulu cuz it's like kofu yeah yeah there we go that's that's probably what it was well this is not a CO episode and so we're we will try not to cough well I'm going to edit all the coughs out so you know we might have a 2-hour recording edited down to 45 minutes so we'll see but I wanted to say if you missed our 2021 year interview episode special guest Jason Aton joined me it was the longest show I think I've done an apple Insider yet it was like 2 hours but it was a lot of fun we went through everything Apple announced in 2021 kind of our favorites from the year looking back at those things and now in this episode we're going to look forward to see what Apple will be bringing this year mark Gman had some leaks and rumors that he believes things we should be looking for in this next year and apple actually announced some things that are definitely coming so we'll talk about that as well I do want to mention that it's CES this week and so CES is over as you listen to this recording Andrew O'Hare was actually there in person and so we do a big Roundup on The homekit Insider episode that comes out this Monday so check it out there was some awesome homekit announcement and devices but you know there's not a lot of other Apple news aside from smart home kind of stuff I have a couple bullet points just cuz I think this stuff is funny because just there's just wild stuff that gets announced at CES which if you didn't know is the Consumer Electronic Show happens I was going to say every year in Las Vegas but it didn't happen last year because of Co so this was kind of the the first one back it was in person even though many companies dropped out last minute CES is one of those shows that's been around forever I remember I don't know maybe a decade ago when this and E3 and everything was all happening back to back to back like the first 6 months of the year was just convention time um for for nerds you know video games on electronics and just like E3 kind of has died off over the years so has CES it's turned into fancy smart lights and cars and the the cars have become more and more part of the show over the last few years and I actually kind of excited by that I I really like the idea of more technology getting to vehicles did you see any of the cool cars before we get into the tech stuff I did I mean I did see that there were some EV cars announced which is cool I didn't see any specific technology there was a a BMW you'll have to look up this this video maybe we'll put a link in yeah there's a BMW that is covered in E Ink so you can change the color from black to white on command what the entire car is e ink yes all right that's prettyy it's really fancy yeah you can see it in action and it's it's it takes about three or 4 seconds for the whole thing to change so it's not onof it's kind of like a like Smooth transition it's really fancy it's like the it's like okay I don't know why I would need this other than hiding from the police but this is really cool that's amazing now if you could change your license plate while it's doing that especially while I go through a red light but I'm sure that's not the intention you know that actually made me think this was not a CES announcement but if you've never heard of this technology it's called vanta Black and basically it's this material that I don't know I don't know if it's absorbs all colors or absorbs zero colors but it is a a compound that is like 100% black and I'll put a link to this website the website is Serano systems and they have kind of been developing this technology but you put this on anything and it literally looks like a hole whether if you hold a piece of it in your hand like they have a picture of it I'll put this as the chapter art of course so you could see it but you can put this on your hand and it literally looks like there's a hole in your hand like no light or color is reflected in it and they actually have a BMW which made me think of it covered in this vanta black material and it looks amazing because there's just nothing blacker than this you know it's just kind of a pretty cool material whatever it's called so I'll put a link to that website if you're curious but I'm down for cars being covered in E Inc and stuff that's pretty that's pretty sweet all right and last thing on cars we can move on Sony announced their electric vehicle what I missed that so yes Sony entertainment announced their electric vehicle so that gives me hope for an Apple car if Sony can do it wow I mean come on Apple's right behind them Sony is gearing up to make its own electric cars yep I will put this actually doesn't look half bad either that's interesting yeah you know S sedan what is that like a crossover like a sedan ate a SUV and stopped halfway kind of thing yeah it's like my Kia of Soul it's one of those crossover terrible things but anyway I will put that link chonas it's prettyy slick so some other things announced the CES thought I thought was hilarious LG announced a 97 in 4K television it's rumored to come out at $40,000 so if you just want the biggest TV available TCL which is a technology company you know they make TVs if you've heard seen them in like the stores they're working on some AR glasses which I think was interesting just because you know all the rumors about Apple doing AR glasses they actually are also working on them using some kind of micro LED display using optical holographic wave guide technology I don't know what all those words mean but cool they're working on it tplink has a Wi-Fi 6E wireless router with motorized rotating antennas this thing looked wild like I guess it would follow you around the house to optimize the Wi-Fi connection to your device I guess that was interesting next up is a drone that shoots Wi-Fi at you with lasers and wireless power that has been developing and did you did you see the Samsung TV remote that charges using Wi-Fi oh my good was this a CES thing yeah this was yes yeah are you watching the same conference well I'm watching our coverage on it which was mostly smart home stuff so okay so a Samsung remote that charges over Wi-Fi is that it yeah it's like a TV remote you never have to charge because it's all like whatever Wi-Fi radio signal it's getting is enough to keep it alive to keep it whoa that's wild yep I found that too this last thing I thought was hilarious was Coler which makes kitchen and bathroom like fixtures and stuff they have a self filling tub which I guess you can uh it hey fill the tub and it will fill it and you don't have to worry about it overflowing which there's some actually some smart home faucets like that like pot fillers where you can say fill this pot or fill one cup of water and it will do it based on just your voice command which is pretty sweet and now uh you can do a whole tub well Stephen I mean didn't you grow up seeing all the same cartoons I did where uh many of them featured a tub overflowing this was going to be a real problem as an adult and now it's fixed and we have we have the solution it's technology we have the technology very good I I do want to point out one not CES announcement um linkis did do an update they updated their logo for their app they still have not given us homekit router support for uh minus Steven's very specific router for whatever reason this router that we have ax whatever the 5300 yeah yeah 5300 does not have all the other ones do every other one but our router they just they heard us talk about it on the podcast and decided you know what these guys aren't getting homekit routers support so but they have a new logo so that's great Wes you're really put me on an emotional roller coaster in 5 seconds cuz well the reason why is where I'm living right now we actually switched to a fiber internet connection gig service which a is incredible I get like 900 down and up which is amazing but they gave free like ero Pro routers and the person's house like he wanted to go ahead and switch to those so they can sit here even after we move into our new house later this year and so we've been using the ero pros and my lyus velop system has not been hooked up so an update could have come through and I wasn't aware of it and as you went into that I I thought is it true could it have happened and then no you crushed my dreams once again I'm here for you Stephen yeah thanks a thanks a lot anyway you should check out all of our CES coverage on Apple insider.com and homeid Insider check out Monday's episode we talk a lot about smart home stuff that was announced at CEO so that's pretty cool first thing I just wanted to mention quickly apple is now officially the first company to pass a a $3 trillion market cap their stock briefly hit $182.8 which made them the first $3 trillion Market valuation company ever which Mike Peterson on Apple Insider had the article and he like he threw in this little like jab and says it's bigger than the economy of the United Kingdom I guess $3 trillion is bigger than the entire UK economy which is it's insane apple is just worth a ton of money it's actually dropped since then as you listen to this episode so they're not 3 trillion anymore but they hit it first they were also the first to hit $2 trillion so and $1 trillion yeah oh and $1 trillion yeah so listen if you didn't realize it Apple's pretty successful and they make a lot of money that's what that means remember when everyone was fussing over Microsoft overtaking Apple uh for like briefly last year and now now they're at $3 trillion remember though uh market cap is a meaningless metric it's multiplying the number of stocks available to buy by how much they're worth basically and it it's a total total arbitrary number but for some reason people who watch the stock market really like it but yeah like three it's worth $3 trillion buy at stock value so it's not like how much money they have to spend or whatever but they still have what uh $25 billion just sitting in a bank account in Switzerland so I think it it might even be more than that supposedly I just searched and there's some articles here from 2021 that they might have close to $200 billion cash on hand this was I guess almost a year ago so I mean it could be very different but yeah they they have a lot of cash on hand like they're doing fine we don't have to worry about Apple going anywhere anytime soon well it's it's just when you think about these numbers it's it's good to put it in context so yeah uh real real quick I wanted to look up how much was the Apple campus worth was it like $4 billion this one is from 2019 it says that Apple Spaceship Campus valued at over $4 billion which in the current real estate market in two years after this or three years almost 3 years it might be who knows 6 7 billion a lot so yeah in my well yeah who who knows how inflation works the Apple Park page we have on Apple Insider uh inside Apple Park is $ 4.17 billion is the main building that doesn't include the campus or the glendining barn that they restored and put in a corner so yeah n just think about it though 4 billion is the entire Spaceship Campus the largest office building in the world kind of thing well one of them yeah I'm sure there's a bigger one in Dubai but um it's just like 4 billion and then you said what they had two over $200 billion so they could build just 50 more of these things and have money left over that's an interesting way to think about it yeah they have a lot of money like just sitting around so they're doing okay so I want to look forward to what Apple will be releasing this year or what possibly they'll be releasing this year mark Gman you know he's got his weekly power on newsletter he's usually pretty accurate when it comes to Apple leaks and device and a lot of these things are just kind of no duh like Apple's going to be releasing these this year first thing I want to talk about is the redesign MacBook Air with M2 Chip which we've had rumored MacBook Air renders and redesigns John prer leaks some renders it's been floating around it seems like this might be the big MacBook Air redesign Mark Gman said in his newsletter this past week that it's probably the biggest MacBook Air redesign which to be honest the MacBook Air hasn't changed a ton since it was launched I mean even the M1 MacBook Air still matches the design pretty closely so I think it's due for a big redesign yeah and it it launched in 2008 and it had aluminum unibody this whole time it kind of shifted from that early MacBook plasticky screen to the retina and that changed the look of the Interior but overall the design has been pretty much identical and this this thing whatever they're about to announce is going to be a huge shift um specifically like uh the slope that's always marked the MacBook Air and the chassis is going to be gone apparently it's going to be so thin that making a slope probably wouldn't leave enough room for the trackpad to exist so it'll definitely be an interesting device we're actually working on renders right now our uh render person is putting together some M2 MacBook Air renders and we'll have a article on that sometime on Friday so whenever you're listening to this keep an eye on Apple Insider will have some renders for you to look at that's awesome yeah I'm very curious as the rumors are saying no more tapered design like you were saying that slope or teardrop shape however you want to call it which has been iconic to the MacBook air I'm really interested if they're going to get rid of that just make it flat a how thin is it going to be I mean it has to at least have a USBC style port on the side which if you look at a current MacBook Air is pretty close to that thickness I guess you could make the lid thinner and then the bottom chass he thicker fun facts the thickest part of a MacBook Air is actually thicker than a MacBook Pro so they have some space to wiggle here okay if they bring it down to a thickness that's slightly thinner than the MacBook Pro I believe that they'll be fine and of course this will mean less battery space which means a lighter overall design I I think this thing's going to be stupid light blowing the way in the wind kind of thing so we'll we'll see did you ever hold the 12-in MacBook I did I had a 12-in Macbook for a little while actually super light and it was it was amazing how portable that thing was I did love it yeah so think that's what I'm thinking I mean yeah it had a slope design as well I I'm thinking we're going to see something kind of like that just the same thickness all the way through that thing was amazing so imagine that body with a bezeless display with a notch and that's pretty much your MacBook Air is is my guess yeah that'd be pretty sweet I'm also very curious about the whole M2 naming convention it makes sense because the M1 went into the MacBook Air Base level MacBook Pro which German says will also get a refresh most likely with the M2 Chip and you know I understand pros and prosumers will understand the difference between M1 Pro and M1 Max Max but I feel like there is going to be some discrepancy when we get to an M2 Chip which is out and is really part of the advertising you know even when a12 was in the iPhone but the iPad Pro would have an a12x apple usually didn't promote or Market the chip names as much I mean it would be on the website and you''ll be able to see what it is but it wouldn't be like a selling feature I feel like the M1 was such a big part of the marketing of those initial devices and now M1 Pro and M1 Max are a big part of the MacBook Pro lineup assuming that will also be a big part of the Mac Mini and larger iMac so I'm curious are they actually going to do M2 while the M1 Pro and M1 Max are still out there or are they going to do something different you think so well I mean I don't know how else you're going to name it is it going to be N1 are we going to just move to a new letter the numbers M1 a I I I don't know Apple's painted himself in a in a corner naming wise it's it's going to be an M2 if they come out with any other chip name I would be very surprised they could though do an M2 in the MacBook Air and at the same time announced the larger iMac or even Mac Pro and then put an M2 Pro and M2 Max in those and then the whole lineup will be on M2 the problem with that is is we're not there yet I mean like listen to the ATP guys talk about this they go way into detail but it's it's just one of those things where it's a cyclical nature the people buying these computers who care about chips understand the consumers who are going out here and buying a MacBook Air probably don't even care what chips inside of it they they probably don't even know if it's not Intel but Apple's going to advertise that M2 the people buying the iMac Pro or 27in iMac with an M1 Max in it they know what they're getting they know it's more powerful than the M2 it's it's one of those things where you got to think about who they're selling it to the the the prer or high-end professional any of those people should know better um and even if they don't they can easily be told oh M2 just means it came out more recently doesn't mean it's faster it's faster than the M1 because the M1 Pro and M1 Max are basically multiples of the M1 if you want to go super Layman STS here so the M2 I don't think the technolog is going to be there at least not for I I think Apple's just going to try these out slowly year by year uh like the M2 Pro and M2 Max won't be until 2023 and that's fine we don't need it yeah no that's true well and also German mentioned in the same newsletter that an iPad will be released this year with wireless charging and man I've been thinking about this since I read it and it just doesn't make sense to me I mean I have an iPad Mini I've had an 11-in I also have the 12.9in iPad Pro and I just can't imagine a kind of wireless charging that would be desirable for these devices you know speed aside you know obviously it would take much longer to charge those devices over mag safe even and just the Practical implications of lining up a wireless charger to an iPad size back you would either have to have a dinner plate size mag safe Circle so it lines up easily or if you have the same size mag safe Puck as with the iPhone but an iPad is compatible I feel like that would be a lot of fishing around for the area for mag safe charging so I don't does this make any sense to you I think this is Mark Gman fishing for things it's possible that we could get wireless charging on an iPad I mean technically we've had it before with the SMART connector and that didn't work out too well just because the SMART connector is not great at charging it's just a good for providing power to a keyboard and apple obviously gave up on that very quickly I could see like right now I'm using a stand for my iPad Pro that mag that uses the magnets that would that would be used for the magic keyboard but it's for this stand and it's right it makes it look like a little iMac kind of thing a little foot sticking out from underneath it I could totally see like a a conductive surface on the back of this just providing power to the iPad but again it's what's the use case for it because if I'm using it this way I'm using it at a desk with a cable connected with a keyboard or whatever like this is Apple leaning heavily into Wireless and unless they plan on coming out with a portless iPad I don't really see the reason for it yeah and I mean they just put USBC on the iPad pros and the iPad mini and like you were saying we kind of have a SMART connector that's Wireless now you know I guess you consider the magic keyboard you can plug the USBC charging cable into the magic keyboard itself and then the iPad charges through the SMART connector so yeah that's like kind of a wireless but well Wireless is a misnomer anyway so a wire is coming in from somewhere if it's the stand or the iPad you know where where's the cable but I could see a use case where something iPad Air iPad Mini uh could definitely use the iPhone version of the mag safe Puck and just slap it on the back the batteries in those are huge but they're not so big that I don't think that the current it's not going to be an issue espe at 15 watts it should be enough to float the battery I don't think it's going to be anything amazing but could just be a convenience factor if you're filling your house with these mag safe things why not be able to just slap it onto an iPad 2 keep it alive or charge it when it's not in used kind of thing yeah my my other thought though was like mag safe accessories like I'm going to talk about it in a little bit the new Belin 3in1 that I got you know you wouldn't really be able to charge an iPad even an iPad Mini would obstruct the other charging uh pads or charging are is of something like a belon 3 in1 or even a nomad type wireless charger those are definitely designed for iPhones I think we'd have to see a rethink on if if we wanted it to be truly Universal belcon would have to rethink how they position those but I think apple is doing what it usually does and isn't thinking about what other companies are doing and they're thinking about what Apple's doing and what Apple does is they sell a Mac safe thing connected to a cable and that's it ignoring the existence of that little folding guy that they pretty much got rid of already but um what was it $130 for the max saave duo duo that's it now I will say the max saave Duo I actually went on a little road trip recently I bring those mag saave Duos for my wife and I because if you have iPhone airpods and an Apple Watch it is pretty convenient I mean a good travel charger travel charger yeah not for like a desk or nightstand it's not not great for that but definitely like it for travel this episode is brought to you by our friends at masterclass guys you've heard me talk about masterclass before I absolutely love master class with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn about music composition for film with Han Zimmer acting from Samuel Jackson and cooking from Gordon Ramsey with over a 100 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those courses also love watching them on my phone because then there's a little toggle where you can go into Audio Only mode and listen to a class just like a podcast like you're listening to this right now I highly recommend you check it out you can get unlimited access to every master class and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off an annual membership and you want to do that annual membership cuz then you can watch classes all this year finally learn how to do the thing that you're passionate about so go to masterclass.com slapple Insider today that's masterclass.com slapple Insider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode all right well Mark Gman also had some other things in the same newsletter he said we should be seeing an updated iPhone SE with 5G there will be three new Apple watches this year which we've heard this rumor before an SE Apple Watch series 8 and this rugged version that we' heard rumored several times what I think is interesting is the iPhone 14 rumors now actually just before we recorded also leaker Dylan dkt on Twitter corroborated this whole hole punch style iPhone 14 and that's the big change that's rumored is instead of a notch on the iPhone 14 lineup will now go to a hole punch that just has the camera sticking out of this hole and instead of a round like a complete circular hole the rumors now say that it'll be kind of a pill-shaped or elongated hole punch for the ca camera and most likely I would think the face ID dot projector that actually you need for the face ID thing so it's an interesting renders we have renders by our guy Apple tomorrow on Apple Insider as well so it seems like it's been corroborated by several sources about this hole punch in the screen yeah the hole punch is probably happening centered on the display that's all fine I don't know about this uh pill shape I think that image I did see it it I think that's just the casing without a display over it and the display cover will actually just make it uh cover like show only the camera infrared is weird I I think it can go through without I don't think it's going to be obstructed by class or they can at least code it or whatever uh in a certain way to allow it to pass through so I I I could still see this just being a simple circular hole but you know we'll see well actually and as you say that you know if you have the attention aware face ID unlock which if you didn't know if you go into the settings face ID on an iPhone you can choose to have to be looking at the phone to unlock it or you can turn that off and that's called attention aware your eyes actually have to be on the phone and that works through glasses I wear glasses and so face ID Works through that so we can see your eyes through the glasses in your eyeglasses so yeah I would think a glass screen would be the same it would be able to project through that without an issue they would just have to adjust for the refraction I guess but yeah I don't I don't think it would be an issue and then finally from Mark G's newsletter the Mac Pro and Mac Mini should be updated this year as well these are are some of the final computers to move to Apple silicon the larger iMac being one the one model of Mac Mini that is still being sold on Intel chips that has up to 64 gigs of RAM and stuff like that still needs to be updated and of course the Mac Pro but Apple silicon version German is actually saying the Mac Pro version with apple silicon could include a chip with up to 40 CPU cores which is a 4X increase over the M1 Pro and M1 Max those have 10 CPU cores and a 28 core GPU so if you do all the math it would be very powerful especially compared to the new M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros I think he just took the number and multiplied it by four right it could very easily be just like a four CPUs uh thread it together here uh the M1 Max just I I I know the current ones don't have like uh their proper bus connections I know Mike's really into this Mike worly at Apple Insider he's really into this stuff and can just look at a chip diagram be like I know exactly what everything here does um right and he he described it basically as uh right now it looks like the M1 Pro and M1 Max don't have the connection points to uh basically put two of them together but Apple can always build those in so I I'm wondering if uh we get a new chip for the emac pro and they call it something else M1 Pro Max is uh my joking name here but uh yeah combining all the words but um they could also put a different letter I mean they could use a different letter for the Mac Pro level stuff maybe even a larger iMac yeah I I don't know I I think that would just complicate things again I like we said before the professionals who are spending $50,000 on an on a Mac Pro they know what they're getting they know what they're looking for the the name is arbitrary but Apple from a marketing standpoint I feel like they're going to keep it all the same m1's across the line m2s next year you know I expect this to just be more m1's with some sort of like M1 Ultra right an even bigger superlative name now Mark Gman is saying that we could see all of this stuff come out as early as WWDC this year most likely will be another virtual event probably not in person but even if it's announced at WWDC I am imagining like the last Mac Pro it could be announced then but be available in November or December time we'll see they could always surprise us and make it available this summer but I imagine that Mac Mini the larger iMac and this Mac Pro we're going to see all of these this year so you've been if you've been in the market for a higher-end Mac desktop you want that Apple silicon like myself I've been waiting for this larger iMac or maybe even the Mac Mini this is the year 2022 we should be seeing all this stuff it's going to be at least the 2-year transition that Tim Cook had promised at WWDC 2020 at the latest it would be the fall time November is when the first M1 Max came out and that's the 2-year deadline that Tim Cook set for Apple itself so yeah we should see all this this year that's pretty exciting well we could also see an updated Mac Pro with some uh more recent Xenon processors and what what not from Intel true uh just just because it's a the the final Death Rows of Intel giving uh those guys who still need to boot into windows and stuff something to have um on on that end because when was Mac Pro last really updated uh 2020 I think it was 2019 is the the last Model yeah right so I I could see apple throwing out just a maybe even like a subtext on a on a screen they don't even say it on stage it just says by the way there's also these new Intel Mac Pros but oh yeah I don't know did did you hear about Intel's uh Tantrums uh on stage I heard Intel had like a super powerful chip or something that they announced oh no it's not well it's the I9 but just uh the newer the another Lake version um Alder Lake I9 anyway this thing is supposed to alal Lake from X-Men oh no um it's just another Lake processor we've been again I don't fully understand the naming here but these guys have basically been just newer versions of whatever they released in 2016 or so and just overclocking and adding cores and overclocking and adding cores to try and compensate for you know this is why Apple dumped Intel finally because we've spent the last 5 years with essentially the same chipsets and here we are again this I9 processor from Intel and they're like hey guys look it's Peak power is better than the M1 Max but it's you know in the corner it says it takes the power of the sun to get there so I'm I'm just not sure what Intel's doing but every time they mention Apple in in a keynote or on an ad it's just shooting themselves on the foot they just need need to pretend Apple doesn't exist at this point because Apple's doing the same to them it's not great it's not a good look what also Apple like in their M1 Pro M1 Max event they didn't really mention Intel specifically they kind of just compared it to the top-of-the-line Windows PCS or they said gaming laptops kind of like kind of like a general thing because it's not just Intel that they're competing with anymore I mean AMD the ryzen chips you know there are other competitors out there just Intel and so I agree Intel should not be mentioning Apple specifically you know if they want to say this is the fastest chip in PCS or whatever which I don't know if they can say with all the AMD stuff out there but yeah they they as with the what is it the Jonathan long commercials that they those cringeworthy commercials that came out last year like just just don't just do your own thing Intel just try to innovate and don't worry about what Apple's doing it's hard to watch it's cring worthy I'm I'm happy Samsung is taking a break from those anti-apple commercials Intel stepped in I'm sure we'll see more from Samsung once they have something to talk about I mean I imagine when Apple releases the folding phone or anything with a ho punch display we'll get the we did it first thing you know sure the problem is is they're trying to be too serious about it it's like no no we're actually the ones that you should be thinking about when it comes to computers and it's yeah sorry guys not quite well especially as soon as someone gets real world experience with any of these machines I mean just something as simple as attaching an external display to an Apple silicon computer as opposed to an Intel computer the instantaneous on or like if you change display resolutions on Apple silicon Mac just seeing the speed at which that stuff operates that's what sells stuff to Consumers yeah and don't get me wrong there's benefits to using Intel egpus and such like there's a lot of reasons why they still exist and why they're they're a superpower it's just when you're in this apple World comparing Intel to Apple is it's just not going to work now yeah Windows side very competitive and they're they're very useful processors that are going to continue to exist somehow Intel's business model they've cut everything out except for building stuff for windows at this point um so let's just see where it goes but yeah they should just hush about Apple at this point yeah well and the last thing that we should be seeing this year in 2022 is a refreshed model of airpods pro we did get a magsafe case that's now included when you buy a pair of airpods pro so Gary GES he's VP of Acoustics at Apple he did an interview with the Hi-Fi or what Hi-Fi is the website I'll put the link in show notes but he did a lengthy interiew review about Apple's airpods and he didn't really allude to anything about a future product but he did talk about the constraints of Bluetooth when it comes to bandwidth and how that relates to lossless audio and so this was a big deal like when Apple announced lossless audio and then even the airpods max headphones that everybody loves like does not have lossless and it was because the Bluetooth connection is not sufficient to move that much data I.E a lossless connection and so there was some math I actually listened to the ATP episode the latest one they talked about these numbers specifically but basically it says when you look at a Bluetooth connection which is what all airpods now use to connect to your iPhone or your Mac you get about 2.1 megabit data transfer over Bluetooth even Bluetooth 5 and so it's not a lot of data that can be moved over that wireless connection lossless audio takes about 9.1 megabits per second so you would have to have almost a 4X faster connection to actually move lossless audio data from your device to your wireless headphones well the other Wireless technology that Apple has at its disposal is ultra wideband this is in the U1 chip that's found in air tag and the iPhones now use U1 to kind of help with air droping stuff and it would seem like apple could use this for other things and Ultra wideband can actually move data up to 600 megabits per second I mean that's a massive difference over Bluetooth and would be way fast enough to move lossless audio from your device to your airpods yeah but you're standing 3et away and there's no obstructions well I mean again if you listen to the latest ADP episode syracusa says even the distance for Ultra wideband is pretty good just if this is a what if scenario if Apple moved to a proprietary Wireless technology maybe it's not Ultra wideband but it's some hybrid between Bluetooth and Ultra wideband technically Apple could provide lossless audio to airpods it would take new devices because none of the current airpods have Ultra wideband or anything in it so it would be new devices but these new airpods Pro this could be one of the selling features and Not only would it be lossless audio quality for music and such but one of the things that is challenging as a audio recorder or podcaster is you can use wireless headphones for monitoring ing yourself live because of the delay there's a big delay as you talk into a microphone and as that audio goes to your computer and travels over Bluetooth to your airpods you can't listen to yourself because it's super delayed Wireless protocol as fast as Ultra wideband like 600 megabits it would be such a low latency that you could use it for live audio monitoring so you could use your airpods max wirelessly or your airpods pro wirelessly and monitor your own voice and the other people and it would make it so you can you know if you're on the road or you just want to use wireless headphones because you're doing a video podcast it would make live monitoring possible so I think this is an exciting idea and possibly might be one of the features that makes airpods Pro 2 desirable well generally speaking from the scientific side of this radio signals are all radio signals Wi-Fi Bluetooth U1 it's all just Gomen clature piled on top of radio frequencies so you know just getting past the weights of the naming it doesn't really matter what it's called um Apple could just come out with a codec call it whatever it wants and it's just a better bandwidth than Bluetooth I think I think a lot of people get caught up in the nameing because that's just what the world you know we call everything Bluetooth that's fine or Wi-Fi I think Apple could go Wi-Fi Spectrum here and give it a proprietary name AirPlay you know uh call AirPlay 3 and just have their own very specific chipset that they've built Apple could really disrupt this part of the industry for themselves this is the problem because once Apple does it yes other competitors could tap into that frequency and call it their own brand name and throw it out there make it compatible with Apple's uh airpl 3 or whatever sure but Apple I I I can tell you whatever chip they make whatever enhancements they do for these new airpods or beats products is going to stay locked in cuz we always hoped maybe this U1 this fast switching chip H1 used in the airpods would be used in other things or a game controller or a lot of a lot of people have talked about like different Bluetooth accessories being able to use Apple's for AR chipsets for switching and getting synced over iCloud and all of that and none of that's ever branched out and Apple's kept it proprietary so we have to be careful here uh it's a double-edged sword while I'm very much all in on Apple and will definitely buy whatever airpods Max or something can do these capabilities just wonder if Apple's going to play along with the industry and let anyone else tap into this or if it's going to remain proprietary cuz while these provide amazing Technologies to us Apple users I wonder what it preventing us from getting like that fast switching game controller and stuff it's just one of those things and supposedly you know Ultra wideband other companies can use things like the U1 chip I think it's actually licensable for the companies to incorporate it but if Apple went this direction and did some kind of proprietary Wireless technology like Wi-Fi like faster than Bluetooth but you know better than Wi-Fi which this is why homepods have lossless audio is because they pull it over Wi-Fi and you can get fast enough data rates to do lossless it would be curious if they continue to include a Bluetooth chip in airpods or will it just be this proprietary technology and that would be unfortunate because I know like my son who I got him a pair of airpods 3 for Christmas he will connect his airpods to the Nintendo switch CU you can use any Bluetooth headphones with a Nintendo switch you just pair it like any Bluetooth also cars use Bluetooth and many other devices use Bluetooth for audio it's a old technology sure but it's pretty Universal and so I don't see Apple getting rid of Bluetooth I don't I don't really understand how it's implemented as far as like you know size and taking up space power or whatnot but I can't see it being too complicated that they could just keep it on whatever chip that they produce for this new audio component I'm I'm sure it will be a combination of whatever Apple proprietary networking plus Bluetooth so yeah you could still get that because Apple knows they have the numbers uh how many people are buying airpods because they're popular even if they have an Android phone people are buying these things in droves and apple isn't going to lose that part of the market just cuz they want to you know be silly and lock the lock themselves into an ecosystem limitation I I don't see that happening for this device anyway that's true let us know listeners if that's interesting to you or would you be tempted by airpods with lossless audio again there's a whole other argument to be made of like can you even hear lossless audio difference but we won't get into that in this episod well we've we've we've established before and I'm with you on this that yes while maybe we can't hear the Mercury Rising in a thermometer we just can appreciate better audio quality and whether or not we can tell the difference the knowledge that this is the best possible quality that human years are going to get versus eh lossy Bluetooth I'll take the former over the ladder anytime even if I can't tell quite the difference there will be times that maybe it does come through and it's nice so yeah and it's not just music as an application because with spatial audio watching movies and TV show a better transmit rate a higher data rate for moving that audio from your device to your airpods could mean like a spatial audio to protocol that is better virtual surround sound or just a a better experience yeah this goes beyond even applications for headphones the we're talking about Apple glass and stuff here in a little bit and heads up displays augmented reality headsets headphones all of these things need information and the minute you have to connect a cable to get it uh diminishes that experience so Apple really needs to up its codec game as far as Wireless transmission of video and audio and I think we're probably going to see again I think it's just going to be called AirPlay 3 and that new system whatever Apple does proprietary or not might be a game changer could be could be really interesting to see yeah airpl through that that does make sense this episode is brought to you by true bill over the past couple years you probably like me signed up for some streaming services that you should probably cancel or other subscription Services you don't want anymore but it's sometimes hard to figure out and remember all the things that you signed up for and you're paying for monthly well true bill is a new app that will help you identify and stop paying for all those subscriptions you don't need want or simply forgot about on average people save up to $720 a year with true bill because companies make subscriptions hard to cancel true bill makes it incredibly simple you just link your accounts 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right now to true bill that's T RB i l l true bill.com apppp Insider and it could save you thousands a year true bill.com apppp Insider our thanks to true bill for sponsoring this episode and I just want to mention these briefly some things that will be coming in the future now the Apple VR headset Mark Gman is actually pretty convinced that we're going to see a VR headset from Apple this year 2022 so we'll see if that actually comes true this is the year for VR headsets uh Playstation VR2 was announced this week not as a part of CES Sony just snuck it out okay well they've they've been talking about it for a while but they're revealing more information like each ey gets 4K highres 120 htz it's the specs are insane it's going to cost like $800 probably we don't know right as the industry moves you can kind of see hints of Apple creeping up in the background obviously Sony knows Apple's timeline here or can guess and they're trying to get out ahead of this thing because psvr isn't doing great Oculus Quest is cheaper and more accessible because you don't need a PlayStation to get to it and it doesn't have a cable attached to it and Sony knows this and coming out with a $500 headset right around the same time as Apple that's terrifying so I would I would expect to see something from Apple too and now I'm terrified because I want both of these things and I don't want to spend the money so right well some things you won't have to spend money on this year these are in the future if ever guing Chi saying a foldable iPhone which we've seen some rumors before that maybe we'll see it in 2024 that's two years away and then the augmented reality Apple glasses this would be different than the virtual reality goggles that could come out this year that Apple glass is probably 3 years away 2025 or even later you know I do think it was interesting like I mentioned before that TCL at CES announced that they're actually developing and have a pair of AR glasses right now so that kind of makes it feel a little more tangible that we could see this in the next few years but probably most definitely not this year at least from Apple I think people need to adjust their expectations they expect to get these AR glasses we we're dubbing them Apple glass John prer said the name I'm sure who who knows what it's going to be called but these AR glasses they're not going to be like you put them on in you're a different world that's virtual reality and you're not going to put them on and suddenly instead of seeing a a bench you see a couch you know it's not going to alter your reality which is called a mixed reality glasses these are augmented reality which as lame as it might sound it'll be a game changer because you can wear it on your face it'll be just like something like Pokémon go where right you can just stick digital objects in the real world it's going to be aware of your surroundings uh we're expecting Apple to use lar to know what 3D objects are nearby and can just adjust what is being shown to that so that you get the right size object like so you don't get a 25t Pikachu in front of you it's you know the right size but it's not going to replace or overtake objects in the real world real world that would require more processing more understanding more cameras and sensors this is going to be a little bit more rud com of uh Hey an iMessage just came in want to read it here's the current playing music overlaid in front of you there's a giant arrow pointing in the right direction for your Maps directions that kind of information overlaid on the real world not taking over the real world this this this distinction is very important because people seem to think wow Apple could come out with glasses like that can just put me in the Matrix like this is crazy and it's no not not quite yeah yeah or I wanted to mention some accessories that I gotten and that have been announced recently and also have some followup about iCloud folder sharing but first of all I got the new Belin 3in1 mag safe charging pad with it's this is the Belin boost charge Pro and so this is a 3 in-one charger for your iPhone airpods or just kind of a chi charger in the middle and then Apple watch now I've had the belon 3 in one that looks like a standing tree and I've used that for since it came out really love it still prefer it for some things but the reason why I got this new Boost charge Pro is it has faster charging for Apple Watch series 7 Apple announced 33% faster charging with the series 7 but if you use something like the older belcon 3in1 or anything but a proper brick and the USBC to Apple watch charging cable from Apple you don't get that faster charging so this belon 3 in1 supposedly gives you that faster charging for Apple watch and I will say I've used it for maybe 3 or 4 days now and I have noticed a significant difference in charging speed for my Apple watch I wear my Apple watch to sleep cuz I do sleep tracking and so it's noticeable to me because I charge it twice I take it off as soon as I wake up in the morning and charge it as I get ready brush teeth shower that kind of stuff and then I will throw it on the charger at night if I'm watching something real quick or you know like 30 to 40 minutes before I actually go to sleep and I'll charge it then so it's never really sitting on the charger for more than an hour at any given time and since I got the Apple Watch series 7 charging it with the older Belin 3 in1 like tree style Charger it rarely got to 100% it did sometimes if I took a little too long to get ready in the morning I would see it hit 100% because you get that notification on your iPhone but with this new Boost charge Pro this flat length charger it hits 100% almost every time I throw it on there and go get ready or throw it on there and go to sleep and so that faster charging is definitely noticeable now the design of this is a flat style so all three devices are in a row you got an iPhone magsafe Puck that's kind of elevated above the platform you have a little indentation for airpods then you have the Apple watch charger now if you wanted to travel with this or move it around it's definitely more compact the tree style Charger doesn't fold at all you know it's just kind of sticks up there but it does take up more surface area on a nightstand because it's laying in a row the tree style you actually had your watch and phone floating and then the base of that tree had the airpods charging Chi place and so when it comes to like functionality and design I did prefer that tree style charger also cuz you could actually see your iPhone cuz it was actually being held upright at a slight angle but it was being held upright and your Apple watch was being held upright as well like elevated so depending on how high your nightstand is I liked the tree stand for that kind of visibility and because it took up a smaller surface area but because I appreciate the faster charging and if I ever am in a hurry and want to charge my Apple watch as fast as possible I do like that faster charging and I have enough nightstand area where it wasn't too much of a a hassle and while I don't prefer because it's not elevating the phone or Apple watch I do like this 3 in one so it's 150 bucks from Belin it comes in black and white uh it took a little while to get in because you know it's a new product but I do like it and so I'll be sticking with it I go through these Chargers a lot sometimes review units I right now I have sat's new answer to velin 3 in one I don't have the brand name in front of me but it's just another another one of those Concepts where the mag safe's hovering in the air the Apple watch is at the base and the airpods can charge on a little mat pretty handy I I like this for my desk it has the reflective aluminum which is great cuz I have a black glass desk so it kind of Blends in at my bed right now I'm using I I moved my bedside Chargers away so I have to get up to access my devices I don't want to that's a that's a life hack you got to get up to turn off the alarm yeah uh because this this thing it's the nightstand NY night nightstand uh I reviewed it on Apple Insider a few weeks ago continued using it at my bed I I really like it it's just a very clean design and um I like how the everything's kind of laid out just very simply and it has a USBC thing that props the iPad up in the air um kind of thing and that's what I use for my alarm clock as the iPad so it's just nice to have it Blends in a little bit um whereas these things we're talking about belon and satti and stuff they're very industrial techy looking devices uh metal and aluminum uh stand out a little bit more I feel like those are good desk objects you know and like you said portability wise I I don't really have any portable chargers right now that I I go to I think uh my favorite is uh the one I I reviewed a few weeks ago it's a gan charger by uh charge ASAP it's or not Gan actually that it's even more ridiculous it's a graphine battery which can output like 210 Watts at once or something nonsense cuz you can charge you can charge a MacBook Pro from it and it has a MAG safe Puck for charging an iPhone it's it's insane anyway okay uh that Bon thing though I'm not a fan of the flatlay I if I'm going to have mag safe I want it to take advantage of the magnets throw it up in the air a little bit show off yeah I do like that uh speaking of Mag safe though my wife I upgraded her to the iPhone 13 when it came out and since then she has been missing a popsocket on the back of her phone now I'm not a big popsocket person I've actually never used them but I know they're super popular many times they're built into the case for the iPhone or whatever case you're getting and I got her an apple silicon case which she likes the case but no popsocket but rather than stick a pop socket like with a sticker onto the case I did find a MAG safe popsocket I'll put the link this is on Amazon it's like 30 bucks which is kind of expensive for a popsocket very very expensive but it is mag safe it sticks to the iPhone really securely and she really likes it you know you do have to take it off if you want to charge via mag safe or if you're going to put it on a car mount that's magsafe but that's the beauty of Mag safe it just pops off that's but I actually got my mom one of these as kind of like a Christmas thing cuz I got her I upgraded her to an iph iPhone 13 as well she got she has the regular size iPhone not the many it's big uh heavy kind of for her so I figured you know why not she's never had popsocket before let her try it out and got her the one of the mag safe ones and uh it's great and it sticks on it's a really strong grip um very surprising that like if you were like wondering oh well you know the point of popsocket is is it's stuck to the phone it can't come off this thing is on there unless you just try to sling it across the room or something it's that phone is not coming off it's uh really cool the only thing that you lose that other popsockets can do is uh I've seen other people use popsockets as like stands to prop a video up for like watching watching a video and uh or portrait orientation on the desk or something you you can't do that with this cuz it's centered perfectly in the back of the phone but it is cool uh I I would never use popsocket but I thought this was a interesting little accessory yeah I'm going to jump around here real quick Marquez brownley actually tweeted a USBC cable that he got that to charge device like your MacBook Pro it actually has a little LED screen on the end of the USBC cable that tells you how many watts is being used for charging and so if you plug this in to your MacBook Pro you'll see 60 watts or however many watts it's being delivered and you can kind of see like how many watts is it charging with right this second and this little LED numbers has it on there now it's like because he tweeted it out and then I think um snazzy Labs guy Quinn Nelson also tweeted it it is now out of stock you can't get it anywhere but I'll put a link in show notes in case it comes back in stock pretty nifty little feature I'm always pretty not skeptical but I'm very careful about the USBC cables I use to charge my devices because you never know but I figure if Marquez brownley and Quin Nelson and a bunch of other people are now using this cable that we would know about any issues so I think it's a cool idea and you could see you know also your iPad Mini or Pro or air you can see how many watts it's pulling as it's charged so yeah I thought it was a cool idea also my last Apple product of 2021 was delivered I think it was on New Year's Eve I got the Apple polishing cloth finally shipped you know it's still weeks out if you order one right now but it's a $20 polishing cloth it was a big deal a couple months ago and I don't know man I will say it's fine as a polishing cloth but after I heard John grber talk about this on the talk show I had bought some whoosh polishing cloths and cleaner whoosh like wh I'll put the link in show notes these were actually the polishing cloths and cleaner that Apple used to use in Apple retail stores I don't know if they now have to use the Apple polishing cloth because it's like their own now but compar the Apple polishing cloth to the whoosh especially for the cost I actually think I prefer the whoosh ones so I got it because it's an Apple product it's got an Apple logo on it and I kind of wanted to try it but when it comes to actually preferring a polishing cloth I think if you want to buy one I would look at the whoosh cloths and cleaning stuff I think it's a good meme you know haha funny Apple made a cloth and everyone bought it and it got sold out but it's it's a piece of cloth guys don't don't worry about it you're not missing out you're not missing out it's a piece of cloth you could go to Walmart and buy a similar cloth uh for it's true 10 bucks so don't worry about it don't get fomo don't get fomo over it I also wanted to mention as far as Apple devices over the holidays I've talked about the airpods I got my kids I actually got my parents their first homepod I got them a homepod mini they did already have an Apple TV they use that to watch all their stuff they cut cable a long time ago they have iPhones and an iPad but this is their first like smart speaker and so I set up the homepod mini for them on Christmas and they've actually been really liking it I showed them hey you can check the weather you can play music you can set reminders and you know a couple other things and they've been using I also gave them a smart plug I gave them a weimo smart plug as kind of their first smart home thing to try I plugged it up to a lamp in their house and they said they've been really like really enjoying it so I don't know if you don't know uh what to get someone who might not be super techy homepod mini apparently liked by uh by a lot of people so there you go they they really enjoyed it another thing I got my mother last year sometime it wasn't a Christmas present but yeah the home pod mini she she loves it she thinks it's hilarious she forgets she can talk to it but the fact that she can just walk up and touch it and it starts playing whatever she was listening to she's all about it so yeah exactly really really cool it is cool or I actually had one piece of follow-up I wanted to touch on because I was tweeting about iCloud folder sharing and I have been using folder sharing with a couple non iPhone users but someone tweeted at me and said you actually need to have an iCloud account to access a shared iCloud folder and I wasn't sure if this was accurate because I had been sending it to an Android user and they had been downloading the files without an issue what I didn't realize is they actually were downloading it on a computer where they had an iCloud ID like they have an iCloud account for something else I think they might have a Mac as well so I looked up the Apple support page and I'll put this link in the show notes as well but you actually do have to have an Apple ID to download even a shared folder that you share via link viewable by anyone someone without an Apple ID can't download it and I didn't for some reason I did not realize that this was a thing and honestly it's a big shame because I was really considering moving to iCloud Drive exclusively dropping Dropbox entirely but unless they allow someone without an iple ID to download files and folders if you work with other people who are not in the Apple ecosystem iCloud Drive is just not an option you can't share a folder with a bunch of files that you just need someone to download uh unless they have an Apple ID and so I'm really hoping maybe come WWDC or maybe in some update this year that Apple opens that up allow you to share an iCloud drive folder just via link not require an Apple ID to download like just put a download button on there don't require anyone to sign into anything and that would make iCloud drive then a much more viable option than it is right now without this ability so just wanted to correct that and hopefully they change it this year yeah it's just more evidence that um Apple Engineers collectively expect the world to live in Cupertino California with the same weather and only talk to people who use iPhones and that's their user base that's who they're designing for because if any of these people actually use these in um a lot of these iCloud features and sharing features in real world conditions it's a lot more messy and apple doesn't design for messy and I I wish they would start addressing these things cuz I mean I I don't have that much need for file sharing but yeah there's there are points where it sometimes just Dropbox works better because yeah you you need an account just to download an iCloud folder or you can't do specific uh naming or link sharing and stuff like that with iCloud and all these are such strange oversights especially with uh WWDC 2021 being such a big focus on pandemic related features and social sharing and all of that stuff and then you look over at I and and business and student applications and all of it's just still sitting there being ignored by Apple unless you're an apple consumer working with apple people it's it's super weird to me yeah well it's weird too because one of the big features was FaceTime you can now invite someone to a FaceTime call regardless of device they don't have to sign it to anything you can send a link to a Windows user to an Android phone user and you can join a FaceTime call without having any kind of Apple ID and yet iCloud folder sharing which has been out for sever years still does not have that ability all right well I want to touch on this last thing and this was announced during CES but Google actually said that they are working on a new campaign called Better Together to try and make their operating systems Android on the phones Chromebooks even Chromecast communicate and work better together hence the naming scheme and features like the google Bud switching you know right now airpods can switch from iPhone to iPad to Mac to even Apple TV pretty seamlessly and that's again part of because all these devices are in Apple's ecosystem well Google's going to try and make some Headway into that Arena also things like handoff and continuity on Apple side they're going to be trying to do things like text message syncing which again like Google's history with messaging services like aloe and Google Hangouts has not been the best so we'll see how they actually manage to to do all that but this is something that's needed especially for Google to compete as far as a full ecosystem I foresee some big challenges especially with a majority of the Android phones out there are not Google pixels they're Samsung Galaxy phones and OnePlus and Huawei and so they would have to really work with those device manufacturers to support all this Better Together ecosystem stuff but it's good that they're trying to implement more of this these things but what do you think about this Wes it's just a very odd announcement to me I mean looking at Android and chrome uh ecosystems Android Weare which I always forget even exists I'm surprised that Google's even bothering to announce this this feels Dead on Arrival uh especially from a company who kills a lot of their products before they ever release just because you have to look at the technology that they're trying to implement here how do people get this update is it going to be Android 16 comes out and you download it on what devices the newest pixel and that's it I mean you have to have the newest devices running the latest operating system and maybe you'll get these features and maybe they'll get updated to to work together it's just Android's such a fragmented mess that I I I'm very curious to see if they can pull this off I I hope because uh honestly continuity and a lot of Apple's features there is the reason why I jump ship from Android Windows back in like 2014 I remember that keynote when Apple showed off Universal clipboard and showed handoff of apps you know typing a message an email on your phone and it and the draft box just showing up on your Mac when you sit down at it that was magical and that was years ago and here we are Google I I think they've announced stuff like this before even and it's just quietly got pushed to the back because how are they going to implement this and I and that's just one of the strangest things observing Google as a company is every time they announce something they always seem to ignore or just hope people forget the fragment fragmented nature of Android and its operating systems how they're not going to they don't describe how they intend to get this done because it's unbelievable uh sorry get it's just one of those things where I want this technology to exist for everyone because it's amazing but I I'm just very curious as to why I even bother announcing it at this stage unless they're ready to ship it and I don't think they're going to be ready to ship it well Google usually does their Keynotes shortly before Apple uh the Google what Google IO usually happens in May yeah Google IO so hopefully we see this in May and hopefully they have something shipping this fall but again it makes me wonder how many Android users are actually going to have access to this technology and what devices will you have to own to even get to do it and that's kind of the the sad part here is a majority of users won't even hear about this technology probably for another decade and that's just how this ecosystem works so unless they can figure out how to get better updating systems for main systems yes don't don't tweet me I know how Android update Works they do security patches and such for every I'm talking about Android the operating system the top level UI and guy and all that stuff uh like ask ask everyone how material you is going um on the what five devices that have it it's just sad to me honestly anyway yeah well we'll see again Google IO hopefully maybe they'll announce something big who knows but we'll of course cover any of that that might come out but let us know what you thought of CES what you hope for for 2022 you can tweet at West and myself our Twitter handles are in the show thank you to those of you who have given a fstar rating and review in the Apple podcast app if you haven't done that yet it greatly helps the show so go to Apple podcast app on your iPhone iPad or your Mac hit the five stars and leave a little review just tell us what device you're looking for this year if you're not sure what to write and that helps out the show you can also support the show with $5 a month either directly in apple podcast or at patreon.com inssider you get an adree version of the show and Early Access and it's great to be back in this new year again tweet at us if you have question questions for the show we'd love to hear that as well thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next time\n"