The Excitement of Apple Event Season: A Conversation with The Cult Cast

As we approached the highly anticipated launch date of the HomePod Mini, we couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. But before we dive into the latest rumors and speculations surrounding the new speaker, let's take a step back and appreciate the art of conversation. Our hosts, Leander, Kenny, and Lewis, gathered to discuss their thoughts on the tech industry, Apple's recent announcements, and what it means for us as consumers.

The discussion began with a passionate debate about the sound quality of the HomePod in stereo mode versus single mode. "I'm telling you, getting a stereo pair of HomePods is like having transcendent experience," exclaimed Leander. "It's like they're wrapping all around me, and I can't even tell where the audio is coming from." Kenny chimed in, "But it's surprising how good it sounds already, especially when you're not in stereo mode. I mean, I have one at home, and it just blows my mind."

The conversation took a interesting turn as they discussed their personal experiences with the HomePod. Leander revealed that he had bet on the sound quality of HomePods being better when paired in a stereo setup, and was thrilled to find out that his prediction was correct. Kenny shared his own experience with the HomePod, saying that it sounds amazing even when used alone. The hosts also discussed their excitement about getting their hands on the HomePod Mini and hearing its sound quality for themselves.

However, before we dive into the latest rumors surrounding the HomePod Mini, let's take a brief detour to discuss some of the other Apple-related news that has been making waves in the tech world. Leander pointed out that Apple promised to release new products with Apple Silicon by the end of the year, and wondered if this might mean an event before November 6th.

Kenny jumped on this idea, suggesting that it's possible we might see another Apple event soon. "From what I've heard, there are so many products in development, they're going to need some kind of event to showcase them," he said. Leander agreed, saying that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant delays in production and has thrown off Apple's entire timeline.

The hosts also discussed the rumor mill surrounding new AirTags, AirPods, and studio headphones. "It sounds like there's a lot going on at Apple right now," said Lewis. "They promised to release some of these products before the end of the year, but it's hard to say what exactly that means." Kenny chimed in, suggesting that we might see an event soon to announce some of these new products.

As the conversation came to a close, the hosts expressed their excitement and anticipation for the future of Apple devices. "We're definitely going to have another event in November," said Leander, "and I think it's going to be huge." Kenny added, "I'm hoping they can get all these new products out the door and make them available to us soon."

And with that, our conversation with The Cult Cast came to an end. We want to thank everyone who tuned in and joined the discussion. If you have any thoughts or opinions on Apple's latest announcements or upcoming products, we'd love to hear from you. Be sure to follow us on Twitter for more conversations like this one, as well as new episodes of The Cult Cast every Thursday night.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to cast the best 30 plus minute conversation you're gonna hear all week long i'm your host erif and elijah joining me today author of 18 apple books and creator of the new psychedelic website cult of crack he's the founder of sister site cultivac later katie's here his favorite pastimes include correcting people's grammar and punching out i mean gently disciplining cult of mac writers when their stories don't make the deadline he's the managing editor of cult of mac lewis wallace is here ah yes yeah oh that was an abrupt end to the intro music there this stop for you i'm fitting it out as we speak right now how's it sound do you know how many things i'm doing in real time right now my brain is barely keeping two or three production assistants there i could use at least two or three but it's just me and i've got i've got like hands on i feel like i'm in i'm i'm taking off on a spaceship here i've got hands on all the controls i've got about 150 buttons in front of me and you know i'm just going with the flow i don't know what's going to happen can you show us the setup could the camera go down uh no there's no doing that what do you think this is back break weekly i've got one stationary camera right here and uh and that's all i've got and i'm not even gonna try and change anything right now because as far as i can tell it's actually working people are here watching and so i don't want to jinx it so let's just dive into the show and get this over with as quick as we can before everything goes south this is our first cult cast live and hopefully this will be the first of many look there's gonna be little hiccups along the way we've already had about 35 things go wrong and i don't know what the level of production quality is here but we're gonna get these we're gonna get things worked out as we go along so this is going to be our big apple event episode and someone's knocking on my door go away perfect timing not now this is gonna be our apple event episode we're gonna be talking about all of our reactions to the plethora of stuff that was announced oh hold on yes what oh you got me some food this is my daughter the magic of live okay you guys i gotta go talk to him i didn't realize it was my daughter i'll be right back you guys just vamp i wanna put full screen now i'll leave it right here people are going to let's say get your children you guys wanna you guys wanna see my daughter all right i'll bring her get her to say hi hey sweetheart that's a nice beautiful shirt okay see you later sack of something all right sorry did she deliver to san francisco she delivered me some food should we see what this is it's uh i don't know what this is oh my goodness it's a euro oh man that's all the cool cast we have for you guys this week i asked if she would to come in and she i could tell she looked right at el caney and she was like no and then she started slowly backing up right i was waving like this you want to see some puppies i know i look like a horrible pervert but i've trained her well to identify danger look at you guys just like yeah now i'm done all the old creepy old guys all right so this is gonna be our our apple event reactions we got a lot of stuff to talk about here i mean i don't even know if we're gonna make through all this stuff we've got homepod mini we've got the iphone 12s and that's pretty much it we got just those two things but within the realm of those two products there is a ton of stuff to talk about here and i just realized that we didn't even review these show notes together before we went live because there was so much stuff happening so we're just gonna we're just gonna bill o'reilly our way through this adjust your tie and we're just gonna cram through this as fast as we can before we do that i want to give a very hearty thank you to squarespace for supporting this episode squarespace.com forward slash cult cast boy do you not have a website yet this is why i say that you should always head on over to squarespace.com forward slash cast look how beautiful these websites are and you can see as i'm scrolling through these since we're doing video now too you get a regular website for people using computers and you also get a website that's built for mobile devices which is what everyone is well that's the device people are going to be using to visit your website now and it's all automatically rearranged you don't have to do any extra work to make this all work you just drag in all of your images all of your text all your copy you can do a portfolio of your work you can do a blog an online store which is what i have going with cult cloth.co you can do a personal resume you can show off your services or just do something for your business and it's so easy that you'll actually do it and maintain it because you don't need anyone's help it's all just drag and drop and your website is going to look good on any device that visits squarespace is like the apple of the web world they make it that easy and that simple check it out squarespace.com forward slash cult cast sign up for the two week free trial build a website see how you like it and if you like what you have at the end of the trial use code cult cast to check out you'll get 10 off your first purchase at squarespace.com forward slash cult cast alrighty guys i think we should just jump right into our best of show thoughts here and then we can dive into all the specifics so leonard caney as you were wondering through your dark greenery forest pondering this this topic what was the most exciting gadget that you saw at the event the one that made you think whoa that's the one for me that's the one that lk needs uh well actually you know all all uh all three of them but all of them all the devices like you know the mac mini i think looks really you mean the homepage cool home page yes oh my god i'm losing my mind yeah i already explained that you were wandering through the oregano forest people will forgive that yet uh but um and on the phone side i'm you know the pro max for sure that's the phone i'll be getting but i'm really intrigued by the mini i really want to check that out you know it looks like a really capable device it's not crippled in any way it's not like an sc it's not you know um dial back it's got almost all the features except maybe for the camera you know i mean you've got if you want to get the pro you could the program is gonna go the pro lineup but apart from that it looks really awesome that was the thing that people were upset by was that we are going back down the track where you have to get the top-tier largest phone to get the nicer camera which i i don't like that way of doing business i really wish they would just make all the phones the same and then you pick the size that you want but i feel like they need to get they need to put something in there to make you spend the extra money you know otherwise people are going to just get the smaller iphones because they're so closing capabilities now well they used to be i want to say i mean do you think the camera module you know is it yeah i i i don't know this i haven't seen the teardowns maybe the turnouts will reveal this but you know is it too big to put into a smaller phone oh well actually that's a really interesting point now in the in the iphone 12 pro max i think it actually might be too big because they they made the sensor bigger so that it would have drastically better low light performance and it does have drastically better low light performance i think we could talk about this later but i think the low light performance in the max is 87 better than the last max and that's that's nuts because you know the current max is an amazing camera and the low-light stuff is bonkers i mean and i think the iphone 12 pro max low light performance is 50 better than the iphone 12 pro so if you if all you care about is camera then the 12 pro max is the one to get but then you're walking around with major surfboard in your pocket right right yeah but i gotta say it it's tempting very tough oh really you think about that route huh well i mean especially since i barely ever leave my house these days yeah well why would that be tempting then because it's like photos of what you know the cats you watch no i i mean uh you know like the little one i like having the smaller phone especially when i'm traveling for instance you know spending a lot of time outside of the house with the thing you know but uh i don't know i had this it's really tempting i would i'm with you uh erifan i wish they did not give that one a better camera because it really kind of irks me you know the one thing though so i i said this last week and i don't know if this will turn out to be true or not but i was like yeah i really want the 12 mini i know that i want that one but they're going to do something that's going to make me want the pro and what they did was not what i was expecting to get me right i thought it would be something else like some secret feature that we hadn't heard about but the thing that makes me want to go with the iphone 12 pro is the gold color that gold is is the best looking gadget gold that i have ever seen it reminds me of i just retired from the police force after 30 years and they gave me a watch gold you know what i'm saying like that classic gold that's like i'm roger murtagh i don't have time for this i'm not gonna say the word and i'm retiring from the force and i i want my gold watch that's what it reminds me of it's such a beautiful goal that that alone might make me spin you want the trump toilet gold that's not trump trump toilet gold is more yellow right this this is like it's like there's just some let me let me see if i can bring it like a gold tooth isn't it it's like uh the gold of the yeah i don't know it's just it's just the best looking gold that i've ever seen in the device i feel like previous oh this is the wrong phone i feel like previous devices were like a rose gold or some kind of like weird shade of gold maybe like a yeah oh man look at that gold you guys can't see it but all of our viewers can that is a beautiful gold that's the best looking gold i've ever seen i know i just keep repeating myself over look at that oh man that is such a good looking phone oh i can't all the finishes look good even the even the blue looks good and one of the things i love is that subtle that subtle bezel they put around the glass for the lens it's so polished all the little details thoroughly thought through but i have to say i don't think this is what got me the most excited out of the event louis before i dive into my most exciting gadget which if it's not going to be the iphone you could probably guess which one it is since literally only two things were announced let's see but uh what about you what was the thing that you thought was the most exciting well i just you know watching all those uh videos again today and all the i mean the photography is just mind-blowing and it just they really i mean i was reading this article today saying oh well they didn't do a good job of selling this to the average consumer i'm like god they really make me want to go out and make a movie i mean i don't even do that kind of crap i barely take pictures like i said barely leave my house but i just love the way the pictures look and and it's it's just so tempting to buy like you know the highest end one and see what you can do with it i mean i'm sure it's going to be oh look another picture of a charging mat or something they post but uh i don't know yeah i the thing that i should still have the least uh understanding of is just what exactly this lidar thing is all about you know and i and there's another thing with the pro i i want to get it just because i don't want to be left out of that when you know three weeks after it's launched some developer says oh here's what that's good for with some app that you're just like wow look at that oh my god i've already got you they already got you the fomo they got you already yeah that's true it's funny the lidar was one of the things i really cared least about and from the examples that we saw it does kind of what we expected it to do it it enhances the autofocus in low light shots now that looked like a drastic enhancement so being able to autofocus really well in low light scenarios is usually pretty difficult for cameras quickly and quickly so so maybe that's gonna be something that is actually not even a primary feature really is it of the lighter i mean i think this is something they took they they really downplayed the ar stuff i was kind of surprised they barely even talked about the ar stuff yeah did didn't you find yourself going uh oh so the next time that somebody says hey louis deck out a factory floor with a bunch of cardboard boxes i would say no that would take weeks and thousands of dollars instead i'm gonna point my phone at it right i mean that was not exactly a uh this is a consumer application it's just not practical yeah we want to see what it's going to you know what it can do for them and in the home but you know that the ikea stuff you remember the early ikea stuff because there was a lot of stuff that talked about this last year wasn't there you know that the the the 11 was supposed to be an ar farm wasn't it there was there was a lot of talk in in the uh keynote about ar then and this i think you know it's just going to take it to the because i saw some really amazing demonstrations of people waving their hands in front of an ar object and and the ai you know it perfectly occluded it it was just it's you know it is astonishing the amount of computation it takes to be able to do that don't laugh at my choice of words you i was about to say another choice we're live on youtube don't use any of your other choice words you've been seven years you've been laughing every time i say you know certain words right astonishing etc i guess now you can see me now i can see you doing it yeah i've seen some really cool ar demos on twitter you know just the last couple of months and this is definitely the cart before the horse you know it's like i don't think we have the software yet to show its capabilities but it you know it should be pretty spectacular when it does come when it does come which maybe this year maybe no year we'll have to wait and see about that but yeah lidar i thought was pretty underwhelming it's a cool feature but i didn't i wouldn't consider it to be a marquee feature and the 5g of course is the marquee feature but the other thing about 5g is it's another one there's not really a reliable built out network for 5g yet at least here in the us maybe if you lived in south korea it might be different but i saw a pretty funny map of london today they're like oh look here's the 5g in london and the 5g is like a little is is areas marked in red and the entire map is green and then they zoom in and they zoom in again and again and then finally you see it and it's like this tiny little it's almost like a one house one building that's got 5g and london it's the ceo of that telecom has 5g and no one else does yeah and you know they and europe is you know especially wirehead of of the us and its uh wireless infrastructure but did you look at the map lewis i mean the map here in san francisco is kind of pathetic isn't it i looked at it prior to the event i have not gone looked at to see if they've updated it but yeah i was like oh look they've got it uh you know it's a like a angry red area of 5g down by you know the convention center or whatever and then it kind of goes along the streets around it and then you know but like in general hardly anywhere in san francisco it's covered by it but there's three different kinds isn't it there's the millimeter wave and then there's a you know the long and the medium or whatever they are right so who knows what the build out of each of those different ones is and then the the the the the really fast stuff has got no range at all won't go through walls so you're gonna be sitting right next to the the uh the repeater in order to get any kind of benefit from it so i don't know you know don't forget about your cult cast lead marble bag available on cult cast lead marblebags.com oh i didn't register that that's that was a huge mistake another missed opportunity for sure well hold on a sec here's some interesting stuff about the iphones okay so i was going to dive into this story i'll just do it right now so first let's talk about 5g 5g coverage is available worldwide but only the iphone 12 devices sold in the united states support the better 5g uh 5 millimeter wavelength iphone 12 models sold in other countries are limited to the slower but more widely available sub 6 gigahertz 5g connectivity by the way i just want to give a shout out to colton mack and macromers where i'm reading a ton of this information from so you might hear little snippets from from both places so if you live in the u.s you're going to get the best 5g some call it tremendous 5g if you live outside of the us you're getting the worst 5g so it will probably be i don't know fast but not as fast uh gigabit lte is supported when 5g isn't available as is wi-fi 6 and bluetooth 5. by the way i'm going through a list of features here a list of features now that are available are common for both the iphone 12 and the iphone 12 pro okay so these these are what they have in common you get the a14 chip promising up to 50 faster performance in graphics and 70 faster machine learning and up to 80 faster neural engine over the a13 bionic in the iphone 11. and let's see here uh with 5g you can enjoy speeds as it is if you're in the u.s of up to four gigabits per second upload speeds of 200 megabits gee that's a huge difference and significantly reduced latency the a14 powers a new image signal processor and computational photography capabilities they're calling this hdr version three so apparently the image processing capabilities are supposed to be taken to the next level now here was with the here was the big one for me that i was extremely excited about and that was the 4k hdr video support with dolby vision i'm trying to bring this up on my browser here if we could have have an example of this and of course it doesn't seem like they listed on this on this page at least for video but that was the part of it where they were showing that video and i was like whoa and i think i mentioned this last week the photo capabilities on these phones is a huge leap forward i mean you're getting 4k hdr video with dolby vision built in that is something that is going to future proof all of your memories and for me that might be the most compelling reason to actually go and upgrade and that part of the keynote was wild they were showing like the horses running through the desert that was some of the most beautiful mobile phone imagery that i have ever seen i was i was truly stunned by that and i think that that alone oh here we go here here's the video right here just look how good that looks that does not look like something taken on an iphone in my opinion i mean that looks better than some dslrs that i've seen that looks incredible now of course they're probably lighting this with like 25 thousand dollars worth of equipment but uh didn't they he had a phone strapped to the undercarriage of a suv or something and on a drone i mean yeah for their video yeah yeah that video was crazy and that stuff all helps with with the shakes and everything and making the video look professional but to a certain extent i mean that is sensor performance that is technology performance right there that that ability to create that unbelievably beautiful image of of the people in the desert i i just was really impressed by that and all the iphones get that okay so that's good ip68 rating this is something that's hugely practical that i think a lot of people ignore but is i think really important so now your phone is going to be waterproof they call it water resistant because they don't want to get sued six meters of water so that is that 18 feet of water for up to 30 minutes that's huge all the phones also get the super retina xdr oled display so all the phones are oled now you probably already knew that all of them have hdr support with significantly better contrast you also get ceramic shield i thought this was going to be a new superhero in the marvel universe what should we do here comes thanos don't worry ceramic shield is here he's like uh captain america's cousin ceramic shield i've taken that too far ceramic shield glass with four times better drop performance which is good because what i've learned is in the first 24 to 48 hours after getting my new iphone at some point i'll be changing pants and it will shoot out of my pocket at mach 2 and hit the ground like it does every single year right before i put a case on it right and then and i have to i have to admit the nips went full mass when i heard this i mean i'm looking for a plastic surgeon because i think i did some some real damage here magsafe compatibility with up to 50 faster wireless charging because magsafe charges at 15 watts versus regular uh qi charges which are 10 watts leander show me the face you made when they revealed magsafe during the keynote wow you went full codfish i know that i know that was possible max lives back and not just magsafe magsafe duo they called it the duo do you remember the uh the mac duo lander do you remember that duo yeah they had a mac and i think it was like a notebook and then you could stick the notebook into that dock and then it would it was like almost like the original nintendo switch the same idea you know like you jammed into the dock and all of a sudden the screen shrinks on yeah goofy and funny enough i i shouldn't say anything but there's something that i'm working on there's something that i'm working on that has the name duo in the title and i was like because it was going to be a play on on this duo product and then here comes apple reusing the duo name well i'll just have you know that i was working on it before too so anyway that magsafe duo so the so the the magsafe charger is 39 bucks which i think is actually pretty reasonable but they didn't say anything about the mag safe duo which was probably my favorite announcement of the entire keynote because i need something that charges my iphone and my apple watch at the same time and there's just nothing good out there and now you have well it's there's loads of stuff check out you know the customer studio mac.com we got a bunch of them they're great wait wait wait where should i go ultimate.com store.cultimate should i check it out store cultimac have you ever been there got some great stuff in there i try to avoid the mac website okay what am i looking for here louis what am i looking for here what should i search for you you've made fun of me live on the show here uh logitech one that has a it'll charge it charges all three watch phone and airpods i can't even actually remember the name of the product are you looking at the uh the zen's dual charger aluminum charger yeah that's because that looks cool but that's not portable i want something portable and the magsafe was that's true you know what that's a good point it looked very that i i gotta say when i saw that i said yeah i'm gonna get one of those because that's gonna be great on the road any predictions on price on that there louis uh what was the other one 30 39 so this one is 79 89 i was thinking 79 yeah mid if we're lucky maybe 69 if we're lucky but because how much does an apple watch charger cost it's 30 right and so if they're charging 39 for the magsafe charger for your iphone plop another 30 on there and they'll drop it 10 bucks you know since you're getting both in the same gadget right listen to he's like now who's uh now who's smoking crack it's definitely you no i mean yeah if you get one of these phones you got to get one of those i mean if for nothing else then the twice as fast charging you know i mean it's it's it's i i mean you see that you say okay well you know add to cart thanks here's more of my money let's hear uh i'm looking at the chat right now so amagecon says 59. uh dude i i hope i hope that's right i don't think that's right i think i think that you need to be a writer for a cult of crack you know we're having guilt of crack writers i think you might fit right in uh let's see here their premium old charger was 79 dollars says bloodson jeez so serious of a name yeah i think it's going to be i'm guessing 69 not not not 79. that seems like a little bit too much so there you have it that was uh one of my favorite announcements let's see here let me go back to my notes and see if there's anything else worth mentioning about the uh the iphone the other accessories they had they showed off you know the the goofy little wallet thing i thought it was cool i don't think that's for me doesn't it make you a little bit nervous to have your wallet attached by magnet to something that's being removed in and out of your pocket 20 times a day or 100 times a day yeah yeah yeah yeah right it depends on how sturdy the magnet is right maybe if the magnet is supercharged i just i couldn't believe we were even seeing magsafe and of course this is the beginning of the end for the lightning connector it's gonna it will probably be gone next year like if you could have a really fast charging experience via wireless then why include a lightning connector on the iphone anymore i think that's going to be the end of it and they're not including earpods in the box anymore which you all heard they're not including a charger in the box anymore so here's your phone you see any outrage about that where people i guess people already kind of knew right but i didn't see a lot of complaints about it although some advertisers you know like uh how do you pronounce it show me the chinese they they have an ad that i saw this morning on twitter saying oh look you know look what we include in our box and they open it up and there's a charge in there so i think and i think samsung did the same thing too didn't they they made some hang out of it but i haven't heard i don't see any complaints at all from like you know pundits and customers it's just hard to imagine that there's you know more than a tiny tiny fraction of people who don't have a charger and everybody's going to want that fast wireless charger i mean if they included it i bet you 50 of people wouldn't even ever use it i mean don't you have iphone boxes with chargers sitting out yeah i just leave them in the box my junk drawer of wires and charges you know it was a big big bag of stuff and this is only you know probably a couple of few years worth of stuff yeah they accumulate yeah i like the point i mean the whole like environmental thing was like a little bit i don't know how much stock i put in all these stats and stuff but the the simple fact that they said like oh well by making the box you know basically half as high we can have you know this many more people you know they're cutting down number of airplanes full of iphones they have you know to send it that's a little bit mind-boggling you start thinking about the scale they produce these things and yeah i mean yeah it's crazy that's crazy i mean they did cut the size of the box like literally in half didn't yeah yeah it's a little slim box now but like louis is saying it is mind-boggling that that alone has a massive environmental impact and big enough for them to mention injury keto it's kind of bonkers yeah i i i can't imagine very many people could be bent out of shape about them not putting one of those little chargers in there yeah i was surprised though i thought it was you know because usually there's a huge outcry about it right now and i think a lot of people like especially android people would be making hay out of it saying you know you're getting ripped off and or whatever but i you know there was some narrative about it that i saw yeah i haven't heard anything i was just concerned about the presentation because they had lisa jackson up on that roof i think he looped her in which i was happy to hear because from my sources within apple he made it pretty clear to her if you don't nail this presentation you're staying up here to the next he's just gonna open up his window and throw some food up under the roof and she's gonna have to fight the seagulls for it actually you know one very bad place to live do you see it it's a beautiful view yeah it had a really had a really wonderful view yeah nice hot up there today yeah oh man it's hot hot here today whoa in san francisco yeah you guys it's 57 here right now in seattle wow that's like 157 here 88. you guys have 88 you guys don't even have that in the dead of summer oh yeah it's crazy this is the best time of year it's the weirdest thing you know like anyone a pro tip if anyone you know wants to come visit san francisco at some point in the future do not come in the summer it's freezing this is the time of year to come late october early november this the weather is glorious best weather all year all right well apparently i've never been there during the best weather because every time i go there the wind is howling and practically blowing me over all right let's see here we got a bunch of other stuff oh my gosh we're just look at us we're just going on and on and on and on okay let's see here let's talk about some other details for the iphone 12. so let's talk about iphone 12 and 12 mini first because i think i probably am going to go with the 12 mini apple showcases from the story now so forgive the robotic reading apple showcased the iphone 12 mini and iphone 12 handsets on tuesday showing how powerful an entry-level smartphone can really be who wrote this i don't have time that must be luke yeah probably yeah it sounds like luke is going to say okay the iphone 12 mini will be the first iphone in history to where the mini suffix comes with a 5.4 inch screen we already knew that that makes the screen just an inch larger than the 4.7 inch 2020 iphone se the iphone 12 meanwhile will be 6.1 inches slightly bigger than the 6.06 inch iphone 12 okay so let's get into the uh the interesting stuff here aside from the battery life and the physical size the iphone 12 and the iphone 12 mini are exactly the same so that's good to know the iphone 12 mini sadly is 6.99 available available for pre-order pre-order in november the iphone 12 is 7.99 available for pre-order tomorrow 10 16. and uh the iphone mini is november 6th in case i didn't you see the time the pr the orders go live i did not see that i don't like this new time tim cook just because he gets up at five now we've all got it up at five tim cook has already run like 25 miles to the gym he's already answered all his emails right and he's eating two bowls of two bowls of oatmeal by the time 5am rolls around geez yeah so let's see here uh i was very sad to see that they raised the price of the iphone 12 to 7.99 from 7.49 and uh they they changed the price well i guess they came in with a price of 699 on the iphone 12 mini which was a huge bummer because that means they rate i think they raised the price of each phone 50 bucks got a rake in that profit you know what else i heard and this is and this is interesting yeah so this maybe because the these phones are so expensive to to make is if you're not with 18t or verizon the cost of the phone for you is actually going to be 30 listed 30 more than the prices that i just mentioned it's also 30 more if you buy the phone unlocked so i'm guessing they must have made a deal with verizon and 18 t to pay them like perfect that was what all the all the outrage was about i mean that was there was a whole bunch of howling about that yeah i thought that was kind of bs and i'm on the apple website right now you can see c-18t offers c verizon offers so i heard if you're with sprint or t-mobile the phone actually costs you more so yep 30 bucks more i'm going to resist the rant here it comes no i pushed it back down this is like this is like incredible hulk level i'm trying to like not turn green or rip my jacket off and start talking about 18t you know yeah so if you want the iphone 12 that goes on sale tomorrow iphone 12 pro goes on sale tomorrow you better get on it did you see how quick they sold out in taiwan oh really like they did the pre-orders i think earlier today that's good news because look at this look at this what it's already started in taiwan i think so yeah i saw some headlines saying they already they sold it in an hour one hour that's wild that's so wild that i'm having trouble adjusting my camera angles here okay so that's iphone 12 64 gigabytes base storage 11 thinner 15 smaller and then i also wrote 16 smaller so one of those numbers is not confusing at all what are those numbers is it right yeah i'm gonna have to look that up after the show uh ultra wide camera and oh so the phones have the iphone 12s and the 12 mini uh ultrawide camera and a wide camera the wide camera has 27 better low light performance thanks to its slightly wider 1.6 aperture versus the 1.8 on the 11. now night mode and deep fusion are supported on all the cameras including the front-facing camera so that's pretty useful and they have the aerospace aluminum band let's talk about iphone 12 pro and then we can move on to the most exciting thing that was announced and that's the homepod mini but since i'm the only one that cares about the homepod mini i'm doing you all a big favor moving that to the end of the show so iphone 12 pro like its predecessor the iphone 12 pro comes in two sizes the smaller model offers a 6.1 inch display and the larger model packs a 6.7 inch display let me see if i can bring these guys up so i can give you some eye candy as i uh as i go through this any pictures to show me yeah the scrolling on this here here we go look at that beautiful gold phone oh my goodness so let's see here uh they're they're available in silver gold graphite and pacific blue they have the stainless steel band as you can see here you get a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera a 12 megapixel wide camera with a faster 1.6 aperture and a 40 or 47 larger sensor that allows for 87 improvement in uh light capturing i think that's for the uh the 11 or for the 12 pro max actually uh the 12 pro and the 12 pro max get apple raw support which is cool i don't know raw i don't oh sorry i mean the industry calls it raw but yeah i guess pro ride means that it comes out of the uh the iphone 12 pro the iphone 12 offers 12 pro offers dual optical image stabilization for the lens but the iphone 12 pro max gets the sensor shift technology which i think is going to mean that it can just handle way more vibration especially for like if you're doing video where you're driving through the desert and you're trying to hand hold it in the car that might be uh that might be helpful for you let's see the 12 pro and 124 max are equipped with lidar that measures light and distance and pixel depth of a scene to map out the area around the iphone it allows for more realistic ar experiences which no one cares about and improves auto focus by up to six times in low light so that's really good okay the iphone 12 here's the low light performance for the iphone 12 pro and pro max so the 12 pro boasts 27 27 better low light performance the 12 max boasts an 87 improvement so crazy if you're looking for the best a man can get go with gillette and that's because of the bigger sensor right compared to the 12 yeah i would imagine that's because of the bigger sensor because when you make the sensor bigger but you keep the megapixels the same the mega the megapixels get larger and it improved improves their low light performance which is why pro cameras that have outstanding low light performance only have like you know 12 to 16 megapixels so there are all the iphones do we know what we're getting gentlemen which one's for you louis i'll tell you what i'm kidding i'm getting bummed out that the ones that i want aren't available for weeks that is the biggest disappointment good news is i have time to carefully weigh my decision do i go super small or gigantic one of the other so you don't know your decision you mean like weeks and weeks are more procrastinating and yeah collaborating and honestly i think i'm probably gonna get the big one i haven't uh i haven't had a big phone since the uh with the six plus i thought you're gonna say the 60s six that's the 60s yeah six plus and uh i might do it now because um i don't know especially working from home i'm spending a lot more time with my phone day in day out morning noon night etc um so yeah i might go with that one although it really kind of grinds my gears to have to wait three weeks to order it yeah you're gonna have to just be patient louis i'm not good at that wait it out and they're trying to they're trying to milk the sales of the uh the other phones first and then and then release the actual popular ones for later the mini right and then because they know everyone's going to want to buy the mini and everyone's going to want to buy the max because those are like the best and the smallest my thoughts all right leonard what are you going for at the max the pro max oh of course you're a pro max kind of guy exactly plus you said you're gonna get the new pro max cult of mac watch store case which has skateboard wheels on the bottom right and then just ride that around it doubles up yeah then you take it up and get down the beach and you can write a few waves magsafe compatible oh they think yeah we should we should check into that i already have a small phone here though look this is a palm oh my gosh that thing is that is tiny it's a palm uh i can't remember what the model is but look it it works here's here's a call to my website it's pretty cool isn't it wow it's it's actually so small it's completely unusable it makes you palm pre or something yeah i got on ebay for like 60 bucks but why what a steal well you're looking for a way to weigh 60 bucks i really need a good way to waste the 60 bucks what should i do it's just lying around here what am i going to spend it on i could sell you an old moto phone if you'd like so someone said these are really good bike computers you can use it as a bike computer it's an android phone so there's a couple of apps you can load up on it and because of its connectivity you know it's like step up over regular bike computers um because it you know it has a the uh they don't have uh a dynamic connection and i it's quite a long story short i never actually did set it up i just have it sitting here in my day but one day i will well i've got a decision to make i'm either going with the mini or i'm going with this i'm going with this let me bring it up i don't know if i can say no to that gold look at that one i might go with the gold i'm sorry i i really try to resist doing the gold finger impression because it's so you had a gold gold phone i've never owned the gold anything i keep believing that that's the one thing that makes you like that's the the feature that you're most excited about it's gold color it's just so beautiful louis it's so beautiful you're bedazzled and i love bedazzling things it's something that i do with my kids on the weekend and i thought maybe my daughters and i could dazzle this together and uh have a special that russian company that goldifies all these gadgets what are they called caviar no no no they put like swarovski swarovski crystals all over everything you know yeah you know what i'm talking about caviar huh i don't know i remember the name of the company i don't either so yeah that's my decision okay so i think i'm going for the gold pro that's that's where i think i'm at especially since they upped the stores to 128 which is what i was thinking about doing anyway because i'm like if i get the mini at 6.99 okay let's look i get the mini at 6.99 right and let's let's bring up the iphones or 729 if you're on or 720 i'm on a t but i usually buy my phones unlocked and now if you have to go with the carrier to save that 30 bucks i i guess i could go through apple i wonder if apple would would give you that well this this little part everyone's looking for these iphone customers aren't the 5g iphone customers there's going to be a lot of i heard there's gonna be a lot of competition so i think you know like after this initial launch yeah probably in the new year there's gonna i bet there'll be a bunch of deals going on yeah okay all right so let's take a look here just real fast at the pricing the page is loading okay so i'll go with the 12 mini okay in oh we got some nice colors here black let's just go with black okay 18 t and what about oh there we go okay so they do they add 50 bucks to the price so okay so it's a significant difference actually so 749 for the 128 12 mini versus a thousand dude a thousand bucks oh it's such an expensive year too the red komodo is coming out the canon c70 is coming out i gotta get my hands on at least three homepod minis three yeah they're only they're only 100 bucks each lander i know but three you don't want so it's stereo plus one that is a good point are you on the iphone upgrade program no i just buy i hate making payments on stuff i just i was just thinking i was just gonna buy it you know on your credit card then make a blanket payment on that plus the interest exactly well you could just uh you know wait for next year's phone i bet that did cross my mind that did cross my mind i mean 5g 5g is not built out everywhere so the main feature already for most of us is really not going to be something that we can take advantage of right and and i would say the one big draw for me is the 4k hdr video because like i said one of the reasons i upgrade every year i take a lot of videos of my kids and my family and if i can if i can increase the quality of those videos those are basically saving my memories in higher fidelity and to me that's worth something i think it's worth something so i don't know i'm gonna i'm gonna think about it and see what i do tomorrow i might pre-order the mini you put her decide really i know i don't have much yeah right you're not pre-ordering a mini tomorrow man that's your life the pro the iphone 12 pro nature finds a way okay so there are the iphones exciting very exciting i'll be back to you but let's talk about something that i did find to be very exciting and that is the homepod mini am i still on my brows screen let's bring up the browse let's bring up the home pod mini i think it's over here in music bring up the browser the homepod mini first thing i will say is i'm not a huge fan not a huge fan of the industrial design looks like a bar candle that is what it looks like it looks like a cat i couldn't place it it has a large candles little little netting around them yes it has an odd look to it i was really hoping it was going to be the homepod but just smaller yeah but instead i was i was kind of shocked too yeah when i saw the picture of it an hour before the event right yeah yes and i was actually going god i hope that this is a wrong photograph i hope that this is actual fake news unfortunately no it literally looks like a bar candle when i saw it i was like this is definitely gonna be 99 that does not look like a 149 speaker it looks like a cheap speaker i don't mean that in a bad way but it just looks like a speaker that's cheap and no battery or anything on this louis it just looks like so you can take this little shower if you want but do so at your own risk they did an awful lot of uh glamour shots that don't show the cord yeah i thought pretty deceptive right why is yeah i mean so many pictures where there's just no chord to be seen oh i see what you're saying so you're saying that they are unintentionally implying that it's cordless when in fact it's got a big old cord on there yeah and think about it it's not a very big thing and it the cord is kind of gigantic looking on it i mean i don't know it's gonna be weird one of the wild things is it's 3.3 inches tall it's like it's like i don't even know how to show this for scale it's like this tall it's tiny absolutely tiny and let me let me hop into the story here because there's all sorts of interesting stuff that has come out about the speaker and one of the big things was is this going to work with my apple tv because apple's website says no but apple's website also says yes so people were not really sure it seems like maybe they were scrambling to put together some of this stuff last minute uh so first of all 99 dollars apple i'm reading from the story now apple took the wraps off the homepod mini showcasing a bite-sized smart speaker that promises high-end audio at a lower price than its bigger brother but the most interesting parts might not have anything to do with the music oh my that's because of the u1 ultra wide band chip inside which is something john prosser talked about we've talked about this on the four on the show before before homepod mini can serve as a advanced hub for home automation a new intercom feature promises to connect family members wherever they are this will also work with regular homepod by the way and this was one of the coolest features that i saw at the keynote 360 degree computational audio uh apple engineer david wilkes jr said we started by custom designing every acoustic element so we created a full range a full range dynamic driver that delivers high output while keeping distortion to a minimum and developed a pair of high excursion force canceling passive radiators that enable amazing bass response so i think unlike the homepod i think this just has one single down firing driver whereas the homepod i believe has is it seven custom-made tweeters on the outside going all the way around i think it is i don't think that this device i don't think that this device has any custom tweeters from what i can see it looks like just one downward firing speaker but still delivers 360 degree sound uh homepod mini will stream podcasts and radio stations from iheartradioradio.com tune in with support for pandora for the 10 people that still use pandora is it still going yeah i didn't even know that pandora was still around so for pandora and amazon music spotify was noticeably absent from the list of content partners probably because spotify keeps selling apples so i really hope that spotify is going to be something that gets integrated eventually i mean dude come on come on tc they just came out with a spotify um widget for ios 14 today so okay they're putting out the apple stuff you know there's still hope i have hope uh so let's talk about intercom intercom lets you quickly send messages from one homepod to another in a different room or multiple rooms this is super cool uh let's see here in the example when he yelled at his kids i mean that was i could totally relate to yeah except yeah i think i would use more colorful language than he did but uh well he was on stage he probably is extremely abusive when he's by himself you know apparently you can um apparently intercom is already available on amazon devices it is but it's not something that i ever use i don't find it to be very interesting i never even use that does anyone ever use it i've used it a couple times but you have to go into the alexa app to use it or you have to have a echo and i only have one echo so i can't speak to like different echoes in my house and i think the new homepod mini is going to replace my echo for a variety of reasons uh least of which is or not least of which is airplay airplay is so much more convenient than having echoes in your house which make you connect your spotify account to the alexa app in order to stream any audio which is ridiculous so let's see here intercom works with your iphone ipad apple watch and even car play so you can send messages to any home pod from virtually any apple device now that's pretty cool and that's something that i think i would actually use because i'm out here do this show how it works how does it how do you actually how do you decide which one to send it to i think you have to use the magic words oh that's a good point like which homepod are you gonna send the audio to yeah i guess everything's gonna be named right we have to name it yeah and so you have to say oh you know send it to my kids iphone or or send it to all home pods or something yeah tell everyone i don't know lander we'll have to look that up yeah it'll be interesting to see how well this works i mean because the walkie-talkie thing in theory is awesome with the watch but uh well it's also unreliable i mean it does not work every single time that i try to use it which guess what uh causes me to tend not to try to use it right so it'll be interesting to see how this intercom thing works out i mean it looked slick of course but proof will be in what was called i thought it looked really cool yeah i mean i'm gonna have these all throughout my house so it'd be great to be able to yell at people inside my house and i mean the fact that it can go into air pods too i mean i thought that was especially interesting yeah oh i uh i didn't catch that so you can send audio to someone's ear pods yeah do you see that whoa that's wild finally i'll have a way to get ahold of my wife man i mean my wife it's like i don't know if this is intentional but anytime i try to get a hold of her she never answers her phone ever like she's she's on her phone all day anytime anyone texts her text them right back when i come call in you know what i do is i go to the phone i go to find my app and i ping her phone wow maybe she's blocked you she claims she's done nothing to block me but i'm starting to have my suspicions so one final note about the homepod minis i'm buying several of these and i'll be testing them out on my youtube channel for sure because that's kind of my thing i've got just the right songs lined up some some very beautiful and authentically sun sung doctor disrespect music that i'll be pumping through these and comparing them so let's talk about some little tidbits that you may have heard going on on the internet about these because there's a lot of confusion about these uh first of all you can't pair so you can't stereo pair a homepod to a homepod mini you can only stereo pair like kinds okay so that's number one uh and then jim darremple who i didn't realize was still out there doing his yeps but apparently he's he's still out there loose did you know that yeah yeah you know he just does his yeps nope i forgot about the notes the notes are there too right so people have had a lot of questions about whether or not the homepod will pair with the apple tv or the homepod mini excuse me we'll pair with the homepod or the apple tv because apple's website has a picture let me see if i can bring this up apple's website has a picture comparing the different homepods and let's see if i can bring this up do they have it here no it was on one of their pages that says that it doesn't work with the apple tv in home theater mode and i was like what the heck is home theater mode have you guys ever heard of that mode uh i mean i've heard people talk about uh using the uh home pods home theater speakers but i i don't know that i've actually heard of home theater mode yeah me either so anyway i can't find this image but um because you can you can use them with your apple tv but is there like some special mode so it turns out i think there is a special mode called home theater mode and uh so let's hear jim downrimple said that homepod will add many features okay so i'm just gonna read all this homepod will add many features that are coming to homepod mini including intercom personal update maps continuity multi-user support for podcasts and support for third-party music services and he doesn't mention anything about spotify here again apple's website says homepod mini can be used with apple tv but their homepod compare page okay that must have been what i was looking at says they do not work with apple tv home theater does anyone know what home theater is okay let me keep reading because apparently it's right here original pod will work with apple tv home theater and we'll be getting support for dolby atmos that's pretty cool so here's what home theater is it's 5.7 or 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound with dolby atmos so that mode will only work with the original homepod so that means you'd have to have like i guess six home pods to use it that way or or eight home pods seven well that's right yeah well the point one is a subwoofer so maybe you need seven in a subwoofer but how would that work um so you need the original homepod to do that and this feature yeah so home theater mode includes spatial sound support for home pod and that isn't available in the homepod mini uh um you will be able to use your homepod mini with your apple tv in stereo mode so you can only use two together in stereo mode with your apple tv if you want to do that so yeah you can use these with your tv if you want which is really useful i mean if you want to have these instead of your sound bar that'd be really cool now what i hope they do eventually is allow you to to use these in like surround sound mode because how perfect would they how perfect would it be to have your two home pods up front and then your homepod minis in the back and then you could do like 4.1 surround sound or 5.1 or something that'd be pretty cool sure you know what i'm saying this sure i think i do all gonna be plugged in good and there's no it's not but it's going anywhere but it's not clear if you can do that and how many speakers you'll need well you can't you can't pair your homepods and your homepod minis to your apple tv at the same time it's either one or the other so you either have your stereo pair homepod minis attached or you can do your 7.1 or 5.1 who has that many home pods i really would love to meet that person you can do that with home pods but not with home pod mini does that make sense yeah so it seems like they're on their way to letting you use your home pods in more of a home theater setup which is really cool because i'll probably move my home pods out of the cult command center into my living room in front of my tv and then i'll move the homepod minis out here and just have like a tiny little musical experience going on here you think you think you know here's a big question though do you think they're going to sound any good i mean because that size isn't isn't wasn't isn't it just like the laws of physics you know you only get good sound from big drivers big speakers it's gotta move a lot of air right i don't think they're gonna sound incredible but i think they're gonna sound good for their size home pots sound incredible for their size the only little the only little issue i have with them and i almost wish that lewis never would have mentioned this because i feel like if i if you wouldn't have said anything lewis then you wouldn't have ruined me is is that they do sound a little shrill on on the high end and now whenever i hear something higher it's alerted you to which you are completely unaware of right now golden is ruined i would have been happy louis if you want to just left alone and not let me know what i couldn't even hear and now every time i hear it it bugs me too right yeah i was so happy and then you ruined it for me why do you take such great pleasure in ruining things for people louis my specialty well louis you know the ultimate he is what's the name of the little one they have the the little wonderboom that's a that's actually a pretty decent sound speaker isn't it yeah i mean it's not as good as the bigger ones but uh yeah it sounds pretty good it's i mean it's kind of amazing how how speaker design has gotten smaller and smaller and they make better and better you know smaller smaller things sound better and better but uh yeah i mean i'll be very curious i mean they're really talking up how great these things sound and uh yeah i mean there is i think a limit to what you can produce with such a small thing but maybe to be fantastic who knows it's gonna be good for the size for sure sorry i mean well you know apples what apple's been doing sound recently has been phenomenal you know i mean they've done some amazing amazing things you know even the airpods pro right they managed to get amazing sound of that and there's very very small drivers in those things because they're lodging your ear but you know so i don't know i'm getting the benefit of the doubt but uh i mean i bet with with a couple it's amazing how much better the home pod sounds in a stereo pair i mean that really does make them sound amazing isn't it getting a stereo pair of home pods so maybe the homepod minute is the same thing will be true oh yeah the stereo pair in home pods is like a transcendent experience it you have the one and it sounds good and it's surprising how good it sounds but then you go into stereo mode and it just envelops you in this phrase that i coined called the envelope of power which just completely wraps all around you and you're like you can't even tell where the audio is coming from and they sound way more powerful in a pair than they do in single mode obviously but they sound like they shouldn't be able to sound that much better in a stereo pair and so i'm excited to get my hands on the homepod mini i'm definitely those don't go those don't go on sale i don't think until uh i think it's said november november 6th it sounds like november 6th is when some of this stuff goes on sale i'm trying to pull it up but of course it's uh it's loading slowly yeah someone's starting their uh their hooptie outside your house they're nice oh that's a giant trash can uh truck yeah oh there we go they're just distributing the trash just kind of throwing it all over the place is that how they keep the streets looking the way they do they're keeping that san francisco ambiance they're just chucking it out you're right they're not even doing it they're not even doing anything they just hired those guys to walk around and start their cars and make noise it doesn't have the uh okay there we go 11-6 so yeah it is is launching on 11 6. so the one thing i think we should mention though before we go here is odds of us having a another event in november leander what do you think uh it from the rumors it sounds definitely like it maybe even two oh my god i mean there's so many products that's supposed to be coming out that they're gonna need events for that i mean they promised the mac uh apple silicon didn't they you know before the end of the year so there's that first there's that oh you know that alone they've got to do an event for that that has to be a standalone event doesn't it i i think so that's a huge change yeah it's a massive massive deal so i imagine they have to do it they'd have to do an event for those or that or whatever it's going to be um and then of course you know that there's a the you know all those other products that we're supposed to get the tags air tags the airpods studio headphones um so yeah it looks like at least one other event i'd say it's pretty likely yeah hopefully they're able to get all that stuff out the door so that we can have another event it sounds like the rona has kind of thrown off their production schedules and have caused havoc in tim cook's personal and professional life because he can't get these products made so if they can get those things made we're gonna have to have another event in november and i think that's the way we're trending we've got to get the the new max with the apple silicon as lander kenny pointed out and they promised that they promised that in june i believe that those were going to be coming before the end of the year so right i thought yeah we got those we got uh we got the air pods pro i mean there's just all sorts of stuff the air tags are obviously on their way so we got another apple event coming up in november hopefully fingers crossed but i think we should go ahead and wrap it up there guys what do you say can you hear the music yeah is the music playing for you that's our cue that's our cue that we have wrapped up on the very first cult cast live i think it went quite successfully quite honestly i was expecting everything to blow up and we had a few small explosions but uh but nothing faster i think that was a total disaster so we gotta we gotta go now before anything else goes wrong so that's it that's all cats we have for you guys this week if you guys want to come tell us what your favorite gadget was well we're all on twitter i'm at airfon erf when lewis is at lewis wallace lander is at l kenny this has been the call cast the best 30 plus minute out conversation you're gonna hear all week long new episodes the cast come out every thursday night i want to thank everyone for listening and we'll see you guys next time don't talk about my finger pointing\n"