**Apple Announces Lossless Music Support and Spatial Audio**

In a recent announcement, Apple revealed its plans to bring lossless music support and spatial audio capabilities to its Apple Music service. The company's focus on these features is expected to revolutionize the way we experience music, offering a more immersive and detailed listening experience.

According to Apple, one of the key features being implemented is spatial audio, which will allow users to pinpoint specific instruments and sounds within their favorite tracks. This technology uses advanced algorithms to create a 3D audio field, allowing listeners to fully immerse themselves in the music. Apple also plans to support Dolby Atmos for music, which promises even more realistic soundscapes.

One of the most significant implications of this new feature is its potential impact on music production and distribution. Procoder notes that while there's currently no support for lossy formats, Apple appears to be working around these limitations through some "weird trick" with AirPlay. However, as we know from our discussions on the show, Wi-Fi chips are not present in the AirPods, which raises questions about how this will actually work.

While details remain scarce, Apple's commitment to these features is clear. The company believes that spatial audio and Dolby Atmos for music will be a game-changer, allowing listeners to interpret and experience music in new ways. As someone who spends a lot of time listening to classical music, I find the prospect of this technology to be incredibly exciting. It would be amazing if music producers could support these features with orchestra-type tracks, allowing for even more immersive experiences.

For those who are feeling steamed about the lack of clarity around Apple's announcement, don't worry – we're here to listen! We'd love to hear from you on social media using the Twitter handles provided in our show notes. Are you excited about these new features? Do you have any concerns or questions? Share your thoughts with us!

In other news, the Epic vs. Apple trial is drawing to a close. This week, Apple VP Craig Figi took the stand and made some interesting comments regarding customer protection and security. While iOS has established a higher bar for this aspect, Mac users are not meeting that same level of expectation. This raises questions about why Apple doesn't extend similar protections to the Mac, especially when compared to third-party app support.

Craig's distinction between iOS and Mac use cases is also worth noting. He suggested that iOS is designed as a "car" – something you can take off the road if needed – whereas the Mac is more like a personal vehicle, with a higher level of responsibility required for its operation. While this doesn't necessarily address the issue at hand, it highlights an important difference between these two platforms.

The trial will conclude next Friday, May 21st, when Apple CEO Tim Cook takes the stand to answer questions from the judge. We'll be discussing what this means for both companies and whether Epic has won the battle or if Apple is able to avoid making any changes to their policies. Stay tuned for our next episode to find out!

**Additional Resources**

For more information on these topics, check out The HomeKit Insider podcast, which releases new episodes every Monday. You can also support the show by visiting Patreon.com/Insider and AdFree version of the show.

Finally, don't forget about Apple Daily – your top source for Apple news and updates. With daily headlines in just a few minutes, you'll stay up-to-date on all the latest developments from Cupertino.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Sten Roz and this episode is brought to you by masterclass headspace and start mail you'll learn about those in a second and don't forget you can get an adree version of the show at patreon.com Insider to talk about all the new iPad Pro iMac Apple music stuff my friend Wes Hillyard how's it going Wes pretty good Stephen uh coming at you through the pure pristin audio of lossless compression no never mind actually you wouldn't tell the difference anyway but I li okay you know we are going to talk a lot about that music lossless spatial audio Apple made those announcements earlier this week but we have so much to get to we're going to try and jam through as much as possible I have my my hot tea here to help my throw basic apple guy he he recommended I get ready for this week's episode so we're going to do it we're going to try and hit all of it first of all as listeners are hearing this if they listen to it on the day it comes out provided Apple podcast actually releases it I should be receiving an M1 iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard Apple TV is still in the wind I haven't gotten the delivery notification about that but it will be coming and so on the next episode I'll be able to give some personal thoughts and the experience I have with it this is actually the last episode I'll be editing on my 11in 2018 model so little Nostalgia there but have you gotten any shipment notifications on your iPad Pro no I think it's going to be it says between June 2nd and June 9th so smack in the middle of WWDC uh we'll see I don't think I'll have it for the next episode but the one after that I'll be on iPad OS 15 on the new iPad so that'll be fun that's right that's right yes we'll have to see what comes of that so iPad Pro reviews the Embargo lifted this past week on Wednesday and so all the names that you recognize had their iPad Pro reviews go up MKBHD I Justine Renee Richie The Verge and a number of other ones you know a lot of those reviews I'll put links in the show notes to those videos so if you want want to check those out you can watch them but a lot of those reviews basically said it's an iPad it's still really fast and the screen is really nice but it's still an iPad and so I feel like every review had this caveat on the end one don't buy a product now based on the promise of software updates in the future some pie in the sky idea of iPad OS so totally get that and also that it's still an iPad which we understand we get but I I'm still excited about it one because in mkbhd's video review of the new M1 iPad Pro he really said that he felt a difference in the ram performance that as he was opening multiple apps and using the task switcher to go back to apps that were open you know several apps ago on his iPad Pro it felt like every app was just sitting in Ram and nothing was having to be frozen or kicked out of ram because it has 16 gigs of RAM he had the terabyte version so if you get the one or two terab version it comes with those 16 gigs of RAM so I'm excited to try out that Ram even in multitasking with frite as I edit a podcast and something else maybe it's Safari or even Lightroom side by side I'm very curious to try that out but it was nice to hear that the ram sounded like a difference and the screen of course everyone commented that the screen looks great you know it's an xdr display many compared it to the pro display xdr saying it was on par with that some said it was the brightest display they've really ever used and so if you use your iPad Pro outside a lot or you're a mobile creator that's pretty useful but what did you get out of some of those iPad Pro reviews it's it's as expected this is uh new hardware without any of the software it's like reviewing a PlayStation 5 but the only thing you could play was PlayStation 4 games I mean everything's snappier I'm sure Safari is amazing open 100 million tabs but this is only 20% of the story not even half if Apple comes out on stage at WWDC and says all right here's widgets on the home screen and walks off stage I'm I'm going to throw an iPad through a window it's I I don't think that we're going to see Apple come out here and say hey here's this very expensive iPad with up to 16 gigs of RAM and the processor that you can find in the mac and then do nothing with it and um everything that these guys are testing it's all basically quote unquote pre-release Hardware running pre-release software none of the apps are optimized for the M1 chip we're not seeing anything there's there's been some weird situations like uh guys testing Luma Fusion are seeing you know speedups and certain things as far as navigating the app uh and na navigating large video files as much faster but rendering hasn't changed and apparently um between the a12z model and the M1 model uh they're getting identical render times and this might be because of optimizations or or whatever I mean these apps are built with what uh four gigs in mind and then the maximum previously was 6 gigs and now we're talking 8 gigs minimum up to 16 so yeah big changes coming for this software for sure and so I'm I'm excited still to get it you know a lot of pictures of the white magic keyboard seems like apple sent every reviewer the white magic keyboard to try out because it's a new color I totally get it and I'm excited to get mine mine shipped as we record just Thursday like I just got the shipment notification but it says it's still coming tomorrow being Friday with the iPad so be able to get them together so excited for that but it does look pretty cool in pictures and some of the videos and the big controversy that the old 12.9 in magic keyboard would not fit the new model that is now a thing of the past you can definitely use the old 12.9 inch magic keyboard for the iPad Pro with the new model it is a millimeter thicker the new 12.9 inch you can see pictures and videos where it's slightly like bent out I mean it is so slight I mean you really have to look very closely to see that millimeter difference in the iPad and magic keyboard but you can use it it works fine all the video reviews said the same thing Jason A10 had a written review as well so if you have an old 12.9 in magic keyboard but want to get the new iPad you can still use use that old magic keyboard yeah I I never thought this was going to be that big of an issue for me personally like if you hold these up side by side if you or splice it together in Photoshop or something so you can see what this looks like in each case you can tell that there's a difference there's absolutely a little bit of a closure difference I wouldn't be too picky about it but I already have the new magic keyboard so I think I'm just going to keep it selling an old iPad to somebody will be much easier when I can say Hey you also get this you know very expensive keyboard included at my discounted price you know it's just one of those things where I'm not going to be too picky about it I like that it fits the old one but also I'm enough of a purist that I would want the proper magic keyboard with the iPad I think this is just Apple again avoiding some person with some calipers saying look it doesn't actually fit this uh you know outer edge of the iPad sticking out ever so slightly and they were getting ah had a thicker gate that's all it was you gave me that term thicker gate we'll talk about the iPad Pro more once we have it in for sure but links in the show notes to those reviews also if you're listening an apple podcast and if they haven't fixed the ability to actually click links in the app you can go to appleinsider.com podcast and all the links are there in the article for you in addition to the iPad Pro embargo being lifted the M1 iMac the new 24-in model redesigned that embargo lifted this past Tuesday you know what's Difficult about all these computers is they're all the same computer everything is the M1 now you got the iPad Pro iMac Mac Mini MacBook Air MacBook Pro everything is the M1 right now so as far as performance and specs and all that we've already talked about the M1 it's an amazing chip it's really fast it's great so it's really more a story about the hardware design and the hardware features of these new iMacs and the big thing that people were talking about as they were announced was that white bezel and I thought MKBHD you know he does a great job at all this stuff but as he was reviewing the colored iMac he filmed it in a room with white walls and made the point that a lot of offices maybe even homes probably have light colored walls you know not not many places have walls that are dark gray or black especially where you're putting in this computer you know if you have an office that might be dark but in the common areas where you would have this consumer level iMac whether it's a family room the white bezel does blend away into the background when it's against a lighter colored wall and he had a couple camera shots really showing how it just kind of Fades away and so totally get it it's probably not a big deal even if you don't see crazy about the white bezel it will probably just kind of Melt Away into the background but as far as the design they look cool they're fun colors I Justine unboxed like every single color so if you want to see a video with every of the seven iMac colors you can watch her video but it looks cool you know it looks like a fun computer it's a fun redesign all the braided cables and color matched accessories are really nice and so it's a great entrylevel M1 iMac if you're in the market for an all-in-one pretty much what I expect everyone wanted to comment on the colors and the white bezels and it's like you said every everybody has you know these generally speaking these brighter uh living rooms and stuff so these bright colors might stand out especially makes you think though how many places are you going to actually have these things set up so you can see the front and the back most of the time you might have this tucked into a corner or against the wall so all the new bright Rich colors are kind of wasted on that for me I live in this dingy brown house with wood paneling everywhere M so uh I can't I I can't take advantage of the bright colors I have to wait for the space gray versions to come out so I can just live in darkness right but very good I just think it it's a good sign of like what's coming I'm I'm excited to see like what the MacBook airs and everything look like with this design right I'm really hoping that we get to see the peripherals for sale separately as well a lot of weird things have come out about these IMAX since uh the reviews started dropping like apparently Andrew tried to get a trackpad with his iMac and you had to select it at checkout but you can only exchange the trackpad or Mouse you can't get both and Apple's being very weird about this so I'm I'm wondering what the accessory story is here and apple did say that magic keyboard with Touch ID built in this new colored model will work with any M1 Mac so if you wanted to get it for the M1 Mac Mini or even get it because you use your M1 MacBook Pro in clamshell mode maybe in Bridge vertical dock that it would work with other M1 so surely these will be sold separately this is also on the heels of Apple discontinuing the space gray accessories which I thought was an interesting move you know they're just saying you know no more gray no more space gray going to go all white and color so surely they'll be sold separately eventually but it's weird that you can't get it right away for sure what do you think about the rumors about how Apple's going to release everything ever rumored at WWDC I mean everyone's really wanting there to be the the pro IMAX or maybe a Mac Pro uh in miniature you know it just every every body's once again it seems like every time we're up coming to an Apple event it's just everything's coming out guys get ready for it it's I don't think we're going to see any hardware at this event so John Gruber commented that so many announcements that Apple has released in the past week and we'll touch on some of these later in the episode but even like the accessibility features that Apple added which are amazing features huge news for the people who use those features that really felt like it could have been a WWDC announcement you know it is a software thing these new accessibility features even the Apple music which we'll talk about in a second the lossless and spatial audio those are software features and WWDC is where Apple talks about their software features yeah if you saw me if you saw me on Twitter I was very adamant I said why would Apple announce something like apple music software editions a week you know two weeks before WWDC it just doesn't make sense for the company but I guess unless there's just a lot to talk about this event seems like it's going to be jam-packed right and even if they just talk about iOS iPad OS TV OS watch OS what is it like home well they're not going to talk about homod they just just continue that but they're going to talk about all these things so it does seem like it's going to be jam-packed and they're trying to get some of these other software features announced and out to save time on WWDC I think there will be some Hardware announcement I don't think it's going to be a lot of things I don't think it's going to be several computers but because it's the developer conference and developer are one of the major use cases for pro machines I could see apple either announcing the larger iMac model or maybe that redesigned 14in and 16-in MacBook Pros with the more powerful M chip but there was a rumor and we could just touch on it now that you know the 14 and 16 in will be coming soon could support up to 64 GB of RAM and this report was from Bloomberg talking about all the things that will be coming I'll put a link of show notes to that but I think we'll see some thing we'll see some Hardware announcement but not a lot you know I think we're a ways off from the redesigned MacBook Air that John proc are leaked and definitely away from the Mac Pro because we haven't gotten anything close to that kind of powerful computer in the lineup right well we'll save our predictions for the for the next show I'm on because that's the Thursday before WWDC but oh yes I'll go ahead and say though that I believe that since last year Apple ended the conference keynote with uh information about their move to Apple silicon they didn't announce the M1 processor but they talked about the advancements they had made to get there I believe that this would be the perfect opportunity to step on stage and say this is what a pro M series processor looks like and that they may not drop a name you know maybe we'll finally get to hear about this 30 core monster that people keep trying to tease us with so whatever it is m1x M2 I think apple is ready to give us something maybe not a Mac Pro or Pro Hardware but I think we'll hear the chipset story at the very least yeah that's a good point well we'll put the links to all the iMac reviews and show notes you can check those out let us know if you watched them let us know if you got one I'd be curious if anybody out there got one of these new iMacs what color you got one of the thing I will say I agree with MKBHD where he said you know make the iMac a few millimeters thicker and get rid of the chin I feel like that has to be the next move you know just having that screen without a chin would look amazing and I I don't buy the story about it has to have a chin because that's the iconic look like I don't think so I I think Apple could totally remove the chin and it would look great so maybe they're just waiting till they can do it without making it any thicker Allah Johnny I I don't know we'll see but that that's my point of view I personally don't have anything against this chin um just like with the notch once you're sitting in front of a screen and staring at it you're not looking at what's around the screen you're looking at the screen itself so true you know looking at the desk or whatever from from afar and saying wow that's a pretty desk set up I love it but uh you're you might notice there's a chin on that monitor but otherwise I don't I don't think anyone's going to notice it's just another weird little picky thing and while I agree a fullcreen monitor would make sense I think this isn't so much the iconic chin thing but I do think it might be a visual differentiator from other models cuz we still haven't seen the pro iMac and maybe that is the iMac with the pro display xdr style design that we've heard rumored before where it's just maybe it's a IMX 6K with that crazy looking cheese grater design on the back of it who knows yeah I think this isn't the full Design Story and maybe once we see those Pro iMacs the design of the consumer iMac might make a little more sense this episode is brought to you by masterclass with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn about movie scoring and composition from Han Zimmer scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn cooking from Gordon Ramsay and you can even learn about Adventure photography from Jimmy chin you know we've been talking about music on this episode of the Apple Insider podcast and that's why I loved the course that I did with Han Zimmer learning about movie and film composition you can see his inhome Studio it has beautiful cinematography and he talks about Melodies and how they're attached to characters and themes and you get to see his whole setup as he passionately talks and teaches you about music composition for film and I also highly recommend the course by Chris Voss on negotiation I read his book never split the difference but seeing him on video in this course in Master Class can give you negotiating 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slapple inssider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode all right so John prer Big Time Apple leaker I have to say he had quite a week with leaks and renders you know he had the MacBook Air render the colorful MacBook airs we talked about that on the last episode then he released Google IO like promo video for and Android 12 wild that he got the entire video and whatever his Source was was cool with him just showing it on his front page Tech YouTube channel so then he had that plus the Google pixel render and if you're interested in that and what that looks like I'll put a link in show notes to those those renders and what that looks like and then this week another leak where he got an Apple Watch series 7 image you know he's not sure exactly if it's seven or something else he just got an image of a redesigned Apple watch renders by Ian is the guy that John prer works with these on Twitter making these renders from the images and they do the renders so they don't put the actual pictures out there to protect their sources so totally get it the renders look amazing I have to say but for the Apple Watch series 7 this redesigned Apple watch is basically an Apple Watch with flat sides I mean you imagine the transition from iPhone 11 to iPhone 12 rounded side to Flat sides that's what this Apple watch looks like if this is accurate to a redesign that's coming from Apple soon it's like an Apple Watch but flat sides it looks good my initial impression is like yeah that looks cool it looks like a little bit of a more modern take it matches Apple's other product lines like the new iMac iPad Pro the iPhone 12 so it looks pretty cool and he also said it might come in a new color being green which he shows in a lot of the renders but I don't know what do you think about this Apple watch redesign uh it's interesting it moves a little bit away from classic watch uh design to more of a very techy geeky look because right now when I look at my Apple watch I see h I mean it's obviously a piece of technology but at the same time there's the rounded Corners there's still a physical instrument attached to it that looks sort of like a watch but looking at this guy looking straight on it's a screen it is a full display on the side of your arm and now we're getting into just having a display on your wrist and nothing else I mean maybe eventually we'll we'll get into that Futurama position of having just a thing on your arm you poke at but it it it just it looks different it looks very techy to me that alone makes me a little bit iffy on this render I'm sure the source is great or whatever but think about it Apple said that they're fashion forward they're going to be very conscious of what people are going to put on their body and here we have what's essentially now the flat sided iPhone on your wrist and I guess before it was the curv sided iPhone on your wrist it's just right we're moving away from that fashion aspect I believe I I would like to hear from maybe more picky people who actually care about a design and how this looks and there's there's something else about it too it it does just look very square and flat even to the edge that is resting on your wrist I mean how what what's the difference between what we have now which is kind of a rounded glass surface resting on the wrist versus what looks like almost a flat pancake sitting on your arm so right obviously it's just renders they don't have the full picture but it it does make me kind of question where we're going and what we might see in the future cuz now we're so close to a circle why doesn't Apple just make a circular watch as well well yeah and John prer one of the other leaks he had was the upcoming pixel watch or the next you know Google watch and it was a round circle face I've heard from watch enthusiasts John grber being one and other people that you know a piece of technology like an Apple Watch is not going to resemble a mechanical watch on a variety of levels for a long long time if ever and so when they wear an Apple Watch they tend to lean towards let me just treat this like a computer on my wrist rather than an analog watch to the point of not liking analog watch faces with the hands because it's trying to mimic something and it's not good at mimicking it and they lean more towards the digital so I would be curious about watch effici AOS but they might be leaning more into the techie side because maybe most of the people wearing Apple watches are not watch efficient Autos I know I did not wear a watch prior to the Apple watch I just not something I did I had my phone I look at the time and so for me you know I don't I don't have an appreciation for mechanical watches I I appreciate them from a craftsmanship standpoint and some of them look very cool but for most people maybe the tech angle is the way to go it does look like there's less bezels because of this design because the edges are flat if you look at it straight on which you as the user of the Apple watch is how you use it most of the time or how you view it it would limit the amount of bezels cuz right now you have that rounded you see the metal titanium aluminum or steel whatever it is around the edges because it's round and not and not flat so ites does look a little bit less Bez in this design but we'll put the picture in show notes and in the chapter art so you can check it out and let us know what you think I'll make one last note here and say that maybe the fashion move was smart at the beginning when we were just when Apple was just trying to get this thing on as many risks as possible but now apple is essentially the Smartwatch Market I mean sure people still go out here and buy fitbits but we're talking about $30 fitbits versus $300 Apple watches if you're spending $300 on a smartwatch you're pretty much buying an Apple Watch at this point and apple knows this so I believe that now maybe after what seven years of having Apple watch on the market we can finally start moving towards the more digital future of this thing and people will now just say oh it's an Apple Watch I want it and maybe not think so much about what it looks like so one other quick update after Apple released the release CID date for iOS 14.6 and they've gone to calling the gold Master editions of iOS and ipados updates releas candidates or RC's so if you're wondering what that language is it used to be yeah the industry term of Golden Master release of a software meaning if you download this it's technically beta but it's actually going to be the same thing we released to the public apple is now calling it the release candidate so iOS 14.6 is in release candidate phase and so should be coming very soon looks like early June it might be one of those at the June 7th WWDC keynote Apple just says iOS 14.6 available today and that will bring Apple card Family Sharing to the iPhone in 14.6 most likely podcast subscriptions and channels will be coming in 14.6 hopefully a fix to the app overall and the new apple lossless spatial audio stuff which we'll talk about in a moment but after announcing that earlier in the week then Apple released betas of iOS 14.7 and as far as I know this is the second time ever that Apple has gone up to a seven in the point releases the first number the big number is the OS the major OS change so iOS 14 13 12 and coming 15 at WWDC and then the point something are those in thee updates or mid-year updates so there is apparently going to be an iOS 14.7 now we don't have a lot of details about what is going to be new in that iOS version but one thing this is very minor but some people might love this and I'm actually encouraged that this is going to be part of it is you will actually be able to manually set and adjust timers on your homepods in the home app come iOS 14.7 now that that might not sound like anything interesting to you all but for me my kids yelling at homepods to try to set timers is an effort in futility and they just get confused and the wrong homepod hears it and then they don't know when the timer goes off so actually being able to set timers manually via the home app for a homepod is pretty cool so I'm glad that's coming and we'll see what other details come from IOS 14.7 in the future it's very very curious because it it Point update like this kind of says that there's going to be some sort of major feature associated with it and if Apple music and podcast payments are all a part of 14.6 that means there's something big probably coming for 14.7 that we don't even know about and if the timeline's correct as I understand it um apple promise paid podcast by the end of this month May 14.6 will be out any day now before the end of the month that's going to include the Apple music stuff which is due in June so there's probably going to be a switch Apple flips server side to enable that feature once everyone's on 14.6 do7 that's going to be after WWDC so I would expect maybe we'll see some features coming from WWDC announced uh there and then released a couple weeks later so definitely something to keep an eye on yeah it's it's funny though to think about because now say like with the timers for homepod now we know well there's probably not going to be a timer change for between 14 iOS 14 and iOS 15 now because right you know everyone wants timer handoff so to speak so you can start a timer on your iPhone and stop it on your homepod and you know back and forth kind of thing but obviously that's not going to happen we just get timer settings and homekit great and hopefully just more bug fixes overall especially I'll just say it again the apple podcast app please markco arment who makes overcast he actually gave me some information and went back and forth bya email for the article I wrote about why Apple podcast is broken but every week I see that ATP podcast just come up like it's supposed to and I'm like man how come they don't have any issues and we have all these issues yeah did you see they they recently released 91 episodes that was that was pretty good on them very productive and then in in some move of Providence I felt Justified that okay if the ATP guys have an issue with apple podcast I'm I'm just glad we are not the only ones here at Apple Insider and it's been sometimes better is the last couple episodes some people have said I got it on time or I got it on the day or at least I got it in the first 24 hours but the ATP guys they couldn't access their podcast and podcast connect for a few days and then yeah I got the notification about ATP has 91 new episodes it's like okay it's not just us so I'm just glad it's not anything I'm doing so listeners Apple podcast is really broken right now maybe you can hear this if you're listening to my voice you're obviously doing it in some way but I encourage you check out overcast or pocketcasts or Castro or in the amazing thirdparty podcast app at least in this interim period where Apple's podcast app is just hopelessly broken but hopefully it gets fixed a little bit in 14 .6 this episode is brought to you by headspace if people keep telling you you should try mindfulness and meditation and you just feel like you don't have the time let me encourage you I highly recommend you check out headspace headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy to use app headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research so whatever the situation headspace really can help you feel better do you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you maybe you need help falling asleep headspace has a wind down session that their members swear by and for parents headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids heads space's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress improve sleep boost focus and increase your overall sense of well-being after using headspace for 30 days it can lower your stress by 32% and just four individual sessions can reduce burnout by 14% but when I take the time to do headspace especially just doing a few minutes every day it makes a world of difference I can be more productive I can focus more I have better concentration and I don't have this weight of stress on me I've even done headspace sessions with my kids they have unique sessions for kids about attention and mindfulness and it's just fun to do as a family headspace is backed by 25 published studies on its benefits 600,000 f-star reviews and over 60 million downloads head space makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule anytime and anywhere you deserve to feel happier and headspace is meditation Made Simple go to headspace.com slapple inssider that's headspace.com appleinsider for a free one- Monon trial and you can access headspaces entire Library their full library of meditations for every situation this is the best deal offered right now so go to headspace just like it sounds.com slapple Insider today our thanks to headspace for sponsoring this episode so Apple also announced a bunch of accessibility updates some of these updates are wild first of all for the Apple watch they're coming out with new features in assist of touch for Apple watch where you will be able to control the Apple watch using the heart rate sensor motion sensors and on device machine learning and so you can operate it with a single arm like you won't have to touch it to interact with it or to use it and that's pretty amazing also in iPad OS an update is going to be coming later this year that supports third-party eye tracking support meaning that it can track your eyes as you look at the iPad and you can control it just by looking and I remember watching documentaries when I was younger about the kind of amazing computers that people who were unable to use their hands and their arms to control a computer would use their eyes to move around a screen and blink to actually click and be able to operate a computer just by looking at it and the fact that this could just be built in to a device like the iPad where someone can use it just with their eyes looking that opens up an entire world of possibilities for people to be able to interact with these devices and just be able to use them at all incredible updates to accessibility I'll put a link in show notes with all the updates and changes to accessibility uh and one of the last ones too is that a service will enable Apple customers to communicate with retail staff and Apple Care employees by using American Sign Language British sign language or French sign language right in the web browser so imagine with camera and all this kind of stuff being able to communicate that way and one other one they're actually going to add baked in background sounds to iOS that could help some users minimize distractions by utilizing White Noise settings or environmental sounds like ocean and rain this is on you know depending on maybe you just like white noise maybe having White Noise actually helps you concentrate and focus and there's lots of apps out there to do it but some of them are kind of janky and you know depending on how much they cost or in at purchase or subscription and some of them are great uh endel is one that has like kind of atmospheric music and you know you can get night sounds but the fact that apple is actually baking that into iOS I'm very curious how that's going to work and function and that might be something that I use just as I work so I don't know really cool stuff yeah it looks like you can play some noise while listening to other audio which is a really interesting so like you'll be able to just have white noise or ocean sounds playing while you have music on I wonder how the mixing is going to work on that and how that'll sound but it's pretty interesting yeah that's pretty cool I think the most interesting technology out of all these I mean iPad getting more peripheral support that's awesome obviously we have USBC Port let's use it right the most interesting thing here is Apple watch just everything they did there is just a technological achievement it it's insane the the heart rate sensor is tracking tendons under your skin to see if you're pinching your fingers it's it's wild I'm I'm very excited about this because not only is it amazing for accessibility it's amazing for technology in general because this kind of stuff can roll down from accessibility to us eventually through just general things like think about the cursor for iPad that was an accessibility feature originally and now we have this amazing cursor that's uh built just for iPad OS based on that original one you know Apple watch could evolve greatly based on this stuff as well just imagine being able to flick your wrist a certain way to open an app or assign certain gestures to different app settings or workouts it's it's definitely opening a door for the future of the technology for sure it's very cool all right Wes we have to talk about Apple music and the announcements that Apple made this past week about spatial audio and Dolby atmo support and lossless tracks so many confused people on these announcements it's very confusing and then also what devices support which thing and so I think it's helpful to distinguish these basically two different things that Apple announced honestly there is four separate features here if you wanted to get technical how would you break it down in four different ones I would say lossless highres Dolby Atmos and spatial audio they are four different things and and the problem is is everyone keeps trying to say lossless and highres in one sentence and spatial audio and Dolby Atmos in another sentence and that gets cloudy because then you have to specify which is supported where and it's crazy it's absolute Madness just right makes things so much easier if you just talk about it one at a time here just to simplify things Dolby Atmos is the is a surround sound technology that is used by like movies and TV shows to simulate a 3D audio environment in February they added the ability for musicians to simulate 3D audio using music and musical instruments and apple is adding support for that with this update now to confuse things further Apple decided to lump the terms together by calling it spatial audio with Dolby Atmos which is very annoying because you can listen to things with Dolby Atmos through equipment that is compatible with Dolby Atmos so iPhone and iPad the newest ones have Dolby Atmos support through their speakers and then you can connect headphones and speakers that works on anything that is running Apple music basically through equipment that supports Dolby Atmos including Android technically once it gets an update um at launch apparently Android does not get DB Atmos support okay spatial audio is an Apple only feature that uses the audio track from Dolby Atmos to give us the 3D audio environment but uses the gyroscopes on the airpods pro and airpods Max to let us turn our head inside of the 3D audio space that is the difference let's do it with the four breakdowns like you were saying so DOL Dolby Atmos yeah you can listen to Dolby Atmos Apple music with regular airpods airpods Pro airpods Max and your Apple devices that support Dolby Atmos recent iPhones and iPads and the Apple TV and homepods so that's Dolby Atmos support then like you said spatial audio which is Apple's additional feature to Dolby Atmos that is supported correct me if I'm wrong but airpods Pro and airpods Max and then iPhone and or iPad devices that also have spatial audio so we begin to not include the regular airpods yes right you have to pair the airpods pro or airpods Max to an iPhone or an iPad and that is it for spatial audio spatial audio is also coming to homepod and homepod mini is that correct Dolby see this is where Apple's this is where Apple's phrasing gets weird and if you read the arttic I wrote a a compare on what spatial audio and dolp Atmos is yes and mention Apple needs to clarify some things there it's a mess it seems that they are bringing Dolby atmo support to the hods but spatial audio doesn't actually makes sense because it's not tracking your head the audio is fixed to the homepods in that environment so technically speaking you wouldn't act it would just be regular do Atmos and and then you're physically moving your body through the environment I guess you could call it spatial audio but I think it's cheating a little bit got it the homepod thing is the only exception I could find that there's no rule to yet Apple hasn't clarified okay this episode is brought to you by startmail free email service like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free you pay with your privacy or frankly lack of privacy since those companies have access to every 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easy to set up and I also value my privacy and that's why I enjoy using start mail knowing that my email is private and not being seen by tons of other companies and that data being sold everywhere and I know my data is not being sold anywhere advertising companies may be after your data but you can be empowered not to give it away by using startmail start securing your email privacy with startmail and you can sign up today and get 50% off your first year that is a whole half 50% off your first year so go to startmail.com AI That's start mail with a t s t mail.com /ai for 50 that's 50% off your first year startmail.com our thanks to startmail for sponsoring this episode so that's Dolby admos and spatial audio most people will probably be able to tell some difference even if you don't tell a quality difference if you have airpods Pro airpods Max and your iPad or iPhone and you're listening and you turn your head you should be able to hear that things move move around the space instruments and voices or whatever it is and you should be able to notice that 3D space quote unquote if you've watched a movie with airpods Pro or airpods Max that has spatial audio Dolby Atmos enabled whether it's through the Apple TV app or Disney plus you should be able to recognize that difference and that's probably going to be the most useful feature for most people in apple music right and not to beat a dead horse here but it depends on the mastering of the audio because right you can take spatial audio and place it like use stereo and spatial audio and and move your head around a stereo environment that's not really going to give you anything it just tells you which direction the audio is from oh the iPhone's on my right hand I can hear it on the right side great but a really well-mastered Dolby Atmos track can have up to aund I think I said 128 sources of audio within a 3D space wow and if you have physical speakers in a room now this is this doesn't count for headphones but you can have up to like 34 speakers connected to a Dolby Atmos environment outputting those 128 channels so with headphones on yeah you're not going to be able to replicate that exactly but musicians can literally Place their their individual instruments in this 3D space in up to 128 locations simultaneously within that environment and if they Master it anywhere Beyond eight or nine channels you're going to notice that moving being able to turn your head in that space you're going to hear the difference in the audio nothing technically in apple music support reports it yet but if you're on the latest beta for 14.6 or 14.7 music videos for some reason say that they work as spatial audio you can tell this by opening the control center and pressing into the headphones and you'll see the spatial audio icon animating it did not animate on previous versions of iOS when watching music videos so the features enabled for the music videos and you can tell a difference if you disable spatial audio but they are not mastered for spal audio so you can tell that there's more space that the there's some sort of algorithmic change here trying to take advantage of spatial audio but it's not exactly what we're expecting once the actual product releases in June got it okay so that's Dolby Atmos and spatial audio then the other features that Apple announced was lossless audio and lossless high quality is that what they're calling it it's lossless and high res high resolution that's the the they're both lossless it's just one has a higher bit rate okay so you have lossless and lossless high reses now I encourage people to go to the website that we have in one of our articles how to tell if you can actually tell the difference between lossless audio which means either uncompressed or you know larger data files meaning better quality or a compressed MP3 and so it's the ABX test I did the test with my airpods Max plugged into to an audio interface have you done this test W yes and it's a lie so go ahead it's a lie wait a minute why do you say it's a lie I mean that's encouraging to me all right so I I have the iPad so I I can't wire in with the airpods max to an iPad uh feasibly I the the test just would not work in Safari so I had to go to my Mac Mini and plug in my headphones and you could there's just literally no difference between the tracks I I believe there's something tricky happening with airpods Max which we'll get into in a second as to why lossless audio won't work with airpods Max but they are digital only headphones right so correct me if I'm wrong but aren't headphone interfaces generally analog output to your from speakers to your ears am I crazy I encourage people to listen to the ATP segment if you really want to get into this audio stuff you know Marco Armen talked about all this kind of stuff because audio has to be analog to hit your ear drum like that's what I yeah it has to be analog and so if you even think about if you have airpods and you're listening to Apple music from your iPhone your iPhone is playing a digital MP3 file transferring it through the air digitally via Bluetooth to your airpods but then inside each airpod is a digital to analog converter that then makes the little speaker inside the airpod physically move and make vibrations in the air so you can hear it so any kind of headphone that is I don't know electronic or wre Wireless we'll say is going to have some kind of digital to analog converter at the very least inside your ear you know because it has to you in order to be able to hear it it has to be an analog signal that hits your eardrum all right so I I might be wrong in saying this so does that mean that going from the Mac to a headphone jack it's going through a digital to analog conversion to that headphone jack running to the lightning port in your airpods max getting converted back to digital and then the airpods max are converting them back to analog to Output from the speaker is that correct I think so I I think so and that's why like technically there is no way even wired to get a lossless audio signal to the earphones and your airpods max just because you're converting it twice you're going to introduce noise at some point during those conversions and it's just no longer technically right lossless so the point of lossless audio and again if you're an audio file maybe you've heard of the file format of flak flcc this lossless audio file is meant so you can listen to it on your super high-end lossless stereo system whatever it is maybe it's speakers maybe it's analog headphones plugged in directly that have no Wireless kind of connectivity but plugged into a headphone amp that's taking those flak files and playing them directly through a digital audio converter on your table you know that's lossless for the a audio file crowd now Marco Armen basically argued you really can't hear a difference anyway like just from a technical frequency standpoint of music and equipment and how the human body works that like there's really not that much of a difference I agree so there's that I did the ABX test to see if I could tell the difference between lossi and lossless which again I I don't even know how you could do that test on headphones like the airpods max that don't support a lossless codec but I got 48% correct what did you get oh again it's a lie because I couldn't tell a difference so I just selected a on all of them and got 56% okay the law of averages I I win you did you did apparently cuz I listen I have a music background I have a music degree and I was like I want to get over a 90% because I'm a music person I should be able to get this from an audio engineer from what I've read things that I've studied like if you don't read the the dude who's out here buying $36,000 speakers because he has the money to do it read an actual dude who went to college and he will tell you if you sit in a soundproof room stuffed with mat mattresses and cotton that's how they do it in the studios mattresses negative sound space it is so quiet that is inverting your eard drums right and then put on a set of headphones and listen to a lossless track you might be able to ascertain the difference between the two but even just the general room noise around you is introducing just enough noise that you you can't tell the difference between something like Lo like because the idea of lossless is that it is able to reach your ears as if you're hearing it from the instrument itself but it's it's just mindboggling to me the science here says that you can't hear it but audio files will tell you different so choose what you want to believe I guess so from the audio file side you know let's say there there is some difference that some small percentage of people can tell apple is going to have lossless available to the Apple music catalog but in order to listen to the lossless tracks as one would want you will need a digital audio converter so something that connects to a USB port on your Mac that goes to some kind of audio interface that's for highres lossless specifically right for highres lossless lossless will work over a standard headphone jack wire right it's the high reses lossless that will not and so you're going to need that digital audio converter on your desk and a pair of headphones not airpods Max I will work with that for the high quality lossless now everyone was up in arms because Apple's newi is $550 headphones the airpods max do not support this highquality lossless form format now hopefully Wes and I have tripped over enough explanations to to bring some light to the fact that why it's not possible with the airpods max let me go ahead and contradict myself so as far as lossless goes this isn't like we're not saying this is a useless feature that Apple should never have introduced obviously there's a reason for it it's competitive in the marketplace but there's also good reason to have higher quality music cataloges available now maybe we won't be able to technically hear the difference even with a million-dollar headphones but the quality is there and if uh so say you have a 4K TV the the Apple TV right now that we're we're upgrading to the Apple TV 4K it's going from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second on HDR video technically speaking you're not going to notice that much of a difference but there is a difference and in some cases there will be just enough of a difference that you will actually be able to tell and I think that's going to be the case for audio as well now not every single song is going to sound absolutely amazing and perfect and pristine but because there's the higher quality bit rates and stuff coming to you you're going to hear what is technically a better quality audio Source than what you had access to before and in some cases it will sound better right it isn't a bad thing they're not charging more money for it it's just an interesting thought that like yeah maybe it's kind of dumb that they're doing it in the first place it's appeasing a very small portion of the market but there are those people out there who will say hm Spotify has a high reses channel right apple does not I'm going to Spotify and that's pretty much the only reason why Apple's doing this I believe yeah and you know tidle this was their whole stick when tidal launched and Jay-Z it was all about the high quality audio that made it a thing and that didn't go anywhere you know the title did not become a thing just because the market is so small for it but like you said I agree not like having it is not a bad thing and adding this as a feature it's competitive in the market great on Apple also for not charging it they actually Force spotifi to lower their upgrade fee for their high quality tracks because Apple was like here we're just going to give it to you so very cool I guess to be clear lossless I I won't say the numbers cuz they're basically meaningless but lossless is what 24-bit at a Whatever frequency and you can listen to that over supported headphones that are very high quality over a cable Bluetooth isn't going to support that lossless highres you're going to need a DAC a digital audio converter right and you're going to basically connect that between your headphones and the and the computer and hear an even higher quality audio file technically right if you're ready to get into it there's also a rumor uh from from John prer that says that Apple's actually working on changing how airpods and uh receive audio and maybe changing codecs in order to get higher resolution audio over Bluetooth which again technically isn't lost but will be higher quality overall right and so to that end Spidey Sam on Twitter actually tweeted me this link to a device called a f it's F IO and it is a Hi-Fi Bluetooth amp that supports ldac and lossless Bluetooth codecs to send those digital highquality lossless music files to Bluetooth headphones this would not work for Apple music and airpods Max because Apple has their own codec for this lossless high quality which is Al a Apple's lossless audio codec so this specific device won't work for it but the fact that there is a device out there that claims at least to do something like this where you can get ldac over Bluetooth I think it lends Credence to this rumor from procor that says maybe a WWDC maybe later this year that Apple will announce some kind of proprietary coding you know maybe it's because something with the H1 chip that apple is putting in all the airpods or is it W1 it's H1 and the airpods max it's H1 and W1 W's in the original airpods I believe that's right the W1 is used in the Beats products as well right that's right if that rumor is true great you know that'd be awesome it would bring more value to the airpods max that people already have but I'm also not banking on that like that's not a deal breaker for me procor specifically and this is where it gets a little iffy uh he released a video that like a few minutes after we released this article on it cuz he made these comments on a podcast and then clarified more on um his video and he says that it's going to use airplay now AirPlay is a Wi-Fi connection for music that that we use for the homepods uh which uh I guess we haven't mentioned homepods don't get lossless either for whatever reason I I believe it has to do with AAC Apple uses AAC and homepods and airpods for their audio codec and that's a lossy format and there's just no support whatsoever for the loss formats apparently procor says that Apple's going to use some weird trick with AirPlay to allow uh the airpods to connect to that lossless uh codec but again there's no Wi-fi chips in the airpod so I'm not entirely sure what they're going to do unless Apple redefines what AirPlay is right so once we actually get these features out we will talk about them more for sure myself Wes we have airpods mac so we're going to test all this kind of stuff and we'll see and listen let us know are you excited about this I think the spatial audio thing is pretty cool it'll be fun to try that out on different music tracks again being a classical music guy I think Orchestra type tracks if music producers can support that kind of spatial audio features with Orchestra and other types of music it'll be really cool we'll see let us know if you're an a if you're an audio file out there and and you're just steaming mad right now because we got something wrong I think you should definitely tweet at us I would love to hear from you for sure CU oh sure not an expert at this for sure but I would love to hear from from you what your thoughts are as an audio file on all this I'll say I side with apple on this I am excited for for the updates for spatial audio and Dolby Atmos for music I think that Apple isn't exaggerating when they say that that is going to change music forever it's going to change how we hear music and how we can interpret it and that is really important and I think that is actually going to make a difference for everyone who is listening yeah not just the people who can hear wax melting on a candle I I've never tried to listen for that I'll try to listen for that next time right or uh uh what's the other one they use uh they can hear the Mercury Heating in a thermometer that's intense that that is that yeah I mean super human even yes I I believe that spatial audio and Dolby Atmos is going to be the game changer here and apple seems to believe so too cuz that is all the marketing they're doing it for the Apple music app is not advertising lossless so right well that was Apple's announcement about loss list and spatial audio coming to Apple music and we're going a little long but I do want to mention that the Epic vers Apple trial is actually ending this week as you listen to this podcast as it comes out on Friday Apple CEO Tim Cook will be taking the stand and so talk about his statements on next week's episode I did think it was interesting that Apple VP Craig Figi took the stand earlier this week and had some interesting comments to say about privacy protection and security especially as it related to the Mac versus iOS some of his actual quotes he said quote iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection and the Mac is not meeting that bar today end quote he said and so that's an interesting distinction for him to admit that they don't think the Mac is as secure as iOS and this is one of the arguments that we've mentioned here on the show and other people have talked about that you know the Mac is open why not open iOS to thirdparty apps being able to download outside the App Store and he also made this distinction about how the Mac is a car you can take it off the road if you want to drive wherever and that's what you bought there's a level of responsibility required but with iOS you bought something where children can operate it and feel safe doing so and so I think it's an interesting distinction that Craig fed is making from the understand about iOS versus MAC the use cases and the level of protection they feel is required for each device platform so again we will conclude this epic vers Apple trial as Tim Cook takes the stand Friday May 21st and we'll talk about what the judge actually rules is Apple going to have to change their policies in the App Store did epic games lose this battle and apple doesn't have to change anything we'll talk about that on the next episode but listeners reach out to us we would love to hear from you you can tweet at myself or west those Twitter handles are in the show notes also don't forget you can get an AdFree version of the show at patreon.com Insider you can support the show there and you can also support the show by giving us a five-star rating and review in apple podcast that helps us get discovered by more people looking for technology and Apple news like yourself also don't forget to check out The homekit Insider podcast that gets released every Monday talking about smart home and homekit devices and apple Insider daily you can get the Top Apple news headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Sten Roz and this episode is brought to you by masterclass headspace and start mail you'll learn about those in a second and don't forget you can get an adree version of the show at patreon.com Insider to talk about all the new iPad Pro iMac Apple music stuff my friend Wes Hillyard how's it going Wes pretty good Stephen uh coming at you through the pure pristin audio of lossless compression no never mind actually you wouldn't tell the difference anyway but I li okay you know we are going to talk a lot about that music lossless spatial audio Apple made those announcements earlier this week but we have so much to get to we're going to try and jam through as much as possible I have my my hot tea here to help my throw basic apple guy he he recommended I get ready for this week's episode so we're going to do it we're going to try and hit all of it first of all as listeners are hearing this if they listen to it on the day it comes out provided Apple podcast actually releases it I should be receiving an M1 iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard Apple TV is still in the wind I haven't gotten the delivery notification about that but it will be coming and so on the next episode I'll be able to give some personal thoughts and the experience I have with it this is actually the last episode I'll be editing on my 11in 2018 model so little Nostalgia there but have you gotten any shipment notifications on your iPad Pro no I think it's going to be it says between June 2nd and June 9th so smack in the middle of WWDC uh we'll see I don't think I'll have it for the next episode but the one after that I'll be on iPad OS 15 on the new iPad so that'll be fun that's right that's right yes we'll have to see what comes of that so iPad Pro reviews the Embargo lifted this past week on Wednesday and so all the names that you recognize had their iPad Pro reviews go up MKBHD I Justine Renee Richie The Verge and a number of other ones you know a lot of those reviews I'll put links in the show notes to those videos so if you want want to check those out you can watch them but a lot of those reviews basically said it's an iPad it's still really fast and the screen is really nice but it's still an iPad and so I feel like every review had this caveat on the end one don't buy a product now based on the promise of software updates in the future some pie in the sky idea of iPad OS so totally get that and also that it's still an iPad which we understand we get but I I'm still excited about it one because in mkbhd's video review of the new M1 iPad Pro he really said that he felt a difference in the ram performance that as he was opening multiple apps and using the task switcher to go back to apps that were open you know several apps ago on his iPad Pro it felt like every app was just sitting in Ram and nothing was having to be frozen or kicked out of ram because it has 16 gigs of RAM he had the terabyte version so if you get the one or two terab version it comes with those 16 gigs of RAM so I'm excited to try out that Ram even in multitasking with frite as I edit a podcast and something else maybe it's Safari or even Lightroom side by side I'm very curious to try that out but it was nice to hear that the ram sounded like a difference and the screen of course everyone commented that the screen looks great you know it's an xdr display many compared it to the pro display xdr saying it was on par with that some said it was the brightest display they've really ever used and so if you use your iPad Pro outside a lot or you're a mobile creator that's pretty useful but what did you get out of some of those iPad Pro reviews it's it's as expected this is uh new hardware without any of the software it's like reviewing a PlayStation 5 but the only thing you could play was PlayStation 4 games I mean everything's snappier I'm sure Safari is amazing open 100 million tabs but this is only 20% of the story not even half if Apple comes out on stage at WWDC and says all right here's widgets on the home screen and walks off stage I'm I'm going to throw an iPad through a window it's I I don't think that we're going to see Apple come out here and say hey here's this very expensive iPad with up to 16 gigs of RAM and the processor that you can find in the mac and then do nothing with it and um everything that these guys are testing it's all basically quote unquote pre-release Hardware running pre-release software none of the apps are optimized for the M1 chip we're not seeing anything there's there's been some weird situations like uh guys testing Luma Fusion are seeing you know speedups and certain things as far as navigating the app uh and na navigating large video files as much faster but rendering hasn't changed and apparently um between the a12z model and the M1 model uh they're getting identical render times and this might be because of optimizations or or whatever I mean these apps are built with what uh four gigs in mind and then the maximum previously was 6 gigs and now we're talking 8 gigs minimum up to 16 so yeah big changes coming for this software for sure and so I'm I'm excited still to get it you know a lot of pictures of the white magic keyboard seems like apple sent every reviewer the white magic keyboard to try out because it's a new color I totally get it and I'm excited to get mine mine shipped as we record just Thursday like I just got the shipment notification but it says it's still coming tomorrow being Friday with the iPad so be able to get them together so excited for that but it does look pretty cool in pictures and some of the videos and the big controversy that the old 12.9 in magic keyboard would not fit the new model that is now a thing of the past you can definitely use the old 12.9 inch magic keyboard for the iPad Pro with the new model it is a millimeter thicker the new 12.9 inch you can see pictures and videos where it's slightly like bent out I mean it is so slight I mean you really have to look very closely to see that millimeter difference in the iPad and magic keyboard but you can use it it works fine all the video reviews said the same thing Jason A10 had a written review as well so if you have an old 12.9 in magic keyboard but want to get the new iPad you can still use use that old magic keyboard yeah I I never thought this was going to be that big of an issue for me personally like if you hold these up side by side if you or splice it together in Photoshop or something so you can see what this looks like in each case you can tell that there's a difference there's absolutely a little bit of a closure difference I wouldn't be too picky about it but I already have the new magic keyboard so I think I'm just going to keep it selling an old iPad to somebody will be much easier when I can say Hey you also get this you know very expensive keyboard included at my discounted price you know it's just one of those things where I'm not going to be too picky about it I like that it fits the old one but also I'm enough of a purist that I would want the proper magic keyboard with the iPad I think this is just Apple again avoiding some person with some calipers saying look it doesn't actually fit this uh you know outer edge of the iPad sticking out ever so slightly and they were getting ah had a thicker gate that's all it was you gave me that term thicker gate we'll talk about the iPad Pro more once we have it in for sure but links in the show notes to those reviews also if you're listening an apple podcast and if they haven't fixed the ability to actually click links in the app you can go to appleinsider.com podcast and all the links are there in the article for you in addition to the iPad Pro embargo being lifted the M1 iMac the new 24-in model redesigned that embargo lifted this past Tuesday you know what's Difficult about all these computers is they're all the same computer everything is the M1 now you got the iPad Pro iMac Mac Mini MacBook Air MacBook Pro everything is the M1 right now so as far as performance and specs and all that we've already talked about the M1 it's an amazing chip it's really fast it's great so it's really more a story about the hardware design and the hardware features of these new iMacs and the big thing that people were talking about as they were announced was that white bezel and I thought MKBHD you know he does a great job at all this stuff but as he was reviewing the colored iMac he filmed it in a room with white walls and made the point that a lot of offices maybe even homes probably have light colored walls you know not not many places have walls that are dark gray or black especially where you're putting in this computer you know if you have an office that might be dark but in the common areas where you would have this consumer level iMac whether it's a family room the white bezel does blend away into the background when it's against a lighter colored wall and he had a couple camera shots really showing how it just kind of Fades away and so totally get it it's probably not a big deal even if you don't see crazy about the white bezel it will probably just kind of Melt Away into the background but as far as the design they look cool they're fun colors I Justine unboxed like every single color so if you want to see a video with every of the seven iMac colors you can watch her video but it looks cool you know it looks like a fun computer it's a fun redesign all the braided cables and color matched accessories are really nice and so it's a great entrylevel M1 iMac if you're in the market for an all-in-one pretty much what I expect everyone wanted to comment on the colors and the white bezels and it's like you said every everybody has you know these generally speaking these brighter uh living rooms and stuff so these bright colors might stand out especially makes you think though how many places are you going to actually have these things set up so you can see the front and the back most of the time you might have this tucked into a corner or against the wall so all the new bright Rich colors are kind of wasted on that for me I live in this dingy brown house with wood paneling everywhere M so uh I can't I I can't take advantage of the bright colors I have to wait for the space gray versions to come out so I can just live in darkness right but very good I just think it it's a good sign of like what's coming I'm I'm excited to see like what the MacBook airs and everything look like with this design right I'm really hoping that we get to see the peripherals for sale separately as well a lot of weird things have come out about these IMAX since uh the reviews started dropping like apparently Andrew tried to get a trackpad with his iMac and you had to select it at checkout but you can only exchange the trackpad or Mouse you can't get both and Apple's being very weird about this so I'm I'm wondering what the accessory story is here and apple did say that magic keyboard with Touch ID built in this new colored model will work with any M1 Mac so if you wanted to get it for the M1 Mac Mini or even get it because you use your M1 MacBook Pro in clamshell mode maybe in Bridge vertical dock that it would work with other M1 so surely these will be sold separately this is also on the heels of Apple discontinuing the space gray accessories which I thought was an interesting move you know they're just saying you know no more gray no more space gray going to go all white and color so surely they'll be sold separately eventually but it's weird that you can't get it right away for sure what do you think about the rumors about how Apple's going to release everything ever rumored at WWDC I mean everyone's really wanting there to be the the pro IMAX or maybe a Mac Pro uh in miniature you know it just every every body's once again it seems like every time we're up coming to an Apple event it's just everything's coming out guys get ready for it it's I don't think we're going to see any hardware at this event so John Gruber commented that so many announcements that Apple has released in the past week and we'll touch on some of these later in the episode but even like the accessibility features that Apple added which are amazing features huge news for the people who use those features that really felt like it could have been a WWDC announcement you know it is a software thing these new accessibility features even the Apple music which we'll talk about in a second the lossless and spatial audio those are software features and WWDC is where Apple talks about their software features yeah if you saw me if you saw me on Twitter I was very adamant I said why would Apple announce something like apple music software editions a week you know two weeks before WWDC it just doesn't make sense for the company but I guess unless there's just a lot to talk about this event seems like it's going to be jam-packed right and even if they just talk about iOS iPad OS TV OS watch OS what is it like home well they're not going to talk about homod they just just continue that but they're going to talk about all these things so it does seem like it's going to be jam-packed and they're trying to get some of these other software features announced and out to save time on WWDC I think there will be some Hardware announcement I don't think it's going to be a lot of things I don't think it's going to be several computers but because it's the developer conference and developer are one of the major use cases for pro machines I could see apple either announcing the larger iMac model or maybe that redesigned 14in and 16-in MacBook Pros with the more powerful M chip but there was a rumor and we could just touch on it now that you know the 14 and 16 in will be coming soon could support up to 64 GB of RAM and this report was from Bloomberg talking about all the things that will be coming I'll put a link of show notes to that but I think we'll see some thing we'll see some Hardware announcement but not a lot you know I think we're a ways off from the redesigned MacBook Air that John proc are leaked and definitely away from the Mac Pro because we haven't gotten anything close to that kind of powerful computer in the lineup right well we'll save our predictions for the for the next show I'm on because that's the Thursday before WWDC but oh yes I'll go ahead and say though that I believe that since last year Apple ended the conference keynote with uh information about their move to Apple silicon they didn't announce the M1 processor but they talked about the advancements they had made to get there I believe that this would be the perfect opportunity to step on stage and say this is what a pro M series processor looks like and that they may not drop a name you know maybe we'll finally get to hear about this 30 core monster that people keep trying to tease us with so whatever it is m1x M2 I think apple is ready to give us something maybe not a Mac Pro or Pro Hardware but I think we'll hear the chipset story at the very least yeah that's a good point well we'll put the links to all the iMac reviews and show notes you can check those out let us know if you watched them let us know if you got one I'd be curious if anybody out there got one of these new iMacs what color you got one of the thing I will say I agree with MKBHD where he said you know make the iMac a few millimeters thicker and get rid of the chin I feel like that has to be the next move you know just having that screen without a chin would look amazing and I I don't buy the story about it has to have a chin because that's the iconic look like I don't think so I I think Apple could totally remove the chin and it would look great so maybe they're just waiting till they can do it without making it any thicker Allah Johnny I I don't know we'll see but that that's my point of view I personally don't have anything against this chin um just like with the notch once you're sitting in front of a screen and staring at it you're not looking at what's around the screen you're looking at the screen itself so true you know looking at the desk or whatever from from afar and saying wow that's a pretty desk set up I love it but uh you're you might notice there's a chin on that monitor but otherwise I don't I don't think anyone's going to notice it's just another weird little picky thing and while I agree a fullcreen monitor would make sense I think this isn't so much the iconic chin thing but I do think it might be a visual differentiator from other models cuz we still haven't seen the pro iMac and maybe that is the iMac with the pro display xdr style design that we've heard rumored before where it's just maybe it's a IMX 6K with that crazy looking cheese grater design on the back of it who knows yeah I think this isn't the full Design Story and maybe once we see those Pro iMacs the design of the consumer iMac might make a little more sense this episode is brought to you by masterclass with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn about movie scoring and composition from Han Zimmer scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn cooking from Gordon Ramsay and you can even learn about Adventure photography from Jimmy chin you know we've been talking about music on this episode of the Apple Insider podcast and that's why I loved the course that I did with Han Zimmer learning about movie and film composition you can see his inhome Studio it has beautiful cinematography and he talks about Melodies and how they're attached to characters and themes and you get to see his whole setup as he passionately talks and teaches you about 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access to every master class and you're definitely going to want to do more than one and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off an annual membership so go to masterclass.com slapple Insider that's masterclass.com slapple inssider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode all right so John prer Big Time Apple leaker I have to say he had quite a week with leaks and renders you know he had the MacBook Air render the colorful MacBook airs we talked about that on the last episode then he released Google IO like promo video for and Android 12 wild that he got the entire video and whatever his Source was was cool with him just showing it on his front page Tech YouTube channel so then he had that plus the Google pixel render and if you're interested in that and what that looks like I'll put a link in show notes to those those renders and what that looks like and then this week another leak where he got an Apple Watch series 7 image you know he's not sure exactly if it's seven or something else he just got an image of a redesigned Apple watch renders by Ian is the guy that John prer works with these on Twitter making these renders from the images and they do the renders so they don't put the actual pictures out there to protect their sources so totally get it the renders look amazing I have to say but for the Apple Watch series 7 this redesigned Apple watch is basically an Apple Watch with flat sides I mean you imagine the transition from iPhone 11 to iPhone 12 rounded side to Flat sides that's what this Apple watch looks like if this is accurate to a redesign that's coming from Apple soon it's like an Apple Watch but flat sides it looks good my initial impression is like yeah that looks cool it looks like a little bit of a more modern take it matches Apple's other product lines like the new iMac iPad Pro the iPhone 12 so it looks pretty cool and he also said it might come in a new color being green which he shows in a lot of the renders but I don't know what do you think about this Apple watch redesign uh it's interesting it moves a little bit away from classic watch uh design to more of a very techy geeky look because right now when I look at my Apple watch I see h I mean it's obviously a piece of technology but at the same time there's the rounded Corners there's still a physical instrument attached to it that looks sort of like a watch but looking at this guy looking straight on it's a screen it is a full display on the side of your arm and now we're getting into just having a display on your wrist and nothing else I mean maybe eventually we'll we'll get into that Futurama position of having just a thing on your arm you poke at but it it it just it looks different it looks very techy to me that alone makes me a little bit iffy on this render I'm sure the source is great or whatever but think about it Apple said that they're fashion forward they're going to be very conscious of what people are going to put on their body and here we have what's essentially now the flat sided iPhone on your wrist and I guess before it was the curv sided iPhone on your wrist it's just right we're moving away from that fashion aspect I believe I I would like to hear from maybe more picky people who actually care about a design and how this looks and there's there's something else about it too it it does just look very square and flat even to the edge that is resting on your wrist I mean how what what's the difference between what we have now which is kind of a rounded glass surface resting on the wrist versus what looks like almost a flat pancake sitting on your arm so right obviously it's just renders they don't have the full picture but it it does make me kind of question where we're going and what we might see in the future cuz now we're so close to a circle why doesn't Apple just make a circular watch as well well yeah and John prer one of the other leaks he had was the upcoming pixel watch or the next you know Google watch and it was a round circle face I've heard from watch enthusiasts John grber being one and other people that you know a piece of technology like an Apple Watch is not going to resemble a mechanical watch on a variety of levels for a long long time if ever and so when they wear an Apple Watch they tend to lean towards let me just treat this like a computer on my wrist rather than an analog watch to the point of not liking analog watch faces with the hands because it's trying to mimic something and it's not good at mimicking it and they lean more towards the digital so I would be curious about watch effici AOS but they might be leaning more into the techie side because maybe most of the people wearing Apple watches are not watch efficient Autos I know I did not wear a watch prior to the Apple watch I just not something I did I had my phone I look at the time and so for me you know I don't I don't have an appreciation for mechanical watches I I appreciate them from a craftsmanship standpoint and some of them look very cool but for most people maybe the tech angle is the way to go it does look like there's less bezels because of this design because the edges are flat if you look at it straight on which you as the user of the Apple watch is how you use it most of the time or how you view it it would limit the amount of bezels cuz right now you have that rounded you see the metal titanium aluminum or steel whatever it is around the edges because it's round and not and not flat so ites does look a little bit less Bez in this design but we'll put the picture in show notes and in the chapter art so you can check it out and let us know what you think I'll make one last note here and say that maybe the fashion move was smart at the beginning when we were just when Apple was just trying to get this thing on as many risks as possible but now apple is essentially the Smartwatch Market I mean sure people still go out here and buy fitbits but we're talking about $30 fitbits versus $300 Apple watches if you're spending $300 on a smartwatch you're pretty much buying an Apple Watch at this point and apple knows this so I believe that now maybe after what seven years of having Apple watch on the market we can finally start moving towards the more digital future of this thing and people will now just say oh it's an Apple Watch I want it and maybe not think so much about what it looks like so one other quick update after Apple released the release CID date for iOS 14.6 and they've gone to calling the gold Master editions of iOS and ipados updates releas candidates or RC's so if you're wondering what that language is it used to be yeah the industry term of Golden Master release of a software meaning if you download this it's technically beta but it's actually going to be the same thing we released to the public apple is now calling it the release candidate so iOS 14.6 is in release candidate phase and so should be coming very soon looks like early June it might be one of those at the June 7th WWDC keynote Apple just says iOS 14.6 available today and that will bring Apple card Family Sharing to the iPhone in 14.6 most likely podcast subscriptions and channels will be coming in 14.6 hopefully a fix to the app overall and the new apple lossless spatial audio stuff which we'll talk about in a moment but after announcing that earlier in the week then Apple released betas of iOS 14.7 and as far as I know this is the second time ever that Apple has gone up to a seven in the point releases the first number the big number is the OS the major OS change so iOS 14 13 12 and coming 15 at WWDC and then the point something are those in thee updates or mid-year updates so there is apparently going to be an iOS 14.7 now we don't have a lot of details about what is going to be new in that iOS version but one thing this is very minor but some people might love this and I'm actually encouraged that this is going to be part of it is you will actually be able to manually set and adjust timers on your homepods in the home app come iOS 14.7 now that that might not sound like anything interesting to you all but for me my kids yelling at homepods to try to set timers is an effort in futility and they just get confused and the wrong homepod hears it and then they don't know when the timer goes off so actually being able to set timers manually via the home app for a homepod is pretty cool so I'm glad that's coming and we'll see what other details come from IOS 14.7 in the future it's very very curious because it it Point update like this kind of says that there's going to be some sort of major feature associated with it and if Apple music and podcast payments are all a part of 14.6 that means there's something big probably coming for 14.7 that we don't even know about and if the timeline's correct as I understand it um apple promise paid podcast by the end of this month May 14.6 will be out any day now before the end of the month that's going to include the Apple music stuff which is due in June so there's probably going to be a switch Apple flips server side to enable that feature once everyone's on 14.6 do7 that's going to be after WWDC so I would expect maybe we'll see some features coming from WWDC announced uh there and then released a couple weeks later so definitely something to keep an eye on yeah it's it's funny though to think about because now say like with the timers for homepod now we know well there's probably not going to be a timer change for between 14 iOS 14 and iOS 15 now because right you know everyone wants timer handoff so to speak so you can start a timer on your iPhone and stop it on your homepod and you know back and forth kind of thing but obviously that's not going to happen we just get timer settings and homekit great and hopefully just more bug fixes overall especially I'll just say it again the apple podcast app please markco arment who makes overcast he actually gave me some information and went back and forth bya email for the article I wrote about why Apple podcast is broken but every week I see that ATP podcast just come up like it's supposed to and I'm like man how come they don't have any issues and we have all these issues yeah did you see they they recently released 91 episodes that was that was pretty good on them very productive and then in in some move of Providence I felt Justified that okay if the ATP guys have an issue with apple podcast I'm I'm just glad we are not the only ones here at Apple Insider and it's been sometimes better is the last couple episodes some people have said I got it on time or I got it on the day or at least I got it in the first 24 hours but the ATP guys they couldn't access their podcast and podcast connect for a few days and then yeah I got the notification about ATP has 91 new episodes it's like okay it's not just us so I'm just glad it's not anything I'm doing so listeners Apple podcast is really broken right now maybe you can hear this if you're listening to my voice you're obviously doing it in some way but I encourage you check out overcast or pocketcasts or Castro or in the amazing thirdparty podcast app at least in this interim period where Apple's podcast app is just hopelessly broken but hopefully it gets fixed a little bit in 14 .6 this episode is brought to you by headspace if people keep telling you you should try mindfulness and meditation and you just feel like you don't have the time let me encourage you I highly recommend you check out headspace headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy to use app headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research so whatever the situation headspace really can help you feel better do you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you maybe you need help falling asleep headspace has a wind down session 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and anywhere you deserve to feel happier and headspace is meditation Made Simple go to headspace.com slapple inssider that's headspace.com appleinsider for a free one- Monon trial and you can access headspaces entire Library their full library of meditations for every situation this is the best deal offered right now so go to headspace just like it sounds.com slapple Insider today our thanks to headspace for sponsoring this episode so Apple also announced a bunch of accessibility updates some of these updates are wild first of all for the Apple watch they're coming out with new features in assist of touch for Apple watch where you will be able to control the Apple watch using the heart rate sensor motion sensors and on device machine learning and so you can operate it with a single arm like you won't have to touch it to interact with it or to use it and that's pretty amazing also in iPad OS an update is going to be coming later this year that supports third-party eye tracking support meaning that it can track your eyes as you look at the iPad and you can control it just by looking and I remember watching documentaries when I was younger about the kind of amazing computers that people who were unable to use their hands and their arms to control a computer would use their eyes to move around a screen and blink to actually click and be able to operate a computer just by looking at it and the fact that this could just be built in to a device like the iPad where someone can use it just with their eyes looking that opens up an entire world of possibilities for people to be able to interact with these devices and just be able to use them at all incredible updates to accessibility I'll put a link in show notes with all the updates and changes to accessibility uh and one of the last ones too is that a service will enable Apple customers to communicate with retail staff and Apple Care employees by using American Sign Language British sign language or French sign language right in the web browser so imagine with camera and all this kind of stuff being able to communicate that way and one other one they're actually going to add baked in background sounds to iOS that could help some users minimize distractions by utilizing White Noise settings or environmental sounds like ocean and rain this is on you know depending on maybe you just like white noise maybe having White Noise actually helps you concentrate and focus and there's lots of apps out there to do it but some of them are kind of janky and you know depending on how much they cost or in at purchase or subscription and some of them are great uh endel is one that has like kind of atmospheric music and you know you can get night sounds but the fact that apple is actually baking that into iOS I'm very curious how that's going to work and function and that might be something that I use just as I work so I don't know really cool stuff yeah it looks like you can play some noise while listening to other audio which is a really interesting so like you'll be able to just have white noise or ocean sounds playing while you have music on I wonder how the mixing is going to work on that and how that'll sound but it's pretty interesting yeah that's pretty cool I think the most interesting technology out of all these I mean iPad getting more peripheral support that's awesome obviously we have USBC Port let's use it right the most interesting thing here is Apple watch just everything they did there is just a technological achievement it it's insane the the heart rate sensor is tracking tendons under your skin to see if you're pinching your fingers it's it's wild I'm I'm very excited about this because not only is it amazing for accessibility it's amazing for technology in general because this kind of stuff can roll down from accessibility to us eventually through just general things like think about the cursor for iPad that was an accessibility feature originally and now we have this amazing cursor that's uh built just for iPad OS based on that original one you know Apple watch could evolve greatly based on this stuff as well just imagine being able to flick your wrist a certain way to open an app or assign certain gestures to different app settings or workouts it's it's definitely opening a door for the future of the technology for sure it's very cool all right Wes we have to talk about Apple music and the announcements that Apple made this past week about spatial audio and Dolby atmo support and lossless tracks so many confused people on these announcements it's very confusing and then also what devices support which thing and so I think it's helpful to distinguish these basically two different things that Apple announced honestly there is four separate features here if you wanted to get technical how would you break it down in four different ones I would say lossless highres Dolby Atmos and spatial audio they are four different things and and the problem is is everyone keeps trying to say lossless and highres in one sentence and spatial audio and Dolby Atmos in another sentence and that gets cloudy because then you have to specify which is supported where and it's crazy it's absolute Madness just right makes things so much easier if you just talk about it one at a time here just to simplify things Dolby Atmos is the is a surround sound technology that is used by like movies and TV shows to simulate a 3D audio environment in February they added the ability for musicians to simulate 3D audio using music and musical instruments and apple is adding support for that with this update now to confuse things further Apple decided to lump the terms together by calling it spatial audio with Dolby Atmos which is very annoying because you can listen to things with Dolby Atmos through equipment that is compatible with Dolby Atmos so iPhone and iPad the newest ones have Dolby Atmos support through their speakers and then you can connect headphones and speakers that works on anything that is running Apple music basically through equipment that supports Dolby Atmos including Android technically once it gets an update um at launch apparently Android does not get DB Atmos support okay spatial audio is an Apple only feature that uses the audio track from Dolby Atmos to give us the 3D audio environment but uses the gyroscopes on the airpods pro and airpods Max to let us turn our head inside of the 3D audio space that is the difference let's do it with the four breakdowns like you were saying so DOL Dolby Atmos yeah you can listen to Dolby Atmos Apple music with regular airpods airpods Pro airpods Max and your Apple devices that support Dolby Atmos recent iPhones and iPads and the Apple TV and homepods so that's Dolby Atmos support then like you said spatial audio which is Apple's additional feature to Dolby Atmos that is supported correct me if I'm wrong but airpods Pro and airpods Max and then iPhone and or iPad devices that also have spatial audio so we begin to not include the regular airpods yes right you have to pair the airpods pro or airpods Max to an iPhone or an iPad and that is it for spatial audio spatial audio is also coming to homepod and homepod mini is that correct Dolby see this is where Apple's this is where Apple's phrasing gets weird and if you read the arttic I wrote a a compare on what spatial audio and dolp Atmos is yes and mention Apple needs to clarify some things there it's a mess it seems that they are bringing Dolby atmo support to the hods but spatial audio doesn't actually makes sense because it's not tracking your head the audio is fixed to the homepods in that environment so technically speaking you wouldn't act it would just be regular do Atmos and and then you're physically moving your body through the environment I guess you could call it spatial audio but I think it's cheating a little bit got it the homepod thing is the only exception I could find that there's no rule to yet Apple hasn't clarified okay this episode is brought to you by startmail free email service like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free you pay with your privacy or frankly lack of privacy since those companies have access to every email you send and receive those big tech companies can sell your data to the highest bidder if you ever wonder why you get ads for cruise lines or airfare after you've gotten an email or confirmation message from something it's because your email provider is using that information in your email to serve you ads and to sell it to ad companies so they can pinpoint and Target exactly what you're interested in this is where intrusive ads come up and it also opens you up to identity theft and fishing attacks that's why you can trust start mail to secure your email today and feel safe again start mail keeps your email private period every email is encrypted even if the recipient doesn't use encryption which means big Tech can't read scan analyze or sell your personal information ever not 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a quality difference if you have airpods Pro airpods Max and your iPad or iPhone and you're listening and you turn your head you should be able to hear that things move move around the space instruments and voices or whatever it is and you should be able to notice that 3D space quote unquote if you've watched a movie with airpods Pro or airpods Max that has spatial audio Dolby Atmos enabled whether it's through the Apple TV app or Disney plus you should be able to recognize that difference and that's probably going to be the most useful feature for most people in apple music right and not to beat a dead horse here but it depends on the mastering of the audio because right you can take spatial audio and place it like use stereo and spatial audio and and move your head around a stereo environment that's not really going to give you anything it just tells you which direction the audio is from oh the iPhone's on my right hand I can hear it on the right side great but a really well-mastered Dolby Atmos track can have up to aund I think I said 128 sources of audio within a 3D space wow and if you have physical speakers in a room now this is this doesn't count for headphones but you can have up to like 34 speakers connected to a Dolby Atmos environment outputting those 128 channels so with headphones on yeah you're not going to be able to replicate that exactly but musicians can literally Place their their individual instruments in this 3D space in up to 128 locations simultaneously within that environment and if they Master it anywhere Beyond eight or nine channels you're going to notice that moving being able to turn your head in that space you're going to hear the difference in the audio nothing technically in apple music support reports it yet but if you're on the latest beta for 14.6 or 14.7 music videos for some reason say that they work as spatial audio you can tell this by opening the control center and pressing into the headphones and you'll see the spatial audio icon animating it did not animate on previous versions of iOS when watching music videos so the features enabled for the music videos and you can tell a difference if you disable spatial audio but they are not mastered for spal audio so you can tell that there's more space that the there's some sort of algorithmic change here trying to take advantage of spatial audio but it's not exactly what we're expecting once the actual product releases in June got it okay so that's Dolby Atmos and spatial audio then the other features that Apple announced was lossless audio and lossless high quality is that what they're calling it it's lossless and high res high resolution that's the the they're both lossless it's just one has a higher bit rate okay so you have lossless and lossless high reses now I encourage people to go to the website that we have in one of our articles how to tell if you can actually tell the difference between lossless audio which means either uncompressed or you know larger data files meaning better quality or a compressed MP3 and so it's the ABX test I did the test with my airpods Max plugged into to an audio interface have you done this test W yes and it's a lie so go ahead it's a lie wait a minute why do you say it's a lie I mean that's encouraging to me all right so I I have the iPad so I I can't wire in with the airpods max to an iPad uh feasibly I the the test just would not work in Safari so I had to go to my Mac Mini and plug in my headphones and you could there's just literally no difference between the tracks I I believe there's something tricky happening with airpods Max which we'll get into in a second as to why lossless audio won't work with airpods Max but they are digital only headphones right so correct me if I'm wrong but aren't headphone interfaces generally analog output to your from speakers to your ears am I crazy I encourage people to listen to the ATP segment if you really want to get into this audio stuff you know Marco Armen talked about all this kind of stuff because audio has to be analog to hit your ear drum like that's what I yeah it has to be analog and so if you even think about if you have airpods and you're listening to Apple music from your iPhone your iPhone is playing a digital MP3 file transferring it through the air digitally via Bluetooth to your airpods but then inside each airpod is a digital to analog converter that then makes the little speaker inside the airpod physically move and make vibrations in the air so you can hear it so any kind of headphone that is I don't know electronic or wre Wireless we'll say is going to have some kind of digital to analog converter at the very least inside your ear you know because it has to you in order to be able to hear it it has to be an analog signal that hits your eardrum all right so I I might be wrong in saying this so does that mean that going from the Mac to a headphone jack it's going through a digital to analog conversion to that headphone jack running to the lightning port in your airpods max getting converted back to digital and then the airpods max are converting them back to analog to Output from the speaker is that correct I think so I I think so and that's why like technically there is no way even wired to get a lossless audio signal to the earphones and your airpods max just because you're converting it twice you're going to introduce noise at some point during those conversions and it's just no longer technically right lossless so the point of lossless audio and again if you're an audio file maybe you've heard of the file format of flak flcc this lossless audio file is meant so you can listen to it on your super high-end lossless stereo system whatever it is maybe it's speakers maybe it's analog headphones plugged in directly that have no Wireless kind of connectivity but plugged into a headphone amp that's taking those flak files and playing them directly through a digital audio converter on your table you know that's lossless for the a audio file crowd now Marco Armen basically argued you really can't hear a difference anyway like just from a technical frequency standpoint of music and equipment and how the human body works that like there's really not that much of a difference I agree so there's that I did the ABX test to see if I could tell the difference between lossi and lossless which again I I don't even know how you could do that test on headphones like the airpods max that don't support a lossless codec but I got 48% correct what did you get oh again it's a lie because I couldn't tell a difference so I just selected a on all of them and got 56% okay the law of averages I I win you did you did apparently cuz I listen I have a music background I have a music degree and I was like I want to get over a 90% because I'm a music person I should be able to get this from an audio engineer from what I've read things that I've studied like if you don't read the the dude who's out here buying $36,000 speakers because he has the money to do it read an actual dude who went to college and he will tell you if you sit in a soundproof room stuffed with mat mattresses and cotton that's how they do it in the studios mattresses negative sound space it is so quiet that is inverting your eard drums right and then put on a set of headphones and listen to a lossless track you might be able to ascertain the difference between the two but even just the general room noise around you is introducing just enough noise that you you can't tell the difference between something like Lo like because the idea of lossless is that it is able to reach your ears as if you're hearing it from the instrument itself but it's it's just mindboggling to me the science here says that you can't hear it but audio files will tell you different so choose what you want to believe I guess so from the audio file side you know let's say there there is some difference that some small percentage of people can tell apple is going to have lossless available to the Apple music catalog but in order to listen to the lossless tracks as one would want you will need a digital audio converter so something that connects to a USB port on your Mac that goes to some kind of audio interface that's for highres lossless specifically right for highres lossless lossless will work over a standard headphone jack wire right it's the high reses lossless that will not and so you're going to need that digital audio converter on your desk and a pair of headphones not airpods Max I will work with that for the high quality lossless now everyone was up in arms because Apple's newi is $550 headphones the airpods max do not support this highquality lossless form format now hopefully Wes and I have tripped over enough explanations to to bring some light to the fact that why it's not possible with the airpods max let me go ahead and contradict myself so as far as lossless goes this isn't like we're not saying this is a useless feature that Apple should never have introduced obviously there's a reason for it it's competitive in the marketplace but there's also good reason to have higher quality music cataloges available now maybe we won't be able to technically hear the difference even with a million-dollar headphones but the quality is there and if uh so say you have a 4K TV the the Apple TV right now that we're we're upgrading to the Apple TV 4K it's going from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second on HDR video technically speaking you're not going to notice that much of a difference but there is a difference and in some cases there will be just enough of a difference that you will actually be able to tell and I think that's going to be the case for audio as well now not every single song is going to sound absolutely amazing and perfect and pristine but because there's the higher quality bit rates and stuff coming to you you're going to hear what is technically a better quality audio Source than what you had access to before and in some cases it will sound better right it isn't a bad thing they're not charging more money for it it's just an interesting thought that like yeah maybe it's kind of dumb that they're doing it in the first place it's appeasing a very small portion of the market but there are those people out there who will say hm Spotify has a high reses channel right apple does not I'm going to Spotify and that's pretty much the only reason why Apple's doing this I believe yeah and you know tidle this was their whole stick when tidal launched and Jay-Z it was all about the high quality audio that made it a thing and that didn't go anywhere you know the title did not become a thing just because the market is so small for it but like you said I agree not like having it is not a bad thing and adding this as a feature it's competitive in the market great on Apple also for not charging it they actually Force spotifi to lower their upgrade fee for their high quality tracks because Apple was like here we're just going to give it to you so very cool I guess to be clear lossless I I won't say the numbers cuz they're basically meaningless but lossless is what 24-bit at a Whatever frequency and you can listen to that over supported headphones that are very high quality over a cable Bluetooth isn't going to support that lossless highres you're going to need a DAC a digital audio converter right and you're going to basically connect that between your headphones and the and the computer and hear an even higher quality audio file technically right if you're ready to get into it there's also a rumor uh from from John prer that says that Apple's actually working on changing how airpods and uh receive audio and maybe changing codecs in order to get higher resolution audio over Bluetooth which again technically isn't lost but will be higher quality overall right and so to that end Spidey Sam on Twitter actually tweeted me this link to a device called a f it's F IO and it is a Hi-Fi Bluetooth amp that supports ldac and lossless Bluetooth codecs to send those digital highquality lossless music files to Bluetooth headphones this would not work for Apple music and airpods Max because Apple has their own codec for this lossless high quality which is Al a Apple's lossless audio codec so this specific device won't work for it but the fact that there is a device out there that claims at least to do something like this where you can get ldac over Bluetooth I think it lends Credence to this rumor from procor that says maybe a WWDC maybe later this year that Apple will announce some kind of proprietary coding you know maybe it's because something with the H1 chip that apple is putting in all the airpods or is it W1 it's H1 and the airpods max it's H1 and W1 W's in the original airpods I believe that's right the W1 is used in the Beats products as well right that's right if that rumor is true great you know that'd be awesome it would bring more value to the airpods max that people already have but I'm also not banking on that like that's not a deal breaker for me procor specifically and this is where it gets a little iffy uh he released a video that like a few minutes after we released this article on it cuz he made these comments on a podcast and then clarified more on um his video and he says that it's going to use airplay now AirPlay is a Wi-Fi connection for music that that we use for the homepods uh which uh I guess we haven't mentioned homepods don't get lossless either for whatever reason I I believe it has to do with AAC Apple uses AAC and homepods and airpods for their audio codec and that's a lossy format and there's just no support whatsoever for the loss formats apparently procor says that Apple's going to use some weird trick with AirPlay to allow uh the airpods to connect to that lossless uh codec but again there's no Wi-fi chips in the airpod so I'm not entirely sure what they're going to do unless Apple redefines what AirPlay is right so once we actually get these features out we will talk about them more for sure myself Wes we have airpods mac so we're going to test all this kind of stuff and we'll see and listen let us know are you excited about this I think the spatial audio thing is pretty cool it'll be fun to try that out on different music tracks again being a classical music guy I think Orchestra type tracks if music producers can support that kind of spatial audio features with Orchestra and other types of music it'll be really cool we'll see let us know if you're an a if you're an audio file out there and and you're just steaming mad right now because we got something wrong I think you should definitely tweet at us I would love to hear from you for sure CU oh sure not an expert at this for sure but I would love to hear from from you what your thoughts are as an audio file on all this I'll say I side with apple on this I am excited for for the updates for spatial audio and Dolby Atmos for music I think that Apple isn't exaggerating when they say that that is going to change music forever it's going to change how we hear music and how we can interpret it and that is really important and I think that is actually going to make a difference for everyone who is listening yeah not just the people who can hear wax melting on a candle I I've never tried to listen for that I'll try to listen for that next time right or uh uh what's the other one they use uh they can hear the Mercury Heating in a thermometer that's intense that that is that yeah I mean super human even yes I I believe that spatial audio and Dolby Atmos is going to be the game changer here and apple seems to believe so too cuz that is all the marketing they're doing it for the Apple music app is not advertising lossless so right well that was Apple's announcement about loss list and spatial audio coming to Apple music and we're going a little long but I do want to mention that the Epic vers Apple trial is actually ending this week as you listen to this podcast as it comes out on Friday Apple CEO Tim Cook will be taking the stand and so talk about his statements on next week's episode I did think it was interesting that Apple VP Craig Figi took the stand earlier this week and had some interesting comments to say about privacy protection and security especially as it related to the Mac versus iOS some of his actual quotes he said quote iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection and the Mac is not meeting that bar today end quote he said and so that's an interesting distinction for him to admit that they don't think the Mac is as secure as iOS and this is one of the arguments that we've mentioned here on the show and other people have talked about that you know the Mac is open why not open iOS to thirdparty apps being able to download outside the App Store and he also made this distinction about how the Mac is a car you can take it off the road if you want to drive wherever and that's what you bought there's a level of responsibility required but with iOS you bought something where children can operate it and feel safe doing so and so I think it's an interesting distinction that Craig fed is making from the understand about iOS versus MAC the use cases and the level of protection they feel is required for each device platform so again we will conclude this epic vers Apple trial as Tim Cook takes the stand Friday May 21st and we'll talk about what the judge actually rules is Apple going to have to change their policies in the App Store did epic games lose this battle and apple doesn't have to change anything we'll talk about that on the next episode but listeners reach out to us we would love to hear from you you can tweet at myself or west those Twitter handles are in the show notes also don't forget you can get an AdFree version of the show at patreon.com Insider you can support the show there and you can also support the show by giving us a five-star rating and review in apple podcast that helps us get discovered by more people looking for technology and Apple news like yourself also don't forget to check out The homekit Insider podcast that gets released every Monday talking about smart home and homekit devices and apple Insider daily you can get the Top Apple news headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next time\n"