B (2:30)

We are very happy to have you back. It's been sad not having you here. Hopefully you got a few people saying, you know, wishing you well etc etc as they knew that you were gone for good reason. But again we're happy you're back and I think back just in time for exciting things because we have been hearing rumors for some time now that Apple was slated to release a bunch of products here in the beginning of the year and will perhaps be doing so throughout the year. And part of that is Apple's latest, we don't call it the budget offering, but we do call it the perhaps cost friendly option. And that is Apple's new iPhone 17e, which of course replaces the 16e. The good thing in terms of what we've got with the latest iPhone is that it actually starts at double the storage capacity from the last gen, but keeps that 599 starter price. It's 256 gigabytes of storage now at that same starter price. And it's available also in 512 gigabytes. We've got a black one, a white one, a soft pink one. These all are supposed to have a sort of soft matte finish. And as we record this show, pre orders start tomorrow. But as we publish this show, pre orders will have started the day before the show publishes and the device is set to be available on March 11th. You know, Rosemary, I'm curious to hear your kind of initial take your initial impressions. We kind of expected this, I think. And so it's not a shock to see the 17e but you know, you think about the soft pink color, for

D (4:39)

example, it's, it's a nice soft pink color, unlike some of Apple's previous attempts at coloring. It does look like it's actually once seen the color pink and therefore is attempting to, to bring some of that to life. Unlike the, was it the M4 MacBook Air in blue, which was like somebody had once described what they thought the sky might look like whilst in the same room as the colors being mixed. You know, so it was, it was silver with the slightest hint of blue if you looked at it in exact right light. But yeah, it looks like it's a good phone. It's the expense friendlier option, I would say for people who don't necessarily have the budget to upgrade to the Pro or Pro Max or the full edition version of the iPhone. But also it's great for people who don't necessarily need all of that technology. For example, if I were looking to buy a new iPhone for my grandmother, I would be looking at a 17E. I would not be looking at giving her an iPhone Pro. The only reason why she's got an iPhone pro is because it's been passed down through the Family. It was mine, it was my dad's, it was my mum's, it was my mum's secondary phone for a while and now it's hers. So in our family that ends up working out well for us. But for a lot of people it is a really nice option. You know, it's got a nice fast cpu, it's got GPU with the neural accelerators which, you know, do various things for gaming. It depends on what sort of level game you're going to be playing on your phone. Most people I know who game on their phones seriously spend time playing Balatro solitaire, that sort of thing rather than, you know, trying to get the latest whatever it is game to, to work flagship game. But yeah, it looks like it's pretty nice and it does also support Apple intelligence and it supports it better than the previous generation. So, you know, that's always nice having those smart options. I have to say I've been evaluating family members and I'm surprised how many of them will just ask and you know, any assistant for things and be happy with. Here are some web results. So yeah, it's good to have actual Apple intelligence even if it's, you know, as with all these things, not necessarily 100% accurate but it'll get there. And yeah, I think it's, you know, it's good. It's also energy efficient. It's more energy efficient than the iPhone 16 Pro. So apparently it does have all day battery life which is better than the iPhone air I suspect. I don't remember what your experience might have been with the iPhone air battery life but I know some people had some thoughts about the, the iPhone air battery life and the fact you could buy, you could buy a maxi battery for it from the get go.

B (7:28)

Yeah, that was enough to be like not so sure. I personally didn't have one or use one, but they were. I've had a few friends who decided that that was the route they wanted to go and then returned them and went a different route. But you know, depending on your needs it may be enough for you. So there's a lot to kind of dig into here. Right. With the new iPhone 17e, we talk a little bit about storage. It's got this a 19 chip. It's supposed to be up to like it's interesting the choices that Apple makes when it comes to, when it comes to what comparisons it makes, we sort of what devices it's compared to. So in terms of its comparison to the iPhone 11, the six core CPU is two times faster. It's got those neural accelerators like you talked about in terms of the ability to run Apple intelligence. Intelligence. Well, I think the connectivity is very important here as Apple kind of sort of covers the gamut of its connectivity options to make sure that they've all got its new cellular modem, that it's also more power efficient all combined together. I don't know, what are your thoughts on a single camera array? The reason I ask is because I personally, when I think about using my phone camera, I realized that I actually do zoom a lot more than I thought I did. And so I'm regularly taking photos at different zoom levels. And some of those are digital, some of those are actually physical. But having the multi camera lens on my phone actually does matter to me. And Apple, you know, cleverly tries to make it all work. It's a single 48 megapixel fusion camera doing all of that stuff. What's. Yeah, do you think it's enough to have one camera lens on your phone?

D (9:44)

I mean for me the thing that stands out, it's Apple's regular iPhone, comes with a standard lens and a wide angle lens so that you can zoom out but you can't zoom in really. And the thing that I, I do most on my phone is I'm trying to take a picture but I'm too far away from something and I can't physically get closer. It might be because I don't have time to get closer. It might be because I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and I can't literally take a step forward without plummeting to my death. You know, both of which don't seem like great options but you know, being able to pull out my phone and work straight into 8 times optical zoom, I don't necessarily go straight to 8, but 2 and 4 right there on my, on my phone, which are really good options. I would really struggle not to be able to have greater optical zoom. Now just to be clear, if you don't have the optical zoom, your phone can still do digital zoom, but essentially what it's doing is it's taking a picture and then it's cropping down the pitch pixels. So if you would have a phone that photo that would be, you know, however, this big and then you take a digital version of that, you're taking a smaller picture and essentially stretching it and at some point you're going to end up with a lesser quality image because it'll be somewhat blurry because you just don't have the pixels stretch. Now by going with the 48 megapixels, that significantly reduces that problem. Most people really aren't going to see the issue. My problem is, is I grew up with a dad who was massively into cameras and photography. So looking around a dslr, could you just chuck this telephoto lens in your handbag for me, please? That, you know, that was the things I grew up with. So I'm a little bit of a snob when it comes to digital zoom and I actively try to avoid it. But yeah, I think, I don't know. I think for a lot of people, they don't know about it. I know my grandmother has struggled previously when taking photos because she was covering one of the lenses on her phone and so, and she didn't realize that when she was like pinching to zoom in that she was actually like her fingers were in the wrong place and that's why she was getting like it was suddenly going black because she was covering the wrong lens. She shouldn't be covering any lenses. But yeah, I think a single lens, most people, it's probably fine. And let's be honest, if you, if you want to do serious iPhone photography, you will be looking at where the pro model phones anyway. You certainly won't be looking at the. I guess it's the economy edition, but expense Friendlier. It's the name I would probably prefer to stick to myself.

B (12:17)

Yeah, yeah, I like that one. All right, let's take a quick break. Thank you so much for watching iOS today. I do want to tell you about our sponsor for this week's episode. It's Net Suite bringing you iOS today. Every business, honestly, they're all asking the same question, how do we make AI work? For us, the possibilities are endless and guessing, frankly, is too risky. But sitting on the sidelines, that's not an option either. Because one thing is almost certain, and that's that your competitors are already making their move. So no more waiting. With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work. Today. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP. It's trusted by more than 43,000 businesses. It's a unified suite that's going to bring together your financials, your inventory, your commerce, your hr, your CRM, all into that very important single source of truth. That connected data is what makes your AI smarter. So it doesn't just guess, because it'll actually know. It will intelligently automate routine tasks. It will deliver actionable insights. It will help you cut costs and make fast AI powered decisions with confidence. Plus, you get total flexibility now with NetSuite AI connector. Very exciting. You can use the AI of your choice to connect your actual business data and ask every question you ever had from key customers. Cash on hand, inventory trends. Plus automate those tiresome manual processes. Let's see your competitor do that. This isn't just another bolted on tool. It's AI built into the system that runs your business. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead of the pack if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Get NetSuite's free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com appsios the guide is free to you at netsuite.comios netsuite.comios and of course, we thank NetSuite for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS today. Back to the show. I'm really excited for people who haven't had the opportunity to try MagSafe yet to be able to. I think that that's pretty exciting only because I see a lot of people moving to MagSafe. And when it comes to, or let me, let me try this again. I see a lot of people using wireless charging now more than ever.

D (14:38)

Yes.

B (14:39)

And if you have MagSafe on top of wireless charging, what you get is a much faster charge than you would otherwise get due to the ability of the magnets to align the coil on the phone with the coil in the charger. And that's a fantastic option. So those kind of come together and I think make a difference for people and I think sort of an eye opening experience. Especially like right now my phone is on a mag safe stand and that's just so handy to have whenever you need it. Now.

D (15:16)

Yeah, it also solves the problem of, I thought I put my phone on charge, but it turns out it was slightly misaligned. So it was charging, not charging, charging, not charging, charging, not charging, and ends up using more battery because it's continually cycling that and it just gets really hot. And I feel like a lot of people, unfortunately, that was their first experience with wireless charging, you know, trying to do it. It was maybe successful the first couple of times and then they, you know, thought they dropped it on the pad and then it turns out Oopsie misaligned it and then they had a really bad experience with wireless charging. So, you know, for a lot of people having MagSafe certainly solves a lot of problems. And it also means you don't have a cable sticking out the side of your phone when you're trying to use which then gets bent at an awkward angle and inevitably ends up breaking, which I've seen quite a few people do. And I've been recommending right angle cables for those fox for a really long time just to try and avoid that. But you know, a MagSafe charger is a nicer option where it's appropriate.

B (16:12)

Yeah, I agree. When we look at again comparing the latest iPhone to iPhones of years past, or even the current models, it's great that we're getting the safety features, emergency sos, the roadside assistance, the messages via satellite, find my via satellite, crash detection, all of that's built in. So what we're seeing is less of a trade off for the feature set when it comes to these devices. And I think that's important.

D (16:53)

Yes, yes.

B (16:54)

Let's talk about kind of who this phone is for then. If you're rocking an iPhone 11, an iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 and it's just that, you know, you don't get new phones every, you know, regularly. And now it's time to get a new phone. This is the one that I think is going to be a great option for you. If you are in that budget, friendlier or cost friendlier category, it's there, there are trade in credits. So depending on your carrier, you could get up to 590, $99 from an iPhone 13, $400 for an iPhone 11. That's pretty wild. An iPhone 11 netting $400 potentially. And then again, if you think mag safe is something that's important, this is your option without having to go for Apple's flagship devices. And of course, if I think this is the big one that I think of for my everyday folks, the people who aren't steeped in tech, they go, I don't have enough space on my device for all the things that I'm doing now. That storage option being doubled at the, you know, at the least expensive tier, but then the option to go to 256 gigabytes, or rather no, the option to go to 512 gigabytes is really great, especially now that we are in a period where most of the video we take is a lot higher storage cost. Apple, along with releasing the iPhone 17e, also rolled out a bunch of new accessories that can go along with this as well. So you can get new crossbody straps. There's a new clear case, of course, that features MagSafe and I believe silicone cases that come in six different colors. So, you know, you can outfit your new iPhone 17e with some fancy new accessories. Anything else that you want to highlight with the iPhone 17e.

D (19:07)

I mean, I think it is just, it is a good option for a lot of people. The people who perhaps don't really care about their tech as much, but they want a nice device. And you know that. I think that is something that is a really good option to have. You don't, people don't need to buy the flagship phone every year. People don't need to buy the pro version of the phone. And if it's one of those things where you just want your thing, your, your device to be good enough, I would say get, get the E version of the phone and maybe if you've got the budget for it, look at upgrading the storage. Because this is the one thing I find the people that people do continually run into, they're taking photos, they're taking videos, they're downloading apps. They don't sit down and delete a bunch of apps that they're not using on a regular basis. And so they do end up using up a bunch of storage. And yes, you can reclaim that by deleting duplicate photos of where you've taken 10 photos of the same thing. You can reclaim that by sitting down deleting apps. But it's nice to put that problem off for as long as you can also buy some icloud storage and make sure that you've got everything backed up and stored online just in case something horrible happens to your device. But yeah, I think it's a really nice option and it should be the default one that people consider, especially in this economy.

B (20:20)

All right, with that, I do believe it is time to move along to our news. This, of course, is iOS today, but that doesn't mean that we can't briefly touch on some of the other stuff that Apple has announced that we don't typically cover on the show. And that includes, of course, Apple's other announcements. It has released the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips and those anytime Apple does these Apple Silicon announcements, it's typically because the new chips are being used in new devices. And so that is paired with a new MacBook Pro and a new MacBook Air that all feature the M5 chip. Are we excited, Rosemary?

D (21:13)

I mean, we are excited because while this isn't coming to the iPad this year, don't worry, folks, we've got an episode all about the iPad coming up next. It is coming to the MacBooks and what comes to the MacBooks, give it a year, it'll be in the iPads. And so this is going to lead to even more crazy powerful iPad airs and iPad Pro. So, you know, I think this is really exciting. You know, the, the more performance that we can get on a device, the less we need to call out to other services outside of our home and things like that. So the more we can just do, we can have super crazy amazing graphics on an iPad and we can have Apple intelligence running completely locally if we want with crazy local models and doing all sorts of fancy and wonderful things. Which means that we can also just have more powerful nerdy apps doing things as well. Because I can guarantee you there are game developers out there going, cool, there's all of these, you know, multi threading capabilities, I'm gonna do this with it. And then you get the really, really nerdy programmer people who, you know, they work for Omni Group, they work for dev and tech and things like that and they're going, cool. How can we make a better task manager? What can we do in Omni Plan with this? What can I do in Devon Think with this? And all of these people are just sitting there going like rubbing their hands like the little happy little raccoon, you know, meme that you get. Because all of these do just enable more powerful devices. And this will end up in our iPhones at some point, you know, not necessarily exactly as it is because these chips are relatively speaking quite large and trying to cram that into an iPhone Pro. Max, max, max, max, max might be required, but you know, we will get there. So yeah, it's more exciting things. And I believe also the MacBook Air might be in some exciting colors or vaguely exciting colors. I think I saw a mock up, but I might not have actually seen that in the actual article. I think it possibly is just gold and space gray once more, but you know, it's the possibility of colors.

B (23:15)

Yeah, exactly, a possibility of colors. Obviously we're going to continue to keep an eye on what Apple might be announcing as the weeks go on, but for now, these new M5 chips making their way into Apple latest hardware is very exciting because it means that the product cycles keep pushing forward, the new features keep pushing forward. It won't be long before WWDC is here and we'll have so much more to talk about as the next versions of these software, as the next version of these software platforms rolls out. Very exciting stuff. All right, with that it is time to move along to our appcaps. Our app caps are next.

A (24:05)

Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with Epglis. A once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About four in ten people taking Eblis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

C (24:24)

MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Eglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglis before starting Eglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

A (24:58)

Ask your doctor about evglis and visit evglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979.

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B (26:00)

This is the part of the show where we share our app or gadget picks of the week. The things that we are using that we love, that we think you all should know about. And this week it's interesting because my pick is a choice that is something that goes along with what I already have. What? What does he mean? Well, I told you before about the Spigen case. Oh I don't. Wait, hold on. I almost showed the reveal spoilers, so I showed you the case. This is an amazing case that gives this vibe of an old school Mac. It has this great sort of rubberized component and then a harder case goes on the outside. It has magnets built into it so that it is MagSafe compatible all the way through. And one of my favorite features, or sort of not features, but it's a, it's, it's a nice little touch is what I'm, what I'm looking for is that the button on the side button says hello in that cursive typeface. Now, showed you that before. And one of my favorite things is these days is a lanyard loop, right? And I had just a generic lanyard loop on there. Well, I was browsing Amazon the other day and I just so happened to see that the company has released a wrist strap specific for this case. It is the beautiful beige color, the threading is orange. And the little tip of it, it also has that hello on it. And what's great about it is this is an attachable and detachable quick attach clip. And so I can pop this on and my phone is good to go, but I can press that little button and pop it off. And now my phone is free from the little lanyard strap. I love this thing. I love this case and I love the new wrist strap. The wrist strap is 20 bucks on Amazon and I think the other, the case itself is $40, so 60 bucks all in. But I am loving these two paired together. This is, it's a delight. It's an absolute delight. And good on speaking for making such a great, great. Just. It's, it's so clever. It's so clever. Set of accessories. All right, that's mine. Rosemary, tell us about yours.

D (28:55)

Well, mine, Mica is also hardware, though slightly more hard than a nice soft wrist strap in the sense of. I don't know how to pronounce the company name, so I'm gonna go with absolute. And this is the M4 snap on mobile controller. So it comes with a MagSafe ring. It also comes with a natural will like stick on MagSafe ring in the box. If your phone, for example, an iPhone 16e or an Android does not support MagSafe. But this is the actual controller. Now this connects to your phone via Bluetooth. So I'm just going to turn it on a second and it's got a whole bunch of buttons on it which if you've ever played on a Game Boy, might Look quite familiar. So you've got your AB X Y pad, you've got your standard D pad, you've got some extra buttons up here. There are, are two buttons on each side at the top and then you've got your plus minus and home buttons. So I'm just going to make sure this is turned on because this will then allow you to connect it to your phone because it connects via Bluetooth. And if you download a really cool app called the Delta Emulator, then you, if you've got Game Boy games like cartridges, there's actual. You can buy a little thing off of Amazon or somewhere there to get the games off of the cartridges and put them into the emulator. So instead of looking a Game Boy around with you, you can just look, grab your little controller and I would magsafe it to my phone to demonstrate this. But that's gonna make it slightly more difficult. But I can play actual Tetris on my phone with a little controller and it's really great. So I actually have the original Tetris game. So I went through the process of lifting it off to make sure that it's, you know, I actually have it here. It's a little weird not playing this on my controller. Why is this not working? There we go. And there we go. And now I can just rotate the blocks and move them around. And it does, you know, because I've pulled the actual game, I have the full music and everything I've turned off to make sure that we don't get into any trouble here at Twit because we don't want that. But it's really nice to be able to play Tetra on my phone, you know, waiting to go see, get, have an appointment or anything like that. I can just, you know, get on with my day and have this in my bag. It's tiny, takes up practically no space. And, you know, it also, you know, connects to my phone in a really nice little way. So I've now got a performance and anxiety playing Tetris. So I'm just gonna press the pause button there because it's, you know, it's one of these things where I can play Tetris for a really long time by myself. As soon as somebody else is watching me, I get really worried that somebody, they're judging me, which they should be. I'm not good at Tetris. I can just play, you know, I, I can work around my mistakes for long enough to keep going. That is the secret. But it's, it's good fun and Yeah, I like the fact that I can basically play any game using the Delta emulator. So that is a bonus recommendation. It's the two for One Special day. So Delta emulator and then you can put your Game Boy games or any other kind of console games that would work with this in there. And yeah it's this was 35 pounds and so I suspect it's about $40 or so plus postage. It is coming for abroad so obviously imports and things like that may apply but that's all detailed on the absolute website. That's a B X Y L U T E. But we'll have a link

B (32:29)

in the show notes and we will Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS today. I remind you all that you can reach out to us. IowaD WWIT TV is how you get in touch to leave your feedback, to ask your questions and even more. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of iOS today. I want to remind you all about Club Twit, our offering for membership. When you join the club at Twit TV Club Twit or scan that QR code in the top corner there you can join $10 a month, $120 a year and doing so gets you access awesome benefits. Every single one of our shows ad free, just the content. You also gain access to our special feeds that includes our feed that has behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, little clips and bits. We've got a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events and we've even got a feed that has all of our special club shows like my crafting corner. We've got Stacy's Book Club and so much more all there in the club. You can also join our Discord which is a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twitters in the of us here at TWiT. If all of that sounds good to you, TWiT TV Club TWiT is where you go to sign up Rosemary Orchard if people would like to follow you and keep up to date with the awesome work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

D (33:48)

At the best placesrosemaryorchit.com which has got links to apps, books, podcasts and of course all my social media sites. Or you can find me in the Club Twit Discord where people are checking that somebody who's having issues with the YouTube stream isn't just leaning on the space bar, but also that there's lovely nerdy chats during the show. And after the show, Maika, where can

B (34:07)

folks find you if you're looking to find me online? I just remembered that I need to update this so by the time you hear it it will be fixed because the bento service unfortunately is no longer around. So heading to Chihuahua Coffee C h I h u a h u a coffee you will find links to the places I'm most active online. For now it just redirects to an advertisement but again that will be gone by the time you check this out. So head to Chihuahua Coffee C h I h u a h o a Coffee and I look forward to hearing from you. Alrighty. That is that on that? Thank you all for tuning in. We'll catch you again next week for another episode of iOS today. Bye bye. If you like what you heard and you want more of this week's top stories in tech, well, subscribe to Tech News Weekly. Every Thursday, I talk with the journalists making and breaking the tech news.