Welcome to the forty-second episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast. Jonathan Mosen is joined by Judy Dixon, Michael Feir and Heidi Taylor for comprehensive analysis of Apple's recent hardware event announcing new AirPods Pro, Apple Watches, and iPhones.
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Speaker 1:
Live the life you want.
Speaker 2:
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. In its awe-dropping event, Apple has announced new AirPods Pro, Apple Watches and iPhones. Access On brings you our panel to give you a comprehensive recap of the event from a blindness perspective. We also look ahead to our webinar next week, four hours talking all about the smart home. And the National Federation of the Blind's Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility is hiring.
It's Jonathan Mosen from the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Thank you for joining us for Episode 42 of the podcast. And let's start with that last thing first, a reminder, you can hear a lot more about this in Episode 41 of the podcast, which we published last week, but the National Federation of the Blind's Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility is seeking to fill two new roles. Both are called accessibility excellence advocates.
One is in the field of education and employment and the other is for home and independent living. The positions are based here at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore and you can read all about them by going to our careers page at nfb.org and then choose the career opportunities link. You'll find some other roles at the National Federation of the Blind as well, nfb.org, and then choose the career opportunities link.
And the National Federation of the Blind is looking forward very much to bringing you a seminar on creating your own smart home. It's happening on September 17th and it runs from 1:00 until 5:00 PM Eastern Time. The world of technology that can connect to the internet and other devices has exploded in the past decade. Various smart speakers, cameras, sensors and more have been gaining popularity in the mainstream, but how many of these devices are accessible?
Join us to hear the latest in accessible smart home devices. You can register for the Smart Home Automation Seminar by going to nfb.org/cena. That's nfb.org slash C-E-N-A. Choose the events and training link and you'll find where to sign up for this webinar. And as you'll hear later in this episode, we also have one on iOS 26 coming later this month.
And as typically the case for these post-Apple event recaps, we're joined by Judy Dixon, Heidi Taylor and Michael Feir. Welcome to all of you. Let's crack on because Tim Cook actually did this, he got right into it today, sometimes to fill some time. They have recaps of Apple services and TV shows and all sorts of things, but it was all substance today. So I'm going to go around the table and first ask, if budget isn't a constraint, is there anything here that you really do want to buy that was announced today and why? And, Judy, I'll start with you.
Judy Dixon:
Yes, I think I'll buy a new iPhone 17 Pro and probably some new AirPods.
Jonathan Mosen:
Why is that?
Judy Dixon:
Well, partly because I buy a new iPhone every year, which so that's no surprise. I don't buy new AirPods every year, but the new ones, it sound really intriguing.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, and we'll drill down into that a little bit further. What about you, Heidi? If budget wasn't a constraint, would there be anything tempting you from the announcements today?
Heidi Taylor:
I want a new Apple Watch because mine's coming to end of life, but I don't think it's because the technology's super compelling. It's more because mine's so old that technology has moved on.
Jonathan Mosen:
What Apple Watch are you rocking at the moment?
Heidi Taylor:
I have a Series 6 that you got me when I graduated university.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh, gosh, that is getting on now. That is getting on.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. And, Mike, how about you?
Michael Feir:
If anything, I would maybe go for an Apple Watch SE 3, the latest of that. I find that's about it at the level that I'd use it. That's pretty much everything else. I don't know that I'd notice much difference unless AI really turns a sharp corner for the better. I don't know. I'm pretty happy with my 16 Pro to be honest, so I'm sitting with that for a while I think, but yeah, the Apple Watch SE 3 would go down very nicely.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, in fact, I'm pretty happy with my 16 Pro Max right now and I don't see a lot to entice me to upgrade this year, but we'll come to that and Judy's going to convince me, no doubt, because I think she and I have had this conversation before, but I really have missed this year, I have missed my Apple Watch Ultra a lot and I am looking forward to the Apple Watch Ultra 3. The blood pressure thing sounds pretty compelling and we'll come to that, but I miss the speaker, I miss the battery life and I think I could be tempted.
But let's go through in the order that Tim Cook went through and we started off with the third-generation AirPods Pro. The features here, better audio, a lot more bass, a lot more ... Well, everything really, four times better noise cancellation they claim. And the killer feature I think, other than improved audio quality, was that demonstration that they did of live translation.
And I was thinking of the blind people who attended the World Blind Union Blindness Summit last week in Brazil and how amazing that would've been to just wear those AirPods. And if you've got two blind people, they're wearing AirPods and talking to one another in different languages, that is an amazing thing. So for people who didn't see it, as you talk, the speaker's voice fades down a little bit.
It ducks, audio ducking style, and you actually hear in real time a translation, much like you might hear when you tune into a press conference on a news network or something like that, so that was pretty exciting. And, Heidi, they talked about a simple gesture, which starts that translation process. Did you see what that gesture was, how you invoke it?
Heidi Taylor:
It just looked like they squeezed the stem of the AirPods. They didn't show it particularly up close.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, so let's talk about AirPods. Judy, again, we'll start with you, what's the verdict on those?
Judy Dixon:
I do think the killer feature is the simultaneous translation, and if it's fast enough, it could be really, really incredible. I've tried it on the Meta Glasses, and while it does work, it is excruciatingly slow. You have to wait two or three seconds before you hear the translated speech of the other person and it's too slow for a real conversation.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now of course, Mike, you're in a very much bilingual country. Do you parlez-vous français?
Michael Feir:
Oh, I'm horrible at it. I had got out of the French classes just as quick as I could and paid for that with the heavy duty math that I barely survived. But yeah, that translation stuff, you do need iPhones for that. It uses the Apple Intelligence on your iPhone. So as I understand it, that's how you do need both. But yeah, that could be very, very useful. And of course, the hearing, the trends ... Oh, not the translation, but the audio, the transparency, there we are, mode would be very useful if the volume could be raised.
When they kind of added the hearing aid feature, we don't have that yet here in Canada, so I have yet to use AirPods as hearing aids at all, and hopefully, that will eventually be here, but if they can get the transparency mode better again, so that you can adjust the volume rate up, that would interest me. I'd like to be able to use them as emergency hearing aids if my actual ones break for some reason, which has happened in the past.
Jonathan Mosen:
At the National Federation of the Blind, we did some evaluation of this at the International Braille and Technology Center. We got the AirPods Pro and we had a look at the hearing aid feature. The hearing aid test appears to be fully accessible and it seems to work quite well. It's not something that I can try because my own hearing loss is too severe. Has that worked for you because I know that you have a milder hearing loss than me.
Michael Feir:
I think it would except, being in Canada, they have yet to basically certify the hearing aids. The main countrywide health service has, but the provinces have to sign off as well and they haven't yet. So we have a feature that is blocked completely by purely legalistic concerns, whatever they are. Very frustrating for me at the moment. I really hope that eventually changes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now also the AirPods Pro are monitoring your heart rates if you get the third generation, which now can be preordered today and I think delivery is the 19th like it is for a lot of these things. So you've got heart rate sensing and that will work when you're doing workouts. You can have that little buddy chatting away and encouraging you to work out that little bit harder.
There was some talk of a camera potentially coming to these AirPods, but that was not a rumor that was substantiated. So you got heart rate monitoring and that's something that Apple has probably taken from the hearing aid industry, because for some time, aids that have built-in battery, rechargeable batteries from Phonak and other manufacturers, have been collecting health data like this because the ear canal is quite a handy place to get this data.
You can put thermometers in your ears and all sorts of stuff. So there may well be a lot of information that the AirPods can collect going forward that will be interesting to see.
There's eight hours on a single charge and 10 hours on a single charge during transparency mode, so that helps hearing aid wearers because I think that was one of the criticisms that's benevolent. It's all very well having these AirPods acting as hearing aids, but you need battery life that takes you through the day if you're seriously using them as hearing aids and 10 hours is still not a lot if you're wearing them from dawn to dusk.
Michael Feir:
Yeah, I'd have to recharge and you could recharge them one at a time. You just have to pick times when you're not needing to hear anything and hope that you're right in that assumption. So yeah, it's getting slowly towards the range where I'd still a good, probably double that, 18 hours, something in that range before I'd feel really safe, really relying on them to help you through a whole day. My hearing aids had like 39-hour charge and I never exhausted.
I always started charging again at night. So yeah, it's something you really don't want to muck around with. So I am glad they're increasing battery life. That's really getting to a range, especially for more casual hearing needs. If you just need a little help when you're in noisy environments, something like that, it's going to do more good for longer at this point. So that's good.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm not an AirPods wearer, but I'd be interested in the panel's views on how easily they stay in your ears. They made a big deal today of saying that it's now going to stay in your ears even in more rigorous activity. Has that been a problem for people up until now?
Judy Dixon:
Yes, somewhat. Not a major problem, but it's one of those things that you're always aware of and are worried it's going to happen and it does occasionally happen.
Michael Feir:
Yeah, I've had a few instances, but it's mainly when I've reached up and accidentally bumped it. It's rare that it actually just falls out, but yeah, eventually ... And of course you don't want that happening when you're outside in some noisy crowded area. So if I were using them seriously as hearing aids, I'd want some sort of band, that you can get bands that you can wear around your neck that hold the stems in little cup kind of thing and keep them from falling and I'd probably feel safer with something like that just to be sure.
But they do have five ear tips as opposed to ... I think it was three sizes now. So presuming they've thought through the sizing optimally, that should really help I would think.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, You have AirPods Heidi?
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, I've got the fourth-gen regular AirPods, not the Pro ones.
Jonathan Mosen:
The regular, okay. And how are they for fit?
Heidi Taylor:
I think they're pretty good. I do have some instances where they come out, but again, it's more when I bump them, not just them falling. If I'm just wearing them and walking down the street or whatever, it's fine, but if I'd like, I don't know putting on a jumper or something, I'm more likely to knock them off.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's sweater for Americans by the way.
Heidi Taylor:
Sorry.
Jonathan Mosen:
We do have reports of some people with the latest generation non-Pro AirPods getting some weird artifacts that happen after some use. Apparently, there may have been a batch that was affected by this and there's enormous static and crackle and scary things like that. That's obviously something that you haven't seen, Heidi, or I would have heard about it.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, I haven't experienced that.
Michael Feir:
Me neither.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's good to hear. We did get some comments here on Access On about that. Now, and I love the way that Apple puts these little process things in from time to time and I thought of how interesting it is that they analyzed over 10,000 ear canals to help with fit and I thought, how nice it would be to get a phone from Apple to say, "Hi, I'm calling from Apple. Can we look in your ear? Could we get the shape of your ear canal?" I wonder how they chose the 10,000 ears and where they got them from.
Judy Dixon:
Maybe they just did it in an Apple Store one day.
Jonathan Mosen:
Maybe when everybody was waiting for the Genius Bar. There you go. All right, anything else about AirPods before we move on? Okay, so let's talk about the Apple Watch and Series 11. It has 5G connectivity if you want to buy the Series 11 and that can be quite handy if you get the cellular version and you want to leave your phone at home. I thought I might do that more than I actually do. Do you have the cellular one, Judy?
Judy Dixon:
I do and I'm in the same exact boat. I thought I would do it more than I actually do. It is occasionally handy and it will ring when I'm far, I'm in a hotel or something and I leave my phone in my room for whatever reason and I'm away from it. And when my watch rings on its own, I'm always surprised when it happens.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think I would do it more if there were a couple of core apps. I think there was once an Uber app for the Apple Watch, which if memory serves, it's-
Judy Dixon:
Oh, it's terrible.
Jonathan Mosen:
... deprecated.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, it was bad.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, it wasn't particularly good. But if I could call Uber and Lyft from the Apple Watch, I might be inclined to leave it at home a fraction more, but there's just so much on your phone.
Michael Feir:
I always have my phone with me and I never even thought of getting a cellular watch. I'm just not away from my phone enough to even think it would ever be worth doing like adding that extra ongoing expense to the watch as a whole because you're paying your carrier every month. So yeah, just not worth it for me. I just assume have my phone with me in a holster or something.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think the one thing that keeps me doing it is the prospect of some sort of natural disaster and I'm paranoid about this, because living in New Zealand as I did for most of my life and in an earthquake-prone city as well, you just never know when some major catastrophe is going to happen. And so I tend to be so cautious.
I have a MagSafe battery charged up, I have a big battery pack always charged up and I figure, if I run out of juice after all those things, what I would probably do is switch my Apple Watch off knowing that it's a last resort and then I can switch the Apple Watch on if I run out of juice for everything else and still need to contact people. That is a pretty extreme use case, but it does keep me buying them.
The Series 11 has more power efficiency. It's more rugged. And again, I think the killer feature here, and this applies, as I understand it, to the Series 11 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3, but not the Apple Watch SE 3 that was announced today, is that it has blood pressure monitoring or specifically hypertension monitoring based on data that it collects over time.
So as I understand it, this is not the kind of thing where it can take your blood pressure and give you that number, but it detects hypertension. I think that's a fair representation of what they've done here.
Michael Feir:
That's what I understood them to say. Yeah.
Judy Dixon:
Yes, you won't actually get a reading, you just get an indication that this may be an issue for you.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. Any further data on this, Heidi, from the visuals?
Heidi Taylor:
Not really. It just seems to use the sensors on the watch and it analyzes something and gives trends.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now the other thing that will interest many blind people, perhaps those who don't have light perception and have them on 24 going on or people who are just stressing out generally, you can now get a sleep score and it's a simple number. It's I think something that I have seen in some of the third-party sleep apps. So it's not completely new, but it will be done very simply.
Apple will tell you information about how that sleep score is calculated and it just avoids the need to scroll through a lot of data that Apple is collecting while you sleep and interpreting it, so you just get a simple number. And I guess the health app is then going to try and tell you how you can improve that sleep score.
Sometimes I think getting all this data can be counterproductive because it makes you more worried about the numbers. It's a balancing act. You know what I'm saying? So that's the-
Michael Feir:
And like-
Jonathan Mosen:
... sleep score. Should we talk about-
Michael Feir:
Of course.
Jonathan Mosen:
Go ahead, Mike.
Michael Feir:
I was just thinking that sleep score, I like the thought, but I want that other data to the core sleep, REM sleep. I want to know about the stages as well they used to have. So I hope we don't lose that ability. I hope it's just a gained convenience.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think so. I would be really surprised if they took that data away because there'll be the health geeks who want to go into the weeds. So I think it might be just a way of making it more user-friendly for those who don't. You just want a simple measurement of their overall sleep quality.
Judy Dixon:
Well, it said it was going to show you what components made up the score. Did it actually show that visually, Heidi?
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, so it mentioned that the time of sleep still considered the deep sleep, the core sleep and the REM sleep.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh, good.
Heidi Taylor:
But then the score is out of a hundred and up to 50 of that is for the duration of your sleep. So I guess if you have a shorter sleep, you get a lower score. 30 points are allocated to your bed times, so you get a lower score if you go to bed later than average and 20 points-
Jonathan Mosen:
So it's just like having a parent on your wrist.
Heidi Taylor:
Right. And then the last 20 points related to interruptions or wake up and how many minutes you're awake during your overall sleep window.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, so that's the Apple Watch. The Series 11 has 24 hours of battery life. So they're getting there with the battery life, and presumably, if you take a shower or do something like that, you can pop it on charge during that period. Who has worn their Apple Watch in the shower or bath?
Michael Feir:
Never done it.
Judy Dixon:
I have not.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. So I can now tell you that I have, but for a very interesting reason. A few months ago, my Apple Watch speaker got really quiet and one thing that the Apple Watch is doing, maybe a reset would help it, is that it is lowering its volume at random intervals. It gets quiet and I go into the control center and I have to wind it up again.
And I've checked all the obvious settings that might be affecting this. There is a setting that adjusts the volume based on environmental sounds and things, but that's toggled off, so it's all very mysterious. Then something seemed to happen to the speaker and it got very muffled. And I looked up this problem online and asked the jolly old ChatGPT and it came up with a novel solution.
It said, "What you might want to do is submerse Apple Watch and water so that the Apple Watch is aware that there's water in the thing and then run the eject water option, turn the water lock on and then run the eject water option at the end. So I've been wearing ... And I know people will be listening to this saying, "Yeah, what a chicken," but I have had Apple Watches for whatever it is, 10, 11, 12 years or something now. When did it come out? 2015, so 10 years.
Judy Dixon:
2015.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, 10 years. And I've never done it because I've been too chicken. But one day, I wore it in the shower and I deliberately got the Apple Watch wet and it got even more muffled and I did the water lock thing and it was very, very interesting, the water coming out of the speaker and its little vibration that it makes to make it happen. And lo and behold, the speaker got clear again. So it was a marvelous thing, a wondrous thing. I just passed that on.
Michael Feir:
So the dirt probably-
Judy Dixon:
When I got my Series 10, it would occasionally get very distorted. The speech would be extremely distorted and I had talked to Apple. They told me to reset all settings on my phone, which I was very reluctant to do, but I did and it fixed it for two days and then it started again. And it got worse and worse and worse like it was to the point that it was really unusable. So I took it to the Apple Store and they sent it off for repair. It was gone only three days, came back, worked perfectly and has never done it since.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, I did read there was a problem with some Series 10 devices, so who knows. I was almost set to have my very first Genius Bar visit because we don't have Apple Stores in New Zealand. So being able to just go to one is a marvelous thing. It's an age of miracle and wonder.
So then there's the one that Mike wants, the Apple Watch SE Version 3 with the always-on display for the first time on that particular model, wrist temperature sensing. Sleep apnea and sleep score is in there as well and 18 hours of battery life. Fast charging, up to two times faster charging than previous models. What else, Mike? What's spinning your wheels about that one?
Michael Feir:
Well, those things in particular are ... I want the sleep score. I want that 18-hour battery life. Honestly, I'm probably going to turn that always-on display off if I can, so that'll probably even extend it more. There's that and really the sleep tracking, I used it a lot for and for just basic fitness. I'm no Hercules by anyone's measure, but it was useful in that regard, but I mostly use it for information like for apps, delivering information to the watch rather than having to go out of whatever I was in to check things, notifications and such sometimes.
So that's more what I use it for. So the SE, it's all I need. I don't know that I would get much from getting like say a Series 11. I'd be interested in the experiment, just like I found getting the iPhone Pro was an interesting one-off probably for me. It's been amazing. I've really enjoyed it, but I don't know that I can justify that price, right?
So with the watches, I'm thinking the price differential is a little less, but it's the same thing, "Do I really need anything more than the SE?" And one of these times, I might go to the regular series, get like, I guess now it would be the 11 and just see, but probably not this year.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, it's the health data that I really like about the Apple Watch and I was quite moved and interested in the video that they ran at this presentation today, talking about specific examples of how the intervention of Apple Watch had probably saved some people's lives in various scenarios.
And while I haven't been in that category, it was interesting. A month or so ago, I had pneumonia. We got Access On done through rigorous editing, rigorous editing, but it was interesting to see the Apple Watch's response to this pneumonia and reporting that various factors were not as they should be. And it was reassuring to have that little buddy on your wrist looking out for you at this mnemonic time. Is that, no? There's a different thing, right, Judy? You can't say mnemonic in that context.
But as I get older I think, I get more interested in the collection of this data and just the reassurance that nothing is seriously wrong. And of course, we should mention for those who don't keep up with this tech news day in day out that blood oxygen monitoring has been restored in the United States.
So they have been in dispute with a company that claims that Apple has infringed their patent with respect to blood oxygen monitoring. And as a result of that, it was taken away if you activate the Apple Watch in the United States. You could buy an Apple Watch and go out of the country and activate it and come back into the United States, then it would be fine. But if you activated it here, you weren't going to get it.
And now they've got some other way that they say circumvents this. The company that took the original lawsuit disagrees, so it's a slightly live issue, but blood oxygen monitoring is back in the Apple Watch. And even if you didn't have blood oxygen working before, you should do when you get iOS 26 and Watch OS 26. So let's talk about the Apple Watch Ultra, Judy's favorite Apple Watch model.
Michael Feir:
Wow.
Judy Dixon:
I gave mine away a couple of days.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, Apple Watch Ultra 3. So for those who haven't, how would we describe this, Judy? It's big, right?
Judy Dixon:
Huge. Huge.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, yeah, it's huge-
Judy Dixon:
Bigger than big.
Jonathan Mosen:
... and heavy on your wrist, but-
Judy Dixon:
It's like a diving ... If you've ever seen a diving watch, it's a big thing.
Jonathan Mosen:
It is and it feels substantial. It's got a good speaker on it, which is, someone with a hearing impairment, I really appreciate. The speakers substantially better in my view. And it feels plasticky. It's not plastic, is it, but it felt that way. Just the original Ultra did feel that way to me.
Judy Dixon:
Interesting why you say that, yes. It's as much the shape as anything else that it has much crisper edges.
Michael Feir:
Ooh, didn't expect that.
Judy Dixon:
It's not roundy. The edges aren't rounded. They're quite squared.
Michael Feir:
So it's like a dial almost. Do they protrude more from the-
Judy Dixon:
They do.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. That's probably why I like it because I'm quite square, but now this reminds me by the way that I don't think much about colors, but I know there are people who do. So what colors are the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch SE available in? Do we have that data, Heidi?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes. So I can't remember the names, but the Series 11 comes in a shiny jet black, a silver, a rose gold and then a space gray. That's the aluminium ones. And then-
Jonathan Mosen:
What's your pick?
Heidi Taylor:
Well, I personally quite like the rose gold one, but that's slightly more pinkish, so I think it's slightly more feminine.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, but they're all lovely. And then they have the titanium ones and that comes in a silver, a gold and a black. And then for the SEs, they only had two colors. They've got a starlight and a-
Judy Dixon:
Midnight.
Heidi Taylor:
... midnight, yeah, which is like a slightly blue-toned black. And then for the Ultras, they've got the silvery one and the black one.
Michael Feir:
Which one should I get?
Heidi Taylor:
The black one.
Michael Feir:
Okay.
Jonathan Mosen:
So the Ultra 3, it's a newer, brighter display. Satellite connectivity is a pretty cool deal actually. And that's one reason to carry one, although of course, if you're carrying an iPhone, the iPhone has this too, but now from your watch, you can do messages and find my ... I got the impression that there might be a premium to pay for some of this. They made the comment that one particular thing was available with the watch and it made me wonder whether there's some sort of subscription coming for some of these satellite services.
Michael Feir:
Oh, I think they said that it was included free with one of the watches, probably Ultra if I-
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Ultra. Yeah, all of it. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll see how that goes. Now the thing that really impressed me was 42 hours of battery life. Eat your heart out, Judy, with your Series 11.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, that's pretty incredible.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yup, 42 hours of battery life is great. And I actually, when I did have my Apple Watch Ultra, I went away for the weekend somewhere and forgot to pack my Apple Watch charger. I wouldn't have that problem anymore because I've got this thing called the Flash Pro Ultra, which has got lots of USB ports, a little wireless charger thing for the phone and a little wireless charger thing for the watch.
It's pretty nice. But I didn't have that then and I went away without my Apple Watch charger and I lasted the whole weekend with the Ultra, which is fantastic. That also has hypertension notifications in the sleep score. So it's rugged, it's got a crazy battery life and that's the Apple Watch Ultra. Do we have pricing on those watches?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes. So it at the SE 3 starts at 249. I assume these are American dollars. The Series 11 starts at 399 and the Ultra 3 starts at 799.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh my word. That's quite-
Judy Dixon:
Quite a jump.
Michael Feir:
Yeah, but it always was, I think.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Michael Feir:
Just thinking back, I always had that impression that the stepping up to the Ultra was always a major jump like that in price.
Jonathan Mosen:
That is quite a steep differential there, but okay, the Ultra may not, does the Ultra come in a Wi-Fi only version or when you buy the Ultra, you get the 5G connectivity built in and all that with the base model?
Heidi Taylor:
The Ultra only comes in a cellular version. There's no GPS-only version.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. Whereas if you're buying the base model of the Series 11, you're getting Wi-Fi only?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. So that does account for it to some extent. Okay. Any final comments on Apple Watches? All right. Well, then we move on to the final item really and that is the iPhone range, iPhone 17. We've got four new models. There's the iPhone 17, there's the iPhone Air, which I'm sure we'll talk a lot about because it's a new model, the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
And the first question I want to check and I believe there's been no change here, but is the iPhone Pro models, so the Pro and the Pro Max, still the only models that include LiDAR in them? Okay, and the reason why this is important is that they enable a range of accessibility features for blind people, the detection features, point and speak, people detection, door detection, a number of others that you can find on the rotor when you have access to them.
And I do understand why Pro features include LiDAR and they don't go elsewhere, but it is also a pity that it puts these accessibility features out of reach of people for whom buying a new iPhone really is a stretch and they might not be able to stretch to the Pro model and it's a shame. That said, how often do you use these? I think, Mike and Judy, you both got Pro iPhones. Do you find them helpful?
Michael Feir:
I really, in everyday life, no. I've certainly played with them, but really in everyday life, if I were navigating a room, I would hesitate to pull my iPhone out and wave it around to navigate to find things, especially in any kind of crowded situation. So it really depends on your lifestyle. I completely get, if you're traveling a lot, if you're in new locations all the time, it might change your perspective.
Same with the point and speak, there's something that might be really useful, but I've never really had success with it. I've tried a number of times with that, but I don't think I'd trust it if money was involved, if I was trying to get something from a vending machine or something. Yeah, I'd probably sooner go to a sighted person and say, "What's the right button to do what I want to do?"
It's just not working as well as it would have to really interest me in fiddling that much with it. So yeah, the detection things, it really depends on your lifestyle. I get how for people, especially people in a lot of different environments could use it a lot more than my life leads to, but you're paying half again as much for the Pro as you are for the base model, so that's why you really hit that wall of how important is that one aspect to you.
Jonathan Mosen:
Judy?
Judy Dixon:
I must say that, probably if I were to count, I've probably used LiDAR maybe 10 times in the last year, but those 10 times have been pretty significant. When I do use it, I use it mostly for following a line, standing in a queue of people and it works amazingly for that. And I don't really wave my phone around. I do just put it in some kind of a holder around my neck, so I don't think it's at risk or terribly offensive.
I agree with you, Mike, about point and speak. I have never been successful with it and I keep thinking there might be things about it that I just don't know or maybe I'm not doing it right, but it's a feature that, in my opinion, either I don't know what I'm doing or it just doesn't work, one or the other, but I've found it quite useless.
Other LiDAR features are cool and work like door detection, but I usually walk up to the door and figure it out. I don't actually query the door before with my iPhone. And so that one is not of tremendous use for me personally, but I do like the people detection to follow people in a queue. It's absolutely fantastic and very useful at airports and things like that.
Jonathan Mosen:
Do you have a recommendation for a holder to put your iPhone in?
Judy Dixon:
Right now, I'm using the new one from Feeldom, and they were at the NFB convention. They had a nice exhibit there and they have an iPhone, it's a soft material, but it has a cut-out for the camera and it works pretty well. I made some suggestions to them about some ways they might think of improving it, but it's not bad.
Jonathan Mosen:
Were you at the convention in July in New Orleans?
Judy Dixon:
I asked you a question in your AI session.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't remember. Of course, you did. I remember now.
Judy Dixon:
Of course, I remember it. Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, so I'll tell you something, I would have agreed with you about point and speak before that convention because I have tried it with microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, different things and I haven't had a great deal of success, but I did get it to work with the destination elevators and that was very interesting, because for those who haven't been following this, these destination elevators are becoming more common and it's something the National Federation of the Blind is talking to elevator manufacturers about, and obviously, we have a lot of raw data to work with after that convention in New Orleans, but a lot of them have an accessibility button that you press and then you have to wait patiently. And if you are on the 39th floor, it's a long wait until you get to your number and then you push the thing.
So I found, and it wasn't perfect, but with a little bit of trial and error, I was able to circumvent that accessibility process by using point and speak. So that was a real-world case where I found it was helpful.
Judy Dixon:
I used to guess and speak and it worked real well too.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's something to think about and I agree with you. When you need it and it works, it's pretty impressive. It's just one of those things that people have to calculate, "Do you really want this?" and it is a pity that it could be out of reach of some people who really want it. So anyway, let's talk then about the iPhone 17. So this is the base model, if you will, 6.3-inch display. Is that bigger than what we had before? Was it 6.1 before?
Michael Feir:
Yeah, I think it's 6.1 before.
Judy Dixon:
Was it 6.1 for the-
Michael Feir:
For the base and then 6.7 for the larger. Yeah.
Judy Dixon:
... base, 6.16?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, I think that's right.
Judy Dixon:
It's bigger, huh?
Jonathan Mosen:
I find it wonderfully interesting that we talk about the display in inches, and then when we get to the iPhone air, we're going to talk about its thickness in millimeters. I'm trying to get my head around the measurements here. So 6.3-inch display. It has thinner borders. It has Pro Motion which has come from the Pro models, so that's made its way down if you will. There's an A19 chip.
This is Apple silicon of course, which is powering it, and of course, it's faster and more efficient and all those good things. It has eight more hours of video playback, which is how Apple tends to like to measure these things. Eight more hours compared to the iPhone 16, that is a substantial increase in battery life, so that's compelling.
They said I believe that 10 minutes of charge is going to give you eight hours of video playback. So at a pinch, you can get a quick bit of charge there and keep going. The charging is quite a bit faster. Anything else about the iPhone 17 that stands out? Heidi, was there anything that you saw that maybe wouldn't be obvious based on the narration that we got?
Heidi Taylor:
Well, it's still got the two-camera design. I think the last year's was in a vertical stack as well. Hold on. Yeah, so it looks very similar to last year's model in terms of how the camera's laid out. But other than that, I guess it's mostly the same. Oh, but the colors are so pretty this year.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh my word. Okay, tell us about those.
Heidi Taylor:
Well, they've got this lavender, which is the most beautiful soft purple. And I don't know if people know, but purple is my absolute favorite color.
Jonathan Mosen:
Geez, Heidi, are you on the payroll?
Heidi Taylor:
No, I just love purple. And if I didn't have my phone that I got last year, I would very seriously consider this one. That's all just because I love the color and also they've got a pretty sage green, a soft mist blue, a white and a black.
Judy Dixon:
Heidi, if you put a case on your phone, how much do you see the color?
Heidi Taylor:
Well, it depends on the type of case because you can get clear cases or cases that are partially clear and have a design and then you see the color through, so that's what I've got at the moment.
Jonathan Mosen:
Just don't put a case on your phone.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, or that.
Judy Dixon:
Oh, I would be afraid I would drop it.
Michael Feir:
Yeah, I insist on cases on my phone.
Judy Dixon:
Me too. I'm a case person.
Michael Feir:
I get them before I get the phone even just so-
Judy Dixon:
Me too.
Jonathan Mosen:
Could we talk a bit about the improved front camera? This actually does sound like quite a significant upgrade, and for people who do a lot of FaceTime, video conferencing or take selfies, this could be a significant contributor in terms of working out, "Should I upgrade this year or not?" Can you give us any further intel on this front camera that's been revamped, Heidi?
Heidi Taylor:
So it just seems like it's a higher quality camera to start with. And then the vertical Center Stage technology is really cool. They had it on iPads before, but the way it works is it keeps your face in the frame, which I think would be really useful on FaceTime calls and stuff, because often, just for anyone, your hand will shake a little bit, but not to be call out Bonnie here, but Bonnie's struggles more with keeping her face in the frame than say you do. So it would help Bonnie in that sort of situation.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. And I think this is something that some blind people do struggle with, just working with a camera, because for those of us of a certain age, we've spent most of our lives not having camera technology that's been accessible or useful. So that's interesting to note that. Any other comments about the iPhone 17?
Michael Feir:
Now the camera that basically they've improved of course the quality of both, one of the things they were talking about with the front camera was that you could have landscape pictures without having to orient, to turn your phone sideways like you used to have to turn it sideways to get that larger picture, but now because of the square shape of the sensor, you don't have to. So that might be useful.
The only other thing that applies, as I understand it, to a lot of these phones is the heat dissipation. And I think they mentioned that with the base as well as the Pro, but they've sort of improved that and that does, if you're charging and it gets too hot, it'll stop charging until it returns to normal. So that's something that could impact especially heavy users of iPhones. That's something I would value somewhat in addition to the better battery life. So there's a couple of things. Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
What I'd like to do is think about somebody for whom they're not super geeky and buying an iPhone is a significant purchase and that's a lot of people in our community and I'm wondering what the sweet spot is where what's the model that someone might have at the moment where if they upgraded to this they would think, "Wow, I can really appreciate a massive difference. This was worth the money. This was worth the sacrifice because everything's so much faster and so much more nimble," and I am thinking about say the iPhone 13 if-
Judy Dixon:
I was going to say 11 or 12. I have a 12 Pro, Jonathan, that I use for testing and it's fine. It really still ... I mean, I don't have a lot of apps on it, but I don't stress it out much, but it rocks right along. I'm always amazed how well it still works. So I think, even if somebody had a 12, if they upgraded to 17, there would be noticeable things, but I don't think it would be major.
Jonathan Mosen:
What do you think, Mike?
Michael Feir:
I would tend to think 13 because I used to have one of those and I remember going from the 13 to the 15 with enough of a jump that I really noticed and some of the speed-up, some of the little things that took fractionally longer took shorter to the point where it just felt really snappier. And the quality of the descriptions you got from the camera, I found improved a bit as well. So it was enough of a bigger upgrade and the 15 to the 16 Pro, it was noticeable, but I was going from a basic to a Pro.
So I'm thinking that's part of the equation. If you put in that extra money, you do get an extra bit of speed and extra bit of a few different things at once, which can make a big difference in your day-to-day kind of experience of these things. But I've made other jumps in the past from the 10 to the 13 that really didn't feel quite as substantial as going from the 13 to the 15 did even.
So I think ... Well, this Apple Intelligence thing, it remains to be seen how quickly this emerges, but that could really be a decisive factor if they manage to do a lot of what they said they were going to do in a relatively quick timeframe.
That could really catch people out if they have less memory then of course. And we don't quite know. I don't think we heard how much, if any, memory increase for RAM that these phones got, which could make a difference in how smoothly the language models interact.
Jonathan Mosen:
I know that there is a tendency among some to zone out when Apple waxes lyrically about its cameras, which it does a lot in these hardware events, but I do think you make a good point that, as you upgrade to the newer phones, when you get into lower lighting conditions and difficult environments like that, sometimes the improvement in the ability to use camera technology for be myAI or AccessAI or whatever it is that you want to use, even ChatGPT itself, with it's camera features, there can be substantial improvements. I agree with you about Apple Intelligence.
I might be too much of an optimist by nature, but I think 2026 is going to be the year where we really see a lot of significance with Apple Intelligence. And I think we are going to see, during this coming cycle, a point at which you will be able to use Apple Intelligence to voice control a lot of functions in apps to have certain items on the screen tapped and various really key functions like that and for certain use cases, perhaps people who just struggle with touchscreens or people who have some sort of dexterity issue where maybe fingers tremble and even when you put the accommodations in place, it just doesn't feel pleasant to use a touchscreen.
I think Apple Intelligence and what Siri is going to deliver next year could make an Apple Intelligence-compatible phone worth considering as well for certain use cases.
So these things are incremental year on year, but if you've got a phone that's three or four years old, I think you will find some real value in making the upgrade if you use your phone regularly and you use it a lot.
Judy Dixon:
And you use it for camera-intensive activities because the camera improvements are major and people who do use Seeing AI and all the IRA and all of those things would notice a big difference.
Jonathan Mosen:
Do you think that that's the case if somebody's looking at upgrading from a 16 Pro to a 17 Pro though?
Judy Dixon:
That's yet to be determined, but yes. The camera improvements, even this year, they're more significant than they have been in some years. Some years, they've been hardly noticeable. This year, we really should notice some pretty significant differences.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, sell it to me, Judy. What-
Judy Dixon:
For me at least, that's the one and only reason to get a new phone this year, is the camera improvements.
Jonathan Mosen:
What improvement would I see upgrading to a 17 Pro from a 16 Pro?
Judy Dixon:
There's a wider, wideband camera. The field of view is greater. The megapixel is significant. Aira will more easily read things. Apps that detect texts will more easily read things. You won't have to make a sign of adjustment to get it to focus. Yeah, I think it should be pretty major.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's talk, before we talk about the Pro, about this new member of the family. This is interesting. So this is called the iPhone Air, and if it had ... I mean, it actually did make me wonder, "Could I live without LiDAR for a year?" because this sounds like a gorgeous device and now I'm not on the payroll, but it does sound like a gorgeous device. They're 5.6 millimeters thin.
Judy Dixon:
I have a question. What is the advantage of a thin phone?
Jonathan Mosen:
It's just sexy, Judy, that's all.
Judy Dixon:
Is that it? It'll be harder to pick up.
Michael Feir:
It would be-
Judy Dixon:
Think of how hard it's going to be to pick up off of a table.
Jonathan Mosen:
You're being a curmudgeon.
Michael Feir:
Well, I've also thought, "Why does everyone want so much thinner?" You get to a point where you could add ... Instead of having that new MagSafe battery that they developed, you could just have a phone that's thick enough to actually have a decent size.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, for battery.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, that was funny how, when they talked about battery life, they didn't give specific numbers until they started talking about adding the MagSafe battery on the back. And then they said, "Oh, if you add the MagSafe battery on the back, you're going to get 41 hours of video playback."
Judy Dixon:
"And you're going to get the thickness of a real phone."
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah.
Michael Feir:
Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
All right. What is the next? 6.5 Pro Motion display, very resistant to cracks. So they really want you to go caseless with this to the extent that they're coming out with a good old-fashioned bumpers like from the iPhone 4 [inaudible 00:55:01].
Judy Dixon:
Oh, I like the bumpers. Yes, I remember bumpers.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you can't be accused of holding it wrong.
Judy Dixon:
Right.
Michael Feir:
[inaudible 00:55:09] your back pocket with ease.
Judy Dixon:
Make it easier to pick up.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. What else do we have on here that I noted down? It's more durable than any previous iPhone. It's got the A19 Pro chip, which is interesting. And Apple's increasingly becoming self-sufficient. They've been this way with software for a long time and with Apple silicon and their various hardware things, that continues. So they have an N1 chip from Apple in this thing, which has WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6, so that's really very good. They didn't make any comment about WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6 in the context of any other phone, so I presume that if this has it, the Pro has it too, although they didn't say-
Judy Dixon:
I would certainly hope so.
Heidi Taylor:
And the regular 17 has it too.
Jonathan Mosen:
Oh, it does?
Judy Dixon:
Oh, it does.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. Interesting. That we've got the Apple modem, which came out first in the SE. I guess that was a really good way to do it because they did a soft launch with that. No, it's not the SE anymore, 16e. That's right, the 16e. It's a fast modem and it's battery efficient. If we ... Oh, one thing that interests me was that here they mentioned the dual capture mode that's coming. This does sound very cool actually. So you can take video from the front camera and the rear camera at the same time. I presume that, if it's in there, it's in the Pro as well.
Michael Feir:
That-
Heidi Taylor:
And the regular one.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. Oh, interesting. All right.
Michael Feir:
That's good. Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
They have gone eSIM only worldwide. So I've been having a chat to the carrier, I still have back in New Zealand because I'm trying to maintain my New Zealand phone number mainly, because when I think I'm done, I still find that there's something that's sending a two-factor authentication to my New Zealand number and I fear being locked out of something important. I keep trying to change them as I go.
So I've been talking to them, because in America, all the iPhones are eSIM only and I want to make sure that I can successfully transfer my New Zealand eSIM over. So wherever you are in the world, if you want the iPhone Air, you're going to have eSIM. Do we have, in the finer print, Heidi, specifics about how long the video playback is when you don't put the MagSafe battery on the back?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes. Give me one moment. Okay, so the iPhone Air has up to 27 hours of video playback compared to the iPhone 17's up to 30 hours of video playback.
Jonathan Mosen:
And that's not really major. Right. And the Pro?
Heidi Taylor:
The Pro is up to 37 hours. And sorry, that's the Pro Max. Sorry. The Pro is 31 and the Pro Max is 37.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. And it's the battery life that keeps me buying the Pro Max. Also, I like the real estate for Braille screen input as well. So the MagSafe battery presumably can be used with any of the new iPhones. I presume it has USB-C to charge it with and that there'll be a lot of people who will be glad that that Apple MagSafe battery is back. Is there anything new about that battery, Heidi? Does it look similar to the one that Apple previously manufactured that had Lightning?
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, it looked very, very similar.
Judy Dixon:
Sounds like it might be flatter. They specifically called it thin.
Heidi Taylor:
They did. It's the same general concept, but yes, probably a bit thinner. I don't know if I've ... Actually, I think we have one here, but I have never really thought about the thickness of it. And yes, it says USB-C.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. Good. There's some nice MagSafe batteries out there these days.
Judy Dixon:
There are lots, yes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, some of them are very good. I can't remember the manufacturer of mine, but I really like the little MagSafe battery that I have. So-
Heidi Taylor:
Oh, actually, sorry, a compatibility issue that might arise with this MagSafe battery is that, because there's only one camera on the back of the Air, the camera bump is shorter and the battery goes right up to the bottom of that camera bump. So it may not fit on the other devices which have the longer battery bumps.
Jonathan Mosen:
It maybe is specific then.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Interesting. So do you like the iPhone Air, Heidi?
Heidi Taylor:
I think it's very pretty. I don't think I'd ever get one.
Jonathan Mosen:
Why not?
Heidi Taylor:
I like my many, many cameras and I don't know, I don't think I need it.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, I'm intrigued enough that I am going to walk into an Apple Store now that I'm in a country that actually has one to have a look at the iPhone Air. I just want to feel how thin it really is and what-
Judy Dixon:
Be careful of the camera functionality though.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right, right.
Judy Dixon:
It's going to be pretty limited.
Jonathan Mosen:
Is it limited even compared with the 17?
Judy Dixon:
Oh, it has one camera.
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah, the 17 has two cameras and the Air only has one.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. All right.
Heidi Taylor:
And the Pros have three.
Jonathan Mosen:
That could really impact you then if you are using a lot of camera apps.
Michael Feir:
They were saying, in the Pro iPhone, you'd have eight professional lenses in your pocket and the number was lower for the Air, but I can't remember what it was.
Jonathan Mosen:
Somewhere in the, I think it might've been in the Air description, they talked about an audio mode and I wish that they'd talked a little bit more about what that means, what the audio mode of the camera was. Did we get any more information about that?
Michael Feir:
I do remember them saying something about audio mics or something.
Jonathan Mosen:
No, it was, specifically, there were different modes and they were going through them and there was one that-
Michael Feir:
Dolby and ... Yeah, I remember-
Jonathan Mosen:
But anyway, it'll come out in the wash. So I would observe as we talk about the 17 Pro line, which also includes the Pro Max, which is bigger and has better battery life, that a good Apple demo always includes a non-American English speaker saying aluminium without fail. I got somebody with a non-American accent talking about aluminium. The rest have done lots of market research on this. So can you tell us about the different composition of the phones this year because they've moved away from titanium to aluminum.
Judy Dixon:
Oh, you're so American, Jonathan.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, I'm-
Michael Feir:
Getting there.
Heidi Taylor:
Well, they use titanium again for the Air, but yeah, for the Pros, they've gone back to aluminium. I don't know why. It just looks-
Michael Feir:
I think it's heat. It's heat dissipation because they have it with ... The Pros have this vapor lock chamber in it that has this water contained that helps the heat disperse through the aluminum frame and aluminum is better for that apparently than titanium, I guess.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, there's a vapor chamber and so that will help sustain performance. And I think one of the big reasons for this is that as we start to use Apple Intelligence more and I think many of us will be in the next year, the device is going to be working a lot harder because Apple's so intent on preserving privacy when at all possible. So much is going on the device.
And actually, I've been using this thing called Whisper, I think it's called Whisper AI and it's a very, very big app. It's a very large app to download, but it does amazing transcriptions. And you can give audio files to it, you can do that kind of thing, but you can also just dictate to it and it's remarkably accurate, but you can feel a bit of heat coming on when you're using that because all the AI is happening on the device.
MagSafe battery. Now this is interesting. The eSIM only models have an additional two hours of video playback per charge. So they really are pushing this pretty hard. And obviously, in the United States, that's all there is and I wouldn't be surprised if they were expanding the eSIM only markets beyond the United States. So I'm just looking at my numbers here. Anything else about the iPhone Pro line that we should talk about? Any more about the camera that we haven't covered?
Heidi Taylor:
Well, the camera bumps now the full width of the phone.
Judy Dixon:
Really?
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Judy Dixon:
New face so again?
Heidi Taylor:
Yeah.
Michael Feir:
Yeah.
Heidi Taylor:
So the flash and the LiDAR are now on the, I don't know, if you're looking at the back, on the far right rather than halfway along the phone where they used to be.
Judy Dixon:
So the cameras are in a row or are they still in a triangular shape?
Heidi Taylor:
They're still the triangle, but they're bigger again and they've shifted over the LiDAR and the flash more.
Michael Feir:
And of course, they're using this new Ceramic Shield 2, which apparently is four times as more resistant to scratch, which might be good, those of us prone to drop our phones and such. They're a little more durable than they were, which is always good.
Jonathan Mosen:
It was interesting to me that, this year, it's pretty much just the camera, obviously the new look, but sometimes you get new features that are announced for the new iPhone lineup that are exclusive. And I was interested by what was not announced. So there was a lot of speculation that Google's Gemini AI might be joining OpenAI's ChatGPT on the iPhone as another option that you could choose.
That didn't get announced today. There really was nothing that was exclusive to the new iPhones this year and that's unusual. You normally get a little something, but this time, it's just really the camera and the faster processor and a few other little bits.
I do wonder whether there might be just something buried away that we will see once the tech press starts to go deep into the weeds that might be a bit more exclusive about these phones, but it was an interesting decision, really.
Michael Feir:
Yeah. We didn't hear when iOS 26 is released. I don't remember them announcing that.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, they didn't.
Michael Feir:
I presume it'll be [inaudible 01:06:44] phone.
Judy Dixon:
Did they show that at all? I wondered about that.
Heidi Taylor:
No, they just talked about all the devices coming on the 19th.
Judy Dixon:
It may be tomorrow.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, yeah, normally.
Judy Dixon:
A new beta came out this afternoon though, so-
Jonathan Mosen:
That's unusual.
Judy Dixon:
Yes, it is.
Jonathan Mosen:
They're putting up a slightly larger number of betas this year.
Judy Dixon:
They are. This will be Beta 10.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. Yeah. And I don't think we've seen that many for a few years. Normally, they've stopped at 8 for the last few, so that's good. Can we just go through the pricing, Heidi, if you have it to hand for the different models in case people are thinking about budgeting for one of these?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes. So the iPhone 17 starts at 799.
Jonathan Mosen:
Which gives you what, 256?
Heidi Taylor:
256.
Jonathan Mosen:
Gigs of storage.
Heidi Taylor:
Yup. The iPhone Air starts at 999 for again 256 gigs. The 17 Pro starts at 1,099, again for the 256, and the 17 Pro Max starts at 1,199 for 256 and that one goes up to 2 terabytes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. So what are the tiers for the iPhone Pro? You start at 256 and then what is there?
Heidi Taylor:
The Pro is 256, 512, 1 terabyte and then the Pro Max goes up to 2 terabytes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. And just for giggles, how much is that, the 2-terabyte iPhone 17 Pro?
Heidi Taylor:
I would have to bring that one up. Hold on.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. That's a lot of storage on your-
Judy Dixon:
That's a lot of storage.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's a lot of storage.
Judy Dixon:
I still have a 256 and I'm trying to decide if I should get a 512 this year and I looked and I still have 100 gigabytes free on my 256.
Michael Feir:
Oh, wow. No, I have maybe 25 gigs left on my 512 gigabytes because I pack a lot of audio on there, a lot of books.
Heidi Taylor:
Okay. From the US Apple site, the 2-terabyte 17 Pro Max will cost 1,999.
Judy Dixon:
Wow.
Heidi Taylor:
Please don't get the orange one.
Judy Dixon:
Oh, that sounds horrible. Is it as bad as it sounds?
Heidi Taylor:
It's like a road cone. It's like the most bright, vibrant orange and it just makes me want to cringe.
Judy Dixon:
Oh, that's just horrible.
Jonathan Mosen:
You are now well and truly off the payroll.
Heidi Taylor:
Hey, I got opinions and I'm going to say them.
Michael Feir:
I did do a double take when I heard orange, I thought, "What? [inaudible 01:09:36] people like that on their phone?"
Judy Dixon:
And what did they call it, something orange? They had-
Heidi Taylor:
Cosmic orange.
Judy Dixon:
Cosmic orange.
Michael Feir:
That was ... Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Cosmic orange, it is totally-
Judy Dixon:
It just sounded horrible.
Michael Feir:
It sounded like a breakfast cereal. I don't know.
Jonathan Mosen:
So if you were-
Heidi Taylor:
They've got a nice sensible silver and a very lovely deep blue, which is a navy color. Those are both beautiful Pro colors. Please take one of those. Don't pick the orange one.
Judy Dixon:
I'm getting the silver.
Jonathan Mosen:
All right.
Judy Dixon:
I'm intrigued by this cross body strap that they're coming out with, with a bunch of magnets to hold it together.
Jonathan Mosen:
For the Air, wasn't it? Wasn't it for the Air?
Judy Dixon:
No, it's for everything.
Michael Feir:
Oh, okay. I thought that would-
Judy Dixon:
And they even said that it would work on the silicone cases.
Heidi Taylor:
Yes, so there'll probably be some little anchor points on the cases that the strap hooks into.
Judy Dixon:
Did they show this?
Heidi Taylor:
Yes. I have to find again. And then it's like a thin strap, maybe leather, leather adjacent and the clasp on it, instead of being a buckle or something. It's a magnet, just magnets along different points on the strap to hold it at your desired length. Like a handbag strap almost, but with magnets.
Judy Dixon:
That sounds great.
Jonathan Mosen:
And that requires one of the newer phones?
Heidi Taylor:
I think it just-
Judy Dixon:
That requires one of the newer cases.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay, right, which requires one of the newer phones.
Judy Dixon:
I'm sure if you want ... Right, exactly. Yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. Now if you want to order any of this, I think some of the preorders are open now. So certainly the AirPods Pro 3, you can preorder that right now. What about the Apple Watches? Are they preorderable at the moment?
Heidi Taylor:
I think they said they were. Hold on. I'm going back through my notes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Just verify that.
Michael Feir:
Yeah, kind of-
Jonathan Mosen:
Meanwhile, while Heidi looks it up, the iPhones are available this coming Friday-
Judy Dixon:
Friday.
Jonathan Mosen:
... with delivery September 19th. Do you have any information on how ... Sorry, go ahead, Heidi.
Heidi Taylor:
The watches are preorder today.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. I'll have to have a serious ... Make my application to the powers that be called Bonnie about the Apple Watch Ultra. That does interest me. So have you had any experience trading in an iPhone here in the United States, Judy, and how that process works?
Judy Dixon:
The way I do it, I mail mine in every year. I trade mine in every year and they send me the new phone and then they send me an empty box that my old phone goes in and I put my old phone in and they have instructions on how to clear it and so forth and I mail it back and-
Jonathan Mosen:
That's through Apple?
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, yup. So I do it every year.
Michael Feir:
I did it once and I remember they send you a return kit with the packaging and stuff and also they ask you what condition it's in and whether it can accept a charge. You have to go through this form and answer these questions, so that they can then give you ... "If this proves to be in this condition, you will get this much credit," and then you send it off. And we did it with watches too. That worked reasonably well.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, I don't get any credit. When I send mine back, it just cancels last year's loan and starts the new one and I just carry it on.
Jonathan Mosen:
All right. That sounds pretty straightforward. So that's the iPhone line up. I thought we could just close by talking a bit about iOS 26, which is coming soon and I'm sure that, by the time this podcast is published, there'll be information about precisely when that is happening, but it won't be too far away.
And later in the month, if you check the NFB website and you go to nfb.org/cena for the National Federation of the Blind Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility, you'll see that we have a boutique coming up introducing some of the new features in iOS 26. There are quite a few accessibility features and a bunch of other things as well. I think that this one is in pretty good shape for a first release. Do you guys think that that's true?
Judy Dixon:
I do. What I have played with it, I think it seems to be working well.
Michael Feir:
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I've got to tell you, the live captions in Braille in certain environments for me is just so impactful. Sometimes I do laugh at the mistranslations that Siri, recognition, is coming up with, but it's still incredibly useful. Are you running iOS 26 at this point, Mike?
Michael Feir:
No, I refuse to take that risk, beta testing, with something I rely on for everything from grocery shopping to ... I'm very cautious, but I too try to pay attention to the testers in my Mastodon feed who are doing that. And I've seen fewer complaints than I would have expected, but that's about as far as I go with that. I'm very cautious with this beta stuff.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, no software's bug-free, but I think, for a first release, it's in better shape than I've seen a build of iOS for quite some time, so we can take some heart from that. All right, let's just go around the table. Go ahead, Heidi.
Heidi Taylor:
IOS 26 is available on the 15th in American time.
Judy Dixon:
Monday, okay.
Jonathan Mosen:
Okay. And yeah, that's pretty consistent with the way it tends to work. So we'll go round the virtual table as we wrap. Any final thoughts from you, Heidi, a general feeling about this event?
Heidi Taylor:
I think there was some fun engineering things in there, but overall, it just felt like another iPhone event. The Air is pretty cool, but it's not for me.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think the thing is, and I have made this observation before, all these terrible leaky people who tell the tech press what's coming up, they're like the Grinch that steal Christmas because we know what's coming pretty much. How about you, Judy? What did you think of the event? Any final thoughts?
Judy Dixon:
I was hoping for a new Apple TV and that didn't happen because there were lots of rumors about it. So sometimes they don't always get it right, but that's disappointing.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think it's coming and I think new AirTags are coming soon as well.
Judy Dixon:
Yeah, they keep seeing the new AirTags are ready and maybe it was just beneath them to mention those today because it-
Jonathan Mosen:
Sometimes for some of those smaller items, they just do a press release, sometime.
Judy Dixon:
They just do it.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, but we need the new AirTags and we need them to be much, much louder. There are-
Judy Dixon:
There are other-
Jonathan Mosen:
... competing products that are compatible with the Find My network that are a lot louder, so hopefully Apple will oblige. All right, and last word to you, Michael?
Michael Feir:
Yeah, I liked the presentation. The pacing was good. Hearing about the new Apple Watches was interesting, seeing what they're doing and with the phones. I was expecting HomePods actually. That was the rumor that I was pretty sure we'd see something there, but no. So they don't always get it completely right. Very much looking forward to, of course, playing around with iOS 26 and really digging into writing the fourth edition of my book and with the actual new system to start working on.
But yeah, if anything, I would say that the SE is what I'm after and possibly might get the Apple Watch SE 3. iPhones, presuming Apple Intelligence arrives in timely fashion, I think yeah. The heat dissipation, the extra battery, the extra processor, you do get a jump in performance there. So that could really ... People who went ahead might really thank they're lucky stars later, but I don't know immediately that it would be quite as noticeable.
Jonathan Mosen:
Brilliant. Thank you as always for all of your insights and your contributions. And a reminder that, if you do check out the Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility website at the National Federation of the Blind, we are doing an iOS 26 webinar later in the month and we look forward to people coming along, not just to hear what's new, but also share your thoughts because you will have had iOS 26 on your device for some time before that if you're brave and an early adopter. So thank you all. We'll see you next time.
That concludes this episode of Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us. Attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected] ,That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon, [email protected]. That's [email protected] on Mastodon.
To subscribe to an announcements-only email list about upcoming episodes, send a blank message to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org or phone us (410) 659-9314. That's (410) 659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.