Apple Rumors Predict Spring Event with AirPods 3, AirTags, iPad Pro & More

By Ashleigh Page Updated 03/18/2021

In the 155th episode, David and Donna dig into what to expect from the next Apple event. From AirPods 3 with shorter stems and spatial audio to an iPad Pro with a mini-LED display and 5G support, learn what Apple devices could be coming your way this spring.

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Episode 155 transcript:

- Hi, and welcome to the iPhone Life Podcast. I'm Donna Cleveland, Editor in Chief at iPhone Life.

- And I'm David Averbach, CEO and Publisher.

- Today, we're gonna talk about Apple's rumored March 23rd event. We're expecting the official announcement any minute now, but we wanna talk about today what Apple devices we're expecting to see and the credibility of these rumors about whether it is going to happen or not. And before we get into the episode. David is gonna tell you about our sponsor.

- Yeah, so today's sponsor is OWC. And I'm gonna tell you about their product, the Envoy Pro FX. And what it is, is it's a solid state external hard drive. And you might think like I used to think, that pretty much all external hard drives are the same, they just store stuff. But, what I've learned from covering hard drives is that they're really not, and there's a wide range of quality. And so this one from OWC is really high quality. So let me tell you a few reasons why. Number one, the transfer speed can vary a lot. And that's really important if you're trying to back up your device every day or you're trying to transfer large files like a video. You wanna be able to do that quickly, cause then it saves you a lot of time. So this has a really, really fast transfer speed. It's 2,800 megabytes per second. It also is really easy to just plug and play and it has a very wide range of compatibility. So it has both USB-C, USB-A, and it works with... Within USB-C there's all sorts of different types of USB-C. This works with a wide range. So it also is Thunderbolt 4 compatible. I know I'm throwing a lot of specs at you guys, but what I'm trying to say is that, it's a really compatible hard drive, it's fast, also looks sleek and it has military grade drop protection. So check it out, we'll link to in the show notes, it's called the OWC Envoy Pro FX.

- Next I wanna tell you about our iPhone Life tip of the day newsletter. This is our free offering. If you sign up, we send you one tip every day that teaches you something cool you can do with your iPhone in less than one minute. So it's a really low time commitment. And if you're wanting to make sure you're up on all the coolest, latest things that your devices can do, this is really the best way to do that. So go to iPhoneLife.com/DailyTips to sign up. I wanted to share a tip that I learned this week that is changing my Safari experience. So if you open your Safari app, which is Apple's browser on your iPhone, and you tap the bottom, it's in the bottom right corner of your display the little square icons that brings up all of your open tabs. So, if you're on your computer, you're used to this. When you open your browser, you can see all the tabs up along the top of your display. On your iPhone, the way that shows up is you see a scrolling list of tabs that you can swipe through. So I knew about this already, this is how you see your open tabs, but, if you press and hold the plus icon at the bottom of your display, it will bring up all of your recently closed tabs. And this is a feature I use a lot on my desktop and I didn't know you could do it on your mobile device. So, are you following along with me, David?

- I'm following along. And I also did not know about that. No. I'm like, my mind is being blown but I didn't wanna interrupt you to tell you that.

- So, yeah. I use this feature constantly. If I'm doing research throughout the day or there's something I was looking at earlier in the day, I'll go up into my Safari menu and check out. You can see all the tabs you were looking at recently. And so I use that on a daily basis. And this was just yesterday that I discovered this, so I can't tell you how much I will use it, but I think I will use it a lot. And it's always fun when you find hidden features on your iPhone that if no one had told you about there's no way you would have discovered it on your own. So this is a fun one.

- Totally. And that's in my opinion the best tips that we come out with are the ones that are non-intuitive, but really useful. And we have a lot of them. So, if you're not on the tip of the day newsletter, make sure you sign up. Also, Insider is just jam packed with these sorts of tips. I wanna just throw out one more kind of related Safari tip. Cause if you're anything like me, I'm pretty anti tab. Like on my desktop browser, if I reach a certain point, like probably two to three times a day, I'll just close my browser and get rid of all my tabs. Do you do that or are you like a hoarder of tabs?

- I clear my tabs multiple times a day as well. Cause I find at some point it's not helpful having them all open, cause you can't see them anyway. I mean, if you hover over a tab, if you have one of the latest Mac OS on your computer, you will be able to see a preview of that page which is nice. But it's just cluttered. I don't feel like it really creates a great environment to be productive if you have a billion tabs open. Which my dad will disagree with this. When I look at his computer it just makes me so overwhelmed. Even seeing the hundreds of tabs he has opened at any given time.

- Yeah. Our CTO Raph, who I used to work right next to is like that. He has like hundreds of them open. And it stresses me out just seeing it. My rule of thumb is, if I navigate away from a tab, I no longer need it. So I'm never like... Could people keep them open cause they're worried that they need to go back to it. And so I just make sure that if there's something I need on that page, I find a different way to save it before I navigate away. But here's my tip. Because on desktop really easy, you just close Safari and it clears all your tabs, on your phone it's less intuitive. You close Safari and your tabs remain. And so over time you end up having hundreds and hundreds of tabs open. And then it's like you're saying, they cease to be productive. So, if you long press on the place where you have your tabs, the little two squares on the bottom, there is an option to close tabs. And as I'm doing this right now, it tells you how many you have. I have 65 open and I do this pretty regularly. So that's--

- I know I wouldn't be surprised-- I wouldn't be surprised that people at home would have hundreds. I recently went through mine, so I only had three, but usually it would be way more than that, yeah.

- Let's make this a question of the day. How many tabs do you all have open right now? And let's see, we'll see if we can find a winner for next time we do a podcast. So yeah--

- so it's a podcast at iPhoneLife.com. Make sure to email us at Podcast@iPhoneLife.com. Sorry, it's hard with Zoom to not talk over each other. It's just--

- I know.

- It's probably my biggest pet peeve of Zoom or of any video call.

- I agree. But we're doing our best. And there's one other setting you can do where if you go into settings and you go to Safari, I'm pretty sure this exists, so I'm actually doing it as I'm talking to you guys. I think there is a setting for it clears out your tabs. Yeah, okay. So if you go to Settings, Safari and then you scroll down, there's Close tabs. I have mine, close after one week. So it will automatically close out a tab that's been opened more than one week. And if you have it set to manual, it will never close them. And so that's where you can end up with hundreds and hundreds. But that's a nice setting that I like to. I'm actually, I'm tempted to be aggressive and change it to after one day. Cause I hate having to many tabs open.

- Especially if you know you can use the recently closed feature.

- Yeah, there you go.

- Then you can be less attached to your open tabs. So iPhoneLife.com/DailyTips is where you can go to get more tips just like this. I love when I bring them up, David, you usually have like extra bonus tips that are relevant which is great as well. Which is a plug for listening to the podcast.

- Yeah, there you go, I try.

- So next I wanted to tell you about our paid subscription and that's called iPhone Life Insider. You pay for a monthly low fee, you get access to all of our best content. You get our video guides, a digital subscription to iPhone Life Magazine including our full archive. You get in-depth video guides. Oh, I already said that. You got in-depth video guides, you get our online live courses and online live workshops with live instructors who will answer all your questions. And we have a feature called ask an expert where if you're running into a tech issue, you can contact us and we'll help guide you to a solution. And you also get an ad free version of this podcast with bonus content from me and David. So if you go to iPhoneLife.com/PodcastDiscount, you'll get a special discount on your Insider subscription for being a listener. We had a couple of Insider questions this week that I wanted to share with listeners today. They're pretty simple, but this first one's very simple but can really make a difference to a lot of people who don't have the greatest eyesight. So the question was simple, but need to know, how do I make the text larger for mail, text, et cetera. So, Apple doesn't provide a way to change the text size on an app by app basis, but you can change text size that will just, it will apply overall to Apple's built in apps. So you just go... There are two ways to do this. If you just need to bump it up a little bit, you'll go to Settings, Display and brightness. And from there if you tap on Text size, you can use a little slider and adjust it and it'll adjust the text size live so you can see as you go, if it's right for you. And there's also an option to toggle on bold text which will make all of the text bold and easier to read, therefore. But if this isn't big enough for you, you actually can go into your accessibility settings. And from there, hit on Display and text size. I think it's called text size, let me verify. So settings, Accessibility, Display and text size and then tap Larger text and toggle that on. And then you'll be able to toggle it up to a pretty large size there. So you have two options there. So I hope that's helpful to any of you at home who are squinting a little bit to read what's on your display. And we had another question that I thought was great. Natalie Rightsen, I could have sworn you taught us how to create polls in iMessage in an online course a few months ago. Did I imagine it? I can't find anything online. Does iMessage allow you to create polls with the native app? So the answer here is that it's not currently a native option, but there are third-party apps you can download. We've done polls in courses by the way, but not through iMessage.

- Oh, that's what it was.

- So there's an app called Polls for iMessage that you can use where you'll be able to do that which I think it actually made me wanna give that a try as well for some group chats, that could be helpful.

- Yeah, that's funny, cause yeah, we totally did not teach that, but it is a really cool thing that I didn't even know about. And exactly, that was my use case too, is for group chats. If you like say, trying to figure out where you're gonna eat dinner with a group of people or things like that, polls can be very handy. So that, I might check that out too.

- So I want to save our apps and gear section until after we talk about the spring rumors and news, cause I don't wanna make people wait any longer. And so we have... I didn't mention this at the top of the episode, but we have some news too. Apple this week discontinued the original HomePod and iMac Pro. And I wanted to get your take on this David, cause I know in general the HomePod, you've seen as an underappreciated or misunderstood product and I know you have the original HomePod. So I wanted to see how you felt about this.

- I felt sad as you predicted. I understand it, cause they came out with a new HomePod mini and it's cheaper, and I'm guessing it probably sells a lot better. And the main reason why I think the HomePod is an under appreciated product is that, even though Amazon has a lot more functionality with Alexa than Apple has with Siri, if you use an iPhone the fact that Siri is native on your phone, makes the HomePod a lot more user-friendly and functional than Alexa in my opinion. So that was the main thing. And obviously the HomePod Mini's still have that. That being said, I personally love high quality speakers, I'm obsessed with them. If you come to my house, I have so many high quality speakers, I always make sure to write that article so that I can hoard these awesome speakers. And so I do think there's something lost because I think that people don't always want to splurge on a more expensive speaker because it sounds better. But when they have them, they really like them. So I feel a little bit sad about it. What I'm worried about, I'm hoping that they're discontinuing it but they're still gonna continue to build out HomePod through the HomePod Mini. I'm a little worried that this is the beginning of the end of HomePod and Apple is gonna give up. I don't think so, cause voice navi... Smart speakers and using a assistant through a smart speaker just feels so much like the future of everything we're gonna be doing, that I don't know why they'd give up. But I'm, a, sad that we're losing our nice speaker. And b, I'm really hoping that Apple keeps working on HomePod.

- Yeah, I wrote a review of the HomePod Mini in our last magazine issue. And basically my takeaway was, I feel like there are great things about it, but I feel like Apple needs to put more attention on it, not less. The user interface isn't that good through the Home app on your iPhone, having like multiple users on it, at least isn't working at all well at my house. And I don't feel like the solution is to get rid of it, it seems like Apple just needs to refine it and make it better. And I agree with you that then eliminating the original HomePod seems a little more like them just deciding that it's not worth their energy or something instead of making it better. And HomePod Mini audio quality is fine, it's pretty good for such a small speaker but it's nowhere near as good as the original HomePod.

- Yeah. I'm guessing it's just that people didn't wanna spend the extra money for the nicer speaker. I hope that's what it is and Apple keeps working on it. I think conversely, cause I am sad about the loss of the HomePod, the original HomePod. I really don't care about the loss of the iMac Pro. We we've been talking about for a while, but Apple's pro lines are sort of breaking down right now because they have been really improving their other lines. And so, we're gonna talk about in a second with the iPad as well. The iPad Air actually just spec by spec is just objectively better iPad and the iPad Pro right now. So it makes no sense. I and the iMac Pro is sort of similar where it was hard to justify it. And I think they're gonna kill it off and then they're gonna improve it down the road with the new M1 chips. And I think where Apple's actually going to be improving their max a lot this year, so I didn't feel at all sad to see the iMac Pro go. I don't know a single person who bought it or owned it.

- Yeah, I know. I'm really curious to talk to you about the new iPad rumors, because I agree with you. We've been looking at the new iPad Air from second half of last year and talking about how at this point would anybody wanna splurge on a pro? And I mean, maybe we'll get into it in a minute, like what would it take with this new iPad to really make it worth spending all the extra money on. Almost twice as much as the--

- Yeah.

- So, moving on to that, the latest rumors are that we'll have an event on March 23rd. If that's gonna happen, I feel like Apple is gonna be in the next couple of days that Apple would let us know. Of course it will be a virtual event because of the pandemic. And yeah, there've been a lot of... The top leakers have been talking about a March event cause that follows Apple's usual cycle anyways. But the latest one is from Chinese leaker Kang and who has been right a lot recently. So we'll see about March 23rd. And the--

- It might be by the time-- Sorry. This is the thing we do where one person we can interrupt each other. It might be that by the time you're listening to this, it's been announced. So at the time of recording it has not, we usually published like the next day. So probably it won't have been announced yet, but it should be announced like any minute now, really, if it's gonna happen.

- Yeah. And the devices we're expecting to see are AirTags, potentially two different AirPods, the third generation AirPods or the second generation AirPods Pro. Then they're rumors of an iPad Pro, an iPad Mini and just an upgrade to the original iPad and potentially a new Apple TV and a new iMac. So, we'll go over each of those rumors right now. The AirTags, that's the one I've been seeing the most in rumor posts. And it's the one I'm probably the least excited about personally. But I'll just tell you about it. If any of you have used tile trackers, it would basically be Apple's version of that. So you can put that, attach it to your keys, or put it in your wallet or something like that. And you'll be able to track the location of that item or really it's that tag through the Find My app on your iPhone. So other products are already out there that do this. So that's why I'm less excited about it. Although having it being able to track all of your devices through the Find My app, including things like keys and your purse and wallet is pretty cool I guess. It is nice just not having to go into separate apps. But that's pretty much the biggest benefit I see.

- Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting one for a couple of reasons. Number one, like you're saying, it exists already. And so, will Apple find a way to significantly improve it, or are they just gonna be like, good news, we're Apple, so you'll buy ours instead. Which I hope not. I hate when Apple does that. The other thing though--

- And Apple does that a lot in my opinion.

- And there is some validity to it--

- Especially with their services lately.

- Yeah., I know, exactly. Sometimes they can pull it off because it's built into the operating system and that's really convenient, and so it does work. But sometimes they don't pull it off. And for example, Apple News. Does anybody doing premium Apple News subscriptions right now? I think it's not been a very popular thing. But--

- Yeah. And with this one, it seems pretty credible though. Like on Mac rumors, I was seeing all of these Apple support videos that have AirTags mentioned in the operating system and things like that. So it does seem like whether it's this March or later this year, it seems like it's happening. And we were getting rumors of it all last year as well.

- Well, that's what I was getting ready to say. Is I think it's happening also because of the way they changed Find My Phone to Find My, it's like they were getting ready to do this and then they never did. But we've been hearing rumors about this for literally over a year now. And so it's one of those things that it's dragged on long enough that I have no idea what to make of it. I'm also like, I agree with you, I'm not that excited about it. So I'm sort of like ma!

- Yeah. Now, what about the... Let's talk about the AirPods and AirPods Pro. For some reason, AirPods pro is just so awkward to say, like you wanna say AirPod Pros. But anyways, so the AirPods 3, the big thing that I was reading with that is that there'll be designed more like the pro with the adjustable ear tips, but they still won't have noise cancellation and they'll still be cheaper. And they'll likely have spatial audio, which as of now was only available in the AirPods Pro and the AirPods Max, which creates like a surround sound type experience with earbuds. I love the original AirPods and they also should have shorter stems. And as you can see, I'm wearing mine right now. I think that's probably my biggest complaint with them is they look a little nerdy. So, having an updated design does sound nice to me. Although I actually don't really want the rubber ear tips.

- Okay, same. And I'm trying to decide if I'm just grumpy because it's daylight savings time or if these are legitimate concerns of mine. But I actively, like you, I talk about all the time in the podcast, really. I don't like the design of the AirPods Pro. I don't like having a sealed fit. I like having earbuds that I can just throw in my ear, I can still hear ambient noise. This design to me is so comfortable in a way that the pro design is not comfortable that I'm worried about it. I feel like I'm gonna lose access to the design that I like. I agree the shorter stem I'm excited about. I'm also curious about spacial audio. Although I haven't heard a lot of people rave about it being a game changing feature. As far as I know people who have the AirPods Pro probably haven't even noticed that it exists.

- I know. And it does also some of these things that are like Apple branded names for things. It's like, is it just like a marketing term more than being something that's really significantly different. But I will say I noticed the AirPods Pro sound quality is better in general. I don't know if it's the spatial audio that's doing that or other factors.

- Okay. I mean, in general, I guess I'm excited for them to upgrade the sound quality of the AirPods. And I personally don't want my AirPods to be noise canceling. So the fact that they're not giving up on the cheaper version of it is a good thing to me, but I'm worried about that sealed fit with those rubber tips cause I hate that.

- Me too. Yeah, so for the AirPods Pro 2, it's interesting. If we do get those, which some rumors are saying we won't get that until April or maybe later this year so we'll see. But that they would add a new chip to it that would allow them to shorten the stem really so that it looks a lot more just like the other true wireless earbuds you see out there which are more just like a little knob instead of having anything that's hanging down. Which to me, I don't know that that matters that much to me. I also think the knob... All of these earbuds look a little funny when they're in your ear, whether or not they have a little stem on it or not.

- Yeah. I do think the stem looks particularly funny though. And I would imagine if you're getting rid of it you're gonna make it lighter too, which is nice. I would be excited about that. And it feels like a lot of their competitors have managed to not have these awkward little knobs. So I don't know why they have not pulled that off yet. So I think I'd be excited about it. The other thing that'll be really interesting as we're talking about is, now that they are going to make the AirPods design similar to their AirPods Pro, will they differentiate the pro enough? Is the noise cancellation an important feature to people? The lack of stem, is that important to people? Or are they actually going to end up selling a lot more AirPods than AirPods Pro?

- I know, it's a good... Again, like the whole pro thing, is the pro worth the extra price? I mean, I think if they really started marketing the AirPods Pro as more being like for fitness and working out, that to me would make more sense, and to make the AirPods more of a general use type thing.

- I mean, to me, I will say that the AirPods as of now is a pretty clean differentiation. I know so many people who love the AirPods Pro and then there's people like me who love the AirPods. And I think they have differentiated it enough. The question is, will they continue to do so as they sort of build out the features of both lines?

- Yeah, that's a great question. Now, the iPad Pro continuing along the pro conversation, the new iPad Pro they're saying they'll have it mini LED display on it which being completely honest I don't really know what that means. And potentially a 5G chip.

- I think it's one step below an OLED display, but one step above the display they have now. So it will be like better quality display, but it still is not OLED, which is I think what a lot of people are hoping for, is an OLED display.

- Yeah. Okay, that is good to know because yeah. So far OLED displays have made the iPhone a lot more expensive and it makes sense since they'd have to be so big on the iPad, it could really knock up the price in a way that would be problematic. So that makes sense why they wouldn't do it I guess. Although I love my OLED display.

- Me too.

- And then having a 5G chip on your iPad, if you have a cellular model is cool. I've never paid for a cellular model of an iPad, so that's less personally meaningful to me.

- I love the cellular that model. I always get it, I always splurge on it.

- I forget, you're always championing the iPad.

- I love my iPad Pro, I love my cellular cause it's like perfect for traveling when you're not like... When you don't need to do heavy lifting. If I'm going to work remotely, I'll bring my computer. But there's so many times where I'm going on a trip and I still wanna be able to access my email, do some light work. And the iPad is perfect for that. And I really like having data because, a, I can, like I get to the hotel and there's so many times where hotels have really bad wifi or just like no wifi at all. And also I can use it in the car. And now, a lot of times I will give my iPad to my step son while we're driving and he can use it. And so having data means I don't have to hear 20 times on a trip, "Why can't I use Netflix?" And I'm like, "Because we don't have data."

- That does seem worth it.

- Just that, yeah, that's really the main reason. And then a really nice thing too, is like, with the iPad if you get the data model, you don't have to pay for a subscription each month. So what I do is, I'll do one time subscriptions and it's like $10 for five gigabytes of data or maybe it's like $10 for two to three gigabytes of data. And I'll do that for when I'm going on a trip. So I'll spend 10 extra dollars when I'm going on a trip, update it the whole time I'm gone. And then when I'm at home, I don't need the data cause I obviously have wifi at home. And so then it's like, it's not the same expense as buying a phone where you have to pay like 60 bucks a month for data.

- Oh, okay. That makes a big difference. I didn't know it was so adjustable that way. Flexible.

- Yeah. They do a good job with it. And I don't know if all of them do, I have the T-Mobile one and I particularly like T-Mobile. I have Verizon for my phone, but T-Mobile has really good iPad options. So I've always gone with that. And a 5G chip would be great. I am excited about that.

- Yeah. Especially if you live in an area that has, where the carrier you use has built out 5G. Well...

- Yeah. As a total side note, I can't figure out why they don't have cellular computers yet. Like it's 2021, why don't we have a 5G computer?

- That's such a good point. I have no idea.

- It's so weird.

- Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's coming our way. I mean, we'd probably be hearing about it, but yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, so the other iPad models that are rumored is just an upgrade to the regular iPad. It's still supposed to be 10.2 inches which is the same as before. And just to have like thinner bezels, to be a thinner build in general, but I didn't see any other significant upgrades. And then an updated iPad Mini, which I know a lot of people love the iPad Mini, so there'll be excited to hear this. So some rumors are saying it'll be a pro iPad Mini with no home button, that it'll be like the edge to edge display. And then the other rumor is just that it'll be a little bigger. The current one is 7.9 inches and this one's supposed to be 8 1/2 to nine inches, which presumably there'll be accomplishing that mainly by going edge to edge. And so it shouldn't be a lot bigger. Cause I was gonna say, most people who like iPad Minis don't want it to be bigger. They like that it's small.

- That is a good point. I know I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but I think, I actually think iPad is to me the most broken of Apple's lines. Like it's already, like it's really broken right now because the iPad Air has better specs the iPad Pro. But it's confusing. They have an iPad original, they have an iPad Air, they have an iPad Pro and then they have an iPad Mini. And it's so hard to figure out which device you should get within that line, especially when they are not clearly differentiating those features. Like it's unclear why one would get a Pro over an Air or get an Air over an original. And you really have to like dig into the specs to figure out the differences in the trade-offs. And I'm really hoping that this is the year that Apple sort of fixes that and really clearly differentiates it. I'm still a purist. As a side note, I was supposed to write an article on this, but as a side note, one of the kind of classic Steve jobs stories is when he came back to Apple after being gone working on his other company, he took Apple's product line and they had like, I don't know, they had like hundreds of skews, and he distilled it to like five. And so that's why under Steve jobs, you had the iPhone, you didn't have the iPhone CE, the iPhone 12, Mini 12. There's so many now--

- Pro Max.

- And same thing. I mean, Tim cook had just done this across all the lines. And so I really wish we could go back to the days of having a much simplified, a much more simplified product lineup. Because it's really confusing to users. And I don't think Apple is doing us any favors in their marketing. They do not help you to figure out which of these you want.

- I know. I find like with MacBooks, the pro-line made a lot of sense or does make a lot of sense because you can do higher powered things on it, so it's more intuitive, like, okay, you can do more like professional work on it hence being called the pro. But I feel like with the AirPods and the iPad Pro it's a little more confusing. It's like for the AirPods Pro for instance, it's like is that better for professional use? It's like maybe, I don't know... And also with the iPad Pro, really at this point, I would probably recommend most people get the new iPad Air instead because it's cheaper and does almost the same stuff.

- Well, and same thing too cause they haven't updated the MacBook Pro line yet with the new M1 chips. So you probably don't wanna get that. Like it's really in a weird place. But--

- Well you can get the 13 inch MacBook Pro, but you can't get a big one.

- Oh, you're right.

- With M1.

- Yeah. But it's again, it's the same chip. Like it's the same features. The difference between that and the Air is almost nothing in terms of specs. So, hopefully what we're doing here, instead of just being grumpy because it's daylight savings time, if putting a context to what the next year of Apple is gonna look like. Which is I think that Apple is aware of this. They're never gonna go back to the Steve jobs era where they just have one Mac and one iPhone. But I think they are going to spend this year differentiating their product lineup. And I think in particular, they spent last year building up their consumer facing lines. And this year I think the pro lineups are gonna get a major upgrade, both on Mac and iPad. And so that's what I would look for watching this announcement, is sort of, how are they differentiated the lineups? Also of course, what are the cool new features? But one of the other interesting things in reading these, we'll have to see for the announcement. But none of these sound like breakthrough features, do they? They all sound incremental updates to me.

- Yeah. The AirTags is the most kind of like, Oh, that's something different. Which again, other companies have the same product, so it's not that exciting. And yeah, no other features. It makes sense that they're improving the AirPods and updating the design because it's been such a successful product line for them. And I do think those changes sound nice. The iPad line particularly, I'm feeling like the changes aren't very significant.

- Yeah. We'll see. We'll have to see

- We'll see. And then the last two products we didn't talk about yet is a new Apple TV which is supposed to have a remote that you can track down using the Find My app, which sounds great to me cause I've definitely lost my Apple TV remote before in the past. But it would have to be within your house and Bluetooth range to track it down from what the rumors are saying.

- But who's carrying around their remote? You're taking it with you when you go places Donna?

- No, no you're right. It's most likely gonna be in your house unless you like move, I don't know. Anyways. And there could be two versions, one that has a higher powered chip that can power more like console level gaming. Because with Apple Arcade, apparently Apple is wanting to keep pushing that more. So, we'll see about that. And then a new iMac which is supposed to have the M1 chip, which if you've been listening to recent podcast episodes you'll know that David and I are a big fan of the M1 chip. And so that should lead to better performance and lower power usage. And it should be 23 or 24 inches. And have smaller bezels.

- I'm really excited for Apple rolling out their new lineup of computers with the M1 chips. Cause like you said, the new ones have gotten great reviews but I'm holding out for the MacBook Pro which is not rumored to happen until I think the fall. But I'm really excited for the new iMac Pros. And there's some really cool features coming for iMac Pros. I'm getting into rumors for things that are not coming out this spring.

- Do you want... You want the laptop or do you want a desktop?

- I want the laptop. I want the MacBook Pro. Thank you, MacBook Pro. But what they're doing, I'm really excited. They're gonna bring back the MagSafe which is a little magnetic charger which I think I love that feature on my Mac and they got rid of it. And they're getting rid of the touch bar, which I hate. So I'm really excited for rumors for the MacBook Pros even though that'll be the fall.

- So that is a... That rounds out all the rumors that we have been tracking for this supposedly March 23rd event. We will continue covering this on iPhoneLife.com and we'll have live coverage of the event if it does happen. So stay tuned. I know we are on a time crunch David, cause for you, so I feel like we should either do apps and gear or Apple complaints and learning for our Insiders and wrap up the episode, don't you think?

- I think that makes sense. Just real quick though, let me put a plug for our Facebook group because we do coverage of the event in our Facebook group. So if you are not part of our Facebook group, now's the time to sign up. Cause during the announcement we will be doing live commentary of it. And then of course we'll do a reaction podcast immediately after. There is a custom URL and I am figuring it out as I'm talking. I think that it iPhoneLife.com/facebookgroup, it is. So if you go to iPhoneLife.com/facebookgroup, it will redirect you to our group in Facebook. It's a great group too. If you aren't a member already where you can ask the group questions and then crowdsource the answers. Our editors are active there as well, so it's a really great group to sign up for. Okay.

- All right, thanks so much everyone. If you're an Insider stick around we have some special content just for you. Otherwise we'll be back... Really, the next episode will probably be our coverage right after the announcement, assuming it does happen. So that'll be either March 23rd or whenever Apple does have its event. So we will be back soon and see you next time.

- Thanks everybody.

- Bye.

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