In the 91st episode, the iPhone Life team unpacks the latest blast of rumors as Apple's fall iPhone event quickly approaches. Tune in to learn when the September product launch will take place and how you can follow it. Plus, get the details on the three new iPhones we expect Apple to release, iPad Pro with Face ID, an upgrade to the Apple Watch line, and the likelihood of the AirPods 2 arriving this year.
Click here to listen and subscribe. If you like what you hear, be sure to leave a review. And remember to tune in every other week to hear our editors share with you the latest Apple news, best apps, iPhone tricks, and coolest accessories.
This episode was brought to you by Tablift and Earin. If you don’t already have a Tablift, what are you doing? Tablift is the only stand that allows you to use your tablet hands free while sitting on the couch, recliner, or even in bed. This makes Tablift ideal for watching movies and videos, reading, making video calls, playing games, and more. Earin’s motto for its wireless earbuds is, “No cables. No wires. No distractions.” And that’s exactly what the company delivers. With a touch interface on the tip, Earin M-2 earbuds are designed to create a seamless user experience—you can answer calls, play and pause music, skip songs, and more with a just couple taps of your finger.
Question of the week:
Do you use a password manager? Which one? Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know.
Articles referred to in this episode:
- How to Delete Old Backups in iCloud to Free Up Storage
- iCloud Photo Library vs. Google Photos: Workshop + PDF
- iPhone Life Facebook group
Useful links:
- Join the iPhone Life Facebook Group
- Become an iPhone Life Insider
- Sign up for the free Tip of the Day Newsletter
- Email the Podcast
- Subscribe to iPhone Life magazine
Episode 91 Transcript:
Donna: Hi and welcome to episode 91 of the iPhone Life podcast, I'm Donna Cleveland, editor and chief at iPhone Life.
David: I'm David Averbach, CEO and publisher at iPhone Life.
Sarah: And I'm Sarah Kingsbury, senior web editor at iPhone Life.
Donna: Each episode we bring to you the best apps, top tips and great gear in the iOS world and this week we'll be talking about everything you can expect from Apple's fall announcement, which we're expecting to be in two weeks. So we're super excited about it.
David: So excited.
Donna: We've been studying up on the rumors, we're gonna tell you all of ... There have been a lot of new rumors this week, and so we're gonna fill you in on all of the latest, and help you prep for the events and know what to expect and know how to follow the coverage, including our amazing coverage. First we wanna tell you about our sponsor for this episode, Tablift.
David: So one of the rumors we're gonna get into later on in this episode, is new iPad coming out. So whether you're planning to get a new iPad or you own an iPad already, one of the things, accessories you need to get is Tablift. If you're watching the video, I'm gonna hold it up and you can see. Basically what it is, is it positions your iPad so that you can view it from a reclined angle. 'Cause most of what you're doing with your iPad, although Sarah I think is the exception because she often works from her iPad. But most of the time, at least for me, I spend browsing the web, watching a movie, doing things like that.
And what you want is you want to be able to view your iPad from an reclined angle. And in particular, if you're all the way reclined, if you're lying in bed, you want the table to be kind of angled towards you, which his a very difficult angle to get for most cases. And that's where Tablift comes in. It's one of the most popular iPad accessories on Amazon. It's really successful, I use it, I love it. And so make sure you check it out.
Donna: Can I just add what I love about Tablift.
David: Yeah.
Donna: I like to recline and lie on my side and there's no such thing as a tablet stand that can accommodate that, except for Tablift. And that's [crosstalk 00:02:13].
David: It's really inconvenient, yeah. So go to iPhonelife.com/podcast we'll have a link to it, or if you go to Amazon and you can just search Tablift. T-a-b-l-i-f-t.
Donna: And there you go. Next we wanna share with you our daily tip of the week. If you go to iPhonelife.com/dailytips you can sign up for our free newsletter and we highly recommend that you do, 'cause that way you can learn something cool you can do with your device in just one minute every day. So it's a really low commitment and it's completely free and you'll be learning all kinds of cool things. So I chose the daily tip this week that will help you the best is getting ready for iOS 12. At the Apple announcement Tim Cook will presumably let us know when you can install iOS 12 on your device. That does take up storage space on your device, so it's good to prepare for that and have at least like two to three gigabytes free for iOS 12 before you install it.
And so this week's tip is how to delete old backups in iCloud and that's probably the first thing I'd recommend doing before you go through and bother with looking through your photos and things like that, and your message threads, to get rid of stuff. So you can just go to your settings app, go to iCloud and check your backups. And there you'll see you may have an old backup for a device that you don't really need it anymore, and so you can just delete that and that can free up a few gigabytes of space.
David: It's one of those things I think Apple needs to do a better job of handling for us, but they don't. And so this, I find, a really valuable tip because what happens is, you have an iPhone, you back it up on iCloud and then you wipe it, you sell it. But that backups still stays there and it can take up two or three gigabytes, you're not using it, you don't even own the device anymore. You have no need for this backup. But most people don't think to go look, so make sure you go look. You're perfectly safe to delete old backups from devices you weren't using.
You of course wanna make sure you at least have the latest backup before installing a new operating system, but everything else, just delete.
Donna: Yeah, and one question, when this tip ran a couple weeks ago. One question we had from our reader was that if you delete it on one device, will it delete it from all devices? And the answer is, yes. So for instance, if you go in and you go into your iCloud settings you'll see backups for all of you iOS devices, so if you have an iPad for instance, you'll see the backup for the iPad too. And if you delete it there, and you're viewing it on your iPhone, it will also delete that backup. It's just deleting it from iCloud.
Sarah: So don't do that if you're still using your iPad. You wanna have at least one current backup so that if something happens you can restore you iPad.
Donna: So yeah, you want to keep backups in iCloud for all of your different devices.
David: And one more point on this, just to plea to everybody to please have automatic backup turned on. I can't tell you how many people I come across who are too lazy to manage this, or they don't wanna spend the extra money to get new storage, but they need new storage. So they just don't automatically backup their phone. Don't be one of those people who has to go on Facebook and say, I lost all my contacts.
Sarah: Yeah.
David: All you need to do, is backup your phone automatically and you keep all your contacts, you keep all your settings, everything. And so make sure you're backing up.
Sarah: I think, you know you can get ... I can't remember what the tier is for like a dollar a month, 99 cents a month. But you can get for $12 a year it seems worth it to me to have that extra storage so that if you lose your phone, if you break your phone, you have all your things. Your photos, your contacts, those things to me are worth more than $12 a year.
David: Yup.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: So I know a lot of people are, of course they tell me, 'cause I encounter so many people who don't have their iPhones on automatic iCloud backup. But they just don't wanna pay that extra 99 cents a month for that beginning tier and they also have not managed their photos well, so they don't have enough storage, iCloud storage, to back their phones up. And I just, I think it's really worth it.
David: I live in fear on their behalf.
Sarah: Especially because they're not managing their photos in a way that allows them to save them somewhere else, 'cause that's a very sort of like hand in hand problem I found. You're really taking a risk with all those photos then if they're really important to you, you should first of all be backing them up somewhere. But also you should be paying for that storage.
David: We have an excellent workshop on photo management and whether to use iCloud or Google Photo. And there's a bunch of trade offs, we can maybe link to this. I love promising that Sarah will link to this. So you're welcome, Sarah. But the main point that I wanna make with that is, if you for some reason, if you really don't wanna pay that 99 cents a month, you can back up all your photos on Google Photo for free. Now there's a bunch of trade offs that we don't need to get into. You can watch the workshop. But that is an option for you as well if you wanna make sure your photos are backed up, but yet not be using iCloud backup for that.
Donna: Yeah, and the other thing is, I just was on vacation with a friend. And she's having the problem, she's totally happy to pay for iCloud storage, but she has a 16 gigabyte iPhone 6. And so she doesn't have the local storage to support those photos. And so one thing to check is to go into your iCloud settings and make sure under iCloud photos that you are optimizing photos on your device. And that just means that you're seeing a smaller lower res version on your iPhone and the larger versions being stored in iCloud.
Unfortunately, even with that she was still having storage problems. But that is one thing to check if you're having an issue of local storage versus your willing to pay for the iCloud storage.
David: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Good point.
Donna: Yeah. We had a comment from a listener that I'm really excited about and want to read to you guys. Lonnie Rodriguez wrote in after I mentioned a couple episodes ago that my first generation Apple Watch broke, meaning the screen popped off and he was saying that ... Let me read. My wife's back popped off, and this is the Apple watch back, popped off and at the time, this was a year ago and it was an unknown issue, so it wasn't covered under warranty. But Apple recently just extended their coverage for first generation Apple watches to three years now that they're aware of this. A swollen battery will make your display pop off, so this happened a couple weeks ago to his device.
And he was able to get it replaced for free.
David: Wow.
Sarah: Nice.
Donna: And so there's something I'm gonna look into or my first generation Apple watch.
David: I love this. I love that we now, our users are now providing us with tech support.
Donna: I know. Yeah. Thank you. So let's move on to insider. We have our premium subscription, iPhone Life Insider, as many of you know. And this is our full educational service with in depth guides, we're coming out with the iOS 12 guide as soon as the update is available. So that will help you learn all the new features. You get a digital archive of iPhone Life magazine, so you get all of our back issues, we have over 30 issues now. A video version of our daily tip and ask an editor, a feature that lets you connect with our experts to get answers to your tech questions.
So Sarah is our expert, and she is going to share how she helped out an insider.
Sarah: Well this is a really simple question, but apparently this is the day that we crowdsource information. 'Cause I wanted to bring up this question 'cause I felt like the more input the better. So the question was, what is the password manager you recommend for iPhone? Now I am lazy and I use Safari Keychain, but of course not everyone uses Safari or your not always using a Safari browser. So I probably should and probably other people should be using like a third party password manager. And I've heard really good things about Dashlane and 1Password, but in know you guys both use password managers as well, so I wanted to get your input.
Donna: Yeah, I really, I enjoy 1Password.
David: That's what I use too, 1Password, I love it.
Sarah: I'd love to hear from our listeners too what they use.
Donna: The one thing with 1Password is that with iOS 12 it's gonna be getting a lot better, 'cause now it will allow you to auto login to your apps. Whereas before it would just be through Safari or Chrome that you'd be able to auto login. Also though, Apple's own password management features are getting better.
David: They are.
Donna: With iOS 12. So in some ways that's just easier to use and you don't have to pay for it, so I'm actually considering just using Apple's going forward.
Sarah: Interesting.
Donna: 'Cause I don't know that I feel for paying for 1Password anymore.
Sarah: So, considering in less than a month we'll have the shipping version of iOS 12 it might be worth if you're considering getting a password manager, waiting and seeing what more other features we get for Safari Keychain.
Donna: Yeah, I think the biggest thing, it's really nice now in your settings app there's a section called accounts and passwords and there you'll see a full list of all of your logins. And you have that with iOS 11, but now it will also, with iOS 12, it will be a little exclamation point next to all of the ones that are duplicates. So it kind of calls you out on accounts that you've been using the same password for. And so then from that page you can go in and change your password, use one of the ones that Apple suggests, and then Apple will, you're iPhone will store that password for you and auto log you in anytime you go back there.
So it's really helping when you make the switch to have better practices with passwords. And so that's pretty awesome.
David: I think the main reason I like 1Pass, and I agree, I keep being tempted just to roll with Apple's functionality. But I use Chrome as my default browser on my computer, I'm pointing to my office if you're watching this. And I sometimes use Chrome and sometimes use Safari on my iPhone. And I like the fact that 1Pass is agnostic, so if you do use Apple's default password managers, especially if you use them to have them create passwords that you don't actually even remember anymore, which is of course the whole point of them. Then you're pretty stuck with using Safari everywhere, and using Apple's operating systems everywhere.
Donna: It's true.
David: And so that's the part that I don't love about it.
Sarah: Do you know what ends up happening for me, since I use Safari on my iPhone and all of my passwords are in Safari Keychain, and I use Chrome on my computer? I end up opening up the passwords thing in settings and like typing in, like reading from the passwords into my computer. The username and password.
Donna: Yes. [crosstalk 00:13:23].
Sarah: Which is the whole point is to make it easier right.
Donna: All right we're ready to jump into all the rumors for what to expect from Apple's announcement. First we wanna tell you, just give you an overview of what to expect in terms of when the announcement will be. I was doing a lot of reading yesterday and it's not basically we don't know 100%, but ever since the iPhone 4S, Apple has announced, had their big fall announcement the first or second week of September and it's always been a Tuesday or a Wednesday. And so most of the rumors that I was reading was saying Wednesday, September 12th. Sarah was saying September 11th some places. She's betting more on Tuesday, I'm betting more on Wednesday. We'll see who wins.
David: The good news is, I planned to be traveling on Monday. And yesterday I got really worried that I did not play the bet right. But I think, I'm hoping I'll be safe.
Donna: Yeah, I think hopefully.
Sarah: We'll find out next week for sure they'll probably issue the announcement at that point.
Donna: Yes.
David: And let's talk about why I'm worried about it, what our coverage is gonna be.
Donna: Yeah, so Apple's announcement also is usually at noon central time, or 10:00 a.m. Pacific time. So we always have our whole office here covering the event live and we're going to have, okay let's see. What do we have? We have a private Facebook group which we'll link to how to sign up for that at our show notes at iPhoneLife.com/podcast. And there we'll be having commentary throughout the event.
So David and I, our plan is to be as the even unfolds, giving you our commentary telling you, like giving you some context for what's being announced. And it's also a place where we really want our community to be able to come together and share and connect and also share what your take on the announcement is. So we'll be having a conversation there.
Right after the podcast we'll be having a-
Sarah: You mean right after the announcement.
Donna: Oh sorry, yeah. Right after the announcement we'll be having a live podcast. And so that's gonna be really fun. We'll send out emails to all of you so that you can join on Demio and watch the podcast live. You can be sending in your questions and comments live and we'll be answering. We'll also be posting that in the podcast app afterwards as usual, so if you can't attend live, you can always catch it later that night. Or that following week. We'll also be having on iPhoneLife.com we'll be having all of our analysis during and after the event. So am I missing anything?
Sarah: I'm not sure we're posting a whole lot of coverage during the event because it's mostly gonna be on the Facebook page, but immediately after we'll have roundups of everything thing that's been announced along with our take on what's been announced. And if you're on our newsletter mailing list you'll get a newsletter with all of those links to all of those articles.
Donna: Yeah.
David: A couple quick thoughts. First of all, if you aren't on the Facebook group, you wanna go sign up even if you aren't available to follow along for the announcement. It's a really great community where you can crowd source your questions, just like we do sometimes. And if you have any questions you can post them to the group. You can help other people in the group. It's really fun, so make sure you sign up for that it's totally free.
Donna: It's iPhone Life Group, so if you just search for that in Facebook you can find it.
David: Yes, iPhone Life Group, or we will link to it if you go to iPhoneLife.com/podcast, we'll link to it in the show notes. Second of all, we did the live podcast for WWC and it was a lot of fun, so make sure if you're available you tune in for that. One of the things in general that we're gonna try to do in the Facebook group, in the podcast, in the post announcement coverage, is to really give our editorial expert take on it. 'Cause we know you guys can follow along the announcement yourself. You can get the news anywhere in terms of what iPhones are gonna be announced. To be honest, we'll tell you right now what's gonna be announced and it'll probably be true. But we'll try to give you kind of our expert takes about whether it's worth it.
So that's one of the things we do in the podcast each time as we have a debate about whether you should upgrade or what you should upgrade to. What devices are worth the money, those types of questions. So it's one of my favorite podcast to do of the year.
Sarah: Are we gonna do a, which iPhone should you get debate, David?
David: I think we are, David versus Sarah, round like 18. I'm hoping I might win a round.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: I feel like whatever thing I argue I always end up getting the new iPhone.
David: I know. Well, yeah we always do.
Donna: The Facebook group's also a good place, like in the coming weeks we'll be posting all of the latest rumors. So if you're excited about the announcement it's a good place to get our pre-event coverage to.
David: I think the last point for you all is you can watch the Apple announcement. They live stream it, if you didn't know that, you can go to Apple.com at 12 o'clock central time, 10 o'clock Pacific time. You have to make sure you're on Safari. Apple TV has an app, so you can watch on your Apple TV as well, which is what we do. And we always do a pizza party, so if you all wanna do a pizza party as we are, go right ahead.
Sarah: I have a tip for this though. Make sure your Safari app is up to date or your Apple TV is up to date. You don't want it to suddenly start updating when you're trying to watch this.
Donna: I know.
David: We've had nightmare scenarios where all of a sudden we're updating our Apple TV as the announcement is happening. Everyone's panicking and wanting to see the announcement.
Sarah: And I think there's usually people have auto updates on, but it's worth checking. [crosstalk 00:18:55].
David: It's worth checking.
Donna: Okay, so the first product that we wanna talk about is the iPhone because that's really, for a lot of us, is the most exciting devices that we'll be seeing. So this is expected to be an S year for Apple, so last year was the tenth year anniversary of the iPhone, so we saw the iPhone 10, that was a huge update. Like clearly Apple had been spending many years on some of these updates, including the face ID and wireless charging and all of that. So this year we're gonna see more incremental updates. The form factor is expected to stay somewhat similar on the iPhones. You're not gonna see anything crazy different, but there will be internal updates.
Feel free to jump in.
David: Yeah, well first of all, so we did a rumor roundup probably about a month ago. What I'll say is, most of these rumors are the same as then, but they're being much more confirmed. So Forbes, it was just yesterday, had a huge dump of rumors that seemed pretty accurate and pretty reliable. So that's what we're basing this off of. Like Donna's saying, it's gonna be an S year, so there's gonna be kind of incremental updates. But one of the cool things is, I think there's gonna be three different iPhones this year.
Donna: Yeah.
David: So they're going to have the same iPhone 10 update that ... They're gonna take the iPhone 10 that they had last year and just update the specs a little bit and that'll be one of the updates. The other thing they'll do is, I don't know what they're gonna call it, probably the 10 plus. Well it's gonna be the 10S.
Donna: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:20:32]. The one that has the 5.8 inch display, like which is the same as this year's size, will just be updated with I think it's like camera and processor improvements most likely.
Sarah: So that would be the 10S.
Donna: The 10S.
David: Yes.
Donna: And then what you're saying now, is there will be the 10 Plus or something like that for the larger one.
David: Yeah. And that'll be kind of replacing what we have had, which is the plus. What's nice about it is, if you take the form factor of the 8 Plus and then you make it edge to edge display, it's a huge display. Like you're gonna be walking around with a really big display. And they're gonna apparently do a nice job, I've read, their planning a lot of ability to multi-task. So you can do, if you go portrait mode, you can-
Donna: Landscape.
David: Landscape, yeah thanks. If you go landscape mode you can have a lot of kind of, like they've had in the Plus in years past. A lot more functionality to take advantage of the larger screen, it'll presumably have a huge battery which is really nice.
Donna: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David: And then the one I'm most excited about will be, I don't know what they're gonna call it to be honest, but it'll be a cheaper version. But it'll still be edge to edge display. I think it will still have-
Donna: Face ID.
David: Face ID, but it will not have an OLED display. Which I live OLED display, but it's the most expensive part of the phone and you don't need it. Like there's no reason you need it, so it's a really, in my opinion, a really nice compromise from a lot of people who still want the edge to edge display, who want a lot of these great features, but don't really need the extra extra high quality.
Donna: Yeah. What I'm excited about most about this year's update is that not that many people I know bought the iPhone 10 'cause I think there were enough question marks, like will Face ID work? Do I wanna spend the money? That I feel like this is a good update for people to buy one of these devices who have been waiting to buy a new device for a while, 'cause it'll be more refined than last year's iPhone 10. I love my iPhone 10. So I don't think I feel the need to update this year. Upgrade this year.
But I think, like for the people that I know who've been holding out for a couple years, or longer, this is a good year to buy something. And maybe they wanna get the LCD display one and save a few hundred dollars.
David: Now, a couple things. Well the LCD display, do you know, will that one have the camera?
Donna: The dual camera?
David: Yeah.
Donna: Ah.
David: Do we know that yet?
Donna: I'm struggling to remember. Hold on one second, let's come back to that. I'm gonna check on that.
David: I mean the next point though is, this is a loss for people who love the home button and love touch ID. And certainly we have mixed feelings-
Donna: Single rear facing camera.
David: Single rear facing and so to me that kills it. I love the dual camera. I love the portrait mode. [crosstalk 00:23:28].
Sarah: Gotta have those new emojis.
David: Gotta have the [crosstalk 00:23:30].
Donna: Some people won't care though.
David: 'Cause you have Face ID.
Sarah: Oh okay.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: It'll still have the front facing true depth camera.
Donna: Yeah. I don't know that I would care that much about the dual camera, to be honest.
David: I know but, I really ... Well, we'll wait for David versus Sarah. But I really wanna argue that everybody should care, that we should all care more about cameras because none of us carry nice cameras around anymore. This is our primary camera. These are valuable memories people.
Donna: Yeah, I mean, portrait mode is not perfect, but there are a lot of settings where it does create a really nice effect. And then the two times zoom.
David: The two times zoom.
Donna: Not losing any resolution when you zoom in.
David: Is really nice.
Donna: Is really great.
David: Yeah.
Donna: So there is that. Okay, so other rumors. I was reading yesterday that none of the new devices will have 3D touch. I had heard that before for the budget phone, I thought that was a budget decision. But that's really interesting, to me that's an admission that 3D touch-
Sarah: Is stupid.
Donna: Is kind of a flop.
David: Definitely it is an admission that it's a flop.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: I mean, there's nothing you can do with 3D touch that you can't do just with a long press. You know, so like why do you need 3D touch?
David: Yeah. I have mixed feelings about 3D touch. I don't know that I dislike it, but the problem is it's a very un-intuitive UI. And Apple specializes in intuitive user interfaces. UI stands for user interface by the way. And especially on Apple Watch, but on all my devices I'm constantly discovering things that I can do with 3D touch that I didn't even realize. And that's the whole point, when you have a button on your phone, you know that you can tap that button and you can generally get a decent idea of what it'll do. But 3D touch it just feels like hidden features that there's no indication that what it'll do or that I can 3D touch something.
Donna: Yeah, and like the 3D touch shortcuts for apps I never use, like you can hard press on an app and get like a little menu of extra options. But none of it feels that essential. Okay, Sarah uses them.
Sarah: It's a great way to share an app, you just like 3D touch the app icon and then there's a share icon and you can be like, here's the app I was talking about.
David: See.
Sarah: And text it to someone.
David: But that's a good tip, but that's the whole point. I didn't even know that existed.
Sarah: That's because you don't read our daily tips, David. [crosstalk 00:25:42].
David: There's a thousand of them, they're hard to keep track of. And I never knew that.
Donna: Another rumor, I actually wasn't aware that the rumor was that some of these new iPhones would have Apple pencil support, but the latest rumors are saying the new devices will not have Apple pencil support. This one was interesting 'cause I could see how people would be super excited about this new huge iPhone with the 6.5 inch display and all these extra multi tasking features you mentioned in landscape mode, but you might also want the Apple pencil. So I don't know. It doesn't sound like Apple's gonna do that.
Sarah: That's a shame. I mean so many people are insane about the iPhone mini, I mean not the iPhone, the iPad mini. It's kind of a bit like how Apple had to make an iPhone SE for all the people who were holding onto their smaller iPhones.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: I don't know that-
Donna: It's like little cults.
Sarah: I've had many people who are gonna willingly switch to that really big iPhone?
David: Yeah, I mean so what Sarah's alluding to is one of the iPad rumors is that they're gonna kill off the iPad mini altogether.
Sarah: Yeah, that they're not updating it further. But yeah, people love their iPad minis. [crosstalk 00:26:50].
Donna: So what was your point with the Apple pencil though?
Sarah: I feel like they need to give ... I can see Apple making the Apple pencil be an iPad only thing because they sometimes will do that with certain functionalities. But I think they should give those iPad mini people a really big iPhone with Apple pencil support.
Donna: So those people have somewhere to go.
Sarah: You don't have Apple pencil support on the iPad mini, to be fair. But you know, if they were updating the iPad mini, like they probably would give that functionality. The most recent, just regular iPad has it.
David: I mean, part of the problem with the getting rid of the iPad mini is that the iPhone 10S Plus or whatever name they're gonna call it, sorry I'm just annoyed at Apple's marketing. It's gonna be the most expensive device by far. I mean it's probably gonna be 12-13 hundred bucks. And so the iPad mini part of the appeal was, it was a cheaper iPad. You were paying 300 bucks for this and so now you're replacing a $300 item with an $1,300 item. So I agree with you, I don't think people who love their iPad mini are gonna be happy with the iPhone whatever.
Sarah: I also feel like the iPad mini is a really great option to have for a child to use because it is inexpensive. You know, you don't need them, a small child to have like cellular capabilities. You can put it in a really tough case and they can play games or watch YouTube videos, appropriate YouTube videos. So I'm hoping that just for the iPad mini people that they at least do a sort of basic upgrade. A little bit of an upgrade just so that's there's something faster.
David: Everything I've read says they're not going to.
Sarah: I know. Me too.
Donna: I think we've wrapped up the iPhone rumors pretty much, so we could just hand it over to David to tell us what the iPad rumors are.
Sarah: I wanna complain about one thing.
David: Okay.
Donna: Okay.
Sarah: I think it's very unlikely, but I'm still really mad about Apple's naming convention this year because there's the iPhone 10, which is a roman numeral and then there's the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which are arabic numerals. And I disapprove of that mixing of different types of numerals. And now there's a rumor which I believe is not true, but still makes me mad. That an iPhone X2, which really doesn't make sense because-
David: Oh my god.
Sarah: Yeah, it makes me mad just thinking about it. It's not true, it won't happen. But if it does, like you will hear me screaming from the iPhone [crosstalk 00:29:14].
Donna: I feel like it's like Sarah's worst nightmare.
David: If this happens we will live stream Sarah's scream in the Facebook group. Your welcome.
Sarah: I really doubt this will happen even though Apple has really dumb naming conventions.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: But you know, just in case I want everyone to know how wrong it is. If you even think about this possibility.
Donna: Sometimes both of Apple's marketing copy and their naming conventions, I feel like they're just kind of thumbing their nose like, we can get away with this because we're Apple. But this is so stupid.
David: Yeah, they're almost like showing off.
Donna: Yeah.
David: We can come up with the dumbest naming convention possible.
Donna: Most pretentious marketing copy too.
David: And call it courage. [crosstalk 00:29:54].
So the latest rumor is the same rumors that we talked about last time but I'm gonna update you all again because they seem to be very confirmed now. Which is we're gonna have two updated versions of the iPad Pro, really excited about it. It's gonna be edge to edge display. Face ID. It's not gonna have an O-LED display. I don't know, do you guys say O-LED or OLED?
Donna: You can just do either.
David: Either one.
Donna: Yeah I looked it up because I didn't wanna be saying it wrong in the podcast. [crosstalk 00:30:23].
David: What I'm doing right now. Yeah. So it's not going to have that, which is expected because OLED displays are really expensive. [crosstalk 00:30:32]. The largest part of the iPad.
Donna: So expensive.
David: Yeah, exactly. And so it would be just cost prohibitive. But the two models they're gonna take the 10.5 inch form factor, leave the same form factor, but make it edge to edge display which will make an 11 inch screen on the 10.5 inch form factor that they have now. But they're gonna take the 12.5 inch screen and they're gonna actually shrink the form factor. So you're gonna end up with an 11 inch display and a 12.5 inch display, which means the iPad Pro 12.5 inch will be smaller. Which I think those are both the right decisions. I think that-
Donna: Yeah, 'cause the current iPad Pro feels huge.
David: It's unruly. The 12.5 inch it's like one of those comedy skits where you're walking around with something that's just way to large.
Donna: Yeah, I agree.
David: So I think those are basically the rumors. I was reading ... Oh and this actually ties into another thing with the iPhone that I wanna talk about because it's scandalous. So first we're on the iPad, they are apparently planning on getting rid of the headphone jack.
Donna: What?
David: So queue all the tears and the world's smallest violin.
Donna: Yeah, that seems [crosstalk 00:31:43].
Sarah: Courage David. Dig deep for that courage.
David: I stand by their decision. Are you guys ready though? I'm gonna skip back to the iPhone.
Donna: Yeah, I'm ready for your scandalous one.
David: The rumor that they're going to switch from a lightening cable to a USB [crosstalk 00:31:55].
Sarah: Oh yes I've heard that too and I meant to mention it, I forgot.
David: Yeah.
Donna: Really?
David: Yeah.
Donna: Interesting.
David: Which is going ... I mean people will lose their minds. And I'm gonna sit here, I actually think that it's the right decision and I hate to say it.
Donna: Well so you're MacBook Pro has USB-C [crosstalk 00:32:11].
David: 'Cause the MacBook Pro has USB-C [crosstalk 00:32:12].
Donna: MacBook Pros do.
David: So it's just real quick, USB-C is kind of the latest model of USB. It's a really think USB, so it looks very similar to-
Donna: To lightening.
David: To lightening. It's reversible like lightening, you can plug it in either way. The annoying thing about the original USB's was that you could only plug it in, in one direction.
Donna: I hate that.
David: And yeah, the Mac's use it, which his really annoying. And to quick charge your iPhone, you need a USB-C to lightening cable. Which is annoying. And most of the modern Android phones use it as well, so it would be pretty awesome because when you go into a hotel, when you have anytime you're using charging cables Android people and iPhone people can finally get along.
Donna: That would be nice.
Sarah: I was just sitting here thinking like, I can share chargers.
Donna: Yeah.
David: And it's like, when they switched and got rid of the headphone jack I feel like most people switched all of their audio to wireless anyway. Obviously not everyone, but most people did. We have wireless charging now. So I think it won't practically be as big of a deal, but I think people will lose their mind.
Donna: Yeah.
Sarah: So are you suggesting then that for the iPad they will get rid of the headphone jack and just go straight to USB-C 'cause it would be weird to just-
Donna: Oh no I think it had lightning on the iPad and USB-C-
David: The iPhone and the iPad won't match, that I guarantee. If they have USB-C in the iPad they'll have it in the Mac and vice versa. I shouldn't guarantee anything but [crosstalk 00:33:45].
Sarah: How are you able to guarantee us, David? Like tell me more.
David: My mind tells me.
Sarah: Yeah, the voices in your head.
David: Yeah. That summarizes my iPad rumor roundup. There's a couple other just quick things. There's some rumors that they might update the Apple pencil, which would be nice. I've also heard rumors that they might move the keyboard location. I got a little confused about what they were doing and why when I read this. I only read it in one source, so I don't have a lot of information for you there. But they might do a new smart keyboard and they might change the way that it docks. So we'll see.
Sarah: Would they finally have like a portrait orientation docking?
David: Yes, that's what I'm hearing.
Sarah: That would be amazing.
David: Portrait orientation docking.
Sarah: Hmm. That's something that's really annoying about iPad Pros.
Donna: Sarah tell us about the Apple watch.
Sarah: I love the Apple watch in case you're listening for the first time and haven't heard me mention that in every single episode. Most of the rumors are the same, we just have more details. The price is expected to be pretty much the same or just a very small bump. So I said last time we talked about this that I expected the Apple case size to be the same. And now the rumors seem to be confirming that because I've heard that you'll be able to use your old Apple watch bands with the new Apple watch. So that's good news.
David: But bigger screens?
Sarah: Right. Yes. So we have been hearing about bigger screens because of smaller bezels. And now we're hearing specifically it could be anywhere from 15 to 30% bigger.
David: That's pretty cool.
Sarah: What do you think about having, I mean, if it's 30% bigger, if there's really no bezel, I feel like the odds of something brushing against the side of your screen and causing problems gets bigger.
David: I mean they do. When they did this with the iPad they had basically in their software a kind of the ability to detect whether it was an intentional push or not. It's not perfect but it does help with that. But I don't know.
Sarah: Definitely doesn't work. I wear my Apple watch in the shower and I'm constantly it's discovering that I'm tracking a workout or deleting a song from my music library just because of drops of water falling on it. Okay, so other rumors are sleep tracking, which I talked about before. It seems fairly likely and improved heart rate monitoring. I don't think we're gonna see glucose monitoring in this iteration, but it's a possible future thing.
And related to that, we're supposed to have a bigger battery, because you need good battery life.
Donna: That would be great.
Sarah: I mean this one, the Apple watch 3 has really good battery life. Especially when i do a workout I can go a couple days or a day and a half. But if you're gonna do sleep tracking you need an even better battery. And I also, slightly related, doubt that the Apple watch will be thinner. The Apple watch 4. And here's a new one, apparently Apple is expected to get rid of the mechanical buttons and replace them with solid state buttons similar to the home button on the iPhone 7 and 8. So there will be sort of like a haptic feedback when you touch it, but it won't actually mechanically be doing anything. Which would improve the waterproof rating of the Apple watch as well.
David: Oh cool.
Donna: Cool.
Sarah: And it would also leave a little more room inside for a bigger battery or other components. So that's exciting.
David: Can I tell you which rumor I've heard that I'm the most excited about and might actually finally inspire me to update or upgrade? That they will allow third party apps to have audio.
Sarah: That would be very exciting.
David: Because as is well established if you're a regular podcast listener, I use Spotify. I have an Apple watch, there's not Spotify app and so therefore when I workout I still have to carry around my iPhone with me because I can't just download the music on Spotify. And podcasts. They're gonna support podcasts.
Sarah: Yes. That's a watch OS5 thing, but yes.
David: Oh okay. Well I'm very excited.
Sarah: We all are. That's very important. So other things that seem a little unlikely to me is the rumor that there will be Face ID on the Apple watch.
Donna: That would be so cool.
David: That would be crazy.
Sarah: I don't think it's gonna happen, at least not now. And also the idea that there might be smart bands. I don't think that we're gonna see that from Apple. I feel like some third party people have been playing with that a little bit, so maybe we'll see something eventually, but I don't think that's happening this time around.
Let's see, any other things? Oh this is only slightly related, but it's exciting to me. We might see an air power, you know the charging pad [crosstalk 00:38:31] iPhone air pods and Apple watch at once. You know they talked about this, was it last year?
Donna: Yeah. Last fall.
Sarah: And said that we'd get it in 2018. Well, you know it's been almost a year, it's still 2018. But it's time Apple. It's time.
David: I think they said early 2018 actually.
Sarah: Yeah, we're definitely beyond that. Yeah, so hopefully fingers crossed we can get that. And I think that's it for me as far as Apple watch goes. Do you guys ... Have I covered any ... Missed any rumors you guys have heard?
David: No.
Donna: No. I'll update you guys about the air pods. I'm pretty disappointed about the rumors for the air pods. I had the original air pods, lost them and have been waiting for this fall announcement to buy new air pods. So the latest sources Bloomberg had sources that they shared some information about this week. And basically the air pods 2 were originally slated for 2018 and this would be water resistant, noise canceling, have wireless charging and they'd be a little more expensive. That's now expected for 2019.
But what they're saying is that there may be a 2018 version that has hands free Siri. Right now you have to tap on your air pods to summon Siri. Unless you have your iPhone within range. So there might be 2018 air pods that have that as well as wireless charging, so they would work with this air power charger. [crosstalk 00:39:59].
All the rumors are saying that most likely the air pods will work with any Qi wireless charger that you won't have to have the special air power mat, which that was really good to hear.
David: Yeah.
Donna: But yeah, I was really bummed to hear this 'cause I don't know that hands free Siri and wireless charging alone, like I might wanna wait if I know in 2019 they could also be water resistant, meaning they'd be better for working out. It wouldn't mean you'd wanna go swimming with them, but if you're gonna run in the rain and if you're just gonna sweat on them they'll be fine. Noise cancellation is awesome. I mean I love the noise canceling headphones that I do have, so that would be really great.
But the version for this year would be the same 159 price tag, whereas next year's ones would be more expensive. So this has left me is sort of a conflict of what I will do. So there may be two air pods, but likely if there's just one for early 2019. Probably Apple will announce that at the fall announcement, but they won't be available for a few months.
There's also a rumor of a 2019 over ear headphones from Apple that would just be a higher end version of the Beats headphones. 'Cause as you all know Apple bought Beats. And that would be interesting so it'd probably be more expensive than Beats. Be Apple branded, but would be very similar to Beats headphones. Which I don't know, I'm not as excited about that personally. What about you guys?
Sarah: I don't know, I've never been a huge fan of Beats. I think they're not the best quality. On the other hand, Apple's so good about their warranties and so my daughter got, you know in one of those promotions for college students, she got a pair of Beats with her Mac. And just before the year was up something happened to them and she got like a brand new pair.
David: Oh nice.
Sarah: So that's nice. Which actually you can do with our ear pods too. 'Cause you know the ones that come with ... And your iPhone cables, all those ones that really suck and that come from Apple, you can actually if they get wrecked before the end of your warranty you can get them replaced.
David: To be honest, I don't know that I care about noise cancellation. 'Cause I love have a pair of noise canceling headphones, but those to me are my over ear headphones. When I travel I always use Bluetooth over ear headphones with noise cancellation. They're a lifesaver. But when I'm going for a run or when I'm just kind of using my headphones around the house, I still use my ear pods as opposed to, I have a bunch of nicer headphones that I could use, but I actually like being able to have the ambient noise. I like if somebody wants to talk to me I can still, I can hear that they're talking to me. If I'm working out, I'm going for a run, I like I can hear cars.
Donna: All right, so I think it's time to recap what you can expect from Apple's event. First of all the date is likely going to be Tuesday, September 11th or Wednesday the 12th at noon central time or 10:00 a.m. Pacific time. You wanna make sure to go sign up for our Facebook group so you can get our commentary throughout the event. Just search iPhone Life Group in Facebook and you can signup there. Also, go to iPhoneLife.com/podcast 'cause we'll have links there to all the other coverage we're gonna have.
And in terms of devices we'll likely get three new iPhones, all have Face ID, all have edge to edge displays. Two new iPad Pros, same story there. And Apple watches with larger displays but keeping the same form factor size which is great. And air pods, hopefully we'll get air pods in 2018, but we'll just have to wait and see on that.
And yeah, we're all so excited. We really hope that you follow our coverage because we're putting a lot of planning into it and are just gonna help you make sense of everything Apple announces in a couple of weeks. I can't believe it's only two weeks away.
David: I know.
Donna: Just talking about the air pods, it seems like a good time to introduce these. Our second sponsor of this episode, Earin. That also is [crosstalk 00:43:53] wireless earbuds.
David: They have true wireless and if you do not want to wait for the noise canceling air pods these are perfect for you. And these are honestly, they're so great. So Earin, these are the M2's, this is the second version. Earin was one of the first people to market with truly wireless ear buds. And I'm gonna do a little unboxing for you all here. And what makes them great in my opinion is not only are they sleek, truly wireless, but they focus on sound quality more than anything else. And I love that.
Sarah: Their sound quality is crystal clear.
David: Yeah, I love that because I feel like a lot of the truly wireless headphones in this space focus on other types of features. Like I have a pair that have a heart rate monitor. That's fine if you wanna use them exclusively to workout, but for the most part I'd rather have my wireless headphones focus on sound quality. They're really sleek, they come in this cool little case which also charges it. I'm gonna pull them out you can see just how little they are.
Sarah: They are by far the smallest. I mean, my favorite pair of wireless ear buds, besides for working out because you can't workout with these, look like I'm Frankenstein's monster like with the bolt sticking out of my head. These just disappear. Like looking straight on, you can necessarily even see that they're in your ear.
Donna: Yeah for those of you listening and not watching, I'd say they're about the size of like an almond. That's what it looks like.
David: Yeah they're tiny and they're light, which is really important. And they have amazing sound quality and they're super sleek. So make sure you check them out, we'll link to it or you can go to Earin.com. E-a-r-i-n.
Donna: Right, thanks David. So this wraps up our episode. As I just mentioned you can follow all our coverage, go to iPhoneLife.com/podcast to see all of the links there. And we're really excited to interact with you guys on the day of the event. And let us share your commentary with us too in the Facebook group. And we will see you at the live podcast if you can manage to attend right after the even, September 11th or 12th, we will be here. So in two weeks we'll see you.
David: Thanks everyone.
Sarah: Thanks.
Donna: Thanks.
