Is Apple bringing back the iPhone with a metal back? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 113)

WIFI is something you don't really think about until you don't have to, or you don't have it, and it's not working properly, video's buffering, you've got WIFI dead zones. Everyone is home for the holidays, guess what, they're fighting for your WIFI. So So when did you last upgrade your Wi-Fi at home? If you just want better Wi-Fi everywhere, check out Orbi's Wi-Fi system from Netgear. With Orbi you'll enjoy super strong, fast, and more reliable home Wi-Fi from your basement To your backyard. From the basement to the yard. Change your WiFi world get orbi that;s O-R-B-I WiFi system from net gear, visit netgear.com/orbi that's O-R-B-I. Yo ****, let's get to the show. [BLANK_AUDIO] Here we go. [LAUGH] Three, two. Get on this thing. Here we go. Three, two. [MUSIC] Hello everybody on the planet Earth. My name is Steven Beachum producer for the Apple Byte Extra Crunchy podcast. With your host Mr. Bryan Tau. What's everybody. Welcome to the show. It is episode 113 Apple Byte Extra Crunchy keeping it munchy. We've got all you munchies in the chat rooms going off right now. We also want to let you know, just if you want to be a part of this amazing show because you're the ones that make it pop. Call us whenever you want, any time of the day something pops into your mind and you're like, you know when you do your best thinking in the shower? Yeah. I'm not saying think about us in the shower, but you might be. [LAUGH] I know some of you all are like that. But just call us at 1-800-616-2638, tell us your name, where you're from. We got some great calls this week. Just some really good, thoughtful calls, and we love that because it just adds to the texture of the show. So, yeah, let's just jump into and I think, obviously, the biggest news this week and we will have a new news. This is our complementary piece of the Apple bite video pod cast. The big news this week without a doubt to me Apple TV finally, finally gets the Amazon prime video app. You can go to your Apple TV right now, check it out, install it, see what it's all about. Look some of the comments I read made me laugh, people are like who cares about shows on Amazon Prime? What are you talking about? No, no I'm serious, there's people out there that look those same type of people are the people that are like Google sucks. Samsung sucks. They're like on one platform. They don't think that there's anything else better out there. And I'm like there's amazing shows. There's so many legit free movies. I'm stupid. I just paid to watch or to rent Arrival maybe two weeks ago and then I turned on, thanks Amazon Prime for getting the app out late I turn on Amazon Primes' video app and guess what's one of the free videos because I'm a prime member? Arrival. Bro, I watched that weeks ago yeah [LAUGH] It's great [LAUGH] Come on man, seriously? Yeah it's on Amazon Prime. They have awesome documentaries too. There's a lot of great stuff on Amazon Prime, kids tv shows a lot of them. [CROSSTALK] My boy Gil Cabrera loves Grand Tour. Season two coming out from the guys. The Top Gear family. That's worth watching if you're into that. I know, I think Amazon Prime was the first to roll out The Wire, one of the greatest TV shows of all time in HD. on their service as well, so just kind of cool stuff like that. Anyways, check it out. I want to know if you guys like it or not, but there's plenty. Free content is free content. I don't know what anyone's complaining about. Yeah. What's the problem here? Also, updates to TVOS flew in here. We have TVOS 11.2 What does that help do? The cool thing is that the Apple Tv now does with this TVOS, I'm sorry I'm jumping around a second, the Amazon Prime Video app supports 4k and HDR content which is cool. And also, it is plugged into Apples up next feature. In the TV app, and for those of you who're like what is in the TV App, Apple has this kinda like a watch App that queues up after it's connected like anything you watch on iTunes or movies or Tv Shows. Thing like my CW app, and so I have to plug in the amazon video app is plugin. It will show you where you left off on your most recent show and videos and movies. And you jump into it. It is weird that they call it the tv app because you watch movies and tvs on the tv app. I always find it to be a confusing name, you should not even call that, call something different Yeah. I don't know. This kind of confusing. Yeah. Also, no longer confusing the actual Apple TV app, is now available for users in the UK, France and Germany. That wasn't the case. Initially, it rolled out in the US and then I believe Australia was getting it early as well but, This comes down to like rights, internet companies and distribution for content. UK, France, and Germany almost a year after Apple announced the service it's now available for you guys on your AppleTV. [CROSSTALK] I know they are happy about that. I know they are happy about that [LAUGH]. [INAUDIBLE] apples already. The other thing that I did jump a head to accidentally is with tvOS 11.2. We saw a lot of software updates, we will get some more of that. But tvOS 11.2 brings couple new features to the apple tv as well. There is this new HDR feature and frame rate feature. Basically in the video settings, you can select to match the original content, and what was happening in the first run of Apple TV is about two months ago when they first launched it, content that was not in HDR. That was like. Maybe even something like watching Batman The Dark Knight through an app. Because it wasn't an A star it was trying to artificially create this high dynamic range and the images are really blown out. It looked really crappy so now you can actually choose for it to max the content which is a good thing. You wanna switch that on. And then the other feature you have is to match the frame rate. And that's also important because then content that is shown Will show in its native framerate. That makes a difference when you're watching TV shows to movies, and other types of content whether it's on YouTube or whatnot so that's good to know. Although, YouTube still doesn't show 4K content on the Apple TV. They need to fix that ASAP. Yeah. Still cannot watch 4k content on YouTube. What are they doing? Aren't they in a little battle right now? YouTube and was it YouTube and who was it? Amazon. It was Amazon and YouTube. Sorry. My bad. Yep. YouTube and Amazon are pooping on each other. Right now, YouTube is not allowing Fire TV products to get access to the YouTube app anymore. It basically doesn't work because Amazon is being a D bag, and they're not selling Google Home. And I believe they're not selling the nest as well? But definitely, they're not selling Google Home products which stream video. So they're just basically pissed off at each other cuz they're both dumb. They should just make it happen. But they did a similar thing with Apple. When they were promoting their fire TV's, Amazon Took off Apple TV's and Chromecast from Amazon, and prevented them from being sold. And then basically trying to force people to be like the Fire TV platform's the only one that's out there. Yeah, we're smarter than that. [LAUGH] So people complained, and then Apple TV and Chromecast ended up. Actually, it's just Apple TV Is back on the Amazon storefront. I'm still waiting for Amazon to get Chromecast support and I feel like that's never gonna happen. So I guess I have to get a Fire TV, but whatever. Don't you have a Fire already? I don't have Fire TV but I have a Kindle. Prime and all that stuff. You're the man in Amazon ecosystem bro. I'm in all of them. Apple, Google, Amazon. I'm in all of them. Like a little bit in each of them. What about Netflix? You still not on Netflix bro? Hell no. But I'm accepting Netflix gifts for Christmas. I am accepting that. Hey, check this out. This is the first time I've ever heard this comment in the Periscope chatroom. Owlrisotto5 says there's a skunk on my head. [LAUGH] First time I've ever heard that. First time. All right, let's get into iPhone news. This one's kind of cool. Not a surprise because this has happened muliple years. Flickr Posted their top devices of 2017 based on what devices are posting. Obviously, they're great photos. It's kinda Flickr's year-end review. The top device types in 2017, number one taking 50% of that chunk is smartphones. Number two at 33%, DSLR cameras. Number three, at 12%, point and shoot cameras. Wow. Probably my mum. [LAUGH] And then number four, at 4%, mirrorless cameras, which are on the rise without a doubt. You'be got like the Sony A7 line and up. Mirrorless cameras are on the rise and are amazing But they have to become like buzz worthy to the general consumer yet. If you wanna talk about the top brands in 2017 using flicker, 54% of users posting for the photos were Apple, 23% were Cannon and 18% were Nikon. Hm. So this is really just There's no android in there or Google or anything? Yea it didn't make that top list and I think the perception has been. Also if you think about it, its not that it could be Android, it would be like Samsung- Yeah, yeah Google, LG right? They didn't clump them together because that's not how they're identifying them in this survey. But, you know there's been this idea for years, and it was true, that the iPhone have the best camera. But, I think now you can argue in a lot, in a different ways, you know, depending on what you are looking for in a camera. The LGB30, probably has the most control you'll find in the camera. The Google pixel 2 camera has the best overall sensor. I even like how the pixel handles the portrait mode better than the iPhone in many cases, but again it comes down, it just depends, but look these are all great cameras, it kind of just comes down to what you're looking for. I mean, you guys in the chat might have a different idea, but at least according to Flicker the. Apple platform is the number one used top pecentage of photographers at 54%. it's kinda cool Yeah, it is cool Kinda interested, you know other iPhone used that i wished came earlier sim free iphones, unlocked sim free iphone 10s are not available from the apple online store in the US. This is a big deal. Everyone was looking for unlocked phones. Guess what? They ended up just aligning with the carrier that they wanted and so that's how the carriers were able to kind of benefit from that because if you get an unlocked phone, you're buying it directly from Apple. It's not dealing with any carriers and people were frustrated about that. There were kind of ways to go around that if you were technically a Verizon and Sprint Phones, really more of variety and you could essentially buy it, sign off for like a 3 gig data plan if you did it already. And then cancel the plan and then you could use that phone with other carriers. I think the main advantage here though to let people know is the unlock the version of the phone. Includes the Qualcomm modem. And we've talked about on this show, about the Intel modem performance versus the Qualcomm modem performance. How it first was an issue with the iPhone 7. And there's gonna be a lot of you that say who cares? You guys are only making a big deal about this. I don't think it's a big deal. I think it's actually important to know That one I guess type of version of the phone actually without a doubt, there is no doubt about it, performs better because of the modem inside. Apple has had this ongoing legal battle with Qualcomm. They complain that Qualcomm was price gouging them. Qualcomm says Apple is Throttling down their motor performance so it wasn't as good. And at the same time, Apple has every right to try and get their phones similar in performance with each other, but you got to check out this article from PC Mag. They did an exclusive with Cellular Insights. This is a company that broke down the performance. Of the Intel versus Qualcomm modems in the iPhone 7. And ultimately the data came back and Qualcomm's iPhone 10 modem still outpaces Intel. Now, what they're basically testing here is the speed of the LTE band 4 download speeds that you have. And in most cases when as they're reducing the signal power and basically the signal's getting weaker, you'll see how the qual com modem is always just edging the Intel modem, which is all right. But then when it comes down to really, really weak signals, and this is what I remember feeling from day one when I got the iPhone 7, Places where I had one bar or two bars of signal. I was able to easily get a signal on my previous iPhone sixes and all that.. But in San Francisco specifically, once I got to those areas with the iPhone seven, there were times I couldn't even get a signal or Little to no LTE data anymore and then reports had later come out that there were two different modems. The same thing is happening with the iPhone 10 and ultimately if you want the best performing, and it's not going to change be a big big difference, but it does still make a difference. Yeah. And it does still make a difference but Qualcomm powered intel modem is part number 81865, that's sold by Sprint, Verizon and US cellular. And the intel based modems, part number A1901 are from AT&T and T-mobile So the third model is A1902 is only sold in Japan but those are Intel-based modems. So that's just the bottom line, I'm not trying to like make you feel bad like you have a crappy iPhone, you don't. Well maybe you do. [LAUGH] But you don't have a bad iPhone, it's just that there's gonna be slight differences That are noticeable specifically when you're in a lower signal area, so just something to chill on. Yeah, I've definitely notice my phone, like I had better reception on like the iPhone 5 than I do with the iPhone 6. I felt like I'm losing connectivity, especially like going across the Bay Bridge every and stuff. Like there's definitely dead stops on the Bay Bridge that I would notice more now that I have this phone. So yeah, I mean, it's hard to say, but you know this is clear representation of that. and I'm curious if people are. We talk about on the show and people don't dispute us on that either because I feel that the listeners and the viewers are experiencing similar things and it's just something that you just know about And I'm not gonna get all mad and shake my fist at Apple because I'm on AT&T like, that it is what it is, I'm gonna move on but it's something that we should just point out and let people know, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's all. Because this is kinda like a little more nitty gritty Inside baseball stuff compared to what we do. On a normal show, all right, let's go over to talk about Apple Pay Cash, finally rolled out this week. Very cool. I notice a lot of people that I know haven't even activated the actual feature. Like, you have to flip the switch on to get Apple Pay Cash turned on. People kind of made fun cuz on my Twitter I told them about my experience. I don't care if people say shame on you, I never turned on two-factor authentication on my phone, so I had to do that. But also, I had to type in the last four digits of my social security number. Then I had to scan my driver's license, front and back. What? And then enter in my entire social security number. I was like, what