An Apple event... and a fond farewell

00:21 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from September the 10th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us, listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated stations of the Radio Reading Network or the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and [?Dana]... can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast.

With me for the last time on a regular basis, leading Australian blindness technologist David Woodbridge. David, welcome to what's really a pretty special program.

01:08 S2

Well, it's a special in a couple days, isn't it? Number one, it's sort of my last official regular, like you just said, last program. And number two, of course, it was all about the Apple keynote, which took place today as we go to air.

01:20 S1

And how fitting it is that this program is about an Apple event. Let's start with the event that happened at 3:00 this morning Australian time. Australian Eastern time. Firstly, your overall impression of the event itself.

01:37 S2

Yeah. Look, I mean as you saw, it's been pre-done. So it's been, you know pre-recorded. It's audio described which is really good. There was lots of information in there. Sometimes the audio description of course, which happened was a little bit too quick. And it's the same level as the rest of the audio. But overall it was a really good polished presentation from Apple. And they got all the marketing promo stuff in there very nicely. But yeah, look, if I was giving you a bit of a rating as far as content, I'd give it about a 8.5 out of ten.

02:09 S1

So if you'd like to go and listen to it, it runs for about an hour and a half. Mm. Lots of content there. Hardware devices were on centre stage, as it were - the Apple Watch, the AirPods, and the iPhones. Let's talk about those, starting with the Apple Watch series.

02:30 S2

Yeah, so effectively there's going to be two Apple Watch versions that at least what they talked about. So that's the Apple Watch 10 and also the Apple Watch Ultra which is the V2 version. And they were really talking about the fact that, and they did with this most of the stuff except for the AirPods that we'll get to in a minute. We're talking about the fact that it's thinner, lighter. The screen is slightly bigger, it's slightly brighter, it's slightly louder, nicer bands and all that sort of cool stuff. So as with most of the stuff that we'll talk about in the program today, it's incremental changes, which are actually quite good. 

So... I'd say if you're back at a sort of an Apple Watch, I'd say 8... then absolutely, it's definitely worthwhile updating it, particularly for low vision, because the the actual face of the watch is a lot easier to see in, in bright sunlight. And of course, at night time, it lowers the luminosity of the watch face so it doesn't glare at you. But no, look, it looked really good. One of the things that caught my attention about the Apple Watch 10, of course, which I've always wanted on my Apple Watch, is the fact that you can actually listen to media on the Apple Watch itself, because beforehand, of course, as we all know, you really need to use AirPods or whatever else to listen to music or audiobooks on the Apple Watch, but now you don't. 

And the other little thing that also caught my attention was the sleep apnea function. So that if you do suffer from sleep apnea or you don't, you don't even know that you've got it, as they pointed out. and then this will pick up if you've got breathing problems during the... night and I'll give you a report once a month. So that was quite fascinating as well.

04:22 S1

Now that won't be available straight away, but it will be in the coming weeks, hopefully in Australia soon.

04:27 S2

Correct. Yeah. And they did say that that will be available also on the previous Apple Watch, but not on the old ultra watch, the original one, but it will definitely be on the previous. What we now say is the Series 9 Apple Watch. So that was a really great thing to to have a chat about.

04:44 S1

We'll talk about dates later because they're the same across all the devices. Let's come to AirPods now.

04:50 S2

Yeah. Look I'm going to say up front that I found the discussion about the AirPods a little bit confusing because they talked about sort of two versions of the AirPods, one of which was slightly more expensive. They did talk about the fact that they're reducing the size of the case. One of the versions of the AirPods had better sound acoustic quality, and a few other odds and ends. So what I would suggest, and I'm not talking about the AirPods Pro here, when they were talking about the two AirPods, I would say if you go back and have a listen or go to Apple.com now, and because they have the information about the AirPods online now and have a read about them, and they also talked about the new AirPods Pro.

Now, the thing that caught my attention about that was another health one, and that's the hearing aid functionality. So what they've done is they've said that the AirPods Pro, the new one, will be the same as over-the-counter hearing aids that you can buy at the chemist or the pharmacy, as we call them in Australia. And it will allow you to have a audiologist, as in the iPhone, give you an audio test, and then it will actually give you a hearing aid through the AirPods Pro By themselves so you can use it. So that will be interesting to see how that goes against, you know, people that have to use like $6,000 hearing aids.

06:20 S1

Yes, certainly iPhones. The big one.

06:24 S2

The big one. Yeah. Look, there was of course, the of course there's the iPhone 16, the 16 plus, and of course the iPhone 16 Pro and the 16 Pro Max. So the 16 is basically 6.1 right up to the fairly large 16 Pro Max, which is 6.9in diagonally. So that's actually, you know, fairly fairly large, from a, I guess, a blindness and low vision type point of view. I'd say most people are probably going to be quite satisfied with the... 16 or the 16 plus. 

One thing they did start to talk about several times, which I only got worked out what they were talking about: there's a little touch surface on the side of the phone now, which is called the camera click and the camera click. You can do all sorts of wonderful things in it. You know, launch the camera and you can do like a force press and a light press to bring up different functionality for the camera. 

One of the fantastic things was visual intelligence, because they did spend a lot of time, of course, when they talked about the iPhone, about Apple intelligence, which, by the way, they covered back in WWDC. There's nothing new. And that was the fact that you could be wandering down the road and you could see a nice little puppy dog in a park. You could take a picture, and then you could do a search on ChatGPT or Google, and it would tell you the actual breed of the dog. 

Or if you're at a restaurant and you took a picture of the menu, it would go up and search the menu options, find prices and all that sort of really cool stuff. So that's almost getting to what we would like to have, as you know, blind and low vision people. And that is your camera taking pictures of objects in your vicinity and telling you more about them.

08:20 S1

Yeah, I can imagine this could be very useful in the shopping environment where you photograph something on the shelf and it goes to a website to tell you more about it.

08:29 S2

Yeah, no, that was quite fascinating. But keep keep in mind though, that with Apple intelligence it's not quite here yet. We've still got sort of 18.1 currently in Beta. So they did sort of point out that this is a building process. And these things will come online in the next month up to the next year or so. So just keep your ear out for a software update. And then all these other Apple intelligence stuff that they talked about today will be coming on board. But as far as 18.0 is concerned, the stuff they talked about today in the keynote actually won't be there.

09:05 S1

There's been some significant developments with audio.

09:08 S2

That's right. So what they were talking about is particularly when you're videoing and you're in a bit of an echo-y room, what the system will do, it will do a lot of noise dampening on the echo or the sounds in the room. And the other thing it will also do is decrease the background sound. So it will focus on the main audio focus. But I think the fact that it's actually focusing on dampening the noise around you when you're recording, that's actually pretty amazing stuff happening as far as audio is concerned.

09:40 S1

This applies in the Voice Memos app too.

09:43 S2

That's right. So for budding podcasters or even maybe people that are doing their own little filming, that's going to work really nicely. Mm. Yeah.

09:50 S1

Very interesting. You can pre-order these devices from today.

09:56 S2

Indeed. And they said of course in in US terminology they'll be available from September 20th. And then they also, like I said just now, they kept saying that all the other some of the features will be in later iOS 18.1, but also 2. The FDA in the US hasn't authorised some of the features quite yet. So things like the hearing aid audio function that hasn't been quite okayed by the FDA yet.

10:26 S1

The prices are pretty consistent with what we've seen previous years, aren't they? People can go to the website to check out the details of those.

10:33 S2

They are? Yeah. And look, they're still Apple... they're still high end phones. I know we've been talking about Apple, but I've been testing the RL headset and I bought a really nice Samsung A15 for $350, and it's been absolutely perfect. So whilst I've really enjoyed talking about Apple, it's not the only thing on the block and you can get cheaper smartphones out there.

11:00 S1

There are useful podcasts around about the hardware and the software.

11:04 S2

There is. So of course all the normal people are doing all the all their own podcasts, Macworld and so on. But specifically, Jonathan Myerson just did a really good show on all the features of iOS 18.0.

11:18 S1

Living Mindfully Edition 300.

11:20 S2

That's correct. And he also did another podcast earlier on, I think about a month ago on the Apple intelligence features for 18.1 coming later this year. So those two programs will cover them quite nicely of what they actually talked about today in the keynote.

11:36 S1

And you're talking to the tech doctor.

11:37 S2

I am indeed. So that'll be happening with Alison and Robert. So hopefully by the time you listen to this talking tech during the week, that podcast will be out and you can enjoy hearing me go on about the Apple keynote in more detail.

11:54 S1

Doctor Robert Carter with the Tech Doctor podcast. As we come to the end of the program, let's reflect on In your 12 years with Talking Tech. Prior to that, you used to do a Tuesday afternoon session on the afternoon program talking about what was the latest in tech. Give us some reflections on your 12 years, you and I chatting away.

12:17 S2

I've always been one for sharing information about stuff that I find to, you know, originally to just stuff inside, you know, Vision Australia. And back in the day, the old royal blind site in New South Wales. And because I spent a lot of time on social media. So LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram X, Mastodon and so on. For my own information, myself, plus sharing it out to people now, that's always worked out really well. And the other thing too, is that I always assume that I don't know enough. You know, there's somebody else that knows a lot more than I do. And that's one reason why I keep delving into the whole range of mainstream and assistive technology, because the only way that I can keep up to date and make sure that my knowledge and skills are up to date as well. 

So in a way, doing Talking Tech over the last 12 years has made me really focus on all the technology trends that are happening in the field. So that's been really great. So it really has done wonders for my professional development, looking into what's happening and then sharing it with us. Because, you know, before you and I could talk about it, either one of us have got to understand what what we're actually talking about. So it's actually worked out quite well. And making it concise in a 15 minute program every week has worked out really nicely, I think, for everybody.

13:39 S1

And don't worry, we'll be picking your brains in the future for more insights into this evolving world of blindness technology. Before we go, a reminder of details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program, this address for the last time.

13:56 S2

Indeed. You can go to my blog site, which is David Wood BR, podbean, podbean com.

14:02 S1

David Wood BR podbean podbean.com to write to the program.

14:09 S2

You can drop me a line again for the last time, or you can just keep it in your thing and just send me an email anyway. And that's David Wood-B-R at gmail dot com.

14:19 S1

davidwoodbr@gmail.com ... We will give you details of new contact information next week. And in next week's program I'll be introducing my new partner in crime, Damon McMorrow, who is the National Access Technology Manager with Vision Australia. But today I've been speaking with David Woodbridge, leading Australian blindness technologist. It's great to have been working with you, David, and look forward to from time to time in the future. So me, I'm Stephen Jolley, this has been Talking Tech. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.