Bonus episode - New OS releases and my iPhone 15 choice

I’m going to run down them very quickly here for you. If you are listening to this on Monday September 18th, right now available to download, the final versions is iOS 17, iPad OS 17, watch OS 10, tvOS 17.

Now along with that you can also go and grab, if you are in the developer portal, the Mac OS 14 release candidate, which is due for release, I forget if it’s the 24th or the 26th of September, so next week, which I think is a good thing.

I think it’s good, so that you have some separation here, you don’t go crazy mad and update all the operating systems on all your Apple devices in one go and then have to deal with that.

And I also think it’s better for Apple servers and better for Apple in general, right? It gives them time to deal with these, gives them a chance to look at all the data for a week, gives us as users a chance to try out the devices for a week with the new OS’s before upgrading our Macs.

I think that’s a good thing, you know, not that there’s any real excitement for me to upgrade to Mac OS 14, nothing truly spectacular in there, but it’s always nice to get a new Mac OS with some new features, hopefully plenty of bug fixes.

So that’s where we are at today.

Now of course, hopefully a lot of you have gone ahead and, you know, all pre-ordered or ordered your Apple phones, new iPhones and everything else at this point, I want to talk about that briefly here.

So I am upgrading my iPhone 12 Pro Max to iOS 17 right now actually as I’m recording this, but I’m also went ahead and ordered and I want to talk about what I ordered and why, because it might help some folks.

So I went ahead and like I said, at the moment I’ve got the iPhone 12 Pro Max and obviously it’s a few versions old, but it’s not like it really needs upgrading in any way to behonest.

It’s perfectly fine.

If I didn’t get a new phone, I’d still be perfectly happy with it. But this time around, first of all, partly based on the trade in price. So you know, Apple’s offering me $450 for my phone, which is, I guess not bad for, you know, something that’s a few versions old, but that’s part of the decision factor here for me.

I realized that it’s old enough that, you know, you’re reaching that break point. It’s kind of like with cars, right?

They reach a certain age where you’re only going to get a certain amount and then probably after that it’s not worth trading in.

And I feel like I’m getting to that point. So this time I’ve ordered the iPhone 15 Pro, not the Max version.

And I’m going to talk about why. First of all, let’s talk about why I’m upgrading in general.

Firstly, obviously, USB-C port. I get to carry a whole lot of less cables with me. Everything else I own is USB-C at this point. So great. That’s number one, right?

Number two is certainly that the, you know, my phone is, like I say, reaching that point where it won’t be worth anything. And at that point, you know, in future years, it’s a case of, well, I’m just keeping it for testing, something like that.

Now I’ve gone for the Pro instead of the Pro Max. And here’s a couple of reasons why.

Number one, I got the Pro Max because, you know, I love my photography, as you all know. And I was like, oh, I need that extra lens. And you know, the benefits that come from that.

Well, turns out after all these years of you having that phone. No, I really don’t need that extra lens. Now there’s no question the iPhone 15 Pro Max with that optical zoom, very nice.

But at the end of the day, as I’ve said before, for me, the cameras are good enough on the phones because, you know, I have DSLRs.

And so I’ve got to like, for example, a few cameras, but I take my FUJIFILM X-T4 is the one I use for all of my, I hate to use the word proper photography, but, you know, photography with intent, I guess is the best way to describe it.

And so I’ve got a whole bunch of lenses, well, not a whole bunch, but I got lenses for that. And frankly, you know, phone cameras, as good as they are, they don’t provide me the creativity and the options that my DSLR does.

And that’s the primary reason why I really don’t care too much about the cameras on the phones. They are more than good enough at this stage for most people. Right.

And for me, you know, like I say, if I’m going to do like some fine artwork and blow up to big prints, I’m using my DSLR. Right.

So it doesn’t, it’s nice to have the option to use the iPhone camera and carry that around. But when I’m doing photography with intent or photography trips, things like that, I’m using my dedicated cameras still.

It’s just the way I am old school. I get it, but that’s the way it is.

Now the other thing is the iPhone, you know, the Pro Max, I love it. Right.

The screen size is nice. The obviously the screen itself is fantastic, but I’ve learned that I don’t need that screen to be as big, you know, as the Pro Max all the time.

It turns out that I’ve got a sort of a Pro 12 Pro here for testing. And it turns out that’s actually the ideal size for me for just carrying around. It feels better in the pocket, certainly fits in the back pocket of jeans a lot better than the Pro Max and shirts and everything else.

But I just don’t need that screen size because I realize that after having the Pro Max and you know, for all these years, I’m always in front of a Mac or an iPad. So I don’t need the use case that I thought I did of having a big screen phone like that all the time.

And the convenience of having a smaller version in the pocket and that wins out for me because most of the time my phone is probably going to act as a hotspot for either my iPad or my Mac or just general stuff. Right.

And everything else, you know, what I call meaningful deep work is going to be done on my iPad or my Mac. It was never done on my phone and it just won’t be done on my phone.

So why have that big device in my pocket? You know, and it’s a heavy device too.

Yes, they get lighter, but it’s still heavy. So I’ve gone for the Titanium Pro because it’ll be lighter, it’ll be smaller and more convenient.

And so that’s the route that I’m going. And I just wanted to provide that insight for folks here.

Also want to point out that I’ve been using the Xcode 15 release candidate so far without issue. I’m happy to say not that I have been pushing it too hard, but it’s been working pretty good. So I’m pretty happy with that.

Xcode 15 is now available at the final version as well in the app store or on the portal. I haven’t downloaded it yet, but I’m going to and hopefully it’s going to be the experience will be good for me like it was with the release candidate.

And you know, I didn’t use the betas too much because I was doing a lot of production work that I had to ship.

So I didn’t bother testing the betas too much.

Anyway, wanting to put that out there as just a bonus episode for you all today in case you were not aware that some of these things were available and just to share some thoughts on some of the hardware.

This has been helpful.

You know what to do.

Follow the podcast, tell your friends about it.

Other than that, I will be doing some more interviews.

I hope you’ve been enjoying the interview series. I’m having a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of folks.

There’s going to be some more of those, but this is just a bonus episode for you all and

I will speak to you the next one.