I HATE APPLE

I still have never gotten above a 256 gb iPhone.

What's your storage need? You might be able to use an external USB-C SSD?

I upgraded from 11 to 15 last time because the camera had improved enough to be worth it (and the battery on the old one was starting to need more frequent charging), hoping to make it to 19 or 20 this time.

Don't even try to talk me out of that - streaming services are not an acceptable substitute.

Mix of lossless and 320 AACs. 81,627 songs in my music library rn.

what playback app on the iphone do you use? apple music?

i feel like for the first time the Pro series seems squarely targeted at, err, "pros" - I have no need for the A/V stuff so it looks like i get the regular model without any FOMO

Base model > pro this year

explain?

this annoying guy covers it from about 11:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVPSDCSPv9Y

he's speaking from the perspective of someone who's upgrading every year...but it does sound the base 16 isn't as hobbled vs. the pro compared to most year. still not sure if it's worth the extra $100 or so to go up to Pro for the better screen refresh rate and camera, so i'm half-convinced

I’m still getting a Pro, primarily because it’s the only option to get a black phone

agreed. I don't care about the screen or the macro lens and that's basically the difference this time iiuc. it's not my year, but if it was, I'd get the base.

xp the base 16 is available in black?

base: blue, green, pink, white, black

pro: brown, silver, white, black

I always use covers so colours and frame designs are pretty irrelevant. Still debating whether to wait til next years edition so as to have the AI stuff done and ready

lol ignore me, I apparently can’t read or recognize colors

who's getting desert titanium i.e. brown?

I thought about it for a hot second and then went “wait, NO”

i'm waiting for next year's iphone slim

Just moved from an 11 Pro to a 14 Pro Max. Ugh at the level of processing evident in photos now, esp selfies. Portrait mode looks significantly more fakeyfakey than before. First pic I took was on Contour Light mode for some reason and that was just comically bad but even on Natural Light it's pretty horrid. Are there third-party apps that can use the depth sensor to do fake shallow-D.O.F. better? I've been using Lightroom app a bit to take photos but that doesn't do a portrait mode.

if you're using Lightroom I think there's a new 'blur' effect that fakes DOF

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/14/24220178/halide-camera-app-process-zero-ai may be of interest, but my understanding is that the photos look like shit and some processing is necessary

(won't help with DOF)

Halide has some nice interim options and has features. I use it half the time when I'm actually framing something, don't have my Fujifilm on me, and it's not a quick snapshot

Just not sure I can justify the cost of Halide

try it for 7 days?

I somehow can’t ever get on with Halide - the interface is too obscure and it’s too much effort to get the results I want. Zero AI was even worse.

I’m trying Obscura 4 now; the interface is much more camera-y.

Same with halide
These days I use the Lightroom camera if I don’t have my camera (which is all the time). Less processing. At least different processing. Sometimes turns out well

Am I the only one who thinks finewoven is … kind of good? I’ve had a case for about 6 months and it’s super comfortable. Not slippery af like leather gets

nah, I think the badness was overstated. there was a youtube guy who demonstrated you can just scrub finewoven if it gets dirty and was buying them off amazon returns and ebay and cleaning them up a bit and they looked almost like new. Which means it’s not really a leather alternative because it seems to be a dirt magnet, but it’s probably decent.

I have been doing the almost-bare phone thing with my 15 pro. really like the titanium sides and the very thin side bezels are nice without a case covering the sides

My 11 yo has scratched the fuck out of mine in the attempt to ruin it and it’s fine a week later

haha, take that, petulant child

Got the new noise canceling pods and my urban walking experience just increased dramatically

But that new ad with the last of us girl is terrible , again unwittingly makes the case against ai and device

So thumbs up on the AirPods ANC?

Do any of you sleep with AirPods in? I like to fall asleep to music and my wife doesn’t; I was using a pillow speaker for a while but the sound was not good and the internal wiring eventually failed, lately I’ve just been putting the iPhone under the pillow but the volume has to be just right to not bother the wife and still be able to hear ok myself, and a few times I’ve gotten a warning that it paused charging overnight because it was too warm. These new pods seem like they might be almost perfect (aside from having something in my ear all night), cancelling the air conditioner and getting decent sound while still able to have conversations and not completely isolated from the environment. Reviews are noting that the lack of a seal like the Pros have means noise cancelling doesn’t work as well but that seems like a plus for this kind of use? Dunno how I feel about falling asleep with them in though.

I have no idea about the regular model but the pros, I have fallen asleep in those for a nap. For a little nap I am relatively still and my hack for being a side-sleeper (napper?) is laying on my hand with the airpod between my thumb and finger on my splayed hand so there’s a little breathing room and the pillow doesn’t smoosh it into my ear

Yeah I fall asleep with the pros in. Sometimes I sleep with just one in and an ear plug in the other ear.

Thumbs up imho but I can only use them for maybe 20 minutes until the noise that’s cancelling the other noise becomes too much. YMMV

the Podcast app. just, like, what the fuck.

I've been through 3-4 iphones, on now two different service providers and have had the same issue, which is I listen to 30/40/60 minutes of a podcast that is 2/3 hours long in total. I stop listening to it at the midpoint or so, and go back to it the next day, and it just buffers and buffers. Out of curiosity the other day I let it buffer on my entire commute home, so like a half hour. It never is able to pick up where I left off. Nor am I able to restart it from the beginning.

This seems like an issue that most people who listen to podcasts on an iphone (so most people? for fucks sake?) would also experience.

Spotify never had a problem picking up where I left off when I listened to podcasts on there.

Please tell me if I'm doing something wrong here.

I hadn't used the Apple Podcasts app in years (I'm a Pocket Casts user) but disc the other day to try out its auto transcript function. Is pretty good - you can search for spoken text (even across podcasts) then jump straight to that part. But haven't made the switch

highly suggest overcast for ios

disc = did

Xpost

I used to use Overcast then I switched to Pocket Casts for its Alexa integration that I never really ended up using but by the time I thought "Right, let's go back to Overcast" I found I'd got so used to Pocket Cast's way of doing things I couldn't get on with Overcast any more. I'm institutionalised!

don't use the built in podcasts app?

another vote for overcast

they all have their pros and cons imo. overcast was a little glitchy after the update but seems mostly fine now. castro was my go-to for years but they flubbed it so badly when they had downtime a while back that I migrated to overcast. apple podcasts is no-frills and just... ok... but might be nice if you pay for some podcasts and don't want to manage them on another platform like patreon

Castro is back to being good again.

good to know

yeah the new proprietor seems v committed to it and is a good listener

I am having problems posting pics from the new phone to various locations. I got errors when I tried to send them as Gmail attachments and Slack choked on a bunch of them when I tried to share them with my family. Anyone else having similar experiences?