This is Technology Bytes, episode 81 for September 22nd, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So I’m getting everything I can out of this Apple’s event.
It’s glow time, but today I’m going to talk about the purchases that I have made in the new products that were announced at this event, and my initial thoughts.
Now we’ve only had them for a brief number of hours, and I’ll tell you what we purchased.
So this is very early on, but I still thought I would take the time to share what we purchased, and why, and what we have thought at this point so far.
So this week is my wife’s birthday.
Actually the 20th is her birthday, and so what a perfect time for Apple to release a product, especially when my wife was interested in getting something new.
She has the Apple Watch Series 6, and the battery is going.
It doesn’t really last her all day.
So she was wanting a new Apple Watch, and we had looked earlier in the year, just a little bit, maybe just a couple months back, and I knew this event was coming.
I knew a new watch was coming, and I asked her to hold off and see what Apple announced, because I thought spending the same money three months later would get her way more product, even though she’s not all that interested in the new necessarily.
And also the fact that it was going to be on her birthday, or I thought very close at the time, it gave me an idea, without having to spend a lot of time, because she told me what she wanted, of what to get her for her birthday.
And getting it that early would mean that, I don’t know, that doesn’t always work in our family anyway.
Like, oh this is for your birthday, even though your birthday is a month out.
So that is something that we were looking forward to.
So in the event, she watched the Apple Watch portion, and was very disappointed in the colors that the watch was available in.
She really liked the starlight color that the SE actually does come in still, because it’s more neutral.
It seemed kind of, I don’t know, it’s just a color that she liked.
And so with the Apple Watch Series 10, which we didn’t end up purchasing, you know, the colors are very limited.
We weren’t going to buy the titanium, because it’s not sure that was worth the extra, what is it, four hundred dollars, three hundred dollars.
And so she really had the choice of the silver, or the black, or the, I don’t even remember what the third color was.
So she didn’t like, oh the rose gold, she didn’t like that.
She says, I’m not a rose gold person.
She had silver in the very first Apple Watch she had.
So quite a few years ago, like 10, but still a color that she had.
And so she decided to go with that really polished black.
And so I was a little bit nervous, because I felt like I was making her get something that she might not be all that interested in.
But we bit the bullet, made the purchase, and then waiting for the week to pass until we could go and pick it up.
At the same time, I bought the new iPhone 16 Pro Max, and I got it in the natural titanium color, because it would match my Apple Watch Ultra 2.
And so I’ll talk about that a little bit later.
So we went to the Apple Store, not too long a line on Friday evening, just before six.
And at eight, the line was much longer.
I was quite surprised.
But we got the devices.
The Apple Watch is quite easy to set up.
So my wife took it out of the box, and it immediately asked her to pair it with her phone.
And so she did all of that walk through, and got it working, and even made a payment for a case for my daughter for the phone that I was giving her, my 15 Pro Max, because she likes to have her phone in a case.
And I don’t carry a case, so it didn’t have one.
And so she was able to use Apple Pay right away.
It all set up.
She had her cards in it, all those things that she does on her watch.
And so then at dinner afterwards, we went to a birthday dinner with our daughter, additional plans the next morning on Saturday with our son and his family for breakfast.
And so we were just talking about what she liked about the watch.
I know one of the things that they talked about was the viewing angle.
So we talked about that a little bit.
But at the end of the day, there were just a couple of things that stood out to her.
One was the size of the screen.
She didn’t want her watch to be bigger.
She bought the smaller version.
I think it’s a 42 millimeter.
But she said, the screen looks so much bigger, and it’s very bright, and it’s very inviting.
It’s very clear.
It’s easy to see.
And so those are the things that she really likes about the watch.
She didn’t notice that the watch was thinner than her old one and didn’t sit as far off her wrist.
She said that that was not noticeable.
Maybe as we get into the colder seasons and she’s wearing long sleeves, maybe she’ll notice that.
But off the cuff, she didn’t notice.
But the one thing that she said at the end of the evening, so only having worn the watch for a very short period of time, she said, I really like this new Apple Watch.
And so that just says it all for me.
As a tech nerd, I really wanted her to enjoy it.
So I think at the end of the day, a very successful purchase.
So as I mentioned, I bought the natural color of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Very quickly, you know, the iPhone 16 or 16 plus, good sizes.
I like the bigger phone.
So why do I need a Pro Max?
Well, I probably don’t need, but that’s what I’ve had for years now.
I always buy that one.
I like that one.
It has functionality that maybe I don’t always use, but I think I’m going to.
But that is the phone that I buy.
And, you know, I don’t really think about getting the other ones.
It’s the best phone.
It has the best screen.
It has the best technology.
I just like all of that.
And this year, the size of the phone actually went up.
And so I was curious to see how that would look.
And so holding my 15 Pro Max next to the 16 Pro Max, you could tell the size difference.
I don’t think it’s all that much wider, but it is just a little bit taller.
But in the pockets in my shorts that I carry it in, and I have actually a phone pocket, obviously that’s become something that short manufacturers have chosen, any pant manufacturer, that other pocket that’s there for carrying your phone.
But the screen is super nice.
The size, I don’t mind.
I like the bigger size that fits in my pocket.
I generally use my phone’s two-handed anyway.
I don’t carry a case.
And so I put my Apple wallet on the back.
All that seems to work really well.
And so I really have enjoyed it for the brief time that I have had it.
The one major change is the camera control button.
And so obviously that is something I wanted to play with.
And, you know, just sitting in the living room, not really taking a picture of anything, just playing with the control button, it took a little bit of getting used to.
In fact, the next day when I was with my son, I was like, you can just do this.
And I kept taking pictures when I didn’t want to and showing him how you could get to the different functions.
And the control is pretty cool.
And being able to slide your finger and zoom in, and my son was playing with it and doing some other things like going into the digital zoom portion, it showed you what the picture, full picture was going to be.
And then a little square inside that picture, which showed what the zoom is that you are going to capture.
So that was pretty interesting to see.
And I’ll look at that more in the future.
And then as we played with it, I was getting a little better at the little double click.
So then you could get the functionality up on the little screen control, and you could swipe between zooming, between S-stop, between exposure, between your filters kind of like, although you have to listen to other people talk about that filters because it’s not really filters.
It’s going through the whole thing and changing the temperature of your pictures.
So it is a little complex.
But one of the things that my wife said to me is, I used to enjoy going out when you wanted to take your big boy camera, whatever you want to call it, my digital SLR and take photos.
And I said, yeah, I enjoyed doing that with you as well.
And so I think I can do more of that with the 16 Pro Max and the control that I’m given on the little button that they’ve added.
And so I’m looking forward to spending time with my wife and learning more on how to use that camera and taking more pictures because I’m not very good at doing that regularly.
But I think it’s going to take time to get used to how the button works, to figure out all the settings again, to get my brain back into the mode of shooting a photograph instead of just taking a picture.
And I look forward to doing that over the time that we have.
So in closing, both my wife and I are happy with our purchase.
We’re excited about what it brings and looking forward to updates and software that bring even more functionality across the board.
And for the moment, excited about our recent expenditure of probably too much money.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merigfamily.com.
I want to thank you for listening as always to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
