This is Technology Bytes, episode 135 for October 5th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Today I want to share initial thoughts on new iPhones and new Apple Watches.
And you’re thinking to yourself, well, you already did that.
You did that in the last few podcasts.
I did, but now I’ve actually made a purchase.
I talked about what I might want to purchase, and this past week I actually purchased the new iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I also purchased the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
I’ve only had them for a few days, just about a week, I guess, and so I thought I would cover that in the next few minutes.
So as I mentioned, I bought the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
When I went into the store, I was thinking about getting the orange phone.
They didn’t have anything except for the one gigabyte or maybe the two gigabyte version, and I’m not interested in spending that kind of money.
But they had the Navy in the 512, and I’ve been using 256 for some time on the memory side, on the storage side, I guess, and I was thinking maybe moving up.
I had about 89 gig free on my current phone, and so I thought maybe going to the 512 will help.
The new cameras, new video modes, maybe using a little more storage on my phone and taking pictures.
I know I offload that to the cloud, but just in the moment.
So I thought that was good.
I think I’m pretty happy with not having the orange.
I think it would have been good, but at some point, I don’t know, it might have been just a little too much.
I really like the Navy.
It’s very subtle.
It’s a great color.
I’m not disappointed with the choice at all.
So I start too many of these segments with so.
When I went into the store, my wife went with me.
We were trading her iPhone 14 Pro, and so we weren’t sure exactly how that was going to look, but I’ve been reading some and seeing that the carriers are, you know, it’s just crazy.
It’s almost like, you know, you get your phone for nothing, but you sign up for so many years.
So they gave us like $1,100 for my wife’s iPhone 14 Pro.
So my monthly cost for the new 17 Pro Max is like $8 a month.
It is a three-year contract, but as you can see, my wife is trading in an iPhone 14.
So she is going to be carrying that, using the phone.
I gave her my 16 Pro Max.
She’ll be using that for at least three years.
If I buy next year or the year after, you know, give it to my daughter or maybe my son.
So, you know, it just travels through.
So that three-year contract is not going to be a problem.
So I haven’t used it a whole lot.
The battery life seems to be pretty good.
I never really have battery issues with my phone.
The phone feels different in my hand.
It feels almost softer.
And no, I don’t have any scratching problems.
I don’t use a case.
I don’t use a screen protector.
I use my phone as Apple made it.
I don’t put anything else on it.
I do use the Apple Wallet.
And so maybe that protects the back.
But at the moment anyway, haven’t seen any scratches on the phone or anything like that.
But I also haven’t been able to use a lot of the functions.
One of the things that happens in the transition to a new phone is the time it takes to figure out who you are and how you use your phone and logging into everything and all of those steps.
It seems like it almost takes a week for it to figure out, okay, now I am your phone and I perform like your phone and I know who you are and all these things start to work a little bit better.
Just weird little things.
But some of that was complicated by using the AT&T trade-in method because trading in my wife’s phone made AT&T believe that the new iPhone 17 Pro Max is my wife’s phone.
So when you set it up, it has her phone number on it.
And they’ve already done that.
And so now she has my phone with my phone number.
I have a new phone with her phone number.
So that transition, while it wasn’t all that complicated, it was actually pretty cool.
The guy at the store said, well, when you set it up as your phone with your Apple ID, it will ask you if you want to transfer the SIM.
Well, that is not entirely true.
Well, that’s not true at all.
What happened was I set my phone up as me with my Apple ID, you know, load everything on it, not transferring from another device.
I transferred the setup from another device, but all the rest of it, I just wait for it to download and off the iCloud.
And that’s probably why it takes a week to figure out who I am.
But when I set up my wife’s with her, you know, and got my system off of her phone, the 16, and set up with her Apple ID, it still didn’t ask us to trade SIM cards.
And so my son and I were doing some research.
And what happened was I was able to go onto my wife’s phone and say, I need to transfer a SIM to this phone.
And so what I did is transferred the eSIM from my 17 Pro Max to her 16 Pro Max.
And now her phone has both of our phone numbers and I have a phone that’s not connected to AT&T.
And then once that was completed, I did the reverse transfer and transferred my phone number from the eSIM from the 16 Pro Max to the 17 Pro Max so that now we each have our own phone with our own phone number.
It was fairly simple.
The new 17 Pro Max was the most simple, but on the 16 Pro Max, it still showed both phone numbers.
It just showed my number as inactive.
And then when my wife started using her phone, it would say, oh, the last time you called this number, you were on a different eSIM.
What do you want to do?
And so she has to say, well, I just want to make a call.
It’s kind of weird that it asks you that because I don’t call the people that she calls.
I don’t have those people in my contacts.
So it really was not true.
The last time she called that number, she was using her eSIM from her 14 Pro.
So that’s kind of strange, but it ended up working out in the end.
And I really do enjoy the phone.
One thing I tried last night was the center stage on a FaceTime call, and it works for one person but doesn’t seem to work for two in the video call mode.
And so after the call, I just did a selfie with my wife and I.
And as we moved further away from each other, you could see the format change in the phone.
And the interesting thing is I can no longer put my phone in the landscape mode in a FaceTime and expect the camera to change unless I turn off center stage.
So I think there’s still some growth that needs to happen there, but I’m looking forward to using that selfie cam.
We’re going to a football game.
There’s going to be four of us, so that’s going to be interesting and see how that format changes.
Also at the football game, I think I’ll be able to test the 40x digital zoom max.
So it’ll be interesting to see how that works.
But initial thoughts, I really like the phone.
I like the feel in the hand.
It feels a little more slippery and soft, but I haven’t worried about dropping it, so I’m not concerned about that.
Still not planning on putting a case on it and looking forward to doing more with the cameras.
I’ve really done nothing to this point.
I also purchased the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
And when I was talking to the guy at the store about that, and he was looking up availability, he only had the black version.
And I wasn’t ever sure if I really wanted that.
The natural stainless was something that I liked.
And, you know, I guess black kind of goes with everything, but that natural stainless kind of goes with everything.
So I was a bit up in the air, but I said, okay, let me see what it looks like.
And so we went to the table where there was one, picked it up, looked at it.
My wife says, I really like that color.
I said, okay, done deal.
I’ll get it.
So I’ve gone from the stainless to the black.
Obviously, they’re still titanium.
The other things I talked about last week, those are the changes.
The battery life is significantly better.
I’ve noticed that already.
Now my watch is a year plus old, a couple years.
So that has something to do with it as well.
And I’m a two Apple Watch person.
And so I was thinking, well, I’ll still use my, I’ll still use both Apple Watches.
And then I thought, man, using two Ultra Watches feels, I don’t know, it felt a little wrong.
It felt a little opulent, especially when my son is on a Apple Watch version seven.
And I know he would really enjoy this watch.
So I just kept my seven that I have.
And that’s my wear it while the Ultra is charging mode.
And I gave my son the Ultra two that I had been using before that.
And he really is enjoying it.
He really likes the feel.
He really likes the look.
It’s a huge upgrade for him.
My upgrade, not as big, but I do like the always on display with the one Hertz refresh so that my second hand doesn’t disappear.
I didn’t know
