This is Technology Bytes, episode 137 for October 19th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So a couple weeks ago, I don’t know why I always start with the word so.
I’m trying not to do that, but I find it hard to catch myself.
A couple weeks ago, I talked about my initial purchases and what I purchased, one of which is the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and so today I am going to talk about that phone in a little bit more detail.
So I told you, nope, there I go again.
I told you two weeks ago that I did not get the orange one.
I was leaning towards that.
They really didn’t have it.
No, they did not have it available at the store I was in.
I think on second look, I’m pretty happy with the dark navy one that I ended up with.
And I also got 512 gigabytes of storage because that was the only one available in the store.
Most often, well, really up until this point, I have lived with 256, never less than that when it was available, but 256 is where I always was at.
So it’ll be interesting to see if I use more memory because it’s there or, you know, what will happen, I guess, is that iCloud doesn’t have to take as much off my phone because of the space that’s available.
And maybe that’s a good thing because I’ll have more of my files more readily available.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max feels different in your hand.
I gave my 16 Pro Max to my wife and I was holding it the other day to show her some things and it is a hard phone.
It has way harder edges than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max actually feels almost malleable in your hands.
It’s got a softness.
It kind of conforms to your palm.
It doesn’t bend.
It doesn’t twist.
It doesn’t do anything.
It’s just the way it feels in your hand.
And it’s kind of interesting because the back for some time has had the round ring where the magnet would be for those MagSafe things and accessories and charging.
And this one just has that.
I don’t even know what it is.
Is that aluminum too?
Is it steel?
I’m not exactly sure.
But the magnet holds really well.
And overall, the phone just feels good in your hand.
So one of the biggest changes, I did it again.
One of the biggest changes on the phone almost every year is the camera.
And this year they’ve got a 48 megapixel sensor on every single lens that’s on the phone.
What does that mean?
Well, it means they get to capture more information, more detail about what the picture is of, more light, just so they can do some, you know, magic of computational photography, as they call it, to give you the best picture that the phone thinks it should be giving you.
But you also have the ability to shoot in what’s called a raw format so that you can do all of that work on your own.
You can capture full 48 megapixel photographs.
And then they use some kind of magic to make it look like you get an 8x optical zoom based on how you crop that 48 megapixel.
So is it really optical zoom?
I don’t know if I call it that.
But, well, it is what it is.
And they also go up to 40x on the camera itself.
And so I was at a football game the other day, professional football game here in Arizona, and I went into the 40x mode and I could just fit the huddle in the frame of the picture.
That’s how close I was trying to do that 40x magnification.
It was very hard to hold steady.
And I’m shaky anyway, so maybe even harder.
But it was kind of interesting.
I was in the fourth section of the stadium, so I was a ways away from the game.
So it wasn’t like I was close in getting that.
I was way away.
The only way I could really use that kind of zoom is with a tripod and something to hold it steady because I don’t think I can do that with my hand, even though the phone does a good job with its onboard stability.
The other thing that they did is the selfie camera.
I’ve used that a few times and I like that.
But today for the first time, I was watching my granddaughter, our entire family was watching my granddaughter play volleyball.
And so I was able to use the dual capture mode where I was capturing her activity and then my sons and my reaction to her activity on the court.
And that was pretty cool.
It was, I don’t know if it’s gimmicky or not.
It actually did a pretty good job.
But the one thing I found is I might need a tripod for that mode as well, not because of being too shaky, but because my fingers start to get in the way of one of the lenses of the other, either the one taking a picture of the court or the video of the court or the one on the FaceTime side taking a video of us.
So I think if I had held it in the portrait mode and done the same thing, I would have been better off.
So I know that there are other things, processor speeds, those kind of things.
I haven’t really, I started with so again, but I haven’t really noticed that much difference.
I didn’t really expect to.
One of the things that I don’t do is use any type of artificial intelligence.
And so I’ve been challenged by my boss at work to use it more.
My wife used it a little bit for something and my daughter uses it all the time.
And so I chose to do a little bit of testing with Apple Intelligence, asking questions and getting pretty good responses back, taking photos and saying, what is this?
And that’s pretty good.
A lot of that goes back through ChatGPT.
And so I’ve been able to ask Siri to ask ChatGPT to do something and I’m really using it very sparingly, but I probably need to get better at it.
It’s funny because I’m a tech nerd and yet that just doesn’t interest me at all.
And even all the podcasts that I listen to that talk about people using it all the time, I just don’t get it.
I see commercials and they’re like, oh, I get to use Google’s artificial intelligence to teach me how to do this or that or the other.
You can do the same thing with a voice search.
The same thing pops up on my screen.
So I don’t know.
I’m not enthralled with it yet.
I know people say it does great things.
I mostly see it do the wrong thing, like every other intelligent help, whatever system you want to call it, on smartphones.
I could be wrong, probably am, but that’s where I sit today.
Well, that is all I have for today.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
