AppleVis Extra 111: Recapping Apple's 'Awe Dropping' September 2025 Event

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Michael Hansen, Tyler Stephen, Geo Bahena, and Levi Gobin get together to discuss Apple's 'Awe Dropping' September 2025 event.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Michael, 00:01 Welcome to Apple This Extra number 111. My name is Michael Hansen. It's great to be here with you today, and I am joined by three other members of the Apple This team. We're going to be talking all about Apple's awedropping media event, September 2025. We got new AirPods, new Apple Watches, new iPhones, including an all-new iPhone Air. Of course, we're going to also maybe touch a little bit on iOS 26 and the releases for the other platforms as well.

Michael, 00:31 But before we get to that, let's start with the introductions. First off, we have Tyler Stephen. Tyler, how are you?

Tyler, 00:37 I'm good.

Michael, 00:39 Excellent, excellent. And guys, for those who don't know, Tyler is the main man behind a lot of AppleBiz's blog posts for the software releases. And he also does a lot of work with our community bug program. Huge shout out, folks, as well, if you've submitted questions. Bug reports to the community bug program. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you. Our software content is going to be better because you participated. Moving right along, we have Geo Bahena. Hello, Gio. How are you?

Geo, 01:10 Hi, how are you? Thanks for the opportunity for being here today. It's good to be here.

Michael, 01:18 You are so welcome. And I believe, is this your first Apple Viz Extra or were you able to do the last one?

Geo, 01:24 This was my first. So I'm really excited. I'm really excited.

Michael, 01:28 We are certainly glad to have you here and welcoming back. Certainly last but not least, we have Levi Gobin. Hello, Levi. How are you? I'm doing pretty good today. How about you? Excellent. I am doing well. The weather is still nice here in Chicago, although it's probably not as nice as some other areas, but the weather is still good.

Levi, 01:52 Well, it's been pretty rainy today, so...

Michael, 01:55 And where are you at again?

Levi, 01:57 I'm in Daytona Beach, Florida, but it's been pretty rainy.

Michael, 02:01 Levi, it rains every day. Isn't that like every day in Florida? It's like it rains every day in Florida.

Levi, 02:08 You could literally walk outside at like 1 p.m., realize it's raining, and then go inside and come out at like 1.30 and it's sunny again.

Michael, 02:16 Apple held a media event on September 9th of 2025. The tagline was awe-dropping. And at this event, Apple released or announced, rather, some new AirPods, new Apple Watches, new phones. First up on the list were the new AirPods Pro 3. It's got best world-class noise cancellation. It removes up to two times the noise.

Michael, 02:44 of the previous version, which I guess would be AirPods Pro 2, up to four times as much noise as the original AirPods Pro. It's got a new multi-port acoustic architecture that will precisely control the airflow that carries sound into your ears. It has next generation EQ, transform bass response, wider sound stage,

Michael, 03:10 So, you know, the sound is going to sound spread a little bit more of a sonic spread, increased sounds of instruments and voices, especially sounds like in the higher ranges as well. More personalized transparency is going to mean that voices, your voice and the voices of people speaking to you when you're in transparency mode are going to be clearer. We've got a new in-ear design that Apple says fits more people than ever.

Michael, 03:40 It's got design utilized over 10,000 ear scans and 100,000 hours of research. It is a new fit, kind of a redesigned fit. Apple says that it's smaller. It is the best-fitting AirPod, most secure-fitting AirPod ever, rather. So you've got new foam-infused ear tips here.

Michael, 04:05 You've got five different sizes of ear tips this time with the AirPods Pro 3, including a new extra, extra small. All right, moving right along there, we've got a heart rate sensor in the AirPods Pro 3 and a new workout experience. You can track over 50 different types of workouts just with your AirPods Pro. You can track your heart rate, calories burned, closure move ring,

Michael, 04:34 and earn awards in the fitness app. You also get access to Workout Buddy, which is Apple's AI, Apple intelligence-powered workout coach and assistant. And that is not all with the AirPods Pro. We've also got live language translation, and it basically works is that if someone is talking to you in another language, AirPods will translate that for you into your language. And if the other person is wearing AirPods,

Michael, 05:04 they can hear your response in their native language as well. Starts at $249. And Levi, I know just from talking with you that you are really, really excited about the AirPods Pro 3. Tell us all about it. What are your thoughts on this?

Levi, 05:24 Yeah, so I'm all things audio. So, you know, what piqued my interest was when Apple said, you know, wider sound stage. And the transparency things also piqued my interest. But the wider soundstage and the improved transparency really are what make me want to go for the AirPods Pro 3. Because I actually pre-ordered my AirPods Pro 2 right when they came out.

Levi, 05:54 And they were great, better than the AirPods Pro 1, but I'm certainly looking forward to trying the AirPods Pro 3. And I do sometimes like to get out of the house and do some working out, so the extra noise cancelling will be great and the sweat and water resistance will be great. to have in that case. Don't forget your workout, buddy.

Speaker #5, 06:19 Oh, yeah.

Levi, 06:21 But the workouts, I don't need someone going, great job on your first mile. You did this. So it's cool, but it's not really my thing. But the thing that is hopefully going to be my thing is the transparency in the bass response and the noise canceling. I own a pair of USB-C AirPods Max. And the audiophile in me wonders, how good is it compared to the AirPods Max?

Levi, 06:48 Because I've used the AirPods Pro 2, and they're, I mean, the AirPods Max certainly have more bass response than the Pro 2s. But my brain goes, how do they compare to the $549 AirPods Max? How good is the noise canceling? How good is the bass response? Because the one benefit of the Pros is, you know, you don't have a heavy set of headphones on top of your head.

Levi, 07:12 But I love my AirPods Max because I can plug them into my computer via USB-C audio and zero latency, and so you get spatial audio and all that stuff.

Geo, 07:24 And you still got your ears. They're not being crushed to death by those giant dinosaur headphones.

Levi, 07:32 Yeah, but I love everything audio, so of course I had to get the AirPods Pro 3. When the AirPods Pro 2 came out, I was like, ooh, fun, fancy things. I gotta try these. I got them, and now the Pro 3s are coming out. I'm like, oh, I've got to try these again. And when the AirPods Pro 4 come out, I'm going to say, I've got to try these new ones because that's just who I am.

Michael, 07:54 Yeah, we just might as well admit defeat and just call it quits right now and admit defeat. You know, it's the AirPods 3 this time. It'll be the AirPods Pro next time. Well, thank you, Levi. Gio, you mentioned to me that you are an AirPods user as well. Do you have the Pros or do these have any appeal to you?

Geo, 08:13 You know, they don't. I have a pair of, now, Partly because, for some reason, the silicone just bothers my ears a lot. So I actually don't... I've owned an AirPods Pro 2 for many years, and every time I would wear them, my ears would itch. So believe it or not, I actually decided, and I just got the AirPods 4, which I find much more comfortable, and they don't...

Geo, 08:44 make my ears my ear itch as much as they you know the airpods pro 2 did the thing about the airpods 4 that i like is that they still have a lot of the nice features that the pros do like noise cancellation ish i say ish because i guess because the silicone will make them kind of give you more noise canceling but there's a lot of leakage with noise canceling

Geo, 09:09 uh, on the, on the AirPods, regular AirPods four, but I, I mostly use it cause I'm, I'm on meetings a lot at work. Um, I'm on the phone a lot when I'm not at working. So I'd like to be able to still walk around and hear my surroundings. So yeah. All right. Well, I had an AirPods max for some time, did not care for them. I felt like my ears were going to be crushed to death as I mentioned earlier. And I said, Nope, Nope, Nope.

Michael, 09:39 Yeah, just say no to ear crushing.

Geo, 09:43 No.

Levi, 09:44 I've actually not had that problem of feeling like they're crushing my ears. The one problem I've had is just if I wear them for extended periods of time, my ears do start to get a little sweaty, but that's what happens when you love music and you want to listen to your headphones non-stop. I guess that's what you get. But the Pro 3s, I hope they're just as good as the AirPods Max, so that way you get

Levi, 10:09 Because the transparency on the AirPods Max is really close to just natural, you know, natural hearing without anything in your ears. So my hope is the AirPods Pro 3 are the same way as the AirPods Max when it comes to transparency and gives you all the custom features like custom transparency and the hearing aid features and all that other stuff. So I'm hoping we can get the best of both worlds. And what really has me hyped was I was watching a video...

Levi, 10:40 from a podcaster who does a podcast called 20,000 Hertz. Really good podcast, by the way. He got to try them out early. And I watched his thing, and, you know, he's an audio guy like me. So he said, you know, he did say that, like, the highs were... There were more... There was more emphasis to the highs. But the transparency...

Levi, 11:01 He said that he kept fiddling with the AirPods because he thought the transparency wasn't working, but it was actually that they were fit correctly, but the transparency was just that good. So when I heard that, that just had me hyped, like, ooh, the transparency is going to be pretty good. So I can't wait to try them out.

Michael, 11:22 Apple next presented three new Apple watch models, not entirely new because they're not new products, but there are more iterations of previous models. We first off Apple upgrade updated the Apple watch S E. Now the Apple watch S E is the budget conscious Apple watch. Apple has updated it. Now it now has the S 10 chip.

Michael, 11:49 which is the current chip that is in all of the watches, including, from what I read in a Mac Rumors article, even the Apple Watch Series 11 and the Ultra 3. So when compared to the Apple Watch SE, the previous generation, it has more advanced health features. It has the S10 chip again that powers the always-on display feature.

Michael, 12:16 It powers the gestures like the double tap and the wrist flick gesture. It powers on-device Siri, and it powers fast charging. This is a device that I personally think will be really cool for a lot of people who maybe don't want to spend a whole lot of money on the Apple Watch for some of the more advanced features.

Michael, 12:41 Again, this thing starts just at $249 for the GPS 40-millimeter version, $299 for the 40-millimeter cellular version. So quite affordable as Apple Watches go, but it still delivers all of the basic things of the Apple Watch, plus it is responsive.

Michael, 13:06 Apple also announced the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and big selling points of that and the Apple Watch Series 11. We'll get to that in just a second. But the Apple Watch Series S, Apple Watch Ultra 3 rather, has up to 42 hours of battery life. So the watch with the best battery life just got even more battery life. It also has a slightly larger display, but I read their

Michael, 13:36 On Mac, rumors that the case size is unchanged, has 5G connectivity, which you can also get on all of the Apple Watch cellular models, including the SE3. Same SE3. same series of chip as the others, so no real performance improvement. And that same goes for the Apple Watch Series 11.

Michael, 14:02 But what all of these watches offer is a new sleep score feature, which will kind of assess and help you get some data points about the quality of your sleep. And on the Ultra 3 and on the Series 11 plus some older watches, I believe MacRumors said it is the Series 9 and up, you will get hypertension, high blood pressure notifications.

Michael, 14:32 Now, the way that this works is it does not measure your blood pressure in real time, but over time, the watch and the phone work together to calculate whether or not your blood pressure may be high. Apple expects that While it won't catch all cases of hypertension, it will notify up to 1 million people in the first year of when high blood pressure notifications go live. I believe that is still awaiting regulatory approval.

Michael, 15:02 So a couple of kind of cosmetic improvements for the Ultra 3 and the Series 11. Series 11 also gets up to 24 hours of battery life, which is a meaningful boost. But in terms of the performance, really no change in the two upper end models, the Ultra 3 and the Series 11.

Michael, 15:26 The only watch that kind of gets any sort of specifications, a speed bump, is going to be the Apple Watch SE 3. Gio, you've got an Apple Watch Ultra and Ultra 2, I believe, and I've got the Series 10. What are your thoughts? Are you going to be upgrading?

Geo, 15:44 First of all, I would like to start by saying I was very, very impressed with the changes coming to the SE, especially for someone like my mom, who doesn't particularly need the more advanced features, the rugged design, as they use in the Apple Watch Ultra, at least one of their selling points. So I was very, very pleased with that.

Geo, 16:11 So I'm happy that Apple really kind of took, like, you really raised the bar with what they're offering now with the SE3. That being said, I charge my Apple Watch Ultra 2 maybe every other day. And even when I do charge it, it's at 40%, 45%. The reality is I do have

Geo, 16:41 cell service on my watch um but i yes it would be kind of nice to um have 5g but i don't i'm not away from my phone enough to justify the upgrade um the battery is great on this watch that i have it's still at 100 the battery health capacity i just don't that didn't really kind of make me excited to upgrade.

Geo, 17:12 I know that the Apple watch ultra three, which one of the things I want to bring up is they is also bring satellite connectivity as well. So, but I, I, again, I don't really feel like it's something that, you know what, I have to go out there and get my new Apple watch ultra three.

Speaker #5, 17:34 All right. Levi, what about you?

Levi, 17:39 So I, um, so I currently have an Apple watch series seven and you know, that's an, that's an older watch. Um, but currently for what I use the Apple watch for, although voiceover might be a little laggy on the new software, it still holds up. So I'm still going to keep using it until I hear that it's no longer supported because it, it does what it does, what I needed to do it. Um, I can read my texts on it.

Levi, 18:10 I can, that's pretty much all I use it for. Just check my notifications when my phone's not there or ping in my phone. I might use it for my sleep, but that's pretty much all I use my Apple watch for. So it, uh,

Levi, 18:21 it does what I need it for, and, um, you know, I, I see nothing earth-shattering to upgrade for, like, you know, I don't know what would make me upgrade, um, but I see nothing to upgrade for, and I, my, my Apple Watch does get pretty low if I don't charge it, but, um, but, but that's just because it's an older watch, and I've had it literally since it came out, I got it pretty much right when it came out, so I've had this, I've had this Apple Watch 3-7 for a while, but, um,

Levi, 18:51 I don't think I need to upgrade quite yet for the amount of time I use it. But if I had to upgrade, I would probably just get the Series 11 just because... The Ultra seems like it would be too big and bulky. And while the SE seems like it might not get, I forget what they said about the battery life on the SE3.

Levi, 19:12 But the 11 is kind of like that middle ground where, you know, oh, you don't need the cheapest thing, but also you don't need to spend out $700 on an Apple Watch.

Geo, 19:23 You don't want the rugged design of the, you know, it's supposed to be for hardcore. You don't want that rugged design.

Levi, 19:29 I haven't even seen the Apple Watch Ultra, so I don't even know what it looks like. So I think I saw one in the store, but it had that casing on it that you see in the demos. I've never gotten to actually feel one, put it on my wrist, and try it. I will say that, but I'm fine with the regular Apple Watch design that I'm used to.

Michael, 19:50 You know, I think that that brings up something that I kind of noticed, is that a lot of the features that Sleep Score provides, hypertension notifications, new watch faces, these things are going to be coming to older watches as well.

Michael, 20:04 I figured that the hypertension notifications especially would be something that Apple would not bring to the older watches just, you know, because I think Apple gets a bad rap for arbitrarily, you know, or, you know, so people say. arbitrarily kind of limiting features. But one thing that I'm really glad to see is that they're bringing it to the older devices. That's a choice. That's a conscious choice to do that.

Michael, 20:34 Kind of like the way that they brought some of the 16 functionality to the 15 Pro. So all of the three Apple Watch models are currently available for pre-order right now, as are those AirPods Pro. I forgot to mention that. All of the Apple Watches and the AirPods Pro 3 are available for pre-order now with deliveries starting September 19th, 2025.

Michael, 21:04 Moving right along, Apple announced four iPhone models at the odd-dropping keynote, starting out with the iPhone 17. A quick plug, just a second here for Alex Hall's excellent write-up of the event. He posted it the night of the keynote, and it was a great, great, great recap event. It is well-researched. It's got the details you need, and it's funny, and it's approachable.

Michael, 21:33 So definitely check that out at AppleViz.com slash blog if you want the nitty-gritty. But the iPhone 17, it has a 6.3-inch diagonal display. And when we say that, again, we're talking top left to bottom right, top right to bottom left diagonally. It has the A19 processor. MacRumors says that it has only 8 gigabytes of RAM, whereas the rest of these phones have 12.

Michael, 22:03 It has a ProMotion 120 hertz display refresh rate, which means that during a period of lower activity, the display can refresh less often, so maybe faster. Hopefully that will translate into battery life improvements and the cameras. So the back camera, of course, all of these pro models come with better cameras. They do that. That's an every year thing. And to me, as a blind person.

Michael, 22:34 That doesn't really tell me very much, but there is one camera upgrade that I think has the potential to be really, really impactful for blind, deaf, blind, low vision users, and that is the new front-facing center stage camera. So now that the way that this works is it is an 18 megapixel center stage camera and it will work to keep you in the frame when you are on a video call. So let's say that you're on FaceTime with someone.

Michael, 23:04 Kind of hard to know non visually as my face in the frame without asking somebody. So this, the way I understand it is that this system will work to keep your face in view, even if you move your head out of the frame would, you know, would normally do that. We also, for pictures, you can do AI generated view control.

Michael, 23:27 So if you're taking a group selfie, it will automatically know to adjust the view to get everyone in the shot. So Some cool things there that I actually think will maybe offer some quality of life improvements. The iPhone 17 is kind of the baseline phone. In reading, it sounds a whole lot like other iPhone 16 in terms of the design.

Michael, 23:59 The all-new design would be the next phone that Apple introduced. and that is the iPhone Air. Note 17, it's just called the iPhone Air, and it is 5.6 millimeters in thickness. It has a 6.5-inch diagonal display.

Michael, 24:25 It has all of the major components housed in what Apple calls the Ford's Plateau. It is a kind of a larger area on the back of the device that houses the speaker and the Apple silicon and the cameras and other things so as to make more room for batteries. This phone offers 27 hours of video playback, 22 hours of streamed video playback.

Michael, 24:53 And to put those numbers into perspective, that is the same as the iPhone 16 Pro. And it is one hour more on both ends than the iPhone 16E. I took a look at the 16E back in late February to early April and loved it. And the battery life was awesome. If the iPhone Air can get anywhere near that, if it can get to that point, that would be awesome and a big win.

Michael, 25:24 It also has the new Apple N1 networking chip. which is a Wi-Fi Bluetooth chip that Apple says will bring increased reliability. It also has the Apple C1X modem. I'm going to take a pause right here to talk a little bit about the iPhone Air. Tyler, what are your thoughts?

Tyler, 25:48 So I think the iPhone Air, I find it interesting, for one thing, that they don't use 17. I'm not sure what it means now, but I wonder if They're signaling something, either that this is a novelty product or if they're kind of testing the waters, not sure if the concept will stay around.

Tyler, 26:09 or if they're going to try to do a sort of naming rebrand, similar to what they did with their software, where they don't use numbers like 17, 18, or if they feel like it's too abstract, maybe they'll do 26 or 27, or maybe it'll just be like the iPad, where it's like iPhone, iPhone Air, iPhone Pro, etc., and just different generations. Now, as far as what I've heard about the design...

Tyler, 26:36 I think, I'm not sure how much use, like, for example, how much use I would have of it. Because if it's one speaker and if it's really thin, even if it's good battery life, like for me, a 6.5-inch screen is bigger than what I need. I have an iPhone 15 Pro 6.1-inch screen that works well for me.

Tyler, 27:08 and I wonder if like the AR is how people will decide between say the AR versus the Pro the AR is more like I said seems like kind of a novelty design people might want to check it out see how it feels see how the form factor but other designs like the Pro or even the base 17

Tyler, 27:36 those are more familiar and you get more features with less overall compromises. The only big compromise with it, what I've heard about the pro is that it is larger and uses different materials. So it's, it's both, it feels thicker and bulkier. Um, so if you really want a thin phone, the iPhone air could be your, your cup of tea. Um,

Tyler, 28:04 But with the compromises that have to be made, I'm not sure exactly. I wonder if they'll have the same kind of issues that they had in the past with marketing the 16+, 15+, 14+, or the 13 and 12 minis, where there's enough of a market to see demand, but actually turning that into a reality, into a sustained reality. It seems to have been a challenge for them.

Tyler, 28:34 for Apple.

Michael, 28:38 Speaking of compromises, a lot of people on Apple, this just reading, reading some of the initial commentary on the topics. A lot of people were talking about concerns that Apple's tech specs page for the iPhone air indicates that it only has one top speaker. And a lot of people, myself included, have some concerns about that. Me too. Gio? Yeah. What are your thoughts, Gio?

Geo, 29:06 Yes. As soon as I saw it was only going to be one speaker, I definitely had to put a hard, hard, hard no for me. That's just, no. I listen to voiceover. Sometimes we'll listen to podcasts. Sometimes we'll listen to music on it. Having just the one speaker... And I'll just throw in this, too. Having just the one speaker is just a hard no.

Geo, 29:33 And when Apple has to advertise a battery pack with it, hard, hard, hard no.

Michael, 29:40 The battery pack is even on the tech specs page. Go ahead, Levi.

Levi, 29:47 Yeah, I kind of feel the same way about the whole single speaker. But to me, it feels like we went back. Oh, I don't know, 10 years? Because the iPhone 7 was the first phone to get stereo speakers, and I feel like we've just went backwards.

Levi, 30:09 I could see why Apple might not want to do it because it's not going to live up to their quality standards. But they could have probably fit a slightly, like a speaker, the quality of like an iPhone SE speaker in there for your stereo speakers and called it a day with maybe 15 minutes less of battery life. And it would have been a non-issue.

Levi, 30:36 They could have marketed it at the same exact, you know. how many hours of battery life, because 15 minutes isn't really much of using your phone. But if, you know, I'm more of a Pro Max type of guy, but if I were to get the Air, I would most certainly rather a slightly, you know, I'm a sound guy, but if I wasn't, I would most rather have just like a slightly...

Levi, 31:07 worse sounding phone with stereo speakers with a little less battery than a single speaker because I hold the bottom speaker of the phone to my ear because that's just what I do whenever I'm using voiceover I have that volume at like 6% and I hold the bottom speaker to my ear and that's what I do when I'm in a very crowded situation and doing that the other way around is quite complicated I've done it before so yeah it's

Levi, 31:34 Yeah, I mean, the Air, I mean, I'm curious to try it out just to see what it's like, see what it feels like, you know, get my hands on it. But then after that, it's like, okay, where's my Pro Max, please? Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Michael, 31:47 I want to try it because it's a new thing. I want to try it because it's new, but I don't know that I want to keep it. Same. It's a cool concept, and, you know, it sounds like a great phone, For somebody, it just doesn't sound like it's a great phone for me. In addition to the iPhone 17 and then the iPhone Air, we also have the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.

Michael, 32:16 So the iPhone Air is made out of a titanium body, whereas the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are made out of an aluminum body. They also have the new plateau for the camera and other components

Michael, 32:36 Sounds like the Plateau is what has allowed them to move some of those components out of the other areas of the phone to allow for bigger batteries to be put in these phones. And anytime you start talking about bigger batteries, you get me smiling because I love phones with big batteries. Me too. Yes. And the iPhone 17 Pro Max in particular, up to 39 hours of battery. non-streamed video playback.

Michael, 33:08 Even on the 17 Pro, you get 33 hours of regular, 33 hours of regular video playback, 30 hours of streamed video playback. And I think it's 33, I think it's 33, it's certainly it's 33 regular hours of regular video playback. And to put that number into perspective,

Michael, 33:33 This year's the iPhone 16 Pro Max from last year, the current iPhone, that one gets 33 hours of video playback. So it's almost like with the software optimizations and the chip and all the iOS 26 battery optimizations and things like that, that Apple is expecting. If I'm reading this right, it sounds like on paper, the 17 Pro could get the equivalent of

Michael, 34:03 This year's 16 Pro Max battery life. Of course, I'm not going to take that chance. If I get one, well, not if, it's when, it will be a Pro Max. But, you know, it's cool that they're making such leaps and bounds with this. Of course, the iPhone... Air and the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max have the same A19 Pro chip.

Michael, 34:34 And it sounds like the iPhone Air is in a little bit less graphics performance. But, you know, it's the same amount of RAM, 12 gigs of RAM per Mac, rumors. Sounds like they're going to be a lot of fun. And prices for these things is the regular 17 starts at $799. The iPhone Air is $999, the Pro $1099, and the Pro Max $1199. Again, all for 256 gigs of storage.

Michael, 35:05 You can get these things in deep blue, silver, or cosmic orange. I have some questions. Cosmic orange, huh? Cosmic orange. I have some questions about that. You can also get new cases. Apple's got a new tech woven material. I guess it is. I don't know. I hope it's not a fine woven 2.0.

Michael, 35:35 And you can also get a crossbody strap for the first time, which I am super excited about. Thoughts, guys, on the 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max? We'll start with Tyler.

Tyler, 35:50 Okay, so one other interesting feature about the 17 Pro line is the new heat dissipation. So I have an iPhone 15 Pro, and one of the things I've noticed as I've used it

Tyler, 36:06 over time is that particularly with sustained workloads, like even watching a streamed video, like when I was watching the keynote yesterday, or if I'm using something like Seeing AI or Be My AI or something like that for a long time, the back of the phone can get a little warm. And I'd imagine if I continued to do sustained workloads or very high performance activity,

Tyler, 36:35 that it could get hot, which can obviously cause performance to be throttled down. And that was a known complaint, particularly of gamers and graphics-heavy users of the 15 Pro and I believe the 16 Pro as well. So what Apple has done with the 17 Pro is the new heat dissipation mechanism. They call it vapor chamber. So I think it's a little like active cooling rather than just allowing...

Tyler, 37:04 the heat to passively dissipate out of the phone, like just to the material. There's liquid cooling in the phone, which from my understanding, how the liquid in the vapor chambers helps direct the heat more actively and more targeted out of the phone.

Tyler, 37:33 and away from some of the critical components like the battery and the chips, which then can lead to more performance and maybe even contribute to greater longevity of the device, because obviously with less heat, there's less stress on the components. You might be able to get a little longer life out of that device if you're not heating it up so much. Apple claims...

Tyler, 38:01 to be able to achieve 40% more sustained performance than the iPhone 16 Pro. That is obviously something that will need to be verified in real-world testing, but I think that is telling if something that Apple has responded to or heard out complaints from users about heating and has used some of their

Tyler, 38:29 silicon and hardware engineering prowess to really make the most out of what their silicon can do and be held back less by thermal constraints.

Speaker #5, 38:46 All right, Levi.

Levi, 38:47 So one thing, I've not seen anybody mention this, but for our low vision users, I don't know if this is available on all the iPhones, but From what I've heard, I believe, I forget if it was Mac Rumors or 95Mac who mentioned this, But there's a settings option in accessibility where you can disable PWM. I know that I've seen for some people that hurts their eyes.

Levi, 39:15 It's a way that it tries to dim the brightness of the OLED display. But apparently there's going to be an option where you can disable that, and it will use another way to dim the screen so that if the ProMotion kind of hurts your eyes because of the flickering or the PWM, which basically... It basically means how long it stays on versus off at the refresh rate, whether that's 50% on, 50% off, or 25% on, 75% off.

Levi, 39:44 It's just a way of controlling how long it's on or off. You can disable that within the settings if that is something that affects your vision, which I've seen places where some people say it has. So if you're worried about promotion...

Levi, 40:05 I believe you can, um, I don't, so I don't, so I've heard like, we don't know if it's on all the 17 line just, but, but I think they saw in the code for the air. Um, so we're going to have to wait and see when we get our hands on it.

Michael, 40:21 All right. Geo, what about you? 17 pro? Well, I'm sure you want the 17 pro max, right?

Geo, 40:28 Um, you know, I, like, like everybody mentioned here, I think for me, the battery is what really gets my attention. Um, You know, having a good battery is always a plus for me. That and the speakers for me. And, you know, not so much, you know, the cameras. I mean, that would be great, but the battery is one of the things that is really a nice, you know, kind of what kind of gets my attention for sure.

Michael, 40:55 And all of the iPhone models that were announced at the keynote, so the iPhone 17, the iPhone Air, 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max pre-orders begin Friday, September 12th, 2025 with deliveries Friday, September 19th. Stay tuned to AppleVis. We are excited about these launches and we think you will be too.

Michael, 41:20 Certainly, and last but not least, Apple also announced that the version 26 of the software for all of its operating systems, yes, no more iOS, different numbers for macOS and iOS. It is all now version 26, kind of like a car model year type numbering cycle. Version 26 will be released on September 15th, 2025.

Michael, 41:48 And one of the big hallmark things of the software of these releases is the new liquid glass visual interface redesign. And my understanding of it, being totally blind here, my understanding is that it makes icons much more transparent and there's a whole new aesthetic. And I don't have anything or don't have any way to know how it will affect the experience for low vision users.

Michael, 42:18 So if you do have low vision and you do rely on your vision at all to use your device, I strongly recommend trying out iOS 26 on a secondary or a friend's device, family member, something like that, before you install it on yours. As far as how iOS 26 affects voiceover, there is zero, absolutely zero impact from Liquid Glass on the voiceover experience.

Michael, 42:46 So if you were worried about that or wondering about that, the answer is it doesn't change things at all when you are using voiceover. We've got a lot of exciting content we're going to be putting out in the next few days. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but right now we'll go ahead and take it to the panel to talk about iOS 26. Tyler?

Tyler, 43:07 Okay. See, like you said, Liquid Glass is really visual, and so voiceover is unaffected. It works pretty much how it always has.

Tyler, 43:24 One thing I've noticed with iOS 26 on a test device is that certain things, like elements in app toolbars, for example, like in Mail and Safari, are, I think because they're floating elements, they are a little smaller. When you move your finger, you have to move more precisely around. Like if you feel the bottom, if you're in a message in Mail, for example, and you feel to the bottom there's the delete, move button,

Tyler, 43:53 more actions composed, yada, yada. Um, you do, it's not directly at the bottom. It's sort of hovers a little bit, um, uh, hovers a little above the bottom. And I think that's because it's, if it's a transparent element or a floating toolbar, maybe that's because, uh, maybe that's why, um, if in Safari, you notice it too, with, if you have, depending on what view you have, um, But that's pretty much the only thing I've noticed about Liquid Glass.

Tyler, 44:23 Other than that, VoiceOver pretty much works as it, you know, and the app experiences are generally, you know, as they've always been. Obviously, individual apps have their own new features, but that's kind of to summarize. I wouldn't say I've noticed in my use case any serious bugs, but we'll obviously have more coverage on that coming. on the 15th.

Michael, 44:50 All right. Thank you, Tyler. Levi, what's your take?

Levi, 44:54 So, you know, like Tyler said, there isn't really, you know, much, there isn't really like a big change to the overall, you know, no new voiceover sounds. The voiceover sounds are all the same. Voiceover gestures are all like they have been in previous releases. But like Tyler said, you know, some of the toolbar buttons are a bit hard to, reach.

Levi, 45:18 Other than that, the only other thing I can think of is sometimes tab bars will collapse themselves, meaning if you're way... If you scroll, you may not see the tab bar at the bottom of the screen when you explore by touch. For me, I've seen only one tab appear out of all the tabs, and you can click that to expand the tab bar into the rest of your tabs, but that has the

Levi, 45:47 at a drawback of you actually going into whatever tab, like in, I'll give you an example in the music app. If, um, I'm in like the, I don't know, the library tab and I'm scrolling and I'm in like in my music or whatever, and I want to go to the search tab. If I scroll, if I do scroll by the bottom, I don't really see the tab bar. I see a home tab and it just collapsed. And if I double tap that, it expands the toolbar or the tab bar and but also takes me to the home tab.

Levi, 46:17 And then I have to click the, whatever the search tab or whatever it is I want to go to. And then you're at your destination. So that's the one thing I don't really like is I like tab bars to stay right there and don't move away from me because that's like, I guess I'm just used to that, but that's what tab bars should be in my opinion.

Michael, 46:39 All right. And, Of course, along with iOS 26, we're going to be seeing a release of macOS Tahoe 26. And Tyler has been leading the way and Levi's been supporting with our macOS testing efforts. Tyler, what can voiceover users expect with macOS 26, I hope?

Tyler, 47:05 So like iOS 26, macOS Tahoe does adopt liquid glass across the operating system. However, also like iOS 26, voiceover isn't really affected by that, even less, I'd argue, than iOS 26 because macOS is a keyboard-driven interface rather than, say, a touch interface where you're interacting, you're touching the elements like with iOS. You're

Tyler, 47:35 primarily using the keyboard on Mac OS and the commands and everything like that are pretty much the same. As far as new, there are new features like if you use Control Center, the experience will mirror, much more closely mirror what you get on iOS in terms of the customization of Control Center and status menus. And as far as voiceover features,

Tyler, 48:05 I'd say probably the biggest is you can now do remote screen sharing. So if you use the screen sharing facility through FaceTime or to share your control, another Mac that's on your local network, you can do that. And VoiceOver is supported in that. And there are settings in VoiceOver Utility to do that. But other than that, And it will obviously have more coverage on some of the other features, enhancements, bugs, et cetera, come the 15th.

Tyler, 48:37 But I would say in general, it's pretty light on voiceover changes. Your workflow likely won't be tremendously impacted for better or for worse. So that's kind of what I've noticed about Tahoe. Okay. Levi? Levi?

Levi, 48:58 I would have to say basically the same thing. One thing which, you know, the one thing I like about Mac OS 26 and iOS 26 is the ability for shortcuts to use AI. I'll probably write something up about this, but I have a shortcut which will take a screenshot of the voiceover cursor and send it to

Levi, 49:28 You can either use ChatGPT or Private Cloud Compute, and it will take an image of your voice for cursor. So you no longer need VLC or an API key to do that, which I find super cool. And I've actually used it before, and you can fully customize it. I've got one for iPhone, which although you can't describe the cursor, you can describe the screen. I literally just two-finger double-tap on the edges, and I just choose what AI model I want to use, whether that's the Private Cloud Compute or the ChatGPT.

Levi, 49:58 And then it shows the model response in a quick look action. And it's a, you know, it's way easier than, you know, taking a screenshot, going to share, tapping through my eyes and all that. You just two finger double tap at the far edges and there you go. So when the software is out, I'll probably write something up about that and share them all to the world. So, yeah.

Levi, 50:23 But yeah, it took me a good long while to get that one on the Mac to work because it uses Apple Scripts to basically, basically what it does is, I'll sum it up real quick. Basically what it does is it uses VoiceOver and Apple Script to take a cursor or image of whatever's in your VoiceOver cursor.

Levi, 50:45 then it saves it to your home folder, then the shortcut uploads that to the AI, then it gets you to the description, and then it removes the file from your system, so it cleans up after itself, which is pretty nice. Wow. So, yeah.

Michael, 51:00 That is really, really cool, and we will definitely be looking forward to seeing that. Looking ahead, again, all of these software releases are going to be coming out on Monday, September 15th. 2025.

Michael, 51:26 Prior to that on AppleVis, we're going to start releasing some of our iOS, our 26, I just called our 26 release content. We're going to have some podcasts from Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymous, demonstrating what's new in iOS 26. We're going to have Scott Dabbert's awesome article talking about what's new in iOS 26 accessibility. I've had a look at a draft and it was, as it always is, Awesome.

Michael, 51:47 Tyler's got a post in the works about what you can expect to be changed and fixed and some new things here in macOS Tahoe 26. We've also got an iOS 26, iPadOS 26 bug list. We're also going to get something together for the Apple Watch as well. Speaking of watchOS 26, just a really, really quick update. preview here.

Michael, 52:15 Myself and Levi and Gio have all been kind of using watchOS 26 in our daily lives and found the experience to be quite, quite good. It has been great to be here with everyone. Thank you so much all for coming and for your time and most of all for listening. Be sure to stay tuned to AppleVis in the days and weeks to come. We're hopefully going to have lots of exciting content both about the phones

Michael, 52:44 and the AirPods and of course the software.