iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch, iPhone Duo, and iOS 27 on the AppleInsider Podcast

Wesley Hilliard (0:05)

I'm your host, Wesley Hilliard, and our sponsor this week is CleanMyMac by MacPaw. I'm joined once again by William Gallagher, and I think we're just going to jump right back in. We're going to get back to the Apple event. We only talked to iPhone Duo last week, really. We're going to touch some other things this weekend. Of course, get back to iPhone Duo. Our Apple Insider Plus ad-free segment is going to be about where iPhone Duo lands in Apple's lineup.

Is it the future? Is it the present? Is it the past? And where does it fall with spatial computing? We're going to be talking about all of that.

William, how are you today?

William Gallagher (0:43)

Yeah, I'm fine. I'm amused by the whole Christmas Carol style version of App Insider Plus. That'd be good. But yeah, I'm very well, thank you. And measuring things, looking at new stands, trying to work out trade-in figures, which are not that good. All sorts of things in preparation for probably not buying the iPhone Duo. What about you?

Wesley Hilliard (1:04)

Well, I'm very sad that I got to watch everyone have their fun on iPhone Pre-Order Day and I did not get to participate. I have decided that I'm going to attempt to find an iPhone 18 Pro in the wild on Friday and purchase one cash in hand and then return it within the return window.

William Gallagher (1:25)

Okay. This sounds a little dodgy, like you're going to meet someone in a park.

Wesley Hilliard (1:29)

Yeah, totally fine. Separate it.

William Gallagher (1:33)

It's not ideal.

Wesley Hilliard (1:35)

I don't recommend anyone else do this. It's kind of wasteful. They have to repackage it, maybe sell it as refurbished. It's a little, but I've done this before to test things. The no questions asked return policy, especially at places like Best Buy, helps you get away with it. It's consumerism at its finest.

There's nothing in the rules that says I can't, so therefore I will.

William Gallagher (2:00)

I did once do it with the first Kindle scribe, but it was mostly because the first Kindle scribe was so bad, I could not get it back to Amazon fast enough, really. So yeah, it still feels ungreen, but there are times when it's practical, I suppose. Yeah.

Wesley Hilliard (2:16)

So I want to talk a little bit about the OS releases before we get to the event again. All the OS 27 releases are here. That means if you were on a beta, go turn off the beta.

The public release is a different version than the RC. So you actually do have an update for iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and iPad.

William Gallagher (2:44)

So the other one, iPad.

Wesley Hilliard (2:46)

visionOS Mac OS did not get a post RC update. But obviously, Siri AI is here. It's interesting. I'm going to address this here while we're talking about it. I got an email from JT that says, what's going on? I talked to the new Siri AI and it just says, I don't know what you're talking about over and over again. Basically, the error. I've read into this a few times in the past week. I'm assuming that this is related to the rollout. This is related to server conditions.

The unavailability of Siri is interesting at launch. It's annoying that this would happen on this week. But I also would assume that it's likely connected to your on-device archiving or creating your spotlight index. That is all shown in settings. If you go to settings and at the very top, it says, currently optimizing Siri in search, that means you were not finished indexing and it will take time. So, yes, it should work. It should probably do the things it always did.

It's kind of broken when it's indexing and that is the frustrating part. But hopefully it'll be done soon and you won't have to worry about it.

William Gallagher (4:00)

That's the frustrating part. Yeah, haven't tried Apple Music yet, have you? Anyway, which by the way, Apple Music Add This Tractor Playlist works on the Mac again now. Doesn't work on the iPhone, even on the release. Why would you do that?

Wesley Hilliard (4:13)

There are examples going around. I saw someone say, tell me what the best Ghost in the Shell version is. There's a movie, a couple of anime series, there's a new one out. Someone asked, tell me the best one to watch and it said, watch the 1997 one, which I disagree you should watch the new one.

The original is always good, but the new one is beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous. But it recommends the 90s one and the person says, add it to my Apple TV up next. It says, okay. And then they say, I don't see it. It doesn't appear you've added it. And it responds, yeah, I can't do that. You should add it yourself.