iPhone 18 Pro review

Michael Simon (0:05)

Unscrypted, Unfiltered, Unafraid, welcome to the Macworld Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined today by Jason Cross.

Jason Cross (0:13)

Good morning.

Michael Simon (0:14)

And our producer, Roman Loyola.

Roman Loyola (0:17)

Ahoy there.

Michael Simon (0:18)

Roman, welcome back. Did you have a nice trip? You were actually here in the podcast, but we didn't see you for a few days.

Roman Loyola (0:24)

Yeah, I took a long weekend. It was my wife's annual family reunion. It was 107 degrees.

Michael Simon (0:36)

I was watching the Dodgers game, and half the stadium was empty because nobody would sit in the sun.

Jason Cross (0:42)

It was, we're having weird second summer here in California.

Roman Loyola (0:47)

It's California, yeah.

The rest of the US is, you know, summer's ended already. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and most, you know, this part of California, it starts to heat up during this time of the year.

Jason Cross (1:02)

Even for that, though, this is crazy. Like, it's, all of California is, for some reason, cooking this year, just in October.

Roman Loyola (1:11)

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Simon (1:13)

I'm sure it's fine. Nothing to do with the world ending.

Roman Loyola (1:18)

Just covered stuff.

Michael Simon (1:20)

Well, this is episode number 1003

And today, we're going to talk about the iPhone. iPhone, specifically the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which Roman and Jason have had a chance to play with for a bit. I'm sure Roman took it with him on his trip and took a bunch of photos.

So we're going to talk about your impressions of the phone. I haven't actually done anything with it, so I'm going to basically just ask questions because I haven't even been to the Apple Store to look at it yet, although it's the same. Yeah. We'll talk about that AT&T recall over the weekend, camera chip design, whatever we want to talk about, maybe the duo and we'll close with this week in Epihistory, and wait, no, then we'll have this week in Epihistory and we'll close with comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook threads, search for Macworld, search for the Blue Mouse logo, send us an email to podcasts.macworld.com, send us a personal email, comment under a video, comment under a post, get in touch with us, let us know what you think of the new phone, if you have it or if you aren't going to buy one or you are going to buy one, let us know, and we'll talk about your comment on a future show. Okay, so before iPhone, before iPhone 18, let's take a moment because yesterday, October 5th was the 15 year anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, which just seems crazy to me. Like it's somehow both too long and too short because like so much has happened since he passed away. I mean, obviously Tim Cook's entire tenure came and went now, and we got AirPods and we got Apple Watch. I mean, there are things that didn't exist while he was alive. But it also seems like he was doing keynotes like last year because he's such a memorable figure in the Apple Universe.

Jason Cross (3:21)

To me, I don't feel that way. I feel like it's been so divorced from him for so long. And it's partly because he died, he didn't just quit or get ousted or any of that other stuff. And there's no new Steve Jobs quotes. Like, there's no new, he's not doing interviews, there's none of that. So, he kind of only lives on in everybody's, what would Steve do mentality about Apple, which as time goes on becomes less and less useful because we don't know what Steve would have done, you know?

Or, and that's also not necessarily the yardstick to use. Like, he made bad decisions too at times. Like, so, to me, it feels like Apple's been Steve Jobs less for so long now, it almost feels like that's just this whole other era. It's almost like thinking about car companies like in the 80s or something, like, it just feels so different.

Michael Simon (4:32)

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's just that his shadow loomed so large over everything Apple does. Like, even with the duo, like, the first thing people said was, oh, Steve Jobs wouldn't allow the stylist to be supported on an iPhone, and, you know, would he stand for this asymmetrical design? And, like, you know, people still immediately gravitate towards what would Steve Jobs do. And you're right, it's been so long. And Apple is such a different company from 2011 that it's almost an exercise in futility, because it's...