iPhone Ultra, OpenAI's Alexa Dot, & AI costs on the AppleInsider Podcast

**William Gallagher** (0:04)
Hello, welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. I'm William Gallagher. My sponsor this week is CleanMyMac by MacPaw. More about that later, unless you're a subscriber, in which case, forget I said anything. And just join me in welcoming Wesley Hilliard to the show as ever.
Now, well, I should say this because I say that about subscribers. If you subscribe to the Apple Insider thing, of course you don't hear about sponsors, but you also get an extended extra Apple Insider Plus at the end, which this week is about what?

**Wesley Hilliard** (0:35)
So we're going to talk about what makes a product Ultra. Apples only use the name a few times. There's rumors around the foldable iPhone using the name Ultra. And I just want to get into it, like why this name works, why it doesn't, why it would come to iPhone. So we'll be talking about that in Apple Insider Plus.

**William Gallagher** (0:54)
Right, I can exclusively reveal that I know the answer.
What makes a product Ultra, I know precisely, and I will unveil this to applause or derision, I'm not sure which, in a little whilst time. But in the meantime, speaking of iPhones and things that are coming and things that are not, it wouldn't be a week on the Apple Insider Podcast without some iPhone 18 rumors. I'm going to be so glad when the iPhone 18 rumors are over and we can start on the iPhone 19 rumors. But for now, the first one that came to my mind this week as we were talking was that, well, everything seems to be coalescing around facts we've heard before. The processor, the modem, under display Face ID keeps coming back and going, you're the rumor expert, what do you think? What should we genuinely looking forward to? And what is actually just a kind of wish list even now from people?

**Wesley Hilliard** (1:49)
This is one of those funny things that, I mean, it just keeps coming back. I think because we've seen parts, we can go ahead and say under display Face ID is happening. We're going to have a smaller cutout on the display. The Dynamic Island isn't going to go anywhere. The selfie camera still needs a cutout, so that's going to happen.
That's pretty much all we got. I mean, when the display is off, you won't notice anything because it's black. When it's on, you kind of might notice something depending on what content you're viewing. If you're in dark mode, you'll never notice.
This whole thing about Notch, Dynamic Island, all this stuff is silly because realistically, it's such a small portion of the display and Apple has such a clever solution. I'm not really that concerned about it. It'll be nice having more space for more notifications, I guess, but that's all that's really going to happen.

**William Gallagher** (2:39)
I suppose. I remember when the Notch appeared on the MacBook Pro and people were complaining that it was cutting into the screen, that bothered me because no, it wasn't. That Apple had kind of increased the screen either side of it, so you were getting more.
That was the only time I thought about it. I'm completely ambivalent because I'm with you, I like the Dynamic Island, I think that was clever. So a smaller one, not a smaller one.

**Wesley Hilliard** (3:03)
It's a smart design solution that isn't going anywhere. Apple has no reason to get rid of the Dynamic Island or move on from it. It's here to stay. Even if they put the selfie camera under the display, we're still going to have a Dynamic Island. It would just, when it's off, nothing would be there. That would be the only change, but it would still turn on and display things because iOS is built for that. Obviously they can change that, but I just don't see it happening. It's a very useful piece of information to have floating there. And I would prefer have it there than have it be like Android, you have 750 little icons in your bar at the top, so your status bar.
Speaking of status bar, quick aside, the latest beta changed the status bar on iPhone.

**William Gallagher** (3:49)
What's it done?

**Wesley Hilliard** (3:50)
So it took away the 5G or 4G or LTE designators and only gave us cellular bars now next to the WiFi symbol, which honestly is a welcome change to me. People were like, well, I want to know what service, it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. If it were up to me, I would have none of those indicators. I would barely have a clock. So, you know.

**William Gallagher** (4:09)