It Was Basically a Wash

David Sparks (0:03)

Welcome to Mac Power Users, I'm David Sparks, and joined as always by Mr. Stephen Robles. How are you, Stephen?

Stephen Robles (0:08)

I'm doing great, David. I'm excited. I got new tech. Excited, looking forward to new tech in October. It's a tech-tember. Tech-tober is a fun time.

David Sparks (0:15)

Yes, it just continues. We have so much to talk about. There's new hardware we both purchased. We've got reports to give on the new gear. We also want to give some serious time to Siri AI.

I really feel like this is the thing that a lot of people are missing. I was even just showing it to my wife the other night. And a lot of people just don't realize that, oh, wait a second, Siri works now. And we want to talk through that, how it's working on device natively with some third-party applications. Frankly, we want you to be excited. After you listen to this episode, I want you to just pull your phone out and try some Siri AI stuff. Because, gang, Apple has something pretty good now with Siri AI.

Stephen Robles (0:55)

It's really good, and it's taken a lot of my kind of general LLM requests, and we'll get into that and all the specifics. And we're going to do some pontificating on more Power Users today as well, because there's some exciting announcements that are being rumored, Apple launching stuff in October. I want to go through those, what we're excited about.

David Sparks (1:12)

Yeah, man, there is one thing that if it comes, I'm going to be very excited for.

Also, I have a surprise for you today. I'm going to tell you what it is. At some point in the show, I'm going to spring something on you.

Stephen Robles (1:25)

Oh, my goodness. All right.

David Sparks (1:26)

Well, I'm just going to tell you that right now.

Stephen Robles (1:28)

I'm excited. I'm excited now. One big follow up I wanted to do, we talked about AppleCare One Family a couple of episodes ago, because Tyler was on last episode about the iPhone 18 Pro camera. That was an awesome episode. I highly recommend listening to that one. But Elijah sent me an email because I had said on this show and others, that if you sign up for AppleCare One Family, you have six claims across all your devices.

And that was inaccurate. It's six claims for theft and loss, but supposedly for accidental damage, there is an unlimited amount of claims if you're on AppleCare One Family. So unlimited, accidental, six theft and loss. And we'll see.

It says unlimited, but I have to imagine that if you just keep going back to that Apple Store, eventually they're gonna be like, hey buddy, stop dropping your phone or whatever. But yeah, supposedly unlimited.

David Sparks (2:16)

How often do you make AppleCare claims? When's the last time you made one?

Stephen Robles (2:19)

Here's the thing. Well, I'm actually just making one for one of my kids' Apple Watches, because as we're gonna talk about, I got a new Apple Watch, and so I passed them all down the line. I asked my wife if she wants the Ultra. She says no, and so I go to my next kid, and then they all go down the line. And one Apple Watch I discovered, because my kids don't tell me everything, it has a crack on the screen. So I'm gonna do an AppleCare claim for that. But typically, it's once a year or less, which I know begs the question, then why do you even pay for all these devices? But it's peace of mind.

And there has been a few times, like with an iPad, where one of my kids did something with the iPad, stuck it in his backpack with too much stuff, cracked the screen, that was a couple of years ago. So we got it replaced. And there was one instance where I wasn't paying for AppleCare on an iPad Pro.

And my wife actually dropped it, and the sleep button was pushed in in such a way where it wouldn't start. It was like the button was permanently depressed. And so there was no way to turn it on. And when I brought it to the Apple Store, I was like, well, it's not on AppleCare. So to get it fixed, David, $700 to get it fixed. And I was like, okay. And that's one of those things where I would have had an M1 iPad Pro for one of my kids to use if I had AppleCare on that specific device. And so that's why I go all the way with it. Yeah.