charlesn

As much as I liked Verizon's coverage in my hometown of NYC, I was tired of paying its exorbitant single line prices and especially sick of paying so much extra for my Apple Watch, almost $20/mo with taxes and fees. So, two months ago, I switched from Verizon to their new, low cost carrier, Visible, and I could not be any happier. Yes, it's owned by Verizon but operates as a completely separate company and it shows, in the best, consumer-friendly way. I have its top Visible Plus plan that's locked in for the next two years at a flat, $35/month, all in, no extra taxes or fees and my Apple Watch service is FREE. Since Visible uses Verizon's network, including 5G UWB, I've noticed zero difference from my previous Verizon service over the past two months, both here in NYC and in LA where I sometimes travel. Also, since my wife's iPhone is still on Verizon, we've been able to compare the band we're on at any given time (LTE, 5G or 5G UWB), plus bars of reception, and there has never been any difference. The Visible Plus plan has since gone up to $45/mo, all in, with an Apple Watch, but that's still a deal. Honestly, this all seemed too good to be true when I read about it, but Visible offers an easy, 14-day trial with no credit card or payment info needed--you just download an esim that's good for 14 days, so you can try it alongside your existing service. If you don't like the Visible service for any reason, do nothing, the esim just expires after two weeks and you keep going with your existing service. 

Also, I just went through the transfer of my Visible service from my 15 Pro to my 16 Pro and it was a piece of cake following the very clear transfer instructions posted online with no bullshite "activation fee" that Verizon charges just to move your existing service to a new phone. Also a breeze getting my Apple Watch reconnected again, too. 

DAalseth said:

the iPhone 16 Pro Max's camera has been given a great set of results

Fourth is not a great set of results. Being not as good as Google, or Huawei, and Honor (whoever THAT is) is not a great result. Sure they are close, but there was a time when Apple’s cell phone cameras were head and shoulders above the rest. Now they are mid pack. 

Oh, puh-leez. There is a fair amount of subjective judgement in a camera test like this, and a second highest score of 158 vs 157 for the iPhone isn't a difference that makes any difference at all. In fact, there was only a TWO point difference between the #2 phone and the #7 phone: 158 vs 156. There was a little bit more daylight between the #2 phone and the 163 points scored by Huawei to take the top spot, but then again: the Huawei phone costs a whopping 36% more than the Pixel 9 Pro XL and 25% more than the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which seems like a awful lot to pay for a 3%-4% better camera score.

The real takeaway from this test isn't the rankings, it's the obvious conclusion that all the top smartphone cameras are now very competitive, with any notion of "best" being mostly subjective. And, as we see with Huawei, even meager gains over the competition now come at a very high cost. In my opinion, the main quality issue facing the iPhone Pro cameras now was triggered by the change from a 77mm 3x telephoto lens to the 120mm 5x telephoto. This has left the 24mm main (wide) lens with the job of covering the whole 24mm-119mm range with sensor cropping and computational software tricks, and the results aren't great. In the 77mm-119mm range, which is highly used in general photography, the 15 Pro Max and now both 16 Pro models generate objectively provable worse photos than those taken with the old 77mm telephoto lens. 

If you know anything about lenses, this is hardly a surprise, Even with a true optical zoom lens of high quality, a 5-to1 zoom range of 24-120mm is going to involve some tradeoffs in image quality vs fixed focal length lenses or a zoom with a more limited range, like a 24-70 or 24-85. But it's so much worse with iPhone because all three lenses are fixed focal lengths and there is no true optical zooming at all--you're getting a 5-to-1 range out of a 24mm lens strictly from "digital" zoom via sensor cropping and computational software, and it shows up inevitably as inferior image quality.

StrangeDays said:

Didn’t the fear mongers suggest Desert was going to be Zune (poop) brown? Oops. They never learn 

Since you asked: the answer is no, there was no fear-mongering. There was a strong reaction to what Apple Insider posted as supposedly leaked photos of the new color and it looked like a cross between Zune brown and the color of baby diarrhea. That’s what people commented on. Oops! Some people never learn to get the facts straight before they post. 

mike1 said:

I'm feeling that a new Apple TV is on the horizon, so I have been delaying buying another.

My guess... emphasis on guess... is that it's at least a year away. Why? In terms of the television hardware part of it, there's nothing in need of updating. All current video/audio standards for streaming are handled beautifully. Current OS is as snappy as you could want it to be. The only thing on the horizon is 8K, and when you consider that a lot of streaming is STILL being watched in HD, not even 4K, thanks to premium fees often charged for 4K, who knows how long it will take for consumers to care about 8K? (Amazon just downgraded its free, ad-supported tier of Prime Video from 4K to HD.) As for gaming, I really thought Apple Arcade was going to be a big thing, but it has never risen above meh, and Apple seems content to let it stay there. So no new hardware needed on that front. The one new feature that could be a big deal, no surprise, would be AI augmentation of how a user interacts with the Apple TV box. A lot of very cool stuff could probably be done. However, Apple's AI dance card seems pretty full for the next year getting AI features rolled out to iPhone, iPad and the Mac. I don't think for a second that Apple TV is a priority, and that's why I believe it will take a while to get there. 

Orders began, at least here in the U.S., with Sept 20th as the DELIVERY date, not the shipping date. Also, as of right now, while delivery dates have slipped for the Pro Max into the 1st/2nd week of Oct, you can still order one for pick-up at an Apple Store on Sept 20th.