Transcription
What's up, guys? My name is Brandon and welcome back to Apple Weekly. In this episode, we're going to be discussing even more new iOS 26 features. We're going to talk about some fresh new iPhone 17 details, Apple's secret new AI team, a crazy Air Tag story, and more. And as always, if you want to continue staying up to date with everything going on in the world of Apple, be sure to hit that subscribe button down below and check out the Apple Den newsletter.
Okay, so this week was a fun one because we did see Apple release iOS 26 developer beta 5 and of course we did also get public beta 2. So they are the same build. They are the same version. One is just developer beta, one is public beta, but they are identical. And of course, I did make a video talking about everything new in iOS 26 beta 5. So if you missed that for some reason, I will leave that linked down in the description below. But there are even more new features and changes that we did not cover yet in this version. And so the first thing actually has to do with the home screen. So now if you go ahead and haptic press on the home screen, you will notice that the little minus icon right there finally has the liquid glass effect. Before it did not have that where it shows a little minus right there in the top left corner. It also shows up in the control center by the way. So if you have to press, you can see it right there in the control center as well.
Also in this latest beta, we see a new low power indicator that comes out of the dynamic island as you can see right here. So for 20% and 10% you will get this new indicator out of the dynamic island has a little animation there on the red. You can also tap on that to turn on low power mode instantly. So that is really nice. Also a small thing that was added is the select button in the mail application. So before you had to go to the three dots and that's where you saw select. So now it's just right there so you could select multiples easier.
But easily the biggest controversy of all had to do with the camera application because everybody for some reason lost their minds over this. Now don't get me wrong, there were quite a few people who were happy to see this, but a lot of people were really mad at Apple for adding a toggle for this. And if you don't know what I'm talking about by now, it's that the scroll direction was reversed in beta 4. So when you swipe to the uh left, it would go to the right or it would go to the left. If you swipe to the right, it would go to the right like this. So that it was not normal. Like it used to be the opposite direction and a lot of people were mad at that that Apple changed that and now Apple actually added a toggle in the settings down here at the bottom of your camera settings. Mode switching, classic mode switching. So if you turn that on, it will go back to the original. But if you keep that off, it will go to what we saw in beta 4 where if you, you know, swipe to the left, it goes to the left. Swipe to the right, goes to the right. So, I guess people are just getting mad at anything and everything because people were mad at Apple for introducing that and now people are mad that Apple added a toggle for this instead of just keeping it one way and basically forcing us to, you know, do it their way.
Now, the thing I will say about this is, and a lot of people are upset, but keep in mind this is beta software. This toggle very well might not exist in 26.0 when it gets released to the general public. Apple does a lot of things like this where they add random toggles. they add random things throughout the OS, not only just to kind of gauge user interaction, like how many people are are doing that and just what's the consensus of it, but also it's just maybe a temporary thing while Apple kind of, you know, refigures out what they want to do with the scroll direction. So, not saying it won't be there in the final version. I'm just saying that this toggle might just be a beta toggle.
Also, in my beta 5 video, I talked about an animation when you lock your screen, how the app icons would kind of come at you. And I didn't see that in beta 4, but actually a correction to that is that on my beta 4 device, I did not have always on display turned on. So, that animation where the icons look like they're coming at you, that animation only works if you have always on display turned on.
Now, here's something interesting. if you have the AirPods because with iOS 26 beta 5, there's a new splash screen for the AirPods that shows what the light on the AirPods charging case does. Like it shows charged, charging, and charge case. Like three different little uh, you know, colors for that button right there. So, that's an interesting new splash screen. It doesn't seem to change anything, you know, with the actual AirPods, but it is a new splash screen.
I should also mention that since I got a lot of questions about low power mode because you guys have experienced what I've experienced where it's just so laggy. It's like unbearable. You can't even use your device basically in low power mode from betas one through four. With beta 5, when you turn low power mode on, it's still really laggy, but it's actually bearable now. Like I could actually use my device now. So, I'm happy to say that low power mode, I wouldn't say it's fixed, but it's better.
Now, if we head back into our settings and go to Apple Intelligence and Siri, and then go down here to ChatGpt, we might be getting a change pretty soon to chat GPT, the extension on the iPhone because this week, OpenAI did officially launch GPT5. So, this is a big launch for OpenAI. And Apple basically said that they will be using GPT5 for the chat GPT extension in iOS 26. And this was according to 95 Mac. And as you can see when you open up the actual chat GPT application, you do see the introducing GPT5 the first time you actually load it up right there. So it says it now has our smartest, fastest, most useful model yet with thinking built in so you get the best answer every time. So what do you think about GPT5? Have you used it? Do you like it better than 4 and 40? Just let me know your thoughts.
Now this week we also saw Apple get made fun of by Google and it was actually not bad. I actually kind of agreed with Google here, but they had a new ad for their upcoming Pixel 10. And basically in this ad, they said this. If you buy a phone because of a feature that's coming soon, but it's been coming soon for a full year, you could change your definition of soon, or you could just change your phone. And I thought that was actually a pretty clever burn. I'm not usually the type to think these are funny at all or entertaining, but I thought that was actually a pretty good one. So, Google, you have a point there. I'll give that to you. But with that being said, are any of you going to be getting the new Google Pixel 10? I don't think a lot of you are. So, it's not going to work. Probably it's probably not going to translate to sales, but it's still pretty funny.
Okay, so now let's talk about Apple's new secret AI team. So, this comes from a report from Mark German over at Bloomberg, and it looks like Apple has formed a secret answers team to create a stripped down chatgpt rival. So, it looks like Apple is going back on what they said before, how they would not have a chatbot because that's not what, you know, people wanted. But it looks like they're forming a new answers, knowledge, and information team, aka AKI. So, this AKI team is going to build a chatbt- like search experience. And this group is led by Robbie Walker, who's the former head of Siri, and they're developing an answer engine that can crawl the web and respond to general knowledge questions. So basically like a chat GPT chatbot and this report also says that a standalone application might actually come from this. So we might have a new default app on our iPhone. So basically this chat GPT like chatbot might not just be fully integrated into Siri. It might be its own independent app which I think Apple should do that.
Now this is still pretty early because there are actually job listings still posted up that Apple is hiring engineers with search algorithm expertise. So, it might not be coming in iOS 26 or 27, but maybe in like 28 or 29 at this point, which I don't think anybody's surprised that we keep putting out these long out dates. But basically, Apple's trying to compete with chat GPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, I would say. But I have to say, it's actually quite refreshing to see Apple kind of go back on their word about how they said before how they don't want to create a chatbot. They don't feel like people like average users actually want to use a chatbot. They were wrong, but at least they were admitting it now. At least they're going back on that and saying, you know what, we will bring out a chatbot eventually. So, we'll have to wait and see how that turns out. I've actually been really enjoying the AI browsers. If you guys have used AI browsers like DIA or any of the others, let me know in a comment down below because I've been loving AI browsers. I don't think that I'm going to use them more than Safari, but it's definitely something I think Apple should get in on.
Now, getting back to present time, as far as the performance goes on iOS 26 beta 5, aka public beta 2, performance has been pretty good. This is by far the best performance yet for iOS 26 betas, which is obvious. Usually the latest beta is the best. Not always, but usually. And with beta 5, performance is pretty solid. It's not a huge jump from beta 4. Like I said, we're probably not going to see any type of major improvements to performance or battery life until the RC build, maybe even after that. But performance is good. I've noticed less crashes. I haven't had any rerings, random respings throughout the week, which is great as well. Uh, but as far as just overall raw performance, it's solid. It's still a beta. You're still going to have bugs. You're still going to have issues, but with the new animations that are better and they feel faster, low power mode being fixed, just small things like that make the experience better with Beta 5.
Now, as far as battery life goes, I have to say battery life is actually a more noticeable improvement than performance. Now, don't get me wrong, some people are still going to have battery drain. Battery is still not going to be as good as it is on a stable release. Obviously, we're still in a beta, but battery life is not terrible. Like my battery life was terrible really through betas one through three. Four was not terrible, but it was not great at all. But beta 5 is pretty solid here for battery life for a beta. So you guys let me know in a comment down below. There's always going to be people out there who have terrible battery life no matter what. Usually a user error, but uh yeah, I'm just curious to see what you guys think. Also, my battery percent is at 90% right now. I've been recording for about 18 minutes, so I'm curious. You guys have to let me know how much I went down right there. But seems pretty good to me.
All right, so now let's talk about what to expect next from Apple. So next up, of course, will be iOS 26 beta 6 and public beta 3. And I would actually expect Apple to switch over to a weekly release schedule now for the next few betas. So we should be seeing beta 6 if Apple goes based off of what they've done in the past. We should be switching over to weekly here. So that would mean we get beta 6 and public beta 3 next week on the week of August 11th. And then after that, we should see beta 7 on the week of the 18th, beta 8 on the week of the 25th. And then typically after the beta 8 or whatever comes before the RC, we have more than a week of a gap right there because that's around the time of the iPhone event. So, we don't know the official day for the iPhone event yet, which of course is when we will see the RC release, but we'll talk about that here in a moment. But of course, the final release for iOS 26, we know for sure, is coming at some point in September, most likely in midepptember. So maybe the 15th of September is a possibility.
All right, so now let's move on to the latest Apple news. And let's start with that rumored iPhone 17 event date because we're now hearing from a source in Germany. So a German carrier claims that the iPhone 17 event is set for September 9th. And they also say that the iPhone 17s will go on sale on September 19th. And that actually aligns with what Apple has done in the past. alo an event on Tuesday the 9th and then of course pre-orders are usually that Friday and then the official release is the following Friday. So that is in line with what Apple has done in the past. So they could just simply be guessing because it's just what Apple does pretty much every year or they could have some inside knowledge, you know, about when Apple is planning to launch this so they can get their website and all their stuff prepared.
Now, speaking of the iPhone 17, have you ever wanted a lanyard for your iPhone case? Well, Apple might be giving you that with the iPhone 17 cases because apparently they're going to be launching a new liquid silicone line of cases for the iPhone 17 according to Majin Buu. And this is going to have a lanyard strap on it. So, you can see what these might look like. Very interesting. Not my style, but that is pretty cool here. And you know, he wasn't the only one. Magibu was not the only one who said that this is going to be happening because another leaker, Dwan Re, also shared a CAD of the iPhone 17 Pro case and it shows two spots to attach a lanyard down here in the bottom corners. So, this is not something brand new. We've seen this from like Caseify and, you know, Maggis. A lot of different companies have had these type of cases, but it'll be interesting to see Apple implement this into their own firstp party cases.
And speaking of the iPhone 17 lineup, let's talk about the iPhone 17 Air because we have new details on the battery inside. So, we're now hearing, according to a source on Neighbor, that the iPhone 17 Air battery is allegedly only 2.49 mm. That is about half of the thickness of the iPhone 17 Pro battery. So, that's pretty crazy. And they're also claiming that the iPhone 17 Air is 2800 milliamp hours. So, a 2,800 mAh battery, but it's just 2.49 mm thick. So, it's going to be thin. Of course, we already know that the 17 Air is going to be thin and light. Probably even thinner and lighter than the S25 Edge. So, I think it's, you know, we'll give Apple a break on not having the best battery life in that because you're not really getting it for battery life. So, I don't know. I'm curious to see how the Air actually shakes out.
Now, let's talk about some future iPhone models because here's something that I would upgrade for because we're now hearing that Apple is developing a new custom image sensor for the iPhone with dynamic range levels that are close to the human eye. So this comes according to a Weibo link along with a recently filed patent by Apple which describes this as an advanced sensor architecture that combines stacked silicon, multiple levels of light capture and onchip noise suppression mechanisms to reach up to 20 stops of dynamic range. And what's interesting is that the Weibo post claims that Apple has already developed the sensor and they might be testing it in developmental hardware right now. So it might not be super far off. Like a lot of times when you hear about these patents from Apple, it's like years in advance or it just never actually happens. But according to this Webo link, it is actually happening right now. It's just that the patent, you know, was just recently discovered as well.
And then finally, just as tradition, we have another crazy Air Tag story. So this time, construction workers in Florida noticed a string of thefts where thousands of dollars worth of roofing supplies had been missing from construction sites. And after seeing this go down for a while, one roofer from a company called Roof Tile Specialists decided to put an end to this theft game. So he did the smart thing and he hid an Air Tag inside of a roll of Polylass. Literally the last place you'd check for an Air Tag. So well done to this guy. And just as expected, not long after putting the Air Tag in there, he had a hit. Another 40 rolls of Polyglass, which was worth about $4,000, vanished from two separate job sites. And these rolls are normally stored up on roofs, but now they were just missing. So the roofer, of course, checked his Find My application, and he saw that the Air Tag was pinging from a home on a street that he recognized. It was nearby. So he called the police and rode over to the house with a police detective. And as they pulled up to the street, as they pulled up to that home right there, they could literally see rolls of polylass stacked on a backyard lai all the way from the front of the house on the street. So, it didn't take long for deputies to close in and arrest the 44year-old suspect. And while he was accused of stealing 40 rolls, deputies actually counted a total of 51 rolls sitting there. So, that's over $5,000 worth of supplies that were returned to the job sites. Meanwhile, the thief is currently still in jail. But without that little Air Tag hidden inside of there, they would have never known where all this polyglass, all these roofing materials actually went. So, good on this guy.
Anyways, guys, that's it for this episode. I hope you did enjoy it. We are getting so close to iOS 26 and the iPhone 17 launch. I am super super excited. But let me know your thoughts, any thoughts at all down there in the comments. As always, thank you guys for watching and I'll see you.