Beats Studio Buds + Giveaway and hang out with Juan and Jerry
This was a live hangout with Juan from TheJuan&Only, our first dual live stream and the end of the collaboration where we compared the AirPods Pro 2 and the Beats Studio Buds + in separate videos. It ended with a live giveaway of a pair of Studio Buds +. (The full comparison videos have their own posts.)
September event chat
The rumored event was exactly a month away, September 12th. For the iPhone 15, I was looking forward most to the rumored titanium case: I love the Pros and their cameras, but they’re heavy, and the 14 Plus is so much lighter than the 14 Pro. I’m on an Apple Watch Series 7 and might upgrade, though the watch doesn’t do much for me. Juan was excited for the iPhone 15, especially in the rumored dark red color, plus the rumored extra battery, and the rumors of a processor-only update for the Watch Series 9. We talked about finishes: I wear dark stainless steel because the silver gets marred, and a lot of us would love a red iPhone with stainless edges, as long as it isn’t one of the lighter, gross-looking product reds.
On whether to wait for M3 MacBooks, I couldn’t see Apple putting M3 in an Air before sometime next year, and M2 Macs are already plenty capable. If you do creative work (photography, music production, video in Final Cut, iMovie or DaVinci Resolve), consider at least a Pro chip; the base M2 isn’t enough for my needs, though it works for most people.
Earbuds and headphones
I wore the Beats to the gym, where they feel more sporty and stay in longer, with no stem. But my go-to is the AirPods Pro 2, which I connect to my Apple TV on the treadmill. I like the Beats’ bassier tone, but the AirPods Pro have the better overall balance for podcasts, music and movies. For over-ear, I sold my AirPods Max (great sound and feel, but heavy and awkward) and use the Bose QC45, lighter than the Max, great on a plane, with really good noise canceling.
My two complaints about AirPods: the batteries degrade pretty quickly with daily use, and the automatic device switching is still so buggy that I turn it off on all my devices. AirPlay to a HomePod is buggy, too.
Vision Pro
I’ll probably review it and send it back; I can’t justify $3,500 for entertainment. The only use case that makes sense to me is entertainment, like watching a movie or playing a game, and I don’t think people will wear it around an office. It reminds us of the first Apple Watch’s $10,000-plus gold edition, which became obsolete within a few years.
If Apple didn’t exist
For earbuds, probably Sony or Bose. For phones, I’ve owned ten or twelve Androids, and my favorite was the Galaxy S9+, so I’d go Samsung now. Juan would take a Google Pixel, which is underrated. The ecosystem (iMessage, AirDrop, Apple Music, Continuity) is what ties us to Apple.
YouTube
Both of us have been on YouTube about four years, with channels around the same pace. My day job, which I still have, is managing a team of engineers in data center, virtualization and DevOps. The best part is reading every comment, even if I don’t reply to every one, and translating comments in other languages with Google Translate.
Advice for a viewer who wants to start a channel: your first few videos are for you, and nobody will see them. You learn to edit and work inside YouTube, then pick up a few regular viewers. It takes me about 45 minutes to record what ends up as a 10-minute video, and I use a multi-camera setup so I can switch angles when I mess up.
The giveaway
We used a random comment picker: one comment from each video, then a coin flip (done by asking Siri). The winner had 48 hours to claim the prize, and we left the replay up so everyone had a fair chance.
