iOS 26 - Apple Admitted It!

0:00 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 and changes. We're going to talk about why Apple might be replacing Siri, Apple's secret vision road map, some new iPhone 17 details, a crazy Air Tag story, and more. And as always, if you want to continue the conversation off of YouTube, be sure to check out the Apple Den Discord server linked down in the description below. Okay, so this week was relatively quiet just as expected. It was the gap week between beta 2 and beta 3 for iOS 26. However, we did see a software release this week for iOS, but that was for iOS 18 and that was iOS 18.6 beta 2. And if you see on my community page here on YouTube, I did

0:47 make a post about this and a lot of people actually thought it was iOS 26 beta 2, not iOS 18.6 beta 2. So, kind of some confusion there with reading that and I understand it. But yeah, we got iOS 18.6 beta 2. I did not make a video on it just like I did not make a video on beta 1 because there's really nothing to talk about with that update. It's going to be a very minor update for those in the US. Now, if you are in the EU, it will have some additional features such as a new user experience with installing alternative app marketplaces. And also Apple says this on their website that Apple's going to provide an API which will allow developers to initiate the download of alternatively distributed apps they publish from within their app. So that's

1:32 coming to the EU and really nothing else is coming in iOS 18.6 as far as we know aside from bug fixes and security patches because the Apple intelligence support for China that has been delayed. We're not going to see that in 18.6. So, minor update, but that was released this week. But as far as iOS 26 goes, we are currently on beta 2 as of the time of recording. We should see beta 3 get released next week. And we will see the public beta after that as well. And we'll talk more about the specific dates that you can expect that in a little bit. But let's start off by talking about even more new features and changes in iOS 26. Because yes, I've already covered hundreds of features, but there are even more that I want to discuss here. And starting off on the lock

2:17 screen with beta 1 of iOS 26, you are only able to move the widgets to the bottom of the screen if you made the clock bigger. But now you can, you know, leave the clock at its default size, its smallest size, and you can still move the widgets to be at the bottom of the screen, which is nice for customizability if you do like having the widgets down at the bottom. I think it can be kind of convoluted there when you have, you know, the two little quick actions there as well. It's kind of a lot in one place, but that is at least an option. Now, I also noticed that when I was charging my iPhone on my wireless charging pad in my Tesla, that on the lock screen where it shows the amount of time until you reach like 80% or whatever, it actually showed slow charging. So, it didn't actually tell me a time. It just said that my phone was slow charging. And I did not see that in

3:03 beta 1. It may have been there, but I did not see that until just now. Now, here's a new feature that I thought was really cool in iOS 26. So, if you attend a concert or this probably applies to other things besides concerts as well, like sporting events, but for concerts specifically, you'll notice that when I swipe up now, it actually shows me the exact artist and that it was a Laney concert, for example. So, if you tap on that, it will also show you a new interface here that shows you that specific event that you attended. So, it says this was a past event and it gives us the date and everything. It shows us the time, you know, where it took place from the artist, a playlist for that, you know, that tour set right there. Even shows the venue, top songs, all of that right here, straight from the

3:49 photos application. Now, I believe something like this did exist in iOS 18, but I did check this on my iOS 18 device, exact photo, and when I swiped up, there was no way to, you know, identify this as being a Laney concert. So, that is pretty cool. And that's something new here in iOS 26. And also in the photos app, I noticed that when you tap on the share sheet right here and you go to add a photo to an album, you can see that we have the recents right there where it says add to iOS 26. That's not new, but I've noticed that it actually lasts like forever now. So before in iOS 18, when you went to add a photo to a specific album, it would only stay there as a suggestion for a certain amount of time. If you went back like a week later, it would not be there. But now with iOS 26, it seems like that just

4:35 stays there indefinitely. So anytime you've added a photo to a recent album, it will just stay there in case you want to add another photo to that album, you can do it quickly right there. Now, here is an interesting new feature in iOS 26. So now, if you're on a FaceTime call and the other person is potentially undressing, so maybe you're in a long-distance relationship and you're talking to your partner, I don't know what the case may be, but now on FaceTime, if it detects something sensitive, it will show you this alert right here where it says audio and video are paused. So it will pause the moment that it detects something potentially inappropriate or sensitive. And it says because contact name may be showing something sensitive. If you feel uncomfortable, you should end the call. So it shows you they can end the call or

5:20 resume audio and video. So it will mute and cut off the video of the other person who is showing something sensitive. So very interesting. That is a new feature with FaceTime in iOS 26. So one of the really interesting new features in iOS 26 is the fact that AirPods can now pause when it detects that you've fallen asleep. If you're listening to an audio book, a podcast, something like that, and you have your AirPods in your ears, but you fall asleep, your AirPods will now be able to detect that and pause that music or that podcast or that audio book for you. Now, I've tried testing this multiple times, but I just full on fall asleep and when I wake up, I don't know if it actually paused or like it just ended because every time it's been with a podcast and you know, obviously by the time I wake

6:05 up, that podcast is over. So, I've not found a great way to test this. Maybe I should try like a really long audio book or something to see if it works. But this actually we've seen now that this will actually work for Beats headphones as well. So, if you have Beats or AirPods, this will work. And of course, this is enabled by default if you update your AirPods to the latest iOS 26 beta version. And some people have asked me if you need to have an Apple Watch for this feature to work, but I do not think that is the case. I'm not entirely sure how Apple is detecting if you've fallen asleep or not. Maybe it's just using the accelerometer to see kind of how you move and guess, but as far as I know, you don't need an Apple Watch for that feature to work. But speaking of the Apple Watch, there's also a new feature in Watch OS 26, which is pretty interesting, and it's kind of similar to what we see on the iPhone. But it will

6:51 now tell you if your battery is draining faster than normal. So, it'll give you kind of an indication of that. if you're at like 50% that way you know that your battery might be draining more than it should be. Okay, so now we need to talk about some big news from this week that I really did not have on my bingo card for this year because we're now hearing according to Mark German at Bloomberg that Apple might actually be ditching its in-house models for Siri and they're going to instead potentially use OpenAI or Anthropic to power that revamped Siri. And this would obviously be a major shock. I guess maybe this report is more of the shock than if it actually happened. But this is something that we really did not see coming. This has kind of blindsided us because Apple has been working on its in-house models and

7:38 saying how they're going to launch the LLM Siri, you know, in due time. But now we're hearing that they might potentially partner with Anthropic or OpenAI to basically power that Siri functionality to make it a smarter Siri. Now, Apple has asked for custom versions of Claude and ChatgPT to run on its private cloud compute servers. This, of course, would help Apple maintain strong privacy while outsourcing the AI brain power. And apparently, Anthropic is currently the frontr runner and Apple has already discussed a potential multi-billion dollar per year deal. Now, that price is obviously very steep and that's why Apple's keeping OpenAI and other options in play. And regardless of what happens, this LLM Siri is still expected in 2027. So, we're still expecting to see some of the updates to

8:25 Siri in iOS 26. Most likely iOS 26.4. So, early next year in the spring is when we should see the more personalized Siri and things like that. But the full-on LLM series, the chat GPT like Siri is still expected to come in iOS 27. But again, it might not be powered by Apple's own in-house models, at least not entirely. And what's interesting is that this shift has caused internal tensions because Apple's AI team fears that this move signals a broader abandonment of in-house efforts. And that's big because key engineers have already left, including Apple's top LLM researcher, Tom Gunter. So, yeah, clearly not a good look for Apple because they're admitting that their own in-house models are just not ready yet.

9:11 They're not even close to ready yet. Otherwise, they would not be looking to spend millions and billions of dollars on acquiring others services to power Siri. So, now a lot of people have asked me, you know, does this mean Apple is giving up? They're just going to throw away all of their in-house model, you know, work that they've been working on for so long. And no, that's not the case. They're not giving up on this. I see this as more of a stop gap. This is like a solution to bring something to the market by 2027 because clearly their models still have a lot of work to be done. So, we're not going to see that for a while. But at least with this, we'll have something to show for it. Siri will be smarter than it's ever been, even if it's not Apple's own AI doing it. And that leads me right to the next concern that a lot of people have, which is surrounding privacy. A lot of

9:57 people are concerned saying, "Well, what's the point of Apple doing this?" because that just completely goes against everything they believe in with privacy because all our information is going to go to OpenAI and Anthropic now. Well, that's not the case. As I described earlier, all that data is going to go through Apple's PCC, the private cloud compute, just like we have right now with the ChatGpt extension on our iPhone. So, I'm personally not worried about privacy whatsoever because that's obviously Apple's, you know, claim to fame. That's what they prioritize most more than anything. So, I do not think that privacy is going to be of concern because again, it's going to go through their servers before it actually goes to theirs. So, yeah, at the end of the day, I think the headline looks a lot worse than what's actually happening because I actually think this is the right move for Apple. That way, we actually get something, you know, in

10:44 the next couple of years. If it were not for these partnerships, we would have nothing to show for the next couple of years because we know Apple's not going to put out a halfbaked version of their, you know, version of LLM series. So, they're going to make sure it's perfect and make sure it's right before they release it, just like they do with everything else. So, I see this as a good move because I think a lot of people are going to be happy that we just have a smarter Siri regardless of what's going on behind the scenes. But that's just my opinion. What do you think about this? Let me know your thoughts down below. Now, also this week we did celebrate the 10th anniversary of Apple Music and Apple did celebrate with some brand new playlist. So, if you go down to the home tab right here in music and you go down to replay your top music, we have something new here. So, we now have replay all time. So, now it

11:30 will show you your alltime most played song. So, if you go all the way down to the bottom, it will show you your top 100 songs that you've played, you know, by all time. So, you can see my number one song of all time is Good Things Fall Apart. So, that's interesting. If you tap on more right here, it will say in honor of Apple Music's first decade. take a look back, relive your all-time favorite tracks all in one playlist. And then if you go down here to the radio tab and you go down to on air now, you will see that we have Apple Music 10 years. So we have this new broadcast now that counts down, you know, you can see day four, it's showing numbers 200 through 101. So they're counting down the all-time top songs for Apple Music. So last Friday, we saw Apple's new F1 film get released and it was a massive

12:15 hit at the box office. So, it actually recorded a $144 million opening weekend. So, a grand slam for Apple in terms of this film's opening success. Now, I saw the film. I thought it was great. You know, I am into F1, but I think it's a film that pretty much anybody can watch, even if you don't know anything about F1. I was surprised at how much I liked it. I actually watched it in 40X where I was moving all around the seat. It was crazy, but it was a pretty good film. If you guys saw it, let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Oh, and I did also want to mention that it was really cool watching the shots from the races in that F1 movie because if you guys remember in a previous Apple Weekly and also in the Apple Den newsletter, I covered a story talking about how Apple built those custom

13:02 cameras for that movie using like the iPhone, you know, sensor. So, it was really cool to see that. And I honestly was not able to tell any time where, you know, Apple was using that camera versus any of the other cameras. It was so fluid and just so well done in the film. It was it was just awesome, especially when you know the backstory surrounding, you know, how they got some of those clips. Anyways, going back to iOS 26 beta 2, let's talk about the performance because this past week has really not been any better than the previous week. So, as you guys know, based on last week's Apple Weekly, I told you you're probably not going to like hearing this. And I don't know why so many other people are making it seem like performance is great on beta 2, but it is not great on beta 2. And still, as of now, performance is just not very good on beta 2 of iOS 26. There's still a lot

13:49 of frame rate issues. There's a lot of lag in the keyboard. There's a lot of overheating in terms of thermals. It It's just not great. Performance is not great no matter how you cut it. And I did actually run a fresh Geekbench test here. So, we did score a 3523 single core, 8861 on the multi-core. So, you can see how that compares to the previous run. So, it actually did score better this time than it did previously. So, that is good to see. But again, as far as raw performance, it's still pretty bad. Still a ways to go. Obviously, just as we'd expect with a beta 2. And then in terms of battery life, again, battery life is slightly better than it was in beta 1, but it's not nearly as much as I was hoping for. Battery life is still pretty bad in beta 2 on all my devices. So, I've been testing this on four different iPhones,

14:35 and it's really bad on the watch and on the iPad. It's actually even worse than the iPhone. But the iPhone battery life also just not very good. I've been using up, you know, way more than 100% of my battery every single day, which means I have to charge it at least once a day, usually a few times a day, which again, that is expected for a beta. I was not expecting anything less. I'm just reporting to you guys to not expect to have good battery life on this beta. Hopefully, we do see an improvement though with beta 3. And of course, by the time the public beta comes out, we should have at least decent performance and battery life. So, I'm looking forward to that. And speaking of that next beta and the public beta, let's talk about when we can expect to see those releases. So, next week is going to be the week of July 7th, and that is when I would expect to see iOS 26

15:23 developer beta 3. So, Apple has been sticking to the Monday releases. So, I would expect that to continue on Monday, July 7th around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time as usual. Now, I would not expect the public beta to come out immediately after that. It is possible, but typically what we see is Apple releases the public beta the week after developer beta 3. So, usually it's between beta 3 and beta 4 of developer betas. So, if that's the case, if that sticks around this week, that means that we could see the public beta for iOS 26 possibly on July 14th. But Apple is kind of tricky with how they do public betas. So, we don't know for sure. That is just my guess as of now. But next week for sure, we should see developer beta 3, which again, I'm hoping that that is much better than betas 1 and two. Okay. So,

16:09 now let's talk about some more Apple news because we got some really interesting news this week surrounding future Apple products, specifically related to the vision line, because we now have new details on Apple's secret vision road map. When I say vision, I mean like the vision pro, the glasses, all that. So, this comes from Mingchi Quo and he dropped pretty much everything Apple is working on. So, they're working on seven AR VR products and we have from 2025 all the way until 2029. So, this year in 2025, Apple is planning to launch a refreshed Vision Pro with the M5 chip. And this is only going to be a refresh. It's not going to be like a true second gen version of the Vision Pro, but we are expecting to see that later on this year, potentially

16:55 early next year, but we're still hearing it's going to come later this year. And Apple is expecting to ship 150,000 to 200,000 of these refreshed Vision Pros, which hopefully are going to be much cheaper. But anyways, moving on to 2026. We're not going to see any new Vision products. Apple's going to take kind of a gap year next year, but 2027 is going to be a big year for vision because Apple is planning to debut the Apple smart glasses. Now, these are going to be similar to the Meta Ray-B bands. They're going to have, you know, no display. Obviously, it's just going to be like sunglasses, but they will include audio playback, photo and video capabilities, gesture controls, and AI powered environmental awareness. And just like the Meta Ray Bands, Apple is going to offer multiple frame designs to

17:40 choose from. And these, you know, we're hearing from Mingchi Quo that these could actually replace the AirPods or the iPhone camera in certain situations, which honestly for me, the Metray bands have absolutely done both of those things on numerous occasions because I listen to podcasts through the Metray bands and I take a lot of photos and videos through the Metray bands instead of using my phone. So, I can absolutely see that. And Apple is expecting big sales volume for these smart glasses. So they're expecting between three and five million units in the launch year. And then also in 2027, we're expecting to see the first vision air. So this is going to be a big one because it's going to feature an allnew form factor. It's going to be over 40% lighter than the original Vision Pro and it's going to use an iPhone chip instead of an M

18:28 series chip and it's also going to be cheaper. So, it's going to be cheaper, lighter, and it's going to use a different chipset and apparently an all new design as well. So, I'm pretty excited to see what that vision air looks like. But I think personally so far, I'm most excited for the smart glasses, the Ray-B band-like glasses. But then moving ahead even further into 2028, this is when the real second generation Vision Pro is going to come out with a completely new design, a lighter build, and a cheaper price tag along with a Macgrade processor. So, it might have like a max chip or an ultra chip inside. And again, being cheaper is the key point here. It seems like Apple with every vision product, they're planning on making it cheaper than the previous, which is a good sign. And then also in 2028, Apple is expected to launch its first pair of XR glasses. So,

19:15 these are going to differ from the Ray-B band glasses because they're going to have the color liquid crystal on silicon display. That's an LCOS display with waveguide optics. And these XR glasses are going to include voice and gesture controls, but they'll rely heavily on AI features. And this is expected to reach mass production in the second half of 2028. And then in 2029, I know this seems forever away, but Apple's expecting an upgraded version of the XR glasses, but little is known about that second gen version. And then also, Apple has paused work on a display accessory that tethers to iPhones and Macs. This is going to feature display technology from BirdBath Optics with electrochromatic dimming as an

20:00 additional key selling point. So, this device was originally scheduled to enter mass production in 2026, so next year, but development was paused and kind of suspended in 2024, due to the lack of competitive edge, specifically surrounding the weight of the product. And as of right now, the project is currently under review for repositioning and specification refinement and could be restarted at a later currently unspecified date. So, a lot on the horizon for Apple's vision line. Clearly, Apple sees this as the next big trend, you know, in consumer electronics. Apple really sees this and obviously they're putting a lot of R&D and effort into this for the next, you know, few years. But that is not the only thing that Mingchi Quo reported on this week because we also heard that

20:47 Apple is working on a cheaper MacBook that's powered by an iPhone processor. So he's saying that this is actually expected to enter mass production in late Q4 of this year or early next year at the latest with an approximately 13in display. and it's going to be powered by the A18 Processor currently found in the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max phones. And he says that this cheaper MacBook could come in silver, blue, pink, and yellow. And that Apple aims to return total MacBook shipments to the CO 19 peak of around 25 million units in 2026 versus the estimated 20 million in 2025. So, this more affordable MacBook is projected to account for 5 to 7 million

21:32 units for 2026. And interestingly, Mac Rumors found a new MacBook with the A18 Pro chip in back-end code a while back. So, they found this in the code and that's the same, you know, cheaper MacBook that's being described by Mingchi Quo right here. And I'm actually on board with this cheaper MacBook. I think that the MacBooks, even the cheapest MacBook Air at a,000 bucks is unaffordable. It's unattainable for a lot of people out there. So, if Apple can make, you know, a MacBook that's going to be a lot cheaper, maybe not a lot cheaper, but maybe in the $600 to $700 range, and they're going to save a lot by using the iPhone processor, which is still going to be super powerful, by the way, even for a Mac. I actually think this could be a pretty big seller, and a lot of people might be very interested in this. Also, this week, we heard that Apple is planning to move the Apple logo on the iPhone 17 down on the

22:20 frame. So, this actually comes from Magin Buu, and he's saying that the Apple logo will now move lower on the 17 Pro because the new full width camera bar that's expected to span the entire width of the back of the device. And this is also why the iPhone 17 Pro is going to have a new MagSafe design internally. So, this was actually posted by Magin Buu as well. and he says that case manufacturers have begun printing new MagSafe rings with central openings to emphasize the shifted logo. They're working on designs featuring optimized cutouts for transparent cases. And you can kind of see what this is going to look like. It looks pretty interesting. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this yet, but honestly, I really don't care much about the placement of the

23:07 Apple logo on the back, especially since I'm somebody who uses a case all the time. And then finally, just as tradition, we have another crazy Air Tag story. So this time, a man in Missouri had listed some of his equipment up for rent on Facebook. This equipment included a Bobcat MT100, which is a mini track loader, along with pallet forks and a tooththed bucket. Shortly after listing these items for rent, somebody reached out asking to rent all three at the same time. Now, of course, the man agreed to rent all of them out for a single day rate of $370. So, once the man loaded up the Bobcats and the other equipment and headed out to the address they agreed to meet on, when he got there, he saw two men waiting and they gave him a signed contract. So, they actually had to sign

23:52 a contract saying they'd return it. And also, they paid $380 in cash. I'm not sure why they paid $10 more than he asked for, but that's pretty interesting. So yeah, after they signed the contract and they paid him in cash, the man thought he had nothing to worry about. But just 30 minutes later, the Air Tag that he had hidden inside of the Bobcat, which it's smart for him to put that in there in the first place, he got an alert from that Air Tag that said that it had been disconnected. Now, thankfully, before being disabled, the Air Tag had pinged its last location in the Find My application, and it was actually on a U-Haul truck heading north on I-55 near Lichfield, Illinois. So within 30 minutes it was already in another state. And thank goodness these thieves were dumb enough to not realize this until they were already on the move in another state. But anyways, the man

24:39 did end up calling his local police and they were able to access traffic cameras to confirm that yes, a U-Haul did indeed leave the area right after the meetup and right after he signed the contract. Those two men signed the contract and paid in cash. So, the Missouri police coordinated with the Illinois State Police who were able to swiftly pull over the U-Haul truck and arrest both men. And once they were arrested, the thieves did admit to the entire plan, and they were each charged with one count of stealing $25,000 or more. And the reason for it is because the bobcat alone was $41,000. So, thankfully, that bobcat along with the other $2,000 in attachments were safely recovered. But once again, he may have never seen that $40,000 Bobcat or

25:24 that other equipment ever again if he were not to have installed that Air Tag inside. So, thank goodness for the Air Tag and the Find My application. Once again, saving people left and right. So, even if you have equipment like that, find a way to hide an Air Tag in anything that you deem of having value. Anyways guys, that's it for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, give it a thumbs up. Let me know your thoughts about iOS 26 and anything else in this video as well down in the comments below. But anyways guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you [Music]