All right, everybody. Yes, I am on a little bit of a hiatus because I just had my first baby girl two weeks ago. But I told you I would jump on here and get into the rhythm again because Apple obviously just released AirTags. We also have Apple's latest earnings report from Q4 of 2025, which is record setting. And then what is Apple Intelligence Siri going to shape up to be? We're going to see it probably sooner than you thought. So all those things and more, you know what time it is. Let's get to the show. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the show. It's the Apple Bits XL. We are in episode 368 and we're doing it. Yes, I'm taking a little breather, trying to find these pockets of time to get the content out. I've been pumping out some videos, but let's just get into all the big stuff. We know that Apple earlier, I guess now you could say less than a week ago, announced AirTags. AirTags second generation. They are officially out. So if you wanted to, you could go to an Apple store and purchase them. I did a full on first take and a full on review of the new AirTags. And what are the quick takeaways? The big things for you all that may not be familiar with what happened. first of all there's a new second generation ultra wideband chip inside this is the same new second generation ultra wideband chip that's in the iphone 17 the iphone air the iphone 17 pro and the iphone 17 pro max this new ultra wideband chip is also in the new apple watch series 11 and new apple watch ultra 3 so what does this enable you to do well it gives you one and a half times better and improved distance if we're talking about precision finding. The previous generation AirTags ranged somewhere from 30 to 100 feet. So we're now talking about anywhere of a range from 45 to 150 feet. I did a little bit of a different test to see how far the signal could actually go if you already had established a connection. And some people didn't like that. But, you know, we got up to somewhere around 235 or 238 feet away with the first gen AirTags. And then somewhere around, we couldn't even actually maximize it, but I hit somewhere around like 335 or 340 feet before a fence stopped me from going any further. So bottom line, your precision finding is going to be better. It's also going to be better with directional finding as well. So that's improved. So that's a nice upgrade, but how often are you going to be that far away or need to try and track an AirTag from that far away? That remains to be seen. I think in a real-world home situation, getting that extra range helps depending on how your house is designed. So either way, it's a good improvement. Also, they've upgraded the Bluetooth chip for improved overall range when you're talking about playing an audio signal to hear it before even precision finding mode kicks in. It also does help contribute to precision finding, but the new Bluetooth gets you, what, 50% better distance. So the chime sound itself has been changed to be a little louder and also higher pitched. And so this Bluetooth chip has better range. This chime sound is louder. So that in combination is also another improvement. I think the third most practical improvement to me is the fact that you can now use whether it's Apple Watch Series 9 and higher or Apple Watch Ultra 2 and higher. no Apple Watch SE but you can use those Apple Watch models directly to do precision finding on your own I showed in my video review how to actually set it up because it's not the most straightforward thing you you have to know how to set up but I like the idea of that hey I don't have to pull out my phone from my pocket if my watch is on I just go right to it I go to control center and hit the air tag that I want and I can find it and it's pretty easy peasy and the interface and ui is exactly what you spec just on your apple watch so i feel like that's arguably the biggest functional improvement um they have redesigned the speaker i talked about the different chimes down and the large a louder chime sound size weight battery life battery life is still basically about a year it's all the same they look exactly the same it's only on the back on the silver side where you see text in uppercase and lowercase letters on the gen one and then in the second gen you're actually gonna see all uppercase and it lays out more features like nfc ip67 even something like ultra wideband the word is all caps so so those are the differences. Pricing has stayed exactly the same. A single AirTag $29, a four-pack $99. So for me, I like the watch compatibility and I like the improved specs. So I did buy a four-pack. I'm still going to keep my original AirTags. I think, to be honest, most people are going to be just fine with their current AirTag situation. But, you know, we'll see over time if these new tweaks have really made a difference. But I do it really more specifically for the Apple Watch integration and then the overall improved specs. So AirTags review, I think overall, a solid improvement, obviously an incremental improvement. This is the first product that Apple announced and released in 2026. And then after that, we had their Creator Studio, which is their subscription suite of creative apps, which is like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, and others, and some hooks and ties to the iWork suite. That's a $12.99 per month subscription or $129 for the year. So that we talked about that in my earlier videos, But that new Creator Studio Suite, Apple is really trying to get people to just really lock in even more in their ecosystem. I use Adobe Suite. I don't use Apple's apps exclusively, but I do use them for features here and there. So I'm not personally a candidate for the Creator Studio Suite, but some of you might be. So those are the new products that basically just released within the past few days. but what I want to talk about is Apple's earnings report okay and we're not going to dwell too much on this but a lot of times you hear about Apple hasn't innovated Apple isn't this Apple isn't that and I've really tried to reiterate look they are innovative they are not as innovative as they used to be they do not take as many risks as they used to they aren built that way they are now a large ship a large like massive the world largest ship that you could think of in the tech industry and in order to change directions or pivot it takes a while to move that ship and that is who apple is today they aren't nimble they aren't fast i wish they had kind of a skunkworks team internally that did kind of some of these high level concept projects and tried out things which would actually see the light of day i know they have teams like that internally but i'm saying that would be fast track to actually release products from them right kind of the the scrappy apple that we missed or the apple that felt like they had a lot of heat on them so they had to innovate now you know they're releasing a foldable seven eight years after their competition did. That just shows how different and how much slower Apple is to the game. And people are going to say, well, Apple takes their time. That's fine. But you can't tell me seven or eight years. That's not even taking time. That's just ignoring a category and then feeling, oh, maybe we should get into this. Oh, wait, this category is becoming something. We need to make sure we don't lose or we're not completely out of that market and out of making revenue from that. So for all the naysayers and all the people that have, you know, been saying, oh, Apple, you know, they've lost it. All right. Well, let's just throw down this. On Thursday of last week, so basically three days ago or so, Apple announced their financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2026. That corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2025. And that is really their sweet spot for iPhone sales, holiday sales. For the quarter, Apple recorded a record all-time revenue of $143.8 billion and a net quarterly profit of $42.1 billion compared to the previous year ago quarter. So that's compared to October to December of 2024 versus October to December of 2026. All-time records for total revenue, earnings per share, iPhone revenue, and services revenue specifically had all-time records. Total revenue was up 16% year over year. That is monstrous. All right. So let's drill down now a little bit of maybe where some of the action happen. Okay. Starting with the iPhone, a fantastic quarter, according to Apple and the revenues report, $85.3 billion in sales up 23% year over year. They said, this is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had. And by far the most popular. Now I want to remember if you rewind and watch my videos and my first reactions out of Apple's keynote, I was not in the fog of the Apple Kool-Aid, but I had said iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max was their most compelling lineup that I had seen in a long time because they spec bumped the 17 to basically have all the key stuff you need. ProMotion display, right? That was always one of those things that people are like, oh, why don't they do that? Better storage, right? Great battery life, all fundamentally just a great phone. To be honest, I said something in my review, like 95% of people only need what the iPhone 17 has. That is the first phone that someone looking to get a phone should consider and look at. And I believe it starts at $799. So whatever, iPhone Pro is obviously their main moneymaker, but their entire lineup resulted in a 23% increase in sales year over year. So they did good there. On the Mac side, revenue was $8.4 billion, another all-time high. Nearly half of their customers who purchased a Mac were new to the Mac. iPad, revenues of $8.6 billion, up 6% from a year ago, all-time record for upgraders. let's talk about with the wearables home and accessories group that revenue was 11.5 billion okay they didn't that that number seemed to maybe not have anything impressive enough to say oh it went up by x amount of percent right so okay uh let's talk about their services an all-time revenue record of 30 billion dollars for apple services up 14 from a year ago So services set all-time revenue records in both developed and emerging markets. They even said in December specifically, Apple saw a 36% increase in viewership over the prior year. And I think that is going to increase even more because we know that in 2026, MLS is now going to be part of the Apple TV Plus service. You do not have to pay that. I think it was an extra $50 per season, which I did. So that's part of it. And then also F1 is coming to Apple TV service. So they're going to see even more increases in the 2026, specifically if we're talking about that service. So Apple went ham. If you don't know what that means, hard as a mofo. also i thought this was kind of funny tim cook essentially said in the earnings report that they were a little surprised by the results because they were so strong he he called what is it the last iphone quarter was simply staggering and beat apple's expectations so again i'm gonna rewind and be like okay everybody i get where you're coming at like i am one of you right i am frustrated by the fact that we're seeing a lot of the cool stuff on other platforms and apple's taking their time together like they're gonna do foldables we'll talk a little bit more about that later in this podcast. But those numbers are undeniable. Records across the board, across the board. And you know what? That makes investors happy. And they like what Tim Cook is doing from a financial standpoint. Let's not talk about the movie screening he recently went to. Goodness. Also, at the earnings report, Tim Cook also teased I like when he kind of gets a little ahead of himself but he loves he loves doing this now that this year Apple will have some new opportunities to deliver and I quote innovations that have never been seen before this year um maybe never been seen before by Apple this year I think that would be more appropriate but either way we going to talk about some of those new innovations All right, let's talk about what you, the consumer and us, the tech lovers will probably see first in 2026. And I know some of you might roll your eyes when I say this, but yes, Apple intelligence and the next generation of Siri is coming. And when I say is coming, is coming very soon. Now, in a recent report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, he talked about how, again, the mass exodus of AI researchers from Apple leaving for other companies continues to happen because at least four more of Apple's Apple intelligence researchers have left, including a high-ranking Siri executive. And we had talked about this in an earlier podcast, but a lot of this talent leaving is because the writing was on the wall. They knew that Apple was going to partner with someone, which ended up being Google's Gemini, and developing less of their own and not developing their own LLMs and really truly their own AI. And look, they would have had to invest billions of dollars to even catch up remotely to what is out there. And for those people that left, they're looking for something like a more exciting challenge. And Apple's not trying to do that. Apple's trying to partner and then eventually potentially catch up. So that is part of the equation. But what also is interesting is that these reports have talked about that Apple is still preparing two new versions of Siri, not one, but two. So the first one is expected to be that more personalized version of Siri that Apple had promised, where I could look at a text message and say, hey, when is mom's flight coming in today? And are those reservations for dinner still in place and it can find all those things? So that idea that Apple showed us that still doesn't exist, that's expected now to be part of iOS 26.4, a more personalized version of Siri, which should enter beta testing sometime in February, which is this month. and then B, released to the general public in March and April. So even Apple themselves said that back in June of 2024, right? Personal context, on-screen awareness, deeper in-app controls right from Siri still remains yet to be seen. Now, the second version of Siri will reportedly get even better, and that'll be coming in iOS 27. and there Apple is planning to turn the Assistant into a full-on chatbot that you can talk to, that you can have sustained conversations and go back and forth with the Assistant just like Google Gemini. This will essentially turn Siri into their own version of ChatGPT or Gemini, except this is gonna be built right into the iPhone and iPad and Mac. You will not have to have any app that's required to run it. It'll be natively prompted by you just... bringing up, you know, the Siri prompt, just like the OK Google pulls that up for Gemini stuff. So they're saying that this Siri chatbot will be competitive with Gemini 3, significantly more capable and more personalized versus the initial Siri coming out in iOS 26.4. So that's the first thing to look out for. All right. From from Apple itself. we don't we also just want to make sure and let you know ios 26.3 is still in beta testing right now i told you about 26.4 right well 26.3 still in beta testing but it has a really quick easy ios to android transfer tool you can do notification forwarding there's a new airpods like prompting pairing for third-party accessories, which could be smartwatches and other devices. So that stuff is all coming in 26.3 and then 26.4, which we are expecting to see the beta maybe sometime in February. And then that will be rolling out to customers. And that's the new personalized Siri that'll come out in sometime in March and April based on the reports. And then just to stick on this AI tip and this I think this one's going to be interesting. Apple confirmed last week to Reuters that it acquired QAI. Now this is a startup that's working on artificial intelligence technology for audio specifically. Apple paid close to two billion dollars for QAI. They're an Israel-based startup. That would make it Apple's second largest acquisition ever and you know the first one the number one acquisition they made i'm gonna let you think about it for a second it was their three billion dollar acquisition for the headphone and audio brand beats back in 2014 how i wonder if they're happy about throwing down that for for beats i don't i don't know how that's worked out really but beats is still part of the apple family but they're kind of like the red-headed stepchild that's there, but they don't want you to know they're Apple, but they are Apple, and they share some of the technologies, but not all the technologies with Beats. It's so interesting, right? So a patent that was filed by QAI, the company that Apple acquired, shows that it has technology that's being used in headphones or glasses that is using facial skin micro movements to communicate without talking. Now, this could pave the way for some sort of nonverbal discussions with Siri if a camera is looking at your face and it can start reading your emotions. That sounds kind of crazy. Here's another little quick note to make. QAI, This company previously founded another startup that was called PrimeSense. And if you weren't familiar or didn't remember, PrimeSense was also acquired by Apple back in 2013. And it's actually PrimeSense's technology that helped develop Face ID, which then debuted in the iPhone 10 in 2017. So it took about three and a half, about four years for that implementation to happen. Very interesting. So we'll see if this new acquisition for, like I said, facial skin micro movements, whether it's being used in headphones or glasses, maybe even your phone, that is also coming soon with that acquisition. Okay, the other hot item that we should all be paying attention to, MacBook Pros, all right? MacBook Pros with the new M5 Pro and M5 chip. According to reports, and Bloomberg Mark Gurman says that they are planned for release sometime around the Mac OS 26 software release cycle well right now 26 for mac os is expected to run somewhere through what february through march so we could be coming up again what end of february i think i had mentioned that in a previous video about new products coming that we could see that stuff late february to early march if this all lines up based on reports. Now, macOS 26.3 is still in beta testing, but the update should be coming soon. And then if that gets that public wide release in late February, that also lines up for new MacBook Pros that would be tied to the new macOS 26.3, or let's say maybe something like 26.3.1. They sometimes do that when there's a new product release that it needs to be compatible with. So we still only have seen a standard M5 chip in the iPad and I believe the entry-level MacBook Pro, but we have not seen an M5 Pro chip, M5 Max chips, or anything beyond that for the MacBook Pro. So this would not be the totally new rumored revamped design MacBook Pro with an OLED display and single design. We're going to push that down the road. that might show itself at the end of this year or into 2027 but right now we're talking about m5 pro and m5 max chips for new macbook pros sometime in february and march so that is a coming now the other thing that we want to talk about is let's talk about the foldable phones all right we know that foldables are coming and there's been plenty of reports that Apple will be splitting its iPhone launch releases starting in the fall. And what I mean by splitting is that it appears that this fall will focus on the 18 Pro series and the foldable iPhone, the one that opens up like a book or, yeah, like a book, right? The two large panels. This would be Apple's first foldable. Innovations that you have never seen before, according to Tim Cook, from Apple. And we've heard of, right, the ability to have a flat screen that doesn't have a crease that uh some sort of a titanium or flexible hinge that is light that allows to also assist with that new software maybe something like iphone os when it's closed something more like ipad os when it's open we'll see but a report from Weibo, which is like a Asian blogging site that has revealed correct and reliable information, and also has revealed completely inaccurate random rumors, has reported that the iPhone foldable will have the biggest iPhone battery ever, and also it is expected to surpass rival devices. So right now, the report says that they could be using a battery with over 5,500 milliampere hours in size. The iPhone 17 Pro Max right now has a 5,088 milliampere hour battery. If you look at something like the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, that has a 5,015 milliampere hour battery. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a 4,400 milliampere hour battery. That thing is so thin and so beautiful. I'm not even hating on it. But this new foldable smartphone from Apple is expected to have a 5,500 milliampere hour battery. We'll see how that all plays out. And in addition to that, another, we've heard this report a few times, but Apple is reportedly still exploring the idea of a foldable iPhone that's more of the clamshell style design a la, let's say it's a modern day Motorola Razr or Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 7, also potentially called the iPhone Flip. I'm going to tell you right now, I would be really surprised if Apple uses the vernacular and description of their devices that Samsung has established and that Google has established. I mean, I get it, but Apple typically kind of tries to, you know, typically, at least when they come late to the party, still while everyone's zigging, they try and zag a little. And I don't know if it's going to be called the iPhone fold. Like it makes sense, but I just don't think that's what Apple does. They want it to be unique. They want people to be calling it. I'm not saying they're going to call it the Apple Passport, but they want it to be called whatever that thing is. That's what they want it to be. So that's all I got for you all. I mean, really a jam-packed last week and moving forward. AirTags, second generation are out now. apple creator studio a new creative software suite is out now apple had their best ever q1 financial quarter ever this year all right apple intelligence we're gonna see two versions of siri with the first one more personalized in ios 26.4 and then in ios 27 which will be unveiled at WWDC, that's when we'll see the version with a full-on Siri chatbot, and then obviously the foldable iPhone news and more. So that is everything that we know in a nutshell. I'm going to, I'm recording this late at night because I found a pocket of window of time where I had some energy and life in me, but I wanted to get this out to you. My baby Skylar is, I probably got to go feed her and change the diaper. I mean, this is all new to me, but it is an incredible journey but you know what we keep on rolling thanks to the support from all y'all so big thanks to our patreon supporters at the platinum level 100 level brandon ledford gil cabrero wesley freighter jared lewis michael gigliotti atari koenigsegg and gregory ford and all of you you can support at any level it starts at two dollars per month five dollars which is like a cup of coffee but that allows you to get early access to my content uh rewards at different levels and a completely ad-free version of this podcast. And really, it supports everything I do. And I am so grateful because you have allowed me to continue to do this. So that's it for this show. We'll be back. I'm going to get back in the flow, but it might be every other week for about another month. And then when big news hits, I'll definitely be here. But for those of you that understand, I know you understand. And I'm still pumping out videos. So it's a little cray-cray over here. But until next time, we'll see you not same bad time and same bad channel, but we will see you very soon, maybe in a couple weeks. But when big news pops, we'll be back here. It's the AppleBitsXL, baby. Take care. Peace.
