Soundbyte 380 – October 2026

ChristopherNews, SoundByte, Soundbyte

Welcome to Soundbyte! In this issue:

Events

Join LMUG, this Monday October 12 at 7pm BST to learn about Apple’s new operating systems. In particular we’ll be having a first look at the Mac and the Watch, both of which have gained some interesting features in the latest software updates.

We’ll start the evening as usual with Newsbyte and the latest news from Apple. 

Members should have the link to the meeting in their calendar. If not, please search your email for the LMUG Announcement, which includes how to join our meetings.

Heads up though, Apple has some announcements to make on Tuesday the 13th. If there’s an event we’ll be back here, on the same Zoom link to discuss what’s happened after the video ends. Watch our Slack for any news on the matter.

Set your calendars for a trip to London, because we’ve booked our Christmas meal early. It’s happening (in person) on Monday, November the 9th at 7pm. We’ve going back to the Gun Pub in the London Docklands. An easy 15 minutes walk from from Canary Wharf station (if you use the western exit from the Tube station!). Add it your calendar now!

iPhone 18 Pro

Last month was September, and like clockwork, Apple released a new iPhone. This time it was the best selling iPhone Pro. Regular iPhones will have to wait. The new Pro comes in 4 new colours. A striking Burgundy, a cool blue Glacier, and then plain old silver and black! Sadly Cosmic Orange is no more.

iPhone 18 Pro comes with one big upgrade this year. Apple claims up to 12 hours more battery than last year. This means if you’re upgrading from an older iPhone like most people, you’ll get a huge boost. How is this possible? A lot is down to the new A20 chip, which includes a process shrink down to 2nm. Tiny chips use less power.

Apple also made big changes to the camera. But you may only notice them if you’re into serious photography. iPhone 18 Pro includes aperture control, which means it has a variable aperture that opens and closes. Micro-engineering! It also gains some more photographic styles and more camera and video controls.

You had me at the unfold

Apple also finally released a folding phone. There’s nothing new about about folding phones. Very expensive, that crease, those hinges. Over time they have got better, but once rumours of the of new Apple’s phone dimensions came out, they suddenly changed shape.

So, what’s different about Apple’s folding phone? First, as mentioned is the shape, its the size of a passport. Shorter, more squat. Fits in your hand and pocket. When open it is a similar size to an iPad mini, but its thinner than the iPhone Air (while sharing its shiny titanium frame). And then you open it, and get a blast of Apple Magic.

Thankfully, Apple didn’t stop here. They changed iOS to take advantage of the different functionalities of the screen. Its Android tablets vs iPads again. For some reason only Apple does tablets and now folding phones properly. It comes in white and very dark blue.

Its called iPhone Duo and it’s on sale in mid-October, but will you buy it when it costs £2,000? How can this ultra high price be justified when the actual specifications under the hood are similar to a regular iPhone?

  • It could simplify your life, carrying one device rather than a struggling with a phone and iPad?
  • You could find that a larger screen is just better at getting stuff done (spreadsheets, calendar) and worth paying for if you can fold it into your pocket.

One thing to bear in mind is that the inner and outer displays are different. The outer screen is glossy like an iPhone, and the inner screen is matt, like some iPad Pros. It’s going to take some time to figure out the pros and cons, and proper reviews will come later this month. In the meantime here’s Apple’s presentation:

Hey Siri Siri!

Siri AI is here, and I can report it’s quite good. Siri can actually answer questions. I use it like I used to use Google Gemini. I just ask a question, it gives me an answer, and its usually right. It can do a lot more than that though. I asked it about a holiday I had a few years ago and the name of a town that I visited. I gave it 2 variations of the name, because I couldn’t remember. To my astonishment, it went into my photos and found the name. I’m sure we have only scratched the surface of this newly energised personalised AI assistant.

But it looks like Siri is going to need to get third-party app integrations to reach its full potential across all of your data. I wonder how far the new target for optimised Siri is from the original in 1987 [that old chestnut again? ED]:

In the wider space, depending on who’s talking, we are either entering a moment of AI accelerated human productivity or the beginning of the end of humanity itself. Lets hope its closer to the former as we see the next stage of AI emerge as a product. The product is an autonomous agent powered by an AI. In the personal sphere, we saw this idea before in the failed Rabbit R1. But it seemed like a great idea – for example you’d ask it to order your favourite pizza. It would go out, contact the Pizza shop and get it delivered. Many different steps joined together.

Now apparently the new Siri AI can do some of this, but it appears the big AI companies have tried to deliver on the original big idea. It’s called Agentic AI. An agent is more powerful than an assistant right? An assistant helps you. An agent acts on your behalf. So what’s cooking. Here’s Open AI’s idea.

And here’s a new idea from Meta

So is this where all the AI money went? Do we want this? There are some clear winning scenarios for Agentic AI. The obvious one is Agentic Coding e.g. build me an app to do X. But are we really happy with it booking things for us, without us? What next? We’ll have to wait a bit to see how these new agents perform and which of their featured actions break through as useful, transformational or a nightmare to the wider public.

Watching me watching you! 

Also released last month were new Apple Watches. The Ultra 4 and the 12. They gain new heart rate monitors that work almost continuously. There’s a sort of gamification of health, with a readiness score each day, faster charging and over shadowing all of it is Audio Intelligence. First here’s a review of the Ultra from a top sports Youtuber:

Your Apple Watch had a voice recorder; now it has an AI powered recorder that can run all the time. Uh-oh. Privacy watchers are already aghast at the snooping potential, but apparently there there is a Secure Enclave that does the transcription without a recording being kept. But there is also a 15 second rewind. Isn’t that a recording? This is all very early, but Apple claims there is a difference between their Watch and the other new AI listening devices which presumably send your private musings up to an unknown cloud to process.

Here’s Apple’s explanation. Looking closely at the video below, that rewind is text-only. So are we re-assured or is this a new AirTag-like scandal about to happen?

When ski goggles turned into a sleep mask!

Meta has announced a new slimmed down VR/AR system called VR glasses. It is perhaps what the Apple Vision could have looked if there was a massively slimmed down version 2. And its cheaper than Vision Pro at $1,299 while learning some of Vision Pro’s tricks like hand tracking. I don’t know if this is a dead-end form factor – we will have to see when it comes out in…2027?! Here’s a hands on:

I can hear clearly now!

Beats has released new high-end headphones, the (£300) Beats 360. It looks a smoothed design evolution of their previous iconic design. Here’s an interview with the Beats Vice President.

At the same time, Apple introduced EQ controls for AirPods for the first time a while back. If this matters to you, read more at the Cult of Mac. Remember to put your AirPods on before opening the Settings App on your phone to see the AirPod settings.

Preview does what?

Finally, let’s look at a very old Mac app. Preview took advantage of the Mac display system. Core Graphics includes Quartz 2D, which includes a PDF-based graphics system. Did you know that PDF is built deep into Mac and iOS? So what can Apple’s updated PDF app do? You might be surprised!