It's become pretty predictable now.
Every September, usually earlier rather than later,
Apple announces a new iPhone of some sort,
and for three years in a row now,
the day of Apple's event has marked a measurable downturn
in viewership on our channel
because we typically don't talk about it.
So you know what?
it.
Let's talk about the new iPhone XS,
which confoundingly is not, in fact, a tiny iPhone,
and the YouTube analytics that have driven me
to drop everything that I'm doing and do that
instead of playing with this much more exciting
48-port, 10-gigabit network switch,
which I've been actually having a lot of fun with.
Yeah.
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Okay, here we go.
So the new Apple Watch Series 4 has a curved screen,
haptic feedback on the crown,
louder speakers, a better processor,
some new health features, including ECG capabilities.
That's actually pretty sick.
And it is thinner than ever before.
The iPhone XS is made of stainless steel
and gold, silver, and space gray
with IP68 water resistance
and very durable glass.
It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display.
It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display with HDR
and a place where someone took a bite out of it.
And it is faster than ever with gigabit class LTE
and their new seven nanometer six core A12 Bionic SOC
that boasts 50% better GPU performance
and a much faster neural engine
for AI and machine learning stuff.
It's got up to 512 gigs of storage,
better battery than the iPhone X,
dual SIM support with both eSIM and physical cards.
So it looks like Apple is finally taking
seriously how did that take so long?
And it now both plays and records stereo sound,
which is pretty sweet.
The XS Max is all that stuff I just said,
but bigger and pricier with a six and a half inch display,
apparently justifying it being the most expensive
mainstream smartphone ever at $1,100 to start.
And that's it.
Oh, except one more thing.
This.
Apple, we know there's a notch.
Just own it.
You guys know that this picture,
your first promo image,
makes the phone look like an all screen design
when it isn't.
Which, wait, no, that wasn't the one more thing, sorry.
The iPhone XR.
It's aluminum instead of steel
with lots of colorful designs.
It's got a smaller screen, also notched.
And I guess, so I guess they're all in on that now.
And the screen is LCD rather than OLED,
which is somehow a.
selling point that gets a sexy new name, liquid retina.
Okay then.
It's got the same A12 bionic chip.
It is still water resistant, although only IP67.
And it's got the same face ID system as the XS
and the XS Max.
So basically there are a couple of key takeaways
for this one.
One, the home button is not coming back.
And two, anyone holding out from the 5C or the SE
for a decent value phone from Apple
is getting one heck of an upgrade.
They are spending a little more for it.
It's still 750 bucks.
But even with the cost down haptic touch versus 3D touch
and the single rear camera,
it actually really looks like you aren't giving up much.
Okay then.
Everybody happy?
We covered the iPhone XS.
Now let's talk about why I bothered to do all of that
and what Google has to do with any of this.
Now I wanna get this out of the way first
because it's important.
To be very clear, I'm not upset about this,
this situation, because I hate the iPhone or something.
I wasn't a huge fan of the X, but I named one of them,
I think it was the 6S, my smartphone of the year
when it came out.
We just generally don't do this kind of content
for anything on this channel.
And I've gone back and forth on it
a lot of times over the years.
It's possible I'll change my position again,
but I've always just kind of had it gnawing
at the back of my mind that summarizing a press conference
is a convenient little helping hand,
for anyone who doesn't have two hours
to listen to Apple talk about how many facial muscles
they can track for an emojis now.
But other than that, it's basically marketing for Apple.
Because until I actually have my hands on the device,
I don't mean the kind of structured hands-on
you get at these events,
but actual time spent with it as my daily driver,
I often end up feeling like I don't have a ton
to contribute to the conversation,
because literally every time I'm on the phone,
I'm like, I'm gonna have to do this.
Every tech publication in the world
is chomping at the bit to publish their spin
on what is essentially all the same information.
Whatever Apple, or for that matter,
Samsung or whoever said during their keynote.
Making me even more hesitant about this type of content
is my personal opinion that video really isn't
the best medium for a bullet point summary of information.
I mean, I personally can skim a written article
much faster than I can skip
through a video, even with YouTube's very helpful,
by the way, live previews of the navigation bar.
So then onto the actual meat of this video,
the way that Google's algorithm basically forces
content creators to jump onto the bandwagon
when a topic trends hard enough.
At the beginning of this video,
I alluded to the dips in viewership that we've seen
right around Apple's September keynote
for the last few years.
So let's take a closer look at that now.
The 2015 and 2016 impacts are pretty obvious
even to the untrained eye.
The day after the Apple keynote marks a multi-week low
in LTT viewership.
But then 2017 is a bit of a trickier one
and requires a deeper dive into the analytics.
There's no obvious crater here,
but it was actually last year that we finally felt
that we had confirmation of this pattern.
So the morning of September 12th, 2016,
Apple made their announcement.
That day, a few hours later,
after a short experimental stream commentating the event,
we launched a video looking at a budget $60 CPU
compared to a $600 one.
And that video performed pretty well.
650,000 views in the first couple of days
was pretty good for us at that time.
Then we followed up that video
with three reasons not to buy a $400 laptop.
A video that killed it for us.
850,000 views in the first couple of days at that time
was great and would usually result
in a noticeable uplift for the channel.
One that didn't come for, should you upgrade to Ryzen?
The video that came out the next day.
So here's what was happening.
Like I'm not suggesting that YouTube
wasn't delivering our videos to sub boxes
or that they were making some kind of intentional effort
to undermine us because Google like really,
really loves the iPhone so much or whatever.
The answer is,
it's way less tinfoil hattie than that
and actually more interesting.
So think about your own experience
watching videos on YouTube.
If you watch one stupid tractor video,
all of a sudden your homepage and watch next
is full of videos about farming.
Well, it's the same thing.
Now in the tech niche,
we don't generally deal with events that are relevant
to pretty much every human with a pulse very often.
So we're usually sheltered
from this smartphones are about
the most mainstream tech thing that there is.
And you know, you could say, well, what about Android?
Even though Android holds significantly more market share
than iOS, there's no individual model of device
that sells anything like a hot iPhone.
And while a diehard Apple fan would have no need
to know anything about or how to operate
some Android handset, pretty much every Android user
probably at least knows someone with an iPhone.
Needs to know at least a little bit about it.
Even if it's just to put together an argument
to make to their friends for why they shouldn't buy it
or whatever.
So that's the Apple effect.
Everyone needs to know about it.
So that's what happens every September.
You guys all watch one freaking iPhone video.
And then because everyone is making one,
YouTube spams your feed with more iPhone content
and you either watch it,
shifting your algorithmic waiting from techie to iPhone-y
or you get sick of it and you turn off YouTube altogether
for a few days.
And you can actually see the effect right here
in the 2017 data.
Search, channel pages, and suggested videos all look normal.
But browse features absolutely tanks
from the 12th to the 15th,
finally fully recovering on the 17th
when our keyboard with no actual keys video
finally fully recovering on the 17th, when our keyboard with no actual keys video
went semi-viral and got picked up hard by the algorithm
after the iPhone dust had settled.
So I hope this video was enlightening,
interesting, entertaining,
something for both those of you
who wanted a convenient summary of the new iPhones
and for those of you wondering why the heck
everyone in your sub box felt compelled
to make an iPhone video today.
I'm gonna go back and play with my network switch.
Nope.
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Thanks for watching.
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Now I can go.
Okay.
Well, I didn't have it.
Sorry.