iPhone Xs - YouTube FORCED me to cover it...
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,945 words · ~9 min read
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It's become pretty predictable now.
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Every September, usually earlier rather than later,
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Apple announces a new iPhone of some sort,
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and for three years in a row now,
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the day of Apple's event has marked a measurable downturn
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in viewership on our channel
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because we typically don't talk about it.
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So you know what?
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it.
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Let's talk about the new iPhone XS,
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which confoundingly is not, in fact, a tiny iPhone,
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and the YouTube analytics that have driven me
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to drop everything that I'm doing and do that
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instead of playing with this much more exciting
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48-port, 10-gigabit network switch,
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which I've been actually having a lot of fun with.
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Yeah.
0:50
And today's video is brought to you by Optima.
0:53
Optima's B-Sport III wireless headphones
0:56
feature 10-hour battery life
0:57
and an IP55 water resistance rating.
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Learn more at the link in the video description.
1:02
Okay, here we go.
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So the new Apple Watch Series 4 has a curved screen,
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haptic feedback on the crown,
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louder speakers, a better processor,
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some new health features, including ECG capabilities.
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That's actually pretty sick.
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And it is thinner than ever before.
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The iPhone XS is made of stainless steel
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and gold, silver, and space gray
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with IP68 water resistance
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and very durable glass.
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It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display.
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It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display.
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It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display.
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It's got a 5.8-inch OLED 2436 by 1125 display with HDR
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and a place where someone took a bite out of it.
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And it is faster than ever with gigabit class LTE
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and their new seven nanometer six core A12 Bionic SOC
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that boasts 50% better GPU performance
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and a much faster neural engine
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for AI and machine learning stuff.
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It's got up to 512 gigs of storage,
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better battery than the iPhone X,
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dual SIM support with both eSIM and physical cards.
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So it looks like Apple is finally taking
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seriously how did that take so long?
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And it now both plays and records stereo sound,
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which is pretty sweet.
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The XS Max is all that stuff I just said,
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but bigger and pricier with a six and a half inch display,
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apparently justifying it being the most expensive
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mainstream smartphone ever at $1,100 to start.
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And that's it.
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Oh, except one more thing.
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This.
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Apple, we know there's a notch.
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Just own it.
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You guys know that this picture,
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your first promo image,
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makes the phone look like an all screen design
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when it isn't.
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Which, wait, no, that wasn't the one more thing, sorry.
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The iPhone XR.
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It's aluminum instead of steel
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with lots of colorful designs.
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It's got a smaller screen, also notched.
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And I guess, so I guess they're all in on that now.
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And the screen is LCD rather than OLED,
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which is somehow a.
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selling point that gets a sexy new name, liquid retina.
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Okay then.
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It's got the same A12 bionic chip.
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It is still water resistant, although only IP67.
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And it's got the same face ID system as the XS
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and the XS Max.
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So basically there are a couple of key takeaways
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for this one.
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One, the home button is not coming back.
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And two, anyone holding out from the 5C or the SE
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for a decent value phone from Apple
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is getting one heck of an upgrade.
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They are spending a little more for it.
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It's still 750 bucks.
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But even with the cost down haptic touch versus 3D touch
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and the single rear camera,
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it actually really looks like you aren't giving up much.
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Okay then.
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Everybody happy?
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We covered the iPhone XS.
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Now let's talk about why I bothered to do all of that
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and what Google has to do with any of this.
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Now I wanna get this out of the way first
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because it's important.
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To be very clear, I'm not upset about this,
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this situation, because I hate the iPhone or something.
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I wasn't a huge fan of the X, but I named one of them,
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I think it was the 6S, my smartphone of the year
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when it came out.
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We just generally don't do this kind of content
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for anything on this channel.
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And I've gone back and forth on it
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a lot of times over the years.
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It's possible I'll change my position again,
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but I've always just kind of had it gnawing
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at the back of my mind that summarizing a press conference
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is a convenient little helping hand,
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for anyone who doesn't have two hours
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to listen to Apple talk about how many facial muscles
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they can track for an emojis now.
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But other than that, it's basically marketing for Apple.
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Because until I actually have my hands on the device,
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I don't mean the kind of structured hands-on
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you get at these events,
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but actual time spent with it as my daily driver,
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I often end up feeling like I don't have a ton
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to contribute to the conversation,
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because literally every time I'm on the phone,
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I'm like, I'm gonna have to do this.
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Every tech publication in the world
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is chomping at the bit to publish their spin
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on what is essentially all the same information.
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Whatever Apple, or for that matter,
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Samsung or whoever said during their keynote.
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Making me even more hesitant about this type of content
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is my personal opinion that video really isn't
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the best medium for a bullet point summary of information.
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I mean, I personally can skim a written article
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much faster than I can skip
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through a video, even with YouTube's very helpful,
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by the way, live previews of the navigation bar.
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So then onto the actual meat of this video,
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the way that Google's algorithm basically forces
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content creators to jump onto the bandwagon
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when a topic trends hard enough.
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At the beginning of this video,
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I alluded to the dips in viewership that we've seen
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right around Apple's September keynote
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for the last few years.
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So let's take a closer look at that now.
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The 2015 and 2016 impacts are pretty obvious
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even to the untrained eye.
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The day after the Apple keynote marks a multi-week low
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in LTT viewership.
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But then 2017 is a bit of a trickier one
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and requires a deeper dive into the analytics.
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There's no obvious crater here,
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but it was actually last year that we finally felt
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that we had confirmation of this pattern.
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So the morning of September 12th, 2016,
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Apple made their announcement.
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That day, a few hours later,
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after a short experimental stream commentating the event,
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we launched a video looking at a budget $60 CPU
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compared to a $600 one.
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And that video performed pretty well.
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650,000 views in the first couple of days
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was pretty good for us at that time.
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Then we followed up that video
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with three reasons not to buy a $400 laptop.
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A video that killed it for us.
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850,000 views in the first couple of days at that time
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was great and would usually result
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in a noticeable uplift for the channel.
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One that didn't come for, should you upgrade to Ryzen?
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The video that came out the next day.
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So here's what was happening.
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Like I'm not suggesting that YouTube
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wasn't delivering our videos to sub boxes
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or that they were making some kind of intentional effort
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to undermine us because Google like really,
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really loves the iPhone so much or whatever.
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The answer is,
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it's way less tinfoil hattie than that
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and actually more interesting.
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So think about your own experience
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watching videos on YouTube.
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If you watch one stupid tractor video,
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all of a sudden your homepage and watch next
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is full of videos about farming.
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Well, it's the same thing.
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Now in the tech niche,
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we don't generally deal with events that are relevant
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to pretty much every human with a pulse very often.
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So we're usually sheltered
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from this smartphones are about
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the most mainstream tech thing that there is.
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And you know, you could say, well, what about Android?
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Even though Android holds significantly more market share
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than iOS, there's no individual model of device
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that sells anything like a hot iPhone.
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And while a diehard Apple fan would have no need
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to know anything about or how to operate
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some Android handset, pretty much every Android user
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probably at least knows someone with an iPhone.
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Needs to know at least a little bit about it.
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Even if it's just to put together an argument
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to make to their friends for why they shouldn't buy it
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or whatever.
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So that's the Apple effect.
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Everyone needs to know about it.
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So that's what happens every September.
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You guys all watch one freaking iPhone video.
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And then because everyone is making one,
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YouTube spams your feed with more iPhone content
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and you either watch it,
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shifting your algorithmic waiting from techie to iPhone-y
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or you get sick of it and you turn off YouTube altogether
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for a few days.
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And you can actually see the effect right here
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in the 2017 data.
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Search, channel pages, and suggested videos all look normal.
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But browse features absolutely tanks
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from the 12th to the 15th,
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finally fully recovering on the 17th
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when our keyboard with no actual keys video
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finally fully recovering on the 17th, when our keyboard with no actual keys video
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went semi-viral and got picked up hard by the algorithm
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after the iPhone dust had settled.
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So I hope this video was enlightening,
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interesting, entertaining,
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something for both those of you
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who wanted a convenient summary of the new iPhones
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and for those of you wondering why the heck
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everyone in your sub box felt compelled
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to make an iPhone video today.
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I'm gonna go back and play with my network switch.
10:05
Nope.
10:06
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It's got onboard memory to keep your profile
10:26
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10:29
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10:33
which of course will affect the price
10:36
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10:37
But if you ever did want to change your switches out
10:39
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10:42
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10:44
without needing to know how to solder.
10:45
So pick it up today on Mastrop at the link below
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for a limited time only.
10:50
Thanks for watching.
10:51
This video sucked.
10:52
You know what to do, but if it was awesome,
10:53
get subscribed, hit that like button,
10:54
or check out the link to where to buy the stuff
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we featured in the video description.
10:58
Also linked in the description is our merch store,
10:59
which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum,
11:02
which you should totally join.
11:03
Now I can go.
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Okay.
11:09
Okay.
11:10
Okay.
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Well, I didn't have it.
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Sorry.