 You know, I thought I might have been the only one who noticed, at least until I read this comment on Mac rumors from user RomanEmpire, but while I was watching the September 2018 keynote, I was blown away that even Apple's own executives, who need I remind you, managed to muster at least some excitement about the iPhone 5C, just didn't seem to care about their newest and shiniest flagships. Why didn't they care? What could compel someone to upgrade their existing iPhone X? What are the selling points here? What could compel someone to upgrade even an iPhone 7 for that matter? And why hasn't Linus segued into the sponsor for this video yet? Oh, wait, no, that was it. Today's video is brought to you by Origin PC. Origin PC's EVO 15S weighs only 4.3 pounds, features a smooth 144Hz 1080p display and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. Check out their latest deals at the link below. I actually almost bailed on this video entirely in favor of a totally different concept where I walked around like man on the street style and pretended to show people the latest new iPhone, except it was actually just going to be an iPhone X because honestly even I, a tech nerd, would need to install IDA or check the model number or the storage capacity of one of the new 512 gig models to know that it's a 2018 model year, unless it was gold. That's the one new thing this year, a gold color. So the truth is I've actually spent the last couple of weeks using the iPhone XS Max as my everyday phone and I've been struggling to find anything to say about this thing that isn't a list of petty complaints, many of which I've given up any hope that Apple will even fix. And I'm just, I'm having a really hard time, so I guess all we can do is get into it. Almost immediately after opening the box, I began missing my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. It's got a bigger screen, it's got a more subtle rounding of the corners, meaning you get more usable screen real estate, and... Oh right. When I slid out the SIM tray, no expandable storage still and not even dual SIM on this model. Now I talked about this in my Note 9 review, but the remarkable thing about that phone is the zero compromises nature of it. It's big and it's expensive, but other than a lackluster commitment to software support, which is something Samsung really does need to address, it gives up nothing. By contrast, on my over thousand dollar new iPhone, I haven't even installed my first app and I find myself reaching for my stupid headphone dongle. The one I already had, mind you, because they don't even include one in the box anymore. And I'm staring at what, well, at first looked like a massive notch by late 2018 standards, at least that is until Google released the Pixel 3 XL and the game changed somewhat. That's neither here nor there. While I'm whining, I really, really hate the name of the iPhone XS. For those of you who were wondering, the last time Apple used Roman numerals in its product naming scheme, was 1994 and they never went higher than three. Why would that be? Well, because it's confusing. Almost no one that I know in the mainstream refers to the iPhone X as anything other than the iPhone X. And look, Apple, if you're going to do something stupid like this, do it properly. Has anyone out there tried to type iPhone XS on their iPhone? This is a perfect example of Apple's utter failure to keep pace with the auto-correcting and predictive typing capabilities of Microsoft SwiftKey and Google's Gboard. As for dictation, well, I didn't have much more luck there either. I mean, Siri can at least do basic things like turn on the flashlight for me now, but ALEXA and Google Assistant, as flawed as they are too, are making Siri look utterly incompetent these days. I mean, do you guys remember when Apple was way ahead of the game in the AI Assistant race? Because I remember. Making matters worse, Apple's design for the iPhone XS, you know, that thing that they are so far up their own butts about that they literally made a $300 book dedicated to their own greatness. It's looking dated already. The iPhone 6 look went basically unchanged for four generations or three and a half, depending on how you count it. And it didn't really look out of style until the third or the fourth when Samsung launched the Galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus. That is how far ahead Apple was that recently. The iPhone XS already looks unexceptional at best with how fast display technology is moving right now. And a big part of that is the thicker bezels on the sides and the notch on the top. The other alarming thing here is that Apple is not only failing to lead in terms of design trends, they're becoming a follower and a slow one at that when it comes to wider industry trends. So think back. First, Apple failed to take the lead on the trend of having two different sizes for each flagship generation. Then, inexplicably, even after fixing that problem with the 6 and the 6 Plus, they managed to miss participating in the large, tablet-sized category for an entire generation of product last year. How is it that there was no iPhone X Max? With all of the resources and employees that Apple has at their disposal to make at most three phones per year, it really raises the question of what were they doing? Was it a strategy thing? Was it not quite ready for the September keynote, so just, I don't know, wait a year and get it on the next one? There's a difference between attention to detail and striving for perfection and just being inflexible and obstinate. On that subject, it turns out that I still hate the lack of a back button on iOS. The swipe right across gesture does work, and it's better than the old way of reaching up to the very top left of the display. But the issue is that much like when we were still reaching up to the top left and Apple all of a sudden started making bigger screen phones, Apple's hardware is getting ahead of its software again. So the back gesture requires a really clear swipe from the edge, which is hard to execute with small hands on such a big phone. Now, it's far less of an issue on the iPhone XS than it is on the Max, but this is the one I spent most of my time with, primarily because it was less jarring moving to it from the Note 9, and then also because I found the display notch far less distracting with the increase in overall screen real estate. Back to the notch though, one good thing is that it still gives Apple room for Face ID, which faster Face ID, by the way, is one of the few headline features of this new phone. But then it also serves as yet another example of something where Apple is letting others take their feature, their idea, and innovate on it and even improve it. So the Oppo Find X lets you swipe anywhere on the screen, rather than only at the bottom to activate its Face ID copycat. Apple doesn't allow you to do this, and instead, it forces you to swipe from the bottom, which is a little tougher ergonomically, especially when you're holding such a large and heavy phone, and often requires you to shift your hand down. I guarantee you that someone has already dropped a XS Max because of this. Now I do need to derail the rant train a little bit here for an in fairness to Apple segment. Android fans have always loved pointing out how wrecked Apple got by their favorite device du jour, having that same feature or a better one, while conveniently ignoring that there's typically been no single device on the Android side that brings it all together in the way that Apple does. So to be clear, I am not recommending the Find X over the iPhone XS, or even the iPhone X, or even the iPhone 8 for that matter. But Android fans also never had the Note 9 to point to before. Now you're probably noticing by this point in the video that I've brought up the Note 9 a lot. Normally, I try to limit my Galaxy Note 9 mentions to one to two per video as much as I love it, and the reason for that is the price. The Galaxy Note 9 is an unfair comparison for the vast majority of other devices on the market. Unfortunately for Apple, they give up any leeway that they might have had otherwise when they command the highest price of any mainstream smartphone. Though to be clear, I'm glad that they're at least offering a 512 gig option, even if it costs $1,500 US dollars. So then, the iPhone has traditionally set itself apart in the camera department. How's that going? Honestly, not too bad. Apple's color science continues to stand out from anyone but Google. But I still have some frustration, starting with Apple's assumption that every power user will use a third-party app. I mean, I get that the included one is supposed to be one-touch, dead simple, any idiot can do it. But then, if that's the case, why do you guys keep cluttering it up? There are so many modes, they don't even all fit on the screen anymore, including the incredibly unnecessary square. And if we're gonna have all these buttons, why not add some of the customization that people are asking for? Most of the complaints I've seen about this phone are actually about the selfie camera and the smoothing and processing that's being done by it that doesn't appear even now to be possible to turn off. With that said though, my worst experience was actually in portrait mode. It managed to do everything from this astonishing background removal on a moving target down to this atrocity where it managed to add a couple of extra teeth to my daughter's smile. Now, these kinds of heavy processing techniques have long been included on competitors' devices, with major ones like Samsung even enabling them by default. But one difference is that they tend to be more transparent and they tend to allow more configuration of the processing. So why was the response to turn it to 11 and lock it there? And why not record an unaltered version of the image for safety? Is this just the Apple knows what's best for you mentality? Hopefully by the time I post this video, Apple will have patched themselves out of this mess. Overall, the camera in the normal mode, the one that I always use it in, and ignoring DXO mark and all that kind of stuff, just using it day to day to capture the moments that mean something to me, met my expectations. Let's move on to a couple more Apple knows best frustrations. If you capture a screenshot of something, you can only share to apps that Apple expects. Now, this is better than locking you down to first party options, but a notable omission that made my life more inconvenient for the last couple of weeks is the Facebook Pages Manager. Now, I'll work around the first time that I did this was for me to save the screenshot locally, but then this was another Apple knows best thing. So what I realized is that there's no way to manually select your photos folder when you want to save a screenshot. You actually just have to exit the screenshot and then confirm that you want to keep it, and it'll automatically go to your photos folder. Like, I mean, I get that this is intuitive, but why remove the option from the other way? It's this kind of thing that always has and probably always will irk me about the iPhone. One thing that they did fix this time around is notification management, though. So huge gold star there. It is super easy to access grouped messages and emails, and you can dismiss your whole backlog in one fell swoop. Just, oh, beautiful, awesome. There you go. And there's more good news, mostly good news. So I'm a lot more used to gesture-based navigation now from playing around with it on a couple of Android phones, actually, including the OnePlus 6. And you know what? Gesture navigation is fine. Fine. But it's not entirely without issue, and not everyone will necessarily prefer it. And actually, this one is a criticism of both Samsung and Apple. Buttons or gestures? You know what? It's 2018. They're both good. I would like to have a choice, and I think you guys can both do better, which I guess brings us perfectly back to annoyances. This whole video is actually getting kind of exhausting. Maybe we won't go for much longer. All right, here we go. You still can't hard-press your Wi-Fi icon in order to get to your Wi-Fi settings. You have to do it the long way. The app grid still can't have gaps, forcing you to make big piles of useless crap in the top of your screen to put your most frequently used stuff at the bottom, where it all belongs. There is still no T9 dialing. I don't understand why that's so hard. And a year freaking later, a year after the launch of the iPhone X, the notch still gets in the way occasionally, like right here in the Twitter app, where I actually had a heck of a time targeting the handful of pixels that I needed to hit in order to switch to my personal account. What I can only hope for is that maybe this is an indication that this notch design language will be short-lived. So, I think that's pretty much it. So let's close this video out with the craziest part. Almost everything that I just said for the last 12 or 13 minutes or whatever has been common knowledge to people who pay attention to the iPhone for a year. So, the iPhone XS. It's boring. It risks nothing, but people bought the crap out of the last one, so I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Enjoy your iPhones, everyone. And while you're at it, maybe enjoy them even better with a skin from dbrand. dbrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins. They're available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, controllers, and more. They actually shipped over our iPhone XS and XS Plus with this sexy new one that I'm calling Black Golf Ball. Anyway, they're useful for all kinds of things. They make your device stand out, and they also make it actually more resilient to incidental bumps and scuffs. I even dropped the XS, and I managed to dent the corner here without going all the way through the skin, so I didn't have to do that. I was super thrilled about that. Their customer service robots are easy to work with, and their products are affordable and shipped worldwide, so go check out dbrand at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching, guys. I hope that wasn't as tiring for you to listen to as it was for me to say. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. Hi, Mr. Cook. If you liked it, though, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. I mean, to be clear, it's not bad. If you like the iPhone, then I guess just buy one. While you're down there, you can check out our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which is totally worth joining. You know, I was really looking forward to going back to the Note 9, but then, like, all these phones started showing up. Razer Phone 2, the ROG Phone, Pixel 3. Like, I'm not gonna get back to the Note 9 for, like, two months.