Paul Stenhouse: iPhone Air, Spotify improves audio quality, Specialist AI agents for Copilot

A new iPhone to add to the mix: the iPhone Air.  

Is it really the thinnest iPhone? The body is, but not the camera area!  

The announcement that caught my eye: eSIM is now the standard. It makes it much easier to change providers or grab a data plan when you're overseas. There's no need to try and track down a packet and remember where you put your old SIM card, you can subscribe fully digitally and be connected in seconds.  

 

Spotify's music quality is stepping up  

And they won't be charging you extra for the improvement, which is nice. It's rolling out to 50 markets around the world and New Zealand is on the list. Spotify says subscribers should receive a notification in the app as lossless becomes available, but you will need to manually select it in your settings. This has been a LONG time coming. In 2021, Spotify claimed it was “coming later this year”, and by May of 2024 it was “almost ready.”  

 

Specialist AI Agents are coming to Microsoft's Copilot AI offering  

The Sales, Service and Finance Agents will be part of the general Copilot offering, instead of being their own subscriptions. It'll mean you effectively get free access to them instead of needing an extra subscription, which Microsoft hopes will simplify things for businesses.  

The finance agent for example can now integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool, like SAP, and bring that data directly into Copilot, Excel, and Outlook to help finance teams manage tasks and gain faster insights. So you could draft an email to a client requesting payment and it'll grab the data direct from your system. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Apple had its big splash event this week, the one
they do in September every year with our announced new iPhones.
But like I've lamented on the show before, it sort
of feels like we're at a stage when it comes
to smartphones, Like the iterations don't really change that much.
They're just kind of tweaking the cameras a little bit,
tweaking the storage, making it all go a little bit faster.
Our textbit Paul Stenhouse was no doubt watching alongside all

(00:36):
the Apple geeks of the world.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
What did you make it a pu?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, that we are geeks, aren't we. It's pretty sad.
I've been looking at the line up and thinking do
I don't I do I? But here's the thing, Jack,
They'll makeing it more complicated for the Apple fans and
the Apple geeks because they've added a new phone to
the mix. So it used to be that you were
just saying where you're going to get basically the iPhone
or the iPhone Pro, and now they've gone and added

(00:59):
this iPhone ear, which looks really cool. And what they've
done is they've managed to kind of squeeze the entire
phone components into an area at the top of the phone,
and then the rest of the phone is just very
very thin. It's basically all battery. And so they say
that it's the thinnest iPhone ever, And I will say

(01:21):
that there are forums on the internet that claim that
it is not. The body might be, but the camera
area obviously is quite thick, because it's kind of you know, so,
is it really the thinnest iPhone? Put that one through legal?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, are people really like, is
this is where the iteration has got to? Are people
really that exercised by something that's marginally slimmer than other
versions of smartphones? Or might perform later and later?

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, I personally wish, like I buy the phone largely
for the camera. Obviously I use it to you know,
I even talk to you on this on my iPhone,
But like, the draw for me is the camera. But
if you could put that same camera in a significantly
smaller phone, and I mean with and height kind of smaller,

(02:11):
not thinner, don't care, I would be very happy. That
would be a dream. I don't want the big bulky
thing who wants that big max one. That's crazy. But
do you know one of the reasons they made the
iPhone ear possible was one as they have been building
their own chips for mobile for quite some time, so
the actual processor it runs on is made by Apple,

(02:32):
that silicon, but they also now are doing their own modems,
and so that innovation, plus the fact that they got
rid of the SIM card slot, which takes up a
fair amount of space in the side, has meant that
that whole body in the middle is now just all battery.
And the thing that caught my eye about them going
getting rid of the SIM card and going all in

(02:54):
on eSIM is great because I don't know if you've
ever tried to change phone providers, but it's a bit
of a nightmare. eSIM makes it so much easier. You
still have to do the number porting thing and blah
blah blah, but it just the fact you don't have
to go into a store and buy that silly little
chip and all that stuff. But also, if you're going overseas,

(03:16):
you don't need to pay your current carrier the roaming charges.
You just go overseas and you can buy eSIMs just
directly on your phone. To get roaming data, you pay
significantly less than what you would if you were doing
the kind of you know sometimes like five dollars a
day and stuff like that, right, or ten dollars a
gig and crazy numbers.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
And so I do that when I when I go
overseas often I'll buy a physical sim card, like if
I'm somewhere. Yeah, right, So you could go to say
Jack and Paul were going on holiday together to Columbia.
Lucky jackabee. I know it would be nice, wouldn't it.
So we go to Columbia, We arrive in Columbia, and
upon arrival we can just use the Wi Fi at

(03:56):
the hotel to buy an ESOM, which we then installs
kind of automatically on our phone and then means that
you're paying local rates as opposed to paying international. But
if someone were to text Jack or Paul from back
in your sibbit or in the US to our normal number,
it still comes through to us.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
It does. Yeah, And if you're using I message it
still will as well, because you've got that data. So
because you can run you can run now multiple numbers
on your on your device. You could even have two lines. Yeah,
people over here have you know, like a work number
and a personal number both on the on their iPhone
and you can be on different carriers too.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, this is one of the thing for anyone who
has a work phone and a personal phone. You can
actually have them both on the same phone.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
You can.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
So look, I think that one was kind of like, Okay,
that's good, that's kind of exciting. It's good because I
think as well it will it will also just kind
of force the providers into thinking eSIM first, which I
think will then kind of make it easier and drive
adoption and all of that good stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Okay, Spotify, and it's making some big changes that have
long been signaled. Finally, it's music quality is stepping up.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah. And here's here's something you don't hear every day.
They won't be charging you extra for that improvement too,
which is quite nice, isn't it. So they are rolling
out their kind of high fi lossless audio offering, which
some of the other services have had now for quite
some time. I mean they first talked about this is
coming later this year in twenty twenty one. It's twenty
twenty five, so you know, good news. So they're going

(05:26):
to be rolling it out to fifty markets around the world.
Good news New Zealand is on that list. You'll get
a push alert if you're a if you're a Spotify
subscriber to say that you can now turn it on.
And that's the key part. You actually have to manually
turn it on you go into your setting, So look
up for that, but it should be coming in the
next couple of months.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Oh nice. And Microsoft co Pilot, which is the big
program being used increasingly by businesses. You know, for anyone
who's used the kind of outlook and Microsoft word the
suite of products that now has specialist AI agents. So
for me, it doesn't understand what an AI agent is.
Do you just want to start there.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, So it's a specialist kind of chatbot that can
do very particular things. So what microsoftice has kind of
made a little bit confusing. They've had the copilot thing,
which is kind of for everyone, and then they had
these other agents you could buy that you actually have
to pay additional subscriptions to. So now you can get
them effectively for free because they're all included in copilots.

(06:23):
You're going to save a little bit of money. But
as an example, the finance agent for example. You think
of your agent like a person, a virtual assistant. So
it can now integrate into your enterprise resource planning system,
your ERP, something like SAP. How many acronyms can I
throze you? So you can effectively connect your accounting system.

(06:45):
Let's let's put it that way into that and then
you can ask your questions directly in Copilot or Excel
or Outlook. So imagine you needed to send an email
to a client requesting payment, for example, you could say,
draft me the email, It'll go away, grab the data
from SAP, put it into your email, and then could
even mark offer to do checklist in an ex spreadsheet.

(07:06):
Yeah that's the type of stuff. Yeah cool, so pretty neat.
So they've got them for sales, they've got them for service,
so like customer service and finance. So yeah, that will
certainly help people.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Hey, what phone are you rocking at the moment, Paul.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I think I'm on it.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
See that's telling, isn't it. Sixteen that's telling the fact
that you say you being the biggest tech geek I know, say,
I think that shows you how much smartphones haven't really
changed over the last few years.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
I hold onto mine so much longer, I really do,
you know? The only reason I upgrade is because I
give my old bunch to my parents. And you know,
if I'm on a two year cycle, that means one
of the parents is on a four six year cycle.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right, So you know I'm on an iPhone eleven. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I've got to after as soon as I get
off the line to you here, I'm going to fire
up the coal powered furnace and I'm gonna I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Go a year.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
It's really hard to know that orange color is pretty
cool on the pros.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
I mean, my problem is that the older they get,
with more computing power they supposedly need, I'm convinced that
these companies stop giving them the you know, they stop
giving them the security upgrades and things they need. So
my one can still receive all the security upgrades, but
not for much longer. So maybe I'll have to update
it sometime soon. Hey, treat yourself, Jack, I don't know
in this economy, Paul, Hey, thank You've spoken like a

(08:25):
man who doesn't have a six month old who's eating
his way through half the house already. Paustine House is
our Textbert of course.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio