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Apple's "Spring Forward" Event Debuts Apple Watch and More
samzenpus (5) writes There was a lot of news at Apple's Spring Forward keynote today. Here's a list of some of the most eye-catching announcements.
- HBO Now standalone streaming service coming to Apple TV and iOS apps in early April for $14.99 a month.
- Lowered price of Apple TV to $69.
- Apple Pay accepted at up to 100,000 Coca-Cola machines by the end of the year.
- ResearchKit Announced: Is open source and allows medical researchers to create apps, and use the iPhone as a diagnostic tool.
- New MacBook: Lightest ever at 2 pounds, 13.1mm at its thickest point. 2304x1440 display, consumes 30% less energy. Fanless, powered with Intel's Core M processor. 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0. and 9 hours of web browsing battery life. Supports many protocols through one connector USB-C. Ships April 10, starting at $1,299.
- iOS 8.2 is available today
- Apple Watch: Accurate within 50ms of UTC. Read and delete email, built-in speaker and mic so you can receive calls. It tracks your movement and exercise. Use Apple Pay, play your music, use Siri and get any notification you get on iPhone today. 18 hour battery life in a typical day. Sport model starting at $349, stainless steel price: $549-$1049 for 38mm, 42mm is $599-$1099, and gold edition starting at $10k. Pre-orders begin April 10th, available April 24th.
Sounds like a perfect match.
more seriously, I'm shocked at how low the price is on the stainless steel watch is. 549/599? I was expecting near 1k.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
While the iWatch might do well in China and Asia (especially the gold version), watches are an old person's deal here in North America.
Meh.
Wake me up when the iPhone 7 comes out.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
HBO Now standalone streaming service coming to Apple TV and iOS apps in early April for $14.99 a month.
not really an innovation but, okay. There was nothing stopping this from happening before, why did it need an event?
Lowered price of Apple TV to $69.
Okay, market competition is good. this too would have happened inevitably and regardless of any innovation, unless youre an accountant on the apple campus that happens to be particularly proud of their excel pivot tables related to this.
Apple Pay accepted at up to 100,000 Coca-Cola machines by the end of the year.
Ah so the great war to control the pocketbook rages on I see. Considering soda sales have been in sharp and inexplicable decline since 2013, im not sure what this does for apple...but kudos to the innovators at Coca Cola for implementing the Apple pay api!
ResearchKit Announced: Is open source and allows medical researchers to create apps, and use the iPhone as a diagnostic tool.
Cool, but the apps store is still a draconian gulag. expect a dearth of crisis pregnancy apps to get written and a bunch of Abortion assistance apps to get flagged and removed as part of our nations proud tradition of culture warfare. And how do we handle HIPAA here?
New MacBook: Lightest ever at 2 pounds, 13.1mm at its thickest point. 2304x1440 display, consumes 30% less energy. Fanless, powered with Intel's Core M processor. 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0. and 9 hours of web browsing battery life. Supports many protocols through one connector USB-C. Ships April 10, starting at $1,299.
Small laptop gets smaller, faster, better, and more expensive despite industry-standard hardware used and widely available at lower cost but without the little white light up apple.
iOS 8.2 is available today
iOS=iOS++....I'd be concerned if the OS werent periodically patched and updated but to the apple engineers making this OS possible, good on ya!
Apple Watch: Accurate within 50ms of UTC. Read and delete email, built-in speaker and mic so you can receive calls. It tracks your movement and exercise. Use Apple Pay, play your music, use Siri and get any notification you get on iPhone today. 18 hour battery life in a typical day. Sport model starting at $349, stainless steel price: $549-$1049 for 38mm, 42mm is $599-$1099, and gold edition starting at $10k. Pre-orders begin April 10th, available April 24th.
Our phones do all of this, are in ubiquitous use, wont stop working if we carelessly wash our hands, and havent cost this much for nearly a decade. And the real kick in the ass is that apple will immediately slash prices 80% once an android competitor comes out and hangs around in this artificial market long enough until people realize singing talking wrist watches are about as practical as google glass.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Sounds like a perfect match.
more seriously, I'm shocked at how low the price is on the stainless steel watch is. 549/599? I was expecting near 1k.
Sadly I was expecting a lower price for this. When the accessory costs far more than the primary device it supports, the pricing model is rather broken regardless of features.
People also need to realize that in less than three years, they'll likely be replacing that $600 watch due to battery death or software/hardware attrition. By comparison, someone who spends $600 on a traditional timepiece expects to pass that down through generations.
Sure, but regular watches don't become obsolete in 3 years.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The one thing I found concerning about the new MacBook is that it does away with Thunderbolt. So will there ever be a 5K supporting Thunderbolt connector, or will this be handled by USB-C? And will the charger for the new MacBook have ports on it? Like a mini-display port, USB, or even Ethernet?
Stainless steel is more expensive than aluminium and uses a sapphire front.
That's easily within reason to say 200 bucks for a fashion item.
Plus the higher end bands have these precision machined steel bands that are hand polished.
If you look at high end fashion watches, 1k for a high end steel watch is nothing, much less watch bands.
From Breitling:
Example for watches
example for bands.
From TAG Heuer:
Watches.
Everyone wants to scream at Apple for being a fashion brand, but the truth is is that if they were, they'd be Vertu. All gold and sapphire buttons with no real substance running some bland OS with crappy software on top.
Apple's a *fashionable* brand, and the key difference here is that a lot of people want them because they're nice products that are nice to use and look and feel nice. It's approaching consumerism from the other side where you're wanted not because you're exclusive or anything insane or insidious like that, but because you do what you do very well.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
But the Rolex won't be obsolete in a year. :) And you are pretty much guaranteed that the Rolex will still be working 24 hours later. The Apple Watch has an estimated 18 hour life.
I don't know about the Apple fanclub, but I've had plenty of days where I didn't get home for 24 hours. Needing to feed my phone twice a day seems just about as needy as a tamagotchi.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It tracks your movement
Obviously privacy advocates will never make headway with Apple fans. This is a selling point to them.
Movement != Location and Watch Tracking != Apple Tracking
It tracks your movement locally on the watch, such as the number of steps you take, by using its accelerometer and gyroscope, and then it can plug that into a Health app on your watch or phone so that you can monitor your own activity across a period of time. That data doesn't typically get sent back to Apple. On top of that, it does not track your location, nor would it even able to do so, since it lacks GPS or cellular antennas. The best it can do is ask your phone where you're at, assuming you've allowed your phone to track your location and share that data with your watch, which is entirely optional and can be controlled on a per-app basis from within settings. You can even configure apps to only have location tracking capability while they are actively running in the foreground, rather than allowing them to access it while running in the background.
Meanwhile, let's not pay attention to the fact that Google Wallet tracks all of your purchases and makes it accessible to Google, nor that Google Health (RIP) used to centralize all of your medical information in Google's cloud, whereas Apple's offerings—Apple Pay, HealthKit, and ResearchKit—keep Apple out of the loop entirely. The only way Apple would even possibly get any of that information is if you choose to take advantage of the entirely optional iCloud Backup feature to backup your device, but doing so would mean that the backed up data would be encrypted with a key that was generated on your device which they don't have access to, meaning that they don't have access to your data at all. Hell, even look at hardware encryption on the phone. It got dropped from Lollipop after Google made a big deal about adding it, but it's been on every iPhone since the iPhone 3GS, released back in 2009.
While there are arguments to be made in favor of some of the niche players in this space, as best I can tell, Apple is currently well ahead of the other major players in terms of protecting their users both from outside prying eyes and from themselves.
It will be really cool to wear in a three years time, when the device is no longer supported for updates. Or in 5 years time, when the batteries are dead, the charger is no longer produced, and the owner realises that it would have been a better investment to buy a real watch for that money. 10k for a watch with a one year warranty, hopefully the owners can afford applecare. Bring out Nelson!
Fancy watches are jewelry. Jewelry doesn't become obsolete in 2 years.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's like saying a sports car should have more luggage space for that price.
Number of ports isn't the new MacBook's purpose. Thinness and lightness is. And more ports would have prevented that. If you want ports, then you buy a new MacBook Pro.
The Apple Watch has an estimated 18 hour life. [...] Needing to feed my phone twice a day
Which planet are you living on that has a 36-hour day?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
But certainly reasonable given their track record.
In three years? Possibly.
In five years? Probably.
In ten years? Of course.
The first gen iPhone came out nine years ago and is not compatible with any iPhone apps. About the only thing you can do with it is sync with iTunes (which I do on occasion). Not a big deal, as I use it as a jukebox for my daughter's bedroom.
The first gen iPad came out five years ago and is not compatible with the last few iOS updates or with most apps available in the app store (since they require newer versions of iOS). I use mine as a remote control for my media center and to read some PDFs.
I guess when the Apple Watch is obsolete it will still tell time. Hopefully the battery doesn't degrade much over that time period (or is it replaceable by any watchmaker?).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Yeah, it's totally crazy that a tech site would cover a major Apple event where they announce an entirely new class of products as well as several refreshes. They even put it in a single post instead of spreading all across the front page with separate articles for every announcement like some pages. You are complaining about a site doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing in the correct way.
I read the internet for the articles.
Well, I will give the pos this much, the new intel chip uses 5 watts, so effectively this macbook is a phone in a laptop case.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
... That is an advertised 18 hour battery life on day one with a brand new device. That means you'll probably be lucky to get 12 hours a day in a year or two, since rechargeable batteries tend to age poorly. By comparison, the upcoming Pebble Time advertised a week of battery life for the base model, and ten days for the Steel version.
They've given themselves a guaranteed six months with no DST issues.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It isn't a good idea to completely deplete a lithium-ion battery on a regular basis. Keeping its charge above 25% makes makes an 18-hour battery a 13.5-hour battery, which means it must be charged 1.8 times a day, unless you charge it overnight while you sleep.
Still, its battery life is a step back from conventional watches. If you're going to invent a new mousetrap, you should try to make it at least as good as the old one in every way--no regressions.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The ports are annoying but the lack of 4k is the real downer.
External video is up to 3840 by 2160 pixels. Yeah, that missing 160 pixels horizontal resolution is Soooooo upsetting.
But wait...
"4K has become the common name for ultra-high-definition television (UHDTV), although its resolution is only 3840 x 2160 (at a 16:9, or 1.78:1 aspect ratio)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4...
It *IS* 4K.
The single biggest thing to come out of this was the announcement of ResearchKit. I don't think people fully appreciate just how...sparse and brittle medical research data can be, even today.
Even in situations where there do exist tracking devices, they tend to be clunky, cobbed-together, user-unfriendly things that are built using generations-old, heavily-used devices--generally by dint of the fact that researchers have so little money to spend on this sort of thing.
Having an open-source platform that'll open the data floodgates? THAT is going to have some real and lasting consequences for medical research.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I was underwhelmed by the watch. Frankly, I nearly coughed up a lung when they mentioned / confirmed the price of the gold model. A few will buy it simply because it's Apple. To me, it's not a something I'd drop the equivalent of a few months rent or mortgage on. The Sport model will sell quickly among the fans.
Battery life still sucks. Personally, one should not have to charge their phone once a day. A week should be the minimum between recharges.
Lastly, as a critique item, it's pretty hard to justify why one should pay almost as much for an accessory as the device it extends. The iPhones will be relegated to the back pocket just begging to be sat upon and requiring a new phone be purchased....Wait a minute....
Does the concept have promise? Perhaps. It will be initially be a success among the health AND selfie conscious. Some interesting and useful apps will be developed ( I can think of a few ). But, it will take about a year for people to decide if its worth having. That's when the general population decides it is or isn't useful. At that time, I may break down and buy one if it looks like the market for Apple Watch apps holds potential (financial) as anything other than a fad.
Eh...dell, Asus, and lenovo offer thinner and lighter at a lower price.
Sure I can. most $10k watches are marvels of mechanical engineering, they hold their value. Apple has no history making watches, and their watch is closer to a Casio then a Rolex (chinese made parts in a ceramic/gold case). My Rolex (a present) is useful for may as it is a great sailing watch, I never have to wind it, I never have to charge it. It keeps impeccable time (very important when sailing, you know sextant and all that).
And to everyone who says mechanical watches are obsolete. Mine will still work in 50 years.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
There are smaller, lighter laptops with more ports than this MacBook. The only reason they put one port on it is aesthetics.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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If you leave biases aside, and want to compare the Macbook with something else, the Dell XPS 13 would be neck to neck. I would even venture to say that the Dell is far more computer for the money (i will qualify why). Here's a comparison.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/3...
The Dell XPS 13 is extremely well built (aluminum alloy, carbon fibre - I've held it, it is gorgeous) - might possibly be a hair lower than the new Macbook (which I haven't held) but really, I think you would be splitting hairs.
The XPS 13 however has two big things going for it - it has full blown Core i3/i5/i7 (2.1 - 2.4 GHz) as opposed to Macbook's Core M (measly 1.1 GHz) - which means much better performance (i would imagine 2x-3x better), much less thermal throttling, and better graphics (HD5500 vs 5300). The other big thing is its display. XPS 13 has a near zero bezel 3200 x 1800 pixel Sharp IGZO panel that is arguably the best and most cutting edge laptop panel one can get today.
You can read a review of this panel here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
And dimensions and weight. Macbook is 11" wide and 0.52" thick, and weighs 2 pounds. The XPS 13 is a bit heavier (2.6-2.8 pounds), but is only 12" wide and 0.33"-0.6" thick. The cool thing is that because of the near zero bezels, XPS 13 is a 13" screen while only being 12" wide (typical for a 11" laptop, not for a 13" laptop).
Again, I am not saying Macbook is not good. It still seems to have Apple's obsessive attention to detail in terms of build quality and user centric design approach. But to say that it has no competion - that is no longer true. I do believe that the XPS 13 is a genuine alternative in just about every respec. The extra 0.8 may be an issue for some, but you also sacrifice a *lot* of computer for that. Then I would say, might as well get an iPad.
I didn't catch the Apple announcement - but I wonder how the Apple Watch compares to the Pebble Time that's doing huge $$$ on Kickstarter right now?
From what I can see:
* Pebble is *way* cheaper.
* Pebble has a 7 day battery life (kinda beats 18 hours!)
* Pebble works with both iOS and Android, so if you ever want to change your phone, you won't have to change your watch.
* Pebble allows anyone to develop & ship apps without a fee.
* Both scheduled to ship about the same time.
I'm sure there is more to it than this than that...but why on earth would I buy the Apple watch?
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