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.

Comments

Re:It's not THAT much....

[Strider-]

Sure, but regular watches don't become obsolete in 3 years.

Death of Thunderbolt?

[glennrrr]

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?

Re:Bwahahahahahahwahahahaah

[sosume]

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!

Re:so lets have a breakdown

[BasilBrush]

Did HBO really shoot themselves in the foot by taking the cableless HBO subscription and screwing the pooch by limiting it to Apple TV for now?

I take it you chose the wrong set-top box.

Re:A laptop with almost no ports?!

[BasilBrush]

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.

Re:Bwahahahahahahwahahahaah

[Jeremi]

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?

ResearchKit! ResearchKit! That's The Big Story!

[American AC in Paris]

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.