Apple Product Event Highlights

samzenpus writes: The Apple product event just finished, read below for the highlights.

• Apple Watch:
• Adding Facebook Messenger.
• iTranslate — speak into the mic and hear translations in over 90 languages.
• Physician app AirStrip can monitor vitals.
• New band options, two new finishes gold and rose gold.
• Watch OS 2 comes out September 16.

• iPad:
• iPad Pro announced: Screen is 12.9 inches, 5.6m pixels, A9X chip, with 2x memory bandwidth, storage and graphics performance, 10-hour battery life, 8MP camera, 802.11ac with MIMO, 150Mbps LTE modem, TouchID, 6.9mm thick and 1.57 pounds.
• Smart Keyboard connects magnetically.
• The Apple Pencil stylus: "Highly responsive sensors built into the tip of Apple Pencil sensor pressure, tilt, and stroke."
• Corporate VP from MS Office, Kirk Koenigsbauer talks Microsoft Office for iPad.
• New suite of Adobe apps.
• Apple Pencil is $99 and Smart Keyboard is $169, all available in November.
• New iPad mini 4 $399.

• Apple TV:
• New remote with glass touch surface. 10mm tall, A8 chip, Bluetooth 4.0. Built-in accelerometer and gyroscope, 3 months per charge, charges over lightning. 32GB for $149, 64GB for $199.
• iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Showtime are searchable.
• New cleaner looking UI with Siri integration.
• New OS: TV OS.
• new games and game collections for the family, using your iPhone or iPod Touch as a controller.
• MLB app, NHL Game Center live in 2016.
• tvOS developer beta available today, available to consumers in late October.

• iPhone:
• iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, Silver, gold, space grey, and new Rose Gold. 4.7-inch 6S and 5.5-inch 6S+.
• 3rd-generation A9 chip 70% faster CPU than A8, 90% faster GPU than A8.
• New pressure-sensitive 3D Touch.
• New Taptic Engine
• New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not.
• New 12 megapixel iSight camera. 50% more pixels and 50% more focus pixels for faster autofocus.
• 4K video
• 5MP FaceTime HD Camera.
• Retina Flash, display can light up 3X brighter than usual to be a flash for the front-facing camera.
• Live Photos: Press with 3D Touch and pictures will move.
• iPhone 6 $199-$399, iPhone 6 Plus $299-$499 all on two-year contracts.
• New iPhone Upgrade Program for a new iPhone every year, choose your carrier, unlocked phones, 24-month installment plan starting at $32/month.
• preorder Saturday, Sept 12. Available September 25th.
• iOS 9 available September 16th.
• New iCloud storage pricing: 50GB for 99 cents a month, 200GB for $2.99/mo, 1TB for $9.99/mo.

Comments

How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[SirDrinksAlot]

Why do I have to see this giant Apple ad on my page? Whatever happened to read more?

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

How do I hide the stories about a tech giant making a round of announcements on this tech site?

Bitch bitch bitch.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have to see this giant Apple ad on my page? Whatever happened to read more?

This ad certainly wasn't necessary.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly is how does Siri answer your questions whether the phone is on or off?!?

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[FlyHelicopters]

More importantly is how does Siri answer your questions whether the phone is on or off?!?

Perhaps because the phone is never really off?

Is that really news?

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[dotancohen]

More importantly is how does Siri answer your questions whether the phone is on or off?!?

There is no more "off" as you and I remember it. There is now "responsive" (on) and "not responsive" (what they call off) but the machine is still monitoring you, even when it is "not responsive". Now we know why the batteries are not removable.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell NSA.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Scutter]

Ford flipped the switch which he saw was marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" that had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off."

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

The battery has not been removable for over 10 years. and its by design not for spying. you clearly have a tinfoil hat.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

The battery has not been removable for over 10 years. and its by design not for spying. you clearly have a tinfoil hat.

Yes, because the concept of Big Brother is only about 7 years old. And spies didn't even exist 10 years ago. Neither did the PATRIOT Act.

But please, go ahead and bring forth your "design" theories as to why a device under constant location monitoring wouldn't be able to be powered off, in the pre-Siri era. The capitalist excuse only goes so far here.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I've found the "Untethered Hey Siri" jailbreak tweak very useful at times, so it's good to see this coming to official iOS.

This one seems pretty obvious; but it's funny how often the best jailbreak tweaks end up in iOS one or two iterations later. I'm hoping that, eventually, Apple will make the control center buttons customizable - the way FlipControlCenter does right now. That's probably the jailbreak tweak I've found to be the most useful.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[dunkindave]

I can't wait to say "Hey Siri" over the PA system at a large event! Should be entertaining.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already hilarious to do if you have a bunch of iTards charging their iPwneds at the airport due to the amazingly short actual battery life those things get. "Hey Siri, how much does a real smart phone cost?" Try it the next time you're someplace where hipsters are desperately charging their phones.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could ruin a whole lot of people's days by announcing "Hey Siri call 911".

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[tw2k]

The summary is poorly phrased. The change is that there is now hardware support for 'Hey Siri' that means it uses less power. So instead of only being available only when you are plugged into the mains, it's also available on battery.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[93 Escort Wagon]

You could ruin a whole lot of people's days by announcing "Hey Siri call 911".

And you would almost certainly go to jail afterward for "malicious mischief".

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could ruin a whole lot of people's days by announcing "Hey Siri call 911".

And you would almost certainly go to jail afterward for "malicious mischief".

I personally would never do such a thing, but if I wanted to it wouldn't be hard to do it so that they didn't know who did it, so no, I would not almost certainly go to jail. You could blast a signal on a popular FM frequency near a highway. You could co-op the wireless mic frequency of an announcer at an event. You could call in to a show from a payphone and say it when you are live on the air. And many more. Only the less bright would do it when they could easily be identified. This feature of Siri always listening is going to be abused. Just watch.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[BasilBrush]

It wouldn't be much use as a phone if it was really off.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[BasilBrush]

Generally speaking a phone that's off isn't much use for receiving phone calls. That's why they just go to sleep when they time out, or you tap the on/off switch. But for those time that you genuinely want an iPhone off, you hold down the power button for a few seconds, then swipe to switch off. Then it's really off. No phone calls, no Siri.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[antek9]

"Hey Siri, call [enter expensive service number]", or "Hey Siri, stop taking this video and delete it", or "Hey Siri, switch to front camera", or, finally, "Hey Siri, shut down immediately / go to sleep / do a full wipe and factory reset."

Oh, the possible fun at the office...

Disclaimer: I'm perfectly aware that most of this stuff won't work, probably, as the developers won't be that stupid. On the other hand: imagine the mayhem shortly after songwriters start putting those lines into radio friendly songs.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be surprised if Siri isn't voiceprinting everyone. If they have your voiceprint in their database then they can instantly know who said "Hey Siri call 911". They've got your fingerprints and faceprint already too. I'm just waiting for an iPhone that takes blood testing strips for diabetics or just to test for healthy blood sugar levels in general so that they can get my DNA too. Then what's left?

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly is how does Siri answer your questions whether the phone is on or off?!?

There is no more "off" as you and I remember it. There is now "responsive" (on) and "not responsive" (what they call off) but the machine is still monitoring you, even when it is "not responsive". Now we know why the batteries are not removable.

Yes, the batteries are not removable because the iPhone is a privacy conspiracy 8 years in the making.

Well caught. I'm surprised you noticed it under all that tin-foil.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what does work?

"Hey Siri, tweet I'm a dumb hipster douche who can't stop buying the latest crap from Apple!" (pause) "Yes."

You need to pause to give Siri a chance to ask if you really want to tweet it.

Apple really should have added a way for Siri to recognize who's speaking to it before making this change, but when this new iPhone hits...

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey Siri, call [enter expensive service number]"

For a really expensive call (of sorts): "Hey Siri, call mom". Many phones will have "mom" as a contact.

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[dotancohen]

Nice catch!

Re:How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[jittles]

I can't wait to say "Hey Siri" over the PA system at a large event! Should be entertaining.

I have an Apple watch and I glanced at the display during the presentation yesterday. The presenter said 'Hey Siri' and all of the sudden I lost my watch face and Siri came up. It will definitely be a great way to mess with people.

Re: How do I hide this Apple Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fry: "I wonder why they call this thing an eye-phone..."
AAAAAAAAARGH!

ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

ipad pro + keyboard = winner for elderly

Re:ipad pro

[bondsbw]

I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that just a surface?

Re:ipad pro

[vux984]

I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.

These days in Apple-speak -- "Pro" == "same as consumer product but faster". Look at the MacBook Pro for another example.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why you fail...

Re:ipad pro

[ranton]

I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.

I have to say the only thing I was waiting for from this announcement was whether the iPad Pro would have OS X or iOS. As I think Windows RT showed us, the primary difference between a consumer tablet and a productivity device is whether it uses a desktop OS.

Can I run the full versions of Photoshop and XCode on the iPad Pro? Can I use the desktop verson of Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro? How easy is it to dock the iPad Pro to my Thunderbolt screen to have multiple monitor support? These are the important questions to answer. Everyone knew Apple could create a device that looks like the Surface Pro, we just needed to know if it could be a true laptop replacement in quasi-tablet form.

I'm sure it will still sell like hotcakes though, since iOS still has a much better app ecosystem than Windows RT did. And if the Apple watch can sell, anything Apple creates (for a while at least) will sell.

Re:ipad pro

[unimacs]

I think what RT showed is that it's hard to survive as a platform without applications and without clear reasons for choosing it over a confusingly similar product from the same vender.

For me personally, XCode doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a touch screen device with limited screen real-estate. I'd prefer to use a Macbook. As for Photoshop, there might be a ton of photo applications that do make sense on a touch screen device with stylus support. Whether that needs to be a full desktop version of Photoshop or something targeted specifically at that kind of device is an open question.

Re: ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that Apple so hatefully made the text too small to read.

Re:ipad pro

[macs4all]

ipad pro + keyboard = winner for elderly

Surface Pro-Killer.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

> winner for elderly

Except for the text that is too small even for the average person to read. Ever watch someone surfing the web with an iPad? It's a constant hassle. They constantly have to do the uncomfortable crab then then awkwardly move the view around while reading. For example, the text here requires 2.5 screens wide in order to be readable on my iPad. That means if I, for example, read text lines of text, I have moved the viewport 40 times. The tiny, tiny text and coupled with sites like this that do not become narrower when zooming and with apps that mostly ignore accessibility settings, the iPad just isn't usable by the average person. And, when Apple confirmed that text on this new larger iPad would be even tinier, that shows they don't actually intend for this device to be used for reading. So, this is not a suitable device for the elderly since web pages and email clients will be unusable.

Re:ipad pro

[unimacs]

Depends on what your qualifications for being a professional tool are. The stylus support and Apple Pencil are potentially very big things for people in the graphics world. Keyboards and cases have been available for iPads for a long time, so that in and of itself doesn't seem to be much of an advance.

Other than for taking notes or referencing documents when I don't feel like caring around a laptop, it doesn't seem like a professional tool for me personally. On the other hand, it's approaching the size of a small laptop anyway.

Re:ipad pro

[macs4all]

These days in Apple-speak -- "Pro" == "same as consumer product but faster". Look at the MacBook Pro for another example.

I don't know when you think "these days" starts; but the MacBook Pro has been a model designator for over a decade.

Actually, "Pro", as in "MacBook Pro" actually means more like "More Features" (although "Faster" is usually one of the features).

It's a common marketing term in tech circles: E.g., Surface Pro.

Re:ipad pro

[SumDog]

I tried using Illustrator on a Surface Pro 2 with the stylus. OMG that was awful. The screen was too small and it was too difficult to get the precision I needed. Plus when you got towards the bottom of the screen, the pointer would jump like crazy...might have just been that device though. I did buy it used.

I preferred using the mouse though. I don't draw, but I've heard from others that a Waccom tablet is better. Even thought he Surface is pressure sensitive, it's still a little buggy. But that could have been fixed in the Surface 3.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what RT showed is that it's hard to survive as a platform without applications and without clear reasons for choosing it over a confusingly similar product from the same vender.

For me personally, XCode doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a touch screen device with limited screen real-estate. I'd prefer to use a Macbook. As for Photoshop, there might be a ton of photo applications that do make sense on a touch screen device with stylus support. Whether that needs to be a full desktop version of Photoshop or something targeted specifically at that kind of device is an open question.

you would rarely use xcode or photoshop in the tablet function of the tablet. Most users would dock it on another monitor or at least with a keyboard/mouse converting it to a laptop equivalent.

Re:ipad pro

[Bing Tsher E]

Except the Surface Pro runs a real operating system, not a curated 'toy' consumer operating system. You can bid again when Apple puts OSX on one of their pads.

Anyway, I think you meant 'Surface RT' killer, but it's already dead, dude.

Re:ipad pro

[FuegoFuerte]

I think you meant to say "Surface Pro Copy." But hey, at least it will run Office, maybe even almost as well as the real deal.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

Desiring XCode on a tablet is irrational. A good keyboard is essential for any real coding.

Can I run the full versions of Photoshop and XCode on the iPad Pro? Can I use the desktop verson of Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro?

For "desktop" read optimised for indirect control mouse, trackpad or digitiser input. Not touch. There are iPad specific versions of Photoshop and Office, and that's obviously better. The iPad Pro is going to be very popular with designers.

Re:ipad pro

[vux984]

"It's a common marketing term in tech circles: E.g., Surface Pro."

On that front, the the surface Win8RT vs pro Actual Windows 8; the pro by having a full desktop OS really did count as a pro device in my books compared to the RT.

Even with the retirement of RT, and the desktop OS now running across the line that's diluted somewhat... but the surface pro still comes with the pro version of windows which maintains consistency with windows home/pro marketing that's been in effect for a long time now.

"but the MacBook Pro has been a model designator for over a decade."

Yeah, it's been steadily diluting...since at least the clamshell iBook vs Powerbook days... but it wasn't until they stripped the eth port out that its credibility as a 'pro' device was completely removed.

Re:ipad pro

[Dantoo]

It's sad that again Microsoft have had to copy yet another Apple innovation. :P

Re:ipad pro

[LinuxIsGarbage]

For me personally, XCode doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a touch screen device with limited screen real-estate. I'd prefer to use a Macbook.

I'll grant you the touchscreen part (though they are offering an overpriced keyboard lid), but not the "limited screen real-estate". They are offering a 12.9" screen. Macbooks have long been offered in a 13.3" size. The iPad will be in a 2732×2048 resolution. I've considered the 11.6" / 12" range to be the minimum for a laptop that could be usable as a real computer (as compared to 10" netbooks). Those 12" laptops would frequently have 1366x768 resolutions. 13"-14" computers are easily usable full time. The iPad Pro's screen is obviously not a limitation. The oversized cellphone apps on it may get in the way, but not the screen.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

For me personally, XCode doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a touch screen device with limited screen real-estate. I'd prefer to use a Macbook.

It's 12.9 inches, the Macbook Air comes in 11" and 13" models that are much lower resolution and the Macbook Pro comes in a 13" version that has pretty much the same resolution. In fact the only Macbook with more screen real-estate is the 15" Macbook Pro Retina, every other one has equal or less. Not to mention it has the attached keyboard.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Surface Pro-Killer.

It's a Surface Pro -clone. It's sad that they have gone the path of copying Microsoft's ideas, massive respect for all the innovation they have done in creating the iPhone and iPad but now they have just stagnated.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

When Windows is Unix under the hood then you can call it a "real operating system". Until then it's just a bug ridden spybot.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

At a $799 starting price, I doubt it'll sell like hotcakes...the stylus might make a nice appeal to artist and such, but a laptop is such a better productivity device, it's laughable that they're even trying a 'pro' model like that. Trying to get work done in iOS is the most clumsy and clunky experience, making the screen 2 inches bigger and the price twice as high doesn't change that

Re:ipad pro

[macs4all]

Except the Surface Pro runs a real operating system, not a curated 'toy' consumer operating system. You can bid again when Apple puts OSX on one of their pads.

Anyway, I think you meant 'Surface RT' killer, but it's already dead, dude.

No. I wrote what I meant. Who cares about the specific architecture? It is aimed more at the Surface Pro than the RT.

Time will tell if it draws Developers; but I have a feeling it will.

And remember: It already has much better battery life than the Surface Pro, also runs MS Office, and as a bonus, has an OS that doesn't send every stinkin' molecule of your farts to the mothership, no matter what you do...

Re:ipad pro

[macs4all]

Yeah, it's been steadily diluting...since at least the clamshell iBook vs Powerbook days... but it wasn't until they stripped the eth port out that its credibility as a 'pro' device was completely removed.

Not sure what your comment about "steadily diluting" actually means; but you do realize that the Ethernet port was replaced by a far more capable Thunderbolt II port (MacBook Pros without a dedicated Ethernet Port have TWO Thunderbolt Ports, each of which can support a variety of "adapters", including Ethernet, don't you?

Re:ipad pro

[ranton]

Desiring XCode on a tablet is irrational.

The primary selling point for these larger tablets is as a laptop replacement, not just for use as a tablet. If I were to buy an iPad Pro or Surface Pro, it would be so I could do work on it. This means being able to run XCode / Visual Studio at a minimum.

A good keyboard is essential for any real coding.

I have never found a laptop keyboard that was good enough for long duration coding either. That is why having a docking station is also a prerequisite for any laptop replacement hybrid tablet.

Re:ipad pro

[vux984]

"steadily diluting" = "becoming increasingly watered down"

MacBook Pros without a dedicated Ethernet Port have TWO Thunderbolt Ports, each of which can support a variety of "adapters", including Ethernet, don't you?

I do.
However:
1 - I can't plug an ethernet cable into a thunderbolt port. I encounter ethernet cables everywhere I go. The purpose of a nice portal laptop is largely defeated the larger the bag of accessories I need to carry around with me.

Just last week I just grabbed the laptop, no bag to attend a meeting in another building, I had a full charge, and knew it would get me through the meeting. After the meeting I'm asked to troubleshoot a wifi access point that was acting funny... and I need to borrow someone elses laptop because my thunderbolt dongle is in my bag, half a block away.

A pro level ultrabook should have:

i) one full size video out port (HDMI is the logical choice in 2015). Not mini-displayport (my previous macbook pro), not mini-DVI, not-miniHDMI -- full size HDMI. Because that's the plug on the end of the cord provided by the hotel, the conference center, the boardroom projector etc. I'd argue that even bog standard VGA should still be on a pro class unit too. Because if where-ever your standing doesn't have an HDMI projector... odds are you've just been handed a VGA cable.

ii) full size USB-A ports (3+). It can have mini-usb-C and other such marvels if you like, but it should have a few USB-A ports, because that's what all devices you are likely to run into will have. From a barcode scanner, to a printer to an electric piano, to a corneal topographer, to an external DVDRW. I shouldn't need an adapter for this. (WTF new Macbook!!)

iii) gigabit ethernet. Actual ethernet. Not something else that can be ethernet with a $40 dongle.

That is a laptop that can do things, rather than a laptop that can do things as long as you have a bag of overpriced dongles.
As for the thunderbolt port... meh... its nice enough but if I had the ports above I don't need it. I'd get more use out of a serial port.

Yes, I know the laptop would need to be slightly thicker than it is right now. (ie as thick as a non-retina macbook pro. Fine. That's just fine. Give me some extra battery life and improve the cooling system with the space, or make the ram and SSD upgradable.

2 thunderbolt is a security hole. Like firewire. Anything that plugs into your thunderbolt port pretty much owns your laptop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I could disable thunderbolt I guess... but that makes using my Ethernet dongle even more irritating than it already is.

Re: ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Full sized hdmi, VGA, multiple USB-A ports, Ethernet... God I'm glad you're not designing my laptops. I certainly appreciate the portability of the new MacBook pros with fewer big giant outdated ports littered all over the sides of them.

Re: ipad pro

[exomondo]

I certainly appreciate the portability of the new MacBook pros with fewer big giant outdated ports littered all over the sides of them.

His point is that they are *not* outdated. You really think having a full-size HDMI, ethernet and 3 USB-A ports (FWIW my macbook air has 2 USB-A ports) makes it any less portable?

Re:ipad pro

[unimacs]

For me personally, XCode doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a touch screen device with limited screen real-estate. I'd prefer to use a Macbook.

I'll grant you the touchscreen part (though they are offering an overpriced keyboard lid), but not the "limited screen real-estate". They are offering a 12.9" screen. Macbooks have long been offered in a 13.3" size. The iPad will be in a 2732×2048 resolution. I've considered the 11.6" / 12" range to be the minimum for a laptop that could be usable as a real computer (as compared to 10" netbooks). Those 12" laptops would frequently have 1366x768 resolutions. 13"-14" computers are easily usable full time. The iPad Pro's screen is obviously not a limitation. The oversized cellphone apps on it may get in the way, but not the screen.

For working with textual information like you are in Xcode, the native resolution on retina displays is almost meaningless. For example, the native resolution on my MBP 15 with retina display is 2880 X 1800, but the default effective resolution is 1440 X 900 which is the same as the non-retina displays of previous versions. Same with the iPads. The newest iPad Air has the same effective resolution as the original, - 1024 X 768. That's because Apple pixel-doubles the text so it's large enough to read.

You could have a native resolution of 2880 X 1800 on an iPhone but that doesn't mean the screen would be optimal for doing Xcode work.

That being said, the screen size of an iPad Pro is approaching that of an MBP 13 which I used for many years for software development. Before that I briefly had a Macbook Air. Obviously portability is an important feature to me and I could hook them up to external displays in the office. However, when away from the office I found the 13" display to be a liability unless I was just working in the terminal, web browsing, checking email, etc. The latest MBP 15 that I have now is almost as light as the earlier generation MBP 13 and is probably thinner. The larger screen is well worth the added footprint when I'm away from the office.

So I guess I don't see the fact that Xcode doesn't work on the iPad Pro as much of a downside since I don't think it's a great form factor for that kind of work anyway.

Re:ipad pro

[Applehu Akbar]

"Everyone knew Apple could create a device that looks like the Surface Pro, we just needed to know if it could be a true laptop replacement in quasi-tablet form."

And how good a laptop replacement is the Surface Pro, exactly? At two different customer sites this week, I had the same experience installing that treasured Windows 10 upgrade to two of those nice Windows laptops and desktops that have the touchscreen feature, and had come with 8.1. You install Windows 10, spend an afternoon cranking through the screens and watching it install its nineteen (the actual number) Windows Updates, and then it reboots - back into 8.1, giving the big old Microsoft Fuck You to all your efforts, and with not a peep as to what it might be objecting to about Dells that are only a few months old.

Windows 10: watch the steady trickle of defections to OS X become a mighty flood.

Re:ipad pro

[Bing Tsher E]

My wife would pay good money for something that sent my farts away. Microsoft wouldn't want them, though. Nor do they want all the 'stuff' you're FUDing about, no matter how much shill slashdotters shriek about it. Microsoft doesn't monetize crap like that. You're thinking of Google, I bet.

I have an Asus Transformer Book actually. It cost about as much as the accessories for the new Maxipad, and includeed a full 'home and student' Office 2013 license, for under $300. And it runs Windows 8.1. I tried Windows 10 on it. Windows 10 sucks on tablets at this point, 8.1 is much better. It's a weird thing, Windows of the last few years. 8.1 is better on a touchscreen than a laptop or desktop, and they've made 10 worse on a tablet than 8.1 was. I wish they knew what they were doing a little better.

But I'd never want an iOS tablet. iOS is suited for 'mobile' devices, not anything bigger than a cellphone. Apple obsoleted me out of using the three iPod Touches I bought and I decided 'never again.'

Re:ipad pro

[ignavusinfo]

Perhaps it depends what profession you're in. As a stage manager and lighting tech, this is a pretty excellent development.

Re: ipad pro

[vux984]

Full sized hdmi, VGA, multiple USB-A ports, Ethernet... God I'm glad you're not designing my laptops.

You can buy a souped up macbook air. I'm not suggesting Apple stop making them for you.

But some of us need a tool to that can connect to things though, in the real world, where there are still LOTs of wires, especially when the wireless is down.

I certainly appreciate the portability of the new MacBook pros with fewer big giant outdated ports littered all over the sides of them.

USB-A, HDMI, and ethernet are not even slightly 'outdated'.

VGA is the only connector that's outdated, but its still extremely ubiquitous. I can live without it, but having it would mean one more dongle i don't need to worry about it.

Re: ipad pro

[bledri]

I certainly appreciate the portability of the new MacBook pros with fewer big giant outdated ports littered all over the sides of them.

His point is that they are *not* outdated. You really think having a full-size HDMI, ethernet and 3 USB-A ports (FWIW my macbook air has 2 USB-A ports) makes it any less portable?

Modern Mac Book Pros have two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-C ports and a full sized HDMI. So I guess it's 1 USB and 1 Ethernet port short of a "real" pro machine. Adding Physical Ethernet would actually make the system thicker. Personally I'd rather carry the dongle. Actually, I carry two as I occasionally connect to multiple isolated networks. But I'm happy with the thinner, lighter machine for the other 97% of the time. Then again, I also connect to a lot of old hardware via DB9 connectors and RS485 but I'm OK using those dongles too rather than have some behemoth with two of everything I use once a year.

But this is an Apple thread so we must be upset that the professionals that require an Ethernet port need to spend $29 for a dongle.

Re: ipad pro

[exomondo]

Modern Mac Book Pros have two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-C ports and a full sized HDMI. So I guess it's 1 USB and 1 Ethernet port short of a "real" pro machine.

Actually his point was USB-A (which is what most devices are), you'd think they'd at least provide a single USB-A for almost all the USB devices out there.

Adding Physical Ethernet would actually make the system thicker.

By what? 1mm - 1.5mm? If you really care about that then you've probably already gone with a Macbook or an Air rather than the Pro as they are thinner and lighter.

But this is an Apple thread so we must be upset that the professionals that require an Ethernet port need to spend $29 for a dongle.

Why must we? And who is upset? Is there a reason you're trying to take a criticism and make it out as though it's some emotional issue and a critical problem? Also it's not about buying a dongle, it's about actually needing one at all.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you'd prefer to use the Macbook with a 12-inch display instead of the iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch display because of "limited screen real estate"?

Okay...

Re:ipad pro

[bondsbw]

Sure, that's nice if your setup currently uses iPads. That doesn't really make this "pro" though. It's just a bigger screen. The iPad Pro doesn't actually have any more relevant functionality than the iPad Air 2.

I would expect a "pro" device to be able to add your lighting hardware as needed, and to be capable of utilizing specialized device drivers when the OS maker doesn't support your device out of the box. A Windows/Linux/Mac device could contain a PCI card that connects directly to a DMX cable, or utilize a USB adapter or RS232 adapter or several other mechanisms. An iPad Pro can't do any of that, it's just wireless. You need another device just to connect the wireless to the lights.

Your setup may be ideal in the long run, but to me a device is truly "pro" when it conforms to your setup instead of dictating it.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.

Congratulations! This is the 5th year that you've completely missed the point about the iPad and its utility!

Re:ipad pro

[ignavusinfo]

Well for SM'ing, the bigger screen is a real win: I (but perhaps not others) really need to see two pages at a time when running a show and the current iPad lineup's screens are too small for that. Combine that sized screen with the stylus and iAnnotate (or the like) I can finally see moving away from printed scripts for relatively cheap money.

As for lighting: your line "it's just wireless" is pretty funny to someone who's debugged DMX perched 25' up on a ladder, alone, in the early hours of the morning. I'll grant you that the larger "pro" factor is not a must have for that use case but the elision of wireless computer control with a traditional fader board form factor is pretty exciting when it comes time to write cues (or run an unscripted show live).

Do you believe that USB --> DMX is somehow preferable to wifi --> DMX via Art-Net? Every place I've worked (including the venue I own) has either made this transition or would dearly like to make it. Granted, large installations probably have other concerns but for small spaces (figure 50 instruments, 300 cues, and one or two tech folks) Art-Net kind of rocks.

Re:ipad pro

[Wdomburg]

Nonsense. Unix was neither the first nor the last "real" operating system.

Re:ipad pro

[bondsbw]

I agree that wireless is ideal. If I can ever get the budget for it, I would love to go wireless for our whole setup.

I can find a multitude of large touch screen displays that make the iPad Pro look tiny, and then attach a capable PC with an OS that makes practically any setup possible (including wireless). Or a tablet with a 17" screen. Maybe even one of these. That's "pro" in my mind.

Re:ipad pro

[Schnapple]

The primary selling point for these larger tablets is as a laptop replacement, not just for use as a tablet. If I were to buy an iPad Pro or Surface Pro, it would be so I could do work on it. This means being able to run XCode / Visual Studio at a minimum.

Microsoft has stated the SP3 could replace your desktop/laptop, yes, but no one else has seriously suggested such a thing. Also, I'm a developer as well but you do realize there are professionals out there that do things other than programming, right? Presumably some number of them would find this sufficient.

Re:ipad pro

[Wdomburg]

One platform might draw developers. The other has a base of twenty years worth of applications for the leading desktop platform. I think it's safe to say the latter has the advantage here.

Battery life remains to be seen. Apple claims ten hours, which is not "much better" than the nine hours that Microsoft claims. But more importantly, you're comparing a brand new product with a brand new processor (and presumably newer display and battery technology) with a fifteen month old product with a completely different processor architecture.

Performance claims are hard to evaluate on an unreleased product, but if we take the claim of being 70% faster than the A8X at face value, and look at the Geekbench scores of 1812 and 4477 that Engadget got for single and multi-threader performance respectively, that would suggest the A9X would get in the neighborhood of 3080 and 7610. That /is/ faster than the i5 version of the Surface Pro 3 (~2700 and ~ 5300) but the Surface 4 is expected to launch soon using the new Skylake processors.

Ultimately, I still think the Apple MacBook is still a more obvious competitor to the Surface Pro than the iPad Pro. The devices may be more physically similar, it's still a desktop platform scaling down to a mobile device versus a mobile platform trying to scale up to desktop tasks. Aside from the application base, there are aspects of the platform itself; e.g. fully windowed multi-tasking versus the slide-over split screen mode they added to iOS 9.

(And of course you can install Linux or whatever else you want on a Microsoft Surface, if you're really that worried about their nefarious fart-tracking. With the Apple product, on the other hand, you're stuck with what they ship, and their record of sending data "back to the mothership" is hardly sterling either. Remember when iOS was caught sending location data back to Apple? Or the revelation that Siri retains search data for two years? Or how Privacy Rights Clearinghouse found that a third of the apps they tested perform undisclosed sharing of health data (which in recent releases can include details like sexual activity and ovulation) to third parties?)

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

The primary selling point for these larger tablets is as a laptop replacement, not just for use as a tablet. If I were to buy an iPad Pro or Surface Pro, it would be so I could do work on it. This means being able to run XCode / Visual Studio at a minimum.

It's irrational to use a tablet rather than a laptop for coding. Unless it's at the toy level.

I have never found a laptop keyboard that was good enough for long duration coding either. That is why having a docking station is also a prerequisite for any laptop replacement hybrid tablet.

Then it's doubly true for you that choosing a tablet for coding is irrational.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

It's irrational to use a tablet rather than a laptop for coding.

Why? If it has a keyboard (which this does) then what's the difference?

Re: ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

So, current-gen MacBook Pros have 2 out of 3 of those, only missing the Ethernet.

I honestly think that the ship has sailed on Ethernet on laptops. WiFi is so prevalent and if you want gig-E a dongle, while a bit cumbersome, is a reasonable requirement.

Full-size VGA? Sorry, the world got rid of those at the same time as HD-DVD drives. VGA sucks sucks sucks and deserves to die. I've never been to a conference or even a conference /room/ that didn't have proper cables for modern video.

(Ha ha ha... VGA... I'm still laughing.)

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

RAM, Flash, CPU power (although that's getting close), the extremely restrictive sandbox, the lack of arbitrarily windowed multi-processing apps. Touch input not being good for locating a text cursor. (compared with mouse/trackpad)
etc.

If you're going to use a foldy cover to prop the iPad up, and a keyboard so it physically resembles a laptop, why not just use a laptop.

iPads are great for some things. Development isn't one of them.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

As you say graphic designers and other people that have to sketch things are going to love it.
Another professional use case is for salesmen. It's all very well going to a customer and plugging a laptop into their projector in a conference room to show them things. But a smaller one to one system is also useful. In the old days salesmen used to used printed material in books of PVC wallets to present. Imagine sitting at a desk opposite a buyer. Place the iPad on the desk so that you both can see it. (You upside down, but it's a presentation that you already know).

Re:ipad pro

[ranton]

RAM, Flash, CPU power (although that's getting close), the extremely restrictive sandbox, the lack of arbitrarily windowed multi-processing apps. Touch input not being good for locating a text cursor. (compared with mouse/trackpad)
etc.

If you're going to use a foldy cover to prop the iPad up, and a keyboard so it physically resembles a laptop, why not just use a laptop.

iPads are great for some things. Development isn't one of them.

Well, those are a problem for the iPad Pro, but only because it is poorly designed. The Surface Pro does not suffer from any of these problems, so I would restrict these complains to the iPad Pro and not to tablet/laptop hybrids in general.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

Surface Pro is a bag of shit. For a start it runs Windows.

Re: ipad pro

[vux984]

So, current-gen MacBook Pros have 2 out of 3 of those, only missing the Ethernet.

Yep... they gave us HDMI which was missing last round and then fucked the ethernet. I still bought one, its a good laptop...but this is still a shortcoming with with, one that feel is significant.

I honestly think that the ship has sailed on Ethernet on laptops.

I honestly think that is miles away. wifi is dog slow compared to eithernet. I want my next laptop a few years out to have 10gig ethernet...my next gen laptops CPU and SSDs can keep up with that...

Full-size VGA? Sorry, the world got rid of those at the same time as HD-DVD drives. VGA sucks sucks sucks and deserves to die.

I'd like to agree, but I do not. Every single new monitor comes with VGA. If I'm anywhere, and someone hands me a monitor, I don't know what it will have on it (DVI? HDMI? Displayport? some of the above?) but I know it will at least have VGA.

Helll here is a BRAND NEW monitor that you can buy today that only has VGA:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Is it crap? Yes. Is it likely being bought for point-of-sale, receptionists, telemarketing pools, and help desks and so forth the world over? And anywhere else someone needed a lot of monitors and wanted them cheap? You bet.

The brand new $15,000 server I received this week... is equipped with VGA and only VGA. The brand new surveillance camera systems I just received... internet enabled of course, but the boxes had a VGA port (and only VGA) as well if you wanted to plug in a monitor to interact with it directly.

(Granted these latter 2 examples have nothing to do with ever being connected to my laptop, but it illustrates my point that to suggest that the "world got rid of VGA" is simply bullshit.)

I've never been to a conference or even a conference /room/ that didn't have proper cables for modern video.

Try a small business boardroom. Gear is often 5-10 years old. If it works, they don't mess with it. Especially if they've had it professionally installed, and the projector is ceiling mounted, and the cabling is run through the walls and then under the floor and up through the meeting table or something. Even if they bought a new projector last month, they just plug the existing 30' VGA cable that's in the wall into it.

I was in a VGA equipped boardroom just last week.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

RAM, Flash, CPU power (although that's getting close)

These aren't particularly restrictive.

the extremely restrictive sandbox, the lack of arbitrarily windowed multi-processing apps.

Well these are artificial limitations, Apple's apps already can get privileges and functionality not available to other applications (see private APIs).

Touch input not being good for locating a text cursor. (compared with mouse/trackpad)

Keyboard is a pretty good tool for doing this.

If you're going to use a foldy cover to prop the iPad up, and a keyboard so it physically resembles a laptop, why not just use a laptop.

Because development isn't the only thing I do, why carry 2 devices when I could just carry 1 if it weren't artificially limited.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

Whats the thing that you do that requires a tablet?

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

Whats the thing that you do that requires a tablet?

It isn't necessarily a requirement, but stylus functionality and of course the fact that most web-browsing is a lot nicer with a touch interface. There really isn't any difference between a laptop and a tablet + keyboard - other than artificially-imposed constraints - that make it "irrational" to use a tablet for coding.

Re:ipad pro

[Anonymous Coward]

iPad Pro is a bag of shit. For a start it runs iOS.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

I don't buy your argument that you would need two devices. Web browsing is not noticeably better with touch.

It is irrrational to use a tablet for coding. You compromise on input devices, and you cpompromise on power. And if you think you don't need power for coding, you've never tried to build a real application with Android Studio.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

I don't buy your argument that you would need two devices.

Well do Macbooks support a stylus? I don't think so.

Web browsing is not noticeably better with touch.

That's your opinion, if that's so and a tablet is pointless compared to a laptop then nobody is going to buy the ipad pro over a macbook.

It is irrrational to use a tablet for coding. You compromise on input devices, and you cpompromise on power.

It has a keyboard, do you not have any experience coding at all? We don't use a mouse to write code. And no, the power argument is long gone, the ARM CPUs of today have plenty of power.

And if you think you don't need power for coding, you've never tried to build a real application with Android Studio.

No, Android Studio's inefficiencies are not representative of coding in general. If you think it is then perhaps you just need some more experience with other tools.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

I've been a developer for 30 years. There's nothing in that post I am wrong about.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

I've been a developer for 30 years. There's nothing in that post I am wrong about.

When you can't rebut valid arguments so your only response is "i'm old so i must be right" you lose all credibility. I get it, you're old and set in your ways, sorry but that doesn't change facts.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

What it does is answers your "you must have no experience of coding". Clearly you made a mistake in your argument. Everything else I said in a previous post, and nothing in your reply changes it.

And no, I'm not all set in my ways, that's just silly stereotyping.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

What it does is answers your "you must have no experience of coding".

Yes I didn't take into account the fact that you might just be "old and set in your ways" and that is the reason you just say it is "irrational" despite the fact that there is no reason to say that.

And no, I'm not all set in my ways, that's just silly stereotyping.

Well it obviously isn't because despite your assertions a tablet with a keyboard is just fine for development in terms of the input mechanism and it certainly isn't lacking computational power, yet you still just say it is "irrational". I'm not sure what your agenda is or why you're pretending to have so much difficulty understanding that.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

Yes I didn't take into account the fact that you might just be "old and set in your ways" and that is the reason you just say it is "irrational" despite the fact that there is no reason to say that.

I won't tell you what the specific App I'm working on is. But today I'm programming iOS with Swift and Xcode 7, and last week I was programming Android in Android Studio.

I've lost count of how many languages and platforms I've worked on over the years. Stuck in my ways? You don't know what you're talking about.

Well it obviously isn't because despite your assertions a tablet with a keyboard is just fine for development in terms of the input mechanism and it certainly isn't lacking computational power, yet you still just say it is "irrational".

If your level of coding is "Hello World", it's fine. For a professional programmer it's woefully inadequate. That fact suggests what your experience is.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

I've lost count of how many languages and platforms I've worked on over the years. Stuck in my ways? You don't know what you're talking about.

Yes I get it you're trying to establish some credential so people take your word without justification, you can tell me you've worked on a million bazillion platforms and languages but that doesn't give your baseless arguments any more merit. Just justify your arguments with facts.

If your level of coding is "Hello World", it's fine. For a professional programmer it's woefully inadequate.

In what specific way(s)? You still fail to justify your assertion with any basis. You obviously don't know what you're talking about which is why you've gone with the "I'm old so you should just believe what I say" method of argument.

Re:ipad pro

[BasilBrush]

Oh fuck off. I already told you why. I'm not repeating every fucking argument in every fucking post for the benefit of a forgetful moron.

Re:ipad pro

[exomondo]

Oh fuck off. I already told you why. I'm not repeating every fucking argument in every fucking post for the benefit of a forgetful moron.

No, perhaps you're just becoming senile in your old age but I asked you to substantiate your claims, which you failed to do. The iPad Pro is absolutely not lacking in computing power as a development tool and it is designed with a keyboard in mind so there is no reason it couldn't be used very effectively as a development machine. But you just cry that it is "irrational"...that is of course until Apple puts XCode on it and then I'm sure you'll hail it as "innovative".

Nice advert.

[Anonymous Coward]

A link would have been sufficient.

Re:Nice advert.

[bob_super]

They need to advertise a lot this year. Most rabid fans got locked in two-year contracts last year when they got the 6...

Re:Nice advert.

[halivar]

The summary, as viewed from the front page, was a single sentence with a link.

Re:Nice advert.

[internetcommie]

Just switch phone company. Most phone companies in the US are so desperate for customers they'll buy out ANY plan to get you to sign with them. Of course, next iPhone (or whatever your electronic drug of choice happens to be) upgrade, you'll have to switch right back.

Re:Nice advert.

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary, as viewed from the front page, was a single sentence with a link.

Not when it first appeared. Originally, the entire body of the story was on the front page.

It was only after several people complained in the comments that the editor(s) changed it.

Re:Nice advert.

[Pfhorrest]

Not when it first appeared, whereupon it was fully expanded and took up the entire front page. And also had red instead of the usual green trim.

Re:Nice advert.

[bughunter]

Actually, compared to the marketing glitz and hype of Apple releases, I found this to be refreshingly concise and free of glamorization.

But on slashdot, no mention of Apple is ever made without anti-Mac zealots complaining about zealotry, even when there is none.

Re:Nice advert.

[Cederic]

Yeah, I appreciated the simple clean list of stuff. It's not advertising, it's a straightforward summary of an announcement that people will either be interested in, want to discuss or want to argue about. Sometimes all three.

Re:Nice advert.

[danaris]

Not when it first appeared, whereupon it was fully expanded and took up the entire front page. And also had red instead of the usual green trim.

AFAIK, the red just means you're seeing it when it's barely past preview status—many stories show up on my feed that way for a few minutes, then after the next auto-refresh, go to green.

I believe it's a more common thing for subscribers to see, as a sort of "early access" type of deal, but since I've never subscribed, I can't say for sure ;-)

Dan Aris

HOLY TALL FUCKING FRONT PAGE POST, BATMAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey saz, how about you trim that shit down a little.

Apple TV storage space

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 32gb and 64gb versions ? Welcome to 10 years ago !

Re:Apple TV storage space

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you need more space when it's going to delete everything when you're done renting it?

Re:Apple TV storage space

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Isn't it 16GB and 32GB?

Re:Apple TV storage space

[macs4all]

Only 32gb and 64gb versions ? Welcome to 10 years ago !

What all is it storing locally?

Re:Apple TV storage space

[AuMatar]

I would assume video. If it can't do that, what the fuck is the point?

Re:Apple TV storage space

[Overzeetop]

It's a streaming device. The only reason to have larger memory is to store and play the housewife games they've added, plus the channel apps. It won't store anything, just as the current ATVs don't store anything. You play off of your laptop/desktop/server with iTunes or (if they get their asses in gear) Plex.

Re:Apple TV storage space

[ksheff]

https://developer.apple.com/li...

There is no persistent local storage for apps on Apple TV. This means that every app developed for the new Apple TV must be able to store data in iCloud and retrieve it in a way that provides a great customer experience.

Along with the lack of local storage, the maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200MB. Anything beyond this size needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources. Knowing how and when to load new assets while keeping your users engaged is critical to creating a successful app. For information on on-demand resources, see On-Demand Resources Guide.

Re: Apple TV storage space

[Anonymous Coward]

Plex clients already exist for every other Apple device including jailbroken AppleTV. Can't imagine there won't be a client on the official store...

Re:Apple TV storage space

[rthille]

WTF? So, I'd get the 64GB version so I can load 64x5 apps instead of 32x5 apps?
I still have the original AppleTV because of this shit. I don't want to have to pull my Mac laptop out and wake it up to stream my music or watch my ripped movies. And no, storing all my shit in iCloud is not going to happen.
I hope they at least have the brains to let iTunes sync data to them.

Re:Apple TV storage space

[ksheff]

Apparently what is free can be used for cached content

iBore 6.0

[mlw4428]

None of this seems "revolutionary" or "magical". Some of it looks like a rip off of Amazon TV, Google Translate, and the same look as last year's model which was nothing more than a larger look of the year before that's model. What happened to Apple supposedly "leading" the way? Did the sheep cause the shepard to fall behind?

Re:iBore 6.0

[bondsbw]

I agree with all of that, with two exceptions:

1) force touch on the iPhone for activating contextual functionality (such as peek and context menus)
2) live photos

To be clear, the only one of those I care about is #1 but I could see a lot of people liking #2.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Feral Nerd]

None of this seems "revolutionary" or "magical". Some of it looks like a rip off of Amazon TV, Google Translate, and the same look as last year's model which was nothing more than a larger look of the year before that's model. What happened to Apple supposedly "leading" the way? Did the sheep cause the shepard to fall behind?

Piss and moan, piss and moan...

Re:iBore 6.0

[bob_super]

Force touch: What happened to long-press?
How much margin on broken screen repairs?

Re: iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Live photos? Maybe Apple will call them videos or maybe movies. It would give you a cinematic experience of what else was going on when the photo was taken.

Re:iBore 6.0

[halltk1983]

I would be seriously impressed if you could break a high end phone screen with your finger.

Re:iBore 6.0

[pushing-robot]

I feel the same.

I don't take many photos but I can see the attraction with making them feel more 'alive' without the trouble of shooting a proper video. Often innovation isn't based on entirely new technology but simply using what you have in a clever, simpler way.

Pressure sensitive touchscreens could be huge. The fatal flaw of touch interfaces (IMO) has been the lack of context, there's no 'hover' or 'right button'; a touch is a touch. The ability to distinguish between an accidental brush of the screen, a light touch, a tap, and a firm press could really push the usability of touch interfaces up a few notches.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong; the 6 did not just scale up the design of the 5 series. And given the fairly solid precedent of a redesign every 2 years, nobody expected the 6s to look any different from the 6.

Re:iBore 6.0

[bob_super]

The glass may be beyond normal finger strength, but what's right behind it isn't.

Re:iBore 6.0

[SuperKendall]

Force touch: What happened to long-press?

That takes, well, too long... once you get used to force touch it's more instance.

How much margin on broken screen repairs?

That is laughable, on my existing iPhone 6 Plus there is no way you could press hard enough to break anything with just a finger. You finger would break well before the device.

Re:iBore 6.0

[BasilBrush]

Wanna bet?

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this seems "revolutionary" or "magical". Some of it looks like a rip off of Amazon TV, Google Translate, and the same look as last year's model which was nothing more than a larger look of the year before that's model. What happened to Apple supposedly "leading" the way? Did the sheep cause the shepard to fall behind?

Year after year of these Apple product announcement Slashdot stories going back to the original release of the iPod we always get +5 insightful comments like these. Yet year after year Apple continues to be the most profitable company on Earth and the largest in terms of market capitalization. Step back for a minute and contemplate this. Why is Apple wrong this time?

Re:iBore 6.0

[BasilBrush]

Force touch: What happened to long-press?

Nothing. It's still there. Force touch (3D whatever) does something different.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Noah Haders]

I have really strong fingers.

Re:iBore 6.0

[BasilBrush]

The amusing thing behind your whinge is that you EXPECT Apple to do something revolutionary and magical every year.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Captain Splendid]

Speaking as someone with dinner plate sized hands, no you can't. Maybe, if you tap it as hard as you can with your finger a few thousand times you might eventually produce a hairline crack. But I doubt it.

Re:iBore 6.0

[SuperKendall]

Really, can you break boards with your hands? I can and have.

You cannot break the iPhone screen with human fingers (or nails). Like I said you WILL break your own fingers first.

Horse hoof: that could probably do it. So if you are a horse, my apologies but you really should state that up front, and not refer to hooves as "fingers".

Re:iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

None of this seems "revolutionary" or "magical". Some of it looks like a rip off of Amazon TV, Google Translate, and the same look as last year's model which was nothing more than a larger look of the year before that's model. What happened to Apple supposedly "leading" the way? Did the sheep cause the shepard to fall behind?

Remember, the Apple TV hardware was actually done almost a year ago; but they didn't want to divert the resources from iOS to write the TVOS. So, that means that the new Apple TV went through the Design Freeze phase almost three years ago, which was definitely before the devices you mention above being released.

I know that doesn't matter to the marketplace; but it does help explain why it seems a bit "me too" for Apple.

Re: iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

Live photos? Maybe Apple will call them videos or maybe movies. It would give you a cinematic experience of what else was going on when the photo was taken.

Of course it is a video; but the idea of making a consistently-short video automatically with the touch of a button, then having the Photos app treat them more like a photo than a video is unique. Not earthshatteringly so; but the audience did think it was pretty cool, and it does allow you to capture something like someone cracking a smile without a bunch of extraneous video.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Toshito]

Live photos, you mean like Cinemagraph that was available since 2012 on Nokia Lumia phones?

I had it, and while fun for a while it's not very useful... you play with it and then forget about it like most gimmicks.

But now that Apple "invented" it, it's revolutionnary and it will change forever the world of photography /sarcasm

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with a guy back in the late 80's who at one point was a concert pianist. When he got aggravated his typing got harder and harder. On many occasions he knocked the key caps off of the model M keyboard while he was typing. Clicky keys were the quietest part of his typing.

Re:iBore 6.0

[cdrudge]

So what you're saying is the hardware is a year old and the feature set is 3 years old and they pounded out a complete OS in under a year because they're too cheap to dip into the kabillizion dollar cash reserve they're sitting on instead of "diverting resources".

Re:iBore 6.0

[nblender]

Maybe not with my finger but when I've used the TeleDildonics app, there have been some close calls...

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple rarely is the first to do something. They're just the first to do it right and in a manner mass marker consumers will tolerate.

Re:iBore 6.0

[rasmusbr]

Actually, if the latency of the "pencil" and screen is as low as advertised this would be the first time since the invention of the paper notebook that someone has come up with a viable new way to take notes.

This could be pretty cool. I can think of some interesting applications...

Obvious: graphics editing, fun drawing apps for kids, note-taking apps.

Less obvious: a math learning app that has a computer algebra system and a math knowledge database that talk to a canvas. A student would write expressions on the canvas, get hints about where they made a mistake, or instructions about problem solving strategies. The system might say things like "this integral that you just wrote looks like such and such an integral, here is a variable substitution that often works for such integrals."

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking forward for the next wave of live fart photos

Re:iBore 6.0

[phantomfive]

The fatal flaw of touch interfaces (IMO) has been the lack of context, there's no 'hover' or 'right button';

FWIW Android often uses "long-press" to mean hover.

Re:iBore 6.0

[bughunter]

I have really strong fingers.

Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your fingers?

Re:iBore 6.0

[bob_super]

Sure. Let's say that your screen's pressure sensor has an MTBF of half a million hours. That's a number for some industrial ones, according to google, and one could assume that a higher-points commercial one would have a lot less, probably an order of magnitude, so let's got with over 50 years MTBF...

Now, you're shipping 50 millions pieces, with an expected 2-years average device lifespan. What's your pressure sensor failure rate? What's the additional failure rate compared to only having a capacitive sensor?
That's before you consider abuse of all kinds, like bendgate, and the failure rate of the extra support circuitry.

I don't want unnecessary gadgets in my phone, because FIT rates are additive

Re: iBore 6.0

[Overzeetop]

So it's like Vine, but only people on iDevices can see you smile.

Re:iBore 6.0

[pushing-robot]

iOS is similar, and uses long presses as extra actions in various places.

It reminds me of long clicking with a single button mouse (shudder).

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought "touch" and "hold" were good enough. Introducing 5 other methods is only going to make apps more confusing and time-consuming to learn (think number of inputs on nintendo controller vs xbox one controller)

Re: iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

but the audience did think it was pretty cool

They could announce the iShit and the audience would think it was pretty cool. These are the people who gleefully squeal, wolf-whistle and shout "woo!" at these events. I use Apple products and they are great but how much do you *not* want to be at any event with those pathetic Apple desperados.

Re:iBore 6.0

[sexconker]

An Apple "article" is posted and SuperKendall shows up and posts fifteen fucking times to champion his favorite corporation, what a fucking shock.

You can easily break the iPhone screen with your fingers, especially the larger models.
The glass used is very scratch resistant and somewhat impact resistant. It does not handle any sustained stress nearly as well. If you want to break it, firmly grip phone in off hand. Using your main hand, firmly press center of phone with finger or thumb. Lookup ifixit repair guide.

It won't break unless you're in need of anger management or you're trying to break it, but you said:

That is laughable, on my existing iPhone 6 Plus there is no way you could press hard enough to break anything with just a finger. You finger would break well before the device.

If you want to go with a strictly literal interpretation of "just a finger", you could have the iPhone floating in space and you could hit it with your second knuckle.

Re:iBore 6.0

[exomondo]

Live photos, you mean like Cinemagraph that was available since 2012 on Nokia Lumia phones?

There's actually a whole bunch of cinemagraph apps on the iOS app store already. Now they will all be shafted because Apple uses their private APIs to create a copy of these and make it a first-class citizen with the operating system. This "private APIs" crap should really end, Microsoft did the same thing in the 90s to make their products a better experience on their OS than competitors' products.

Re:iBore 6.0

[Anonymous Coward]

of course, most users can't/won't use live photos because they're stuck with 16GB of storage and stupid huge files from a 12MP camera

And force touch? You mean long pressing? I think Apple has jumped shark and gone full marketing and design; there's no 'innovation' left

Re:iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

So what you're saying is the hardware is a year old and the feature set is 3 years old and they pounded out a complete OS in under a year because they're too cheap to dip into the kabillizion dollar cash reserve they're sitting on instead of "diverting resources".

So you think that Apple can just call up a Temp Agency and order-up an OS Development Team on a moment's notice? It probably takes them several months before a new hire on an OS-level Dev. Team is even a LITTLE productive!

You don't think things through very well, do you?

Re: iBore 6.0

[perryizgr8]

Actually this has been a feature in galaxy devices for about half a decade now.

Re:iBore 6.0

[green1]

"First time?" Samsung would like a word with you. ..

Re:iBore 6.0

[unrtst]

The fatal flaw of touch interfaces (IMO) has been the lack of context, there's no 'hover' or 'right button'; a touch is a touch.

FWIW, Samsung Galaxy S4 and up can detect and utilize /actual/ finger hover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's not quite as useful as it could be, and sometimes gets in the way (webpage magnifier tends to always come up when I don't want it to), but it does work and is here today (for years now).

Re:iBore 6.0

[SuperKendall]

See: latency.

Which is also why the iPhone was the first really popular touch screen device (and note I said touch, not stylus, so don't go on about the Palm).

Re: iBore 6.0

[murphtall]

wow the galaxy devices are a decade old? whoa, way cool, i didnt know that.

Re: iBore 6.0

[murphtall]

oops half a decade. my reading comprehension was way off lol oops

Re:iBore 6.0

[Noah Haders]

you underestimate my fingers at your peril!

Re:iBore 6.0

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not sure I could use the 3D touch very easily, as I have arthritis in my hands. It's not that bad but it does make it hard for me to accurately control the pressure I apply, especially when I'm not concentrating too hard.

At least they kept the slide up alternative gesture.

Re:iBore 6.0

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting that they are touting stronger materials as a "feature" of the new iPhone 6S, which is a subtle admission that the old ones bend. Kinda bad that the solution to their design flaw is to buy the new one.

Re:iBore 6.0

[antdude]

Because of no Steve Jobs. :(

Re: iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

Actually this has been a feature in galaxy devices for about half a decade now.

Citation, please? Even the snarky articles I found that claim that "Android had this first" fail to mention the "Live Photos" feature. And having it in available in an App doesn't count.

Re: iBore 6.0

[perryizgr8]

Samsung animated photo and htc zoe. Seek the truth and ye shall find it.

Re: iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

Samsung animated photo and htc zoe. Seek the truth and ye shall find it.

The article on the Samsung S4's new "Animated Photo" feature marks it at 2013, hardly "Half a decade ago". Plus, it produces massive 8.5 MB animated GIFs that are only 800 x 450. Ick! Perhaps that resolution has increased with later models; but when it was introduced, it certainly wasn't spectacular by any measure. And it's COMPLICATED and somewhat finiky to use.

As far as the HTC Zoe: That's an APP, and thus doesn't count. Heck, it even runs on iOS; so it's HARDLY a built-in feature for ANY Android device!

Because, as far as Animated GIF APPs go, the Apple App Store lists SEVERAL, some of which are SURE to pre-date the Samsung and HTC offerings. In fact, I find one for iOS, LoopCam, that has a reference on Google dated 11/30/2011.

Prove me wrong, or STFU.

Re: iBore 6.0

[perryizgr8]

You yourself said it can't be an app and then you proceeded to link me some apps? Point is that this "feature" has been on android for a long long time. You don't know any details about how big apple's gifs are going to be or how well the thing is gonna work. It works pretty well on S4, and the quality is good. You can even choose the areas you want to animate and those you want to remain static. It's fun but it's just that: a gimmick. And that is exactly what it's gonna be on ios.

Also, Nokia phones also had this built in. Also, zoe is an in built app for htc phones.

Re: iBore 6.0

[macs4all]

You yourself said it can't be an app and then you proceeded to link me some apps? Point is that this "feature" has been on android for a long long time. You don't know any details about how big apple's gifs are going to be or how well the thing is gonna work. It works pretty well on S4, and the quality is good. You can even choose the areas you want to animate and those you want to remain static. It's fun but it's just that: a gimmick. And that is exactly what it's gonna be on ios.

Also, Nokia phones also had this built in. Also, zoe is an in built app for htc phones.

You are the one that brought up Zoe, which is an APP, not and in-built feature. Witness the fact that Zoe is also available for iOS. THAT is why I felt compelled to say "Well, if you want to talk about APPS, here's some that PRE-DATE 2013, when the Samsung S4 apparently added the Motion GIF creation to their Intrinsic camera software.

You are correct that I don't have any specs on the Apple feature, however. So, let's just table this until more info is available.

Re:iBore 6.0

[green1]

The note series has zero latency on the stylus. And same deal with touch screens. The iphone was popular because it had amazing marketing. It has absolutely nothing to do with the product they offered as they have never had the best product, only the most advertised.

Apple Pencil

[nmb3000]

This made me laugh more than it probably should have:

Apple Pencil is $99

I just hope they don't start requiring an #2 Apple Pencil for standardized tests.

Re:Apple Pencil

[PopeRatzo]

I just hope they don't start requiring an #2 Apple Pencil for standardized tests.

"You failed because you're holding it wrong!"

Re:Apple Pencil

[Anonymous Coward]

This made me laugh more than it probably should have:

Apple Pencil is $99

I just hope they don't start requiring an #2 Apple Pencil for standardized tests.

Why? Have you looked at some of Wacom's prices?

* https://store.wacom.com/us/accessories/pens/

I haven't seen what the capabilities of Apple's pen, so can't say which Wacom model it would best compare to.

Re:Apple Pencil

[GeekWithAKnife]

The apple pencil, innovating as usual. -> http://imgur.com/vvQeJN7

"slide to unlock" innovation-> http://www.geek.com/apple/appl...

You know the list goes on...I wonder if apple truly invented anything at all...why most people buy into this garbage is really just a matter of observing chimps. One has a stick and a can and bangs the stick on the can, makes noise so everyone else wants it. they have no idea what to do with it but if you're a young woman with a slightly posh inclination chances are you have an iPhone. what do you use this magical device for? facebook.

Keep buying iThings and pay iPrices for devices made by exploited masses in China that cost a fraction of what you pay; get vendor lock-in, format-lock in sorry I mean "be part of the experience". Suckers.

Apple inventing and innovating, please...oh wait, didn't they invent rounded edges?

Re:Apple Pencil

[graphius]

Actually $99 is pretty cheap if you compare it to something like a Wacom Cintiq It is even on par with lower end graphics tablets.

Listen when powered off; are you bloody kidding ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Siri can hear you when the phone is powered off ??

Can I assume someone just started advertising this NSA capability as some new feature ?

WTH would be stupid enough to use this ?

iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[Anonymous Coward]

Call the iPad Pro what it is, the iSurface RT. Writing credible productivity apps isn't like slapping together the latest Angry Birds clone (though I'm sure the App Store crapflooders will try) and without real productivity apps, what purpose does the iPad Pro serve?

Re: iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[Anonymous Coward]

Bigger figures, 1:1 display vs print

Re:iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[0123456]

Call the iPad Pro what it is, the iSurface RT.

Except this one doesn't suck.

without real productivity apps, what purpose does the iPad Pro serve?

Reading magazines and print PDFs without having to scroll around and zoom in on the page?

Re:iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[macs4all]

Call the iPad Pro what it is, the iSurface RT. Writing credible productivity apps isn't like slapping together the latest Angry Birds clone (though I'm sure the App Store crapflooders will try) and without real productivity apps, what purpose does the iPad Pro serve?

Just how long, for example, do you think it will take Adobe to add iPad Pro specific features to their iOS Apps?

Re:iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[Lord_Jeremy]

If GP had been watching the broadcast they would've seen when the Adobe guy showed pff the exclusive iPad Pro/Apple Pencil app they're about to release.

Re:iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[Overzeetop]

Which is great and all. But until they upgrade their iOS stable of apps to do *everything* that the desktop applications do, you're still going to be stuck with having to do some editing back on the laptop or desktop machine.

I have an ipad; i used to have an iPhone. I've tried the tagalong Lightroom and Photoshop apps from Adobe, and the AutoDesk apps too (I'm in the Architecture field). They're nice, and you can do some basic adjustments in the field. But there are some things you cannot do in the app, so no matter how much I do on an iPad Pro I will still have to finish my work in the office. More importantly, it means that the iPad Pro can't replace anything but an ipad, not an Air or a Surface.

The iPad Pro certainly won't befall the awful death of the Surface RT, though, because of the massive app support system. My question is whether it will start really banging into the limits of a tablet OS (which has to stay a tablet OS for the phones and legacy/std iPads) and die simply because it's too expensive for the limited extras you get.

(I'm actually awaiting the potential October release of Surface Pro 4 information. It could be a massive ho-hum, or I might not be able to throw 2 grand at Microsoft fast enough as it could be a Wacom Cintiq with serious power and svelte lines).

Re:iPad Pro = Apple iSurface RT

[AmiMoJo]

I'm in the market for a 12" tablet to do just that, but the iPad Pro isn't really suitable.

The price is insane. If all you want to do is read documents and do a bit of surfing/email, for about 1/4 the price you can get an Android or Windows tablet with reasonable specs and a good screen. Might weigh a bit more or whatever, but can you really justify spending 4x as much or more over that?

The hardware is lacking some killer features, particularly a USB port and wireless charging. I don't want to have to buy yet more cables just to charge/copy data. In fact I just want to put this occasional use device down and have it charge up.

iOS makes accessing media a pain too. Can't just copy that PDF or MKV file over USB or WiFi+FTP, I have to use special software to do it. Can't access my NAS without special software support either.

The iPad Pro is a terrible media consumption device, unless you are already heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem and have money to burn.

2 year contracts?

[Dorianny]

All the major operators are moving away from the 2 year contract yet apple still list the iphone prices in terms of a 2 year contract. I am guessing even Apple knows that many customers are going to balk at the iphones true starting price of $650.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the mobile operator have moved away from the 2 year contract... and towards advertising the same price as 2 year financing. The difference is negligible and basically that they offer other lengths of term and that your monthly bill goes down if you complete the payment cycle.

Re:2 year contracts?

[pushing-robot]

Apple mentioned that in the keynote and quoted both contract prices and monthy payment plan prices, which is what you see on US carrier sites now.

Re:2 year contracts?

[MightyYar]

If they start selling $200-ish phones, sell your stock. That market is a total black hole for profits.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Karlt1]

The major carriers are moving away from 2 year contracts where if you break the contract you have to pay an ETF.

The major carriers are moving toward a 2 year payment plan where if you leave early you have to pay for the remainder of the cost of your phone.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't see the video and they didn't mention it in the bullet points, but Apple also gave the monthly installment price which the most expensive (6S Plus) was $31/mo and the cheapest (6) was $19.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope Apple is somehow forced to move away from this false pricing as well. If people realized how absurd Apple's margins are, Apple would be forced to come down to a more reasonable price. They make an estimated 18% profit on their PC hardware but their iOS devices are estimated to bring between 50 and 80% profit.

Re:2 year contracts?

[ceoyoyo]

No phone provider is ever going to advertise the true price of their phones unless required to do so. They're too ridiculously expensive, no matter what brand they are.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is "False Pricing" a term you made up for profit margins you deem too high? People have happily paid a premium for Apple products for years, why would that change?

Re:2 year contracts?

[FlyHelicopters]

Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss...

However, this new system has many benefits, such as "buy a used phone for less, get cheaper service", and "keep your phone past the end of the payments, watch your service price drop", etc.

So actually this is an improvement.

Re:2 year contracts?

[FlyHelicopters]

Why is $650 for a 4.7" hand held computer too much? Compared to the options in the past, that is darn cheap!

For that $650 you get a 4k video camera, a 12m picture camera, a multi core computer that can run everything from Office to Angry Birds. It can browser the web, talk to you, check your e-mail, and do a lot of other things.

Frankly, it strikes me as reasonable considering what does into it.

Can you get cheaper phones? Yes. Can you get cheaper phones with similar spec sheets? Yes.

There is a reason why people buy Apple, and it isn't all because they are iSheep.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because BERNIE 2016, SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL!!!!!*

*Any economic illiteracy should be disregarded, chairman Bern knows best.

Re:2 year contracts?

[frnic]

Yeah, they are barely selling any, and those they sell they are loosing their butt on, so they should lower their prices - oh wait, that is Samsung.

Apple is totally honest about the pricing and the alternatives they offer. That they make a lot of money on their phones is a good thing since it allows them to keep updating product lines.

The really good thing is we don't have to listen to you expo,ain why you bought a cheap Apple and it sucks, or like my son that bought a cheap Android phone and after 6 months is having no end of problems from the "mods" he put in.

I will stay in the garden and enjoy the flowers, you can have fun out in the jungle.

Re:2 year contracts?

[BasilBrush]

Many? Of course. Lots of people want a cheap phone, and that's what Android is for. However lots of other people want a good phone and are prepared to pay the price.

I for one bought my iPhone outright, because I don't like to be caught in a contract, and I'll keep it for perhaps 5 years.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Bing Tsher E]

My Lumia 635 Windows Phone was $79 right at Radio Shack (probably cheaper if you price shop, but walking into Radio Shack and buying it was nice and casual) and it's Virgin Mobile so I bought it outright and pay $35 a month for unlimited voice/text and 3G of data.

It's a low end Windows Phone, but decent. It's nice to have Microsoft Office on the phone, unlike having Squabblewrae(*) 'Office' on Android or being subject to using Google Docs and having all your documents in the cloud.

(* name may vary depending on which shitty Android 'office' you buy or get for free on the app store)

Re: 2 year contracts?

[Karlt1]

It's definitely better for the consumer. But everyone assumes it worse for Apple. Before consumers walked into a store, and chose between a "$200" iPhone or a "free" Android phone with a contract. Now they choose between a $27.08/month iPhone or a $18.75/month ($450) Android phone. Psychology being what it is. The iPhone actually looks better now than before.

Re:2 year contracts?

[macs4all]

All the major operators are moving away from the 2 year contract yet apple still list the iphone prices in terms of a 2 year contract. I am guessing even Apple knows that many customers are going to balk at the iphones true starting price of $650.

Have you priced any unlocked Samsung phones lately?

Re:2 year contracts?

[FlyHelicopters]

Part of what you're paying for with Apple is having a dependable phone. They aren't perfect, but it works every time I want it to, which is actually more than I can say for my old Galaxy, which had to have its battery pulled more than once to hard reset it.

And I didn't have it modded, it was straight from the factory with only Google Play store apps installed.

Windows used to be like that, but frankly MS has cleaned it up to the point where Windows 10 just works. There might have been a time to move to the Mac, back during the XP days... but lord it works well now...

Re: 2 year contracts?

[FlyHelicopters]

We have our pair of iPhone 6 Plus on Verizon Edge.

We bought 2 of the 128GB models, so we pay about $40 a month for them. But we also get $25 credit per line for paying full price for our phones, so our net cost is $15 per phone per month. This is actually cheaper than the contract price.

My monthly cell phone bill went down $20 when we switched from Galaxy 4 phones to the iPhone 6 Plus, and we got top of the line phones in the process.

Hard to argue with that.

If we want to switch to the 6S Plus, we can, just pay off our current phones (and sell them for a decent amount), and start another 24 month deal for the new phones.

Upgrading might not actually cost much, if anything.

So why don't I upgrade? Because that doesn't take into account the time and effort to swap phones, sell the old ones, restore the settings and data, etc.

At some point, the current phones are fine and my time is worth something.

Re:2 year contracts?

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, you can get low end phones at low end prices. Phone companies currently advertise those as "free."

No marketer in his right mind is going to give up "get a basic phone for free or upgrade to an Android Whatever or iPhone Whatsamacallit for $300!" for "pay $80 for the bare minimum, or $700 for the phone all your friends have."

Re: 2 year contracts?

[Karlt1]

So why don't I upgrade? Because that doesn't take into account the time and effort to swap phones, sell the old ones, restore the settings and data, etc.

Restoring the settings and the data is the easiest part. I switched from an iPhone 4 on AT&T (updated to iOS 5) to a 4s on Verizon in 2011. I took the 4s out of the box, signed into my iCloud account and a few minutes later, my 4s looked exactly like my 4 - all of my icons were in the same place, my app data was transferred over, even my text messages, call history, browsing and search history were transferred. As soon as everything was downloaded from the App Store + iCloud. My 4 automatically deactivated and my 4s aitomatically activated with the same number.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Bing Tsher E]

My Lumia isn't a low end phone. I've used crappy low end Android phones before. And I see people all the time with much more expensive phones than the ones I generally use, which are mid-range phones. I don't see them doing anything that I'm not also doing just as well. The main difference that notice is that they have big fat cases on their phones to 'protect the investment' whereas I carry my Gorilla Glass mid-range phone naked in my pocket.

I know, I know. You don't get laid when you flash a Lumia at Starbucks. Different priorities for different folks.

Re:2 year contracts?

[GuB-42]

All the major operators are moving away from the 2 year contract yet apple still list the iphone prices in terms of a 2 year contract.
I am guessing even Apple knows that many customers are going to balk at the iphones true starting price of $650.

Have you priced any unlocked Samsung phones lately?

Yes, Samsung flagships are similar in price to iPhones... on paper. The street price is often much lower.
For example, in France, the Galaxy Note 4 initial listed price was 749 euros whereas the 16 GB iPhone 6 was 709 euros.
The price I actually paid for my Note 4 (new, unlocked) about 1 month after release was 575 euros. Getting an iPhone (new, unlocked) below its listed price is nearly impossible. And the price doesn't drop until near the time the new model is out.

Re:2 year contracts?

[macs4all]

All the major operators are moving away from the 2 year contract yet apple still list the iphone prices in terms of a 2 year contract. I am guessing even Apple knows that many customers are going to balk at the iphones true starting price of $650.

Have you priced any unlocked Samsung phones lately?

Yes, Samsung flagships are similar in price to iPhones... on paper. The street price is often much lower. For example, in France, the Galaxy Note 4 initial listed price was 749 euros whereas the 16 GB iPhone 6 was 709 euros. The price I actually paid for my Note 4 (new, unlocked) about 1 month after release was 575 euros. Getting an iPhone (new, unlocked) below its listed price is nearly impossible. And the price doesn't drop until near the time the new model is out.

Well, I must admit that I was dealing with U.S. prices. Apple has always been more expensive outside the U.S.; in fact, somewhat ridiculously so, IMHO.

But getting any current Apple product, even in the U.S., significantly below MSRP, is nearly impossible. Always has been. Some companies simply don't "deal". In Apple's case, they don't "deal", unless you are a large enterprise or education customer, or are a student or otherwise in "education". customer.

But, as I said, MSRP to MSRP, Samsung == Apple in price, when talking about similar-spec'ed devices.

Re:2 year contracts?

[Miguelito]

Eh.. I'm still on the fence about windows 10. I just bought a Surface pro 3 with win10 the other day... mostly as a new toy and to replace an ageing gaming laptop (which is also massive). While it's pretty cool in a lot of ways, the tablet mode still leaves a LOT to be desired. The biggest annoyance I keep running into is the on-screen keyboard in tablet mode. It doesn't always pop up at all, and when I try to hit the icon on the taskbar, 1/2 the time it's not even there and things keep jumping around on there. Stuff like the date/time just vanished. The systray keeps moving way over to the left. The battery icon is sometimes 1/2 off the right side of the screen, sometimes gone completely.. and when I can tap on it, sometimes the actual popup shows up in completely random places.

I have hopes it'll improve, but it's still not really a "it just works" thing yet.

I can play Kerbal Space Program on my tablet on the go though. :)

666

[Anonymous Coward]

SIRI IS ALWAYS LISTENING TO YOU NOW
THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS NOT A TATTOO OR AN IMPLANT
IT'S YOUR PHONE

Why can't the slashdot comment system tell that I'm yelling ironically?
I have to type all this just to compensate for that. Ugh.

Apple Watch Translation

[Stele]

iTranslate — speak into the mic and hear translations in over 90 languages.

That would be hard to understand. Did they mention an option to only hear once language at a time?

Re:Apple Watch Translation

[SoCalChris]

They'll probably just copy the way Google started doing it years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Apple Watch Translation

[CanadianMacFan]

Hope you don't want the last one and have to hear the other 89 first.

Re:Apple Watch Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's just $9.99

Re:Apple Watch Translation

[sociocapitalist]

iTranslate — speak into the mic and hear translations in over 90 languages.

That would be hard to understand. Did they mention an option to only hear once language at a time?

If you take a tourist boat on the Seine in Paris, each announcement is made in at least five languages one after the other. By the time they get to Japenese (the last) what's being announced has absolutely nothing to do with anything that is still in sight as the boat has long since moved on.

Re:Listen when powered off; are you bloody kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Siri can hear you when the phone is powered off ??

Can I assume someone just started advertising this NSA capability as some new feature ?

WTH would be stupid enough to use this ?

Your kind lost. Get over it.

What's with the ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I hide this crap from the front page?

Enhanced money siphoning action!

[pecosdave]

Improved hipster compatibility!
No more ring-around the collar!
Advanced light-up logo placement so everyone knows you have an Apple!
Even more trendy than previous release!

Re:Enhanced money siphoning action!

[pecosdave]

Smart Keyboard connects magnetically.

Hey! They introduced their own Surface Tablet!

Re:Enhanced money siphoning action!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up and take my money!

Re:Enhanced money siphoning action!

[edxwelch]

> Improved hipster compatibility!
Not really - try getting a iPhone 6 Plus into a skinny jeans pocket

People still buy apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn, if i really wanted to waste money i'd throw it into the East River.

Re:People still buy apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the humanity, some people have differing preferences that don't align with yours. How dare choice be a factor in the property people own, won't somebody please think of the children?

Re:People still buy apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

people can do as they please. That means I can ridicule people's poor choices to volunteer themselves to corporate and government exploitation.

Cheers

Re:People still buy apple?

[macs4all]

yawn, if i really wanted to waste money i'd throw it into the East River.

But if you wanted to spend it on something worthwhile, you'd buy an Apple device.

Re:People still buy apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you wanted to spend it on something worthwhile, you'd buy an Apple device.

worthwhile?

I like the East River. I don't like PRISM participants.

Re:People still buy apple?

[macs4all]

But if you wanted to spend it on something worthwhile, you'd buy an Apple device.

worthwhile?

I like the East River. I don't like PRISM participants.

Then you'd better roll your own OS, and your Router's OS, and your ISP's OS, and the OS in every bit of network hardware and software between you router and the endpoint of every packet you let fly.

Re:People still buy apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not necessary, but thank you for the advice.

When you pay for PRISM it reinforces the bad behavior. I'll take my chances with an open source OS. I'd rather take the option to make my own security mistakes than have them built-in as features of a product I'm paying money for.

Re:People still buy apple?

[macs4all]

That is not necessary, but thank you for the advice.

When you pay for PRISM it reinforces the bad behavior. I'll take my chances with an open source OS. I'd rather take the option to make my own security mistakes than have them built-in as features of a product I'm paying money for.

I love a good Conspiracy Theory as much as the next person; but seriously, other than the infamous leaked PowerPoint document, which you have to admit may or may not be genuine (especially since the Apple "bubble" is dated completely differently than the rest), what evidence do you have that Apple (or anyone else for that matter) participates willingly, or even non-willingly, in the PRISM program?

As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[CSHARP123]

Hence apple introduced new thing called "Pencil" for $99. They had to bring in MS to demonstrate how to use that thing.

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[neoform]

If you think that's "expensive", I suggest you look up how much a stylus normally costs.

https://store.wacom.com/us/en/...

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[SuperKendall]

The distinction is that it does not ship with, or require, the pencil... it's just for finer-grained input in select applications, or for artists...

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[Anonymous Coward]

5 bucks on amazon. For a carbon fiber stylus. Why are you buying a Wacom stylus if you're not using the Wacom tablet with a desktop PC?

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[SumDog]

Microsoft Surfaces ship with one.

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a stylus for Samsung's Galaxy Note phones or tablets for as little as $2.44 (plus shipping) on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Stylus-Replacement-Samsung-Galaxy/dp/B00GLL3R02/

This is somewhat different from Apple's stylus or the higher-end Wacom pens, of course. It's actively tracked by sensors in the screen (so it can 'hover'), it's pressure sensitive, and it has a right-click button, but tilt isn't tracked, and it doesn't have an 'eraser' at the back end.

You can get more sophisticated compatible pens for just about any price under $100. The 'Penabled' ones are cross-compatible between a variety of devices (phones, tablets & PCs from Samsung, Sony, Fujitsu etc.), but not compatible with Cintiq/Intuos/Bamboo/Graphire hardware.

If Apple were smarter and/or more generous, they would've just licensed Wacom's tech so you could spend as much or as little money as you liked on a pen with the feel & features you preferred.

But then if Wacom were smarter and/or more generous, all their pens would be compatible across all their digitisers.

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[AmiMoJo]

A better comparison would be Samsung's S-Pen. Costs about $20.

Re:As soon as you have a stylus you are dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can save some money and just get a Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 . Built-in Wacom screen, integrated stylus, and it works great with Autodesk Sketchbook for those digital sketches. It also includes the assorted notepads and such. I've had mine for a year and no complaints.

News for nerds, stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

or apple press releases. Your choice.

No wonder the level of discourse on this website has plummeted.

Apple TV = xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the things listed about their new Apple TV can already be done by xbox one - voice integration, using a tablet (any surface or windows phone) as a controller, "apps" (including NHL / MLB), etc. for a similar price, with the added benefit of having a real controller and plex / whatever streaming ability.

Even the PS4 has "screen integration" with the Vita. I don't understand who they are targeting here. Gamers don't like touch interfaces (who really uses the Vita touch-screen as a full time controller without the d-pad, and also, Wii-U??), and casual people don't want to pay this amount of money.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

The XBox One and the PS4 can't do it with the same power requirement as the Apple TV. You'd have to be insane to use an Xbox One or PS4 to do things like watching Netflix. It's even worst if you live somewhere where electricity isn't green.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. And I guess I'm insane because I always use my PS4, and previously, Xbox ONE to use Netflix for ~4 hours a day. It hasn't increase my electricity bill by more than $5/mo (I monitor it regularly). I suspect many others do too (my friends all do), so I don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[ceoyoyo]

Lots of regular people are happy to pay $100-$150 for a Netflix box that works well. Google and Amazon have similar products at similar price points.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[gfxguy]

True; what it really seems like is a marginally better Amazon Fire TV.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those ones don't pretend to be gaming consoles too, though. That's the difference here, not to mention it's more expensive.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your Xbox support Air Play protocol and screen mirroring?

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[Orphis]

That's only because they can also play way more advanced games. So the hardware is beefier and generally uses more power.
But if they only wanted the same features as in the Apple TV, their software could be used in a smaller integrated device with the same power requirements. Think Intel NUC for example.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[FlyHelicopters]

Better, if you live in the Netflix/Hulu/iTunes ecosystem...

If you live in the Amazon Prime eco system, then no it isn't...

We have 2 Amazon Fire TVs in our house, one for the kids, one for us, they are wonderful, fast, and do everything we need. Paid $99 for one, $69 for the other (on special) and they are dependable boxes with quick voice search.

If we lived in the Netflix/Hulu/iTunes ecosystem, I'd buy the Apple TV, no doubt. But you don't need both boxes.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[FlyHelicopters]

XBox One doesn't cost $149, Apple TV does.

That being said, it depends on how you use it. We have a PS4 attached to our main TV, we technically can use it for Amazon Prime streaming, but we don't, we use an Amazon Fire TV box for that.

Why? Because it is easier to use, doesn't have any boot time, uses less power, and has a nice simple voice remote.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[mspohr]

Roku is $50.
Chromecast is $35
Amazon Fire is $39

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[pr0fessor]

My roku doesn't have a voice search but the roku app on my cell phone and tablet can control any roku in the house and use voice or on screen keyboard input for searches has netflix, hulu, amazon, itunes through plex I can play content on my tablet and send it to any of my $69 roku devices pause and switch to a different device without missing anything.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[macs4all]

I don't understand who they are targeting here.

Well, howabout the other 90% of the media-consumption market that doesn't have an XBox One or PS4 connector implanted on the side of their neck, so they can be immersed in fantasy-land 24/7?

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[FlyHelicopters]

My understanding is that new Roku 3 boxes comes with a voice remote.

Yes, I know you can do that on your phone, but there is something to be said for a small, lightweight remote with it built in.

Either way works, and is easier or superior to turning on the XBox1 or PS4.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[Bing Tsher E]

Advertisers will love having pre-screened access to the stupid people who spend the $100 extra to get the 'Apple' box over the Roku/Amazon/Chromecast.

Salespeople call that a 'line of suckers' and the ad rates will be significantly higher.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[macs4all]

I call bullshit. And I guess I'm insane because I always use my PS4, and previously, Xbox ONE to use Netflix for ~4 hours a day. It hasn't increase my electricity bill by more than $5/mo (I monitor it regularly). I suspect many others do too (my friends all do), so I don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

$5.00 a month JUST to run your GAME CONSOLE?!?

Holy Fuck! My 15,100 BTU Air Conditioner only increases my summer electric bill by about $15 a month. And that's running almost 24/7!!!

Better watch out! Your PS4 may well decide to sprout a killer energy beam like the M5 unit on TOS, just to feed itself during a gaming session!

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[danbob999]

Why should we care about a proprietary protocol allowing screen mirroring from devices from a single vendor?

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[ceoyoyo]

There do appear to be versions of those that cheap. On the other hand:

http://www.amazon.ca/Streaming...

http://www.amazon.ca/Amazon-Fi...

So I suspect there's some variation in capability.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

The average US power rate is 12.22 cents/kWh. There are an average of 730 hours in a month, so an average cost of $89.21/kWMonth

$5/mth is 0.056kW, or 56 Watts. That means the console is using an average of 56 watts over the month. This chart suggests an average of 80W between PS4 and XB1 when streaming 1080, and negligible when idle. That means the console is being used 17 hours per day, the console is faulty, or the poster is lying (or excluding the TV / stereo power usage).

I'm surprised these devices use so much power. I'm pretty sure my Chromecast uses less than 5W while streaming Netflix.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[laffer1]

With the chromecast, you have to count the power use of the device to control it too.

Modern game consoles use modified PC hardware. It's no shock they use so much power. Consider they use AMD chips :)

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

With the chromecast, you have to count the power use of the device to control it too.

A cellphone uses what? 2 Watts while active? Once you make you selection in Netflix, you can actually power down your phone as the Chromecast is talking direct to Netflix servers at that point.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[pr0fessor]

I've had my rokus for a while before the roku 3 and I'm not the type to upgrade just because something shiny, so I'm not sure what they have yet. My wife does however love playon because she can switch from tablet to tv seamlessly.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[FlyHelicopters]

We used to have a pair of Roku 3, we replaced them with the Amazon Fire TV...

Roku 3 is a wonderful device, when it came out there was nothing that could touch it in terms of speed, performance, or selection.

That being said, if you live in the Amazon ecosystem, as we do, the Amazon Fire TV is a superior device. If you use multiple streaming services, then I'd have kept the Roku devices.

Still, Roku is in such demand, that I sold those pair of Roku for nearly what I paid for them and so the cost to upgrade was pretty minor. The benefits over time of having a device that works best with your ecosystem are worth it.

For example, if you're a heavy iTunes family and really don't do much else, then Apple TV makes a lot of sense.

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[pr0fessor]

Plex family.. I buy DVDs add them to my library and toss the disc in a closet

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[FlyHelicopters]

I used to do that many years ago, my house is wired with Cat 6, I had a server in a closet with many hard drives and streamed throughout the house...

Until one day I realized that the energy, time, money, and space were better used for other things...

Re:Apple TV = xbox?

[pr0fessor]

Yeah, hard drives are no where near as expensive as they used to be, even a small desktop can run a local server today and serve up 3-4 streams even over wireless. I wanted to do it a little over 10 years ago and didn't because storage and a system to run it on was cost prohibitive but tried again and have been running this system for a couple years and saved myself a bundle over cable.

Return of the Newton?

[jfdavis668]

Apple Pencil? Is this the return of the Newton?

Re:Return of the Newton?

[imac.usr]

Well, OS X does include a modern version of the Newton's old handwriting engine; if they can get that ported to iOS, *then* it'll be the return of the Newton.

Re:Return of the Newton?

[AmiMoJo]

It's a knock-off of the Samsung S-pen. That proved that you could do a really good pen interface, not like the rubbish ones we had before.

Re:Return of the Newton?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like Surface Pro pen or a Wacom drawing tablet.
Notice, they never promote it as a tool to control iOS itself. They show it being used to draw and for calligraphy.

S pen is meant for taking notes and as a novel way to control the phone. It's optimized for price, size, convenience.
Surface Pro and Wacom tablets are meant as tools for artists. They're optimized for quality, features, balance.

The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Which means that the iPhone is never really "off". Which means that it's ALWAYS listening to you. Which probably means that the NSA is listening too.

No thanks.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[muecksteiner]

Amen to that. It is amazing that in this day and age, no one at Apple seems to have noticed just how bloody creepy this "feature" sounds.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[FlyHelicopters]

Or, perhaps people don't really care...

My GMC truck has OnStar, it tracks where I drive. My phone has GPS and knows where I go. None of this is new.

Frankly, one of these days we're all going to get chipped and while some people will fight it, they'll grow old and die and the rest of us will be fine with it. When you end up with a CPU in you that provides all the power and information of the world and you don't even need a phone, that becomes a quite useful thing.

And yes, they'll be able to track you.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[Marginal Coward]

Actually, I thought it was about me being powered on or not. And I was kindda looking forward to speaking with Siri in the afterlife. Until you ruined it...

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[Bing Tsher E]

New people are born all the time. Some flakes will be eager to be 'chipped' but the infrastructure to 'chip all new births' will prove onerous and top-heavy and leaky and hopefully collapse. So we might 'all be chipped' for a generation or two of a really shitty dictatorship but it'll break down.

Also, why would they need to 'track you' if you had an implant that had all the information of the world in it? Surely you don't need to contribute to the environmental problems by moving, Citizen. You should stay where you are. You have access to everything. Your chip doesn't allow you in that sector you were trying to get into anyway.

Enjoy your bread and circuses, plebe.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[FlyHelicopters]

You misunderstand... either by mistake, or on purpose...

The government isn't going to go around chipping babies or people... we'll sign up for it ourselves and pay for it.

Imagine Google Glass, but a much better version of it, hardwired into you. There are a lot of people who would sign up for that and pay for it.

Imagine if you can think of a math problem and the answer instantly comes up for you? You want to look something up? There it is...

That future will scare many people, but I believe it is coming... much of what we have today would have scared people of a few generations ago...

And frankly, we chip our dogs, but not our kids... I'd love to chip my kids so I know where they are... and do so in a way not easily removed so if someone snatches them, the police can find them.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[macs4all]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Which means that the iPhone is never really "off". Which means that it's ALWAYS listening to you. Which probably means that the NSA is listening too.

No thanks.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri", which it detects LOCALLY.

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

Think before you hate.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[macs4all]

Amen to that. It is amazing that in this day and age, no one at Apple seems to have noticed just how bloody creepy this "feature" sounds.

It's only "creepy" until you stop to think about how it works.

The PHONE is responsible for interpreting the "Hey, Siri" phrase. That's why it isn't customizable. They have some little, dedicated custom IC who's ONLY job is to listen for "Hey, Siri", and THEN wake up the rest of the Phone to gather up the command.

That's why the first generation of the feature only worked with the phone plugged in. Because they hadn't gotten the custom "Hey Siri" chip back from the fab-house, and had to keep the main SoC alive to listen for the wakeup phrase.

So no, this isn't a Samsung TV. Until you utter the wakeup, I would bet $1,000 that your audio doesn't go anywhere but into the "Hey Siri" chip.

And besides, do you know how much POWER it would take in Standby to send that voice data CONTINUOUSLY over WiFi? You'd go through the battery in less than a day.

Think about it.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[Bing Tsher E]

Imagine if you can think of a math problem and the answer instantly comes up for you? You want to look something up? There it is...

Math doesn't work that way. You can't 'plug in' knowledge in the form of chips. Sure, all sorts of facts can be installed into a body embedded reader of some sort. But you can also build that into the door of your refrigerator, or carry a 7" cellular tablet and get the same 'collection of facts.'

"Looking something up" is good for Quiz Shows, but it's not anything worth embedding in your body. The future I visualize is one where cellular-type wireless connections are ubiquitous, and cellphone/tablet like devices cost a few dollars and bandwith is free. That doesn't necessitate or even promote implantable devices, nor does it impart knowledge on humanity.

Your kid doesn't want to be chipped. Believe me. Kidnapping isn't that big a problem and the civil liberties tradeoff aren't worth it. I know I don't want the police to be able to easily 'find me' anytime they want. Political situations can change in a heartbeat, and the harness of power is easily turned on a citizenry that has that sort of an infrastructure in place. Probably we'll never be a mature enough species for it to ebe wise to give that power to the state.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[FlyHelicopters]

Math doesn't work that way.

So sure of yourself, aren't you?

So if I wonder what 10 times 10 is and the answer of 100 instantly comes up, that isn't how it works?

If I wonder what 5,050,248 divided by 3,921 is, and the answer of 1,288, that isn't how it works?

You might want to rethink your entire point.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[FlyHelicopters]

Believe me.

Yes, because you are all knowing...

Frankly, you're the type of person I was talking about, afraid the future, afraid of change, and afraid in general...

That's fine, you'll die one day and be replaced by someone who isn't afraid, and life moves on.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[narcc]

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

I can. What you're proposing seems reasonable, and the alternative seems absurd, but I'd wait until all the information is in before I'd make such a bold pronouncement.

We have seen crazier things, after all.

It'll be interesting to see if Siri's listening behavior changes when the device is plugged in and what it transmits after the device wakes up. There are an awful lot of questions unanswered here.

I'm surprised there hasn't been much discussion about the dangers this feature presents before, as we've seen it in phones and CPU's already, like the Moto X and Snapdragon 800.

Time will tell.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[muecksteiner]

And besides, do you know how much POWER it would take in Standby to send that voice data CONTINUOUSLY over WiFi? You'd go through the battery in less than a day.

Think about it.

Good point. But then, if you read my posting carefully, I never said that I actually believed the new phone would be continuously listening. All I said was that in this day and age of boundless NSA spying and tracking, Apple should have gone out of their way to state exactly what you just said, in bold capitals, when they announced the feature in the first place. Because it does sound mighty creepy - and not everyone is a techie, and has a solid understanding that the creepy reading of the new feature would involve impractical device usage.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[DirkDaring]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Which means that the iPhone is never really "off". Which means that it's ALWAYS listening to you. Which probably means that the NSA is listening too.

No thanks.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri", which it detects LOCALLY.

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

Think before you hate.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri", which it detects LOCALLY.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri"

"listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri"

Think before you post.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[macs4all]

Apple should have gone out of their way to state exactly what you just said, in bold capitals, when they announced the feature in the first place. Because it does sound mighty creepy - and not everyone is a techie, and has a solid understanding that the creepy reading of the new feature would involve impractical device usage.

I agree with all that wholeheartedly.

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[macs4all]

One thing you disingenuously left out of your clever little thought-poem (see above) :

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

So, what about it? How do you talk yourself out of the laws of physics as applies to battery capacity and power usage?

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Which means that the iPhone is never really "off". Which means that it's ALWAYS listening to you. Which probably means that the NSA is listening too.

No thanks.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri", which it detects LOCALLY.

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

Think before you hate.

Do you have a link to the source code for public review for both the firmware and software that runs this feature?

Re:The iPhone officially becomes a spyware

[macs4all]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Which means that the iPhone is never really "off". Which means that it's ALWAYS listening to you. Which probably means that the NSA is listening too.

No thanks.

I GUARANTEE it isn't "listening" until it hears "Hey, Siri", which it detects LOCALLY.

Can you imagine the standby power requirements to run the WiFi 24/7 JUST to hear you utter one, non-customizable, phrase?

Think before you hate.

Do you have a link to the source code for public review for both the firmware and software that runs this feature?

Of course not; but I am an embedded designer with nearly 40 years of paid hardware and software development experience; and so I have a pretty good idea of what is, and is not, practical. And continuously, or even bursting, the ambient audio picked up by your phone over WiFi (and how else could it do it?) just so that the NSA could plow through the mud to do SIGINT would absolutely KILL battery life, period.

So, if you REALLY want to make this into a "Big Brother" rant, you would opine that the "Hey Siri!" CHIP that I have postulated ACTUALLY listens for a whole SLEW of "keyphrases", but only "wakes" the phone (to your knowledge) when it hears the "Hey Siri!" phrase, otherwise it just silently slurps-up and transfers the audio for a period of time after ANY of the "secret keyphrases".

See? I can engage in wild speculation, too, just like you are. Except mine is even more believable than yours... But it still ain't likely to be true.

Wanna test it? Wait until the iPhone 6s comes out, and put it in front of a speaker playing a simple loop of likely key phrases, but NOT including "Hey Siri!". Stuff like "Guns, Drugs, Al Quaeda, Quran, Attack, Bomb, Militia, Anthrax, Obama, Iran, Iraq, Nuclear..." You get the picture. Then see if the battery life tanks, and the WiFi traffic from the phone roughly follows when you have the audio-loop on.

Come back with THAT info, and I'll be HAPPY to subscribe to your Newsletter!

But not before.

800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Eloking]

Look like they didn't only copied the spect of the Surface pro 3, they also copied the price.

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except not really, because the Pro comes with the pen(cil). So you'd have to throw in an additional $100 on top of that. Not to mention the Surface Pro is worthless without the Type Cover ($120) so you might as well throw in that cost as well for the iPad ($170) meaning that you're looking at an additional $150 to bring the iPad Pro up to spec with the Surface Pro. So, yet again, we're looking at an even more expensive, less powerful Apple device that's competing with superior, cheaper opponents solely on hipster appeal.

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[occasional_dabbler]

I like the neat new features like having two apps on the screen at the same time and photos that include a short bit of video! Apple has caught up with the Winphone and Surface I've been using for the last two years.

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you do photos with a short bit of video on your Winphone?

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Overzeetop]

And the iPad Pro still tops out at 128GB.

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Overzeetop]

Vine.

Windows, Android, Linux, OSX, iOS.

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the price of a PC, 1/4 the utility!

Re:800$ for the iPAD pro?

[Uberbah]

And the Surface has 55% of the pixels of an iPad Pro. Selective comparisons are neat that way.

Not Impressed with any of it

[Anonymous Coward]

These yearly events are just not doing it anymore. The first couple were OK, but now it's just marketing masturbation. I'm more excited about a new version of OpenBSD or the new Nexus phone than I am about anything Apple are doing. None of this stuff is really any better than the last batch. A little faster, yes, a little prettier, maybe. Nothing earth moving. Wake me up when they debut the holodeck.

Re:Not Impressed with any of it

[PopeRatzo]

These yearly events are just not doing it anymore. The first couple were OK, but now it's just marketing masturbation. I'm more excited about a new version of OpenBSD or the new Nexus phone than I am about anything Apple are doing.

You mean the Apple PencilTM doesn't knock your socks off?

Two (2) new bands for the Apple Watch?

How about the fact that they got OS2 to run on the Apple Watch?

Watch OS 2 comes out September 16.

Re:Not Impressed with any of it

[Bing Tsher E]

Is that Microsoft OS/2 or the later, better, IBM OS/2?

Is it Warp? Does the Apple Pencil blend?

(will he need a whole gross of Apple Pencils to make the blend video interesting enough to bother watching?)

Re: Not Impressed with any of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that half OS was the goal, OS/2 ?

Re:Not Impressed with any of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has lost its magic. I'm convinced that Steve put the best people in the position to do exactly what he wanted. He wants Apple dead so the next Steve Jobs can flourish in a world without some predatory monopoly rampaging around in the marketplace.

Correction

[sootman]

Apple TV is now 10mm tallER than the old model, not 10mm tall.

Not self-hosting.

[Anonymous Coward]

A device can't be called "pro" if it isn't self-hosting. It's merely a toy.

Re:Not self-hosting.

[BasilBrush]

Of course it's self hosting. Have you been sleeping since 2009?

"Take that money watch it burn"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else found their choice of music ironical?

original naming scheme for operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

first it was ios. i complained, because i had already been working with ios for years. on cisco routers.

now it's os2. i'm complaining again, because os2 was great. on my 386.

at this rate, let's hang tight until the next shiny from apple runs windows. no, not that windows, silly. the one that apple develops in-house and releases to further obfuscate human language.

Speak to Siri while the phone is off?

[LichtSpektren]

Creepy.

Re:Speak to Siri while the phone is off?

[tlambert]

Creepy.

Actually, you could always talk to Siri while your phone was off.

It would of course ignore you, but hell, you can talk to rocks if you want to, too...

Re:Speak to Siri while the phone is off?

[bughunter]

I've been talking to my computer for decades.

Of course it's been things like "Come on, Hurry Up!" or "Goddamnit not again!" or the classic "You Piece of SHIT!"

It doesn't seem to have any effect, but I keep doing it.

4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

I'm sure that the people who use microscopes to look at their phone displays might notice a difference, but will anyone else?

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[leonbev]

Hey now, that feature is very important... for Apple's profit margins! It insures that their 16 GB phone buyers will run out of storage faster, so they'll spend more money on iCloud storage and make sure to pony up the extra $100 for the 64 GB model next time.

Sadly, I'm only being semi-sarcastic here. Releasing a brand new high end phone with only 16 GB of storage and no expansion slot in 2015 is just evil.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You only watch video on your phone? That's ok. But some of us have 4K or 5K computer screens, and 4K tvs are gaining ground. Feel free to set your camera settings for 1080p, but I'll be enjoying the high-res video myself.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I'm only being semi-sarcastic here. Releasing a brand new high end phone with only 16 GB of storage and no expansion slot in 2015 is just evil.

I'm curious when we're going to stop referring to these "high end" devices as phones, since you suddenly find the need for expansion slots to warehouse 4K videos and a 1,000-song music collection on a device allegedly designed to make phone calls.

Sadly, I'm only being semi-sarcastic here...

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[CODiNE]

The screen isn't 4k. This is for indie film makers, not for viewing on the phone at full quality.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

Oh, my.... just think of how much money this could possibly save the movie industry, if they only used these new iPhones instead of those expensive cameras.

(eyeroll)

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most humorous part about this is the Apple TV is 1080p, so you can't even view the videos you create at full resolution.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm sure that the people who use microscopes to look at their phone displays might notice a difference, but will anyone else?

And yet, had they not done it there would be many people here raking them over the coals over the "omission".

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

Indie film makers tend to use video cameras, not cell phone cameras.

What the fuck good is 4k video quality when the image is shaky all to hell because the camera isn't mounted on a steadycam, or at least a tripod?

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Toshito]

it won't make a difference since the iPhone users will still stupidly shoot vertical video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people will upload the video from their phone and view it on a larger screen...

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[BasilBrush]

What makes you think you can't mount an iPhone on a steadycam or tripod?

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people I know already use magnifying glasses to read their iPad screens. Apple has already said they're going to make the too small to read text on the iPad even smaller. I understand why they hate people using their products that are over thirty, but we spend a lot of money on their products. It sucks to see them intentionally make their products less useful for us.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

Nothing, if you have no objection to Macgyvering.

My point remains that the pro's... and that includes indie filmmakers, are going to be using professional equipment to take their video, and not just using a cell phone.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[sribe]

I'm sure that the people who use microscopes to look at their phone displays might notice a difference, but will anyone else?

Taking 4K video, not just playing it. So you capture 4K, then play it on your home theater ;-)

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

Of course, because everyone knows that anyone who is remotely serious about taking video always uses their phone to take it.

(facepalm)

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[macs4all]

Indie film makers tend to use video cameras, not cell phone cameras.

What the fuck good is 4k video quality when the image is shaky all to hell because the camera isn't mounted on a steadycam, or at least a tripod?

Actually, I seem to remember an indie film that was quite well received at Sundance this year, that was shot completely on an iPhone 5s.

And there are examples going back to the 4s, too.

In fact, there's even an iPhone Film Festival now.

So, suck it.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Huge_UID]

Of course, because everyone knows that anyone who is remotely serious about taking photos always uses their phone to take them instead of a dedicated SLR. (facepalm) Give up dude. Your original comment was wrong (phone shoots 4K video, doesn't have 4K screen) and now you're making yourself look more stupid.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

I know my original comment was about the screen resolution, but generally speaking, the only people who are going to care about 4k for their videos are people who are really serious about it. Considering that most people that use their phones to take video don't even fucking know that they should probably turn the fucking phone on its side first if they ever intend to watch it or display it on another medium in the first place, I don't think a vast majority of people that take video with their cell phones are too worried about quality. The idea that people who are serious about filmmaking are ever going to use their cell phones to take video when they probably already have specialized equipment for that purpose is no less ludicrous than the idea of a 4k iphone screen, which is where I will admit my brain originally went on this article.

Ask nearly any serious indie filmmaker about shooting their stuff with an iphone, and they'll probably say it has merit only in the sense that it is something that might be different, and might be well appreciated on that level.... but it won't compete with any serious professional equipment.

I'm pretty sure that 4k video on an iPhone is just a reason for Apple to charge more for it rather than something that people might get any serious use out of.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[sribe]

The idea that people who are serious about filmmaking are ever going to use their cell phones to take video when they probably already have specialized equipment for that purpose is no less ludicrous...

Excepting, of course, the professionals who have used phones to film pro projects, quite successfully...

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

And when they do this, it's invariably a "because we can", not "because it's better"...

There is arguably an artiistic merit in using an iphone to shoot a video to achieve a particular tone to whatever is being shot, but that's the extent of it.... and that would quickly get old if it was overdone.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Applehu Akbar]

Nothing can match the IQ of dedicated videocams, but how many people who were out clubbing some evening and chanced upon one of those famed instances of police malpractice just happened to have a Red in their hands at the time? Not only does nothing beat the immediacy and ubiquity of a phone cam, but phones are "invisible" in the modern social context, whereas a Red tells everyone around you that You're A Filmmaker, rather than an invisible part of the crowd quietly capturing what's going on.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

Oh, I won't dispute the usefulness of cell phone cameras, but when one is using a cell phone for such purposes, high video fidelity is not typically paramount on a person's criteria for taking the video. Thus, 4K seems pointless, at least IMO.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Uberbah]

Considering that most people that use their phones to take video don't even fucking know that they should probably turn the fucking phone

The best camera is the fucking one in your fucking possession when you fucking need to use it. Most people carry their cell phones at most times. Most people do not carry around dedicated 4k video cameras or high end DSLR's.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Uberbah]

I understand why they hate people using their products that are over thirty, but we spend a lot of money on their products. It sucks to see them intentionally make their products less useful for us.

I understand some like drinking the Hatorade like it's a fine wine...but have you tried increasing the font size?

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[AmiMoJo]

It's more of a "why not?" feature. The camera sensor is capable of that resolution, so all you need is software to capture and encode it. Since you were going to fit that 12MP sensor anyway for stills it adds basically $0 to the cost of the device, excluding some R&D costs that were mostly already eaten by the sensor manufacturer (Sony?) and the codec developers.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[mark-t]

True.... but then the point was about making 4k video.... if that kind of quality is going to matter, then it''s also generally likely that you're going to have your high end camera with you in the first place unless you were explicitly trying to make a film using a cell phone camera to establish a particular tone for the flim.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to be an asshole? Only a very few apps respect accessibility settings. Jobs hated the disabled. He was a supporter of eugenics. Those people want us to literally die. To die. That is why he intentionally made the iPad and iPhones impossible to read for most people. He didn't consider us worthy to use his product.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Uberbah]

Couldn't you make the same argument about 720p video? Who needs better-resolution-than-a-dvd when we could all still be using cell phone cameras that take 320 x 240 video at 12 fps? If nothing else, wider adoption of 4k video might spur networks and producers to put out more of their product in 4k.

When it will get more interesting for cell phones, imho, is when these quad core processors and GPU's start doing reasonable attempts at image stabilization while taking said video.

Re:4k video for the iphone??? Really?

[Uberbah]

And this, kids, is why you shouldn't do meth and 'shrooms at the same time. Have you tried leaving out the meth?

AppleTV Search

[andyring]

Lame. I've had a Roku3 for a couple years and it does this very nicely. And yes I have an AppleTV 3 also. I rarely use it. The Roku does everything the AppleTV does, and significantly more.

OK, the Roku won't mirror my iPhone, but that's a pretty minor thing.

Re:AppleTV Search

[93 Escort Wagon]

OK, the Roku won't mirror my iPhone, but that's a pretty minor thing.

I use AirPlay fairly frequently - so what qualifies as minor for you is of more importance to some others.

Different strokes for different folks.

Re:AppleTV Search

[Anonymous Coward]

you use airplay cause you don't know better.

Smarter strokes for smarter folks.

Re:AppleTV Search

[BasilBrush]

Lame? You forgot the bit about it having less space than a Nomad.

You think Roku is going to fare any better than Nomad? No chance.

Re:AppleTV Search

[Uberbah]

Lame. I've had a Roku3 for a couple years and it does this very nicely.

So did the AppleTV 1 and 2. WYP?

OK, the Roku won't mirror my iPhone, but that's a pretty minor thing.

Not a big thing to do everything a Chromecast can do and more? Oookay.

Re:Listen when powered off; are you bloody kidding

[bob_super]

He was butt-dialing before it was cool.

New Apple TV - good and bad

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Good:
- more powerful CPU/GPU
- app store (yeah, games!)
- costs USD$50 less than an iPod touch and runs the same apps from what I understood
- entry-level has 16GB, same as the entry-level iPod touch

Bad:
- the remote has a touch area, which is bad for gaming and annoying for surfing. Swipping makes sense when it's part of the display and you touch what you see, otherwise not so much. There's a disconnect between your movements and what's going to happen on the TV.
- too expensive (more than twice the cost of the old version, way too expensive compared to the competition)
- no optical audio output, which makes the new box for those of us with custom non-HDMI audio setups: useless (can't connect to it) or even more expensive (we now need to buy an HDMI splitter AND an HDMI audio converter)

Re:New Apple TV - good and bad

[R3d M3rcury]

Swipping [sic] makes sense when it's part of the display and you touch what you see, otherwise not so much.

My Mac's trackpad disagrees with you.

This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[SuperKendall]

Let me tell you why the 6s is the first iPhone "S" update I'm not skipping over:

* Higher res camera sensor, but not just higher res- also has improved photosite separation.

* 4k video (hopefully for slo-mo too?)

* Significantly faster performance ("up to" 70% faster than old model iPhone 6).

* Force touch (useful for quicker multi-tasking and other actions).

* Live Photos - anyone who likes photography is pretty excited about this, especially as it captures just a bit before you press the capture button...

* Motion coprocessor is always-on now so using that feature heavily comes with no battery penalty.

* Taptic hardware on device for better user feedback than mere vibration (as a developer I'm particularly excited about that).

* Front screen brightness can increase 3x normal for short period of time to act as a flash.

Also faster WiFi support and more LTE bands, but I can't seriously so those are features compelling enough for me to upgrade - it's really the ones above, especially related to photography... the newer sensor alone would not have done it, it's the conjunction with other features.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to see that they've caught up to Samsung.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[halltk1983]

What about the NSA-approved always-on spy mode?

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Toshito]

What's the use of a higher res camera sensor with this itsy bitsy small lens with a microscopic apperture?

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[SuperKendall]

That's pretty rich considering Apple's recent refusal to hand over iMessage data with a court order... I guess you must not read Slashdot much? Or news in general? Or at all?

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Anonymous Coward]

I was literally waiting for someone to use that article to support their pro-apple argument.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Overzeetop]

I'm not so sure you'll be floored by the new camera options as compared to, say, the flagship Android phones. Don't get me wrong - it will doubtless be good. Just that we've had 12-15MP cameras, 4k video, high speed video, laser range finding for over a year now. It's nice, you'll like it.

As for the photosite separation...the only way to get photosite separation is to reduce the size of the photosites. The only way to increase pixel count for a fixed sensor size is to reduce the size of photo sites. Every time you reduce the size of a photosite you reduce the dynamic range and maximum sensitivity (sensor technology being the same). You notice that the iPhone 6's claim to fame was the large photosites. You didn't hear anything about that today because they shrunk them to do what they did. It's a series of tradeoffs.

As for technology, Apple tends to use Sony sensors, and Sony has a new round of CMOS BSI sensors out. And they're fast. But they're no better than the seonsor - pixel size for pixel size - than the previous sensor generation.

Personally, I'd rather have a more sensitive sensor on the selfy side than the ability to hit the subject with a close range flash. The very existence of a flash intended to fire on a subject which is 3' away is anathema to good photography. Get me a selfy cam with an f/1.2 lens and a noise-free sensor to ISO3200 equivalent and you can keep your screen flash entirely.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[amicusNYCL]

Motion coprocessor is always-on now so using that feature heavily comes with no battery penalty.

That's a pretty funny way of saying that if you don't use the motion co-processor you're now going to have extra battery drain anyway. You sound like you paid attention in marketing school. Framing a negative as a feature, well done.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[SuperKendall]

As for the photosite separation...the only way to get photosite separation is to reduce the size of the photosites.

Not the only way, watch the keynote on the camera. They have better well separation to avoid cross-contamination (and they moved the CFA closer to the photosites).

Of course, the absolute best way is the Foveon approach... but that's a different story.

Apple tends to use Sony sensors

Apple tends to start with chips from other vendors and then customize from there.

Get me a selfy cam with an f/1.2 lens and a noise-free sensor to ISO3200 equivalent

I avoid using flash myself, but the iPhone already has pretty good low-light capabilities - you can disable the flash, for front or rear (I mostly leave it off). The reason I like using the front screen as a flash is it would be softer than the LED flash, partly because it's not as bright, but more importantly because it's a larger area emitting light, almost like a small soft-box... I would be really tempted to take close-up portraits in a dark environment using the front facing camera over the rear.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Jeremi]

That's pretty rich considering Apple's recent refusal to hand over iMessage data with a court order...

Good thing the NSA is bound by court orders! It would be a pretty grim situation if they were able to just hack into Apple's servers anytime they wanted to, or bribe/blackmail Apple employees into surreptitiously handing over whatever data they wanted to see.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Uberbah]

You literally would have said that to any response. Haters gonna hate.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Otis_INF]

* Still no stability sensor.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[Malc]

* Live Photos - anyone who likes photography is pretty excited about this, especially as it captures just a bit before you press the capture button...

I like photography, which is why I have a point and shoot that generates RAWs, a dSLR and Adobe Lightroom. Every iPhone release Apple heralds how good the photo quality is, but my wife's six year old Canon point and shoot creates better images than my iPhone 5s, especially when the light levels drop. iPhone pictures are often fantastic on an iPhone sized screen, but view them on a computer or crop or blow them up and you start seeing the flaws pretty quickly. So, I'll wait and see, but I assume this will be good for capturing some basic memory shots because it's conveniently always with you or because it's used by somebody who has shit composition skills and image quality is irrelevant when they have a go.

Hmmm, I'm really not interested in Live Photos, which sounds like a gimmick like the whole Lytro thing.

Re:This was a pretty exciting photographer release

[SuperKendall]

The iPhone have had photo stability sensors for a while now. Apple is just not stupid enough to show them to users. Plenty of apps that will if you desire.

Apple has upgrade plan now

[SuperKendall]

For those that don't want carrier contracts but do like new phones every year, Apple now has an upgrade plan.

But really carriers have already been starting to have similar plans anyone, no contract lock-in but you pay for a phone in installments.

Re:Apple has upgrade plan now

[murphtall]

but you can't buy the unlocked phones on release date, which is rubbish.

why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this seems "revolutionary" or "magical". [...] What happened to Apple supposedly "leading" the way? Did the sheep cause the shepard to fall behind?

Why does there have to be something "revolutionary" every year (or two years)? Has there been anything "revolutionary" in the CPU world since, say, the introduction of the adm64 architecture? But incremental improvements (Moore's Law, new instructions like AES crypto) have had a cumulative effect over the last decade (and longer) has been phenomenal. Was going from a 65 nm fab process to 45 nm "revolutionary"? How about 45 to 32nm? 32 to 22nm? And yet with these small improvements we're at pretty awesome power envelopes.

In which way is Apple not leading? Do some other smart phones have better screens: sure, but what's their battery life life? Do some have higher resolution cameras: sure, but what are their low-light performance like? Marques Brownlee recently posted a phone on the "Perfect Smartphone":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmkab1LUqlg

Fall behind whom? Samsung, who's making very little profits and laying off 10,000 employees? Other traditional-computer makers, whose shipment volumes have stalled (while Apple's has generally held steady or increased)? Pebble or Motorola: how are their smart watch shipments going?

Seriously: as a whole, which company is Apple not leading against? Google? Samsung? Xiaomi? Microsoft?

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[0123456]

Why does there have to be something "revolutionary" every year (or two years)?

Because Apple's stock price won't stay in the stratosphere if they just keep pumping out 'same but better' products like these. It's priced on 'revolutionary', not 'bread and butter'.

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[BasilBrush]

Even if you were right, and there's at best a 50% chance of that. Why would it matter to anyone who doesn't have Apple shares. Which is nearly everyone.

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[0123456]

Even if you were right, and there's at best a 50% chance of that. Why would it matter to anyone who doesn't have Apple shares. Which is nearly everyone.

So you don't have any money in a savings or pension fund that owns Apple shares?

Tablet sales are declining, because most people who want one already have one, and it's good enough. Apple need to keep producing new things if they want to maintain their current place, let alone grow any more enormous than they currently are.

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[macs4all]

Why does there have to be something "revolutionary" every year (or two years)?

Because Apple's stock price won't stay in the stratosphere if they just keep pumping out 'same but better' products like these. It's priced on 'revolutionary', not 'bread and butter'.

Um, something like a Smartphone is always going to pretty much be "The same, but better" year-over-year. What did you expect? Built-in Projector? Cold Fusion Power? Antigravity?

And there truly are innovative and unique things about the new iPhones: 3D Touch and Live Photos come to mind, and I'm sure there are others if I dig into the spec sheet.

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[BasilBrush]

So you don't have any money in a savings or pension fund that owns Apple shares?

Nope. The stock market has been a terrible investment for years. I'm not in it directly or indirectly.

(Now watch some idiot highlight a winning stock - such as Apple- with 20-20 hindsight, and forget to mention that most people have lost money on the stockmarket.)

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[FunnyStrange]

So you don't have any money in a savings or pension fund that owns Apple shares?

Nope. The stock market has been a terrible investment for years. I'm not in it directly or indirectly.

(Now watch some idiot highlight a winning stock - such as Apple- with 20-20 hindsight, and forget to mention that most people have lost money on the stockmarket.)

Not an individual winning stock (though you may still call me an idiot), but the S&P 500 is up about 60% over the past 10 years, a time period including the massive drop in 2008-09, and the smaller, but significant drop of the last couple of months. That's an annualized return of about 4.7%. Not great, historically, for the S&P, but quite a bit better than the pitiful returns on ordinary savings over the same period. That also doesn't include the dividend yield of that index, which is currently over 2%.

Re:why is "revolutionary" such a big deal?

[BasilBrush]

Not an individual winning stock (though you may still call me an idiot), but the S&P 500 is up about 60% over the past 10 years, a time period including the massive drop in 2008-09, and the smaller, but significant drop of the last couple of months. That's an annualized return of about 4.7%.

But you're still using hindsight. Who's to say an investor would have bought the S&P 500 10 years ago, rather than some other stock investment, or a different period.

And if they did... you are only considering the raw index. To actually track the S&P 500, you have to pay fees to a fund manager.

Now consider how much you could have made on real estate.

The Old Monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a new damn monitor?

The Thunderbolt Display is OLD,

I was hoping in an "And one more thing" type style, a new Apple Thunderbolt Display, 4K, and like 0 edge for better multimon..

The Rest of the Story

[SuperKendall]

I'm sure that the people who use microscopes to look at their phone displays might notice a difference, but will anyone else?

Umm, perhaps all the people using 5K retina iMacs? Or even Retina laptops which have resolution greatly exceeding 1080p...

It's not like you take video and never see it anywhere else. Heck, if nothing else you can edit three 4k video streams simultaneously on an iPad pro...

Re:The Rest of the Story

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that the people who use microscopes to look at their phone displays might notice a difference, but will anyone else?

Umm, perhaps all the people using 5K retina iMacs? Or even Retina laptops which have resolution greatly exceeding 1080p...

It's not like you take video and never see it anywhere else. Heck, if nothing else you can edit three 4k video streams simultaneously on an iPad pro...

i smell a troll comment.

surely you're not serious, right?

Re:The Rest of the Story

[SuperKendall]

i smell a troll comment.

Well, as the old saying goes, he who smelt it...

surely you're not serious, right?

I would ask if you are really that stupid, but I think we all know the answer (HINT THE ANSWER S YOU ARE AN IDIOT WHO CAN'T READ RESOLUTION SPECS).

it's an iPad, ffs

[Anonymous Coward]

'Pro' toilet paper is a thing.

Real Game Controller?

[MikeDataLink]

The question is: Will there be other controllers? Game controllers for games like Xbox? Seriously this seems like a massive miss. Of 3rd parties will make one, but seriously it will never get the traction of an Apple sponsored controller.

Re:Real Game Controller?

[pushing-robot]

It supports MFi controllers, and the brief demo of the app store listed a game with the feature 'game controllers optional'.

Unfortunately without a reference gamepad we can expect the same mess that is Android/iOS (and for that matter, PC prior to the 360 controller).

Not the same apps

[SuperKendall]

costs USD$50 less than an iPod touch and runs the same apps from what I understood

Not at all, it's a different SDK. All apps must be built specifically for the Apple TV. I think I do remember them saying if you bought an app for the phone you'd automatically get an AppleTV version if there was one, but I'm not sure about that.

the remote has a touch area, which is bad for gaming and annoying for surfing. Swipping makes sense when it's part of the display and you touch what you see, otherwise not so much.

From the demo it works great for browsing and controlling videos, because it's more about gesture than touch.

too expensive (more than twice the cost of the old version, way too expensive compared to the competition)

There is literally no competition to what the AppleTV does now. The app store and the prevalence of developers who can quickly write to it mean a vast variety of stuff is coming, way beyond games... the Roku for example supports apps but how many are there? Have you looked at the SDK? Not easy to get into.

or even more expensive (we now need to buy an HDMI splitter AND an HDMI audio converter)

I have zero pity for anyone who has strayed off the HDMI path, as you say you can make it work. The expense is because of choices you have made to stay outside the standard. I can say this myself because I too resisted for some time, I had multiple HDMI splitters and converters and all kinds of nonsense. Just give in man.

Re:Not the same apps

[BasilBrush]

I think I do remember them saying if you bought an app for the phone you'd automatically get an AppleTV version if there was one, but I'm not sure about that.

I certainly hope not. That would mean yet more work for developers for no more money. It's hard enough already with the low prices on the App Store.

Slingshot

[SuperKendall]

Don't recall Live Photos or Force Touch on a Samsung... also Samsung is now woefully behind on both CPU and GPU. It's no wonder they are shedding users like water off a duck.

Re:Slingshot

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that blind, quit astroturfing you fuckwit.

Hugs and kisses,

Juan Epstein

Re:Slingshot

[Anonymous Coward]

I just feel the need to point something out. With Apples past performance "Up to 70% faster CPU and 90% faster GPU" means that those improvements will only be seen in very rare, not real world applicable scenarios, and the user will notice a marginal speed improvement. And though I'm calling Apple out on this specifically for making these claims with every release they've ever done, it also needs to be pointed out that basically every CPU manufacturer makes the same claims with every release, be it Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, you name them.

Re:Slingshot

[exomondo]

Don't recall Live Photos or Force Touch on a Samsung...

"Live Photos" is just a cinemagraph which has been around for years on Android, Windows Phone and even iOS.

Re:Slingshot

[sexconker]

"Live Photos" are videos (or GIFs). Google "cinemagraph" (even though it should be cinemagram). It was a trend for a few months several years ago.

Samsung's S-Pen in the Note series allows for hovering over something to give a different action than tapping something or long pressing it.
This has been extended to not require the stylus, and plenty of phones now let you hover your finger over the screen to do stuff, and there are various terms for it.

Samsung has had pressure sensitive styluses for a while as well, which makes sense since you're drawing or writing. Adding pressure sensitivity for finger touches seems absolutely retarded since users won't understand why one touch does something different from the previous touch, and we already have 4 distinct modes of touching shit on conventional capacitive screens - swiping over an area, tapping an area, double tapping an area, and tapping an area and holding.

Re: Slingshot

[perryizgr8]

Samsung has had hover and moving photos for quite a while now. Really depressing to so such idiocy on slashdot.

Re:Slingshot

[SuperKendall]

"Live Photos" are videos (or GIFs). Google "cinemagraph" (even though it should be cinemagram). It was a trend for a few months several years ago.

I own the cinemagraph pro software, I have for a while... I know what they are. Live Photos are not that, not at all...

Most of Slashdot (as per usual) simply don't grasp what is going on. You'll all understand within year a so I think, at least most of you will get it before then... some sadly never will. But that hardly matters since the world at large does and will.

Over time I've come to understand the true Apple Reality Distortion field is preventing technical people (such as you find on Slashdot) from grasping what Apple features are actually important. It's never failed through multiple successful Apple releases, and is as strong as ever now.

That must help a ton in keeping competitors behind.

Re:Slingshot

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the classic "You don't understand and I'm not going to explain it to you" post.

Or maybe people do understand and you don't understand that all this stuff doesn't matter outside the magical bubble.

Re:Slingshot

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife's Galaxy S6 will run circles around my iPhone 6. This phone is a turd I have to use for work e-mail on a mobility device. 10 second+ hangs loading / scrolling web pages and apps are infuriating for a so-called premium device.

I'll probably buy a 6s in search of a phone that isn't stupidly slow but I suspect it'll be more of the same.

Maybe I'll buy an Android phone that works and an iPad for e-mail (ugh).

Too many choices

[crgrace]

I'm an Apple fan and I'm concerned they are falling into the trap of customer confusion. For example, when I bought my iPad (which I love) I went to the Apple Store and picked up the iPad. It was done quickly and I was a happy customer. Now, there are *5* different iPads.

Which one do I pick? Christ, I have to research this now? What's my use case? How important is screen size, battery life, cost, etc etc etc.. This is why I hated buying anything from Dell.

On a related note, which Apple laptop should you buy? MacBook, Air, Pro? What's the difference? Customer confusion leads to customer paralysis.

Apple's been down this road before. In the mid 90s there were so many different Apple models, Performa, Centris, Quada, God knows what else, that I had no idea what to get. You know which one I got? None of them. That's when I finally went to PC.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs' genius when he returned to Apple was to make it EASY to buy a Mac. Just get an iMac. Pick the color and you're done. Want an iPod or an iPhone? You didn't need to research and weigh the pros and cons of 5 different models. Now you do. I strongly believe a good part of why Apple revived was a clean product line with minimal choices.

I fear Apple is making a mistake that may come back to bite them.

Re:Too many choices

[Dixie_Flatline]

This is the only valid complaint of Apple I've read today. It's mostly in the naming scheme, though.

They should have
iPad Mini and iPad Mini Pro
iPad Air and iPad Air Pro
iPad Plus

That naming scheme conveys a lot better what you get. Pro is faster, mini is smaller, plus is bigger. Done.

Re:Too many choices

[0123456]

You've got the iPad Mini to carry around, the iPad Air to use on the sofa, and the iPad Pro to use on a desk. Then you just have the current version or the older, cheapo version.

Doesn't seem like a huge problem to choose between them, to me. At least the Mini 4 is a real upgrade, rather than 'let's throw in a fingerprint sensor and add $100 to the price'.

Re:Too many choices

[geekmux]

I'm an Apple fan and I'm concerned they are falling into the trap of customer confusion. For example, when I bought my iPad (which I love) I went to the Apple Store and picked up the iPad. It was done quickly and I was a happy customer. Now, there are *5* different iPads.

Which one do I pick? Christ, I have to research this now? What's my use case? How important is screen size, battery life, cost, etc etc etc.. This is why I hated buying anything from Dell.

On a related note, which Apple laptop should you buy? MacBook, Air, Pro? What's the difference? Customer confusion leads to customer paralysis.

Apple's been down this road before. In the mid 90s there were so many different Apple models, Performa, Centris, Quada, God knows what else, that I had no idea what to get. You know which one I got? None of them. That's when I finally went to PC.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs' genius when he returned to Apple was to make it EASY to buy a Mac. Just get an iMac. Pick the color and you're done. Want an iPod or an iPhone? You didn't need to research and weigh the pros and cons of 5 different models. Now you do. I strongly believe a good part of why Apple revived was a clean product line with minimal choices.

I fear Apple is making a mistake that may come back to bite them.

While I do agree with you here, likely part of the reason Apple was forced to offer so many choices is due to the massive void they created in the upgrade department.

I didn't mind making a rather quick decision with my Macbook in the early days of still being able to upgrade said hardware after the initial purchase (talking about the usual suspects here...memory, hard drive, perhaps even CPU). Today, you're pretty much fucked after you walk out the door no matter what product line you're looking at, hence the expanded catalog.

Point is not everyone can afford a $3000 Macbook, which if Apple only offered one, that would be it.

Re:Too many choices

[FlyHelicopters]

Amen...

I don't mind there being 2 iPhones, a 4.7" and a 5.5"... I really love the 5.5" size. That size moved me from Galaxy to iPhone...

That being said, 2 is enough... the iPad Mini and iPad were enough, the problem with the Pro is that it is more or less a MacBook now. They have a lot of crossover now between those two lines.

Regarding the MacBook itself, also correct... You have a standard one, and a Pro model... You can have 2 screen sizes, but otherwise they should be the same...

The iMac is still that way, you have a smaller screen and a larger screen. You do have generally 2 performance choices, "good enough" and "plenty".

Of course, all of them are still too expensive, but that is a separate issue. Sell a 27" iMac for $999 and I'd be all over it. The screen is $200 these days, the hardware inside it is another $500 or so, the prices being charged are just nuts...

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen...

I don't mind there being 2 iPhones, a 4.7" and a 5.5"... I really love the 5.5" size. That size moved me from Galaxy to iPhone...

That being said, 2 is enough... the iPad Mini and iPad were enough, the problem with the Pro is that it is more or less a MacBook now. They have a lot of crossover now between those two lines.

Regarding the MacBook itself, also correct... You have a standard one, and a Pro model... You can have 2 screen sizes, but otherwise they should be the same...

The iMac is still that way, you have a smaller screen and a larger screen. You do have generally 2 performance choices, "good enough" and "plenty".

Of course, all of them are still too expensive, but that is a separate issue. Sell a 27" iMac for $999 and I'd be all over it. The screen is $200 these days, the hardware inside it is another $500 or so, the prices being charged are just nuts...

the prices being charged are just nuts pretty much sums up the history of Apple for the last 15 years if not the entire history of the company.

Re:Too many choices

[BasilBrush]

MacBook, Air, Pro?

They're just in a transition. When current models have run their course they'll be back to two lines.

Apple's been down this road before. In the mid 90s there were so many different Apple models, Performa, Centris, Quada, God knows what else, that I had no idea what to get. You know which one I got? None of them. That's when I finally went to PC.

The choice argument makes no sense there as the choices were even bigger when picking a PC. The real reason they didn't sell well is that Mac were not good enough for the price they were charging at that time. Unlike now.

Jobs tiny number of choices made a lot of sense when Apple was small and they wanted to get bigger. But at the size Apple is now, they would be limited by saturation if they didn't make sure they covered most users needs. The large size 6 and 6+ (whilst retaining the 5s) were criticised last year for exactly what you are saying. Yet Apple was losing market share, and is now gaining it again, thanks to satisfying the people that wanted a bigger phone.

Re:Too many choices

[BasilBrush]

Yes, the Pro is the most descriptive word possible. It's the iPad you buy to do work on.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got the iPad Mini to carry around, the iPad Air to use on the sofa, and the iPad Pro to use on a desk.

My god, I wasn't even going to get ANY iPad, and now you want me to buy THREE of them? Your income might be greater than mine....

Re:Too many choices

[subk]

I fear Apple is making a mistake that may come back to bite them.

Wouldn't be the first time...

Re:Too many choices

[Schnapple]

Which one do I pick? Christ, I have to research this now? What's my use case? How important is screen size, battery life, cost, etc etc etc.. This is why I hated buying anything from Dell.

You know, the average Slashdotter complains about Apple's lack of options. You've managed to complain about the exact opposite. Impressive.

I agree that the average Joe is not going to figure out the difference between "mini 2" and "mini 4" so some of the naming is a misstep but it's pretty simple overall. How big of a screen do you want? How much storage space? Do you want an iPad that requires Wi-Fi or one that can use a cellular data plan (sold separately)? Done. Anyone who wants one for gaming or mass music storage knows to get a more expensive one, everyone else will gravitate to the cheaper models.

In the mid 90s there were so many different Apple models, Performa, Centris, Quada, God knows what else, that I had no idea what to get. You know which one I got? None of them. That's when I finally went to PC.

You're correct in that this was before Jobs came back and you're referring to the Sculley administration I believe, but the reason they came out with so many of those models was to make price comparison across stores impossible. Circuit City gets the Performa 9000 and Sears gets the Centris 7500 and so the average person can't do price comparison because no two stores carry the same thing. Not that this was any less dickish mind you, and it drove people like yourself to the PC (which, Ironically, had manufacturers that did the same thing) but just FYI, this wasn't a maneuver because Apple was clueless, it was a deliberate move by a CEO who made a number of bad decisions. I doubt Cook is going to be giving Best Buy an exclusive model any time soon (although that weird HP iPod did come out under Jobs' watch)

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't fear, rather I know Apple already made the mistake that is coming back to bite them by falling into the trap of customer confusion as everyone else

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

So the optimum number of models of a given product line (Mac, iPhone, iPad) is four or less?

Because beyond four the consumer gets confused. I know this because I nearly had a breakdown picking out an iPod a few years ago.

Three different styles with different storage options in different colors?

The humanity!

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an Apple fan and I'm concerned they are falling into the trap of customer confusion. For example, when I bought my iPad (which I love) I went to the Apple Store and picked up the iPad. It was done quickly and I was a happy customer. Now, there are *5* different iPads.

Are you sure it's as complicated as that?

iPad: Small one, big one, normal one.
iPhone: New one, old one, small one.
Macbook: Slow one, light one, fast one.
iMac: Big one, huge one.
TV: New one, old one.
Watch: Space-grey one.

Re:Too many choices

[Macdude]

There were too many Mac choices so you switched to PCs where there are a couple of thousand times more choices? When you say something insane like that it makes it hard to take the rest of your post seriously, even if you're making some valid observations.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

While I do agree with you here, likely part of the reason Apple was forced to offer so many choices is due to the massive void they created in the upgrade department.

Funny, they still seem to have absolutely no interest in filling the biggest void in their product line - between the Mac mini and Mac pro. WTF.

Re:Too many choices

[geekmux]

While I do agree with you here, likely part of the reason Apple was forced to offer so many choices is due to the massive void they created in the upgrade department.

Funny, they still seem to have absolutely no interest in filling the biggest void in their product line - between the Mac mini and Mac pro. WTF.

They somewhat filled that void with a range of very expensive iMonitors, that also happen to come equipped with a rather permanently configured computer inside of them, reinforcing my original point.

Re:Too many choices

[teh dave]

One size does not fit all. You might like different features to me. Don't be lazy - do your research, and you'll end up with a device that's better for you. I might pick a different one that works better for me. It is very egotistical to believe that the only phone or tablet anyone could ever need is the one that you find perfect.

Re:Too many choices

[laffer1]

Why even bother with the air now. What the iPhone taught be is that people either want huge screens or small screens. They don't want in between devices.

iPad Mini
iPad (what is now the plus)

done.

Apple rep asks if you want big or small and storage. That is it.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

The Paradox of Choice

Re:Too many choices

[Uberbah]

the prices being charged are just nuts pretty much sums up the history of Apple for the last 15 years if not the entire history of the company.

Hateboi Distortion Field. You're going to pay the same price for a new Galaxy as you are for an iPhone 6S. Newegg has a Dell 5k display for $1900....for a hundred dollars more, you get that display in a 5k iMac plus a computer with an i7 processor.

Re:Too many choices

[Uberbah]

They somewhat filled that void with a range of very expensive iMonitors

Dell sells a 5k monitor for $1900. For a hundred dollars more, you can get a 5k monitor from Apple - with an i7 computer built in.

that also happen to come equipped with a rather permanently configured computer inside of them, reinforcing my original point.

Apple's point is that most people don't upgrade their laptops beyond the occasional memory upgrade. That doesn't work for everyone, which is why they are free to buy what they want that does what they want, from the manufacturers they want. Zombie Steve isn't holding a gun to anyone's head.

Re:Too many choices

[Uberbah]

Yes, the Pro is the most descriptive word possible. It's the iPad you buy to do work on.

And to finally make Duet Display worth the purchase price. 10" screen is a weee bit on the small side to be useful as a second monitor. But 13"? That's as big as my laptop's built-in display.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but think the iPad Plus should be renamed to the MaxiPad.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Hateboi

This is the first time in a while that the first word of a comment was such a good indicator of the mentality of the commenter and the value of the comment they made.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a question of ego, but these are big ticket items for many households, and when there are many options, no matter how much you "research", odds are you'll pick the wrong one.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completely right. Most Apple fans would just listen to the keynote by St. Jobs so they knew exactly which items were going to be under the Christmas tree that year. Now Cook is giving options and they just can't handle that.

Re:Too many choices

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't think the iPhone really teaches that lesson either. Let me preface by saying I like the smaller phone sizes; the iPhone 6 is too big. But the normal iPhone 6 is selling a lot better than the 6+. I don't think the iPad Pro will sell terribly well. Not badly, but it's pretty niche. The real money is at the Air level.

Re:Too many choices

[Uberbah]

Translation: you don't actually have a response to getting called out on your BS, so you'll try to change the subject with butthurt and projection.

Re:Too many choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the Pro is the most descriptive word possible. It's the iPad you buy to do work on.

So... Which one is the "iPad Jerkoff to Porn"?

So the iPad is bigger,...

[Anonymous Coward]

but is the text bigger? Jobs said a few years ago that the bigger the screen, the smaller the text. For example, I can't read my 15" MacBook Pro at all, and the larger text on the 13" is somewhat readable. The iPads have long had text too small to read. With the 12.9" one be actually usable, or will they screw us over and follow Jobs' plan.

Re:So the iPad is bigger,...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't sell a potential 15" iPad unless you make the 13" iPad unusable. Text on web sites, like this one, is impossible to read with the current iPad unless you zoom in and constantly scroll. It's sad to hear that they decided to make the problem even worse.

Sad to see the iPad ruined

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a chance to make the text reDBle but instead decided to make the text even tinier.

Apple's Days Are Numbered (small number)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well really.

The newest apple invention is what Steve Jobs called "Uck", the Apple Pencil (aka Jobs' Uck stylus).

Wow!

Apple Watch that is not a watch.

Now, Apple Pencil that is not a pencil.

Apple is "innovating" backwards.

What Next? Ah! Apple Paper, a technology that is not paper.

Ha ha

Re:Apple's Days Are Numbered (small number)

[bughunter]

What's happening is that all the concepts that Jobs squashed are getting raised again, by people who have now moved up a little in the company, and top management is too stupid to squash them again.

When Jobs fell ill, the software started to suck. Now that he's gone forever, the hardware's starting to suck, too.

I refuse to upgrade past OSX 10.8. And the 17" macbook pro I bought the day after they announced its discontinuation 3 years ago may be my last Mac.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's decline into the depths of suckage is going even faster.

Larger iPad is appealing, but BT mouse support?

[swb]

I've been thinking of replacing my iPad 3 and I like the idea of a larger screen iPad, but could they puhleeze add support for a bluetooth mouse?

RDP sessions from an iPad work fine now, but touch just doesn't translate well into Windows UI. A mouse would make an iPad quite useful for a lot of remote admin tasks.

I don't care if you couldn't use the mouse with the home screen or even as a touch replacement, just make it so it can be paired and developers can see mouse events.

I know, I could just buy a regular laptop but they're not nearly as couch/bed friendly as an iPad is, and it's casual settings where I use it most now. But those marginal times where there's a chance I might need to do some kind of work, I find myself bringing my laptop as well because touch is such a shitty way to do Windows UI.

No, a Surface Pro is not a viable replacement. Yes, I do own one and I can't stand the Windows "tablet" mode or its micro-sized app collection, which makes any touch Windows device nonviable.

Re:Larger iPad is appealing, but BT mouse support?

[BasilBrush]

The Pencil will give you all the accuracy you need for driving a Windows screen.

Re:Larger iPad is appealing, but BT mouse support?

[Overzeetop]

Accuracy, yes. Comfort, convenience, efficiency, no.

I have a high end convertible tablet, and a mouse is still a faster way to interact with a GUI that also requires arbitrary text input.

Styli are fabulous for certain types of input, but picking and clicking along with a lot of keyboard use isn't one.

The Future History of Photography

[SuperKendall]

What's the use of a higher res camera sensor with this itsy bitsy small lens with a microscopic apperture?

The sensor does not just have higher res as I said but better separation under the CFA.

I have a real DSLR with a number of lenses that cost north of $1k so I know what truly professional images look like. I am telling you, what Apple is doing is THE future of mass photography. The images already look great for most uses, and even beyond the resolution increase Apple is doing a great job of software that handles mixed WB, low light, super quick focus, and all sorts of other things.

The future I see for any other still camera that does not support Live Photos (or non-trademarked equivalent) is a role relegated to producing images for print. Now I personally enjoy that, which is why I have a DSLR. But I think it's insane to not realize how vastly the camera market will contract as the phones push quality and ease of use inexorably forward and upward.

At some point very soon, being a serious photographic amateur will mean you have a set of attachment lenses for your phone...

Re:The Future History of Photography

[Toshito]

There is a physical limit as to what a lens can resolve, and going to insane pixel count on the sensor cannot overcome this physical resolution from the lens itself...

The only other way to increase resolution is to have a bigger sensor, like in medium format cameras.

There's no way (appart from rewriting the laws of optics) to attach a humongous telephoto lens to a phone camera and expect to have the same resolution as in a full frame DSLR or medium format camera (which are in the 50 to 80 megapixels as we speak).

Sure some software tricks will give an image clean enough for Joe Public to print some 8x10" but I can't see any pro using a phone for serious photography.

And Live Photos? It's a gimmick already available on Nokia Lumia phones since 2012 with the Cinemagraph app, I had it on my Nokia 920. It's fun for a day or two but it quickly becomes boring.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[Grizzley9]

To add to this, I do see another feature that smartphones and possibly DSLR's will need to add in the near future as well is the ability to go back and select focus on the depth of field. That tech has been incubating for a while now. It will be a way for these P&S cameras in phones to simulate what big lenses give DSLR's. You can mimic it currently with simple composition and editing tricks but the real deal should be possible.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a real DSLR with a number of lenses that cost north of $1k so I know what truly professional images look like."

Spoken like a true Apple fan. High cost == better product.

You're a moron.

Hugs and kisses,

Juan Epstein

Re:The Future History of Photography

[DigiShaman]

Most importantly, the best camera is the one you have with you.

This is just awesome. The only reason I purchased a DSLR ($800 total that's rated for 8MP) was for top notch photos, but I'm a total amateur at working one with a few "For Dummies" books as an aid. Honestly, I've only used it about a dozen time; a waste of money IMHO. Now, we've got a phone that can do pretty much the same. Well...good enough for an amateur looking for "DSLR" quality baked in a phone. And I always carry my phone with me like I do my keys and wallet!

Re: The Future History of Photography

[perryizgr8]

DSLR quality? Are these guys for real? I cannot believe the stupidity. Next you will say the ipad pro has a CPU comparable to desktop CPUs.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[SuperKendall]

You do realize Apple doesn't make camera lenses, right?

In the camera lens world high cost does not always mean "better product" but it tracks very closely. If you want a good and fast lens you are going to have to pay to get one, cheaper lenses will simply be slower and have worse optical quality - that's just how it is (except for 50mm primes, which can diverge from that formula).

I guess I'll forgive you for not knowing that since you seem to know nothing about photography (or Apple for that matter, if you think Apple gear is always.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[Cederic]

At some point very soon, being a serious photographic amateur will mean you have a set of attachment lenses for your phone...

I've randomly picked this post of yours to reply, but frankly I could've gone with almost any. You're a total cock with no credibility, bleating about how you and Apple are so superior and talking utter fucking nonsense.

I'm "a serious photographic amateur". I'm desperately wishing medium format digital cameras were lighter and cheaper, because damn they have fucking magnificent lenses and sensors.

I could put leica glass onto my iPhone but I'd still have the Apple lens in the way too, I'd still have a shitty small sensor and I'd still be limited to Apple's fuckwit software.

No, "serious photographic amateur"s are going to continue to buy "serious photographic cameras".

Re:The Future History of Photography

[Anonymous Coward]

A common way to increase resolution of a sensor is through more sensor readings over time. By compositing all the images into one higher resolution image, you can achieve better detail than one image alone. Android already has apps that can do this "Super Resolution" mode. Taking that same approach but displaying it over time, such as with this live pictures idea, is a different way of displaying the same information, for a different use case.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[AmiMoJo]

I have both a DSLR and pretty good phone camera too. They have different uses.

The DSLR is great when you are going somewhere you know you want to take photos. Because it records RAW and the optics and sensor are orders of magnitude better than even the best phone, the chances of getting usable shots is much higher. You can do a lot more in post processing with the output from a DSLR, and that's what most people who think camera phones will replace them miss.

Camera phones need to do a lot of tricks to look good. There is a lot of software processing going on. That's fine if it works and you get a good shot, but if you don't your options are quite limited. Zooming to crop will quickly show up the limits of the sensor and optics. Adjusting exposure and levels will quickly reveal all the processing that the phone did first.

Oh, and of course you can't attach a zoom lens to a phone, at least not a good one, so they are really only useful for photographing things you are close to your scenery. Take on to a sporting event and the action will be a microscopic blur in the middle of the frame, or a low resolution digitally zoomed mess.

Don't get me wrong, I use my phone a lot and the images are great, but even as an amateur with little real skill I can appreciate having the DSLR when I'm at some event I really want to capture.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[jittles]

Live Photos (or non-trademarked equivalent) is a role relegated to producing images for print.

Why don't we just stop using this silly name of 'live photo'. Don't let Apple PR spin you, it is exactly what Eddie said it is not - a video. It may only be a 1 second video (0.5 seconds on either side of the intended frame), but it is still a video. Outside of your little kids playing sports, maybe some ripples in a pond, I am not certain there is much use for this feature. Do I really need 0.5 seconds of everyone trying to get their face together for a picture? Or 0.5 seconds of everyone wiping that fake smile off their face? No. And I certainly don't need it on a beautiful sunset view or a landscape of the city.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[SuperKendall]

it is still a video

I'm sorry you can't comprehend the distinction, but it's very different from video, because it's not initiated by the user as a video. There's a big distinction in terms of result.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[jittles]

it is still a video

I'm sorry you can't comprehend the distinction, but it's very different from video, because it's not initiated by the user as a video. There's a big distinction in terms of result.

Oooh right. It's me that is having comprehension problems. And a rose by any other name is, what exactly? All they are doing is having the phone auto record ~1.0 second of video when you hit the shutter release. Therefore a 'live photo' is not a photo, it's a video.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[jittles]

Oh I misheard him yesterday - it's 1.5 seconds on each side of the video and I thought he said 0.5. So it's 3 seconds of video.

Re:The Future History of Photography

[graphius]

Yes there is a physical limit to what a lens can resolve, and the 20+ mp cell phone cameras are probably getting close.
Attaching an add on lens of any type will affect image quality, but having said that, a well designed telephoto adaptor should be more than adequate for Joe Public to print as large as he would like. (you do know an 8x10 image only needs about 3 megapixels? 8x10x200x200=3.2mp)
The problem with using a (modern, half decent) phone for serious photography has nothing to do with pixel count per se, but with issues like noise in dark situations, too much depth of field with the small sensor, one wide angle lens natively (unless you use awkward add-on lenses), slow focus and reaction times, awkward ergonomics, etc.
Once you get past these limitations, the picture quality is quite good, and better than a lot of alternatives from a few years ago.

Live photos may or may not catch on. Personally I am not a video guy and print my photographs, so that feature is a meh...

PDFs

[benjfowler]

I could see a 13" tablet being a really nice way to read and annotate PDFs. Tried this with a 7" Nexus, and the small size combined with the funny aspect ration never really cut it for printable material.

Not that I would fork over for an iPad -- the fact that Apple are doing one means that there will be a decent Android equivalent in fairly short order for a hundred quid less.

Yes, see dev docs

[SuperKendall]

The question is: Will there be other controllers?

I figured there would be when they announced Guitar Hero, but the dev docs clearly say there can be third party controllers (that work the same way iOS third party controllers do).

Re:Yes, see dev docs

[Anonymous Coward]

He said APPLE controller, a reference controller, and specifically said he wasn't interested in 3rd party. Because we all know without a reference controller by the manufacturer(Apple) there will never be standardized support.

Re:Yes, see dev docs

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ, didn't Guitar Hero jump the shark about 5 years ago? Wow.

The point isn't to view 4k video on the phone

[Solandri]

Whether you believe in 4k or not, it's coming. It so happens that making a 4k TV is a lot more expensive than making a 4k camera sensor, so we're getting the cameras first. All that means is that the video you shot of your kid's first steps will be viewable in 1080p today, but will be viewable in 4k in the future when the 4k TVs come down enough in price that they become standard.

16 gig???

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, Tim...

The base model still starts at 16 gigabytes, despite the increasing amount of data the phone is capable of taking in (looking at you 4k video and 12mp camera).

Would it kill you to bump that up to 32?

Jumping ship to Android this go 'round.

Re:16 gig???

[0123456]

The cloud! The cloud!

Apple's base iPad model has always been 16GB (or less?), so they can advertise a low price for the version few people want to buy.

Re:16 gig???

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article a little while back (you could probably find it only with a quick search) that said that Apple pay about 7 cents a gig for their iDevices.

iPad Pro? Joke used to be the Redmond photocopier

[tomxor]

I find the idea of an iPad "pro" stupid enough as it is, but the joke used to be about how predictably Microsoft copied Apple's moves.

So much product fragmentation that is feels a lot like the John Scully years before Jobs came back... ah well they did some good things i guess.

"Nobody wants a stylus..." - Steve Jobs

[NimbleSquirrel]

Well, I guess he was wrong. *gasp*

I feel a great disturbance in the Reality Distortion Field, as if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. They probably all want one now. But it isn't a stylus, its a pencil, right?

Seriously, I'm looking at the iPad Pro, and all I see is a slavish copy of what Microsoft are already doing with the Surface line.

Steve Jobs also said "if you see a stylus, they blew it" and "as soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead." Perhaps this is a sign that Apple have hit peak Apple, and are now on the decline.

Re:"Nobody wants a stylus..." - Steve Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I guess he was wrong. *gasp*

I feel a great disturbance in the Reality Distortion Field, as if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. They probably all want one now. But it isn't a stylus, its a pencil, right?

Seriously, I'm looking at the iPad Pro, and all I see is a slavish copy of what Microsoft are already doing with the Surface line.

Steve Jobs also said "if you see a stylus, they blew it" and "as soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead." Perhaps this is a sign that Apple have hit peak Apple, and are now on the decline.

Perhaps, but the iPad Pro + iPencil have a certain appeal for artists who find the iPad to be too small. And depending on the touch sensitivity it might be now be better alternative to the expensive Cintique.

Re:"Nobody wants a stylus..." - Steve Jobs

[BasilBrush]

The point is that there is nothing you need a stylus for. Because the stylus isn't included in the bundle. Everything is designed to be operated by finger touch just as before. It's an optional extra, that's all. Very desirable for artists. And a small number of other uses.

Re:"Nobody wants a stylus..." - Steve Jobs

[SuiteSisterMary]

My daughter likes to draw on her ipad, and I was mentioning how 'real' drawing tablets are pressure sensitive and blah blah blah, and I was surprised that apple hadn't done this yet.

What do you mean by self-hosting?

[Brannon]

You certainly don't need a separate host computer to use it.

Re:Listen when powered off; are you bloody kidding

[macs4all]

Siri can hear you when the phone is powered off ??

Can I assume someone just started advertising this NSA capability as some new feature ?

WTH would be stupid enough to use this ?

If I know Apple (and I do), the "Hey Siri" is recognized locally on the phone, and if it hears THAT, THEN it wakes up enough to start capturing/uploading speech.

Apple would never, ever, ever open themselves up to the screams of the masses if it was discovered that their iPhones were "eavesdropping" on them 24/7.

No, we have Samsung TVs for that...

Market sez "Meh." How the wheel turns!

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Apple can no longer get away with releasing derivative shit in a Jonny Ives form-factor and calling it innovation. In the halcyon days of the High Church of Apple, blatant ripoffs would spring fully-formed from the smooth and seamless forehead of the Blessed Steve, and the Holy RDF would make the assembled domesticated press completely forget the actual first market incarnations of the damn thing. 'Cuz, you know, it didn't count until Apple did it.

It looks like the public has become immune to Apple's incompetently-performed Jedi mind tricks.

Took long enough.

The Live Photo distinction

[SuperKendall]

The only other way to increase resolution is to have a bigger sensor

Sensor size is independent of resolution.

There is a physical limit as to what a lens can resolve

Yes, but as long as the lens can resolve well down to individual photosites, it need do no more. The existing iPhone 6 Plus lens is fine in that regard, it does not lose sharpness at the edges.

There's no way (appart from rewriting the laws of optics) to attach a humongous telephoto lens to a phone camera and expect to have the same resolution as in a full frame DSLR

But you don't NEED more resolution for most uses, especially when the sensor has really good separation of data values captured (that improves effective resolution beyond what mere specs would indicate, when compared to other sensors that supposedly have the same MP rating). MegaPixels as a term are really a huge lie, because they hide a lot of possible quality differences in the output which determines effective resolution.

Attaching a teleconverter won't give you more resolution, no, but it will give you a great effective zoom that yields the full 12MP of resolution the camera can capture. There are already companies like Schneider Optics producing very high quality lens adaptors for the iPhone that do not drop significantly in quality.

Sure some software tricks will give an image clean enough for Joe Public to print some 8x10"

More like 11x14, but if you think about the fact that *every* image captures a few seconds of data (a technique some programs already you to get more resolution from still cameras today), and the fact that it's so easy to make panos, with even more processing 16x20's should be easily had from the phone.

It's a gimmick already available on Nokia Lumia phones since 2012 with the Cinemagraph app

I don't think you are properly appreciating the distinction here, at both the technical and user levels. It's not a gimmick, it's extra data on *every photo* by default, from a little before the capture was started to a little after - but furthermore the data is not just supported by one app, but also across iPhone and OS X, and shortly many apps across both systems. It's data easily accessed by any app for further processing or refinement...

The thing that makes it not a gimmick is (beyond the fact it's in a phone that will be used by hundreds of millions more people) the fundamental and always on by default nature of the thing, combined with widespread support for different viewing and image integration.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[Toshito]

The thing that makes it not a gimmick is (beyond the fact it's in a phone that will be used by hundreds of millions more people) the fundamental and always on by default nature of the thing, combined with widespread support for different viewing and image integration.

So it's more like what I have on my Casio EX-FH100 digital camera (dating back to 2010). The camera is constantly taking shots at high speed in it's buffer, and when you press the shutter is keeps some frames from before the shutter was pressed and some from after.

I used it a couple of times and again it's not worth the hassle (to choose the best frame) and the cost in storage space (suddenly all your pictures take 8 times more space). It's usefull for sport photography or capturing a child smile, but always on means tons of wasted space (but maybe they use some intelligent compression and keep only a key frame and store the difference between frames, a little like video compression?)

I could be wrong (I have been more times than I can remember) but I still bet that in a year or 2 nobody will talk about lives photos and it will be ignored like a lot of innovations that looked cool at first but ultimately where not very useful.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[SuperKendall]

The camera is constantly taking shots at high speed in it's buffer, and when you press the shutter is keeps some frames from before the shutter was pressed and some from after.

It's a little like that but actually useful, because it's not just the camera that sees that data, or (if you camera stored all of the frames to the memory card) because it groups the related frames together and treats them as one photo. Your camera did one of those two things wrong; it had no way to do them right.

it's not worth the hassle

There is no hassle. it's just on and works, you need do nothing to use and view (as you scroll through the photo gallery you can see some of the movement). The photo seems to be a photo unless you want to treat it as a bundle.

the cost in storage space (suddenly all your pictures take 8 times more space)

The size that photos make up on a device is negligible these days, 8x more is nothing. But I'm betting that with compression it's some small fraction of that.

It's usefull for sport photography or capturing a child smile

It's useful for anything anywhere that moves, or has ambient sound.

Yes this is a technology that has existed in primitive forms (you could also say the same thing about burst mode which tons of cameras have), but it's finally as a state that real people not only will use it, but get excited about it.

I still bet that in a year or 2 nobody will talk about lives photos

I think you're wrong; we'll see.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus... you don't just drink the koolaid, you have a swimming pool full of the stuff and take a jump in the deep end each morning.

I hope for your sake that Apple pays you to polish their shit like this. If you're doing this of your own volition then that's just sad.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[SuperKendall]

If you read back through what I wrote it's not very Apple specific, you are just reading through an idiot Apple Hater lens.

Apple just has a very good camera design - but there are many other phone cameras that are quite excellent, and all of them are pressing mighty hard against the traditional camera market.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[jittles]

the cost in storage space (suddenly all your pictures take 8 times more space)

The size that photos make up on a device is negligible these days, 8x more is nothing. But I'm betting that with compression it's some small fraction of that.

Do you work in Apple's marketing department? I swear you praise everything that apple ever does. I'm sorry but even doubling the image size is a problem for most people I know. The base model on the iPhone 6S has 16GB of storage. I know people who keep thousands of pictures on their phones. If you doubled the size of all of them you would need more storage. If Apple actually increased the storage on the base model to 32GB, instead of just dropping the 32GB model all together, I would say that it's no issue. But to me this just looks like a gimmick feature that will force people to pay to upgrade to the 64GB model because they've run out of space all of the sudden.

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[SuperKendall]

It's not double, watch the keynote, it's heavily compressed. Can't you stupid Apple Haters at least complain about something real?

And saying someone is going to have an issue with w mere 2x increase in size (again, it's not even that much) is just insane all by itself - this is a phone which is shooting *4k video*, and you think a small difference in still size would matter at all? Come on!!

Re:The Live Photo distinction

[jittles]

It's not double, watch the keynote, it's heavily compressed.

Can you cite something for that? I watched the keynote. They didn't say how much extra space its going to take, now did they? In fact the amount of storage required will depend on the composition of the shot so the best they could do is tell you the approximate compression which I do not recall them mentioning. But let's just assume that they do something like MJPEG (worst case) at 30 frames per second with 3 seconds of video. That's 91 full frames that are being stored at 12MP with a compression ratio no greater than 100:1. Now let's suppose they use something like H.265 (a codec designed specifically for high resolution progressive scanned video) - you still have 91 frames at a compression ratio no greater than 1000:1. So how do you get less than double the size of a single JPEG image unless you drastically reduce the resolution of the 'live photo'? At best it is 10x smaller than 91 jpegs at the same resolution. Or do you think that Apple has come up with their own standard that is significantly better than anything the MPEG has come out with?

Can't you stupid Apple Haters at least complain about something real?

And saying someone is going to have an issue with w mere 2x increase in size (again, it's not even that much) is just insane all by itself - this is a phone which is shooting *4k video*, and you think a small difference in still size would matter at all? Come on!!

How many people shoot video over photos? Do you and your friends have more home videos on your phone or home pictures? I'm willing to bet most people take more pictures that videos and will therefore hit their storage cap faster due to 'live photo' over shooting 4k video. Anyone who is serious about doing 4k video will use a real video camera. How many people do you know even have a 4k display in their home?

Introducing the Apple Pen Instruction System PenIS

[Anonymous Coward]

At first it is hard to grasp, but with a little practice ideas will soon be shooting from your fingertips...

Stylus vs. Stylus

[SuperKendall]

Yes, and a BMW i8 Concept car is just $200 on Amazon!

What's that you say? It has utterly different capabilities than something else called a "car"? Huh.

12.9" with 4x3 ?

[GodWasAnAlien]

is apple ever going to give up on 4x3, or will they eventually try to revive the 4x3 TV, by changing all of the monitors to 4x3 as well?

Unfortunate lineup

[charrois]

From the looks of the stock price drop, it seems I'm not the only one unimpressed by the lineup. I'm not a fan of "bigger is better". For an iPhone to be practical to me, it has to fit comfortably in my pocket... which rules out the 6 and 6s lineup. I can't be the only one. If they would have released a iPhone 5-sized 6s, I would have snapped it up right away. Same goes for tablets. I have a full sized iPad, and that's as big as I want to go - I can't imagine the inconvenience of lugging around their latest behemoth. I know the iPad mini 4 was just released and was briefly excited about it, until I realized it's capabilities are still behind the year-old iPad Air 2. Bottom line is though I have the money and desire to buy the latest and greatest Apple tech, since size is important to me, their new offerings are less practical than their old, so I won't be getting them. On the other hand, I'm excited about tvOS. Though I'm not a gamer, bringing the world of third party apps to your TV has potential to be a game changer. If the hardware is reasonably capable, having a platform capable of interactive apps and games (not to mention, of course, TV and movies) in a device costing $150 may change some things. It's just too bad that Apple has gone from a company that really innovated to one that just makes marginal changes (not even necessarily improvements) to its products.

Re:Unfortunate lineup

[narcc]

Though I'm not a gamer, bringing the world of third party apps to your TV has potential to be a game changer. If the hardware is reasonably capable, having a platform capable of interactive apps and games (not to mention, of course, TV and movies) in a device costing $150 may change some things

Ouya, Roku, etc.

Surface Pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that saw the iPad Pro and immediately thought Apple was copying Microsoft?

Apple, I'm not a big fan of you, but I do own stock, and as somebody who has money riding on your success, following Microsoft in the tablet world is not a recipe for long term success.

Re:Surface Pro?

[Overzeetop]

It could get worse...it depends on whether the Surface Pro 4 reveal in October reveals just "meh" or something really fabulous. Because, honestly, if I'm going to drop north of $1000 on a device, if there's one out there with a 500+GB on onboard storage, a full OS, display port that lets me connect to multiple 4k monitors, a USB 3 port (maybe even a 3.1/C), uSD, a pen, and a nice docking station, it's not going to be a contest.

No Mac?

[Stormwatch]

> Apple Watch
> iPad
> Apple TV
> iPhone

Zero fucks given.

Re:No Mac?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You've realized that the Mac's days are numbered, right? A KVM for a future iOS device might happen, but OSX is the red-headed stepchild on Infinite Loop now.

Heh, they might just leave the Mac team at Infinite Loop when they board the spaceship. I'm afraid the Jolly Roger is in tatters.

Re:No Mac?

[Stormwatch]

Well, if the Mac dies, there goes the only reason why I'd ever give Apple a dime.

Girl's got to have her standards

[Overzeetop]

I know, you've been waiting for someone to pay that off for you. ;-)

Re:iPad Pro? Joke used to be the Redmond photocopi

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

One week it's 'Apple products don't have features others have had for years!' The next week it's "Now they're copying everybody and there's fragmentation!" Okie doke.

Get to save my money for another year

[CanadianMacFan]

Since they only came out with large phones again I'm keeping my credit cards in my wallet. Though this was expected. Wonder how long I'll have to make my 5s last?

Meh, same old gimmicky stuff from Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does nothing revolutionary. Its more evolutionary then anything. Just tac on a few more features fiddle with price, add some hardware improvements. Brag how they double performance from last years model and claim its all the greatest stuff on Earth. I like my Macbook Air but probably don't need that much computer.
I like my iPhone but its not leaps better then some Androids. I am so over the iPad as being anything more then a big amateur gaming screen. When you started out as being a premium computer maker, and now end up making much of your profit from a smartphone. I think you've taken a step back from revolutionary development.

Re:Meh, same old gimmicky stuff from Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does nothing revolutionary

Neither do you, dick.

Re:12.9" with 4x3 ?

[Overzeetop]

God, I hope not. It's what I hate about my current convertable (16:9). Unless you're watching a movie, 16:9 sucks. It's too wide in landscape and too tall in portrait (even my 15" tablet with near-legal size area was awkward).

4:3 is fine. 3:2 is fine. I'm a bit surprised they haven't gone to 1.41:1 - the same as A(n) sized paper.

iPad pro specs missing on the site

[ILongForDarkness]

I'm curious, at least the apple.ca site doesn't have the weight or dimensions of the iPad Pro. I wonder if the page was made before the final specs were known or is it a matter of if Apple can't say it is thinner and lighter they want to hide it behind all the new/improved specs?

Whaaa

[Petersko]

That Camaro - it's junk if it won't haul gravel! It's useless.

Re:Whaaa

[ranton]

That Camaro - it's junk if it won't haul gravel! It's useless.

This device is being marketed as being a productivity tool, not just a media consumption device like other tablets. A better analogy would be:

That Pickup Truck - it's not as good as I hope since it won't even haul gravel! It has little reason for being on the market.

Still supports ipad 2 and iphone 4s

[mveloso]

Just checked, and the iPhone 4s and iPad 2 are still supported on 9. How annoying for devs, how great for everyone else.

Re:Still supports ipad 2 and iphone 4s

[Anonymous Coward]

Just checked, and the iPhone 4s and iPad 2 are still supported on 9. How annoying for devs, how great for everyone else.

Not annoying for devs at all -- iOS 9 may support those old devices but the App Store is introducing now the ability for devs to limit their apps to only certain HW models. It lets Apple truthfully say that iOS still supports those devices without offering meaningful support for them.

Honestly, what use these days is a device that can't run any third-party apps?

Re:Listen when powered off; are you bloody kidding

[green1]

I know that people with the motox have been using the equivalent "OK Google" for a while now with the phone "off" and seem to love it, it's also available on other androids too now i believe

You need to google more

[SuperKendall]

Nothing, if you have no objection to Macgyvering.

A few seconds on Google could have told you there are scores of iPhone stead cam setups. If you ever visit CES you can find more iPhone video accessories than you can shake a stick at, much of it fairly professional in quality...

Re:You need to google more

[narcc]

Which will be purchased and used exclusively by idiots. Excluding, of course, professionals that are also idiots. Even they know better.

Re:You need to google more

[BasilBrush]

Pretty stupid to call people who know more about the business than you do "idiots".

You can of course get better movie cameras than an iPhone. But the iPhone is a better camera than professional digital cameras of only a few years ago. So it's not a bad choice at all for making indie movies.

Re:You need to google more

[narcc]

Yeah, I'd say using a cellphone to film a movie is a pretty stupid idea.

It's not only a matter of quality and infrastructure, as others have pointed out. Can you think of any other reasons that a cellphone is a laughably bad tool? I'll bet a nickel that you can. Why not just accept reality?

But the iPhone is a better camera than professional digital cameras of only a few years ago

What's amazing is that you believe this. I can only speculate as to why. But it's that absurd belief that drives you to make such ridiculous statements like " it's not a bad choice at all for making indie movies." I wouldn't use a cellphone to shoot a kids birthday party, let alone anything professional, for reasons that should be perfectly obvious.

Re:You need to google more

[BasilBrush]

Keep wallowing in your ignorance.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ent...

Re:You need to google more

[narcc]

There was a story a while back about a girl who wrote a novel on an old flip-phone. It made the news because it's absurd. While she managed to write a novel, her instrument of choice was clearly not well-suited to the task.

The same applies to your story.

A cellphone is not a viable substitute for a movie camera, just as a flip phone is not a viable substitute for a word processor. They're completely inadequate.

I've said this before: Just because a task can be done a particular way does not mean that it's a good way, the best way, or equivalent to other methods. This is not complicated.

Anyhow, the fact remains: The iPhone is no substitute for a professional movie camera, for all the reasons you've seen in this thread already as well those that you already understand, but stubbornly refuse to accept.

I should probably let you know that Apple is in no danger of going-out-of-business once the truth of it's inadequacy as a professional movie camera comes to light. You can accept reality here without fear. The iPhone will survive without being the best tool for every imaginable task. It is not that, has never been that, and will never be that. To believe otherwise is simply delusional.

Re:You need to google more

[BasilBrush]

You seem to think that was a one off. It's not.

http://www.screenjunkies.com/m...

for all the reasons you've seen in this thread

The only reason(s) that you mentioned in this film were you incorrect belief that there were not mounts for iPhones to fit on tripods and steadi-cams. Nothing else. You have literally no argument.

Re:You need to google more

[narcc]

I never made that claim.

Of course, you'll deny that as well. Reality doesn't seem to suit you.

Re:You need to google more

[BasilBrush]

Reality is you were wrong las usual.

Umm, they already said it's not private...

[SuperKendall]

What private API's? What makes you think the Live Photo is not a type of burst photo usable via standard Photos SDK?

Any app will be able to work with Live Photos - they mentioned Facebook was already adding support.

Re:Umm, they already said it's not private...

[exomondo]

What private API's?

Those that allow integration with the operating system to make it a first-class citizen. There are many camera applications superior to Apple's one but you can't quickly access them because this is allowed only for Apple applications.

What makes you think the Live Photo is not a type of burst photo usable via standard Photos SDK?

Nothing, I never said it isn't, you incorrectly inferred that.

Any app will be able to work with Live Photos - they mentioned Facebook was already adding support.

Right and the existing applications that did cinemagraphs couldn't integrate with the OS at the same level. Not only can you not change the default camera application but you cannot add callbacks to the existing one to use 3rd party functionality. So instead you have to wait until they take the functionality of these 3rd party applications, integrate it into their own offerings and make those other ones redundant. You're stuck with the limitations of Apple's default applications, same as with email, any kind of OS-provided "email" option defaults to their email client and you can't change that even if you don't use it. Same goes for web browsers.

Re: what's left after Apple DNA?

[Anonymous Coward]

iBrain! The headband that anticipates your thoughts before you do.

Apple Penis Aka the Pencil Very Lame No Seller

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumors had it that Apple would role out the Penis, Apple Dildo.

Well the dildo turned out to be a Pencil neck geek!

Apple has just crushed the hearts of 4.5 billon women world wide!

That is a SIZABLE of cash running away from Timmy Cook and Jony Ive this and every quarters and years hence.

Well! After all, what would U expect from two gays?!

Ha ha

Durrrrwut?

[Uberbah]

Styluses and keyboards have been available for use with the iPad pretty much from the beginning of the product line, just not made by Apple themselves. And the iPad Pro is still going to be running iOS, not a full version of Mac OS X the way a Surface Pro runs a full version of Windows.

Re:Durrrrwut?

[tomxor]

yes and there are n number of addon things made for ford cars... doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to integrate them into their product line. And who cares what it runs? "pro" and "iPad" for pro consuming? also iOS is OS X underneath all the makeup and touch specific libraries.. but who'd want a desktop UI for fat fingers users.

Re:Durrrrwut?

[Uberbah]

yes and there are n number of addon things made for ford cars... doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to integrate them into their product line.

Well, yeah, trying to rig up a nitrous system to your Ford Focus isn't going to do great things for the lifespan of the engine, and strapping a gigantic spoiler on the back is going to be fugly. But GPS navigation and integrated blutooth audio is pretty sweet. When has Apple done the former, as opposed to the latter?

And who cares what it runs? "pro" and "iPad" for pro consuming?

The Surface Pro tries to be three devices, and does a passable job at each once Metro has been castrated: a tablet, a laptop, and a desktop replacement (with dock). The iPad Pro is just one thing: a tablet.

To cut a long story short, Apple isn't trying to copy the Surface Pro with the iPad Pro. The iPad isn't running the same OS as the desktop, it's not intended to replace a laptop, and it doesn't have a dock feature to replace a desktop. It was released two years before the first Surface, so you probably could have ordered a stylus and keyboard from the Apple store before you could buy a Surface with either. Lastly, Apple started calling some of their products "Pro" at least six years before the Surface was released in 2012.

iPhone 6S seems exciting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an Android guy and you still have to give credit to Apple where it is due. Apple has never been about spec whoring, with the highest clock speeds or the most megapixels. It's all about optimization.

Apple does R&D and designs its own A-series chips. Compare this with how Qualcomm had royally screwed up the Snapdragon 810, resulting in unhappy phone manufacturers who resorted to alternatives (Mediatek, Exynos, Snapdragon 808). That's basically one whole year being wasted.

12MP camera seems underwhelming, but I bet it will ace the comprehensive camera tests or at least come up a close second.

I'll continue to stick with Android until a particular obscure Android-only app gets ported to iOS (hint: divination and fortune telling), then maybe I'll reconsider my options. I'm not particularly heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, and Google Maps is available on iOS. Switching ain't hard for me.

The first iphone to sell less than its predecessor

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what we're looking at right here. AAPL is heading to permanent double digits.

Nokia, before the calamity, offered ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the N808 Pureview, with the most awesome firmware and a beautiful Carl Zeiss lens.
Check out the pro DSLR review ... http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8083837371/review-nokia-808-pureview

"The 808 proves that Nokia can innovate, and its PureView technology has piqued the interest of serious photographers, being one of the most important innovations - arguable the most important - in mobile photography since the smarphone era dawned five or so years ago. As such, the 808 is intriguing not just in itself, but because of what it represents. Things could be about to get interesting..." ... and here we are today, in interesting land :)

Clarity on Apple's products

[theolein]

I actually logged into Slashdot again for the first time in years to post on Apple's products:

The iPad Pro is the Surface done right, and I say this as much as I admire the Surface. Apple has copied liberally from MS; stylus, side-by-side windowing, folding keyboard, and it's done well. The keyboard eliminates the need for a kickstand, the stylus is good enough for artists and the 12" display means you don't need a laptop anymore along with the windowing improvements. Sucks for those who bought a MacBook.

The new iPhone finally has a resolution that is usable in low light. Apple has always had very good cameras on its iPhones and this takes it one step further. It's still a mobile camera with a tiny sensor and a fixed lens, but those have gotten very good in recent years. Not yet quite as good as Samsung S6, Motorola X Style, LG G4 or Sony Z5, but Apple is not usually about choice. The force touch is a very useful addition, but will be mostly useful for 3rd party apps, gaming etc. However, since the Huawei Mate S has it as well, it's only a matter of time before it's standard on all mobile platforms.

The new Apple TV that now offers an SDK for developers is something that will be extremely useful. The Apple TV is already the best device for screen sharing in terms of quality. It even works well with Windows with 3rd party AirSquirrel. The devkit will enable developers to make even more useful presentation tools, which is where the Apple TV really shines. For home, there are many other options that are just as useful.

Of course you would still be locked into Apple's ecosystem, which is the main reason I avoid Apple's iOS products.

Re:iPad Pro? Joke used to be the Redmond photocopi

[tomxor]

Not "one week" just a constant low level hummm... Yeah listening to customers who want every feature is the way to fuck up your products, no one should listed to that kind of vauge "More cowbell like company x" input. Any company allowing that kind of feature creep and product fragmentation is just asking for trouble... References: history.

Erm...

[sociocapitalist]

"New Siri feature allows you to speak to your iPhone whether you're powered on or not."

Because my phone should not be listening to me when its powered off. Period. Ever.

IPod users get shafted

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame that none of that is in the iPod touch

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually people watch video on their TVs and not phone (unless it's YouTube or Facebook) so it's great. I'll be using that to take videos of my son for sure. As for playback, you at least want the thing that took the video to be able to play it back, as well as downloaded videos so you don't have to fetch and store multiple streams just in case.

Re:iPad Pro? Joke used to be the Redmond photocopi

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You're a bunch of hypocrites.

Source: History.

Just A Failure Like Pip Pin! Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Pip Pin was Apple 90s answer to todays Apple TV only a lot better hardware and less cash!

But same problem as today: No Games!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

Cook & Ive are the real deal lam asses. /.