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

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: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.

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: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: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: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.

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

[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: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.

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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.