by First impressions: You can tell the emotions were flowing at the Steve Jobs Theatre on 12th September. Despite the grand occasion of what was essentially an already spoiled event, could Apple show us any surprises from a leaked keynote event. The answer… Sort of. Serenak from the EssentialApple podcast shares his thoughts.
I thought the Apple Watch Series 3 was basically what any fool probably could predict… a newer faster model, and one with LTE (which doesn’t interest me in the least – but I guess it’s nice if you want that sort of “independence” from your phone…). Now with a red end on the Crown so you can demonstrate that you have the “new shiny”… (maybe I will put some nail polish on the crown of my Series Zero :D)
Apple TV – well 4K was very predictable, and some would say overdue… however I have both ATV 3 and 4 and I a) don’t care about 4K, b) don’t have a 4K TV so that’s going to pass me by – again nice for those who have been waiting for the 4K option, and of course at least now you can play your 4K photos and videos from your iPhone onto your TV
iPhone 8’s – nice, really good solid update… everything you would expect, new more powerful CPU – with all the performance/load balancing/battery saving acrobatics you would expect, upgraded ISP, and GPU, better camera sensors and all the usual. Design still looks basically unchanged but with a “glass” back to allow the wireless charging (bring your own charging mat… chargeable extra) – the pundits will call it boring, and Apple will sell them by the tens of millions.
Basic storage now 64GB which is good, expanded now 256GB, clever way to force people onto the higher level because anyone upgrading from a 128GB model will basically feel compelled to move to 256… same trick they pulled by dropping 64GB for the 7… but now they are dropping the middle tier.
iPhone X – really? Of all the names pushed around the table you went with X pronounced “Ten”? Again? It will be the iPhone Ex to all and sundry… I am with Gruber here, they would have been better calling it Ex and leaving the “10” thing as a subtle anniversary.
Very nice I guess – nothing in it appeals enough to me to make me want it desperately. Not that I will upgrade this year, I have 2 year cycle and I had the 7 last year. It reminded me very much of the introduction of the MacBook Pro Retina. Remember that? “Here is a new, really expensive, laptop basically showing off where we are heading, soon all our laptops will be this way”. Nice that it didn’t have a load of dodads not in the others, basically the same internals, some upsell jiggery on the camera.
As I see it, it was all about the screen no? Oh, and the face recognition which whilst clever looked like a PITA to me and FAILED when Hairforce One used it first time – hence no doubt him doing it repeatedly later on. No home button? We’ll get used to it I am sure – no biggie. No Touch ID as a fall back, not so good. Call it irrational, call it psychological, whatever – people will be resistant to losing it.
Give it a year or two and all the phones will be like that. Maybe even the X is a sort of “one off” technology preview and next year there will be two phones again. Price? Well bit rich for me… BUT… here is the thing – people don’t complain overly about $1200-$1500 for their laptops – now consider how MUCH MORE most people use their phone than their laptop, now does it seem so steep?
Yes people don’t usually change laptops every 1-3 years, but even so.
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