So What Did Apple Announce At Their 2019 iPhone Event?
Today was Apple’s latest event where products such as the new iPhone and Apple Watch (though I did put some cold water on that) were due to be announced. So what did get announced? Here’s a quick rundown:
Apple spoke about Apple Arcade. They demoed games from game makers Capcom, Annapurna Interactive, and Konami. Most importantly, it will be $4.99 USD a month for a family subscription starting on September 19th. 150 countries around the world will get it, and more than 100 games in the launch catalog.
Over to Apple TV+. Apple shared the trailer for See which is one of the shows that Apple is developing and stars Jason Momoa (AKA Aquaman from Justice League). The first shows will be available on November 1st in over 100 countries. And it will cost $4.99 US a month for a family subscription. Plus if you buy a MacBook or iDevice starting today, you get Apple TO+ for free for one year. Take that Netflix and Disney+. Though those two services have way more content.
In a bit of a surprise, the next stop was the iPad. Apple announced the 7th Generation iPad with a 10.2″ retina display. There’s a A10 Fusion chip powering it which isn’t exactly new. It will start $329 USD and can be ordered today. Educational customers pay $299 USD. It will start shipping on September 30.
Apple Watch was next. There are three new studies that Apple will be participating in via the Apple Watch Research app which is coming later this year. The three studies are the Apple Hearing Study to study the effects of sound noises. Apple Heart & Movement Study, and the Apple Women’s Health study. As for the watch itself, we now have the Series 5. It now comes with an always on display retina display using a LPTO display. Yet it still has an 18 hour battery life. It also has a compass on board complete with a compass app. The Series 5 cellular models support International emergency calling. And as expected, titanium and ceramic finishes along with recycled aluminum finishes. Apple Watch Nike models, with sport bands and reflective sport loops. New Hermes models with color blocked bands are on the table along with Hermes models in black, with space black stainless cases with black noir leather bands. Apple Watch Nike models, with sport bands and reflective sport loops. New Hermes models with color blocked bands. Series 5 GPS models start at $399 USD for the WiFi version and $499 USD for GPS + Cellular and are available to order today. Series 3 pricing drops to $199 USD.
Next up was the iPhone 11. It has an anodized aluminum and glass design. And the claimed toughest glass ever in a smartphone on front and back. There are six new colors, with new purple, white, yellow, green, black, and Product (RED). It has a 6.1″ Liquid Retina display, True Tone, wide color, Tap to wake, and Haptic Touch. Spatial audio, with immersive theater-like experience. Dolby Atmos. A 12MP TrueDepth front camera has wider sensor with 4k video on front camera is on board. A dual camera system with 12MP wide camera. 12MP Ultra Wide Camera with 120-degree field of view. Updated image pipeline. Added semantic rendering, to help people look even better. Next-gen smart HDR. Multi-scale tone mapping to treat highlights different in different parts of the image. There’s new portrait mode and night mode on board too. Video can switch between the lenses in 4K 60 FPS. And QuickTake is back! Simply tap and hold the shutter button when taking a picture to take a video. Oh yeah, there’s a A13 Bionic processor running the show which Apple says is the fastest GPU and CPU in a smart phone ever. It also has 1 hour more battery life than the iPhone XR. Apple must have figured out that price that they were asking for the previous XR was too expensive. Thus the price now starts at $699 USD.
Next up was the Phone 11 Pro and Pro Max. For the record, I hate that Pro Max name. It comes with surgical grade stainless steel. The back is a single piece of machined glass. It has a matte textured finish. It comes in Midnight Green, Space Grey, Silver, Gold. It still comes with a 1200 nit OLED display (5.8″ and 6.5″) that is claimed to be 15% more energy efficient. It only has haptic touch though. You get HDR10, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos. All that is now called the Super Retina XDR display. You get the A13 Bionic processor too. iPhone 11 Pro lasts 4 hours longer than iPhone Xs. And Apple joins the 21st century by including an fast charge 18-watt adapter in the box. It has three cameras. A 12MP wide camera with f/1.9 aperture. 12MP with f/2.0 aperture. Ultra wide f/2.4 and 120 field of view. It also shoots video at 4k60fps XDR video. WiFi 6 is on board as well. Face ID is faster and works from more angles. iPhone 11 Pro starts at $999 USD. iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at $1099 USD. Pre orders start Friday at 5AM PDT / 8AM EDT and shipping starts September 20. Sticking around are the iPhone XR at $599 USD and iPhone 8 at $449 USD. There are new cases as well.
Apple Retail was next. You can now pair any Apple Watch with any band in store or online. Apple now offers low monthly payments and trade in options. Oh, and if you are in NYC, the 5th Avenue store will reopen on September 20th.
That’s it. That was quite a bit. But not quite what I was expecting given the scale of the rumors that were floating around such as a Tile like device or sleep tracking. I’ll be checking to see if anything else appears so stay tuned to this page for updates.
UPDATE:
From Apple PR:
“iOS 13 will be available on September 19 as a free software update for iPhone 6s and later. Additional software features will be available on September 30 with iOS 13.1.”
UPDATE #2: MacRumors is reporting that watchOS 6 will be out for Series 3 and 4 Apple Watches on September 19. Other Apple Watches will get it later this fall. Whatever that means. MacRumors is also reporting that macOS Catalina will be out in October. Whatever that means.
While it wasn’t mentioned in the keynote, the new Apple Watch Series 5 indeed runs on a new Apple S5 chip inside: 64-bit dual-core S5 processor, up to 2x faster than S3 processor (includes W3 wireless chip)
That seems a bit odd. Last year the Series 4 promised that it was the S4 chip was 2x faster as per this cached webpage. Here are screenshots as proof of this:
Does that mean that the Series 5 is not any faster than the Series 4? I’d love for someone to serve up that answer. Because if it’s not any faster, and with no groundbreaking feature like ECG was last year, I’m not feeling a reason to upgrade from my Series 4.
But I’ve also noted something else. If you go to this page on Apple.ca and scroll to the bottom, you’ll see this:
Apple does not appear to be selling the Series 4 anymore. That’s weird. I’d say get one while you can and hopefully it will be discounted.
UPDATE #4: I found something else. Apple made a big deal about the LPTO display in the Apple Watch Series 5 that allows the display to be always on. The thing is that I found this in this cached webpage for the Series 4:
It too has an LPTO display. So… Unless this is a new version of this display, it kind of implies that Apple could have made the Series 4 to be always on. I guess we’ll have to wait until someone like iFixit does a teardown to discover if this is the same display or not. If it is, expect the class action lawsuit from ticked off Series 4 owners to be inbound.
This entry was posted on September 10, 2019 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
So What Did Apple Announce At Their 2019 iPhone Event?
Today was Apple’s latest event where products such as the new iPhone and Apple Watch (though I did put some cold water on that) were due to be announced. So what did get announced? Here’s a quick rundown:
That’s it. That was quite a bit. But not quite what I was expecting given the scale of the rumors that were floating around such as a Tile like device or sleep tracking. I’ll be checking to see if anything else appears so stay tuned to this page for updates.
UPDATE:
UPDATE #2: MacRumors is reporting that watchOS 6 will be out for Series 3 and 4 Apple Watches on September 19. Other Apple Watches will get it later this fall. Whatever that means. MacRumors is also reporting that macOS Catalina will be out in October. Whatever that means.
UPDATE #3: 9to5mac has specs on the new Apple Watches. It’s intresting reading. Specifically this part:
While it wasn’t mentioned in the keynote, the new Apple Watch Series 5 indeed runs on a new Apple S5 chip inside: 64-bit dual-core S5 processor, up to 2x faster than S3 processor (includes W3 wireless chip)
That seems a bit odd. Last year the Series 4 promised that it was the S4 chip was 2x faster as per this cached webpage. Here are screenshots as proof of this:
Does that mean that the Series 5 is not any faster than the Series 4? I’d love for someone to serve up that answer. Because if it’s not any faster, and with no groundbreaking feature like ECG was last year, I’m not feeling a reason to upgrade from my Series 4.
But I’ve also noted something else. If you go to this page on Apple.ca and scroll to the bottom, you’ll see this:
Apple does not appear to be selling the Series 4 anymore. That’s weird. I’d say get one while you can and hopefully it will be discounted.
UPDATE #4: I found something else. Apple made a big deal about the LPTO display in the Apple Watch Series 5 that allows the display to be always on. The thing is that I found this in this cached webpage for the Series 4:
It too has an LPTO display. So… Unless this is a new version of this display, it kind of implies that Apple could have made the Series 4 to be always on. I guess we’ll have to wait until someone like iFixit does a teardown to discover if this is the same display or not. If it is, expect the class action lawsuit from ticked off Series 4 owners to be inbound.
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This entry was posted on September 10, 2019 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.