Bits & Pixels — TL:DR Edition 6 It was Apple Day on the Interweb yesterday

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4 min readSep 10, 2015

#TL:DR Squared

Take this as the executive summary from yesterday’s long keynote

Like many of it’s past events, Apple announced a bevy of new hardware devices. The list included a re-thought from the ground up Apple TV, the S model of the iPhone 6 family, a brand new iPad size dubbed the iPad Pro and an Apple Watch collaboration with luxury brand Hermes.
Some key themes yesterday included the graduation of Apple TV from fancy cable box to a full fledge platform where users could shop, get content recommendations and play games with their friends. The iPad Pro arrival is a serious push to replace for the masses the laptop. With the Iphone 6 models, the usual software upgrades were coupled with 4K video and a new Live Photo feature, yet again confirming how important photography and video capture continues to be to Apple.
Software wise, Apple reminded us that important operating system updates for the iPhones and Apple Watches (iOS 9 and WatchOS2) were going to be available to the general public on September 16th. It also introduced TVOS, but more on that later in this newsletter.
The under the radar announcement was a new program by Apple that would now enable US customers to sign up for a plan through Apple in which they could upgrade to a new iPhone every year. This upgrade program flips the script in the US where carriers had just started offering this program in the last year or so. Apple is the uncarrier.

It’s hard to summarize all the changes that were made to Apple TV. But let’s try. First it’s no longer a device that serves as a front end to televesion and feature content. With the introduction of TV OS, it’s now a full fledge platform like Apple Watch and the iPhone for which developers can deploy apps. Demo’ed at the Apple Event was a shopping app (GILT), a couple of games (Crossy Road and a Harmonix title). The takeaway is that Apple is looking to TV as a full fledge platform and not just a content catalog.
The importance of the introduction of gaming on AppleTV cannot be overstated. It basically looked and felt like a Wii demo (thanks to the new gyroscope remote)
On the surface the Apple TV UI redesign makes it look like a slicker version of Netflix. But one with very deep Siri integration which allows you to navigate the show and movie catalog by simply saying “show me new movies that are good for kids” or “show me movies with Liam Neeson”.

As Tim Cook, the CEO Apple put it, “The iPad is the simplest expression of our personal computing vision” and its hard to argue that the iPad Pro, with its bigger screen (12.3 inches) at a better resolution than a 15 inch Mac Book Pro, isn’t going to replace a lot of laptops. Beyond a better screen and CPU, it was really the device driving iOS9 new split view (2 apps side by side at the same time) and driving the introduction of Apple’s very own Stylus, the Apple Pencil.

The iPhone S upgrade was also announced. It arrived with a 70% increase in processing power and 90% increase in graphic processing. But even more useful than the specs, was the introduction of 4K video capture along with a new photo/video format called Live Photos. Simply take a normal picture and in Live Photos mode, the camera captures 1.5 second before and after the image including sound. Apple just make the animated Gif mainstream.
As mentioned earlier, a really interesting announcement was the announcement of the Apple Upgrade program. For a monthly fee, you would be able to chose any carrier for service and pay Apple approx $32 to be able to upgrade yearly your phone.

While Apple opened the event to talk about the Apple Watch, there were no huge announcement previously unknown. We already knew that the next version of its operating system, WatchOS2, is due out September 16. What we didn’t know was that they had partnered with Luxury maker Hermes to offer a band and exclusive model. Perhaps the latter is a sign of things to come as Apple seeks to partner with other brands on their Watch collection.