Apple Reminds Us Why It Is The Biggest Name In Tech — Special Event 2018
Apple’s attempt at influencing more than just the smartphone industry(?)
A year ago, on the 12th of September, the smartphone space saw a paradigm shift in its industrial design. The iPhone X gave a new direction to smartphone manufacturers, and as customers, we were greeted with new features that were previously unavailable to us. This year’s Apple Special Event started off in a dramatic, Mission-Impossible-themed manner and it was only fair, that the announcements followed suit.
Apple Watch Series 4
Overview
Smartwatches, since their inception in the recent past, have placed significant emphasis on fitness tracking and monitoring of the users’ health, along with keeping them connected. The latest edition of the Apple Watch — the Series 4, uses these three pillars as the primary focus for innovation. The team of engineers tasked with achieving this, used a host of new and improved sensors to monitor and log real time health and fitness data. When paired with thinner bezels, rounded corners and elegant UI updates, the device truly screams 2018!
Apple Influences: Future of Healthcare
Next-gen accelerometer and gyroscope sensors help the Apple Watch in setting new trends in the healthcare sector. Firstly, Apple introduced a new feature that helps detects “falls”. By conducting extensive studies on real world people, real world fall scenarios and the associated movements of our limbs, Apple was able to calibrate the sensors on the Apple Watch to detect when its user falls down. Upon detection, the SOS feature triggers an alert to call for assistance. If the watch detects no motion for a minute, it sends the location of the user to the preset emergency contacts, and automatically triggers an SOS call for medical attention. One does not need to look far, before finding a suitable use case scenario for this technology.
Electrocardiogram (commonly known as ECG) is made available to the general public, for the first time, through the Apple Watch Series 4. By using an electrode present inside the digital crown of the watch, users can get an ECG done right from their homes (or literally anywhere else). Effectively, this helps doctors monitor their patients throughout the course of a regular day and log essential data. With the advent of predictive analysis and intervention of data science into every facet of our lives, this is truly a change to look forward to.
iPhone XS/XS Max/XR
Overview
“Leaks” and “rumours” are accurate now, more than ever before. As a result, it came as no real surprise when Apple announced a trio of new iPhones for the coming year. Continuing on the trend that was momentarily paused last year, Apple came back with an “S” and “S Plus” (known as “S Max” this time around) skew of the phone that they released the previous year. The iPhone XS and XS Max stay true to the Apple product cycle and receive upgraded internals, while remaining fairly similar on the outside.
In true Apple fashion, the keynote speaker called these phones, “by far the most advanced iPhones ever created”. This time, however, there is more truth to the statement than just marketing mumble-jumble.
The XR is reminiscent of 2013, when Apple launched the iPhone 5C lineup of phones. For the most part, it can loosely be described as a “Diet version” of the iPhone X. It retains much of the functionality and processing power, while cutting corners in the display and camera departments. It has no unique selling point except its (relatively) reduced price point. For an Apple Fan who just cannot shell out the cash for an iPhone X or its XS successor, the XR is the perfect option.
Apple Influences: Future of Silicon Industry
In their new A12 Bionic processor, Apple shrunk their transistor size from 10 nm to an industry-first 7 nm. This helped increase transistor count from 4.3b last year, to a whopping 6.9b. Moore’s law is certainly on the decline, but for now, Apple seems to have no issues in increasing the transistor count (albeit, not doubling) in their processors. This beefy new processor forms the backbone of multiple new advancements on the software side of things.
Apple Influences: Future of Augmented Reality (AR)
Apple has been heavily invested into the AR sphere, for a while now. The release of the original AR Kit, saw many app developers hop on-board the AR hype train. The subsequent release of CoreML paved the way for endless integration between the two developer tools.
In a rather impressive demo, the developer of the basketball training app, Home Court, along with the recent NBA Hall of Fame inductee, Steve Nash, showcased the power of the devices in our pockets. The ‘Real Time Shot Science’ technology broke down jump shots of a shooter like never before, using nothing but an iPhone. From the automatic detection of the court boundaries and the hoop, to displaying real time metrics for each shot, this app poses a serious threat to more expensive, sensor-based solutions that are in the market today.
Given that the sample space for AR apps is limited, it will certainly take a while before we can completely invest ourselves into this sphere, but there is no denying the fact that the potential waiting to be unlocked is humongous.
Apple Influences: Future of Photography/Videography
Smartphone cameras have been on an upward trajectory over the last decade or so. With each new phone, we are greeted with new optics and/or new software updates. While the optics and the lenses underwent upgrades, the stars of the show are ‘Smart HDR’ and the adjustable depth-of-field slider.
Smart HDR takes regular HDR photography and places it on a pedestal above the rest. Aptly named ‘Zero Shutter Lag’ the camera app takes multiple pictures with multiple exposures over a small time frame. It utilises the Neural Engine in the A12 Bionic chip to filter out the best from each picture and stitch them together to give the best possible image. This is made possible by the massive 1 trillion operations per photo that can be done using the A12 Bionic processor.
We are heading towards the era of computational photography (brought to the mainstream by Google’s single-lens Pixel 2 series), and this is increasingly fuelled by the advancements in digital image processing. In an effort that can be regarded as a technological marvel, they have successfully managed to integrate a variable depth of field slider into the ‘edit’ menu of their ‘Photos’ app. For the first time ever, users can alter the depth of field from F1.4 to F16, after the photo has been taken. A demo at the event showcased the massive potential this technology has, and why this is the next step forward in the realm of photography. The XR draws parallels with the Google Pixel 2, where portrait mode is achieved using a single lens and tons of processing.
Last, but certainly not the least, videography also benefits from these groundbreaking innovations. Adding to that, the ability to record stereo sound natively is going to expand the smartphone videography space.
It will be interesting to see the direction Apple goes, with all of this. They clearly have their sights set on an industry much bigger than the smartphone space. Influencing the character of an industry is not an easy thing to do, but if we trust anyone to do it, it has to be Apple!
Disclaimer: This article was never intended to be a comprehensive round-up of all the announcements. Rather, this was aimed at extrapolating the current technologies to give us a glimpse of what the future looks like. For a full roundup, check out CNet’s coverage of the event.
