Apple’s Live Event — Commentary
Tim Cook wishes us good morning and talks about Apple Music so far..
17 million subscribers! The iOS redesign is shown, and boasting about the exclusives of the Apple Music service — now the Apple Music festival 10 in London.
The App Store alone has generated twice the revenue of apples closest competitor in the last month.
Mario shows up with Shigeru Miyamoto
Super Mario Run — sort of like Sonic and Mario combined together with a fairly simple control mechanic, Mario runs automatically. Tapping the screen makes Mario jump, and longer taps make Mario jump higher and get as many rings. Coins as possible.
Toad Rally — beat your friends. Semi online battle play.
No IAP, Mario will have a fixed price. Mario iMessage stickers are coming too.
Connect Ed is a great program helping schools integrate computers and coding education into their classrooms.
Now talking about Swift Playgrounds which is a very cool app I have tried myself, kids will enjoy it much more than I did with Logo!
Susan Prescott with news about iWork updates..
New collaborative features announced called Real-Time Collaboration. Demonstrating live editing while presenting on stage.
Now announcing the new Apple Watch:
Apple Watch is now the second most popular brand, under Rolex!
The top selling smart Watch too.
Jeff Williams on stage to talk about watchOS 3
Some cool features, details here
SOS feature — very handy subtle way to call emergency services, if this could auto-detect falls it would be perfect
Pokemon go is coming to the watch :-(
CEO of niantic “labs” is on stage
Announces a new device that nobody seems interested in.
Then Pokemon go watch app actually gets a response.
The crowd does not seem that excited about Pokemon, I think that fad/bubble has now burst
The Breathe App is a great addition
Next generation of Apple Watch is announced
On the new Watch, the speaker has been redesigned as it was the main weak point for water — it now ejects water when it sounds!
The new chip has a lot more power, and has a nicer display to power as well. It is the brightest display ever shipped on any Apple product! Would make a terrific torch — I use my generation 1 all the time as a torch but this would be much better.
GPS built in..
The Ceramic Watch appears. I want.
“The ultimate device for healthy Life”
Announcing the new Apple Watch Nike+
“With the Apple Watch Nike Plus the worlds best running club comes to life”
“Your perfect running partner”
I do not like the look of the bands but they must breathe well.
Apple Watch Nike to be available in Late October
Now it’s time to talk about the New iOS and iPhone
Home automation has been integrated into the new iOS, if you have HomeKit enabled accessories you can now control your garage door, front door and so many new products that are coming to market this year that will be branded “works with Apple HomeKit”
Many snap chat, and other features are now available inside iMessage. You can send all sorts of special effects with the new iMessage.
The most advanced smartphone…
Jony Ive is speaking about the new high gloss finish on the ultra gloss anodised jet black iPhone.
Everyone’s favourite dad Phil Schiller enters, he loves the jet black finish.
There is also a matte finish black, gold, silver and rose gold.
The home button has been changed slightly, improved and more sensitive using the Taptic Engine.
Both are now water and dust resistant, which is a terrific breakthrough. IP67 standard, it should not be damaged by dropping into water now.
The camera has been upgraded significantly, optical image stabilisation, 3x longer exposure, six element lens and new sensor. 30% more energy efficient. The LED flash detects flicker and adjust so that you can take flicker free shots.
The theatre projector is not capable of showing the photos in their true glory — only certain Apple screens and other cinema quality monitors can show this colour detail.
The front camera has improved a lot as well, it is 7 megapixel now and also does wide colour capture.
The iPhone 7 plus has another camera, a “tele photo lens” which is similar tech seen on SLR’s, it will allow some very cool multi focus effects, and optical zoom
Demonstration now showing an SLR shot, how well the Depth of Field can be used properly — usually only massive lenses can handle this. Bokeh is the photographic term for a perfectly blurred background effect
the software creates a “depth map” almost making the photo 3 dimensional, then this can be adjusted to make portrait pics look brilliant. — “Live Bokeh” /realtime depth detail
Phil says that the picture above was actually NOT taken with a pro camera, it was the “pro” camera on the iPhone 7 Plus! I was fooled.
The display has been improved 25% brighter than last model, wide colour gamut with 3D Touch as well. — rumours of Apple Pencil support are not correct.
He is taking about their snapchat ripoff.. i mean “stories” feature. his photographer accidentally flips camera, proving this is all live. Ian poses for the camera, showing off the colours of his shirt — neither my TV or the projector can show this. Instagram is now supporting Live Photos properly for loops, very cool as before you needed to use a 3rd party app like Google’s .. Motion Stills?
Audio Time
They have built in stereo speakers this time, and much better quality. I wonder how they compare to say the iPad Pro range. One speaker is at the bottom, one at top. Best for landscape stereo, will be good for ringing in the pocket.
EarBuds now connect via the lightning port. Many tears and arguments have been held over this one — personally i just use the phones in the box, and my third party headphones already need adaptors to connect to PS4 or phones /tablets and computers so this does not bother me. Many others are Losing it over this one. If it enables proper water proofing, I am 100% behind it.
Phil’s joking about how old the analog jack is, about 100 years or so. As long as there’s an adaptor, it is quite irrelevant to most of us. They needed to use the space for the haptic engine, and that new camera takes a -lot- of space inside the phone, to take out this port means for the majority of users, they can now fit more inside the phone and not have a dust collecting port that honestly very, very few ever use.
An adaptor for lightning — 3.5mm is included in the box so you don’t have to buy separately.
While Apple already sells many wireless headphones via their Beats Brand, they have now unveiled their own branded wireless headphones.
Jony Ive speaks on the design, functions and the w1 chip, features and sensors that work with the AirPods to determine all sorts of data like “are both in ear or just one?” 5 hours of listening on one charge, the carrying case has a battery inside which will charge them approximately 5 more times, for a life just over 24 hours on one charge of case.
Sound wise no Hz stats, would like to know how good bass and treble response and performance goes to.
iCloud Keychain makes the AirPods handoff like all other devices, very easily switch between iPad iPod watch, phone and computer. The w1 chip helps this process.
The carrying case is smaller than the wired carrying case, looks like a small dental floss case
Beats Headphones are now offering upgraded models with w1 chips too, Solo 1 Wireless up to 40 hours, over the headphones and two other new models.
Apple Pay Advances
FeliCa Support announced for the Japanese market, it will help Apple Pay and other wireless payment and functions. Transit Maps for Japan also included. The second apple watch now works with FeliCa too.
Performance talk time.
The new chip is called the A10 Fusion, a Quad Core CPU with approximately 3.3 billion transistors. Two high performance cores, running 40% faster than the a9, the other two cores are designed for extreme efficiency and use 1/5 the power, helping battery life to the extreme. Apple has a new “performance controller” which decides which cores to use appropriately for max balance of performance and battery sipping.
New GPU performance, not going into technical details at all but again an incremental, quite large jump in performance as well.
F1 2016 shown on screen, very impressive graphics, I am an F1 fan and will definitely be getting that one! Hope it comes to the tvOS as well.
Adobe Lightroom can do live RAW editing now on the iPhone.
Heather Price of ThisGameStudio comes on stage.
She is showing a new RPG based on the Wizard of Oz. A lot of cool visual effects are shown, and our old favourite flying monkeys! Over 400 individual monkeys at once, the wicked witch of the west would be most jealous of this feature.
Battery Life Charts — obviously the Plus with a larger battery offers quite an advantage here
All though at max usually about 1/3 more than the 7, may are only one hour more as the screen is a bit harder to push, so browsing and apps you won’t see a significant difference, non screen heavy use like talking, or using audio you will notice the difference
Usually apple downplays their battery claims, so in real life testing we should find a bit extra.
“Lasts on average at least 2 hours more than a 6s” and the plus “At least an hour more than the 6s Plus”
Water Resistance is a welcome addition to those clumsy or forgetful users that jump into a pool before checking their pockets..
New LTE Advanced offers up to 450 Mbps
To Summarise its not a revolutionary upgrade over last years, more evolutionary. Faster in every way, and the 6S was no slouch! 6S still beating brand new 2016 phones, now it has been bested by its own brethren, the 7.
A huge new range of cases and docks, accessories too. The iPhone 7 costs the same as the previous model, but starts at 32gb instead of 16, and offers 32, 128 and 256. The Jet Black model only comes in 128 and 256 size. Same for the Plus size model — same price, but double the capacity.
The 6S and 6S Plus have also been bumped from 16 to 32, and 128 options available.
The iPhone Upgrade program is now expanding to the UK and China.
You are able to order the iPhone on Friday the 9th of September, and shipping on the 16th for majority of countries and a week later for many others.
iOS 10 officially launches on the 13th of September. Gold Masters have dropped for all *OS’s now for developers and public beta testers.
Tim Cook returns to stage to summarise the event. Will there be a One More Thing? He is thanking all of The Apple Family for working so hard on bringing these products to life, and they are given a round of applause from the audience. He seems earnest and says he is lucky to have such great people working with him. He hints that a musician may be on their way to the stage…
Sia shows up and performs her new song “#WEAREYOURCHILDREN” live for the first time ever. Very.. Unique dancers! Her Dress *could* have matched the iPhone colours, next time SIA, Next Time. Quite a creepy performance for many I imagine!
After her new song, she performs her older song “Chandelier”
The event is over, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco. Many have criticised it and even said that we no longer need the large unveilings, will be interesting to see when the Apple UFO Campus hosts the events.
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