Apple in 2015
What the biggest company in the world has planned for 2015.
This was a big year for Apple.
We saw the biggest OS X update in quite a while, iOS opened up more than ever, two new iPhones, two new iPads, new Macs, and, for the first time since 2010, a new product category: the Apple Watch.
It truly was the companies biggest product lineup in 25 years… but not for long.
Every year, I try to predict what Apple has in store for the next 365 days.
This year, Tim Cook and company will launch an extraordinary line of new products and updates, including new operating systems, new iPhones, new iPads, Apple Watch, and even a new line of MacBook.
The biggest product lineup in 26 years.
iOS 9 and OS X 10.11
Apple, as always, will likely launch updated versions of its iOS and OS X operating systems at WWDC in June.
It’s always hard to predict software features, and last year I barely tried until closer to the actual event, and I think that’s what I will do now.
Do expect major new iPad features in iOS 9 however, although maybe not until after WWDC (more on that later).
iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus
Apple is likely preparing to launch an update to its line of iPhones in 2015 with new features and faster peformance.
The two new phones will very likely be called the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, in line with the conventional naming scheme of the past few years.
As this is an “s” cycle year, these new phones will not include any aesthetic changes, but rather a few major internal changes to differentiate itself.
It is being discussed that the main new feature on the new iPhones will be an astronomical camera upgrade that will put it well beyond the rest of the smartphone industry.
In addition, the new phones will recieve major spec upgrades, including an all new A9 chip, a new tri-core GPU, and the long awaited bump to 2 GB of RAM.
It is also rumored that Apple will dramatically improve the battery life in it’s line of smartphones as a new “feature” in the new phones, as well as a sapphire screen, although the latter doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon based on recent events.
The new phones will likely be announced at an event in September and will take the place of the current iPhones, with the current models all dropping $100 in price.
Apple Watch
Let’s talk about the Apple Watch.
Back in September, following the Apple Event, John Gruber wrote a fantastic piece on his initial impressions on Apple Watch:
Consider Vertu, the company that sells $6,000 Android phones (and which, back in the day, sold $6,000 Symbian phones). Back in January 2012, I wrote a short entry saying that Vertu always reminded me of this wonderful quote from Andy Warhol:
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” — Andy Warhol
iPhone and iPad fall in this category. When you buy an iPhone or an iPad, you know you are getting “the best phone or tablet in the world”, and you know that it’s the tablet or phone that every celebrity has, and every toddler has.
Toddlers aren’t buying an Apple Watch.
At least not yet anyways, because Apple Watch changes the situation. This isn’t a tech product, it’s a fashion product, and fashion products aren’t meant to be the same and for everyone to have the best, they are meant to signify status.
Adam Fields, writing on Medium, drew the same comparison to Grubers Warhol-on-Coke/Vertu piece:
Gruber was talking about the $6,000 Vertu there, but he might as well have been talking about the Apple Watch. Apple has long been ‘the luxury brand’, but it’s been an accessible luxury, unlike luxury cars or jewelry. The products are expensive, but they’re not outrageously expensive (and if they are, it’s because they’re so massively overpowered that most people really don’t actually need them). Apple has even been steadily pushing prices down and making their products more consumer-friendly so they’re now in some cases a markedly better value than what their competitors offer. With the Apple Watch, that is no longer the case — there’s a gold version whose only substantial differentiating feature is that it’s more expensive. Because it’s “gold” and not “gold-colored”, it’s not just a style choice, it’s a lifestyle choice. In other words — it’s the watch that most people won’t have. I’m sure the fashion experts have plenty to say about this from the perspective of desirability, but it’s a real shock to the standard approach of the tech world. I think Apple knows this, too — which results in the strange nomenclature. The only way they could name it that doesn’t sound overtly elitist is the awkward “Edition” edition.
Gruber said it best:
Apple Watch is not a product from a tech company, and it will not be understood, at all, by the tech world.
Seriously though, get ready for the biggest tech shitfit in a really long time, maybe ever.
Let’s discuss prices. Here’s how I think it will go down:
- Apple Watch Sport (glass/aluminum): $349
- Apple Watch (sapphire/stainless steel): $499
- Apple Watch Edition (sapphire/gold): >$4999
Now, these are just starting prices, I imagine the bands will be priced separately at wildly different price tiers based on material.
The tech industry will go and pound on their keyboards, type things like “this shit is too expensive” or “this never would have happened when Steve Jobs was alive” or “it’s just a really tiny iPod touch (remember that one…)”. The problem is they’re wrong.
They are going to mistake Apple for Vertu.
“And then people will line up around the block at Apple Stores around the world to buy them. I think Apple Watch prices are going to be shockingly high — gasp-inducingly, get-me-to-the-fainting-couch high — from the perspective of the tech industry. But at the same time, there is room for them to be disruptively low from the perspective of the traditional watch and jewelry world. There’s a massive pricing umbrella in the luxury watch world, and Apple is aiming to take advantage of it.”
There are still many un-answered questions about the Apple Watch. In fact, we know so little about it that it astonishes me how anyone could possibly make any comment regarding saying that it sucks or doesn’t do anything when we have literally seen it do nothing yet.
While WatchKit has launched and given us a little more information, I don’t think anyone can really guess on what this thing does, despite it being announced months ago.
As such, Apple will likely hold an event at launch, which is rumored to be around March, to show us what the Watch really does and officially launch it, in addition to launching the biggest revolution to the laptop since the MacBook Air.
Mac
This year, in addition to standard upgrade to the companies line of products, including MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac, Apple will launch an all new line of MacBook that will truly shake up the industry.
The new laptop, which I’m just gonna throw a name out there and call it the MacBook Plus, will become the highest tier laptop in Apple’s lineup.
The new device is rumored to include a 12.9-inch Retina display, possibly 4K, and have a drastically redesigned body, said to be thinner then the MacBook Air. The bezel around the screen will be dramatically decreased as well, will result in there being little bezel around the keyboard, with the speaker making a return to a strip form directly above the keyboard. Below the keyboard will be a wider trackpad.
The device will be dramatically thin and possibly allow Apple to reclaim the title of world’s thinnest laptop. The thinness will be achived thanks to Intel’s new Core M processors that will allow for fan-less computing.
Due to the new thinness, it is rumored that Apple will become the first manufacture to ditch the current form of USB for USB Type C, a future dramatically thinner version of the format. Apple has been known to be the first to ditch standards with newer iterations, such as ditching the floppy drive for a CD drive in the original iMac, and dropping the disc drive altogether in the original MacBook Air.
In addition to new dimensions, the new laptop will be different aesthetically with the return of a Space Grey color option on a Mac, as well as a new Gold color edition.
The device looks set to be launched at an event this Spring, likely at Apple Watch launch event.
iPad
This year, Apple will continue its tradition of updating iPads yearly with the iPad Air 3 and iPad mini 4.
The devices will likely feature upgraded internals, even the mini this time around, but the important thing will be the software updates.
They are really doing an iPad Pro.
If you’ve read my work before, you’ll know i’ve been outspoken in saying the iPad Pro doesn’t exist, because it wouldn’t make any sense.
I’ve discussed why it didn’t make any sense a number of times on twitter and on my podcast, but if you want to see it written out, check out Federico Viticci’s fantastic piece at MacStories from January about why it doesn’t make any sense.
Every few days for a couple of months I would sit down and think about what could possibly be the thought behind such a device, and why would Apple even consider making it.
I think I figured it out.
Every once in a while, a company needs to rethink and reinvent what it is already doing. They need to re-revolutionize their original revolution.
Apple has done this with only one product in the past, the Mac, but they’ve done it on a number of occasions. The Macintosh was a rethinking of the desktop computer, as was the iMac, the MacBook Air changed laptop design forever, and if the rumors are right Apple may even do this again with the laptop next year.
All of these products were things Apple has already revolutionized before, but the new one completely rethought what came before it, and was as if the revolution happened again.
When Steve Jobs launched the iPad, the philosophy behind it was for there to be a device in the middle, between the iPhone and the Mac. For this to happen, the device needed to be better at a few key tasks; better then an iPhone, and better than a Mac.
Browsing
Photos
Video
Music
Games
Ebooks
This is the list of tasks Steve Jobs said the iPad needed to be better at, better then a phone and computer, for the iPad to exist.
Every iPad since has continued to improve on making the iPad better at doing these things, better screens, better cameras, better internals specifically for gaming.
The problem, though, is that all these tasks have one thing in common:
They are all consumptionist activities. These are all activities where you are reading or watching something. You don’t create on an iPad.
People really want to create on their iPads.
As Nilay Patel said in his review of the iPad Air 2:
If I’m going to put down my large-screened phone and pick up another device, I want the cost of that switch to buy a dramatically improved experience, not simply a bigger screen. iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are designed to make the transition from iPhone to Mac easier than ever with features like Handoff and Continuity; there’s hardly any reason to take a pitstop at the iPad along the way.
People are unhappy with the fact that the iPad has very few software differences with the iPhone, our main consumptionist device.
If the iPhone is our main consumptionist device, and the Mac is our main creationist device, then for the iPad to truly be a device in the middle, it needs to be better at not just a few key consumptionist activities, but a few key creationist activities.
They need to reinvent the iPad.
In order to reinvent the iPad, Apple is reportedly working on a series of major hardware and software improvements for the iPad line.
Imagine a world where to edit photos, photographers don’t go to a Mac, they go to their iPads. There is no reason for anyone to do home video editing on a Mac for any reason. The best version of iMovie should be on iPad. Imagine if Apple figured out how to make a full sized, on screen keyboard with feedback that made it feel as if you were typing on a real keyboard (keep an eye on that Taptic Engine). Editing documents is a much better experience on a tablet then any other device if you’ve got the keyboard.
This needs to be Apple’s new philosophy.
And Apple’s device to show off this new philosophy is called the iPad Pro.
The iPad Pro is rumored to have a 12.2-inch display with a resolution of 2732 x 2048. The device is said to have all new internals as well as the same design of the current iPads.
In addition, Apple is working on a number of software updates for the entire iPad line to make the iPad a more productive device, including split screen multitasking and the ability to use the iPad as a second monitor for your Mac.
If Apple truly reinvents the iPad, then the iPad still has a chance in this world of 7 -inch phones.
Apple looks to have lots planned for 2015, in addition to everything just discussed, including the long awaited update to the Apple TV.
Check back every few months for a new entry in Apple in 2015 where we’ll look more in-depth at upcoming Apple product launches.
Follow me on twitter @bzgoldman
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