Apple Special Event [video]

I'm amazed by the sizing. The SE appears to be gone. This means the smallest device you can buy is the 7/8. Many still find this to be too large. Considering Apple's history of selling older iPhone models at a lower price, it seems like two years from now the bottom of the line will be the Xs and Xr announced today. The smallest lower-end iPhone available at that time would be the Xs which is larger than the 6/6s/7/8. Obviously I have no idea what Apple has planned, but the push to increasingly large devices seems like a bad idea.

If the new Apple processor is actually 7nm fab, that means that Apple is performing at a higher level of execution than basically everyone else in silicon land. Intel just failed spectacularly at shipping 10nm and TSMC is just beginning to do 7nm production hypothetically (I don&#x27;t think any major production runs have been announced yet, but please correct me if I&#x27;m wrong).<p>If Apple is shipping 7nm in iPhones, that&#x27;s actually incredible.<p>Edit: After doing a bit of research, it seems like Intel is actually the odd duck out and TSMC is doing the fab on these chip runs as well as the fab on Huawei&#x27;s new chip with dual Neural Processing Units. It&#x27;s actually just Intel that&#x27;s failing to produce smaller and smaller chips (again, TSMC is producing 7nm for this Apple run as well as Huawei&#x27;s new chip).

They killed the SE! Now we&#x27;re stuck with screens too big to use with one hand. I really really dislike this.

I can imagine Apple has quite a few linguists on its payroll; They are still beating the words “beautiful” and “best” to death in their keynotes. It’s tough to not be excited about new features that are debuted upon each release, but it’s also getting monotonous to hear, “Product X is the _best_ version of its kind. Product Y is the _most_ &lt;adjective&gt; we’ve ever created and its pictures are simply _beautiful_.”

It occurs to me today how sad it is that we only have two viable mobile ecosystems these days. I have an iPhone SE, which Apple has opted not to update. That&#x27;s their decision to make, I suppose, but no-one else can make iOS devices and I really don&#x27;t want to switch to Android (it isn&#x27;t ignorance, I&#x27;ve used it since the Nexus One, I&#x27;ve just grown to dislike it for privacy and UI performance reasons over time, and it doesn&#x27;t have great hardware in the size I want either)... and there aren&#x27;t really any other choices.<p>Sigh. It&#x27;s enough to make me nostalgic for Windows Phone.

FDA approval to market the new Apple Watch as a medical device is a huge deal.

The showmanship really feels like it&#x27;s run out.<p>Even when it was the post-Jobs Ive and Cook it was still captivating, but this is just tiresome.

It is interesting that Apple will now sell 7 distinct phone models. Throw in the different capacities and carriers and you have a few dozen different SKUs. That isn&#x27;t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a notable deviation from their early approach to the iPhone.

It was interesting to hear apple state that one of their goals for building products was to make them last longer in order to minimize waste. People often accuse hardware manufacturers, including apple, of intentional obsolescence. I am interested to see if they actually change anything about their process, software and hardware, to put any weight behind this claim, or if it is just marketing doublespeak.

I can&#x27;t believe they named a phone X[s]. How can they not see everyone calling it &quot;iPhone excess?&quot;

&gt;This will be the first ECG product available over the counter to customers.<p>The AliveCor Kardia has been available for a while. I got one for a family member with atrial fibrillation issues and it works really well and sticks on the back of their cell phone.

The base phone price is now $999. The announcement and marketing effectively position the XS as the default model (with the messaging around the XR casting it as a downgrade, more like the iPhone 5C). They also eliminated the regular Plus so users who want a larger phone are forced to the even more expensive Max.<p>It looks like they pulled this off pretty well too, although sales numbers in the coming months will tell the true story. In one generation they went from, &quot;pay $999 to upgrade to the higher end option (the X),&quot; to, &quot;pay $999 for our regular phone or downgrade to the XR.&quot;

It might be a dummy question, but what does FDA clearance mean exactly? Does it make the watch a medical-grade device and I can do ECG using the watch instead of going to the hospital?

IP68 is neat. The second camera is also pretty important. The other differences between Xs and Xr I don&#x27;t care much about. I don&#x27;t particularly care about OLED.<p>I don&#x27;t play AR games (and I&#x27;m disappointed nobody seems to have found an AR killer app. Those games are so lame.<p>Star constellation recognition is nice, but doesn&#x27;t excite anyone anymore. But practical uses? Just today I was standing on the beach wondering whether the town in the distance was town A or town B (or if town A is maybe behind the curve). The phone knows my location, my bearing and has a map. It could label POI in display. That&#x27;s the most practical use I can come up with right now, and I doubt I need the bazillion times improvement in their ML coprocessor for that.<p>I&#x27;m in the market for an iPhone right now. The event didn&#x27;t wow me enough to really get comfortable with that kind of money.<p>But will I resist the voices in my head that say that the 7 and 8 are old? I was hoping for a price drop for the original X.

I had a HUGE expectation on a new MacBook Air! I&#x27;ve watched til the end expecting &quot;one more thing&quot; (which would be unlikely, given it isn&#x27;t a exactly a new product)

I hate the loss of the home button.<p>Face ID is fine, but multiplexing so many different features on to the single, poorly-placed, side button has been a huge negative for me.<p>The side button is way too easy to hit when the device is in your pocket, and when that happens you&#x27;re activating Siri, or Apple Pay, or some accessibility shortcut, or you&#x27;re taking a screenshot, or you&#x27;re activating emergency mode.<p>I&#x27;ve lost count of the number of times I&#x27;ve pulled my iPhone X from pocket to find that the screen is on, Siri is waiting for a command, and the accessibility menu is on screen.<p>And when I actually need to take a screenshot, or shutdown the device, I can never remember the actual key combination. It&#x27;s such a mess.

Apple just announced the iPhone Xs. Surgical grade stainless steel. 3 finishes: Gold, Silver, Space Gray. New glass. Waterproof, saltwater proof, even beer proof. 5.8&quot; screen. Still has a notch like the iPhone X. Improved FaceID.

Is Apple discontinuing the iPhone SE without a replacement? :(

Watch the Apple Keynote via MPV or VLC using the following link [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;p-events-delivery.akamaized.net&#x2F;189kljhbasdcvjhasbdscvoahsbdcvaoshdbvaosdhbvasodhjbv&#x2F;m3u8&#x2F;hls_mvp.m3u8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;p-events-delivery.akamaized.net&#x2F;189kljhbasdcvjhasbds...</a>

They presented the dynamic depth control with the words: &quot;No other smartphone right now can do that&quot;.<p>Lie. I&#x27;m writing this comment on a Vivo Nex and I have been using this for months.

Something to note on the market: AAPL was trending well up during the Watch announcements, and well down during the rest.

They just said the new A series processor is made with a 7nm process. That&#x27;s pretty neat

It&#x27;s now possible to change the depth of field after taking the photo. I wasn&#x27;t paying close enough attention to know if this will also be possible on older iPhones.<p>EDIT: sounds like it&#x27;s just the new iPhones. But it includes the less expensive Xr.

Just announced: Apple now runs on 100% renewable energy.

Does anyone have more information or insight into about Apple’s GPU design? The Apple A12 chip has 4 GPU cores vs. 3 cores in the A11, but GPUs from Nvidia have orders of magitude more (3584 CUDA cores for the GTX 1080 Ti, each of which can run 2048 threads). How do these numbers compare?

I love apple products, but number one thing I still don&#x27;t understand is why Siri insists on taking up the entire screen. Siri should be a small overlay much like on mac os, its such an oversight by their software engineering team! This still hasn&#x27;t been addressed on iOS 12.

Uhg. Still no Airpods wireless charging case (first announced at last year&#x27;s September event). I&#x27;ve held off on buying Airpods for a full year because I want the wireless charging case. How much longer will we have to wait for this product, Apple?

The &quot;super retina&quot; designation doesn&#x27;t refer to PPI, right? Seems like 458 isn&#x27;t that much higher than past models, if at all.<p>Is &quot;super&quot; just a reference to the increased color gamut and true tone functionality?

I think the one really innovative thing that is going on at Apple is their investments in their AI&#x2F;ML&#x2F;N team. Plus, the silicon team always does great work with the A series cpus and all the new ones too like the S4 for the watch.<p>I&#x27;m going to use my iPhone SE until it no longer works. I don&#x27;t want bigger phones, and I&#x27;ll vote with my dollars.<p>I&#x27;m also in the market for a MacBook Pro, but the touch bar is not something I&#x27;m interested in at the expense of the function keys. We should be able to get the best of Apple hardware, but not at a compromise.

Dual SIM could be big in some countries.

Also went from large phone to SE... I can&#x27;t stand the power button on the side. I can&#x27;t stand the rounded edges. I can&#x27;t stand the bending phones (5 now)... and yea, they&#x27;re all just too big for my hands. iOS 11 has also been a complete nightmare. Dead batteries, hot&#x2F;slow phone, crashing, text messages have been out of order for over a year. Cost was not a factor. I&#x27;m now on my 4th iphone in 6 months due to hardware and software failues, and manufacturing issues. The warranty experience has also gone down hill.. they keep telling me they have to ship my phone away and give me a loaner... only to call me back a day later saying &#x27;uh we have to give you a new phone&#x27; ... in the past, they would just give you the new phone while you were there the first damn time and thats really something that has changed for the worse. I managed to get a new SE w&#x2F;iOS 10.x.x out of them a couple weeks ago... so I&#x27;m hoping I&#x27;m good for a couple years as long as I don&#x27;t accidentally update it. It&#x27;s looking like the iPhone SE will be my last apple product... ever.

I still cannot believe that in order to use the latest Apple watch, you still need an iPhone 6 or later with iOS 12 or later. I was dead set on grabbing a watch once I heard what it would feature but after reading the small print, why would I spend money on getting an iPhone, then an expensive monthly plan, followed by a watch, then a separate plan for that?<p>Is there something I&#x27;m not seeing? This seems like a lot of money to front just to get into the device I really want but at the same time having to deal with something I don&#x27;t want, plus 2 monthly plans.<p>Edit&#x2F;update:<p>So as it stands now, $749 for an iPhone XR, roughly $80&#x2F;month plan, $499 for GPS + Cellular watch, and $10&#x2F;month for watch (based on current series 3 watch plan).<p>That basically breaks down to $1250 plus taxes in upfront costs to get access to a device that, for me anyway, has more useful utility to it than the phone, plus over $100&#x2F;month (again, after taxes) just so I can utilize the full feature set of said watch.

Could someone enlight me on the EU prices ? US has the 5.8 Xs 64go model listed for $999. Eu price for the same model (french store) is 1159€ ... According to xe.com, current USD&#x2F;EUR rate is 0.8599, so $999 =&gt; 859€. It seems to me that they&#x27;ve applied the inverse rate : 1159*0.8599 = 996. What am I missing there ?

Tiny note: Their event videos are no longer Safari exclusive. Nice!

The loss of 3D touch on the Xr seems pretty disappointing. I use that feature quite a lot on my iPhone 8, especially for moving the cursor around in text messages. It seems like the Xr would be a lot less efficient for that, unless they have found another good UX for that.

This is how apple will lose me as a customer. These giant phones are horrible. All their products are getting progressively shittier. No real Pro laptop, horrendous keyboards (even the new &quot;quieter&quot; ones), borderline unusable phones. What the actual fuck.

A shame new mac models weren&#x27;t announced.

How have privacy concerns over the facial recognition panned out?

It looked like they intentionally hid the notch in iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max during the keynote with the background they chose, maybe to differentiate it from iPhone Xr.

I&#x27;ve owned iphones for 8 years. They are great devices but even with the hardware doubling in speed every year, it still takes just as much time (if not more) to do the same tasks.<p>Perhaps its a software and bloat issue, but the only noticeable thing improvements have been better pictures and I can read more on a single page-view, but everything else seems exactly the same.

iPhone pricing tiers:<p>- XR $749<p>- XS $999<p>- XS Max $1099<p>Yikes. And that&#x27;s for the lowest storage available.

It&#x27;s amazing that Apple&#x27;s watch is now the cheapest cell phone in their new lineup.

Any notable security improvements?

The only thing I want to hear about is the release of a new Mac Mini. I want a new CI build slave, and I&#x27;m not paying for the existing obsolete one.

iPhone 5s was the perfect size for me (I guess that&#x27;s the SE now). But I&#x27;ve been using the iPhone 6s for the past few years and like it. I don&#x27;t see myself replacing it anytime soon since it works just fine the way it is.<p>The new phones are pretty damned expensive though. nearly a thousand bucks where I live for the 256gig version of the XR, and the iPhone Excess is a good 1600USD after taxes in my area.<p>Just too damn expensive.

Probably not the best place to ask this, but what did Phil Schiller mean by &quot;one trillion operations per photo&quot;?

Everyone must be able to admit: the automated HDR and improved bokeh look pretty hot..!

Skipping this round in favor of the Librem 5. If Purism can deliver a usable phone I&#x27;ll be so happy. Apple has managed to run my digital life from bliss to constant, guarded skepticism, happy to jump off that train.

TLDR: &quot;It&#x27;s our newest most beautiful ever.&quot;

No FM radio? Too bad.

How does the iPhone X s max differ from the iPhone X?

&gt; The iPhone XR will offer an LCD screen with a resolution of 1,792 by 828. This would give it a resolution of around 324 pixels per inch, slightly below the iPhone 4’s 326 ppi.<p>This is sad.

I just bought a Macbook Pro yesterday

Wish they would target battery life&#x2F;optimize OS further.<p>512GB storage, what to do with that? Perhaps long-form video.<p>Cook wearing white shoes after Labor Day, tsk tsk.<p>Recommend Ars Technica live blog.