9/16
Apple approached their It's About Time event the same way they did June's WWDC, allowing their editing, speakers, and the campus to co-star alongside the key announcements. While the content was different, Apple's style of socially distanced events is working out nicely.
Here are the key takeaways from the event.
The Apple watch portfolio has expanded, now hitting a wider range of price points—$399, $279, $199—and feature sets. This was accomplished by introducing an Apple Watch SE, which sits between the newly announced Series 6 and the still around Series 3. The SE is mostly last year's watch, though it notably lacks ECG measurement capability.
The Series 6 continues to improve Apple's custom health sensor by introducing V02 Max measurement, which is a strong indicator of overall health. Being able to get this measurement at any time is a powerful selling point. The watch is already a compelling health tool; this addition strengthens that position.
Overall, the Apple Watch is still looking strong. There's very little competition against it when you pull out its entire list of features. The addition of Family Setup allows younger and older folks to benefit from the watch without requiring their own iPhone. That's going to increase the amount of wrists these devices end up on. That $199 starting price doesn't hurt, either.
Apple's non-Pro iPads—except for The Forgotten iPad the Mini—received impressive under the hood upgrades, in what felt like them flexing how dominant their A-series chips are. Even with the year old A12 chip, the newly refreshed 8th generation iPad is still punching way above its weight. For $329, it's a steal.
The redesigned iPad Air pushes that power-to-price ratio even further, stealing thunder from the iPad Pros by being their first device to ship with this year's A14 chip. I won't bore you with specs; simply put, the A14 is a monster and you will not find a more powerful chip in a non-Apple phone or tablet, period. Aesthetically, it adopts the Pro's iPhone 4/5-esque industrial design and moves TouchID to the power button, which is a first for an Apple device. This is the iPad to buy for most people.
Apple continues wading into the wide ocean of subscription income. This event gave us two new ones: Fitness+ and Apple One. Fitness+, like the name implies, is a subscription fitness service that promises high quality exercise videos across ten types of workouts by professional trainers, with new ones added every week. It even has integration with Apple Music. It looks to me like Apple is trying to take some of Peloton's—or even Mirror's—cookies. I can't say whether or not this will be successful (Apple's hit or miss on services thus far) but as someone who exercises regularly while wearing an Apple Watch, it has piqued my interest.
Apple One is a meta service that bundles together other Apple services. The prices are compelling across the board—$14.99, $19.99, and $29.99—but I wish there was more control over which services you get in your bundle. Or maybe they just need more bundles (said no one ever). The only way to get News+ and Fitness+ are to subscribe to the Premier $29.99 tier, which isn't available in every country. On the bright side, the middle and top tiers can be shared with your entire iCloud Family.
Apple One is going to make Apple a lot of money. If you're paying for any single non-iCloud storage service, the small difference in price is going to be a strong temptation. At the very least, I expect Apple One to noticeably increase Music and TV+ usage. I do think Apple missed an opportunity to offer a higher tier personal bundle that includes News+ and Fitness+, perhaps with only 200GB of iCloud storage instead of the 2TB, but maybe we'll see more variety down the road.
Oh boy, this is a good update. If Apple made a 12.9" iPad Air, I would likely never buy an iPad Pro again. This update says one thing to me for sure and makes me wonder about a second thing. First, the iPad Pros must be upgraded sooner than later. The gap between the new Air and the current Pros has closed significantly; this can't stand if the Pros are meant to be differentiated enough to justify their premium price. Second, that TouchID power button looks like a robust piece of hardware and I can't help but wonder if we'll see it on other Apple devices in the future. It looks like it could even fit on the side of a phone, as long as the edge is wide enough. Rumors have pointed to Apple re-introducing TouchID on the iPhones for 2-factor biometric authentication—could Apple's approach be to completely ignore an under display fingerprint reader in favor of a power button one? If they can't get TouchID to work everywhere on the screen with the under display option, then this button would be a fair, and proven, alternative.
The Apple Watch is a product that regularly surprises me and I have worn one most days for the last year and a half plus. The fact that a device as small as it is can do as much as it does is a true technological achievement. Despite that, it's an undeniably less exciting device than the iPhone—or really any modern phone—to the average consumer. The iPad is similar; it's an all around excellent, purposeful, yet secondary device when compared to a phone. It's not that both can't carry an event—most of Apple's competitors could have revealed the same products with a very warm reception—it's just that compared to Apple's entire portfolio they're a little... boring. The already good, category leading devices got faster and better than their lagging competition. Nice job Apple... but where are those new phones? And the AirTags? And the Apple Silicon laptop? How about the AirCans (okay, fine, AirPods Studio)?