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Watch the Apple Keynote via MPV or VLC using the following link [1].

[1] https://p-events-delivery.akamaized.net/189kljhbasdcvjhasbds...

The Apple.com video works for me on Chrome on Linux just FYI.
Same here for Apple.com, Chrome, Windows 10.
Even worked in FF on linux. THAT is progress!
I heard it also was streamed on Twitter. That’s the next level of progress.
That's new, all previous keynotes it didn't work in Chrome at all as it didn't support the streaming stuff they were using. Needed Safari or (surprisingly) Edge.
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" screen. Still has a notch like the iPhone X. Improved FaceID.
> ... even beer proof.

Is beer proofing that different from regular waterproofing? I can imagine juice leaving sugar residue and being sticky. Does beer have similar issues?

Ever spilled a full to the brim beer on your hands before? It can definitely be sticky.
Beer has sugar (alcohol) in it. It gets sticky like juice when it dries.
Pretty underwhelming. Is it a sign for the years to come? I am thinking about shorting AAPL.
Of course it's going to be underwhelming - the smartphone market is completely saturated, and the margins on technology advancements in the space are diminishing more and more over time. People are holding onto their devices for much longer these days and the mad rush to get the next best thing is waning. Personally I think this is a good thing as the market is reaching some sort of sustainable, stable ground and no longer in a huge "race to the bottom" as it were.
They didn't give much detail on the improved FaceID
They implied (and I think it’s safe to assume) it’s faster and more accurate.

What I’d like is a wider field of view. I can unlock an iPhonenwith Touch ID while it’s on a table without pointing it at my phone. Face ID couldn’t do that.

Minor issue, but it was annoying from time to time. Hopefully it’s better.

I wonder if they added official multi-person support, not just the ‘alternate appearance’ stuff previously announced.

I initially read it as bear-proof and was immediately skeptical. Beer-proof makes much more sense.
Same stick-out camera
What I found interesting in the presentation was when they called the new iPhones uncompromising. I was thinking “what are you taking about? All engineering is comprise”. Stick out camera is a perfect example.
TLDR: "It's our newest most beautiful ever."
I can't believe they named a phone X[s]. How can they not see everyone calling it "iPhone excess?"
first thing i thought. Iphone Max Excess
iPhone XS Max... Extra Small Max is Medium?
Extra Small Max == Small Min - 1
Pronounced as "iPhone Ten Smacks"
I can’t believe they didn’t call the Xs Max - XL instead. I mean they have an XS and an XL size...
"XL" has some negative connotations for Apple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_XL
Negative in what way? In my experience they were excellent machines that had much better overall performance than the original "toaster" models. Their main problem was that they had non-square pixels, but people put up with that for many use-cases.
33 years ago. I don't think it's a motivation here.
The new iPhone naming convention sounds like a line of condoms.
Would you like files with that?
They have an Xs, but it's hardly XS sized.
they can probably see it just fine, and they know it won't hurt them. "iPad" was a name lampooned for years before iPads were ever a thing, and that seems to be doing just fine too.
How can they not see everyone calling it "iPhone excess?"

Is that necessarily bad? Up to a point, the more meme-ing and acrimony around your brand, the better. "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Calling your $1100+ phone the iPhone Excess Max is a great way to get every talk show to discuss an update that appears to be little more than an incremental speed bump.
Is it just me, or was there not a very specific arab overtone to the marketing in the videos on this announcement: In the sand, the desert, the oasis village, the gold...

They must really want every Saudi to overspend on the 512gb S Max gold++++

I think it's just because it fits with their other current brand - MacOS Mojave.
And the colors in the desert matched the new gold iPhone color really well when they zoomed in on it. The appeal to arabs thing is a stretch.
Everyone thought people were going to make tampon jokes about the iPad Pro ("maxipad"), but as far as I know it hasn't caught on. I don't think this will either, for the same reason. People who buy the phone won't call it that because they sunk so much cost into it. The only ones who might call it the iPhone excess are die hard android users, but those don't communicate much with iPhone users (at least not in such an aggressive way in real life, outside forums), so the phrase won't get any traction.
There is no "iPad Max"?
Sorry, people were saying this about the iPad Pro. I've updated my post.
I still don't get it though.
There were feminine hygiene product jokes about the iPad when it came out. It was too obvious to be funny.

That said, all the super duper max promax naming seems lame to me.

There were, but it hasn't caught on long term. I don't think the "iPhone excess" will either.
and xs is not flagship-like. I'd be Apple I'd have named it SX so bad. I'm still betting that people will nickname it SX.
Wouldn't work. Apple pronounces the X as 10. So it would be S-10 like the Chevy truck.
I'm an iPhone user, love the camera, and the new ones look really nice – but the naming feels like 90s Apple with their myriad Mac models. I tuned in late, saw Ives' video, and I'm still like, which is which?
I registered xs.io years ago thinking it was a cool, super short domain, but soon realized that it was a true pain to communicate verbally.

I sold it this past summer to someone who has yet to do anything with it. I'm honestly wondering now if it was Apple who bought it.

Whois shows GoDaddy. I doubt that Apple would be using GoDaddy. In fact, whois on apple.com shows that their registrar is www.cscprotectsbrands.com.
I was hoping for the iPhone SE[X]. SE form factor, but with the new display. Not sure I need face id. Er: "need".
Even "Tennis" and "Tennis Match" is bad.
FDA approval to market the new Apple Watch as a medical device is a huge deal.
May I ask why is it a huge deal?
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It is not easy to get any FDA approval. Companies go bankrupt after spending millions and still don't get approved.
When you have more money than the government that’s no so much of a problem.
Yes, Apple is excluded from that statement. The company which had a budget of $1 billion for their new headquarters and end up spending $5b :-)
And have that still be a rounding error on their balance sheet. :-)
Technically Apple has more money than some governments, it's nowhere near the US Government's: Apple's entire assets could pay for under 18 months of net interest on the public debt (263bn in 2017).
The US has negative money, they are in debt. I have more money than the US.
Maybe you can make an offer to buy the US with 30% of your net worth. Then resell to a hedge fond.
I don’t think I have the patience to deal with the ‘deal maker’ in chief, sorry. I’ve heard he’s got quite a lot of experience with bankruptcies though so he might have new ideas to deal with all that debt the US has been taking on lately.
The US has assets to cover its debts in spades. Nobody would give them money for free if they didn't.

And the debt is owned at ~50% by the government itself or the Fed and ~20% by various non-federal investors (pensions, mutual funds, local governments, individuals) with the rest being owned by various non-US entities.

The U.S. federal government can accumulate only debt, it cannot accumulate savings. Why? Because any surplus it generates is stored in Treasury bonds, which are also counted as debt.

Things are different for the federal government. It's an institution of last resort, so the normal ways of thinking about personal finance don't apply. It can't open a "savings account" anywhere, because every other institution on Earth is smaller and less reliable.

It's a 510k "clearance", not an "approval". It's relatively cheap and all you have to do is show your thing (ECG in this case) is effectively the same as other similar devices (older ECGs) for medical purposes.
Was looking for this in the comments.

The ambiguity there is abused by many companies on the fringes of consumer health and cosmetic products.

> A 510(k) is a premarketing submission made to FDA to demonstrate that the device to be marketed is as safe and effective, that is, substantially equivalent (SE), to a legally marketed device that is not subject to premarket approval

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Didn't theranos get FDA approval too.
They have different types of approval based on the risks involved. Some are a lot easier to obtain.
With a prescription you’ll be able to use HSA/Flex Spending or insurance to buy one.
That's fucking brilliant. Tesla, are you listening? I want the car to be an FDA approved monitoring device.
It seems like that could be possible, even without a prescription. I can buy any number of non-prescription things with my HSA now. Obviously this seems a little different than say a blood glucose testing device. Next year they will probably amend it with a "*excluding Apple Watch"
Why would an insurance company care about what you do with your HSA/Flex account. They aren't out of any money.
The IRS might care since they are the ones who enforce the rules surrounding their use, not your insurance company...
I took the parent post as implying that the insurance company would try to exclude purchasing the Apple Watch.
Sorry that was not clear (and this response is late). I know my HSA admin limits use of those funds for medically approved things only. I assume based on rules that the government created. I am just speculating that they may have to start dealing with devices like this which have a dual purpose, mostly not medical.
With FDA clearance you're allowed to brand and advertise your product as a "medical device". Also, without FDA approval, you have to be very careful about certain terms you use to describe your product's features. For example, without FDA approval, you cannot say your device "monitors" falls. You can only say it "tracks" falls. There are several other limitations because the FDA doesn't want you making these types of medical claims to customers unless the FDA has approved them.

Source: I worked on a fall detection app for the Apple Watch last year.

I wonder if that ECG feature might change the market perception of the device - maybe that was the intent. With the ECG and slip and fall detection, I sort of thought it makes the Apple Watch sound like the most consumer medical alert bracelet ever.

For people with aging parents that don't really use mobile phones, I could many watches purchased as safety devices. (Though the battery life doesn't make it ideal for that...)

Yeah, agreed. I have never thought of buying an Apple Watch for myself or as a gift, but after seeing that, I would at least consider buying them for my mother and mother-in-law.
The iWatch. Yesterday's hip fashion accessory. Tomorrow's colostomy bag.
Would people line up to buy the Rolex Submariner FDA-approved version?
I am interested in the idea of having one and using it on multiple members of the family, can it differentiate among a number of users? That would be a nice feature. Kind of how you personalize a car for multiple drivers.
No, it's very much a single-user device, still tied to an iPhone.

Fall detection, heart rate abnormality detection, wouldn't seem to be the type of things you'd want to only use for a short time each day anyway. You could presumably use the ECG feature on multiple people, however.

Agreed on the battery life. The concept is a good idea but my mother would never keep this charged up and on her wrist constantly enough for it to be relied upon.
That was my thought too. Hmm I wonder how bulky a battery add on to get the uptime to a week at a level of monitor-only activity might be?
The slip and fall protection is great. I had a tree branch fall a few feet from my head last weekend. Probably not big enough to have killed me, but I would have sure as hell been too concussed to figure out how to use the phone. Of course there wasn't cell service anyway, but that's a different issue.
If there was any cell signal on any technically compatible network, your emergency call would've been carried by another network.
I wonder if the new slip and fall detection works with motorcycles. There is quite a market for apps and devices to detect motorcycle accidents and notify someone in case something bad happens while your on 2 wheels. That would be a pretty good market to get into, basically for free.
clearance, not approval.
You're totally right, huge distinction. Sorry for mis-speaking!
Anyone know how ECG from the watch compares to a device like the QardioCore [1] (or more traditional Holter monitor, i.e. the recorder with pads/wires all over)?

[1] https://www.getqardio.com/qardiocore-wearable-ecg-ekg-monito...

Sounds like the QardioCore has a 3 lead ECG. Couldn't find too much more on that, as their website is painful at best. Holter monitor is a 12 lead ECG but with some decreased signal fidelity. This is just a single lead monitoring for rhythm like a tele strip.
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More than a huge deal, simply astonishing to this retired long-time neurosurgical anesthesiologist. To have 1)shrunk the giant oscilloscope/monitor (1-1.5 cubic feet/±50 lbs.) atop my anesthesia machine AND eliminate the long tangled lead wires connecting to the never-available sticky gel pads that sometimes came loose in the middle of a sitting craniotomy, necessitating the anesthesiologist's equivalent of the death crawl under the stifling drapes without disturbing the surgeon, glued to his operating microscope in which every movement, even the slightest, appears like Mt. St. Helen's; 2)eliminated the need for an electrical outlet and extension cord; 3)included the capability to store endless ECG traces without needing paper for the oscilloscope printer, which more often than not wasn't working, and when it was only recorded on demand such that if you missed ectopic beats, you couldn't show them to a colleague in real time to get a second opinion: this is a magnificent engineering and design achievement. Using a thumb from the opposite hand to close the loop and act as the third functional lead is so sublime, I'm gobsmacked. The red ring on the crown is perfect as an accent for this function, along with its acting as a cellular capability indicator. Knowing just what this device has accomplished in the terms above, I might just get one just to marvel at the greatness of American engineering. "Designed by Apple in California" — indeed.
Hasn't this been addressed by products like AliveCor's kardia line for a while now? I'd prefer the form factor of a phone-paired device over a watch in a multi-patient environment.
Same here. I was actually surprised at how affordable it was, maybe it was harder to sell FDA and ECG to general public? I was expecting something like $599 or even $699.

To me this new Apple Watch was the star of the show.

I wonder if I can use my flexible spending account to buy one now.
How does the iPhone X s max differ from the iPhone X?
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the screen is .8 diagonal bigger
ty, just realized the displays & cpu is different
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"Max" is the new "Plus", it designates the larger phone in the lineup. And the X/XS is about the same screen size as the old Plus (slightly larger at 5.8 v 5.5) so the entire lineup was bumped up a screen size.

I expect the yet unannounced 3rd phone in the lineup (apparently "Xr") will be the same screen size as the old regular, in a smaller package, and a replacement of sorts for the SE.

edit: well I was wrong, apparently it sits between the XS and the Max, with completely different capabilities…

Yeah, not sure what is going on with there being no truly hand-sized phone available except the SE. You could fit a much bigger screen in that form factor, it would have a huge (pun intended) impact. Instead you see a bunch of bezel-less phones hanging precariously out of pockets.
They just said the new A series processor is made with a 7nm process. That's pretty neat
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?
I missed the part in the stream about FDA clearance, but my guess is yes, it would be some sort of medical device. However comparing the ECG functionality available for an apple to watch to even a standard portable 12-lead ECG is like comparing a slide rule to a modern GPU. It is definitely _not_ a replacement for going to the hospital, but it is a novelty and might be a good way to tell someone when they should go to the hospital to get checked out.
> it is a novelty

I'm sure those millions of people who have hospital-grade ECG machines at home have no need for this toy, but for those few who don't, it sounds like an absolute game-changer that could really save lives. The best medical device, like the best camera, is the one you actually have with you when you need it - and as someone who has occasionally worried about what feels like a weird heartbeat, I'll be buying this "novelty" instantly.

I would expect seniors to be a sizable portion of Apple Watches. Being FDA approved for tracking health would be a huge draw for this audience.

Watch Apple implement a subscription service to call emergency contacts in the event of a health event detected by the Watch.

It does this by default without a subscription service in the event of a detected fall if you do not respond to an alert within a certain amount of time.

Hope nobody falls on their watch and are uninjured but break the touch sensor, preventing them from being able to cancel the 911 call…

I would imagine you could press the digital crown to cancel as well.
It only calls 911 if it detects no movement after a fall, so it would have to be the motion sensors in the device that completely fail, not a touch sensor.
I was referring to the failure of whatever mechanism would be used to cancel an alert that appears post-fall.
My point is that there is no immediate need to cancel anything if you are moving.
You're right -- I thinking more of a clinical context, which is definitely the wrong frame for this. From what I've read online, it only seems to detect AFib, which is obviously useful since I think it's the most common abnormal rhythm. Maybe it's only able to detect AFib since it's just on the wearer's wrist? I wonder if there are plans to make little wireless sensors pads to mimic having more leads. That'd be pretty cool
AFib detection is, IIRC, available even without an explicit ECG session.
Many times you can detect Afib with just your fingers on the radial pulse, as a "regularly irregular" heartbeat, skipping every third or fourth beat.
The fact that it can pick up on A. Fibb, but likely track and save strips of SVT can at least get the user to a medical evaluation with a licensed physician. It's a big deal, as a medicine resident, this could be a game change for a large segment of the population.
One of the points they made was that people who go to the hospital reporting symptoms are not necessarily experiencing those symptoms during the visit, and collecting ECG data when people are going about their daily lives allows doctors to better diagnose heart conditions (Apple Watch ECG data is stored in PDF format in Health app).

An incredible novelty, one that I'm sure many concerned family members will pay $399 for.

One of the presenters mentioned this, but a good use of the Apple Watch ECG will be for patients to take an ECG when they feel weird or bad, and then the doctor can review when they come in.

It's not at all uncommon for patients to say things like "sometimes my heart races" or "sometimes I feel faint", but unless it happens when they're actually at the office, the doctor does not have any actual data to go off of.

> Does it make the watch a medical-grade device and I can do ECG using the watch instead of going to the hospital?

I think it's more the other way around. To the extent that it is marketed and used as a medical device, it has to be FDA approved.

That said, I don't think I'd recommend using it for an ECG instead of going to the hospital. "Approved" medical devices are not, of course, all of the same quality.

With FDA clearance you're allowed to brand and advertise your product as a "medical device". Also, without FDA approval, you have to be very careful about certain terms you use to describe your product's features. For example, without FDA approval, you cannot say your device "monitors" falls. You can only say it "tracks" falls. There are several other limitations because the FDA doesn't want you making these types of medical promises to customers unless the FDA has approved it.

Source: I worked on a fall detection app for the Apple Watch last year.

One possibility (remarked on by @Spooky23 above also) is that you may be able to use a pre-tax healthcare spending account (or similar vehicle - there are a couple) to pay for the device? Similarly, a doctor might be able to prescribe one.
> Does it make the watch a medical-grade device and I can do ECG using the watch instead of going to the hospital?

This is what I am afraid of. People might think that buying a watch will replace visit with a cardiologist (or even using professional home holter) to make a serious ECG measurement (not 30s one, but full 24h scan).

Wish they would target battery life/optimize OS further.

512GB storage, what to do with that? Perhaps long-form video.

Cook wearing white shoes after Labor Day, tsk tsk.

Recommend Ars Technica live blog.

The "super retina" designation doesn't refer to PPI, right? Seems like 458 isn't that much higher than past models, if at all.

Is "super" just a reference to the increased color gamut and true tone functionality?

In laser printers it was a big deal when they hit 200, 300, 400 and 600 dpi.

Going from >300ppi to >400ppi probably warrants a special mention.

It looks like the last-generation iPhone X also had 458 PPI. I got the impression from the presentation that the super retina display was new to this year. My mistake.

EDIT: Also, if Jobs' original theory about retina displays was that the human eye can't see individual pixels at this threshold (300 PPI), then going above and beyond that is perhaps not that important.

>EDIT: Also, if Jobs' original theory about retina displays was that the human eye can't see individual pixels at this threshold (300 PPI), then going above and beyond that is perhaps not that important.

Keep in mind that sometimes implementation details of technology can hide very important differences, so you need to normalize if you want to compare them. In this case, "pixel" does not have a uniform meaning, because it conceals what actually goes into making each unit of light. The original "Retina" displays were LCDs, high quality high DPI LCDs of course, but still LCDs in terms of the pixels being made from even individual sets of red, green and blue. In contrast the OLED in the iPhone X (and now successors) are "PenTile" designs, diamond pixels with a larger green element and smaller red/blue ones wedged in (taking advantage of the human eye's general spectrum response to some extent). This asymmetric arrangement though can mean that an LCD and PenTile display of equivalent "PPI" can have quite visible differences in resolution, and the PenTile requires a higher PPI to reach equivalent levels of imperceptibility. The percentage of active light emission area to surrounding support area can also have an effect. It's possible that future quantum dot technologies or micro inorganic LED displays or the like could change this again, requiring a lower PPI for the same effect, but we'll see.

Also FWIW "resolution capability of the eye" necessarily involves distance and variations in the general population's resting focal point (there are a lot more near sighted people nowadays). So the PPI necessary to achieve "Retina quality" will be a function of sub-pixel construction, expected typical usage distance (a phone will tend to be used closer then a PC display which in turn will tend to be closer then a living room TV which in turn is closer then a billboard or public projector type system), and exactly how many standard deviations into the population a maker cares about.

Retina display also takes into account how far the device is from your eyes so higher PPI means you can't see the pixels when holding it closer.
True, and this is why they refer to computers as having "retina" displays with a lower threshold. But AFAIK, people don't hold phones closer these days than they used to, so wouldn't be a factor here. Might apply to watches?
When going to (Samsung) OLED you'll need an increase in PPI to have the same sharpness because the layout of the pixels is less optimal than with LCD.
Any notable security improvements?
There was mention of the secure enclave and FaceID technology being updated, but I was a little distracted. I did hear them declare it the most secure auth in any phone ever or something to that effect.
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't think any major production runs have been announced yet, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

If Apple is shipping 7nm in iPhones, that's actually incredible.

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's new chip with dual Neural Processing Units. It's actually just Intel that's failing to produce smaller and smaller chips (again, TSMC is producing 7nm for this Apple run as well as Huawei's new chip).

7nm != 7nm - there's a lot of variety between processes.

7nm on a (relatively) small ARM is also a different world to 7nm on a chip the size of the latest Intel's.

6.9B transistors doesn't look small by any standard to me..
die size would br interesting indeed.
Concur. I almost passed out when that slide came up.
TSMC is Apple's sole fabricator for their A series chips so they must be able to make 7nm chips.
Yeah, I realized my error and edited the post.
> It's actually just Intel that's failing to produce smaller and smaller chips

Actually Global Foundries just announced they are abandoning 7nm for the short term.

Size is really just a marketing term at this point. Intel "10nm" is about the same as TSMC "7nm". Size of various features is roughly the same between the two. Global Foundries decided to not touch this cycle (at least for the short term). Samsung also decided to slow their pursuit of "7nm" and focus on "8nm".
AMD has announced 7nm parts also. So, they are only slightly later than Apple with TSMC 7nm.
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?
Notably, you’re comparing the gpu inside an iPhone to a gpu that is more than twice as big as the entire iPhone.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure about how the actual numbers measure up though.

The Bionic chip does 5 trillion operations per second. That's about the same as a NVidia GFX 970. Truely impressive!
NVIDIA labels each SIMD lane as a core, which is basically the same thing as claiming that Intel makes a 896-core CPU.

Anyway, no matter how you define a "core", GPU core counts don't matter except when comparing different SKUs of the same µarch.

Everyone must be able to admit: the automated HDR and improved bokeh look pretty hot..!
Yes, the new cameras and image processing are very impressive.
That is the only reason I would consider the xs over the x. Still waiting for reviews to see just how good it actually is.
It's now possible to change the depth of field after taking the photo. I wasn't paying close enough attention to know if this will also be possible on older iPhones.

EDIT: sounds like it's just the new iPhones. But it includes the less expensive Xr.

They bought the company ~3 years ago that made a camera with post-processing DoF tech: LinX.
Are you referring to Lightro?
I think you mean Lytro, which definitely came to mind during the keynote. Specifically, when they said that it had never been possible to change DOF in photos before. I was listening carefully to see if they would qualify that with "smartphone photography" — but they didn't. I think Lytro's tech beat them to the punch by around a decade.
This stuck out to me, the inventor and CEO of Lytro was my computer graphics professor at Berkeley.

One of our projects in class about adjusting DoF post-capture, and it was definitely one of our exam questions.

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I think the LinX acquisition was more related to FaceID.
The Vivo Nex can do this too btw. It's a cool feature though.
Not really. It just finds what’s closest and then blurs everything else with a depth-independent uniform blur.
Was the bokeh functionality using software to create an artificial depth of field effect, or does the camera capture a range of depth of field? My immediate guess was that it's actually clever software, but was it confirmed either way?
I believe the bokeh is all software similar to the HTC One M8. The only consumer camera I know of that captures multiple DOF is the now defunct Lyrto's, which Jobs reportedly had an interest in for the iPhone.
My impression is that the dual-camera models will capture real frames for depth of field and iPhone XR will achieve it in software. I could be wrong about that though.
When Portrait Mode was first released, they said that the camera array splits the field up into 9 (IIRC) depths based on distance. So probably what's happening here is they save the depth metadata so that you can adjust how blurred you want the background to be.
There's more to bokeh than 'how blurred is the background', it involves things like "how many leafs inside the lens are you using to control aperture".

You can "simplistically" (although still nicely) simulate this, of course.

There may be "key frames", but given that changing aperture is a mechanical action, I can't see how they could capture the range short of shooting a (very short) video as the aperture range is swept.

The calculations are software - and they (obliquely) reference this by "made possible by the new processor".

It's similar to Portrait mode, where they were spinning it as "not done by post-processing", when in reality, a la Tesla and Autopilot, whilst not fitting most people's idea of post work (aka Lightroom/Photoshop), the camera generates a preview of the effect then immediately applies it post shutter release.

Dual SIM could be big in some countries.
This is the biggest announcement for me, because I hope it pushes the rest of the western market to standardize on multiple sims.
It’s just a clever ploy to create demand for their e-sim software sim.
Is that more likely than it being a clever ploy to appeal to people with multiple cell numbers?
If they use a provider that supports Apple’s e-sim software SIM, that is. The ‘not China’ models don’t have two physical SIM slots.
I’m quite concerned about the fact that only China will be getting nano-SIM and every other territory will have e-SIM only. On a recent trip from the UK to South Korea and Japan (where my network has very high roaming prices), it was relatively easy to pick up SIM cards from vending machines and desks at airports. I don’t imagine it’ll be as easy to negotiate and activate an e-sim connection.
you can use esim at home and physical sim on travels, or switch physical sim.
I got the impression where they said that China would not have e-sim but would instead have a dual SIM tray that it was a mutually exclusive thing. E-sim or physical but not both. I hope I’m wrong. There’s a link on the spec page (point 11 in the small print) to details on the e-sim but it returns a 404.
Just announced: Apple now runs on 100% renewable energy.
Including fabrication and production? Or just their office buildings?
At least office buildings and datacenters, unclear (to me) about factories.
Unlikely factories as they don't belong to Apple (ex. Foxconn) so maybe a bit of greenwash involved here. Regardless, a step in the right direction.
I think it’s unlikely too, though they may buy measured or estimated energy consumption in ‘green credits’ (i.e. provide the same amount of clean energy back into the same grid), as pointed out in a sibling comment.
They said all of their facilities, worldwide...

Are apple stores considered a "facility"?

Because, I cant see how the apple store in the Valley Fair Mall can get its own apple-power feed?

It's not like Apple or any other entity doing this is building new last mile electrical distribution, or putting new PV on the roof of malls. They're buying "credits" for kWh from solar/wind/hydroelectric generation sources, which feed into the same electrical grid operator, matching the number of kWh that the meter for the store consumes in a month.
They just calculate what they use, and buy that much from renewable suppliers, there's no separate feed for renewable power
The showmanship really feels like it's run out.

Even when it was the post-Jobs Ive and Cook it was still captivating, but this is just tiresome.

I just wish they would stop saying "the most advanced X ever made". Every new revision of a product is the most advanced version of the product.
Just read your comment and hit play on the livestream to hear Jonny Ive immediately say "the most advanced LCD in a smartphone"...
I understand that to a degree, there theoretically could be a better screen in a competitors phone, though I still think its tired out.

The constant "This is the best X that Apple has done, or the best X in an iPhone/iWatch" was seriously grating. Well, duh, new year, new products. If this wasn't better then apple wouldn't be releasing it....

Why would they stop? They have people like Rene Ritchie who live and breathe what they say and repeat it on their website for other people who live and breathe it.
And the most expensive. Maybe they could get J. Ive to use his best "I'll be your server today" voice and purr about how, "We think you'll agree that this is the most expensive iPhone we've ever made."
Would you say they just phoned it in?
It would be noteworthy (amazing, beautiful, best ever, etc, etc) if they did that, with (e.g.) a live presentation out and about around the world, instead of running the stock The Ghost of Steve Jobs Says Wow script generator macro.

But I guess if you're a trillion dollar company you don't have to try all that hard to think different.

(the previous poster was making a phone pun)
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Phones just aren't as exciting anymore.
I wonder how phones were pitched before the iphone... 300 instead of 250 contacts ? I guess it was mostly aesthetics..
Aesthetics for the regular people.

Geeks would go though which feature set from J2ME, or Symbian OS were being made available, specially on Nokia and Sony-Ericson models.

I mean, nothing to make a keynote about. I think a phone release was mostly a salesman event.
Actually they used to be presented at company sessions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The Apple Watch announcements were intriguing.

The iPhone announcements were, I agree, quite tiresome. So much so, I closed the window a few minutes into Schiller's discussion of the chips in the new models.

I suspect it's because I can only do so much with a phone and nothing in the "smartphone" space jumps out to me as "revolutionary". It seems that innovational leaps in mobile computing will depend on what software becomes available.

The thing that really annoyed me was that after virtually every segment it was "I have a video I want to show you" that was just regurgitating the precious segment.

Either/or, not both.

I send and receive text, sound, and images on my phone. I don't need a revolutionary anything to do that, and the only thing keeping me upgrading is eternal bloat of applications.

What would really be revolutionary is a phone that wouldn't shatter when I drop it.

Especially the iPhone xr was a very annoying tiresome repeat of a repeat. After 15 minutes they named about three specs that are different: color, lcd, camera, size.
> but this is just tiresome.

Especially the exaggerated adjectives. Everything's "gorgeous," "beautiful," or "stunning," even if it's just a featureless black slab like every other phone for the last 5 years.

I could do with less video presentations, they break the flow too much for me. It is almost like intermission during a movie.
This presentation gave the this feeling more than any other I can remember. However, thinking about it now I realize this is a relatively minor event compared to many or most in the past. This was a year of an "s" iPhone model with minor spec bumps, a new lower-end model, and an updated watch with a design that is not radically different. You really can't compare this with unveilings of technological leaps or massively new products.
Because at this point phones are kinda boring. The new chips seem cool, but look completely wasted on a phone. Where is the iPad Pro with the new chips? What about the long rumored MacBook with A-bionic whatever?

Nothing in todays announcement makes me want to upgrade my current iPhoneX. Better graphics on a tiny screen? Yawn. The basketball tracker demo was neat, but those are very specific use cases.

The Apple Watch looks like it is really coming into its own. They should have closed with that.

EDIT

You know what would have really blown the doors off the one more thing? If the iPhone Xr started at $499. That's how you grow the market.

You sound like the sort of person who shouldn't be watching the live feed, and wait for the articles, like me.
Agreed. And I thought the applause was very...scripted? It seemed like everyone was waiting for the appropriate time to clap and when they did it was very lack-luster. Almost like it was a bunch of Apple employees responding to cue cards or something.
Might be just me but Cook felt like he'd had lessons on coming across more passionate and excited, he was over-emoting so much at times.

Previously he's felt a bit dry at times.

They presented the dynamic depth control with the words: "No other smartphone right now can do that".

Lie. I'm writing this comment on a Vivo Nex and I have been using this for months.

No, the Vivo Nex cannot adjust depth of field in post-processing. It can adjust depth of field (via aperture) before capture.
Wrong. I shoot the photo, and can afterwards (or whenever I stumble upon the photo in my gallery) adjust the depth of field with a slider. Pretty similar to what they did in the presentation. I can even change the subject of focus.
Definitely has the option to adjust depth of field in post-processing. Done it lots of times.
>This will be the first ECG product available over the counter to customers.

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.

I don't know why they lie in their presentations. There are at least 100 consumer ECG monitors/trackers on the market.
The presentations aren't exactly off the cuff, that shit is vetted by two dozen lawyers.

Apple doesn't 'lie'. They might stretch and embellish the truth or use very specific phrasing, but they don't lie.

This seems like needlessly trying to take an inch. Apple says statements which the average person with a fully array of facts would call untrue i.e. a lie.

The fact that a lawyer somewhere can find a loophole or just enough edge for doubt, doesn't within itself disprove that. It is common tongue, common sense, a lie, a untruth, factually incorrect, etc.

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I just bought a Macbook Pro yesterday
Oh. Good for you. Thanks for letting me know.
I would return it and get the macbook air before they discontinue it or put the new keyboard in it.
iPhone pricing tiers:

- XR $749

- XS $999

- XS Max $1099

Yikes. And that's for the lowest storage available.

The iPhone SE, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 are still going to be for sale, at $349, $449 and $599 respectively. The range is plenty wide.
This strategy makes perfect sense, but does come with a psychological component that is difficult to overcome. When you but the 7 or 8 there is a sense you are buying an out of date product as opposed to a new, lower-end product. I'm sure managing the products this way saves a fortune because they are always only working to engineer the latest products and coasting on previous years' work for the cheaper models.
Hrm, they seem to have stopped marketing the iPhone SE.
iPhone SE is no longer available in the online apple store (at least in Poland).
Yup, and the lowest tier is 64Gb vs. the next tier at 256Gb. So $DEITY only knows what the phone you'll actually buy will cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this to be the largest gap between tiers yet, with the lowest being four times smaller than the next tier.

EDIT (all prices US): for the big one:

256: $1249

512: $1499

Little one:

256: $1149

512: $1349

R:

128: $799

256: $899

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this to be the largest gap between tiers yet, with the lowest being four times smaller than the next tier.

7 and 8 were the same if not worse.

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't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a notable deviation from their early approach to the iPhone.
When the original iPhone launched there was no other product like it; nowadays they need to be able to compete with Android on price.
Compete on price? They're getting more and more expensive...
Flagship Androids are also getting more and more expensive.
Both Apple and Samsung are going to get their lunch eaten by Xiaomi, Huawei and the rest I guess, then.

I'm eagerly awaiting the Pocophone F1 release here in Uruguay.

That rings true. Huawei owner here who, when purchasing, was doubting between a Lenovo, Xiaomi and this Huawei. Didn't have to think long when seeing what Samsung asks for a mid- or high-end phone (or when comparing specs of their low-end models).
That must be an odd definition of "lunch", given that Apple tends to capture roughly 80% of Smartphone profits, Huawei about 6%, and Xiaomi even less than that.
Now. But they're in serious danger of being disrupted from the bottom.

http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/

Low-end disrupters (think steel minimills and discount retailers) come in at the bottom of the market and take hold within an existing value network before moving upmarket and attacking that stratum

For a value of "now" that includes the last 10 years. And for the entire time, low end disruption has been predicted, with the list of designated disruptors occasionally changing.
One pretty good barrier that Apple has built and defends well is the phone as a status symbol and object of desire.

But, as a phone, I think low end disruptors are here, and I can't understand why people would pay 3 or 4 times as much as needed for a phone - other than that they have the money, and they want the phones for reasons unrelated to performance (aesthetics, perceived quality, privacy, etc.).

Xiaomi in particular is trying to erode that particular Apple barrier, their flagships are already objects of desire in India, China and in my country (Uruguay).

Steve Jobs was the one who axed a lot of their products in their early years.
And he also added a lot of products during his time.
Is Apple discontinuing the iPhone SE without a replacement? :(
The "R" is the replacement
The R is bigger than the iPhone 8. How is it a replacement for the SE?
Let's not shoot the messenger here. You might not like it, but the R is the for "replacement". You'll have to take it up with Apple if you want to know why.
You sure about that? The XS is smaller than the XR.
Was the SE about size or price? I thought it was about price, and coincidentally was smaller. If it's the other way around, then you're right. But then my whole world view on Apple's product lineup kind of gets confused.
Apple may have intended it to be about price, but look at all the complaining. A lot of people bought it for size.
Yep, I bought it for its small size. I still think it's the perfect iPhone. The best in the lineup, even today (notwithstanding it being discontinued).
Who can say whether it was about size or price from Apple's perspective except Apple?

For me and a lot of the others in this thread, it was about size. I'm sure very few people complained about the price, but personally I would have welcomed a higher price if it meant better technology (3D touch, wireless charging for example).

There is no evidence the Cr is meant as a replacement, it’s just the bottom of the flagship models.

I think it’s more likely the 7 or 8 are seen as the replacement. They’re smaller (than the X series) and cheaper.