Apple's Big Day Reveals Refreshes of Existing Products and the Worst Kept Secret - The UpStream

This week, Apple held its annual September product reveal event. In past years, the event has been primarily focused on the iPhone product line, with separate events for the iPad, and Mac, iPod and Apple TV often taking the stage at the company's World Wide Developer Conference. This year, however, Apple changed the game, bringing the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV together. It is likely that Apple did not have faith in the iPhone and iPad to hold the stage on its own, but also believed that the Apple TV announcement deserved bigger billing than WWDC.

With that said, the response to this year's presentation was mixed. The hardcore Apple fans were excited about the new additions and upgrades to the product lineup. Meanwhile, others couldn't help but notice that there was nothing particularly new onstage, simply new to the Apple ecosystem. In fact, the most tweeted about aspect of their presentation was not from them but a partner. Let's take a look at what we saw and what we didn't.

Apple Watch

The surprise participant in this year's event was the Apple Watch. While we knew that an update to the operating system was coming, having only recently launched, an update to the line was certainly not expected. Expected or not, it is exactly what we got. In addition to a new SKU in the family announced on stage, we learned that a collection of SKUs are out of stock and have been discontinued and will not be returning.

The company also showed off some of the new features of the next generation of the watchOS, along with some partners coming with the upgrade. A large focus of the presentation was around the health features of the device, including personal and professional. They also highlighted some partners, including Facebook Messenger and medical platform AirStrip.

One of the interesting aspects of the presentation was integration with GoPro. You will be able to interact with your camera remotely using an Apple Watch. While this might not seem like a particularly exciting feature to most, it was to the stock market, with GoPro's stock price rising almost $2 following the announcement.

iPad Pro

This year's worst kept secret in the tech world was the iPad Pro. We knew many specs and even the name. What we didn't know was that it was going to borrow more than the "Pro" name from Microsoft. The device would be what most would consider to be a Microsoft Surface RT competitor, in that it runs a mobile operating system instead of the full desktop experience, like the Surface Pro. The thing that sets it apart from the Surface RT is its 3rd party support.

Coming in with a 12.9" screen, an A9x processor and 4GB of RAM (announced by Adobe, not Apple), the iPad Pro is a physical hybrid of the Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3. Making it even more like a Surface is the attachable keyboard. It snaps in just like Microsoft's tablet, but without the kickstand on the back, it makes using it anywhere but on a flat surface difficult. If you thought the Surface keyboard was too small, we have news for you: the iPad Pro keyboard cover is even smaller.

Adding to the Surface-like features is the new Apple Pencil, an anti-Jobs multi-pressure stylus. Despite Steve Jobs decrying the concept of a stylus for years, following the massive failure of the Apple Newton, the company decided to include a 1st party stylus accessory in the lineup for the iPad Pro. While the company has not released pressure level values, we can assume they will be similar to the Surface Pen. The difference will be that you have to actually charge the Pencil, something that I have never had to actively do with my Surface Pen in the several years I have owned it.

To add insult to injury, after announcing a pretty direct ripoff of a Microsoft product, Apple invited Microsoft on stage to demonstrate Office 2016 on the iPad Pro. It's no surprise that Apple would need Microsoft's support in launching a new productivity-focused tablet. Office is the gold standard that basically all businesses use, and there is no way that enterprise customers would even consider spending the money on this tablet if it didn't have a well implemented Office suite available at launch.

The iPad Pro will run $799 for 32GB, $949 for 128 GB and $1079 for 128GB with Cellular connectivity. The Apple Pencil does not come with the tablet and will run $99, and the Smart Keyboard runs $169. Let's compare the Surface 3, the comparable product from Microsoft, to the iPad Pro on price. For the 128GB model, a Surface 3 will run you $777 for the Surface, Pen and Keyboard Cover, while the iPad Pro will run you $1,217 and will not run full featured applications, only iOS apps.

Apple TV

The Apple TV took the direction that all of us likely expected: featuring apps. The company has upgraded the hardware and added Siri, but not the way that one might expect or hope. You can ask her questions and even search for video content, but only in the apps that Apple has chosen to implement. There will be no real developer access to Siri, so your podcast app will not be searched when someone asks Siri for Star Wars content.

Assuring that developing for Apple products is as difficult as possible, the company has brought a 4th operating system to the lineup: tvOS. Based on iOS 9, but separate and apart, developing apps for the new Apple TV will be similar to developing for their other mobile platforms, but will not be able to be exactly the same. As Microsoft is working to provide a single, unified platform for developers in Windows 10, Apple is diverging their platform to make development harder - an interesting move. Unfortunately they are taking away some capabilities from developers as well, meaning that a number of existing Apple TV apps will not be possible on the new hardware.

The new remote control has added a screen-less touchscreen. similar to what is on the PlayStation 4 controller. Indirect touch mapping is something the tech savvy consumer will enjoy, but could potentially alienate the casual consumer, which is Apple's main consumer. They have also added motion controls, in an attempt to compete in gaming.

The new Apple TV will run $149 for 32GB and $199 for 64GB.

iPhone

As per usual, the S in the iPhone name stands for "same as last year" with very little change between annual models. There are some improvements, and one truly new feature - to the iPhone, that is. Thankfully, the company started by announcing a camera upgrade, bringing the primary camera to a 12MP iSight with 4K video support. That will bring the camera closer to inline with competitors in the Android world. They have also made the FaceTime camera a 5MP and added what they call Retina Flash, an over-engineered usage of the screen as a front-facing camera flash.

The iPhone-new feature, 3D Touch, is a return to resistive touchscreens - depending on how hard you press the screen, different things will happen. It is a resistive twist on the traditional long-press concept. For example, in the Mail app, if you long-press lightly on an email, you will get a preview of the message, whereas if you long-press hard on the message you will get the full-screen email. You can also continue to interact with the phone in the traditional way - with short presses.

The problem with the concept of 3D Touch, which was originally branded Force Touch, which sounds like something you would end up in prison for, is that there is no way to intuit its usage. All of the UI elements and implementation are hidden behind invisible controls. Will an app implement 3D Touch? If so, how? What will a light or hard long-press accomplish in said app? Unfortunately, only trial and error will reveal.

The new iPhone lineup works as expected: the iPhone 5 is discontinued, the 5s becomes free, the 6 drops $100 and the 6s takes the top-tier pricing block. The gold iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have been discontinued, and a new color, Rose Gold, has been added for the new handsets. The "Rose Gold" does not actually live up to its name, though, just being pink. The company has also implemented their own leasing program, similar to what you can expect from your carrier. The difference is that you can get an upgrade every 12 months instead of 24 with the carrier plans.

Numbers

One of the things that Steve Jobs was famous for was starting the presentation with numbers: new devices sold, new service subscriptions, etc. This was during the height of the Apple boom, which seems to be quickly coming to an end. Why else would the company have backtracked on everything that Jobs hated: big screens, styli, etc.? This year, the numbers we would have expected to hear from Jobs would be Apple Watch sales and Apple Music usage. The numbers we actually got were: none.

Not a single useful stat was revealed, indicating that the company is ashamed of its performance. That is inline with what we have heard already about those exact stats: the Apple Watch sold well its first week, but trailed off almost immediately. It also explains the quick discontinuation of several models of the Watch. A lack of Music numbers also runs inline with what we've heard. The still-free service has seen steep declines in usage, with people displeased with the overall interface and quality.