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So Apple held its annual September "iDevices" event earlier today, and here are my thoughts on it.
The first set of announcements were for the watch lineup, starting with the Series 10. For all of the rumoured hype that Series 10 was getting, due to it being released on the 10th anniversary of the announcement of Apple Watch, it was a pretty underwhelming update.
The wide-angle OLED display and Jet Black finish were the stand-out upgrades to me. Focusing on the wide-angle OLED display, it is now AFAIK almost exactly the same size as the Ultra 2 while now seemingly being brighter than it when viewed at an angle.
And this is where the confusion starts. In the months leading up to this event, rumours were speculating that the Ultra would not be on the same annual release cycle as the regular "Series" watch, and today that came true. The only update to the Apple Watch Ultra, despite it being the most expensive product in the lineup, was the new Satin Black finish.
Don't get me wrong here, the new Satin Black finish looks stunning, however why not give it a slightly larger update, such as moving from the S9 SiP (System-in-a-Package) to the S10 SiP that was introduced with the Series 10 along with the new finish? I can understand the SE not being on an annual release cycle, but not the highest-end product. The SE also did not receive any updates or a price cut, despite being 2 years old.
Another bit of confusion came during the event, where the display sizes of the Series 10 and Ultra 2 were compared, and yet neither the visuals or presenter gave a clear answer on whether there were exactly the same size or not.
In the AirPods department, the new AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (yes, that is its actual name) were announced alongside the AirPods Max gaining some new colour options along with the move to USB-C for charging.
Previously, Apple was selling both the AirPods 2 and 3 as the lower-end options in the lineup, however those have both been replaced by two products with an almost identical name (to the average consumer), the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation.
I do have conflicting views on the latter's name; on one hand, the ANC version could be very easily confused with the regular non-ANC AirPods 4, especially by a consumer that is not familiar with all of the different models and their respective feature sets, but on the other hand, what else could they have called it? AirPods 4 Plus? Name the non-ANC version the AirPods 4 SE? Overall, Apple's name choice is fine with me.
There has also been an update to the AirPods Max, a product that some thought Apple had completely forgotten about given it came out almost 4 years ago (during the middle of the pandemic to put that into perspective) and hadn't received any kind of update until now. It now includes a USB-C port, rather than Lightning, but everything else is the same for the most part. It still uses the old H1 chip from 2019, meaning that it doesn't have the computational capabilities that every other AirPods product now has, and nothing has been done about the condensation issues that plagued the first-gen Max seemingly.
Lastly, a minor update has been made to the AirPods Pro 2, adding support for them to be used as over-the-counter hearing aids, which I imagine will make a huge difference to people in need of cheaper hearing aids, considering typical hearing aids cost thousands of dollars.
Of course, the biggest and most hyped announcement is the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro lineup. Let's start with the new colours for the standard 16 lineup, in my opinion they are some of the best iPhone colours ever made (up with Slate, Midnight Green and Sierra Blue).
Last year, we got a selection of pastel baby-like colours, which I'm glad to see are gone in favour of some well-needed saturation.
For the Pro models, we got a new Desert Titanium colour, which looks much more like a rose gold to me. There were plenty of rumours that were suggesting that it was going to be a much darker bronze after an image of a dummy 16 Pro Max was leaked in August, which I did seriously doubt as Apple typically goes for much less saturated colours on the Pro lineup.
Talking performance, both the standard and Pro models now use the A18 family of SoCs, based on the same second-gen 3nm process as the M4 chip found in the 2024 iPad Pros, which equates to a minor jump in performance but a big jump in efficiency. Although not confirmed, I presume that all models now ship with at least 8GB of RAM, as they all support Apple Intelligence.
Upgrades have also been made to the camera array on all models, including the new 48MP "Fusion" camera which allows for both 24MP and 48MP capture, creating a pseudo-optical zoom on the non-Pro models for the first time, and support for 4K120 recording on the Pros.
I want to start off this section by saying that this feature looked amazing in the keynote video. Having a series of "quick controls" accessible at only a moment's notice would come in especially handy when taking macro photography, especially around insects and such where you need to quickly be able to capture an image. I do feel that not much thought has been given into how it feels to use when the phone is held in portrait, but maybe this is a case of Apple's classic motto "you're holding it wrong" once again.
Lastly, as everyone expected Apple took a great deal of time to talk about Apple Intelligence. I do plan on doing a much-deeper dive into my thoughts on Apple Intelligence once the beta is released globally, however one thing I did notice while watching the event was that Apple seems to be taking features that they previously deemed as "machine learning" and putting them all under the Apple Intelligence umbrella.
As I was in the middle of writing this article, I did think about how most of these updates are very minor in the grand scheme of technology (excluding Apple Intelligence), however the inner geek in me always enjoys seeing new tech, and this event was no exception to that. I am holding out for the M4 MacBook Pro event in October however, so stay tuned for that, and possibly an M4 MacBook Pro review coming soon.