When Americans stopped buying cars in the 1950s due to market saturation, GM’s strategy to segment their customers paid off — different strata like Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac with the same underlying tech. Think iPad Pro, Air, 2020 Plain …
Choose your reading adventure from the 👆 choices above to learn about the Apple Event from September 15, 2020.
Some Editorializing Version
September 15, 10PM
They say you can never get all three: speed, quality, cost. Apple product release events tend to always get you all three, except never all at once. That’s one of the many secrets behind its formula for success.
Wearables
Apple has taken the design playbook of Swatch to bring to market fanciful watch faces and high-tech wristbands. You’ll get to use your watch for 6 more hours (now 18) on a single charge compared with the previous generation. You’re also able to monitor your blood oxygen levels in the highest-end model for fitness monitoring. Or apropos to the current global pandemic, you might know if you have personally been impacted by C-19.
Apple Watch 6
New with Blood O2 sensor and Series 6 chip gives you speed and quality, but it will cost you (Hèrmes $1,499).
Apple Watch SE
Sans O2-sensor with slower processor brings lower-end speed and quality, with an emphasis on cost.
🍃 Eco alert: 100% recycled aluminum case for Apple Watch; 100% arsenic free glass.
Tablets
When Americans stopped buying cars in the 1950s due to market saturation, General Motors’ strategy to segment the market paid off and led to new growth. They invented different cars strats like Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac with varying levels of detailing while sharing the same underlying technologies.
Apple iPad (2020)
Compared with the flagship iPad Pro at the price of a laptop, $329 is so cheap you can buy an Apple Pencil.
Apple iPad Air (2020)
Not too fast and not too slow, and iPad Pro-like in styling, the iPad Air is the Goldilocks “just right” option.
🍃 Eco alert: Transitioning to 100% renewable energy for Apple production; 100% paper from responsibly managed forests and 95% recyclable fiber packaging.
Services
Fitness+
Reminds me of the 1988 U.S. VP candidate debates when Lloyd Bentsen said to Dan Quayle, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” In that spirit I say, “Fitness+, you’re no Peloton.”
Apple One
It reminds me of back in 2011 when the whole world was disappointed to not see new hardware come out of Apple, and instead saw Steve Jobs introduce the new iCloud. Catching up to Google isn’t easy.
Operating System Update
iOS14
Tweaks to the core visual experience when using an i-anything, better voice recognition and other attempts to catch up to Google’s superior AI/ML-powered Pixel experience.
ETC
No Apple Air Tags or Apple iPhone 12 announced as many hoped.
Slightly Disappointed Live Version
Keep in mind that I am a 70s Apple II owner, and bought the 1984 Mac when it first came out and stayed Mac.
Apple Watch Series 6
- Apple Watch … the big reveal. Is. Braided cloth wristbands. And a bright red colored version. All with the Apple Watch Series 6. Wristbands are the new rich Corinthian leather feature of computational machinery.
- Apple Watch. Blood O2 measurement magic in Series 6. It lets you figure out if you’re blood’s working well for you. Blood oxygen and pulse oximetry are COVID-19 era stats you want. Because you’ll know how sick you are, but won’t be able to heal yourself per se.
- Apple Watch. Lots of cool new watch faces by designers. And steeped in the history of timekeeping. With new cool faces so that it’s like more of a Swatch. “There’s a watch face for that” is someone’s really bad idea (as a play on “there’s an app for that.”
- Apple Watch. Connect all your watches together within your family so that you can do Family Setup and buzz each other together. With no need for an iPhone tethered to it. Because it’s a … pager?
- Apple Watch. SE. Slightly-less Expensive. It’s the gateway drug to getting more Apple Watch goodness later. It’s using the S5 chip instead of the S6 chip — so it’s only a little less slower. That way you’ll need to buy the next version in the future.
I’m 29 minutes into the Apple Watch infomercial and not feeling it.
All the talk about fitness and stuff makes me think, “Cool fitness monitoring tech. But it ain’t as cool as a Peloton by any measure.” Apple Fitness Plus isn’t nearly as cool as what Peloton appears to do (I don’t own one but the brand and community certainly make me want one :+).
A sleek Peloton bicycle excites me way more than a cute fitness watch chirping at me.
All that said, I went out and bought an Apple Series 6 watch :+).
iPad
New models coming out? Uh oh. I just bought a new iPad Pro. 10 years of iPad! I bought the first one. But I’m sweating a bit wondering if I should have waited to buy a new iPad until this Apple Event. Okay, Apple. Disappoint me! Make want to buy the next new thing, Apple!
So iPad is getting updated. Oh phew. It’s not the iPad Pro. They’re upgrading their lower end models. 40% faster CPU and 2X in graphics speed. Same design as the iPad I bought a few years ago. It’s 3X faster than an Android tablet. 6X faster than a Chromebook. Ummmmm … I don’t really care about this kind of stuff as an Apple fan. The tactic of “MORE TECH” was the way the PC competed against Apple. I’m not a fan of this playbook.
Apple Pencil works with the new iPads. This means more confusion around which iPads will use the Pencil, and which ones won’t. And yet the fundamental flaw of the Apple Pencil is not yet addressed.
Uh oh. More handwriting recognition. That means old iPads are going to be too slow to run the feature. And bad handwriting recognition is like bad speech recognition. You need to fight to express what you really mean.
iPad Air. I forgot. There’s multiple iPads. There’s the Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac. The Buick has been updated … but the auth sensor has now moved to the top of the iPad air. It’s a combo ON button and auth method. This is all cognitive overload for me as the various chorded button combinations have already starting to lose me. Wasn’t the whole idea of the iPod to have just one button?
iPad Air. Bigger and badder processors letting you do more AI/ML and matrix math. They actually said “matrix math.” Wow. That’s getting super techie for no good reason because the average consumer doesn’t care about your bus size or FLOPs. This Apple Event reminds me of how Sony used to market its devices. And then later Samsung. All about the technonumbers. But where is the love?
iPad Air. Recycled materials are in! That’s good. It’s testament to Apple’s commitment to being an even better company than in its past. So in 2020 I have personally purchased three new Apple products: 1/ iPad Pro, 2/ Series 6 Watch, 3/ replacement Airpods. I remain an Apple lover and haven’t given up.
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Reminder: I am a 70s Apple II owner, and bought the 1984 Mac when it first came out and stayed Mac. But I gave up on the Apple Watch … sorry.
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