Apple’s September Event Review: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Apple’s September Event was slightly underwhelming given all the hype and rumors surrounding their new products this year. Apple chose to focus on small and minor upgrades to their Apple Watch and cheaper iPad versions rather than making the exciting technological leaps that Steve Jobs was known to do. A new heart monitor on the Apple Watch Series 6 is hardly a good enough reason to go out and buy one.
On the bright side, people who fear contracting the Coronavirus will probably view the new Apple Watch as a useful tool for tracking their oxygen level (one of the symptoms of the Coronavirus is shortness of breath).
Speaking of the virus, Apple made a good decision this year by introducing Apple Fitness+, a home-workout service that fully integrates with Apple devices such as the iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple Fitness+ looks sharp and well made thanks to the strong backing of Apple’s production (The virtual conference itself has a major Hollywood production feeling). The new service is looking to be a formidable threat in the home workout market now that people can accurately measure their workout by syncing their Apple Watch to the service. We don’t think a lot of people will jump ship on this yet, but those who are already in the Apple ecosystem will see benefit from it.
Another highlight from this event was the new, redesigned iPad Air. The sleek, box-like finish is a breath of fresh air after years of the same design. This new design shares a similar look to the premium iPad Pro models. The addition of new colors this year-Sky Blue, Rose Gold, and Green- is also a welcome announcement after years of being stuck with the same Space Grey and Silver colors.
The iPad Air also saw a new, redesigned touch ID. This time, the touch ID is located on the power button at the top instead of being on the bottom button. Despite the similar design, the iPad Air doesn’t come with Face ID like the iPad Pro models. It’s a shame that Face ID didn’t come to this year’s iPad Air, but we think it’s a deliberate move so as to distinguish the new iPad Air from the premium iPad Pro models. It’s interesting that Apple didn’t implement this design with the iPhone 6, 7, and 8 models which also used Touch ID. With this new announcement though, we’re curious to see what other redesigns that Apple has under its sleeves.
Overall, the new iPad Air is one of the most exciting, iPad-related news to come in a long time, and we hope to see the cheaper iPad models getting similar upgrades in the near future.
One of the more mediocre announcements at this event was Apple’s new subscription model called Apple One. Now, customers can buy a bundle of Apple’s digital services such as Apple Music, iCloud, Fitness+, News+ and more for a fixed price starting at $14.95 a month. We think this is an attempt to put their least known services like Apple Arcade to more people’s faces as possible. Except for Apple Music and iCloud, there really isn’t much incentives to use the other services, beside Fitness+ which hasn’t come out yet. We’ll see how this one turns out. In the mean time, the whole announcement sounded more like a desperate attempt to get their services into more hands than an actual attempt to add value to people.
There were no announcements mentioned about Apple’s rumored “AirTag”, which is supposed to be a new product that can locate lost items. It’s been rumored that the AirTags will be a part of this year’s product lineup. Our guess is that they’ll be unveiled along with the new iPhones at the next Apple Event which is supposed to be taking place next month.
For now, we have a new product lineup that is more or less an improvement on than last year’s models. Until Apple announces their new Apple Glass or Apple Car in the near future, we’ll most likely be seeing more of the same incremental changes in the coming years.
Originally published at http://yourapplenews.com on September 16, 2020.
