Kevin C. Wong

Apple Event - Sep 09 2024

Apple Watch Series 10
- Summary: slightly bigger, thinner, lighter with a better CPU.
- biggest display, 30% bigger than series 6
- wide angle OLED display, up to 40% brighter viewed from angle
- always on updates every second instead of every minute
- thinnest Apple Watch ever, 9mm
- play music or podcasts through Apple Watch
- 50m water resistance
- fastest charging Apple Watch ever, 30m to get to 80% charge
- polished titanium case option
- carbon neutral product
- S10 CPU, 4 core neural engine (suppress background noise during calls)
- Apple Intelligence: medical reminders, loud environment detection
- AI: overnight monitoring: ovulation, vitals, sleep stages, sleep apnea
- built-in depth gauge, water temperature, Tides app
- starts at $400, +$100 with Cellular

Apple Watch Ultra 2
- Summary: no significant changes.
- training mode for exercising
- offline maps
- new finish: satin black
- starts at $800 and includes Cellular

AirPods 4
- Summary: an effective Active Noise Cancellation in this form factor would be amazing
- H2 chip
- improved audio architecture
- Personalized Spatial Audio
- nod and shake head actions
- voice isolation (so other party only hears your voice)
- Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Mode
- Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness (output volume adapts to environment)
- Charging case supports wireless charging
- AirPods 4 $130, with Active Noise Cancellation $180

AirPods Max
- Summary: slight changes, not enough to call it AirPods Max 2
- new colors
- USB-C
- Personalized Spatial Audio
- AirPods Max $550

AirPods Pro 2
- Summary: adds hearing protection, test and aid features
- Hearing Protection (machine learning reduces loud noises 48k times per second)
- Hearing Test (five minute test, needs iPhone app)
- Hearing Aid (boosts specific sounds you need depending on your hearing loss)
- FDA approval pending for Hearing Test and Hearing Aid

iPhone 16
- Summary: faster and adds yet another hardware control
- 6.1" standard, 6.7" plus
- Camera Control - click and slide control
- A18 chip, 6-core cpu (2 performance, 4 efficiency), 16-core neural engine
- 17% more memory bandwidth, 3 nm technology
- 30% faster than iPhone 15's A16 Bionic with 30% less power
- 5-core GPU, 40% faster than A16 Bionic with 35% less power

Apple Intelligence
- Private Cloud Compute - server-based intelligence with verifiable privacy
- PCC runs on 100% renewable electricity
- Writing tools - rewrite or proofread your text
- Dynamically create new emojis
- Image playground
- Search for photos, specific moments in a video
- Auto select photos and create a video based on your description
- Summarized emails and notifications
- Siri enhancements
- Visual Intelligence - point camera at something to get relevant info

Camera Control
- flush to surface
- click to launch camera, click again to take photos, click and hold for video recording
- haptic feedback
- light press for clean preview and show current camera setting, slide to adjust setting
- light double-tap for more camera settings, slide to choose setting

Camera Features
- 48 MP Fusion Camera: 40 MP with mode for 12 MP 2x Telephoto, 4K60 Video in Dolby Vision HDR
- 12 MP Ultra-Wide Camera, macro photography
- Spatial Capture using both cameras
- Redesigned Photos app
- Remove objects fromm photos using Apple Intelligence

Gaming
- 30% higher sustained performanced
- hardware accelerated ray tracing (5x higher frame rates than software)
- Tencent Honor of Kings: World will be released for iPhone 16

Pricing
- iPhone 16 $800 with 128 GB storage
- iPhone 16 Plus $900 with 128 GB storage

iPhone 16 Pro
- Summary: for people who want a slightly bigger screen and/or better cameras
- 6.3" Pro, 6.9" Pro Max

A18 Pro Chip (improvements over A18)
- Larger caches, next-generation ML accelerators (directly programmable)
- Advanced media: ProMotion display, Always-On display, USB 3, ProRes video recording
- New video encoder
- New image signal processor

Photography
- 48 MP Ultra-wide camera
- third camera: 12 MP 5x Telephoto camera

Video
- 4K120 video capture

Audio
- 4 studio quality microphones
- Audio Mix: machine learning to separate background elements from speech
- Voice Memos app: layer recording on existing audio, saves only recorded audio

Pricing
- iPhone 16 Pro $1000 with 128 GB storage
- iPhone 16 Pro Max $1200 with 256 GB storage

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Personally I'm fine with my Apple Watch 7 and iPhone SE and my next ones will probably be SE models. I love AirPods Max but since there is no real update guess I don't have to buy one and will stick with AirPods Pro (2nd gen).

ANC is actually a great feature and if AirPods 4 have good ANC with an air gap allowing outside sounds into your ear then that would be superior to in-ear headphones.

Overall AirPods 4 with ANC is the most intriguing announcement.