Apple Event 9/12/2017

Written by Eric Miller
Published on Sep 14, 2017
Topic: Apple
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Apple just did another event where they announced the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, among other things. Because I am as predictable as the flame wars about whether or not the event was any good, I’m here to give the highlights about the event so that you don’t have to watch the whole 2-hour keynote.

Let’s Talk About iPhones

The next generation of iPhones is here, with the iPhone X and iPhone 8. And, as usual, the old model is available for slightly cheaper than previously. However, unlike previous years, the iPhone 6S has stuck around, and is selling starting at $449. So, if you’re strapped for cash and want a full-size iPhone, now is a good time.

Anyway, on to a quick overview. Overall, I’m somewhat unimpressed with this year’s new iPhones. If you’re already on a yearly upgrade plan and want to go ahead to the iPhone 8, I think that’s understandable. There’s also not a lot of new features that will be heavily used by most people, so sticking with a 7 or 6S is very understandable too.

So if the question you’re coming to this review with is along the lines of “is the new one worth buying?”, you can leave now, because the answer is “meh, probably not”. The exception is if you take a lot of pictures/video, and take advantage of the technologies already in iPhones for photo/video capture.

Since that’s the highlight of the event, I figured I’d get that out of the way real quick. If you want more detail, I’ll go through that below, along with the other announcements.

Apple Watch

They’ve announced the series 3 Apple Watch. Of course it has the typical processor and performance improvements, but the big selling point of this one is that it has an LTE chip built-in. Most people won’t care about this, and if you do, you already know, so I’m going to leave it there. While the processor improvements are rather impressive, in my opinion they don’t make a huge difference for what the watch is actually used for.

Science!

One of the (in my opinion) big announcements here is that Apple is rolling out scientific study programs, called the Apple Heart Study. It’s being used to monitor heart data and detect things like arrhythmias (which can be a serious indicator of heart problems) automatically. This has the potential to save lives by detecting problems before they become big problems, and is a very good thing to have.

Apple TV

Apple TV is finally catching up with the competition and bringing 4K support with it. They’re also bringing HDR support to the Apple TV. HDR brings brighter and better colors, and really does look a lot better compared to non-HDR. This brings a premium version of the TV box to be available, and it really is a good offering. Of course, this only applies if you have a TV that supports these display technologies. Lots of newer content will be available in 4K HDR, including many Netflix and Amazon Prime titles. If you’re a sports fan, you’ll be happy to hear that they’re also bringing in live sports to Apple TV. It starts at $179

Another nice change (especially for me, since I don’t actually own a 4K TV) is a price drop on the older version of the Apple TV, down to $149.

iPhone 8

This is an incremental improvement, similar to the previous S-series they’ve released in the past. In truth it’s closer to a 7S than an 8 (going by their previous naming scheme). I’m going to break down the changes into a list to cover the points quickly at a high level.

  • Built with new, much more damage-resistant glass. Good for folks who drop their phones.
  • Better water resistance (though still the same water-resistance rating)
  • True tone display - the warmth of the display is adapted to ambient light (like on the iPad Pro)
  • New processor - A11 Bionic. Very impressive processor and improvements. 25% faster at high-performance. 30% faster graphics.
  • Further-refined image coprocessor, meaning better photo quality.
  • Improved camera. More sensitive to light, less noise in photos, and better low-light photo quality.
  • Portrait mode improvements - They made these better in a few ways. They use some machine learning to make it automatically adjust lighting to look better.
  • 4K 60FPS video capture.
  • 1080p 240FPS Slo-mo video.
  • Specialized encoder - makes video look better and compress better.
  • Hardware optimizations for augmented reality (AR).
  • Wireless Qi charging built-in. This isn’t the “across-the-room” charging I’m waiting for, this is the “set it down on a special charging pad” that’s been around for a while with third-party cases.
  • Starts at 64GB.

iPhone X

This is the 10th anniversary iPhone, and is probably going to be considered Apple’s new flagship. It starts at $999. It has many of the same features as the iPhone 8, but a few extras.

  • Display is edge-to-edge, taking up the full size of the phone. No more bezels. No more home button.
  • Along the top, there’s a patch used for the cameras. This chunk is taken out of the display, so when looking at photos or videos, it cuts into them. Maybe my opinion would be changed by seeing it in action, but to me this seems like a severe flaw and miscalculation on Apple’s part.
  • Super Retina display - very high-resolution display, at 2436x1125 pixels, 458 pixels per inch.
  • OLED display - OLED displays have high contrast and deep darks, which looks really good, and makes pictures/videos/movies look fantastic.
  • Face ID - this replaces touch ID. It analyzes your face by building a 3D model of it, and checking that your eyes are open and looking at the phone. By my estimation, this is probably more secure than a fingerprint, which can be spoofed fairly easily by comparison. It works with infrared light, so it will work in the dark. It also adapts to changes in your face over time. Note, this failed during the live demo.
  • I don’t want to undersell Face ID - it’s the best facial recognition technology accessible to consumers, and is certainly impressive
  • You can make facial expressions and project them onto an emoji. Yes, including the pile of poop.
  • Both camera lenses have optical image stabilization, rather than just the telephoto.
  • Incremental improvements to the backside flash.
  • The extra sensors on the front for FaceID mean that portrait mode can be used on the front side too. Selfie-lovers, rejoice!
  • 2 hours more battery life.
  • Serious drawback

Impressions

As I said at the beginning, I’m not too impressed with this year’s hardware, especially in light of how great WWDC was this year with all the new software technologies. Of course, if you’re all about camera improvements, you may be totally enthused about this year. There’s merit to that, there are some quite substantial camera improvements, especially on the iPhone X.

The processor improvements are impressive, as they have been every year. The processor improvements are important. Here’s why. Apple is eschewing traditional processor design by introducing specialized coprocessors for every specialized operation it needs to perform. Traditional processor designs are made up of two main components, the central processing unit (CPU) and the graphics processing unit (GPU). Apple continues to, instead of relying on these two things, introduce coprocessors to allow specialized operations to be performed more quickly and energy-efficiently. To be clear, this is not a common approach. It’s a very powerful approach, one that’s very difficult to do if you don’t have tight control over both the hardware and software at every level, like Apple does. Apple has coprocessors for analyzing photos/videos, motion, and now for machine learning. This could open up doors not otherwise possible, and has interesting implications.

The Apple TV improvements make me really happy. I’ll probably buy one. Between adding a better processor and support for HDR, the case for them has gotten much stronger, and I’m a bit unhappy with my Roku 2.