Last week, Apple had its usual Product launch, where they talk about the cool things that they are going to be coming out with over the next few months. Some of the things that they did were quite typical for an Apple Keynote. There was the continual talking about how excellent everything they were presenting was, and showing videos that made the products look as cool as possible. Some things were vastly different from previous keynotes. There was serious social distancing for each of the speakers. It was cool to see the transition videos between the speakers. They had people who did the normal speaking that they would do in the apple theatre, but they were spread out throughout a few different places in the Apple Park.
1) Apple Watch – So they came out with the 6th series of the Apple watch, which was not a surprise. They were spoiling coming out with a new watch for a while. What was cool was a couple of different things. They have decided to do what they do with most of their other apple products and put them in different coloured aluminum cases. In this case, they’re starting with the same Apple red as some fo their phones have been and a sweet looking blue. With the last major update to the Apple watch, you could do an EKG and make sure that you’re not having a heart attack. With the new one, you will check your blood oxygen levels, which is intensely cool. As a guy who used to suffer from Childhood asthma, ensuring your blood’s proper oxygenation is a big deal. One way that the sold it was to make sure that there is another step that offers you a complete picture of your health.
2) New Ipads – The new Ipads that were prominently featured were the new iPad Air models. The person talking about them went through all the specs and how amazing they were (They were somewhat cool). What would have been interesting was the fact that A) They came in different colours (I’m still partial to the dark grey and I liked the light blue) and B) they are going to USB-C as the charging port instead of using the lightning ports that they have used previously. This is not a surprise as they had gone this way with the iPad pro, and frankly, this fits with their way of standardizing what ports they use. Now that their laptops and iPads are using USB-C for their power and connection ports, I imagine the phones will be next.
3) Fitness + – Apple’s workout tracking program is one of the best that I’ve seen on the market, and it’s something that Apple has taken real pride in. Now, however, they are taking it to a whole new level. Apple is coming out with a series of predesigned workouts that will connect directly to your Fitness App (Formally the activity app), which are videos with trainers who will guide you through the exercises. What’s cool is that if you have one of these workouts running on your television, it will auto-record on your watch. I’ll be honest, it’s a little more than intriguing to me, and for sure, I will be giving it a go when it comes out (and reporting back). Still, it’s interesting to see that Apple is taking Peloton’s working model and adding it to Apple’s business model. I’m interested to see what it ends up looking like.
4) Bundles and Accessories – There were a couple of cool accessories that I liked during the event. There was one that had me mildly confused, though. The new band that they showed off was called the Solo Loop. The intention is to have a single piece that fits around your wrist and is easy to put on and take off without dealing with notches or buckles. It’s cool in theory, but I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to work. The other thing that looked interesting was the bundling of services that they offered. They’re calling it the Apple One Plan. There are going to be levels of bundles. Like you would imagine, if you pay a bit more, you get a bit more. My concern with these bundles is that they showed in the event are very narrow in what they offer. It would be interesting to offer “make your own” bundles where you can mix and match your own programs and levels.
5) Interesting stuff that happened – During the iPad presentation, they did something interesting. The brought in a line of developers to talk about their newest apps and how awesome they are. Having people come out and talk about their newest games on the Apple platform is not new, but the fact that they made sure to establish that they were developers was the interesting part. With the dust still settling on the whole dispute with Epic (a game developer…), lining up a series of developers to talk about their products may not have been a wise choice. It was a subtle dig, having happy developers talk about their products, but I’ll be curious to see if they got away with it. I’ll talk more about the Epic next week about the back and forth that has been happening over the past month.
Something interesting about these apple events is the direction that they take. Sometimes they have so much tech to put out that it’s just jam-packed with everything they have. Some of them only have a couple of things to put out, so that they would have to spend the rest of the time vamping about how incredible they are. This one was a nice balance of products and programs, people and venues. The next few months are going to be seriously interesting in Apple land. I’m looking forward to the products and services coming out. you can check out the apple event here.
Are you looking forward to what’s coming out?
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