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New Apple Watch Series 4 Packs in More Health-Tracking Features
Apple and the aggressive rollout of its iPhone XS vision for the future
The only 8 surprises from Apple's big iPhone XS event

New Apple Watch Series 4 Packs in More Health-Tracking Features

Posted: 13 Sep 2018 03:18 AM PDT

Ivor Benjamin, M.D., a cardiologist and president of the American Heart Association, said during Apple’s presentation that the ability to collect data like this could be helpful for doctors, since patients often report symptoms that don’t show up during medical exams.

In addition to still alerting a user if their heart rate spikes, the new watches will also alert them if it drops too low, Apple says.

Fall detection. The new watch uses a new accelerometer and gyroscope, combined with custom algorithms to sense if the person wearing the watch has fallen. If that happens, the watch will send an alert asking the user if they need to call for help.

And, if the watch senses that the person hasn’t moved for more than one minute after a fall, it can automatically call for emergency services and send a notification to the user's emergency contact, Apple says.

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Apple and the aggressive rollout of its iPhone XS vision for the future

Posted: 13 Sep 2018 08:34 AM PDT

Last year, Apple introduced a 'revolutionary' new iPhone X as if it were a futuristic concept car—alongside the more typical, incremental advancements of iPhone 8. The new X was intended to show off Apple's vision for the future of mobile devices. This year, that future arrived and expanded to become the new normal, fully exploiting Apple's lead with the front-facing 3D TrueDepth camera.

Apple's unique ability to sell new technology

Over the past year, Apple's big investment in front-facing depth sensing camera technology has paid off in record profitability. The components and technology Apple pieced together in a series of acquisitions resulted in the TrueDepth array of sensors and support for facial tracking and Augmented Reality in iOS. These were successfully packaged as key sellers of iPhone X.

Rather than just being presented as potentially-usable new hardware the same way Google mused that its new Pixel 2 silicon would someday do some new magic stuff that it never actually did, Apple's new iPhone X tech is used in computational photography featuring AR overlays of studio-like Portrait Selfie enhancements, facial tracking in Animoji and Memoji avatars as well as gaze detection, as well as Face ID secure biometrics for phone unlocking and approving app purchases and Apple Pay transactions.

Buyers understood what they were laying down money for. It wasn't credulity in a promise or a gamble on a new device like Andy Rubin's Essential.

The iPhone X legitimately offered features that could be demonstrated in an Apple Store and used immediately after buying one. And, a year later, it could be assumed that Apple would develop and release more new features in iOS 12, then more in iOS 13, because Apple supports its hardware for years —unlike Windows Phone, Android or any other mobile platform.

Apple's ability to take raw technologies (formerly picked up and experimented with by others, including Microsoft's Kinect and Google's Tango), find realistic, valuable and salable applications for them, and then build and develop these into shipping products at prices that large audiences rush to adopt—is wildly unappreciated.

Rather than seeing value in Apple's ability to turn hay into gold (as it has done with HDR, Siri, Touch ID, Beats and many other acquisitions), critics have compared Apple's series of home runs to a movie studio at risk of releasing a flop film.

Just prior to Apple's latest product introductions, CNBC republished its worn out rag-feature of "previous Apple flops," for which it had to go back to the dawn of computing in 1980 for the Apple III, the 1983 Lisa, and the obscure Mac TV, a half-launched product from 24 years ago.

CNBC had to dig into the 80s to find Apple flops on the order of last year's Google Pixel 2

When Google tries to imitate Apple's launches for its Pixel-branded products, nobody can go back to its non-existent history in the 1980s to enumerate things that didn't sell. But they don't have to. Over the past decade, every Google Nexus and Pixel device has been a disaster that has had no discernible impact on the market. That includes last year's Pixel 2, a mega flop that was fawned over by the media despite claiming little more than me-too features from the previous year's iPhone, offered at a price that nobody in Android-land was going to be able to afford.

Yet despite introducing a series of significant revolutionary advancements to how people use smartphones, Apple has been hounded for not being "revolutionary" in an industry that effectively does little more than scramble to copy Apple's innovations.

That's not to say that Apple is the first to introduce new ideas. In fact, Apple is often not the first (as I have often previously detailed). It is, rather, the first to successfully implement technology in a way people will pay for. And that's why Samsung, Google and other
Android licensees seek to copy Apple so stridently. Their own novel ideas have not successfully sold, while Apple's have.

It's therefore interesting to take a look at how Apple has rolled out new tech to see why it has been successful, in contrast to its rivals. Think, for example, of early Android fingerprint sensors, Android phones with 3D displays, Google Pay NFC, flawed face-image recognition, curved displays and a variety of other technologies that were either badly rolled out, poorly implemented or dubious to begin with.

One way Apple has uniquely introduced new tech successfully involves its secrecy as a company. For iPhone X, Apple developed many of its technologies in total secrecy to the point of being finished in offering narrowly defined applications, rather than introducing a wide range of only partially finished capabilities with unclear value.

There is no iPhone 9

There are a few different ways to introduce a major new shift in technology. Back in 1997 when Steve Jobs was working to modernize the Mac's operating system using advanced NeXT software, Apple announced its plans for a future "Mac OS X" at a time when it was only offering MacOS 7.6. In between, it introduced two major updates of the status quo (branded as Mac OS 8 and 9) before launching its new product under the X branding—four long years later in 2001. It took several more years for Mac OS X to become the mainstream Mac experience.

Mac OS X eventually became Apple's most important platform, and paved the way for iOS. But its arduous deployment took a long time to arrive. Fortunately, Apple's primary competitors were not ready. Today, Apple's far greater resources have made it much more competitive in rolling out updates rapidly, as time-to-market has increasingly become more important.

The tech world has similarly been asked to wait many years for updates from other companies. At the end of 2006, Microsoft finally shipped Windows Vista 6.0, which had been stuck in a vapor limbo for much longer—more than a half decade after Bill Gates initially outlined promises for advanced new "Longhorn" features (most of which never materialized) in 2001.

Many years later, Microsoft was still struggling to get legacy Windows XP users to adopt Windows 6.x, which it incrementally released under the marketing brands Windows 7 and Windows 8. In 2015, Microsoft skipped over "Windows 9" to introduce Windows 10 (which it also internally incremented to the 'Windows 10.0' version), finally catching up to Apple numerically after fifteen years of being negatively compared against Apple's Mac OS X.

This year, Apple has also skipped an "iPhone 9" generation, but under different circumstances. Rather than just announcing plans for a future new "X" platform in iPhones, Apple did the work in advance in secret, then released it to the surprise of its audience last year at its first Event held at the new Steve Jobs theater at Apple Park.

Calling the new iPhone X its "vision for the future of iPhone," Apple's chief executive Tim Cook detailed its new support for Face ID using a radical new 3D-sensing TrueDepth front facing camera system that also enabled face structure sensing, as well as an all-new hardware design featuring an edge-to-edge OLED design, with rounded corners and a notch never seen before in a commercial product.

Many of its new features (including induction charging and its advanced A11 Bionic processor with Neural Net silicon, a new Apple GPU, and advanced memory controller) were also shared with the more conventional iPhone 8 line introduced at the same time. This suggested that Apple might continue to advance the two iPhone forks, introducing both a conventional iPhone 9 and a new iPhone 10+ this year.

Instead, Apple doubled down on its iPhone X advances, creating a faster, enhanced "S" model and a larger "S Max" version. And rather than continuing the past, it locked older iPhones designs in place and introduced a new, entry level X model at a lower price using an LCD screen and an aluminum frame—at a price similar to iPhone 8. Rather than another pre-X model 9, Apple released iPhone XR.

Incidentally, note that Apple didn't ever release a 7S or 8S; by skipping the 9 (and 9S!), Apple now has reached "X" faster than Samsung, which had been incrementing its Galaxy lineup version every year, rather than following Apple's tick-tock cadence with in-between S models. Note that Apple didn't just reach X, it's now sitting on a portfolio of X models: XR, XS and XS Max. This is just marketing, of course.

New 2018 Touch ID is an iPhone Nein!

Despite badgering, iPhone X took the world by storm, forcing Android to attempt to copy it

A year ago, critics (essentially everyone) pounced on its $999 entry price, wondering aloud who would pay $1000 for a cell phone. Never mind that millions of people were already paying that much for more expensive versions of iPhone 7 Plus, or that iPhone wasn't just a cell phone but also the primary personal computer for millions of people, as well as their primary camera and their personal entertainment system.

Ten years ago, the $999 price of iPhone X would not have bought a state of the art camera, a pocketable computer, a personal audio player, portable TV and a cellular phone, let alone paid for any of the new key features of iPhone X. Add in inflation and last year's iPhone X price tag would barely have bought the original iPhone and used iPod in 2007, or not quite an entry-level Mac in 2000.

But, pundits were desperate to make up some new reason why Apple's latest strategy was dangerously teetering on the brink of failure after spending so many years clownishly trotting out their old nag about how the company "couldn't innovate" in an industry where the only remaining competitor was a range of Android clones that were all as exciting as eggshell grey, with an ASP plummeting faster than Android Tablets or Windows PCs.

And so they targeted iPhone X as "breathtakingly expensive," setting up the logical expectation that sales would shift to cheaper models. That's the exact opposite of what happened. Apple itself introduced its cheapest iPhone ever, the enhanced SE, which attracted so little attention that the company discontinued it this year. Apple's attractively priced, older generation iPhone 7 was also outsold by iPhone X. iPhone X remained the best selling smartphone throughout its entire first year on the market, establishing Apple's ostensibly risky move as being incredibly gutsy and enormously profitable

And even iPhone 8, which was both less expensive and performed virtually the same (making it very attractive to commercial fleet buyers in the enterprise who naturally were conservatively hesitant to rush out support for the brand-new Face ID on an expensive new model) couldn't outsell iPhone X globally.

Rather than being relegated into a niche "concept" tier alongside high-end Sony phones or other experimental or halo devices (including Apple's own "Edition" Watch models), iPhone X remained the best selling smartphone throughout its entire first year on the market, establishing Apple's ostensibly risky move as being incredibly gutsy and enormously profitable.

After a wave of criticism and snark from competitors and their supporters, the entire Android ecosystem lined up to copy—at least superficially—the "notched" design of iPhone X, hoping that customers wouldn't notice that their screens didn't really fit into the corners, that their front facing camera didn't really work similarly, and that their Android OS didn't really handle memory well.

Apple is all in on X

Apple now has a much wider array of iPhone X models, stretching across a much broader price range (from the XR's $750 entry price to the most expensive XS Max model that looks to be priced at something like $1300 or more).

There's likely to be a lot of new interest in the colorful, cheaper iPhone XR, an iPhone X with a more approachable price tag. However, many of holdouts who waited to buy an iPhone X this last year were iPhone 6 through iPhone 8 Plus users interested in a larger display. They're used to paying a premium for a big phone.

That suggests that a significant amount of pent up demand will focus on the even-more-expensive XS Max, potentially lifting Apple's overall ASP even higher, if not simply keeping it in check at its already incredibly high point, far above what any other cellphone maker can find demand at.

Regardless of the specific product mix (which Apple will not reveal for competitive reasons), Apple is now in the position of using its most advanced iPhone X product group to both increase unit sales with a cheaper model that's less expensive to build, and to tempt buyers upward into more expensive models (including the new Max and the new 512GB capacity tier, newly supported by the A12 Bionic storage controller).

And for all of the analyst conjecture that suggested Apple was certain to have to backtrack to Touch ID and somehow fit a fingerprint sensor in its new X model, it's clear that Apple's original story was accurate and analysts were wrong. Apple's iPhone roadmap is moving in one, solid direction, not advancing in parallel lines with an incremented "Classic" model lacking primary features of the future of the iPhone platform.

That's an even more aggressive shift to the future than what occured with previous shifts, such as how Lightning took years to replace the old Dock Connector across Apple's product line, or how iPhone 5 was carried ahead in various colors but lacking Touch ID or the 64-bit A7 chip on iPhone 5c in 2012, or how the last major design revolution in iPhone 6 was accompanied by a more compact iPhone 5s and then the iPhone SE model for four years.

Killing the phony story of iPhone X pricing and demand

Over the past year, specific, high-profile journalists at the Wall Street Journal, Nikkei, and Bloomberg composed multiple and parallel false stories that claimed that Apple's new iPhone X didn't offer enough new "innovations" to interest buyers and was far too expensive to sell in meaningful quantities —the total opposite of reality.

They put their reputations on the line to rush out a story that might have been true, if their logic had been founded in reality rather than just invented conjecture. These weren't simply analysts spewing out made-up ideas hoping that some of their thoughts would end up looking intelligent after the fact. These were reporters who falsely portrayed their writing as factual, professional journalism—reporting, not invention.

To the surprise of many, they were totally wrong, as iPhone X left the gate outselling Apple's other, more affordable models (including the similarly fast and wirelessly-functional iPhone 8 and the much cheaper, year old iPhone 7, as well as the cheapest-ever iPhone SE).

However, after the initial holiday quarter, writers at those papers continued printing stories that suggested they'd done some research or observation into iPhone X sales and found problems with ongoing demand. They also created reports suggesting evidence that Apple was slashing production of iPhone X, creating waves they claimed to have observed among Apple's suppliers.

But, those reports were false. And they were repeated anyway. They were not accidents or mistakes. They were false, and they appeared malicious, not mistaken.

Rather than reporting what was actually happening based on facts and research, these establishments were simply concocting tales of what they hoped —or perhaps guessed —might happen based on nonsense and whispers. None of these people acknowledged these false reports.

The reporting of the Wall Street Journal, Nikkei, and Bloomberg can no longer be trusted to be accurate, impartial and honest, particularly when they attack Apple and report on what they imply are facts ascertained from Apple's supply chain. They could not have been more wrong, and have still not explained why they published garbage-whimsy as factual data sourced from people supposedly "familiar" with what was actually happening.

If these writers held any other job and made a mistake of this magnitude, over and over, they would have been fired as incompetent. They kept forwarding a story quarter after quarter as it was proven wrong publicly over and over, maintaining all the while that they had some special insight or access into the industry they they clearly didn't have at all.

This year, as Apple gears up to unleash its second generation of iPhone X models, the hyper-scrutiny of its unit mix and the contrived supply chain mumbo-jumbo of analysts and these disgraced journalists should have even less impact on the perception of Apple's business.

It increasingly doesn't matter what Android proponents argue and insist. Apple has never had more market power and clout to deliver the future of technology. And Android has never been more boring.</span>

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The only 8 surprises from Apple's big iPhone XS event

Posted: 13 Sep 2018 06:23 AM PDT

For Apple fans, the wait for yesterday’s big press conference seemed like it was going to last an eternity. Details surrounding Apple’s next-generation iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR began leaking more than a year ago when the world’s top Apple insider revealed that Apple had three new iPhone models planned for 2018. The flow of leaks has been constant all year long, painting a clearer picture with each passing day. Then, just one week before Apple’s big event, nearly all the remaining details leak when Apple accidentally posted iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4 marketing materials on its website.

We definitely knew almost everything there was to know about Apple’s next-generation iPhones and Watch models before Apple executives even took the stage on Wednesday. That said, they still had a few tricks up their sleeves to surprise us with. In this post, we’ll recap the only eight big surprises from Apple’s press conference.

Prices

We had a good idea that this year’s new iPhone models were going to be expensive, but holy moly we had no idea just how expensive they were going to be. In fact, rumors suggested that the new iPhone XS would start at $899 this year instead of $999. Sadly, that’s not the case at all. It’s funny, though: last year Wall Street analysts flipped out when Apple announced the iPhone X starting at $999. This year, Apple’s top-end iPhone is even more expensive than a MacBook and Wall Street is loving it.

Here’s how pricing breaks down for the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max:

iPhone XS

64GB: $999
256GB: $1,149
512GB: $1,399

iPhone XS Max

64GB: $1,099
256GB: $1,249
512GB: $1,449

That’s right, boys and girls, Apple is about to start selling an iPhone that costs more than $1,500 after taxes. What a time to be alive.

Where the iPhone XR is concerned, things are even worse. Rumors suggested the XR would be a lower-cost alternative to the iPhone XS and XS Max, with the iPhone XR likely to start at around $650. Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. It’s cheaper than Apple’s other new iPhones, but not by much.

iPhone XR

64GB: $749
128GB: $799
256GB: $899

iPhone XR release date

There were a few rumors here and there that said Apple might have to delay the release date for the iPhone XR due to manufacturing difficulties, but most people didn’t pay them any mind. According to those rumors, Apple’s partners were having problems with light leakage around the outside of the phone’s LCD display, and they needed more time to iron out the wrinkles. Whether that’s the case or Apple just wants to make sure that as many early adopters as possible go for the more expensive iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max, it turns out that the iPhone XR won’t be released until next month. Pre-orders open on October 18th with a release to follow on October 26th.

No AirPower

Remember that really cool wireless charging mat that Apple unveiled more than a year ago? Well reports suggested that Apple would finally announce release information during yesterday’s event. Instead, Apple removed any and all mention of the AirPower from its website. No one really knows what’s going on, but if you really want a wireless triple charger you can already get one on Amazon.

Faster Face ID

This is one of those rare instances when the world’s top Apple insider, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, was wrong. Stop the presses!

Kuo reported many months ago that Face ID wouldn’t undergo any changes on this year’s new iPhones. That… isn’t the case at all. Instead, Apple upgraded both the hardware and the software that handles Face ID. Improvements to the TrueDepth camera system and to the A12 Bionic SoC will apparently give Face ID a big speed boost, and tweaks on the software side will help things even further.

New cameras

Apple improves the cameras on its iPhones every year so we expected some type of improvements, but we had no idea what they would be. Apple ended up announcing what may end up being the most impressive smartphone camera system in the world when the iPhone XS and iPhone XS MaX are released next week.

The new camera still has two 12-megapixel sensors, one with a wide-angle lens and the other with a telephoto lens. All of the components in the camera system have been upgraded though, and the sensor is now twice as fast.

In addition to hardware changes in the camera itself and software enhancements like Smart HDR, the new A12 Bionic chipset has an upgraded image signal processor (ISP) that further improves photo processing speeds and image quality.

Depth effect

There’s plenty to look forward to with Apple’s upcoming new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max camera, but one feature in particular came as a surprise. It wasn’t just a surprise because it hadn’t been revealed in rumors, but also because it’s something no other camera in the world can do. On Apple’s new iPhones, you can actually adjust the depth of field in a Portrait Mode photograph after you’ve taken the picture! Even more impressive is the fact that the iPhone XR has this feature as well, despite the fact that it only has a single-lens rear camera. It’s likely not quite as impressive as it is on the iPhone XS and XS Max, but it’s still another industry first.

A12 Bionic

We obviously knew that Apple would reveal its next-generation processor alongside its new iPhones. We also knew the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max would be the first smartphones in the world to ship with 7-nanometer chipsets. What we didn’t know, however, is just how massive an upgrade the A12 Bionic would be.

This industry-first 7nm SoC has a 6-core CPU with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. The cores can run independently or all the same time, depending on the tasks at hand. The A12 also has a new 4-core GPU that is 50% faster than the A11’s GPU, and there’s an upgraded 8-core neural engine and a brand new image signal processor (ISP) as well. Apple says the A12 Bionic can process 5 trillion operations per second, which compares to 600 billion in the A11.

A12 Bionic in the iPhone XR

Last but certainly not least, the fact that the iPhone XR is also powered by the A12 Bionic SoC came as a big surprise. Rumors positioned the iPhone XR as an upper mid-range phone that would feature more modest specs and pricing that started in the $600 range. The phone’s specs are a bit less impressive than the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, but just barely. In fact, the iPhone XR will end up being more powerful than most flagship Android phones over the year to come.

Since rumors positioned the iPhone XR as a sort of iPhone SE upgrade, many people assumed that it would be powered by last year’s A11 Bionic chipset so that Apple could keep costs down. That’s not the case though, and the iPhone XR gets the same impressive A12 Bionic SoC as the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

Image Source: Apple Inc.

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