An updated iPhone and a new iPad Pro are the stars of this announcement event and arrive just in time for the upcoming holiday season.
September 21, 2015
On September 9, Apple took to the stage at the San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to announce a plethora of new products in anticipation for this year’s holiday season. With such a strong presence of the Cupertino-based company on-campus, it’s only right to preview the products coming very soon to your pockets.
Tim Cook wasted no time in proudly expressing the success of the still-nascent iWatch. Customer satisfaction have polled at 97%, while nearly 10,000 applications for the iWatch have been developed and published for use since its introduction into the wearable market. The keynote also reiterated the additional features that the watchOS 2 would bring, such as improved location- based, time-lapse style watch faces, Live Photos (see the iPhone 6S section), a calendar and news-aggregation integration called Time Travel, native apps, and improvement across all existing features. Additionally, a partnership with fashion company Hermes brings new hand-stitched leather bands and classic watch faces. New Gold as well as Rose Gold watch flavors were also introduced to mirror the new iPhone 6S.
“The biggest news in iPad since the iPad” – Apple Senior Vice President Peter Schilling
Apple traditionally blurs the line between personal computing and mobile with the MacBook Air and more recently, the 12-inch “Macbook”. They continue the trend with the introduction of the iPad Pro, a bigger iPad with 12.9-in screen coupled with an impressive resolution of 2732 x 2048 (higher than the resolution featured in the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro). The iPad Pro boasts a new Apple-designed A9X processor which claims twice the performance over the previous generation A8X in graphical and storage performance as well as double the memory bandwidth. These improvements to the hardware should be more than sufficient in powering the ridiculous amount of pixels on the bigger screen, and Apple claims that the internals are more powerful than 80 percent of portable PCs released past year. Meanwhile, the software specific to the iPad Pro brings multitasking features and optimizations appropriate to such a large screen estate. Color options include Silver, Gold, and Space Gray, and the base 32GB model will start at $700 and will go up to MacBook-esque $1079 for a 128GB with LTE.
Apple also introduced new accessories to complement the iPad Pro; a $99 Apple Pencil that has pressure and diagonal sensitivity for an improved (and official!) writing experience on the tablet. A $169 keyboard that acts like a traditional flip cover (reminiscent of the keyboard covers of the Microsoft Surface) joins the Pencil to round out the productivity ecosystem of the iPad Pro.
The iPad Mini line was also updated with the fourth iteration, which brings the hardware mostly in-line with the latest iPad Air 2 – A8 (versus the A8X in the Air 2) processor, new cameras, support for 802.11ac WiFi (a newer and faster bandwidth standard), as well as a thinner and lighter design compared to the iPad Mini 3. The new iPad Mini 4 starts at $399 for a 16GB model.
Apple has finally replaced the aged, original Apple TV with a more expensive and ambitious successor. The updated model includes an A8 processor, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11ac WiFi. The updated remote has a glass touchpad built-in, motion sensors (like a Nintendo Wii remote) and a button dedicated for voice commands by Siri. The revamped operating system, called tvOS, features cleaner and lighter design language versus the preceding software, and features new runtimes to allow for console-quality games. Apple boasts capability to display content up to 1080p resolution at 60FPS (frames-per-second), backed up by an impressively large media library via iTunes and apps such as Netflix and Hulu. The 32GB model will cost $149, and the 64GB will be $199.
Apple rounded out its keynote with much anticipated “S” update to the well-received 6 and 6 Plus. Despite the nearly identical exterior, the 6S and 6S Plus brings a handful of respectable improvements across the board – arguably the most drastic compared to the “S” updates of the iPhone 4 and 5.
Most radical of these improvements is the introduction of 3D Touch, a similar mechanism to Force Touch introduced with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro during the March 2015 “Spring Forward” Event. 3D Touch allows users to interact with apps using different levels of pressure. For example, while viewing a list of emails, a normal press will trigger selection. However, a slighter deeper press will preview the email, while the deepest will open the email without the user needing to tap anything. This software addition decreases need for fumbling through option menus, and while it may take users time to acclimate, is a welcome innovation with infinite scenarios of usage.
Apple also announced that for the first time since the iPhone 4S, the camera will have a megapixel increase, from 8 to 12. The improved camera of the 6S and 6S Plus now offers capability to shoot 4K videos, bringing it line with the likes of the Galaxy S6 and Note 5. A new feature called “Live Photos” allows users to create GIF-like photos that can be used as interactive wallpapers in conjunction with 3D Touch. A new front facing camera bumps the megapixels from 1.2 to 5, which should bring marked improvements to selfie quality.
Both devices are powered by a new A9 processor, which Apple claims to have 70 percent improvement in computing performance and a 90 percent improvement in graphical performance over the iPhone 6’s A8. Screen sizes (4.7in and 5.5in) as well as resolution stay unchanged from the previous generation.
The new 6S and 6S Plus is now built with a new custom aluminum alloy designed by Apple, and offers a “Rose Gold” color to compliment the Silver, Space Gray, and original Gold. The new iPhone will be priced at $199 for 16GB of storage on a two year contract from a major carrier, while 64 GB and 128 GB options will be available for $299 and $399 on contract, respectively.
Your donation will support the Student Publications Department at Mater Dei High School. Your contribution will allow us to keep our equipment up to date and cover our annual website hosting costs.