Apple September Event 2023

Posting this a week late:

Apple video team getting bold about getting Tim Cook wrapped up in their shenanigans.

Impressions:

Apple Watch Series 9

• S9 chip, 5.6 billion transistors (60% more), 30% faster GPU
• Neural Engine for on device Siri for faster responses even without internet
• 2000 nit display (2x vs last gen), display goes as dark as 1 nit
• Gen 2 ultra wideband chip for precision finding for iPhones
• Double Tap feature – Looks like the accessibility feature got promoted to full fledged interaction type. Looks pretty neat
• new pink aluminum colorway

Visit from Mother Nature

• Tim Cook’s return to acting after the iPad Pro ad
• More companies should do their sustainability reports in short segments with Octavia Spencer as Mother Nature
• Carbon neutral by 2030
• Apple Watch entirely carbon neutral – Recycled aluminum, gold, tin, copper, tungsten, cobalt yarn
• All Watch manufacturing is powered by 100% renewable energy
• Apple will match 100% of expected electricity use of Apple Watch
• No more leather in Apple products, replaced by FineWoven which is “suede-like” – This makes sense in hindsight to help achieve carbon neutrality
• Apple is going really hard on sustainability message this year
• The median annual income of the actors in that ad is probably north of 5 million a year

Apple Watch Ultra 2

• All the features from the S9
• 3000 nit display
• Various software improvements
• 95% recycled titanium

iPhone 15

• Dynamic Island takeover of the entire lineup is complete
• Peak brightness 2000 nits (Peak HDR brightness now 1600 nits)
• Slightly contoured edges – looks nice
• The glass on the back is now also color infused – Imagine being a member of the design team trying to explain this subtle difference to their parents
• 48 MP main camera – pixel binning every 4 pixels into one pixel to produce a 24 MP photo
• Sensor cropping to achieve 2x optical zoom – this is similar to what Google Pixel does too. It’s a nifty trick
• Bigger battery – neat!
• Satellite for Roadside Assistance – Neat, seems like this still trickle down to almost every feature eventually. I think recent Huawei phones can send chat messages with this same technique so iPhone will probably get this soon too
• 75% recycled aluminum, 100% recycled cobalt and copper
• Solid update for people on old phones. Really adds a lot of the pro features people wanted $799 regular, $899 for plus

A16 Bionic

• 16 core neural engine
• 5 core GPU (50% more memory bandwidth)
• 6 cores(2 high performance, 4 efficiency)
• Gen 2 Ultra Wideband friend finding. This is the real announcement today. Crazy quality of life upgrade for friend groups

USB-C

• !!! It’s happening !!! We did it Reddit, we bullied Apple into complying !!! The EU maybe helped idk it was us all the armchair experts on Reddit commenting that did it
• AirPods Pro minor refresh with USB-C, dust resistance, and a mysterious new wireless protocol for low latency lossless between AirPods and Vision Pro
• Now what will people on this subreddit complain about?
• Watch the general public backlash on this be so huge cause “they’re changing the charger again!!!”

iPhone 15 Pro

• Titanium casing – lightest Pros yet
• Smaller border, same screen size
• “Same alloy used on the mars rover” – Ok this will be so useful for when I accidentally find myself on Mars after a drunken night out
• “Using aluminum on the inside creates synergistic properties with the titanium enclosure” – my mind just touched the void
• More repairable structural frame allows back glass replacement – neat!

Action Button

• Replaces the slider
• Press and hold with haptic feedback – hopefully no accidental activation risk
• Activate quick actions like camera, voice recorder, and shortcuts
• Strange feeling now that we have essentially looped back around to having shutter buttons on phones

A17 Pro

• This is the first time, I think, we have seen a clear differentiation in iPhone chips like this with a Pro designation
• 3nm, 10% faster performance cores
• Neural Engine 2x as fast for 35 trillion operations per second
• ProRes Codec, AV1 decoder
• USB 3 – 10 gigabits per second
• 20% faster GPU – Hardware accelerated Ray Tracing

Console Gaming Coming to Mobile

• The Division Resurgence, Resident Evil Village & 4, Assassin’s Creed Mirage
• I think Apple by doing this also makes these games compatible with MacOS. Are they leveraging iPhones market power for an ecosystem assist in Mac gaming? Interesting to think about
• Every year I think I only need the regular phone, then engineering pulls out some neat tricks that gets me to spring for the Pro models

Pro Camera

• 48 MP camera for ProRAW and HEIF (24 MP default photo)
• 12 MP ultrawide with some minor improvements
• Similar pixel math to simulate different 7 different optical zooms – Macro, 13 MM, 24 MM, 28 MM, 35 MM, 48 MM, 120 MM
• Support for direct capture tools like Capture One
• Pro Max exclusive 5x optical Zoom – 25% larger sensor – “tetra prism” to create a longer focal length (Regular Pro has 3x Telephoto no prism)
• Using ultrawide and main camera together to capture spatial content for Vision Pro – Concerns about people using their Vision Pro to take video are anticlimactically resolved now

Overall, a short event but pretty solid upgrades all around. I am mostly excited for this console gaming on phone thing. Seems like an interesting strategy.