Its that time of year again.
Apple Watch
Apple today introduced the next generation of its popular wearable, Watch.
In Series 4, COO Jeff Williams promises every detail has been reconsidered, and its just beautiful.
The screens are significantly larger, over 30 percent larger, actually.
Or, when you oughta relax, Breathe meditation is now a watch app.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
The digital crown now features haptic feedback, providing physical feedback on apps that support it.
The speaker is 50 percent louder for calls (while being even clearer, Williams promises).
When you trip, your body follows a natural motion that Series 4 can now recognize, and record.
you could even initiate an emergency call.
If the watch senses youre immobile for one minute, it sends the call automatically.
Apple Watch gets three new heart features as well.
The first two features is powered by the optical sensor.
The third, is an electrode heart sensor loaded into the sapphire crystal black.
Oh yeah, that same sensor now allows you to an ECG at home, or on the road.
Its the first FDA approved ECG product sold directly to consumers.
Series 4 now has six hours of outdoor workout time and all-day battery, reportedly good for 18 hours.
As watchfaces go, you have options.
Silver, Gold, and Space Grey are standards, while Steel watchfaces include Polished and Space Black.
Theres also a new finish, Gold Stainless.
Series 4 starts at $399 for the Wi-Fi version, or $499 with cellular connectivity.
WatchOS 5 is coming September 17.
If you have both on your card, congrats, youve hit iPhone bingo.
kindly come and collect your prize.
Phil Schiller announced it would be called the iPhone Xs.
Its available in Gold, Silver, and Space Gray.
Theres 458 pixels-per-inch on a beautiful new Super Retina OLED 5.8 inch display.
Its a bigger display than the iPhone 8 Plus, with a smaller body.
Oh, and it has Dolby Vision HDR10 with 60 percent grater dynamic range than the X.
It comes in two sizes, 5.8 and 6.5 inches.
The larger display is called the Xs Max, and packs 26881242 resolution.
It looks huge, but the larger screen paired with smaller bezels could actually be manageable.
Well have to hold it to weigh in here.
It has stereo sound.
That should be a fun new feature for gaming, listening to music, and watching videos.
The Xs has faster FaceID.
It uses faster algorithms and a faster version of the secure enclave.
It wasnt exactly slow before, but anything to speed up access to Instagram, I guess.
Well get our first look at the first seven nanometer chip, the A12 Bionic.
Its packed with 6.9 billion transistors.
Its a 4-core GPU and a 6-core GPU.
Its a huge jump in graphics performance.
Itll support up to half a terabyte (512GB 200k photos) and run five trillion operations a second.
Reportedly, the A12 Bionic will help to open apps 30 percent faster.
CoreML is getting faster too, up to nine times faster, and at only 1/10th the energy.
Augmented reality developers rejoice.
According to Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda, the new iPhone will render graphics 40 percent faster.
A live demo of all 2.7 million pixels onThe Elder Scrolls: Blades.
Its coming this fall.
you’re free to preorder it now.
It uses CoreML to provide a valuable training assistant for backyard hoopsters, or NBA prodigies.
Okay, back to the important stuff.
Up next is a look at the new camera.
It has a larger sensor with a dual 12 megapixel cameras on back.
The new setup adds depth to photos and optical image stabilization.
Up front youll get a new seven megapixel selfie cam.
It promises natural skin tones and details, all thanks to the bigger sensor and the A12 Bionic processor.
The cameras also tout an improved Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting with better bokeh.
A new editing feature also allows you to edit the depth of field after taking the photo.
Apple falsely claims that its the first of its kind.
Huawei has been doing this for a while now.
Both get Gigabit LTE with more band support for roaming.
And the announcement weve been waiting for for years: Dual sim support.
Both devices get eSIM support as well.
The latter rolls out later this fall.
The iPhone Xs and Xs Max come in three configuration options: 64, 128, and 256GB.
It starts at $1099.
It features a liquid retina display thats 6.1 inches.
Its the full iPhone X experience, according to Schiller.
It has the same A12 Bionic chip as the other two models.
Whats different, however, is the single 12 megapixel camera.
Schiller says itll get 90 more minutes of battery life when compared to the iPhone 8.
Essentially, its a beefed-up version of the C models from years past.
The Xr comes in three storage sizes, 64, 128, and 256GB.
It starts at $749.
you might preorder October 19, and itll ship a week later (October 26).
The HomePod and tvOS both get updates, Monday September 17.
On the HomePod, youll get stereo pairing support and AirPlay 2.
AppleTV users get support for Dolby Atomos on Apple TV 4k.
MacOS Mojave will get a dark mode, and a redesigned App Store on September 24.
See you this Spring.
Story byBryan Clark
Bryan is a freelance journalist.Bryan is a freelance journalist.
