iPhone 15 Event Reactions: Sneaky Updates!
– All right, so Apple’s Wonderlust event happened. It was pretty interesting. Honestly, not that much stuff actually got announced. I mean, we knew it was gonna be iPhone, Apple Watch, USB-C, not that much other stuff. But it was more the stuff in between the lines that was kind of interesting and some other random stuff that I don’t think a lot of people are talking about. So let’s talk about it. Now, first of all, I gotta say, it was a complete surprise to me when one of the first things that they did was quote my MacBook
Air review. So you know, like, the beginning of the keynotes they usually do where they sort of recap a bunch of stuff that’s previously happened? One of the things they did was talk about the MacBook Air, and this happened. – And Marques Brownlee said, “The 15-inch MacBook Air is going to instantly rocket to the top of the lineup to become the most popular 15-inch laptop.” We love the new MacBook Air and the entire Mac lineup. – And that was pretty cool. I gotta say, they didn’t tell me they were gonna do that. They didn’t ask.
They didn’t pay for it. They just kind of did it. So shout-out to Tim. I guess in this case, it’s totally fine. I guess there’s just an element of pride knowing that,
kind of a cool moment to see that come full circle. But anyway, after that, they just got right into the announcements, the flagship of which being the new iPhone. So I made an entire separate video on the iPhones, my first hands-on and impressions of all the little details and my first thoughts of everything. So I’ll link that below the Like button if you wanna check it out if you’re interested. But I’ll just do a brief summary here for you. So the iPhone 15 gets the A16 Bionic chip from last year’s iPhone Pro. It gets the
Dynamic Island, of course, from the Pro as well. Some new colors and a slightly updated design with little better curve radiuses, radii, a slightly nicer feel in the hand, and a satin soft-touch back and a slow USB-C port. Same starting price and screen sizes as last year, 799 for the iPhone 15 and 899 for the iPhone 15 Plus. So then the iPhone 15 Pro gets a new three-nanometer A17 Pro chip. There’s these new brushed lighter titanium rails to replace the stainless steel, a faster USB-C port, a customizable action button on the side to replace the
mute switch, a new set of cameras, and just the 15 Pro Max gets a new 5x telephoto camera. And the prices are kind of sneaky. So it’s still 999 for the 15 Pro but the Pro Max now starts at 1,199 because it’s also starting at 256 gigs. There’s a lot more details and interesting stuff about the iPhone in that hands-on video, so you know where to find that. But then there’s the other stuff of this event. Also, I thought it would be cool to shoot here since this is part of where they shot some scenes
in the keynote, but now I’m realizing that it’s a real place. There’s like chainsaws in the background. So sorry about the noise. Anyway, we’ve got Apple Watch stuff, right? So Series 9 and Ultra 2. And one of the most interesting things about these new watches is that visually, just looking at them, there’s almost no way to actually tell that you’re looking at the new watch. It’s very unlike Apple. So I think there’s a new pink color with the Series 9, but other than that, it looks identical to the Series 8 and the Ultra 2 looks
identical to the Ultra. But instead, under the hood, there’s a big process update to this new S9 system on a chip, which is more powerful and more efficient, and that’s allowing them to push the watches to a higher max brightness while keeping the same quoted battery life. So the Series 9 is gonna get up to 2,000 nits max brightness now and the Ultra 2 is up to 3,000 nits, which is actually now, it’s the brightest display ever on any Apple product. And they’ve also moved all Siri requests on the watch now to stay on device
instead of always having to do a round trip to the internet, which I think could help, ’cause there’s a lot of instances of Siri where you, like, ask it, “What’s the time in Cupertino?” And it goes, “Hold on a second. Wait for it. I’m thinking about it. I don’t know yet,” and it’s just frustrating and it doesn’t work. So that should be faster and more efficient. It doesn’t mean Siri’s gonna be good. It just means it’ll be bad but faster. But then there’s also a new Ultra Wideband chip that can talk to the iPhones to
make Find My iPhone way more precise and actually point out a direction to help you find your phone instead of just playing a sound. I think that’s gonna be super useful for a lot of people. But the most sneaky, interesting update here to the watch is this new double tap gesture. So, so, okay, you’ve got the new watch on and, basically, it’s always able to detect if you do this double tap of your thumb and your index finger together. And so I got to try it a bunch of times at the event with a demo
watch in the hands-on area. It actually seemed very accurate. Like, you basically, you raise it to wake, give it a split second, and then double tap to press the primary button of whatever app you’re in that’s on your screen at the moment. So it can accept or reject an incoming phone call or stop a timer or scroll through the Smart Stack of widgets on the watch face. And yeah, it was working really well for me very quickly. This would clearly be super helpful if my other hand is busy or I’m holding something or I just
wanna quickly do something. Ordinarily, honestly, I would be trying to do that with my nose. So this is much better. Now, the reason I say this is sneaky is because I don’t know if you remember, just a few weeks ago or months ago, this is the same gesture used to select things while you’re wearing Apple Vision Pro. In the VR headset, selecting things is like this. And so now on the watch, selecting things is like that. Now, some of you have already pointed out on Twitter this isn’t exactly new completely. If you’ve ever dug through
the accessibility settings on the Apple Watch before, you’ve probably found by a slightly different name basically the exact same feature and you’ve been able to double tap and do all kinds of other things. Now, why isn’t this new double tap to select primary stuff feature coming to other Apple watches, you might be asking. Apple says that basically this new S9 chip is much faster at processing all the info from all those sensors and so you’ll be able to do it more readily. And so that’s why it’s only coming to the new S9-powered Apple watches. It’s
convenient. But let’s talk about AirPods real quick because this might actually be the ultimate sneaky update. So the fact is these barely even got mentioned during the keynote, right? Like, they just casually dropped that there would be a new USB-C case for the AirPods Pro 2 in, like, one fleeting slide and that was basically it. So you could be led to believe that there’s just nothing new with the AirPods themselves and they’re exactly the same. But you’d be wrong. So basically, for all intents and purposes, AirPods Pro 2 with the wireless charging Lightning case and
AirPods Pro 2 with the wireless charging USB-C case are the same product with a different port unless you have Apple Vision Pro, in which case, the USB-C version will be capable of doing lossless audio with low latency with this new codec that Apple has created just for this purpose, this awesome immersive experience. So if you don’t have Apple Vision Pro, then they’re basically the same product with two different ports, but there is actually new hardware and new architecture to make this feature possible with the new USB-C version. I don’t think they wanna talk about that
too much to not make people who just bought them last week feel too bad about it, but they’re actually different headphones. So that’s a sneaky update right there from Apple behind the scenes on one of their most popular products. But that’s a good transition just to get to the last seemingly big pillar of this announcement, which was carbon neutrality and the environment. So Apple couldn’t stop talking about the environment throughout this keynote, including one huge overly self-congratulatory, like, 10-minute skit in the middle of the keynote video with Tim Cook and Apple employees talking to Mother
Nature about how much progress they’ve made with their products environmentally. I just basically want to dig more into this later. I would say I’m not an expert on this, so there’s no way that I can fully appreciate now and fully understand now everything that was said. There’s a lot of specific language used. Some of it is very clear, like just straight up not using any leather anymore in any Apple products, using recycled materials instead of new virgin materials, things like that, having more sustainable energy sources. But then there’s other things that they, I mean, there
was a lot. There was a lot going on and some of it is not quite as simple. But they have clearly made a lot of progress and change and they eventually landed on this moment where they were like, “The Apple Watch is the first fully carbon neutral product that Apple’s actually shipping,” on their way to ideally being fully carbon neutral as a company by 2030. And so there’s a lot of progress that they still need to make. And as much as we’ve talked about how much Apple still needs to do, I kind of feel like
I can’t get mad at this. Like, you know what it feels like, you ever see those like YouTube videos where a YouTuber on the street, they’ll be micd up and they’ll, like, give a homeless person a hundred bucks or something and half the comments are like, “Oh, come on, you clearly didn’t have to do it on camera. Like, if you really cared, then you would do it not on camera.” And that’s probably all mostly true, but also, that person in need still did just get a hundred bucks. So it’s like some net positive was still
done. And this kind of feels the same way to me. Like, okay, Apple is actually doing a bunch of stuff to use recycled materials and to make less of an impact on the environment and then they’re doing a big song and dance about it so everyone can see it, so that everyone sees it. And so you’d say, “Okay, if they really cared, they would do a whole bunch more stuff.” And that’s still true, but I can’t get mad at the improvements that they are actually making. Hopefully that makes sense. Either way, like I said, I’m
not an expert. I wanna dig more into this. I wanna talk to some people who actually are experts on it who can help me out and maybe that’s a future topic for another video. But that’s just my thoughts and reactions from the Wonderlust event of 2023. Let me know what your thoughts are below. There’s a lot to talk about and a lot of random, sneaky stuff and the comments section is always open to talk about it. And techtember rolls on. So stick with us. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys later.
Peace. (upbeat music)
