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Apple Event Live Blog: iPhone 15, New Apple Watch Models, and More Expected

This was a massive MEH for me. Here’s my takeaways:

1. Smartphones have evolved and YoY improvements are negligible
2. Apple gave you USB-C and that’s it. Nothing is free with Tim Apple.
3. Mother Nature bit was a huge waste of time.
4. A lot of rumors were false
5. Apple still cranking out amazing performance in their processors. Can’t wait to see it in a Mac.
 
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redbeard331 said:
Since a lot of the rumors weren’t true, or weren’t as good as we thought, I’d say they probably stuck with 6 once again.

Can’t wait for everything to crash every time I take a picture for another year. 🙄🙄
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Are you serious? 6GB for a PRO model???
 
TigerNike23 said:
This was a massive MEH for me. Here’s my takeaways:

1. Smartphones have evolved and YoY improvements are negligible
2. Apple gave you USB-C and that’s it. Nothing is free with Tim Apple.
3. Mother Nature bit was a huge waste of time.
4. A lot of rumors were false
5. Apple still cranking out amazing performance in their processors. Can’t wait to see it in a Mac.
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Apple didn't give us USBC. The EU did. $80 prepaid phones have USBC.
 
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TigerNike23 said:
Right. Apple complied and that’s it. No fast speeds on the flagship. No Thunderbolt on Pro. No accessories being updated outside of AirPods Pro.
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Makes you wonder what apple needs 1000s of employees to come into work everyday to provide the same stuff year after year. Might as well let everyone work at home indefinitely. It’s not like they are doing anything on the hardware or worse, software side!
 
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kmichalec said:
You can get $1000 trade in for the 13PM if you do it through a carrier. T-Mobile is offering $1000, which I'll be jumping on for that price. That's basically what I paid for it new 2 years ago. For basically $5/mo, I'll gladly take a new 15PM.

*EDIT* - CarAnalogy beat me to the same response.
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Screw it! I'll do the $580. I don't want 36 months of payments with ATT
 
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Its not that I don't care about the environment...but it seems a bit strange to spend so much time talking about how a new device no one needs is helping the environment while skipping the entire idea of doing anything but throwing away, err trade-in, your existing device because its now trash. Give us an Apple watch without a band if we're trying to help the environment so much with how terrible the previous watch bands were.

I also don't know why Tim was moving his upper body so much when trying to make a point. It was very weird.

I know they're a business, but I don't think they sold how this is really helping the environment. Reusing items is great, but I think improving the repairability would be an easier sell for many.

I'm likely going to buy a new iPhone and a used Apple watch Ultra, but not for the environmental impact. I want the better camera, and I want the better battery life as my S6 has started to randomly decide to use an app at 100% for 3 hours or just not charge.
 
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darngooddesign said:
Apple's tetraprism accomplishes the same thing as a periscope camera; which is to let the light path from lens to sensor move parallel to the back of the phone.
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No, it does not. There is no periscope system in Iphone 15 pro. If you compare it to Samsung (which has true periscope system) its x10 (vs iphone’s x5). TWICE. But yes, new iphone does indeed have improved zoom.
 
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Orka said:
No, it does not. There is no periscope system in Iphone 15 pro. If you compare it to Samsung (which has true periscope system) its x10 (vs iphone’s x5). TWICE. But yes, new iphone does indeed have improved zoom.
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Read my post again, I never said Apple was using a Periscope camera. What I said was that their Tetraprism camera accomplishes the same thing as a Periscope camera. Every rumor on here said that the periscope camera was only going to be in the Pro Max.
 
darngooddesign said:
Read my post again, I never said Apple was using a Periscope camera. What I said was that their Tetraprism camera accomplishes the same thing as a Periscope camera. Every rumor on here said that the periscope camera was only going to be in the Pro Max.
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It doesn’t come close to accomplishing what a true periscope system can do.
 
Hkfan45 said:
It doesn’t come close to accomplishing what a true periscope system can do.
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Periscope simply refers to having the light path parallel to the back of the phone so the lens doesn't stick out as far as it would with a traditional camera at the same focal length. That's entirely what a "true" periscope system does. Apple is accomplishing the same thing with their tetraprism design.

Now having a variable focal length optical zoom, instead of a fixed focal length prime, is an additional feature which comes with the compromise of using smaller max apertures. So the real question is whether digitally zooming up to 120mm with the ProMax's f2.8 camera is better, worse, or the same as its competition. We wont know that until the camera tests/comparisons are published.
 
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Pinkyyy 💜🍎 said:
Okay so after watching the whole event, here are my honest opinions on it… :)

The intro ? Too long. I’m okay with how they started off with all the people who were saved by the Apple Watch and the SOS Emergency feature, it was all very emotional and wholesome, nothing wrong with that. But then comes that very long intro of the Apple Watch Series 9, with all those animations and transitions that all made it look very unrealistic and soulless.. (which is one of the reasons I kind of miss the good old live events, especially the ones with Steve Jobs 🥲). And it was nothing more than just an incremental upgrade after all. Same thing goes to the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Even the battery life has not changed on either of them.. though I do have to say, I really liked the new pink color.

And oh boy, that Mother Nature skit was sooo unnecessary IMO, it was truly a waste of time. Okay we already get it, Apple cares about the environment and wants to go all green which is all cool, but they didn’t really have to make it the whole main point of the event !! :)
If it was like a short 2-minute ad or something, that’d be fine. But making it the whole point of the show was just super unnecessary. We’re all watching these events mainly for the announcements of the new products. The event would’ve been soo much shorter if they had just gone straight to the point.

(Also did they literally mention that they wanna get rid of ALL the carbon in the atmosphere ?? This is actually bad for the environment lol.. carbon is literally an essential element for photosynthesis, which means there would be no plants without it..)

And the iPhones… most of it was the the same thing as the rumors, so it was all expected. The only thing that actually surprised me was the “A17 Pro” chip. Why “Pro” ? Lol. Though it got me thinking, since they’re now using last year’s chip in the non-Pro models, perhaps that means the “A17” will be for the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus next year ? Guess we will have to wait to find out..
Oh and also, it was “Pro Max” and not “Ultra” .. yeah, I did expect that.
The new Periscope lens was only 5x, and not 6x as it was rumored though.. well, I guess it’s better than nothing.
And the price hike for the Pro Max model was true.. but hey, they did mention that it’ll start at 256GB storage, which is nice. They didn’t mention anything about the RAM though, so I wonder if they changed it or not…

OH and also, NOTHING AT ALL about the official release dates of the new software versions (iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14, etc..) ?? I was really looking forward to that..
No new iPads either, which was highly expected.

Oh and finally, I got those screenshots from the event if anyone is interested !
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As soon as we realize that these events are not for you or me but to please the shareholders, all of the “time wasting videos” start making so much more sense suddenly!
 
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stealthytolkien said:
As soon as we realize that these events are not for you or me but to please the shareholders, all of the “time wasting videos” start making so much more sense suddenly!
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I can’t imagine the average person watches these. Even enthusiasts gave up long ago. Apple is what it is. They make a great desktop OS and laptops but their mobile devices and more specifically, mobile OS leaves a ton to be desired. The disconnect between the two is striking.
 
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macfacts said:
Only 5x optical zoom, lol
View attachment 2259637
View attachment 2259636
View attachment 2259635
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I mean... if you're happy with all that smeary detail mess then more power to you. Luckily Apple does have 25x digital zoom for the smeary details lovers.

Screenshot 2023-09-12 at 8.56.26 PM.png
 
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iStorm said:
The Apple Watch segment was the most amusing to me. Anyone notice the position of Jeff William's shadow kept changing? Seemed like it was in a different position every time they cut back to him. I couldn't stop laughing, lol. Was the poor guy there all day long recording multiple takes? Or bad footage for green screen editing?
1694545316851.png 1694545474880.png
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Who needs a watch when you have a sun dial?
 
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Johnny907 said:
No, 100% with RAW as a quick draw camera. But that professional planned shoot they were playing at there? Negative. I'm not benching my 5D for a phone regardless of how much they want to hype the new sensors.
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If I walked into a paid job for a wedding, some photoshoot with just my iPhone...I deserve to be kicked out immediately, and blasted online, 0 out of 5 star reviews, etc...LOL

I just nod my head to myself every year when the event shows the iPhone example shots. I swear the same ...or almost the same quality was shown on an iPhone 7 or 8! Can that be achieved? Perhaps...with perfect lighting, and.. I dont care what anyone says...there is post processing involved in those shots.

In the end, I just simply enjoy hauling my camera bag...DSLR, the lenses, tripod. Manually adjusting the different shots, exposures...etc.
 
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darngooddesign said:
That's funny because the 3GS was noticeably better and less laggy than the 3G because it doubled the RAM and had a faster processor. The 3G was basically the original phone in a new case with 3G but not a lot of 3G towers.

IMO the S upgrades were always the better phones.
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You're right, but I hated the 3G's design, so I was ready for something different, and the 4 was an amazing change. But yes — the 4s was a much much better phone. I think the 16 will be similar in that way, I could be way off, but it feel like they didn't hit some marks that they wanted to with the 15 and just doesn't feel appealing, at least to me. I'll stop by the store and see what it's like in person, you never know — I might fall in love))
 
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Hkfan45 said:
Makes you wonder what apple needs 1000s of employees to come into work everyday to provide the same stuff year after year. Might as well let everyone work at home indefinitely. It’s not like they are doing anything on the hardware or worse, software side!
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Ah, that’s an easy one. First of all, employees are busy creating new buggy features no one needs. The old working part of the software gets rewritten, together with some bugs, too. After that the employees try to fix those bugs, but only the most annoying or critical ones.

So the software degrades year by year.

Apple was once known for a limited feature set, that work extra well. Now we all live in the feature hell.


Funny side note about Apples environmental efforts: I just upgraded my mid 2011 27“ iMac with Monterey using OpenCore. Apple declared this device vintage and told us that it doesn‘t support modern OS X versions. But it does! Runs like a charm. This is what I call environmental friendly.
 
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