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What's Coming From Apple in 2016: Apple Watch 2, iPhone 6c, iPhone 7, Skylake MacBooks, and More

For me I think it's about time that the IPad matured and had the chance to show its true potential and currently the restrictions of the OS makes it think its a phone but with less functionality. Apple need to introduce a hybrid of iOS and OS X.
I think the next gen watch will spank the current gen. A year is a long time in terms of technical development and the second gen watch would have been in development long before the original watch was released last April. I think that OS 3 for the new watch will be a major upgrade in terms of functionality. It has to if it is going to support a new watch.
I really don't know what the IPhone 7 will bring. The difference between the iPhone 4 and the 5 was huge as was the 6. Wireless charging would be nice as would edge to edge glass.
 
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John Mcgregor said:
They need to stop with yearly OS updates. For petes sake its never ending beta cycle. You can add features, fix bugs and refine without making it a new release every year.
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That's happened with Apple for years. Snow Leopard was the refinded higher performance Leopard and now El Cap is the refined Yosemite.

I have to say that still having a media centre Mac Mini I can boot into SL for old times sake, it looks really antiquated and busy compared to my other Macs running El Cap. And I loved SL!
 
jasonph said:
That's happened with Apple for years. Snow Leopard was the refinded higher performance Leopard and now El Cap is the refined Yosemite.

I have to say that still having a media centre Mac Mini I can boot into SL for old times sake, it looks really antiquated and busy compared to my other Macs running El Cap. And I loved SL!
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I disagree. It always takes around 6 months to fix all the most prominent bugs and it leaves another 6 months to use a more or less ok OS before they release a new one. Tiger had 11 updates i remember and it was great.

Every 2 year is just fine. To add new features you don't need to make it a major release, mega giga rewrite. This is not how programming works.
 
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John Mcgregor said:
I disagree. It always takes around 6 months to fix all the most prominent bugs and it leaves another 6 months to use a more or less ok OS before they release a new one. Tiger had 11 updates i remember and it was great.

Every 2 year is just fine. To add new features you don't need to make it a major release, mega giga rewrite. This is not how programming works.
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You can always use the second last OS until the newest one gets to couple point updates and becomes stable. That way you get to use a stable OS constantly and only be behind the latest tech for 6 months.
 
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iBug2 said:
You can always use the second last OS until the newest one gets to couple point updates and becomes stable. That way you get to use a stable OS constantly and only be behind the latest tech for 6 months.
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Yes, but its not what most will do and why the **** do it like this when Apple can just do it the right way. Plus if you get a new phone or Mac it's not going to work anyway.
 
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My wish list for 2016 is simple.... work on making the Eco system even more seamless and easier to manage (i.e. continuity enhancements).

Sure... there's going to be new hardware and I hope Apple strives to give the Mac line a little more "umph!" than normal to make them more competitive against the slew of devices out there now. But focus on cloud services, Siri, Continuity, and more content for Apple TV. :)
 
street.cory said:
I don't really understand what value there is to adding a camera to the watch. I haven't ever found myself wanting or needing a camera.

Any ideas?
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A camera on the AppleWatch holds the same value as why there's a camera on the iPhone. If it's the only one you have with you, it's highly valuable in situations where you'd like to get a photo. The next generation AppleWatch is likely to continue the procession towards independence from the iPhone, so having a camera on your Watch is one step closer towards not having to carry an iPhone, towards making the AppleWatch their only device for some people.

It could also be what it takes to finally make FaceTime a popular method of communication. FaceTime has been slowly becoming more and more popular but it's always taken a back seat to iMessage. With no keyboard on the Watch, FaceTime is better suited to take a leading role on how you communicate from your wrist.

From a technical perspective, a single wide lens with a 180° of view could serve as both a front facing camera and a point and shoot. Which portion of the photo to use and image distortion correction can be done in software.
 
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street.cory said:
I don't really understand what value there is to adding a camera to the watch. I haven't ever found myself wanting or needing a camera.

Any ideas?
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it could be a useful sensor - it's pretty useless for facetime, imho, because even holding the watch up for a phone call longer than a few seconds takes some effort, and then you would still be filming up your nose, if it were a video-call. so, you'd have to shakily hold it up in front of your face - but at a distance, not turning your wrist - until your arm hurts. it also doesn't make sense for taking photos/videos, because then the camera would have to be on the side, pointing away from you - you won't be able to pack a decent-sized chip and optics on the side of an even smaller 2nd gen watch, and it wouldn't work if you're a leftie and wear the watch the other way round.

but an upwards facing camera could make sense as a sensor for brightness, UV & infrared, eye-tracking and for using it as a quick mirror/selfiecam or even as a (3D) scanning device. wouldn't it be nice if you could quickly scan a document or object with your wrist, and even have the watch know it's size?
 
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SlipperySlop said:
What's fabulous is that NO ONE will force you to update anything you don't want to. You don't have to update the OS. You don't have to buy a new Mac. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. So why are you afraid of another update? There is nothing to fear but fear itself. Be brave. Be bold. Don't do something simply because it's there. Make an informed decision and go from there. Good luck.
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if it were that easy. got an iphone 4 running ios 6 and an ipad running ios 9? using pages or numbers? now you can't either not use it on the ios 9 devices, because every document you update or create with a newer version of pages (you can't install the old one on the newer device) won't work on your older device - or just don't use it on the newer device.

now imagine adding a few more devices (some macs, watch, appe-tvs, old airport-express... ), apple-apps that require the latest OS and update all your old projects to a new version (eg. fcpx, logic, motion,..) and services (apple music, family sharing, itunes match, ...) to that mix. yes, i neither have to update hardware nor software - unless someone in my family buys a new device, which might break some functionality in some others.

if it were that easy...
 
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cdmoore74 said:
I'm in the camp that Apple can have 3 sizes. Just make the specs as close as possible (minus the screen resolution). Don't waste my time with left over parts from a generation ago.
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There probably needs to be some allowance made to the fact that the 6 plus size can have a bigger battery. So maybe that can have a more powerful CPU. But besides that, yes Apple should do a flagship or near flagship 4" model. It really is a good size and many folks will continue to want to use a phone like. This is especially the case for those of us who usually travel with an iPad.
 
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wilhelmer said:
The next iPhone won't be called iPhone 7. It will be called the :apple: Phone. You heard it here first.
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While that might have made sense when the Phone first got introduced changing the name now would be worse than keeping it I think.
 
mikefla said:
I found the following to be a rather interesting article and I certainly agree with most of it:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/28/10676272/2015-apples-year-in-beta

The iphone6S even with the latest iOS developer build still doesn't run right, still feels slow, animations lag sometimes, etc. The Apple watch after all the excitement about getting the device I put it on my wrist everyday now because I find it a comfortable watch but I don't even use it per say, can't remember even the last time I unlocked the screen! I think the OS got very little attention and been mostly forgotten! The MacBook Pro, I bought one 13" earlier this year, got stuck with the older generation processor they released a new model with next generation processor a few months later. And just got a new 15" this month, come early next year likely they will finally release an updated 15" with newer processors worth the wait and perhaps get rid of the so called crappy AMD discrete graphics on this one and put on a NVIDIA high end work horse in there. You just can't win this year....

-Mike
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I think your ability to buy multiple Apple products in 2015 was kind of winning. Seems like you don't suffer anything more than a year old for very long. Bad timing on those purchases, but I suspect you are just buying more new computers in 2016.
 
JeffyTheQuik said:
Forgive my sarcasm on post #154 (the one that you referenced). The author of the article was telling the person to read the article, and I was trying (albeit poorly) to ask, in a sardonic way, "Do you mean the words below the headline?" Regrettably, by your post, I see that I failed, and in that regard, please forgive me.

Oh, and it's "Jeffy". Jesus is my friend at work, and he doesn't let me use his MacRumors account.

;)
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Dang... I totally missed the boat there! Apologies and have a happy new year. :D
 
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Apple Watch

I'm going to guess that the Apple Watch form factor does not visibly change with version 2. I think it gets a CPU upgrade in speed and energy efficiency and maybe a new sensor in the back. But the iPhone form factor change followed by "S" version has been very easy for consumers to understand and I can see a lot of reasons for Apple to stick with that.

I will be upgrading to new Apple Watch when it comes out. I've decided the default is to upgrade yearly now for things that I use many multiple times per day. So phone and watch are on yearly upgrade plan. Home computer and iPads are not quite there yet. Home computer because too expensive to upgrade and because I use work computer more often anyway. IPads because the rate of improvement is slower. But if Apple puts out a compelling iPad Mini 5 I may upgrade my Mini-R (which is version 3 I think). And since this is the year I upgrade my 2011 iMac, I will have to consider these purchases in terms of budget. But I think I'we been frugal enough using an iMac since 2011. That isn't bad.
 
CmdrLaForge said:
On the watch - how could blood pressure be measured without the pressure? Anyhow - no idea how it may work from a technical perspective but if the watch does that I am interested to.
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Several types of non-cuff blood pressure wrist devices have been made, including:
  • Samsung's health sensor testbed watch uses multiple LED blood sensors to watch blood move along the blood vessels.
  • A similar type looks at the shape of the blood pulse to figure out the pressure, but has to be calibrated with a cuff first for its calculations to work.
  • Yet another has pressure sensitive bristles in the watchband itself, which "feel" the pulse amount.
No idea how accurate any of those are, except that the calibrated one apparently does pretty well.
 
I look forward to the iPhone 7, I hope it manages to improve on the shortcomings of the iPhone 6-design. The iPhone 6 is not a very good-looking phone compared to previous models, if you ask me. Might get the 7.

The rMBPs, not to mention the MBAs could really make use of a redesign. Moreover, the lineup really is a mess right now. I would like to see the following from Apple in 2016:

- MacBook (12" Retina)
- MacBook Air (13.3-14" Retina, dual-core i5/i7, iGPU - thin, light, powerful)
- MacBook Pro (15" Retina 4K, quad-core, dGPU - to keep the "Pro's" happy)

I'm getting rid of my rMBP in 2016, will see whether I bother replacing it this year or not. iMac works well, not interested in upgrading until Apple brings a new design to the table with SSDs standard across the range.

Couldn't care less about the watch.
 
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ipedro said:
A camera on the AppleWatch holds the same value as why there's a camera on the iPhone. If it's the only one you have with you, it's highly valuable in situations where you'd like to get a photo. The next generation AppleWatch is likely to continue the procession towards independence from the iPhone, so having a camera on your Watch is one step closer towards not having to carry an iPhone, towards making the AppleWatch their only device for some people.
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Agree the best camera is the one you have with you. But I think your premise is too ahead of its time both technically & socially. I too hope the AW 2 is more independent of the iPhone, but given the size, storage, and battery requirements of a camera I don't think it's realistic next round. Same for adding a phone chip plus when large screen phones are the most popular I don't see how consumers pivot to taking & texting with just a watch. Personally I enjoy receiving text on my phone & taking calls in private on my watch but sending text replies is too painful and I'd never talk on the phone on speaker in public.
 
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