technology

Apple’s September event: what happened?

iPhone, Apple, technology, releases, Josh, Kettle Mag

As a self confessed Apple fan, I was very excited about Apple’s September launch event. Plenty of rumours had been surfacing prior to the event, and I was following them closely. When the event landed, plenty of announcements were made.

So, if you want to know what happened, here’s a look at what got announced at Wednesday’s event.

The event kicked off with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook riding with James Corden and singing a few songs on the way to the event’s venue, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Tim began by talking a little about the new series of Carpool Karaoke, premiering next year on Apple Music.

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The ConnectED program in the US was also spoken about at the beginning too, with Apple telling attendees and viewers around the world that as part of their $100 million pledge to the programme they had donated 50,000 iPads to students in some of America’s most disadvantaged schools and had given a Mac and an iPad to every teacher in the ConnectED program, plus an Apple TV for every classroom in the programme as well, in order to make sure that students in the most disadvantaged schools in America have access to the newest technology in order to support their education.

A new Apple Watch…

Then talk turned to Apple Watch. WatchOS 3 was on the bill of discussion, talking about the new features, some of them already having been unveiled at WWDC earlier this year, including the new Breathe app, which reminds you daily to complete a breathing exercise to help de-stress, but then, as widely predicted, the new Apple Watch was unveiled.

Apple Watch Series 2 will feature improvements on the first Watch model, including built in GPS, which runners who enjoy Apple Watch may find useful. The newest Apple Watch builds on the splashproof capability of the original Apple Watch by this time becoming ‘swim-proof.’ When announcing this new functionality, they also announced that any activity (such as calories burned) that you undertake whilst swimming will now count towards your activity rings, plus the new Apple Watch is water resistant to 50 metres. Plus, a new brighter display and dual core processor comes to the Watch too.

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Customers in the UK and in many other countries worldwide including America, Australia, Canada, the UAE, Spain, China and Japan will be able to order the new Apple watch from the 9th September. Availability will be from the 16th September.

A new Nike+ edition of the Apple Watch plus brand new Hermes designs have also arrived too. The Nike+ edition will be available to order on Apple’s website on the 9th September, and availability will be available from late October. As for the Hermes watches, they’ll be available to buy in the UK from the 23rd September.

…and a new iPhone

As many expected, Apple also unveiled the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at their big event as well, and cameras were the main talking point. Both phones now feature optical image stabilisation with a 12MP camera on both phones. The difference is that the iPhone 7 Plus adds a second telephoto camera as well.

The two cameras operate as one, and offer 2x optical zoom and up to 10x digital zoom, as well as depth of field on photos. The flash system TrueTone is 50% brighter on the new iPhones than they were on the iPhone 6s, and the FaceTime camera (the front facing one, the one you use for selfies and, predictably, FaceTime) is now 7MP on the new phones too, with image stabilisation. If you really want to get into the technicals of the photos on the new system, the brand new Image Signal Processor on these new phones is able to process “over 100 billion operations on a single photo in as little as 25 milliseconds,” according to Apple themselves.

Sounds impressive, right?

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Graphics performance is up to three times faster in the new iPhones, and Apple’s added a new processor called the A10 Fusion. Good news for iPhone users in Japan, as Apple Pay will now be coming to the country as the phone picks up support for the different type of NFC used in the country.

It’s when you get into sound on the new iPhone that it starts to become a little more controversial and a little more divisive amongst users. As we’ve been hearing for several months leading up to the new iPhone release, Apple has ditched the headphone jack on the new iPhone. They will ship the new phones with headphones that connect via Lightning, but there’s no need to ditch your old headphones along with the headphone jack as they will also ship with an adaptor that will let you use your old headphones on the new phone.

To compensate for losing the headphone jack, the iPhone 7 will feature stereo speakers.

Plus, Apple also announced a new product called AirPods.

These are new wireless headphones, and they look similar to the Apple headphones you’ve come to expect. They’re set up simply by opening up the case that they come in near your iPhone. They can detect when they’re in your ear so they only play music for example when you’ve got them in your hear, and a single charge provides 5 hours of use. They also come with a case that can charge your AirPods, and that provides an “industry-leading more than 24 hours of total listening time,” when compared to standard wireless headphones. Plus, double tapping one of these new headphones allows you to access Siri too.

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The new iPhone will be available to order on the 9th September as well in the UK with availability in store on the 16th September. AirPods, on the other hand, are sold separately from the new phones and will be available to buy online or in store from late October.

So that’s this September’s big event wrapped up for you. Some of these announcements we’ve seen coming for a while (like Apple dropping the headphone jack, this has been reported for a few months leading up to the event), others maybe we were taken aback slightly about. There may not have been a surprise announcement this time round, but Sia did perform her new song for attendees to close the event off.

If you get any of the new products, hope you enjoy them!

What do you think? Are you excited by any of Apple's new products? Have your say in the comments section below.