This has been a long year of leaks and speculation about Apple’s latest iPhone and other devices that are released in the fall.  As usual, whether you have them or love them, the world has been on edge for what our friends in Cupertino are going to do and what all will be released.

Will it have a bezel?  Will there be a mac Mini?  Will it have wireless charging?  How much is it going to cost?

Your questions and more were answered on September 12th 2017 — and let’s hope that all of the leaks didn’t spoil all of the goodies Apple had planned for us.

Steve Jobs Theater

Apple’s latest campus is one of the last things that Steve Jobs worked on, from detailing the type of trees that were needed and more.  The Steve Jobs Theater was the place in which this fall Apple Event was to occur and as Tim Cook noted, “It was only fitting that Steve should open his theater” as we watched a very heartfelt video, seen below:

Source: cnet

This marks a great point in the history of Apple and it was no other way to start this event by words from a true visionary.

Apple Watch

Smartwatches, many of us have them; yet, many still do not.  Some view them as a necessity, while others view them as a trivial child’s play thing — needless to say, the Apple Watch is the #1 selling watch on planet earth and touts the most used heart rate sensor of any device.

Let that soak in for a minute.

The Apple Watch has changed lives from making people fitter, more aware of their surroundings and saving a life or two, watch their stories here:

Source: Apple

Today, we met Apple Watch Series 3, one that’s faster and one that has built in LTE (plus GPS) so that you can make calls while you’re away from your iPhone.  Usually phones get thicker when LTE radios and SIM cards are introduced (hello LG) — not this smartwatch.  Apple has integrated the cellular antenna directly into the watch screen itself, while incorporating a tiny eSIM on board the device.

Now that the Apple Watch is faster, featuring it’s W3 chip — we now have Siri on board, but we already had that right?  Now Siri can actually talk to you.

Source: Apple

Prices start at $329 for Series 3 with GPS and $399 with GPS + LTE

Apple TV 4K

Apple has made minor updates to the current Apple TV model and is introducing Apple TV 4K, bringing it inline with 4K content (albeit a small library) that is available today.  The new Apple TV has an upgraded CPU in the A10X Fusion (same chip that’s in the iPad Pro) that is twice as fast as the old with a graphics processesor that is four times faster that the previous model.

Additionally, Apple is bringing 4K content to iTunes and all of your previous HD content that you’ve purchased will be automatically upgraded to 4K, free.

Source: cnet

iPhone

Let’s get to the star, or shall I say, stars of the show — shall we?  For the past 10 years the iPhone has been an icon in the mobile space that has truly changed the world, from the way we interact, to the pictures we take, from the way we authenticate, how we consume apps, media and more — it is a truly iconic device.  Today, Apple built upon that with 3 brand new smartphones to take us into the future.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus (yup, skipped S this year) are our successors to iPhones 7 and 7 Plus from last year and there are upgrades brought to each model.  Each device is now sandwiched between two very sturdy panes of glass, allowing for wireless charging — a first for an iPhone supporting the standard Qi, which means existing chargers made by Belkin, Spigen and others will work.  Each device is color-matched to an areospace-grade aluminum bezel and are splash, water and dust resistant IP67 certified.

Top features:

• New Retina HD display with True Tone (if you’ve used an iPad Pro, you’ve witnessed the greatness of True Tone, shifting to tone of the colors on the display based off of your current lighting situation — this is different from Auto Brightness)
• A11 Bionic SoC with 6 cores featuring 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, integrated with the first Apple designed GPU for up to 30% faster graphics performance than on previous models.  The A11 Bionic is named “bionic” because of it’s “world tracking” and “scene recognition” abilities, making this vital for AR Kit, which is instantly the world’s largest augmented reality platform.
• Updated Portrait Mode with new Portrait Lighting, which dynamically changes the lighting on the subject and provide a completely different feel to the photo all done while in the camera app itself
• Updated speakers to be louder and deliver more bass
• Bluetooth 5.0 enabling pairing of multiple devices at once
• LTE Advanced

Source: Apple

Starting at $699 for iPhone 8 and $799 for iPhone 8 Plus at the 64 GB configuration, available for pre-order on 9/15 and available on 9/22.

But wait, there was one more thing…..

Meet iPhone X (ten), the future of the smartphone.

Source: Apple

The screen on the iPhone X stretches from top to bottom and features the same glass on the front and back as the iPhone 8 devices with the surrounding band made of surgical grade stainless steel, meeting the glass in immaculate fashion.  Retina, move aside, iPhone X has an all new Super Retina Display that is 5.8″ diagonally with over 2.7 million pixels and has 458 PPI, the highest resolution ever put in an iPhone and it’s OLED.  This is the first OLED display that has met Apple’s high standards to be placed into a device.  Additionally notes is that the display features HDR, Dolby Vision, one million-to-one contrast ratio, color accuracy, 3D touch and True Tone.

But let’s talk camera…or cameras.  The iPhone X features the dual camera system, which sports Optical Image Stabilization in each lens and now, Portrait Mode can be used on the front-facing camera as well.

Gesture Based Navigation

Since the iPhone X does away completely with the iconic home button of old, there has to be a way to get around the operating system.  The home button is replaced with a thin bar that is accessible at the bottom of the screen at any time.  With a series of swipe gestures you can get to where to need to go, quickly.

• Swipe up — Home
• Swipe up and hold — Multitasking

Source: cnet

Face ID

A whole new way to unlock your device, which is actually more secure than Touch ID.  Let’s clear something up here, Face ID is NOT just your ordinary “Face Unlock” seen on phones in the past that essentially compare a picture of your face to what is seen in the viewfinder of the front-facing camera.  The iPhone X features complex depth senors in Apple’s new “True Depth” camera sensor located at the top of the device’s display that actually analyze 30,000 invisible dots on your face — meaning that it really recognizes your face, really.

That is regardless if you change hairstyles, add glasses, add hats and more — your iPhone X still knows who you are on a new level.

It’s a natural and effortless way to access your device that works even in the dark.

Features:

• Easily setup
• Specialized neural networks for your security
• Face data protected by the secure enclave
• On-device processing (not uploaded to Apple servers)
• Requires user attention to unlock (eyes must be open and looking at the device)
• 1 in 1,000,000 chance of another user unlocking your iPhone X
• Works with Apple Pay
• Adapts over time

View all features and specs of the new iPhone X that I might’ve missed, here:

Source: Apple

Key Takeaways

After watching and reading about one of the biggest announcements, since iPhone — there is nothing to be underwhelmed about here and the iPhone X dominated the show, although it was the last item to be debuted.  Apple Watch Series 3 has continued to build on the path set forth by it’s predecessor, while the Apple TV gained what the market wanted it to so badly have, 4K.

What are your thoughts on Apple’s latest announcement?  Get involved and join the conversation, tweet me @Dexter_Johnson, I’ll be there waiting.