Rui CarmoOK, fine. Since I upgraded last year, I was quite unfazed by Apple’s 2024 iteration on either the iPhone or the new watches (let alone AirPods), but there were a few things I liked–and some I didn’t.
Sizes, for instance. Never mind the lack of an iPhone Mini model (we all know that’s unlikely and almost random), but I don’t need a bigger watch (although I like that they keep getting thinner and with a few more pixels of screen real estate).
But the Watch’s hidden superpower is having a CPU with enough NPU cores to run Siri on-device, which is… Pretty impressive, not to mention that I appreciate having some features back-ported to my Series 9.
And yet the non-existence of complete third-party watch faces is getting sillier each year, especially now that there is enough CPU to render a seconds hand…
I couldn’t care less about AirPods, though–at least at the current price point, there are loads of more sensible options, although the amount of Pro features shoehorned into the mainstream model is impressive (and the new hearing protection/aid features are certainly getting some people to upgrade to the Pros).
But the new iPhone… Well, the only thing I have to say about it is: What if Camera Control supported Touch ID?
Seriously now, Camera Control is the only thing I think I “miss” in my iPhone 15 Pro, and it feels somewhat overdue as a feature in the same way the Action Button (which I never use) feels like a mis-feature.
That said, the only other thing that really caught my attention was their explicitly calling out Apple Intelligence being available outside the US as long as you have your phone set to US English. That strikes me as a smart move, although I’m curious as to EU-specific caveats that might crop up (I got nothing considering the way requests are effectively anonymously processed off-device, but you never know).
And with the new A18 chip, I’m left wondering if they will really gimp the next iPad Mini by not giving it an M-series chip. Not that I expect to do any “AAA gaming” on any of my Apple devices, but it would be really nice to have an iPad Mini Pro.
That I’d pay good money for. iPhones and sundry, I’ll probably skip for another three or four years.