Quick Analysis: Apple Special Event (Premium)

Apple launched the iPhone 11 family, Apple Watch Series 5, and a new iPad, and revealed its pricing for Apple TV+ and Arcade. There’s a lot to discuss, including some information that Apple didn’t actually reveal during the press event.

First up, kudos to Apple CEO Tim Cook for skipping the usual humblebrag at the beginning of the event: This always gets Apple events off to a bad start, and I appreciated him diving right into the announcements instead.

The first was, of course, the least interesting, and again, credit to Apple for mostly holding its best announcements until the end. We learned that Apple Arcade, the firm’s gaming service, will formally launch on September 19, about ten days from now, and will cost only $4.99 per month. This is smart pricing, as it undercuts other new and coming gaming services, and is exactly what a newcomer to any market should do.  And it’s even smarter when you learn that Arcade’s monthly cost covers up to six family members with Family Sharing.

Apple says it will have over 100 “curated” game titles “in the coming weeks” (so not at launch), which is quite impressive, and it will add new games each month. But the three it chose to demo onstage at the event were mostly unimpressive. (Oddly, a later game demo during the iPhone segment was graphically richer and grittier.) The good news? All Arcade games will be playable offline.

Left unsaid: While Arcade will be available on mobile (iPhone, iPad), desktop (Mac), and TV (Apple TV), the Mac version of the service won’t ship until October, when macOS Catalina arrives.

Overall, I’m not sure what Apple brings to the table here, and it’s unclear whether there is a market for such a service. The right pricing will help, and of course, Apple’s fanbase has shown itself less averse to paying for things than are Android fans, and this has been true of standalone games as well. So Apple may be uniquely positioned to make Arcade work.

Next up was Apple TV+, the second least-interesting announcement of the day. But here again, Apple saved things somewhat by surprising on price (in a good way, a rarity): Like Arcade, Apple TV+ will cost just $4.99 per month. And like Arcade, a TV+ subscription covers up to six family members, making it an even better deal for those who can take advantage of that. Better still, anyone who buys a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, or iPod touch starting on September 10 will get one year of Apple TV+ for free.

Those things combined should give TV+ the room it needs to establish itself against tier-A players like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, and with Disney+ coming soon, too, and with more and better content, Apple will need all the help it can get. Apple TV+ will launch November 1, just ahead of Disney+, and it will support offline play. But it will also be seriously lacking in content: Apple announced fewer than 10 launch titles, though again it hopes to add more each month. (I think this explains the free year with device purchases.)

One bit I didn’t catch during the press conference: In addition to its availability on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and iPod touch, in macOS Catalina (starting in October), and on select Samsung smart TVs, Apple TV+ will also be available on Amazon Fire TV, LG, Roku, Sony and VIZIO “in the future.” And there will be a web-based version, which should help with most incompatible platforms (Android, Windows), albeit without offline play, I’d imagine.

This is Apple’s weakest offering at the moment, but that should change over time, and I do expect the service to establish itself as a sort of tier-B service, something that some users choose alongside a tier-A service like Netflix. But Apple has a long way to go from a content perspective.

Next, Apple introduced a new generation iPad, its third such release in less than two years. For this 7th-generation iPad, Apple has for the first time changed the screen size, from 9.7-inches to 10.2, and it appears it did so by slimming the bezels, albeit only on two sides; the top and bottom of the bezels in portrait mode are still humongous.

But as with its two predecessors, the 5th-generation iPad (which I own) and the 6th-generation iPad (which is identical but added Apple Pencil support), the new iPad is a great value, and I don’t get to say that about Apple products all that often. Despite the bigger display, it still starts at just $329, for 32 GB of storage, and can be upgraded to 128 GB. (Oddly, the iPad mini can be upgraded to 256 GB.) And the new iPad is also compatible with the Smart Keyboard, turning it into an affordable alternative to the iPad Pro.

We can debate the merits of an iPad as a laptop replacement, but if you accept the fact that many, if not most, people can get a lot of work done on a phone and only need a bigger display and keyboard occasionally, the new iPad starts to make some sense. Regardless, I have nothing but good things to say about this device. And it’s a no brainer for anyone looking for a full-sized tablet.

After this, Apple unveiled its 5th-generation Apple Watch, which is a minor upgrade from last year. Series 5, as Apple calls it, includes an always-on display and improved battery life, two features that seem to contradict each other. Minor updates include the ability to see which direction you’re facing in Maps, a new Compass app, International emergency calling, and several new features that come to most existing Apple Watches via watchOS 6.

This was perhaps the least dramatic hardware update, but Apple Watch is a mature product now, and a big success for Apple. And while the $400 starting price is high, the firm still offers Series 3 watches for a lower-than-ever price of $200 and up, making the family more affordable overall.

Finally, we got to the main event. There was a lot of speculation and rumors about the new iPhones ahead of the launch, including about which branding Apple would use. In the end, Apple did the right thing: It dropped the silly “X” (for “10”) naming scheme. Now, what used to be called iPhone XR is the iPhone 11. And the iPhone XS and XS Max have been replaced by the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max.

Last year, Apple for some reason presented the XS and XS Max ahead of the much less expensive XR, for some reason. But this time around, Apple started, correctly, with the less expensive iPhone 11. Which, by the way, now starts at $700, $50 less than the XR was last year, for a base 64 GB model. The pricing tiers, however, are the same as before, and that’s good: You can upgrade to 128 of storage for $50 more, which is reasonable, and to 256 GB for $150 more.

New this year are some new colors and, more substantively, a second camera lens. So where the iPhone XR made do with an admittedly capable 12 MP wide angle lens, the iPhone 11 provides a 12 MP ultra-wide lens too. So the overall effect should be similar, if not identical, to the iPhone XS from last year.

Less good, the iPhone 11 (like the XR) utilizes an LCD display with very large and noticeable bezels, and of course it has a huge notch. But it does feature the same A13 Bionic chip as the more expensive Pro iPhone 11s, and should provide tremendous battery life.

Overall, the iPhone 11 appears to be an even better value than the excellent iPhone XR, thanks to its $50 price cut. And if you want to save even more, Apple is keeping the iPhone XR in market at prices starting at just $600. And you can still buy an iPhone 8 for $450 and up—a fairly low price for a new(ly purchased) iPhone—and the iPhone 8 Plus for $550 and up. (All previous iPhone models now top out at 128 GB of storage if you want an upgrade.)

For the high-end, the new iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max look and work almost exactly like their predecessors, and they come with the same high-end starting prices ($1000 and $1100, respectively) and unreasonable storage tiers (after the 64 GB base units, your next option up is 256 GB, which will cost an unreasonable $150 more). But there is big news, of course: Apple has upgraded the dual-lens camera systems from the XS lineup, which featured wide-angle and telephoto (with 2x optical zoom) lens, with a third, ultra-wide lens. As good, Apple is for the first time addressing the low-light performance with a new Night shooting mode. Less good, the Pros offer only 2x optical zoom, still.

Meanwhile, battery life is dramatically—one might say suspiciously—improved over last year two: Apple reports that the iPhone 11 Pro will deliver up to four more hours of battery life, when compared to its predecessor, while the Max will provide up to five hours more.

On the negative side, Apple touted faster than ever connectivity speeds but didn’t mention 5G because iPhone 11 doesn’t support it. Likewise, where the non-Pro iPhone 11 got a $50 price but, the Pro models are just as expensive as ever, as are their storage tier upgrades. Given Apple’s fading fortunes in the smartphone market, this might have been the right time to scale one or both of those back.

The iPhone 11 Pro looks solid, and that will be especially true if the new camera system and its Night shooting mode deliver meaningful improvements. And I don’t begrudge Apple reusing the same design three years in a row—after all, it models users’ upgrade habits—but it means that the 11 Pro isn’t all that desirable as an upgrade unless you’re using an iPhone 8 or older.

Overall, the Apple Special Event was more evolution than revolution, but the introduction of more services will only help the firm to help monetize its sizable customer base even more effectively as device upgrades get stretched out further and further. I’d like to see a bit more oomph, especially with the iPhone, but I suspect Apple will deliver that in 2020. Baby steps.