What Apple Didn’t Highlight During Its September Event (Premium)

This week’s Apple event was typical for Apple in that it was big on hyperbole, but it was also atypical in that there wasn’t much big news. And that made for an interesting infomercial in which what Apple didn’t say mattered more, in many ways, than what it did say.

I don’t write that to be critical of the products that Apple announced: Each is, as I wrote yesterday, an evolutionary update* to an existing and mature product, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The only issue I have is with Apple itself: It’s so over the top when it promotes the relative improvements in everything it releases that yesterday’s event came off as even less credible than usual. Yeah, we get it, Tim, the best iPhones you’ve ever made. Obviously.

(* The one notable exception is the new iPad mini, which should be marketed as the iPad Air mini. In taking on this new—for the mini—design, Apple’s smallest iPad has surged ahead in design and usability in ways that none of the other products it announced have. If you’ve been holding out for a new iPad mini, it’s time.)

Anyway, this can’t be a definitive list, as I’m just not as immersed in the Apple world as some others. But even to this relative outsider, there were so many things left unsaid that I feel it warrants discussion. So let’s dive in.

iPad

• Same tired design with huge bezels and a proprietary Lightning port instead of USB-C. Yes, this is Apple’s cheapest iPad, and reusing the same design year after year helps keep down the costs. (And, more important to Apple, helps keep up the margins.) But this design sticks out like an aging thumb in the iPad lineup because the look hasn’t changed almost at all since the iPad 2 in 2011.
• Apple Pencil (1st generation) only. Apple quickly noted that the “new” iPad supports Apple Pencil, but this is the aging first-generation Apple Pencil only, not the superior 2nd-generation version that works with iPad Pro, iPad Air, and the new iPad mini. That means you’ll be charging it from the tip over Lightning like a jerk and hoping it doesn’t keep rolling off the table, which it will.

iPad mini

• As noted, this one should have been called the iPad Air mini. It’s a great design. But no mini keyboard case? 🙂

Apple Watch Series 7

• No new design. I get it, this wasn’t Apple’s fault per se, as it had never announced a new design, but one of the top rumors this year was that the next Watch would get the same squared-off design we see on the new iPhones (which is based on the iPhone 4 and 5 series handsets). And that didn’t happen: Instead, the Apple Watch Series 7 uses an almost identical bulbous design to its predecessor (albeit with a bigger display, which is great). The other good news? All the straps are compatible across the generations.
• Same processor. The Apple Watch Series 7 should be marketed as the Apple Watch Series 6 Pro, since it’s the exact same device internally, with the same processor/SoC. That’s odd, given how much attention Apple usually gives to its chipsets and how much of a differentiator that is year-over-year. Usually.

iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini

• Apple’s mainstream iPhones feature a new A15 Bionic chipset, but for the first time they are not as fast/powerful as the versions in the Pro models. More to the point, they’re not faster than the processors they replace: With iPhone 13, the performance comparisons are all against “the competition,” not against previous iPhones. That’s because there is no meaningful difference between the two. And that is most curious, given Apple’s fixation on year-over-year processor bumps.
• The notch on the iPhone 13s (include Pro) is less wide than before, but it’s also taller. So the overall decrease in screen occlusion is minimal and really non-existent when you consider that users don’t get back any on-screen real estate. If the rumors are true that Apple will finally get rid of the notch next year, it’s curious why they even bothered to do this.
• The iPhone 13s (including Pro) are all thicker and heavier than their predecessors because Apple needed to add bigger batteries to get the additional battery life that they did promote. That means—wait for it—that no iPhone 12-series cases will not work with new iPhone 13s (and vice versa). Oh, Apple.
• Still Lightning. For some reason.

iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max

• The A15 Bionic processor in the Pro-series iPhones is, for the first time, more powerful than those used by the non-Pro models thanks to 5-core GPU. But here again, the comparison is against other phones, not other iPhones: In benchmarks, this chip “delivers up to 50 percent faster graphics performance than any other smartphone chip.” (The A15 in the non-Pro iPhones has 4 cores.)
• Notch isn’t that much smaller. (See above.)
• Thicker and heavier. (See above.)
• ProRes video recording at 4K/30 fps requires an iPhone 13 Pro/Max with at least 256 GB of storage, a $100 upgrade. (Those with 128 GB of storage can only record at 1080p/30 fps.)
• Optical zoom is 3x (up from 2.5x), despite the lame “6x optical zoom range” quoted.
• Still Lightning. For some reason.

I’m sure there’s more, but what this all points to is that Apple’s biggest sellers—the iPhones, the iPad, and Apple Watch—-are almost meaningless year-over-year upgrades, which is great for anyone who bought one of those products new last year. There is literally no reason for any of those people to consider upgrading. Save your money.

But the iPad mini is a huge upgrade, and the first meaningful design change since that product was first introduced. One final point: I enjoy that Apple described the mini as a one-of-a-kind product; what everyone forgets is that Apple was late to the mini-tablet market, and that the mini was originally seen as a me-too product. But in the years since, all of its competition there has disappeared. So Apple is right about that, in a way.