Apple Announces iPhone XS, XS Max, XR, New Apple Watch & More

Last month, Apple held their annual September hardware conference where they announced several new products including three new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. We discuss the highlights in the latest episode of Industry Spotlight. Why not subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos like this?

See below for the full video transcription.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Jamie: Okay, first thing we’re going to talk about is Apple’s big hardware conference last week. So they announced loads of new iPhones. So you got your XS, XS Max. And they also announced an XR, which is, like, a budget-friendly one, that’s coming out next month. You can’t really call it budget-friendly when it’s £750.

Lee: £750.

Jamie: Cheaper than the other ones. Yeah, and the XS Max goes up to…I think if you spec it out, it’s like £1400, isn’t it?

Lee: Yeah.

Jamie: So, yeah, top-dollar devices. They look shiny, though. But yeah, it’s a bit of a mouthful now for those names since they’ve stopped using the old naming convention where they just keep on calling it iPhone or iMac and then you just have to put a year after it in brackets. They seem to be going down the Samsung route, shoving letters after it. No doubt, Samsung will call theirs the SX, now we’ve got the XS, to make things more confusing.

Lee: There’s a pun in there somewhere.

Jamie: There’s a pun in there. Not a lot of new innovations, really, that I can see. It just looks like an incremental improvement in terms of screens and the processors. But they are bringing the ARKit stuff on a bit, that’s the augmented reality stuff, so that’ll be interesting.

They also announced the new Apple Watch. That’s probably the best thing they announced, really, in terms of innovation. Loads of cool stuff there. Screen’s a lot better. Looks like there’s tons more info you can consume on the main watch face. And it’s got a snazzy new electro…what are they calling it? Like, heart-rate reading thing. I’m just trying to find it. It’s electrocardiogram. So I think that’s the first consumer device that allows you to take these readings. And it’s been, like, certified, etc., that it actually does what it says. So I’d be interested in seeing how that gets integrated into the Apple Health kit stuff.

They’ve also done an update for iOS which is obviously software not hardware. But iOS 12’s come out now, as well, and they’re giving a bit of love to the older devices, which is cool because historically they’ve taken a bit of a bashing for throttling them. And people have been saying it’s sort of to make you update the device to the latest and greatest, obviously, to spend more cash with Apple. But they’ve said it’s to do with the batteries.

But as that came out and they sort of admitted it, they took a bit of a bashing there. So they’ve backtracked a little bit on the strategy there and they’re trying to sort of change things up and give a bit of love to the older devices, which is good. Because, yeah, we don’t like just seeing the latest and greatest getting updated. So that’s a plus point for Apple.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It’s a bit of a shame they didn’t announce anything for the Macbook Air or the AirPods or the AirPower wireless-charging stuff. Because, well, it’s just the standard technology which a lot of them are using. They’re going to use the Wireless QI standard, which has obviously been about for years. So I don’t know what they’re dragging their feet on with that, really. They’re just making the little pad whiter and shinier, no doubt, seeing how many zeros they can stick on RRP before people start complaining. But yeah, you should be able to use any old Wireless QI pad.

So that’s a plus point for Apple in the wake of not bothering with USB-C on the new iPhones, which is a massive shame in my opinion. Because they brought it onto the Macbook Pro, which is obviously Thunderbolt, but it’s just USB-C really, in terms of the connector. So it’s a shame that they haven’t brought them into the iPhone and they’re still clinging onto Lightning. It’s just a shame, especially considering now that they don’t sell any iPhones with a headphone port, a 3.5-mm jack. So if you want to listen to music on an iOS phone device, then you need wireless or Lightning. It’s a bit of a shame.

Lee: Or seven dongles.

Jamie: Or seven different dongles. Probably one. But yeah, they don’t put the little dongle in there anymore, I don’t think.

Lee: No, it’s not free anymore.

Jamie: So you’ve got to go and buy it.

Lee: AOV.

Jamie: So they’ll probably charge you for that.

Chris: Marketing machines, aren’t they? It’s not worth doing unless there’s a cross-sell or an upsell.

Jamie: Yeah, so that’s a shame that they didn’t go USB-C. That’d have been good. I’d have been happy with them doing that. Nope. Still got to do Lightning. That means you still can’t connect Macbook Pros to iPhones unless you buy a weird cable or a dongle or both. So, yeah, that’s it. Hopefully we will see some more hardware announcements from Apple, because we’d like to see other stuff get updated. Mac Minis. I want a Mac Mini. 2014, a long time ago. They need to get a new one out.

Lee: Come on, Tim.

Jamie: Timothy’s going to sort it, I’m sure, at some point. Yeah, that’s it.