The Apple company held a big presentation at the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco, during which it presented a new laptop and talked about the working hours of its watches.
The event, which started at 20.00 Moscow time, took a solid hour and a half. Logically, it was divided into three parts approximately equal in time: content, MacBook and, in fact, the clock.
Content
In the first 30 minutes of the presentation, the main focus was on two things.
The first is the appearance of an exclusive streaming channel HBO Live for American owners of Apple TV. The news for the mobile market is not very interesting, but it indicates the continuation of Apple’s expansion “into living rooms”.
The second is the Research Kit. In a nutshell, this is an open source framework created for medical institutions that are able and willing to develop mobile applications that track the condition of patients.
Imagine that you are a doctor specializing in Parkinson’s disease. By asking your patients to install the application of your medical institution, you will be able to track their condition in dynamics, if, of course, they regularly pass tests of your application.
The project, as you can see, is very ambitious, but the whole question is whether it will be widely distributed.
MacBook
The most striking part of the event was dedicated to the return to the Apple lineup of MacBook devices. Recall that the company stopped producing devices under this IP at the end of 2011 (MacBook Air and MacBook are slightly different brands).
The main feature of the novelty is that it is thinner than the MacBook Air (thinner in the thickest place – at the junction of the screen and the keyboard unit): 13.1 mm vs. 17.3 mm. At the same time, the laptop has a Retina screen and a dual-core processor (the frequency of the younger version is 1.1 GHz).
Another unexpected feature of it was the presence of only two ports: one USB-C and an audio connector. In other words, it will be impossible to connect either an Internet cable, an HDMI, or a mouse directly to the device (to be honest, I looked at the presentation of the laptop with horror, since there are now seven wires from my elderly Samsung, including charging). Only through special adapters that will be distributed separately.
But it’s beautiful.
Apple Watch
The main intrigue of the event, of course, concerned the clock. More precisely, two aspects related to them: how long they will work and when they will be on sale.
Before answering them, Apple explained in detail what it would be possible to do with them. However, something beyond unexpected was not said. The user will have the opportunity to:
- customize the dial for yourself;
- monitor your pulse;
- receive and answer calls
- receive and respond with stickers to messages (here, by the way, I was struck by the example of which application Apple demonstrated this – on Chinese WeChat);
- accept mail;
- pay for purchases using Apple Pay (spent hours on the cash register, transferred money);
- put likes on Instagram.
Here you can put “and so on”, but I will say this: the capabilities of the watch directly depend on the creativity of the developers. But, attention, as we have said more than once: without an iPhone, a new gadget from Apple turns, if not into a piece of metal, then, at most, into an ordinary watch that needs to be recharged every 18 hours.
You can pre-order them from April 10, they will be on sale on April 24. The price for the cheapest model made of aluminum (there will also be steel and gold) will be $349.
Not a word was said about the games at the event.
Conclusion
Overall, it was a bit boring. Although, for example, the presentation of the MacBook, or rather the accents made in it, made me smile, because Apple insisted that it had come up with a new type of keys, a new trackpad, and at the same time how to stack the battery so that it took up all the free space in the case. That is, such very small technical details that went into the background when it was reported that a gadget with a dual-core 1.1 GHz processor would cost $1,299.
The history with watches is such that it is still not clear why they are needed within the proposed format. If they showed an independent device that can replace a smartphone, it would be very interesting. Instead, the richest corporation in the world has offered a beautiful toy that cannot fully work without a smartphone.
It is noteworthy that she is going to release a new product a year after the release of the Android watch, which quietly failed. Considering that Apple is now building a marketing campaign for a completely different audience (not geeks, but fashionistas), it can easily succeed in terms of sales. Another question is, is it really possible for the Watch to become the fifth Apple product that has changed the portable electronics market, and not to go into a niche?
You can view the presentation here.
Photo source: Apple
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It produces personal and tablet computers, audio players, phones, and software. In the consumer electronics industry, Apple has a unique reputation comparable to a cult.