Apple's New iPhones, Watches: My Favorite Features
Phones
Speaker 1: Apple this week finally revealed the new iPhone fifteens with Dynamic Island and the new iPhone 15 pros with titanium and we got new U Ss B C ports and there are new Apple watches with new gestures. Yeah, wake up babe. New gesture just dropped. Get ready for double tapping in the air to be a flex. Actually, I think the Apple Watch could be the most interesting update this year, but I'll get into that in a minute. Every September we gather around to watch Apple's pre-produced commercial to see how the company is pushing its tech forward [00:00:30] and then fans get equal parts goody and sassy about it all. Apple delivered some impressive sounding stats about new processors, so we're calling them pro now and materials are now infused with metallic ions and others are made of the same alloy we send to Mars Missions. Yeah, maybe next year we'll get new flavor crystals.
Speaker 1: The actual thing that matters is how useful these devices are to making your life easier. How does the new iPhone and Apple Watch improve your quality of life to make it worth the purchase? We've [00:01:00] seen first looks of the new products from Apple Park, but I have one more thing I want to talk about. Let's review the biggest news from the iPhone 15 event that I think really matters to your life. I'm Bridget Carey, and this is one more thing. It's hard to justify getting a new Apple watch all the time when the changes are incremental with a new sensor here and there. However, it seems this year's Apple Watch update goes back to actually being more useful. Remember when Steve Jobs would get on stage and show off a product and say [00:01:30] it just all works well For a while I've been feeling like the harmony between my home pod watch and iPhone doesn't just work, especially when streaming music or trying to talk to Siri and having different systems not communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: The new processor in the series nine and Ultra two should fix that a bit. Apple calls it the SS nine S a P or system and processor with Ultra Wideband two. It should be smart enough now to better sync with the home pod speaker if you're near it to control a song. Ultra [00:02:00] Wideband two also has something called precision finding. It's really useful in finding your other gadgets in another room or finding people. Apple gave an example of someone finding a family member at an open market, and I'm telling you, I would use that every weekend when my husband and I get separated at the store when he's with the kids and doesn't pick up his phone and I got to find where he's at. I could just ask my watch and bam answers useful, but this only works if both folks have devices with the Ultra Wideband two and [00:02:30] the new iPhone 15 models also will have that ship.
Speaker 1: Fun fact, the first version of the ultra wideband was nicknamed U one, but for some reason Apple didn't call this version U two. Maybe Apple didn't want to tell people that U two is included inside their new iPhone. Been there done that. The new Apple watches are going to have us acting differently. For starters, apple wants us talking more to our watch and to Siri. Dictation on series nine is 25% more [00:03:00] accurate than last year, and Siri commands are now handled on the device. It's faster by not going to the cloud and back all the time, and because it's on device, apple wants you to talk to Siri about your health. So Apple says we can now walk around saying things like, Siri, wait, period started today. Yeah, that's not weird at all and I'm not making this up. This was an example from the presentation, but the bottom line is that Apple is finally making a voice assistant that acts like a real assistant actually [00:03:30] saving you time from logging and tapping each little thing and hopefully Siri is smooth at understanding what we want.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the double tap. The new watches can be controlled by quickly double tapping your index finger and thumb together so you don't have to touch the screen. It's basically the same as pressing whatever main button is showing on the screen, so if you're on a call, hang up taking a photo, click, click. It kind of looks like a room gesture depending on how you do it, like [00:04:00] you're telling someone to zip it, but it actually is helpful for speed so you're not fumbling around a tiny screen or when your other hand is holding something. Now, current watch users may know that tap controls are hidden in accessibility settings, but this new SS nine processor has improved the accuracy to the point where Apple is now confident to have double tap be a main feature. Now a bunch of sensors are working at once to detect how you're tapping your fingers together, including measuring the [00:04:30] blood flow. It will be a flex that folks might show off. It'll get people talking and maybe changing how they interact with tech if it works as well as it's advertised, and it doesn't go off randomly when you're typing or playing piano or something controlling tech by tapping the air. We have seen this before by nudging us to be using more voice commands and air taps. Apple is warming us up for that vision pro life.
Speaker 1: Moving on to the iPhones. The 15 models [00:05:00] all have a boost, but perhaps the most handy change is with photography. You'll be able to edit the focus of a photo after you took the photo and the iPhone 15 has some smarts to be able to switch it to portrait mode for you. When there's a person or pet in the frame or if you tap to focus, the phone is going to capture depth so you can turn it into a portrait later after the fact. That's handy because I never remember to switch it to portrait mode. My life is moving fast. That's going to be a huge selling point for parents that are capturing kids [00:05:30] in a hurry. Speaking of cameras, the iPhone 15 Pro has a video feature that has me very curious. The pros can record three D spatial video that can be played on the Vision Pro headset because that will be a thing someday, right?
Speaker 1: Will these three D movies be able to play on other devices? Will it get people thinking differently about how they capture memories? This goes back to something that sounds neat, but it's not practical enough to be helpful in the moment right now. The more practical advancement is [00:06:00] the Pro Max's better telephoto camera with the five times optical zoom. It's going to be helpful if you find yourself in the bleachers capturing distant shots and wanting a better photo. That's something we do all the time. And of course we got to talk about the switch from a lightning port to U S B C. Does it make our lives better right now? Is it actually useful? Yeah, it's when you have one cord to charge all your devices, life is just easier and it's better for the environment. Unless [00:06:30] you're spending $29 on a lightning U S B C adapter, don't do that, but I got to give Apple some credit on what could be the most practical change that will convince people to upgrade.
Speaker 1: There was no price hike as analysts expected. The only difference in price is that the iPhone 15 Pro Max eliminated the low end 128 gig model. It now starts at the 256 gig storage model priced at around $1,200. That's the same as before at that storage level, and if you're going [00:07:00] pro for video, you probably need that storage anyway, so did I hit everything that matters to you? I mean, besides the pink color watch, that is very important to me. Apple, keep the colors coming. I'm sure some of you though are feeling upset about how the mini size iPhone is no longer sold. So sound off in the comments on your reactions from the news this week and I am looking forward to getting more answers to how these devices work when the early reviews start rolling in. Thanks for watching. Catch you next week.
