Today was Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event where they unveiled the latest set of their core products: Apple Watch, AirPods, and iPhone and boy do I have thoughts. They’re going to take a little while to mature, but, as an Apple user, I’m excited for these new devices, some of this stuff is really cool.

Apple Watch

Apple kicked this event off with the Apple Watch which came with a new 46mm screen size over the previous 45mm size and pairs with a new 42mm model. These new watches are 10% thinner, which is honestly super nice. That was my dad’s biggest complaint about the watch, which he’s been rather lukewarm about wearing over the years. On top of that, the case has been redesigned with a metal back and antenna bands, akin to that of an iPhone as opposed to other back materials the watches have had like nylon, ceramic, etc.. There’s a bump to the S10 SIP, most of the gains were in space, since they really thinned out the package for the device to be thinner.

Some of the more interesting things about these watches are their ability to play any audio through the speakers, meaning you can play music or a podcast through the speakers (oh no) as well as the addition of sleep apnea detection (also coming to the Series 9) and a water temp and depth gauge.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 was refreshed with a black color and a new titanium loop band to match, but no new internal changes.

I think the update is fine, the new tides app seems like it will be useful, and the larger display will definitely be a nice touch. One thing I particularly liked was the faster charging, which can get you up to 80% in 30 minutes. I’m personally less interested on fast charging a phone, since I just charge overnight, but I wear my watch to bed and charge it when I’m showering and getting dressed, having that happen faster is nice.

AirPods

The big thing here were the two different variants of the AirPods 4—one with ANC and one without. They’re physically the same otherwise, and the cases are significantly smaller than both the 2nd and 3rd generation models. This is nice for fitting in that little pocket in your jeans, but it means these cases are too small to actually touch the MagSafe/Qi2 ring, which means they’re only compatible with standard Qi as well as the Apple Watch charger. Not a huge loss, but still a little sad, I would have preferred it to the smaller case personally.

Apple also refreshed the AirPods Max with a new set of colors, as well USBC charging. That’s really all they did and honestly I’m fine with that. Should they have added the H2 chip? Absolutely. But I’m not terribly concerned with it.

AirPods Pro 2 are getting some software updates particularly around hearing health, which is an interesting direction for this product to move. They will be able to perform certified hearing tests as well as work as over-the-counter hearing aids. I don’t know how the battery will hold up with that, but hey, it’s definitely a good add.

iPhone 16

The iPhone is Apple’s bread and butter, and it got…some changes. These new phones come in colors that are definitely bolder than before in a kind of punching you in the face way that I’m not personally too fond of, I really liked the iPhone 15’s more muted palette, personally, but I’m glad people seem to like them.

They’re calling the 48MP main camera the Fusion camera which I’m sure means something, but I’m not entirely sure what it is. The base 16s get the new A18 chip along with the Action Button, which are both nice. The A18 chip has the 16-core Neural Engine and 8GB of RAM that Apple seems to really want for Apple Intelligence to work to their standards. The A18 series of chips also has increased memory bandwidth which I believe is what could be enabling the multimodal AI stuff that they were touting.

These phones also added the Camera Control button which does exactly what the rumors had stated. Pushing it will activate the camera app, holding a half press will lock focus, a full press will hit the shutter, and swiping on it will let you control pretty much anything about the camera. It’s pretty nice, I was very impressed with the functionality they put into such a small part of the interface. There’s also an API available for 3rd parties to use if you’re into that sort of thing.

iPhone 16 Pros

Apple’s flagship phones come with smaller bezels and larger screens. They bring the same camera control button that the base phones have and both models now feature the 5x telephoto lens, thanks to the larger 6.3″ size of the iPhone 16 Pro (the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes in at 6.9″ inches). The colors here are nothing like the bold colors of the 16-series (which, again, I’m not the biggest fan of). Apple’s dropped the blue titanium in favor of a gold-ish desert titanium along with a whiter white, blacker black, and normal-er normal titanium finish.

The Pro phones also gain the ability to do 4k/120 slow motion video with Dolby Vision, allowing for some really nice cinematic slow shots. The clip they played honestly looked pretty cool. Additionally, there was an update to photographic styles that greatly increases the flexibility of the feature with different filtering options, and just more control in general over how the style looks and behaves. You’re even able to change this up ex post facto, which is nice.

Additionally, Apple has added a feature called Audio Mix which allows you to emulate different mic patterns. I’m a little wary of this feature since messing with the mics can start to sound really artificial and overly compressed, but we’ll see how it works when reviews drop. Additionally, Apple added a feature in Voice Memos that allows you to record multi-track audio. Both of these seem to be coming to all of the iPhones 16 so you don’t have to get the pros for that.

Thoughts on the Event Itself

Wow, that was long. There were parts of the event where they were saying a lot of words with not that much meaning, most notably when talking about the enhanced cooling systems on the iPhones 16. This was also incredibly prevalent during the Apple Intelligence segment where they were talking about all of the features already announced as well as their new multimodal features.

Tech companies really need to chill with the AI stuff, it’s just a whole lot of features and I think it’s really overwhelming people whether or not they like the features. I’ve been aware of AI since I was in high school, I’ve been following this stuff for the better part of a decade and I’m still finding that I’m growing tired of it. It’s not like these features are all coming out now, Apple won’t even commit to a timeline for the features. These companies keep shoving all of these features into their devices solely to appease the investors and it’s getting to be way too much.

What are your thoughts on the Apple event? Are you buying anything? Are you going to come and tell me about how you will never buy an Apple product? Let me know down in the comments or over on Mastodon.