Thinking through Apple’s September 9 announcements
Big day on Tuesday, as iPhone Days usually are. I think Apple’s big event this year was actually more impressive than it’s been for quite a while, and despite the flurry of leaks and rumors, I still managed to be surprised by several elements. Individual features can leak, but sometimes a full view of the products doesn’t come until Apple has managed to tell its story and explain how they all fit together.
Powered by a good night’s sleep (I scored 98, Excellent!), here are some of my overall thoughts about what we saw on Tuesday:
Resetting the iPhone bar
Nobody with a thirst for novelty is going to get too excited about the base-model iPhone, this year’s iPhone 17. Ever since the iPhone X arrived eight years ago, Apple has followed a pattern in which it offers a pricey, cutting-edge iPhone, as well as a more affordable model that’s built on less cutting-edge tech.
And yet this year’s iPhone 17 upgrades matter, because it’s reset the bar for what features a “regular” iPhone offers. (Let’s not talk about the iPhone 16e.) The base-model iPhone now offers a ProMotion display, taking that price point all the way up to a maximum 120Hz refresh rate, with support for refreshes down to 1Hz and an always-on display.
This is meaningful. Last year, Apple released an absolutely gorgeous ultramarine iPhone 16. I held it in my hand. I wanted it. What stopped me from buying it was that I couldn’t imagine no longer having an always-on display. Maybe other buyers faced a different show-stopper, like ProMotion or camera quality. But those barriers are what force iPhone buyers up the price scale and allow Apple to convert a $799 sale into a $999 or $1099 one.
This year, Apple is more or less abandoning ProMotion and always-on as iPhone Pro differentiators. That means habitual buyers of the lower-end phones will be getting a really substantial improvement when they next update their phones!
Apple has also chosen not to skimp on its new selfie camera, but is putting it in all these flagship models. Again, that’s not a choice it needed to make, but it decided that the new Center Stage camera was worth putting on all of these phones. Similarly, the base iPhone’s ultrawide camera joins its main camera at 48MP, a feature found on the pro phones too. So the big camera difference between the two models really is the lack of a third telephoto lens.
These decisions also help the iPhone Air, which is taking over the slot previously held by the iPhone Plus and iPhone Mini. When the Air was first rumored, it seemed obvious that it would lack access to a bunch of high-end features, but in the end, it’s picked up most iPhone Pro features. The Air understandably has a single camera and lesser battery life, but of course it has the new selfie camera, a ProMotion always-on display, and the like—because they’re de rigueur on iPhones now.
My gut feeling is that this move to consolidate previously pro phone features is a part of the churning of the waters that’s happening as we enter a potentially new era of iPhone designs. The iPhone Air is here, there are rumors of a folding model next year, and then it’s the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, and who knows what might be waiting for us then? The iPhone X ushered in our current era of iPhones; it feels like we’re on the precipice of whatever comes next, and getting the base-model iPhones up to speed is one of the first steps Apple needs to take before it springs forward with new designs and the next generation of cutting-edge features.
Price increases the Apple way
Apple doesn’t like to just come out and say, “Welp, prices are higher now.” The company places an inordinate amount of pride into releasing upgraded products at identical price points. But this year, it raised iPhone prices, sort of, kind of.
Start with the iPhone Air, which begins at $999, a slot that was previously occupied by the iPhone Pro and a full $100 more expensive than the iPhone Plus, which it’s replacing in the product line. Apple has converted one of its two base-model phones into a new boutique mid-range model with a fancy design; we’ll see how that works out for them. My gut feeling is that it’ll do better than the iPhone mini or iPhone Plus did, but I don’t know if that’ll be enough to satisfy Apple.
Then there’s the iPhone 17 Pro, which now starts at $1099, up from the $999 starting price introduced with the iPhone X. Apple has gone to great lengths to point out that the $1099 price is the same as the similarly-configured iPhone 16 Pro model last year, because the iPhone 17 Pro has 256GB of base storage, and the iPhone 16 Pro started at 128GB. Yes, of course, this is true, and it allows Apple to claim that it’s not really raising prices, but is just continuing to fill the old slots.
It doesn’t change the fact that the iPhone Pro can’t be bought for less than $1099, though. Some percentage of iPhone 16 Pro buyers probably opted for 128GB of storage, and that’s no longer an option. So it’s literally an increase in the price of admission for the iPhone Pro. But done in a careful, almost generous way? As generous as a $100 price hike can be, anyway.
Apple Watch via satellite
The addition of satellite connectivity to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is logical. It’s a rugged device sold as being useful on far-off adventures. And yes, you probably will have your iPhone with you too, but who’s to say it’s on your person, and has full battery, when you get into a jam? More safety nets, I say.
While SOS is covered in all eventualities (and Apple has kicked the can again regarding satellite access on older iPhones), the Apple Watch Ultra 3 requires a cellular plan to make texts or send your location via Find My.
It seems weird, but think of it this way: Cellular SOS features are mandated by law. If you’re on Verizon and find yourself in an emergency with no Verizon service, your iPhone or Apple Watch will make an emergency call using another carrier’s cellular network. Nobody is allowed to die because they happened to be using T-Mobile in an area only covered by AT&T.
This means that Emergency SOS Via Satellite is a feature that only works when your device has no cellular connectivity from any carrier.
But texts (and location) are not like that. You can just send them whenever. And Apple has decided that those features are only intended as a fallback to cellular connectivity. In other words, you’re not allowed to not buy a cellular plan for your Ultra 3 and then use it as a free text communicator in the woods. Apple and Globalstar, its satellite partner, are probably quite concerned about not blowing out the data bandwidth on those satellites.
Apple’s camera shell game
It’s apparent from all the product shots: the iPhone 17 Pro has three cameras, the iPhone 17 two, and the iPhone Air one. But if you listen to Apple, you’ll come away thinking that the iPhone 17 Pro has eight lenses, and the iPhone Air has four! Who are you going to believe, Apple or your eyes?
I get it. It’s marketing. But this continues a trend of Apple slicing its (very good) camera tech in a bunch of different ways in order to make things seem a bit more than they actually are.
Here’s what’s happening: Apple’s put 48 megapixel sensors in every single one of the cameras on its flagship iPhones. This started with the iPhone 14 Pro, and Apple has adjusted it quite a lot over the last few years. Those 48 megapixels can be processed in all sorts of ways. Apple can capture all 48 megapixels, or capture multiple binned 12-megapixel frames that gather more light and fuse them with a larger capture to create an optimal 24 megapixel image, or it can just use the pixels at the very center of the sensor to create a technically-optical “zoom” at a lower-resolution.
These different techniques allow Apple to balance image quality, file size, and the desire of the user to zoom in on scenes. They also allow Apple to market the 4x zoom on the iPhone Pro’s telephoto sensor as going to 8x, since if you go to 4x and then crop the center of the sensor data, you’ve effectively got an 8x optical zoom. Boom, two cameras! And now all three cameras can do it, so three becomes six! Throw in two macro modes and you’ve found how three iPhone 17 Pro cameras become eight, and how one iPhone Air camera becomes “four lenses in your pocket.”
The important thing to know about all of this is not that Apple’s fibbing, but that when Apple states that there are more cameras than appear to be there, it’s implying a level of equivalence of those cameras that doesn’t exist. They have different characteristics—of course they do—because they’re all different aspects of the same sensor.
Fortunately, Apple has designed the Camera app to make you not really worry about all this. You can point and zoom and shoot. But just be aware that one camera really is one camera, not four.
Apple Watch advantages and updates
It’s logical that Apple wouldn’t announce new features that are designed for unreleased hardware at WWDC. That’s top secret stuff, rolled into the new operating systems only when the new hardware is announced. What’s less logical is when Apple keeps features secret all summer, even though they run on plenty of existing hardware.
I’m sure the announcement of the Apple Watch’s new hypertension alert feature helped bulk up the Apple Watch segment and reinforce its image as an important health device. But that feature also works on Series 9 and 10 and Ultra 2. The new sleep score feature also provided needed fiber to the Apple Watch segment, but it’ll work as far back as Series 6.
I get why Apple does it, but just so we’re clear, you don’t need to buy a new watch to get a sleep score. I got one this morning, courtesy of the watchOS 26 release candidate, which I installed on my Series 10 last night. It’s another feature built on the premise that you sleep with your Apple Watch, so I guess it makes sense that Apple Watch battery life keeps getting longer.
When Apple announced that new hypertension-alert feature, I was struck by what it says about the scale of Apple’s reach and the power of its health efforts. This is a major new health feature that—just like the last one (Sleep Apnea detection)—does not come out of the addition of a new sensor. Instead, Apple is using its health studies, powered by an army of Apple Watch-wearing users, to generate massive amounts of data and use it to find patterns that can indicate potential health issues.
Apple may not be the only actor who can play in this space, but it has enormous advantages stemming from the sheer number of Apple Watches out in the world and its control of hardware and software. And in turn, that scale helps generate a feature that will warn a million people of potential hypertension in the first year—another big number. Scale begets scale.
Prepare for a change in selfie behavior
Selfies matter, and they’re not just for kids. Most of the photos I have taken with my family over the last few years have been from the front-facing camera, because we rarely ask someone else to take our photo! But so many of our selfie gestures are based on tech limitations, and someone at Apple has decided that enough is enough, so Apple redesigned its selfie camera.
The new Center Stage camera is square, wide-angle, and high resolution (18MP), which means you won’t have to change what direction you hold the phone to change orientation. It’ll auto-stabilize, which is great for FaceTime (and also for the new feature that lets you record forward and back cameras simultaneously—because it’ll keep you in frame without you worrying about it). And of course, the Center Stage name means it’s using face detection to automatically zoom in and out depending on who is in the frame.
We’ll see how it all works in practice, but it’s entirely possible that in five years, everyone takes selfies entirely differently, because Apple decided to re-engineer that camera. It makes sense, I think: First, you add a front-facing camera, one of low quality but good enough for video chat. Then everyone embraces the existence of that camera to start taking pictures of themselves. Selfie culture grows, and the cameras get better, but maybe some of the underlying assumptions still stem from the early days? This is another turn of the crank, an attempt to legitimately address a load of selfie issues in one go, and I suspect it’s going to be a winner.
Apple silicon’s endgame
Why don’t they make the entire iPhone out of Apple silicon? Apple is getting there. The iPhone 16e introduced the C1, Apple’s first foray into manufacturing a cellular radio to replace the ones it’s been using from Qualcomm. The iPhone Air uses a somewhat upgraded C1X chip to do the same thing. It’s part of a gradual roll-out that will presumably culminate next year in a next-generation C2 chip powering all of Apple’s flagship phones, thus ending Apple’s relationship with Qualcomm as a hardware supplier. (I’d expect iPads to start using the C1 series this year, and it wouldn’t be a shock if Mac laptops joined the cellular party in the next year or two.)
Also in all new iPhone models is the new N1 chip, Apple’s branding for another chipset where it’s replacing a partner, in this case Broadcom. That chip is packed with Apple’s own radios for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread.
Toss in the A19 and you can see Apple’s future vision pretty clearly: it’s going to build everything it can itself, because when it can connect its custom software with custom hardware, it’s going to generate better products. Power efficiency is a big part of that, obviously. But it’s also about priorities. Broadcom and Qualcomm make parts for a variety of customers—Apple makes them only for itself. If there’s a feature Apple wants, it gets it. If there’s a feature Apple doesn’t want, it never gets built. And Apple knows its multi-year product plans in clear detail, something it’s not going to share with Qualcomm or Broadcom.
It’s the same advantage Apple got when it went from using Intel processors on the Mac to building its own. Now Apple has complete control of where it wants to go in terms of processor and wireless—and can build those products to work together, and work with its operating systems. This is one of those places where Apple just does things differently, and it keeps the company ahead of the crowd.
A sci-fi world comes closer
Everyone in the tech industry can see it. It’s right out there, not too far away: Live translation. Apple joins the party this fall with its implementation, which uses AirPods to listen and relay that audio to an iPhone, which uses AI to translate spoken words from one language to another and then plays the translation back in the ears of the AirPods user.
Apple’s video demo is great, if pretty awkward when the iPhone user has to hold up their phone so that their interlocutor can read a translation on the screen. Apple’s second example—two people with their own AirPods and iPhones—is more like the dream. Imagine, for a moment, a world where anyone could speak with anyone else and have their statements automatically translated. It’s magical.
I’m pretty skeptical of how well Apple’s translation feature will work in practice today, but you have to start somewhere. Given how hard Apple, Google, and others are pressing on this feature, it really does seem inevitable. In a few years, the latency will come down, and the AI voice technology will probably be able to entirely erase the original person’s voice from your hearing and replace it with a translation spoken in a dynamic copy of that same voice.
Basically, I am really not sure how practical this stuff is going to be right now, but I can see the outline of where this is going, and it’s really exciting. I’m sure Apple sees that too. But I’m not sure I’m ready to use this translation feature out in the wild.
An iconic plateau to the future
In introducing the iPhone Air, John Ternus referred to the stretched camera bump on the back of the new iPhones as an “iconic plateau.” Though this moniker is apparently informal—no capital letters—it reminded me of Apple’s tendency to name everything it does, like the Dynamic Island. The Dynamic Island was a creative solution to a physical hardware issue—cutouts in the screen for cameras—that turned unsightly blank spaces into part of a real-time status feature.
The iconic plateau strikes me as a bit similar. The camera bump existed because of the sheer physics of collecting light for camera sensors. But at some point, Apple seems to have looked at it and thought, what if we turn that bump into something more? This year’s iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro stuff more and more additional technology into that space. Most of the iPhone Air’s guts are in there, leaving very little beyond the screen and battery in the rest of the phone.
It actually makes sense, doesn’t it? We want our screens to be big, and batteries are vital. Screens are so large that tucking a little bit of battery behind them makes sense. What’s left? Oh, right, everything else. So all that stuff goes in the plateau, leaving the rest of the phone ultra-slim.
The iPhone Air may be an outlier right now, but I really wonder if it also augurs a future direction for iPhone design in general. Maybe not with designs quite as extreme as the Air, but just as the MacBook Air pointed in the general direction Apple’s laptops went over the next decade, I wonder if this approach—keep the bulk of the device thin and light while stuffing as much tech as possible in the thick part at the top—is informing Apple’s iPhone designs for the rest of this decade.
A victory for the color czar
Finally: Welcome, Apple. Seriously. You finally made a pro-level iPhone with a real color. I haven’t seen the Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro in person yet, but I’m optimistic that it’s going to mark the first time in a long time that Apple has opted to take one of its top-of-the-line phones and give it a color that isn’t mostly silver or mostly black.
I think I understand why it’s like this. The phone’s primarily made out of an aluminum unibody, and aluminum is easily anodized into all sorts of fun colors. But Apple still had to take the step of actually using a fun color and offering that to iPhone customers.
An orange iPhone Pro. I never thought I’d see the day. Congratulations to whoever is in charge of colors at Apple. You did it. (Now, about these watered-down colors on the iPhone Air…)
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