Apple pivots to services, but keeps the usual logs in the fire

If I want to write about Apple less, either they or I need to stop having Tuesday as our day.

These days I view these Apple Directs with great trepidation. This is, after all, the company whose designers’ heads are so far up their own assholes they made their credit card out of a material that can’t be put in a wallet or a pocket without getting damaged. You know, the places a credit card spends 99.99999999% of its time.

As typical for Apple’s September announcement, the focus was on Apple’s non-computer products: the Apple Watch, the iPhone, and the iPad. This year, however, Apple’s new Arcade and TV services were along for the ride.

Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade, a service in which you pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to exclusive iOS games — so exclusive that you can’t buy them separately. You can buy them for $4.99 a month for a family of six or just for yourself. The Arcade runs on all sufficiently new Apple hardware excepting the watch.

There will be more than 100 games ready for launch across 150 countries. These games will have no in-app purchases or ads. While you’ll need an internet connection to download the games, they may be played offline afterward. I’m sure there will some some multiplayer exceptions, but they have yet to show their faces.

As far as that lineup goes, it’s got a nice mix of original and, well, unoriginal games. The newbies will be joined by a range of existing properties, from a remaster of Beneath a Steel Sky to the upcoming Shantae and the Seven Sirens. Capcom and Konami also made appearances. I know that sounds shocking, but remember that these are mobile games.

As name dropping the original games would be entirely pointless, I’ve embedded the sizzle reel below:

The release window remains “Fall 2019.”

Apple TV+a

Apple TV+, on the other hand, has an actual launch date: November 1.

You can get a family plan on Apple TV+ for $4.99 a month, just like the Arcade. But there’s a tweak: Anybody who purchases a new Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV (the lack of a plus indicates that this TV is the set-top-box) gets one year of Apple TV+ for free. And the free years stack if you like buying new devices annually, but forking over $60 is probably the more frugal choice.

Apple TV+ is launching in 100 countries with at least 13 original shows at launch, but the show that matters is the one with Snoopy. Some shows will be bingeable on day one, while others will have a weekly release schedule.

But unlike other streaming services, Apple TV+ is home ONLY to Apple’s original content. It has no network TV offerings or classic movies to stream and,unlike single-channel options like Disney+, CBS All-Access or HBO Now, no deep back catalog. In that light, perhaps free is the right price for a few years.

Apple TV+ will be available online, so that’s another reason not to buy an Apple device just to get it.

Apple Watch

There wasn’t much going on here other than some basic housekeeping. Apple Watch series 5 restores ceramic as an option for the case and finally stops the baffling practice of making which watchbands are available based on the case material.

And speaking of features that should have been there since the beginning, the most substantive improvement to the watch’s function is a new screen that can dynamically adjust its brightness and refresh rate, allowing a dim but readable watch face at 1 FPS that sips a nearly unnoticeable amount of power. The Apple Watch finally has feature parity with regular watches.

With only the screen differentiating it from the Watch series 4, the 4 has been discontinued. The Watch 3 will continue to be the budget option. As such, you might be able to find some good clearance deals on the Watch 4.

iPhone 11

If you were wondering whether the iPhone X was pronounced “eks” or “ten,” the new lineup lets us know. Though it saddens me that the previous top-end model, the iPhone Xs, is not actually pronounced “excess.”

In other moniker news, the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro (and jumbo-screened 11 Pro Max), also establishes a new iPhone naming convention that takes a step toward unifying Apple’s various product lines

You’ll have to keep waiting for the iPhone Air, though. The iPhone 7 is now officially retired, but the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus taking over as the low-budget (in comparison) alternatives starting at $449. As for the previous generation, the iPhone XR remains as the next step up at $599, but its siblings have retired. Pricing on the iPhone 11 Pro starts at 1 monitor stand.

Unlike the watch, the iPhone packs a lot of new toys under the hood. The most practical are better batteries. The base iPhone 11 Pro is expected to last 4 hours longer than the iPhone Xs and the 11 Max does it one better, lasting 5 hours longer than the Xs Max.

There’s a few incremental improvements. A new version of the A processor series (now A13 Bionic), more accurate and wider-angle Face ID, Dual SIM (finally) but only by using eSIM, some hardware and software trickery to simulate surround sound, faster modems and so on. Apple claims you can take the phone 4 meters underwater for half an hour, but I wouldn’t dare put something that expensive to the test.

The biggest change, and one Apple spent a considerable amount of time showing off, is a monstrous new camera setup. Bulging out of a tumor on the back of the new phones (because God forbid they made the phone 1 mm thicker to have the back case smooth and flush) are three large-for-a-phone lenses — but only on the Pro; the filthy peasants with a regular iPhone 11 only get two.

The idea behind the multi-lens system is to selectively use wide, ultrawide and telephoto lenses. But a number of whiz-bang features combine the lenses to help boost detail capture. Apple also finally showed off some skillfulness with low-light settings. Though from the description it’s not the fancy new camera setup that’s doing the work, the improved Night Mode is reserved for the new phones.

iPad

This announcement was the biggest thud of the night. Just a modest bump to the existing 6th-generation iPad to give it a bigger screen (10.2”, up from 9.1”) and Smart Keyboard compatibility ahead of the release of iPad OS. They didn’t even change the processor but at least the price wasn’t upgraded, either.

Software

I won’t go into the fine details of iOS, Watch OS and the new iPad OS here, as they were part of June’s WorldWide Developer Conference announcements. What is new, though, are release dates.

iOS 13 and Watch OS 6 will be ready for download on September 19, with the first version of iPad OS coming September 30.

iOS 13 will work on the newest iPod Touch, the venerable iPhone SE, and regular iPhones 6 and newer.

Watch OS 6 requires Apple Watch 3 or newer, but a version compatible with older watches will come sometime later.

iPad OS works with all iPad Pros, the newest-model iPad Mini and iPad Air, and the 5th-, 6th- and new 7th-generation adjectiveless iPads.