Since its ascendance as one of the world’s biggest and most influential companies, Apple’s live announcement events have become must-view watching. During these events, the tech-giant often makes a point of focusing on specific themes, notably showcasing bigger, thinner, and faster products. This year, however, there was a distinctly different tone coming Cupertino as Apple words like ‘smaller’, ‘safer’, and ‘greener’ were given particular emphasis. The event addressed privacy concerns, unveiled a new iPhone and iPad Pro, as well as introduced us to Liam.
In a highly-anticipated talk, Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage last night to address the current political climate in the United States and the challenges facing the company as is squares up to pressure from the FBI regarding privacy concerns and the company’s responsibility in protecting its customers – issues that Cook insisted the company were taking very seriously.
The event then went on to unveil the new iPhone. The iPhone SE is a 4-inch iPhone that is identical to the earlier 5s model but boasts the latest specs. The upgrade means the new phone will be on par with the latest iPhone, which means an impressive two-fold increase in power to its doppelganger. It also means a 12MP camera, 4K video and an NFC chip to work with Apple Pay. The hopes of the new downsize is to appeal to an entire segment of customers who have refused to upgrade to the larger phones, which is apparently a third of the total iPhone owners.
The iPad Pro was also unveiled in a smaller version that pays homage to the original iPad in terms of the dimensions while still living up to the title of Pro. The new iPad Pro includes many of the features of its bigger brother with some new ones as well. The main new feature is being the first Apple product to showcase a true tone display. This is thanks to four channel ambient light sensors that measure the intensity and colour temperature of your surrounding and adjusts itself to match which theoretically should be easier on your eyes.
The next big announcement was the introduction of Apple’s newest employee, Liam. Liam is a robot that can disassemble your iPhone completely in just 11 seconds to make recycling it more effective than just crushing it. In a move to show the world Apple’s continued commitment to staying green, Liam can detect, extract and separate materials like cobalt and lithium in the battery, gold and copper in the camera, silver and platinum from the main logic board. This announcement comes after Apple recently announced it switched to 100 percent renewable energy in 25 countries.
Some of the other announcements included new bands for the Apple Watch, along with a lower price of $299 for the sports model (if you bought one last week, that would be a real let-down). A new OS upgrade to iOS 9.3. This upgrade will see nifty upgrades like Night Shift, which adjusts the screen for late night reading, and a finger print lock for top secret documents in the Notes app.