…and parents should care.
The Apple Special Event aired today on their website and featured a slew of announcements about their upcoming line of products. They only spent a brief time
Apple Watch
The latest apple watch is newly designed and will feature some pretty good improvements to health management. The things that stood out to me the most were the ability to sense a fall and make it easier for you to contact emergency services. It even messages your emergency contacts immediately if it senses you’ve fallen and then you don’t move for sixty seconds. The latest heart rate sensor and ECG abilities are top of the line and an industry first. The ability to give yourself an echocardiogram is even backed by the American Heart Association and the FDA. New Apple Watches can be preordered now and will be shipped next week.
XS, XS Max, and XR.
The majority of time was spent discussing the new iPhones that are being released this month and next. Beginning with XS (available next week at $999) and XS Max. The largest improvement in these phones is “under the hood” with a larger a processor, a neural engine, and new tech that give the graphics, processing, and camera more power than ever before.
The event highlighted the ability of this new technology to allow the iPhone XS Max (available next week at $1099) to be used for serious gaming. They featured a short talk from Bethesda games and discussed a new Elder Scrolls title that is coming out soon. The demo highlighted the new iPhones ability to process better lighting and graphics while offering smooth gameplay. It was really quite impressive for those of us more inclined to enjoy gaming as a form of entertainment. The stereo speaker system was another feature that seemed to bring major improvements. They also featured augmented reality gaming with a multiplayer AR version of Galaga.
The XR is a sort of XS lite with a simpler screen, a single lens camera, (still with many of the same feature’s, though) and a smaller price tag ($749). Speaking of the camera, that’s where there was a lot of improvement for the new iPhones. Selfies can look incredibly good with portrait mode and studio mode and they’ve even added a feature to change the depth of field (blur of the background) after you’ve taken the picture. They dove in quite a bit to explain how they accomplish this new wave of photography but I won’t bore you here with the nerdy details.
What Parents Should Know
These new phones will obviously be in high demand (can I do a fundraiser to get the new XS Max?) and we’ll see how well they perform once they’re out in the marketplace. I prefer Apple’s smartphone offerings because of their attitude towards privacy and data as well as the mostly internal approach to design and manufacturing. I think iOS is well advanced, and most of all the parental control options built into Apple products (including new screen time) puts all iPhones on my recommendations list for your kiddos.