apple pencil – barilo.me

Although it is strange to watch September Apple Event and not see new iPhones, we do live in different times, so here we go. The presentation itself was good, the same style as WWDC 2020 and I enjoyed watching it (in case you are wondering, I realize that it is an hour long ad by a trillion dollar company).

Apple tried to manage expectations when it announced the event (a lot of journalists covering Apple immediately said there won’t be new iPhones) and at the very start of the presentation Tim Cook said they will talk Apple Watch and iPad today.

Apple Watch

Apple Watch Series 6

Same design as last year, although they’ve added three new colors – Gold, Blue and Red. I think they look good, especially the blue one (it will look great with the new blue iPhone).

There is a new sensor which will measure your blood oxygen levels. The manual measurement takes only 15 seconds and it does periodic background measurements, even at night if you sleep with your watch on. Although Apple didn’t say it, but it is helpful for the COVID-19.

The Always-On display got 2.5 times brighter outdoors.

Starting price remains the same at $399 in the US.

Apple Watch SE

The same display size and design as a Series 6, but without Always-On display and with an older S5 chip, which is 2x faster than Series 3. It is available both without and with cellular.

The price starts at $279 and Series 3 still remains in the lineup for $199.

Right now, if you are able to find discounted Series 5 it will be a much better deal – it has an always-on display, more health sensors and the same processor and design.

Solo Loop and Braided Solo Loop

New bands for Apple Watches that don’t have a clasp or a buckle. That means you have to buy one that fits you, it has a lot of different sizes. What interesting, it says on the ordering page that it is not compatible with Series 3 and older watches, but I always thought the band connectors were identical.

Family Setup

You can now use your iPhone to set up an Apple Watch for someone in your family, who doesn’t have an iPhone. They will have a dedicated phone number and cellular connection. This is an amazing feature for kids or older family members and another step to the iPhone-less future for the Apple Watch.

Apple Fitness+

“First fitness service built around Apple Watch.”

Interesting how they presented it as something only possible with an Apple Watch. There will be 10 types of workouts, provided by world class trainers, with Apple Music (you don’t need a subscription for the service to work). New workouts will be added every week.

The new service is available on the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. It will show all the metrics during the workout on the screen and when a trainer will remind you to check your heart rate, the metric will get bigger.

When you start your workout on one of your devices, it will automatically start the workout on the Apple Watch.

There is an absolute beginner program, with all the basics covered and personalized recommendations in the app.

It will cost $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year (Family Sharing included) and you will get 3 months free with an Apple Watch purchase.
Unfortunately service is available only in handful of countries, so we will have to wait for it’s launch.

Other

There are a lot of new watch faces, including GMT which shows multiple time zones at once, typography with a lot of combinations, Chronograph Pro and a lot more.

Apple also announced that it will remove power adapter from the box, basically trying to present the cost-saving measure as an environmental thing.

Everything else that will be changed and added in watchOS7 got covered in the WWDC2020 presentation.

Apple One

The long rumored bundle from Apple is here, but unfortunately it’s not that simple. First, the name – Apple One. There are actually Three different bundles and only Two available everywhere.

First one – for $14.95 you get Apple Music, TV+, Arcade and 50GB of iCloud storage.

Second – for $19.95 you will get the same bundle, but with 200GB of storage.

And Premier – for $29.95 you will get 1TB of storage and News+ and Fitness+ as additional services.

The Premier one is available only in the countries where Apple News+ and Fitness+ are available and there are not a lot of those.

Because of the iCloud storage, the only one that makes sense for me is Premier, which will be unavailable. It is possible to add more storage to the first two, but at that point I’m not sure it will be a good deal. So no Apple One for me.

iPad

8th generation

This is the same plain iPad with a better processor (A12 Bionic), which means it will be more powerful. The design remains the same, with Touch ID button and screen bezels. It will still only support 1st generation Apple Pencil. But for the price of $329 it is an amazing value.

iPad Air

The iPad Air on the other hand got a complete redesign, it now looks the same as 11” iPad Pro, with rose gold, green and sky blue options available.

For the first time in a very long time, iPad gets new SoC before iPhone and iPad Air has A14 Bionic, which is industry leading 5 nanometer processor.

It also has a Touch ID sensor which is now in the Top Button (yeap, they’ve renamed Power Button in this one).

What is similar with the iPad Pro, except for design – it now has USB-C connector, support for 2nd generation Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard.

What it lacks is Pro Motion (120Hz) display, FaceID, camera array and microphone and speaker system.

For $599 right now it looks like a much better purchase than 11” iPad Pro and Apple tablet lineup remains weird and complicated.

The one and only iPad I’ve had before, was the original iPad Mini and I loved it. But quickly phones started to get bigger, laptops thinner and I’ve always used Kindle for reading. So more and more it felt like there was no need for another device in my life and I’ve given that iPad away.

When Apple presented the new iPad Pro’s I didn’t think much of them. But after seeing those in person and reading all the stories of photographers editing on this thing, I’ve started to look more closely, as I’m getting more and more into photography. One day I’ve decided to get one myself, but I couldn’t decide on the size. I’ve re-listened to all the podcasts that were discussing new iPads, I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos (and I mean A LOT), but still couldn’t decide which one was right for me. Whenever I went to the store and played with both – I appreciated the screen real-estate of the 12.9”, but also I loved how light the 11” was – you could hold it with one hand.

Multitasking was also a consideration, as it’s so much better on the 12.9” and for photo editing – the bigger the screen the better. While I was trying to decide between the two sizes, I’ve ordered both of them at one of the local retailers, as they are not that common in Latvia and the wait for them could have reached 3 weeks. I thought the faith would decide – I would buy whichever came first. So one day I got two messages saying that both my orders were ready – so much for the faith. I’ve went again to the store to play with both sizes to decide, with no luck, until I though about what Casey said in a reply to me – “I wanted as portable as a Pro could get”. So I chose the 11”, and decided to cancel the order for the 12.9”.

Few minutes later I found out there was a mistake and 11” wasn’t ready yet, so here it is – the faith did decide for me. And boy the faith was right.

First things first, I thought the 11” would be better using in one hand, but until now I didn’t have a chance to use it this way as it’s still too big and not intended for that type of use.

Second, the screen is gorgeous. I mean, it’s probably the best screen I own, even though it’s not OLED. I know this is not bezel-less screen, but it feels pretty close.

It’s surprising how thin and light the device is. The screen is almost as big as the one on my MacBook Pro and there are all internals inside it, considering this – it weights almost nothing.

Magnets – there are a lot of them and it shows. Popping the iPad into the Smart Keyboard Folio is effortless and surprisingly taking it off is easy too.

Pencil

Fortunately, there was one new Apple Pencil at the store, so I had it from day one and I’m sure this is an essential accessory for the iPad Pro. It’s so much better with the Pencil – one could argue it should come with the iPad. Even going through the interface, it gives the feeling of replacing the mouse or trackpad. I like it for editing photos as it gives a bit more of a precision.

The way it charges and connects to the iPad is great. I can’t even imagine that it wasn’t like that before. This is so intuitive and simple, how could Apple ship a worse product before?

I’m not much of an artist, even in my childhood I didn’t like drawing, so I can’t say how good it is at that, but writing something in Apple Notes or Notability is amazing. It feels so close to the pen and paper (of course not texture wise, but just the feeling of it).

Smart Keyboard Folio

As we live in the 3rd world country, Apple products get to us a bit later than to the rest of the world (9 months later in case of AirPods). So I’ve tried to find Smart Keyboard Folio with no luck. Everyone just smiled and said – try again in a month or two. Luck had it, we were traveling to the Bangkok which coincidentally has the Apple Store. Fortunately for me there was one with US layout and so I’ve got myself the official Apple keyboard.

Having this keyboard is totally an improvement. I can now prop the device to watch videos. Typing on this thing is fast. I love the travel and the sound this keyboard makes. The “lapability” is good too. In fact, I’ve written this review on my iPad Pro sitting on the sofa with the tablet on my knees. Just two available angles don’t bother me too much. Sure it would be better to have more choices, but these two angles work for me.

The one disappointment I‘ve had – the keys are not backlit. It’s not a huge issue, as I don’t look at the keyboard while typing, but it sure would be nice to have.

Also, as a lot of people mentioned – it is dull. There is even no Apple logo on the back. It’s just grey peace of plastic. Now I need to find some stickers to cover it.

USB-C

Surprisingly it’s 2019 and this is my first device with USB-C, so now I need to buy a lot of new accessories, like upgrading the charger to more powerful one. Right now, while traveling, I have to bring different cables for iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, photo camera and power banks. Will have to do some thinking and consolidation of cables and power bricks. The other problem – as we were traveling, we wanted to watch some TV shows on the plane, so I had to buy USB-C to headphone jack dongle. I’ve found a cheap one online from third party and it didn’t work. So I had to buy the official one.

Also, although my camera can transfer photos via Wi-Fi, it can’t do it for the RAW images, so I’ve had to buy USB-C card reader. This all adds up and iPad Pro becomes more and more expensive over time.

Camera and FaceID

Actually, I don’t have anything to tell about the back camera of the iPad, as I have never even launched it, but I wanted to mention the FaceID. It’s much better then on the iPhone. It works in every orientation, it’s very fast. The animation when you cover it is such a nice touch. Also using iPad with FaceID is so nice, I wish MacBook had one. You don’t think about authentication, you just look at the screen and everything happens like it was intended.

As was discussed a lot, right now the one thing holding iPad Pro back is iOS, that’s why I decided to write the review of just a hardware. I love this device. It’s powerful, it’s beautiful, it’s comfortable, it’s all I wanted and even some more, but I wish I could say the same about the software, we are not there yet. There a lot of hype for iOS 13 and I do hope Apple will deliver.

Tag - apple pencil

Apple Event – 15.09.2020