With nothing else to do in the spare time because of the pandemic, TV shows became go-to entertainment. The most interesting thing this year is that most of the TV shows I will be recommending were documentaries.
Ted Lasso
This is the best TV show of the year. Apple had some good shows in the beginning, but Ted Lasso is in the league of its own. If you think of the premise — comedy about American becoming a coach of the Premier League team which is actually based on the character from the ad — you’d think creators are mad. But it works on so many levels.
It is delightful, smart and compassionate in the time when we are all fighting and hating each other on Twitter.
I watched it from the begging to the end three times, I can’t think of a better way to recommend it.
The Last Dance
I’m not a basketball fan and this documentary didn’t change that. But I loved watching the story of Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls. I knew about them since the childhood, but mostly about their existence, what I didn’t know was the story itself.
It is as much about motivation, teamwork and leadership, as it is about sports. Highly recommended.
Drive to Survive
After watching The Last Dance, I decided to start another documentary on Netflix. The first season, which actually came out last year was amazing, before it had a success it had and both Mercedes and Ferrari participated in the next season, which was good, but not as good. As this documentary is about current events it gave me a very nice reference point for races themselves.
I watched all the qualifications and races this year and actually enjoyed them. I would recommend everyone who is not a fan of F1 until now if you want to start — Drive to Survive is an amazing starting point. You will get to know teams, drivers, how it very uniquely combines team and individual sport. After that watching races is much easier.
Also, another thing that helped me was a friend who is a fan for a long time with whom I could discuss races and ask for clarifications if needed.
Tiger King
It’s hard to believe that it was this year when Tiger King blew up. It was everywhere. This is the most surprising documentary. When you think it couldn’t get any weirder — here you go, they show you some totally messed up shit.
The Office
Obviously, not something from this year, but we’ve watched an American version of The Office with my wife and enjoyed it a lot. It’s so much fun, if you didn’t watch it until now I would totally recommend you do, you’ll have to stick with the Season 1 because it’s bad, but after that, it gets much better.
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.
Because this is a series of documentaries, I recommend starting from the second episode, because the first one was very bad. I will write about it another time.
This though is very interesting. I can’t judge the example itself, looks like they were really misleading. But looking at the payday loan scheme itself, I think the companies providing those are not the only ones to blame. I agree that the rules have to be clear, but customers have to assume some of the blame also.
Oh, and also – the same way, half of banking industry has to be in jail because of the 2007 mortgage crisis, but I didn’t hear about a lot of sentences given.
📱 ExpressVPN
I’ve been looking for a VPN service for a long time. I’ve tried a couple and realized – first, you can’t get a decent one for free, second they don’t work well with streaming apps. This one is a great exception. I’ve been using it for half a year already and love it.
Believe me when I say Netflix in different countries is like a completely different service all together. In Latvia, I can still watch Friends and have all but last season of Modern Family, as well as a lot of Marvel movies, some just two years old. In USA, on the other hand I have The Office, Flash (which I’ve stopped watching) and more.
The ExpressVPN works great, I have it on my phone and iPad, as well as on Apple TV. I’ve had an issue once with Apple TV and Netflix, but support was very fast, they’ve explained the reason and gave me a timeline, how they are fixing it. It is pricey, but you get the great service in return.
Although I’ve had iOS 13 on my phone since the day it came out, I’ve waited for iPad OS, before signing up for Apple Arcade. I won’t be able to play my PS4 for about a month, so it was the perfect opportunity to test it out. Yesterday, after installing iPad OS 13.1, I immediately signed up for the free trial of Apple Arcade and downloaded my first games.
After connecting PS4 controller I downloaded a couple of games for starters, for no particular reason other than – I’ve read on Twitter that people enjoyed them. The games I’ve downloaded were – Sayonara, Oceanhorn 2 and Cat Quest II. I’ve played all of them for about 10-15 minutes each and I think I will be playing all of those more, the favorite out of them was Cat Quest, which is fast paced, beautiful and funny.
Playing on the big screen of the iPad Pro 12.9” with the controller attached is a blast. I could only imagine that playing on Apple TV would be something really close to the console, I’m already thinking about buying one, just for the games.
Before going to sleep I’ve decided to try out one more game – Mini Motorways and it was a mistake. I couldn’t stop playing. There is a saying – it is easy to learn, but hard to master, it is totally about this game. It’s fun, seams easy, the music is almost meditative. I’m afraid I will spend hours playing it over and over again.
I will probably write something more in-depth about the service later, but right now, this is the most fun €4.99 a month you can spend on a service.
Millennials invented cable! This is one of the better memes in the long time, but it works so well. I’ve been reading tech blogs for a very long time and couple of years ago one of the most popular themes was cable cutting. There was a lot of talk, how you can cut the cable, subscribe to a couple of services, buy antenna and save a lot of money.
For some time Netflix and Hulu (in the US) were the ones to have. There was a lot of content, some old, some new, some originals. Now, every company wants to build its own subscription service and charge for it about 10$ a month. And as this is the golden age of the TV you’ll want to watch them all. Subscribing to Netflix, Apple TV+ and Disney, for example, would be about 30$ per month. Add to it Apple Music or Spotify (that’s another 10$) and probably gaming service or two (Apple Arcade and PSN). 50$ and that’s not even trying. Want to watch Office next year – another service.
This all adds up very easily. Apps are implementing subscriptions more and more. Weather apps, Twitter clients, writing apps, Podcasts apps. Everything is a subscription.
For the video services, my plan would probably be keeping Netflix and adding one other services. The service I add will depend on the content it has. There is something new on Disney+? Subscribe for a month or two, until I watch it and something else pops up on another service.
When music streaming became a thing, it destroyed piracy in some markets, as it was much easier to pay and listen to all the music you want, without the need to download, clean meta-data, upload to the phone, etc. Now, with all those video services coming out, I have a feeling, piracy will again rise. You either look for it on some shady website, where it is all lumped together or you take your time to figure out which service it is on. Sure, something like Apple TV could help (app, not a device), but already not every streaming service is in there (and Netflix will never agree to be added).
I hope I’m wrong and those services will prosper and companies will have funds and willingness to produce more great shows.
Yesterday Apple held its biggest event of the year. As was rumored we’ve seen three new iPhones, watch and so much more. Luckily this time not all rumors came true, we’ve had a couple of surprises. On the other hand, some were expecting too much, so as always my strategy of not reading rumors before the event pays off.
Arcade
If you didn’t notice, Apple is services company now, so it started with two of them. Apple Arcade is gaming service, starting from 100 exclusive high quality games. You will pay the subscription fee and play whatever game you want on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. The games in the trailer look amazing. Considering that Apple announced support for xBox and PS4 controllers, this could be a very big deal for many.
As it often is, game demos are the weakest part of Apple presentation, after Tim Cook said “I won’t waste your time with usual updates” we’ve watched three game demos in a row with one of them being Froger, in 2019.
It will be available September 19 in over 100 countries around the world for a price of $4.99 per month for the whole family. And Apple will give 1 month free trial.
Considering the price, I feel like this is the one to at least try. As I said games look good, the lineup of developers looks strong with some big names and indie.
tv+
As every company under the sun Apple is launching original content. tv+ will have three shows at start adding more every month. Tim Cook was so excited that the trailer for the Morning Show was “one of the most watched trailers ever” it wasn’t even funny.
We also saw a trailer for the TV show See, which looks very promising.
It will cost $4.99 per month for family and will be available in over 100 countries. What was surprising, you will get 1 year of the service included with the purchase of any Apple device. Considering Apple only has a couple of shows at the start and doesn’t have any backlog this is very smart strategy.
iPad
This one was a surprise. There were some rumors about new iPad, but most thought it would be shown in October event later this year.
What Apple did is update it’s most popular iPad, the original size one. It is now 7th generation iPad, they’ve changed screen size a bit, increasing it to 10.2 inches (instead of 9.7). It has updated specs and is shipping on September 30 starting from $329.
Interesting how Apple doesn’t compare it to other tablets (because that market doesn’t even exist), all of the comparisons were with top selling PC and of course iPad beat it in every aspect.
Up until now, this was The iPad to get, considering the price and power you get. It remains the one device in Apple lineup which you can consider inexpensive and well worth every dollar you spend.
watch
Tim Cook started with the video showing how Apple Watch save lives with its ECG function. What was nice this time – it also showed how Apple Watched helped get healthier by asking you to close your rings or stand. Those videos are always Apple at its best.
There will be three new studies – Hearing, Women’s health and Heart and movement study. Those are great, but unfortunately available only in the United States.
And here is the announcement I was most surprised by – new Apple Watch. Watch Series 5 will have THE feature, the one many asked for from the very beginning – always on display, while still having all-day 18 hour battery life.
All the watch faces were optimized for low-power mode when it shows time, so you don’t have to tilt your wrist or tap the screen. This is the feature for getting a new watch, especially if you didn’t upgrade to the Series 4 last year.
As everything in the US, Apple Watch now has a compass. As most of the cities in the US were built considering the directions, this will be helpful to Americans, but also around the world, Maps app will now be able to show where are you heading more precisely.
There will also be international emergency calling in more than 100 countries if you have cellular Apple Watch. Amazing feature, which I hope nobody has to use.
This year Series 5 is available in a couple of new finishes – two Titanium models and white Ceramic. They look great, but will cost accordingly.
Apple Watch Series 5 will start at $399 for GPS model and $499 for cellular. You can already order one and it will ship on September 20.
What also interesting, Apple leaves Series 3 in its lineup for $199. It is great entry price, but only if you don’t care about the look and newest feature. By itself it is ok, but if you ever come across Series 4 or 5, two year old model looks very old and dated.
iPhone
The main star of the event – iPhone. Last year, I think Apple confused buyers with releasing three models which were hard to differentiate for average consumer (believe me, I know, the amount of questions I got about which one should someone buy was like a customer sat – through the roof). Fortunately this didn’t stop iPhone XR to become the most popular iPhone and smartphone in the world.
This year the lineup is much more clearer. First, there is iPhone 11. Which you can consider the standard one – everyone who wants to buy an iPhone this year should get this one. It has 6.1 inch display, Haptic Touch and Spacial Audio.
It also has two cameras this year, but instead of adding telephoto, the second camera is ultra-wide. This will allow you to switch to x0.5, which means you will be able to capture 2 times more of the scene from the same point.
This is also shown in the new camera interface. When you launch it, it will look more immersive, showing you the whole available picture instead of black bars.
Although there is no telephoto camera, Portrait mode is still made using hardware, so it will work on animals, unlike the iPhone XR.
Apple also showed Night mode, which in presentation looked great, but we will need to see comparisons with Google Pixel, where night mode is just out of this world. Hope Apple delivers.
If photography is something Android manufacturers, especially Google, mastered, in videos Apple is still unbeatable. Adding to that ultra-wide and cinematic stabilization, makes it even more impressive.
Front camera was also updated, it is now wider 12MP sensor which will take normal selfie, until you rotate it sideways and it will get wide.
Apple also added 4K video support and slo-mo to the front camera and invented the word Slofies – which is probably officially the worst word of 2019.
A12 processor leads the industry, the overhead it has is not even funny, it is still faster than all the newest Android phones and Apple made it even faster. A13 Bionic is the new processor inside iPhone. It is so ahead, it will take Android manufacturers a couple of years to catch up.
What iPhone XR did have, was amazing all-day and then some battery life. In iPhone 11 it was improved – adding 1 hour.
It will be priced starting from $699 and as I’ve already mentioned, this is the one to get.
iPhone 11 Pro
As Phil Schiller said – this is the first phone Apple called Pro and it is worthy of its name.
There are four new colors – Midnight Green, Space Grey, Silver, Gold. And at least on photos the green looks amazing, I will be surprised if it will be available on first day in enough quantities. The back has a nice matte finish now, which doesn’t even look like glass anymore.
There are two phones iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, with the same sizes as last year of 5.8 and 6.5 inches. It will also have A13 Bionic processor, but one of the biggest improvements is battery life. 4 hours more for iPhone 11 and 5 hours more for iPhone 11 Pro Max. As a XS Max user I can tell you this will be amazing, it will bring phones closer to the main iPhone 11. It will also have 18 watt adapter in the box, so you will be able to charge it faster.
There is now three cameras. The ultra-wide was also added to the Pro models. One amazing thing 3rd party developer Filmic Pro demoed, was shooting video with two cameras at the same time. So you have more different footage for the same moment.
Apple also showed sneak peak for a feature coming later this year called Deep Fusion. What it does is it takes 9 photos (8 of them before you even press a button) and combines them to bring a lot of detail. On stage it looks great, we will have to wait for it to come out.
The iPhone 11 Pro will start at $999 and iPhone 11 Pro Max at $1099 with pre-orders this Friday and shipping on Septemver 20th.
Apple will also keep in it’s lineup iPhone XR for $599 and iPhone 8 for $449.
Some already are saying this was the weakest Apple event in recent history, but I think it was good. Making already great iPad even better, always-on display on the Apple Watch making it even better in the market with almost no competition. And iterative update on the iPhone, which should be expected, as this is a mature market already.
Most people jot down some notes about keynote overall and then write or talk about each release in more detail. I’ve went my own way, first going through impressions for each OS – tvOS, watchOS, iOS, macOS, iPadOS and also for Mac Pro.
Now I want give my overall impressions about presentation. I mostly agree with Marco – Apple started listening again. And the reason is pretty simple on it’s surface – iPhone sales. Although thanks to increasing prices for a couple of years revenue from the iPhone didn’t fall, but unit sales plateaued. So now Apple has to sell iPhones more aggressively and give more attention to all other products in the lineup.
This was noticeable in every announcement, it wasn’t apologizing per se, but it felt like Apple was overcompensating. There were ver big changes that got at most one sentence mention during the Keynote and a lot of them were just a text on the slide with “everything else that’s new”.
There was something for everyone, be it developers, users, professionals. We’ve got new OS, new hardware and new frameworks. We’ve even got the trailer for TV show. All of this in just 2 hours. The pace was unbelievable. Presenters were very proud of the product, just look at the display demonstration.
I like how passionate, knowledgeable and funny Craig Federighi is. I’ve seen some of the first of his presentations and it’s not even close. It’s a very big growth in presentation skills. This year the biggest joke was about iTunes and with Craig delivering it – it landed perfectly.
Overall, this was very strong keynote, one of the best in recent years actually. And this gives hope that Apple is able to make products and also improvements to those products afterwards, even if those aren’t iPhone.
It’s that time of the year again, Apple announces a lot of new stuff, there are millions of hot takes on the Internet (including mines) and nobody is satisfied. This year though, there was so much for everyone it’s hard to write one summary. During the presentation I’ve made bullet list of the most interesting things and it is miles long. I will try to mention only the things that matter the most to me.
I will focus today on the very beginning of the Keynote and mostly on tvOS.
The video from the beginning showing the struggle of the developers, was very believable and not only applicable to the developers. Comparing to the previous years it was very “safe”, but not worse because of that.
I still can’t find the reason to buy pretty expensive Apple TV. But Apple tries more and more to give me that reason. Most of the changes to the tvOS are similar to the changes to other operating systems. They showed the TV+ service and Apple Arcade. What made me believe a bit more into the idea was the support for DualShock and Xbox One controllers. This is pretty great, as I have one and I believe there will be some interesting games I would want to play on Apple TV. The segment was very fast paced (like almost all of the keynote), but I thought in the room fool of developers and such a full packed keynote, it was not very fitting to spend the time on the trailer for the new TV show. Although now, when I hear or read opinions – at least the press loved it. There was also a moment when Tim Cook was showing some “amazing” feature and waited for the applause, but there was silence, it felt like a Samsung conference, but it got only better and better after that.
Right now on the Apple website there are previews of everything they showed in the keynote – iOS, iPad OS, watchOS and macOS, but nothing about tvOS. This seems very telling. There were almost no changes to the OS itself, mostly the presentation about the services that were added on top.
