[turtle]

Looks like Apple accidentally slipped the date for their next event via a subscription notice in YouTube. There are a number of articles pointing to a screen capture and tweet about this.

Personally I hope it is spot on. This is right about the time that the Watches and iPhones are normally announced. Given I am now in the market for a new Watch, I'm really hoping it is true.

Pulse Oximeter is one feature I'd really like to see in the new Watch too.

[Quagmire]

It would be a weird date given it is a Thursday. Has Apple done presentations on Thursdays before?

[turtle]

It is a weird world we live in now.

Plus, this is speculation and rumors so we can put anything we want down.

I will add that this is the tweet that is being referenced.

[Maciej]

Also recently in the market for a new watch. Smashed the sapphire screen on my series 4 when I dropped it on a tile floor 2 weeks ago. Only $400 to fix!!!

Hoping for pulse ox and maybe Touch ID?

[Frank777]

As I've said before, a way to track body temperature would be useful in a pandemic.

[PB PM]

You won't be doing that with a watch, it would need to be with Airpods or well, one of the other entry points other than the nose.

[turtle]

I would expect that if there is an event in the coming weeks we should see an invite get posted for it shortly. I'm looking forward to seeing a new Watch released with more bells and whistles.

[Frank777]

Bells and whistles would be terrible features to add to the Watch.

[kscherer]

—

These things are usually within the first week or two of the month. However, there have been rumors of this one happening later, perhaps toward October.

If it happens later, expect a possible dual-purpose event (iPhone/Watch/iPad or iPhone/Watch/Mac). However, now that the events are conducted virtually, the press do not have to travel, so Apple could cram them closer together. However, however [sic], Apple also like to spread their events out so that each release can have its time in the sun.

My gut would tell me to suspect an iPhone/Watch/Airpods event next week, and then an iPad/Mac event toward the end of October. But this is weird season, so expectations must be shelved and we'll have to take what they give us.

[turtle]

Bloomberg seems to think a lot is about to be released. Two Watch version as oppose to leaving an older one for the lower price point is the most interesting concept to me. Not a bad one, but the "SE" of Watch.

[chucker]

As someone still on the S0, that low-cost Watch intrigues me.

[PB PM]

The fact that Apple doesn’t want to keep an old model around points to them wanting to drop support for older chips sooner, they are likely holding back development.

[turtle]

Likely true, but that never stopped them from dropping old hardware anyway.

I could see them wanting to more unify the abilities in health monitoring but leaving other features off of a cheaper variant. I just hope they don't go with a "Watch Pro" and and "Watch SE". At least there would be brand recognition but that is where I think the value would end. Not that I have a better naming structure either though.

[kscherer]

I think it might be a big challenge for Apple to have 2 different Watch models with enough differentiating features and still be "6th generation". With iPhone, Apple can have the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro, with both having the same processor and Face ID, but differentiated by cameras and build materials. The Watch is a tougher challenge, because there are no cameras. Thus it has to come down to health features. Either that or they keep the Series 5 around and dump the price like they did with Series 3.

[turtle]

All the ways I came up with how they would produce two new Watches that are different enough to justify a major price difference just don't make sense. It will be interesting to see how they make that happen if they do. While some parts would cost less that others. One manufacturing process over two would be a pretty hefty long term savings too.

[kscherer]

If they were identical body/screen design, then Apple could make the "pro" version the one with all the newest health stuff, and the "SE" version the one with last year's health tech. A $200 difference would work with the got-to-have-it's getting the "Pro" and the budget folks settling on the "SE".

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by chucker As someone still on the S0, that low-cost Watch intrigues me.

Ditto.

Originally Posted by kscherer I think it might be a big challenge for Apple to have 2 different Watch models with enough differentiating features and still be "6th generation".

Since the Watch started with the 'Series 0', isn't the Series 6 actually the seventh generation?

[kscherer]

Seems to be the case.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Frank777 Ditto. Since the Watch started with the 'Series 0', isn't the Series 6 actually the seventh generation?

Sort of, but the "Series 1" was so called in part because it was really just a revised Series 0 with a newer CPU (basically the Series 2's dual-core CPU, but no GPS). It's still a bit unfortunate, because doubling the cores did make it much faster (who would have thought?), which was so critical that they had to drop support in watchOS 5 altogether*. For the Series 0, that is. Not the 1. Which I imagine led to endless "no, ma'am, your watch is the first generation, not the Series 1; you see, there was actually a generation before 1… yes ma'm… no, ma'm, I don't make the product names" calls.

*) That part I don't criticize. Getting three major OS upgrades is still pretty great. However, as with the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, watchOS 4 is reaaaaaally slow once you want to do anything non-trivial like, uh, launch an app.

A more honest branding would have been to retroactively change the original version to the Series 1, and to call the revised one a Series 1.1, or whatever. So I do think calling the 6 the sixth generation is fine.

[turtle]

Looking around I noticed the AirPod Pros and HomePods are on sale. Likely a good bet that those are getting upgraded.

It is already Watch and iPad season so we should see those updated soon too.

While I'm only in the market for a new Watch, I'm interested to see what updates happen.

[kieran]

I"m back in the market for a 13" MBP replacement after giving the 2019 model I bought to my wife for work. I'm just going with the iMac and iPad Pro for the moment, but I'll need to get back to a notebook when society gets back to normal and I'm traveling about again.

Really hoping that the first Apple Silicon notebook is the 13" MBP replacement. Seeing rumors that it's a 12" MacBook, which could probably work too.

[Frank777]

How did a Canadian PhD student with $650k in funding beat Apple to this?

[PB PM]

Maybe because as a student she wasn't bound by corporate management holding things up?

The bigger thing for Apple, which they should have done first, comes from ZTE, which just launched a phone with a camera embedded under the screen, thus sans notch. Ouch.

[drewprops]

Tim Cook's Apple doesn't seem to strive to bring new innovations to market first. They bide their time until they can do it and make it lucrative.


...

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Frank777 How did a Canadian PhD student with $650k in funding beat Apple to this?

There's a difference between some unproven unregulated student project and a product that's tested, approved by drug agencies, manufactured in high volume, etc.

The device also looks much bulkier than an Apple Watch, and we don't know what kind of battery life it reaches. Tons of question marks.

The article seems heavy in fluff.

"combines biosensors and artificial intelligence to measure human vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen saturation, body temperature, and electrocardiogram (ECG) and photoplethysmography (PPG) signals."

What are… "vital signs"? Aren't the things lifted afterwards exactly that? Or is "vital signs" some kind of aggregate measure?

Does it actually measure blood pressure in any way, or does it make guesses using machine learning? If it has sensors for this, how practical is it to scale them down to the Apple Watch form factor? Would it be practical to make this part of a "smart band", perhaps?

Originally Posted by PB PM The bigger thing for Apple, which they should have done first, comes from ZTE, which just launched a phone with a camera embedded under the screen, thus sans notch. Ouch.

Wellllll…

"Putting a camera under the screen makes it harder to match the quality of an unobstructed smartphone camera, so to compensate ZTE has developed software algorithms that address haze, glare, and color cast issues in photos."

How large is the proportion of people who hate the notch (I don't notice it that much in practice; the asymmetry does look dumb in landscape mode, though, but I rarely use that), and is it worth sacrificing camera quality for it?

I'll wait for the reviews. I'm guessing this sets back the camera by half a decade, for what amounts to more of a gimmick.

[PB PM]

Cannot say I care out the notch either, I don’t watch videos on my phone very much. When I do it is kind odd to look at, but no big deal. Then again I don’t use the selfy camera either and would be fine with it not being there at all, or needing software tricks to work like the ZTE.

[chucker]

Also, there's more to the sensor array than just the camera.

Can Apple eventually shrink some of those sensors down? Probably. Will all of them work if they're transparent underneath the screen? I doubt it.

It'll be interesting to see how Apple reacts to the pandemic here, though. It's probably way too late for them to introduce a Touch ID phone this fall…

[PB PM]

True, Face ID would likely be messed up without all the cameras and sensors in there. I’ve gotten used to putting in my password when wearing a mask, so it doesn’t bother me much. Apple should have been working on in screen Touch ID, even before the pandemic made this a issue. As it is FaceID doesn’t work if you are wearing sunglasses, or wearing anything that even slightly blocks your face, not pleasant on a cold winter day! Then again the Apple people are in SoCal so, what’s winter?

[kscherer]

Samsung beat Apple to the folding phone market, too. And we all know how that went.

First to market is not best to market. Those two things are so completely different from one another that I'm surprised it's even an issue.

[PB PM]

Apple has been first to market with many things, like the notch.

But seriously, they have been first with many things, and done it well, but that seems behind them now. Apple seems very stagnant, other than in the silicon area. When the biggest innovation from a mega tech firm in a five year period is wireless headphones, you know they are running out of ideas.