Last Monday Apple made a short event of just one hour long, starting with a video which reminds us that next 1 April Apple will celebrate its 40 years anniversary.
Then, they talked about some important matters to them such as Privacy, Environment and Heath. Presenting a new programming framework called CareKit related to the last one.
Followed by a few announcements:
Apple Watch: A slight price drop from $349 to $299 for the 38mm Apple Watch Sport. Maybe they are not selling as much as they expected/desired, even if they sell more than any other smart watch manufacture, or maybe they are about to release a new version of the Apple Watch. Perhaps both of them. In any way, although I wouldn’t care have one, but I think the Apple Watch is still too expensive.
tvOS: The Operating System running in the latest Apple TV receives a new update, tvOS 9.2, which brings the following new features:
- Siri Remote Dictation: Yes, finally you can use the Siri Remote to dictate text pretty much at almost any text box which requires you to type something: search fields, usernames and even passwords boxes. Just press and hold the microphone button on the Siri Remote when you want to dictate. For passwords, you simply dictate each character, specifying capital for uppercase letters.
- Siri search on the App Store: Now Siri can search Apps on the App Store directly from the main screen.
- iCloud Photo Library: iCloud Photo Library subscribers can view their full photo and video collections on the Apple TV instead of only My Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams.
- Bluetooth keyboard: You can pair an external bluetooth keyboard to work with your Apple TV.
- App Folders: You can organise yours Apps using folders as you do with your iPhone or iPad. To create a folder, click and hold on an app icon with the Touch Surface until the icon begins to jiggle. Then drag and drop it over another app that you want to group it with.
Clicking the play/pause button when selecting an app will give you further options including shortcuts for moving apps between folders. - Scrubbing through videos: Probably you had this issue when watching a movie: if by accident you swiped across the Touch Surface the video jumped to another part and you ended looking for the point where you were watching the movie before the “incident”. Now, you must first pause the video and then you can scrub through it.
tvOS also has some less-obvious improvements, like the way it now handles scrubbing through video. - App switcher UI: Yes, tvOS has changed the way it looks when switching between apps and now it looks more like iOS 9. Remember you can jump between recently opened apps by double-clicking Siri Remote’s TV button.
- What’s New: There’s also a newly added section under Settings > System that will display the biggest changes between software updates.
iPhone SE: Rumours were right and Apple was working in a new 4-inch iPhone and they called it iPhone SE. It is more or less like an iPhone 6S without 3D Touch in the body of an iPhone 5S: A9+M9, 12 MP iSight camera, 1.2 MP FaceTime camera, Apple Pay support, NO 3D Touch [full specs]. Best thing is its good value for money starting at $399 for the 16GB model.
iOS: iPhones and iPads received also a software update with iOS 9.3 and some nice new features such as: Night Shift, Multi-user support (but only for classroom iPads ?), Notes password protected with Touch ID, Apple News improvements, Health App dashboard, CarPlay Music and Maps enhancements (more info at apple.com/ios/updates).
iPad Pro: A new size is coming to the iPad Pro family as the rumours suggested. Apple presented the 9.7-inch iPad Pro which is basically as the previous 12.9-inch iPad Pro in a smaller size, with a better 12MP iSight camera and 5MP FaceTime camera [full specs], starting at $599 for the 32GB model.
The full video of the event is available at http://www.apple.com/apple-events/march-2016/