Apple Event

Apple had to walk the tightrope of announcing both a stripped back iPhone Air and a souped up iPhone 17 Pro yesterday. If you were paying close attention, you might have come away just a little confused.

Allison Johnson walks us through Apple’s new iPhone 17 Pro models. Pre-review don’t-hold-me-to-it hot take: orange iPhone 17 Pro Max over the iPhone Air. ALL. DAY. Going to be so easy to find on my next camping trip. Anyway, I’m but a peasant to our Queen Allison. Here’s what she has to say:

We checked out the Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and the new Apple Watch SE 3. The Verge’s Victoria Song specifically calls out all the good stuff coming down to the $250 Apple Watch SE 3, like an always-on display, wrist temperature sensor, faster charging, and more. But check ‘em all out:

It looks really good on video, but unfortunately, the phone still wobbles on its back even though Apple used a wide camera bump. Can’t have it all, I guess!

According to Apple’s store page for the cloth, no; the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air aren’t listed. Neither are the new Apple Watches.

I got a demo and I’ll say the noise cancelling is pretty impressive. The entirety of this hands-on space was blocked out and I could hear the sweet dulcet tones of Celine Dion and Celine Dion only.

I heard lots of oooohs and ahhhs from the in-person crowd when Apple announced that the iPhone 17 Pro Max will go up to 2TB of storage. I wonder if all of those people were ready to pony up 2,000 bones?

I assume everyone’s already locked onto the purchase page for the crossbody strap, right? But seriously: Apple’s keynote has been over only a few minutes, is there anything you saw that made you immediately go, “yep, that one, I will have it please and thank you?” For me I think it’s the AirPods Pro 3. I’m close to sold on the Watch Series 11, though I have some worries about 5G and battery life. The phones... we’ll see. What’s on your shopping list? Anything so far?

This kind of feels like Apple is forcing me to the titanium iPhone Air. Apple switched to titanium for the iPhone 15 Pro two years ago, and it was noticeably lighter than the aluminum iPhone Pros that came before it. Why ditch titanium here?

The company said it’s building neural accelerators into each GPU core to prime users’ iPhones for intense AI workloads. It’s part of Apple’s bid to stay competitive in the AI race.

There is a lot of new Apple tech in the super-thin iPhone Air — Apple’s talking about the work it had to do on everything from the modem to the chip to make the phone this small. Check out the images below for an x-ray of the camera array, which is seriously crammed in there. Apparently it’s a “plateau,” not a camera bump.

New Watch Series 11, new Watch SE 3, new Watch Ultra 3. I’m due for an upgrade, and am thinking the Series 11 is probably the one for me? That 42 hours of Ultra battery does sound good, though. Check out the stories and the bentos, tell me which does it for you!

They look good! We’ll have to see how that “world’s best ANC” claim holds up, though. Check out Tom’s story for more, and here’s the bento box with all the details:

And Apple CEO Tim Cook says there’s “a hands-on area” at the end, so, you know, hardware confirmed. Go read our liveblog, which is way ahead of all the streams! And also more fun.

I’m betting we’ll get: iPhone 17s, iPhone Air. New Watches, new AirPods. (I am oddly more excited about new AirPods than any other device this year.) From what Bloomberg and others have reported, there might be a big focus on cases and accessories. I’m not expecting much Siri talk, and I don’t think we’ll see a new Vision Pro or even a new iPad, though both have been rumored to be possibilities.

Jake says: “A cool day here in Cupertino. It’s packed and we’re making our way into the venue.” Follow along on our live blog!