A parade of men in blue shirts, joined by a couple of men wearing different-colored shirts and even by the occasional woman, took the stage today at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to unveil an assortment of new Apple gadgets. Advance rumors predicted most of the major announcements, which included a big-screen iPad Pro; a vastly upgraded Apple TV; and this year’s new iPhones, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
The new phones were billed by blue-shirt-wearing Apple CEO Tim Cook as “the most advanced iPhones we’ve ever created,” which came as a surprise to industry observers who expected Apple to release less-advanced phones this year, just to mess with people. But no, the 2015 iPhones include enhancements like 3D Touch, a pressure-sensitive input system that lets users, for instance, quickly access camera features from the home screen or glance at an email by pressing lightly on the display. (At one point, Apple executive Craig Federighi referred to the feature as “Force Touch,” which is what the company has called it until now on the Apple Watch, but he immediately corrected himself with the new, marketing-approved “3D” terminology—thereby saving himself from costly and painful re-education sessions.)
Another highly touted feature was Live Photos, which are essentially brief video snippets that are saved every time you take a photo to give each shot a couple seconds of full-motion context. It’s a neat trick, but it could fill up space fast, especially if you buy the entry-level tier of either new phone—Apple still hasn’t raised the base storage capacity of iPhones beyond the long-standard and increasingly inadequate 16 gigabytes.
The iPhone 6s models do have improved cameras and graphics chips, however, and a man in a blue shirt took the stage to talk about how the latter enhancement will improve the experience of playing video games.
While the one man in a blue shirt spoke, another man in a blue shirt played the game. All in attendance were wowed by the detail of the graphics and the blueness of the shirts. Available September 25, the iPhone 6s will be sold contract-free at prices starting at $650, and the iPhone 6s Plus starts at $750, with the usual carrier discounts and installment plans available.
Today’s media event also brought the long-anticipated debut of the new Apple TV set-top box, which comes with a touch-sensitive remote, an App Store (which, to the certain alarm of console makers, includes games), and Siri voice search. A demo video showed off Siri’s new moves—she can search across multiple apps to find the content you want, as long as it features somebody named “Jason.”