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Apple Stretches Its Lead

When Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage yesterday and pronounced he would be making a "monster announcement," let's just say that I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Apple had leaked that it'd be releasing a bigger iPad, but that the iPhone models would feature the same screen sizes and a new user interface feature called "Force Touch," but that was about it.

But, once again, Apple managed to leak just the footnotes, keeping the big stories for the official announcement. With yesterday's product news, the company managed to launch a basketful of mini revolutions even in an "off year."

Apple Watch and Cool New Apps
Cook opened up talking about Apple Watch, which will be getting a new and improved operating system called watchOS 2. This OS adds some interesting capabilities, including a GoPro app that allows you to use the watch as a viewfinder for your GoPro camera. It also demoed AirStrip, a healthcare app that allows a doctor to view his or her schedule by rotating the winder and for each appointment view the patient's vital signs as well as waveforms of pulse, respiration, and blood pressure in real time. For UC, it incorporates the ability to call, text, or email a team member directly from the app.

Recognizing the importance of fashion in wearables, Cook talked about Apple Watch as being an "expression of personal taste and style." To that end, Apple introduced new colors and bands, even striking up a design agreement with Hermes. While Hermes is producing a special line of watch bands for Apple Watch, Apple is creating three custom displays featuring the Hermes logo.

iPhone: Nice Touch
On the iPhone front, Apple is introducing the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus with, as I said, screen sizes identical to the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. More importantly, we got to see the first demo of what Force Touch capability, now officially called "3D Touch," can do. This turned out to be yet another demonstration of just how far ahead of competitors Apple remains in delivering what is far and away the best thought out and best executed user experience (UX) in tech. By placing capacitive sensors behind the glass, the new iPhones can distinguish between a tap, a harder press, and extended hard press.

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Setting Apple apart from the rest is the intelligent way it incorporates these capabilities into what is already the best UX on the market. Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, did the demo starting with mail to demonstrate what Apple calls "peek and pop." You start with your traditional list of emails that you can scroll through, but you don't have to fully open them to see what they say. Rather, if you press on one it pops open so you can read it; if you're not interested you can simply release the press and you're back to the email list. Press a little harder and the email opens. Swipe to the left to trash it.

Just about every app has the peek-and-pop capability. Press on a date in any email or text, and your calendar for that day pops open and you can create an event. Press on a flight number, and you get the departure and arrival times and current status. Press on the phone icon, and your favorites pop up. Press on the camera icon to take a selfie -- the retina screen will now act as a flash. Press on the edge of the display, and all open apps show; you can do that today by hitting the Home button twice. Press on Dropbox, Facebook, or Instagram, and a menu of frequently used features pops up.

The new iPhone models include LTE Advanced capability in 23 frequency bands supporting data rates up to 150 Mbps, as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO supporting data rates up to 866 Mbps.

Probably the coolest feature is Live Photos. Each picture that you take will now be a little three-second movie, with sound. Any time you take a picture, the iPhone will capture one and a half seconds before and after the shot. Press on the picture, and the movie plays. Also any time you scroll to a picture you get a little of that motion (not the whole three seconds), which makes the pictures appear alive. BlackBerry had done something similar some years ago, allowing you to move the shot backwards or forwards in time if someone had a funny face or had had eyes closed.

Apple is offering the models at the same price as the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in silver, gold, space gray, and rose gold colors. The iPhone 6S will go for $199 with 32 gigabytes of memory, $299 with 64G, and $399 with 128G. The iPhone 6S Plus will be $299 with 32G of memory, $399 with 64G, and $499 with 128G. It also will offer installment purchase plans, in direct competition with the lease and installment purchase plans being offered by the mobile operators. In the meantime, Apple is cutting prices on the 6 and 6 Plus. Apple will start accepting pre-orders on Sept. 12 with deliveries commencing Sept. 25. The new version of iOS, iOS 9, will be available Sept. 16.

Continue to the next page: Apple TV, iPad, and the enterprise

Continued from previous page: Apple Watch, iPhones

Apple TV: Let Siri Be Your Guide
But that wasn't all that Apple went through in its two-hours-plus event. It also showed a new version of Apple TV, with Cook alluding to us being in the "Golden Age of Television" with fantastic programming coming at us from all directions. However, he said, the technology of television has been standing still while the mobile world has charged forward. Apple's answer: Siri for your TV.

The new Apple TV will include a touch-sensitive remote with a Siri-based search function. Even better, you can conduct searches on iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and Showtime... with more searchable TV apps coming later. So you can press the Siri button on the remote and say, "Show me the Modern Family episode with Ed Norton," and you'll get the Modern Family home page with that episode highlighted. If you didn't hear something you can say, "What did she say?" and the program will jump back 15 seconds and the subtitles will automatically come on. I've long commented that the user interface on cable TV is about two steps below Morse code as a communications mechanism, but that may be about to change.

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However, it's not just about what you can find, it's also about what you can do. Apple demonstrated multiuser games (on which I'll likely never going to be one of the players), home shopping on Gilt, and other fun stuff, but the one demo that hit me was Chad Evans, senior vice president of business development with MLB.com. With Apple TV, you'll be able to get pop-ups at the bottom of the screen giving you player stats, scores of other games, the standings, the box score (very important to know where you are in the batting order), and even the weather just by asking Siri. You can also watch two games at the same time.

The remote uses Bluetooth so you don't have to point it at the TV, and it should run for three months on a single charge, Apple said. The 32G version of the Apple TV goes for $149 and the 64G version is $199; the products will be available in November.

iPad: Going Pro & Focusing on the Enterprise
The other big announcement was the iPad Pro, the new model of the iPad featuring a 12.9-inch screen -- that's 78% more screen real estate than the iPad Air. In effect, the iPad Pro's retina display is as wide as the iPad Air's is high, and features 5.6 million pixels. It also is the first iPad with four speakers and features Apple's next-generation A9x processor, which is 1.8 times faster than its predecessor.

The other big advance is a stylus called the Apple Pencil, which costs $99. Like the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, the screen is pressure sensitive, and you can change the thickness of the lines you make by changing the pressure. It also features LTE Advanced and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and advertises battery life of 10 hours.

The focus on more enterprise-oriented features really caught my attention. First, there's a detachable smart keyboard; once attached to the iPad Pro, the on-screen soft keyboard is disabled. The keyboard attaches with a new smart connector that carries both data and power.

It also features a split-screen capability so you can have two applications open on the screen side by side. In a further bow to enterprise users, Cook made mention of Apple's alliances with IBM and Cisco, but Microsoft's Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office 365 client apps and services team,‬ gave a demo.

I have been waiting for Apple to come out with touch screen/keyboard device in response to Microsoft's Surface Pro 3, but I was thinking in terms of a touch-screen MacBook -- clearly Apple's focus is on the iPad rather than the MacBook line. Koenigsbauer and his assistant proceeded to show the iPad versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with the enhancements Microsoft has added to take advantage of the Apple Pencil -- from an extra tools bar beneath the familiar ribbon you can do things like choose colors with a color wheel.

They also showed Word and Excel running side by side on the iPad Pro's screen, and used the Apple Pencil to do editing and formatting functions. This was all the while talking about how you could collaborate through the cloud with other Apple and non-Apple devices all running the Microsoft productivity suite.

I have long doubted that Apple gave more than a cursory glimpse toward the enterprise market and presented enterprise buyer with the classic, "Here's what we've got, take it or leave it," attitude, so I almost fell off my chair when I saw Microsoft presenting at an Apple event. The times they are a-changing indeed.

The iPad Pro will have an entry-level price of $799 for a Wi-Fi-only model with 32G of memory, a 128G Wi-Fi model for $949, and a 128G Wi-Fi/LTE version for $1,079. The detachable Smart Keyboard goes for $169.

What Does It All Mean?
My takeaway is that everyone now wants a piece of the Apple cache, and rightly so. Cook mentioned several times that people love Apple products, and he's right. It's hard to think of another company that has built such a high degree of customer loyalty, and there are several reasons for it.

First, Apple is obsessive about design -- not just the physical design (which is beautiful) but the whole product experience, of which the UX we talk about is only a small part. When you see how well Apple products work, that just screams out at you. Secondly, it doesn't stop trying to get it better. It starts out in a good direction, like with the multitouch interface with touch, pinch, and swipe, and then figures out what it can layer on top of it. Finally, Apple appears to have a vision that goes beyond a single product or even a product line but that seems to look at, "How should life work given the technologies currently available." Sure, everything works better if you buy the whole Apple plan including the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, and if you're really over the top, the Apple Watch, too.

Apple is not always held in high esteem within the technical community, but that's not the audience we should be looking to for advice on what will appeal to the public at large. However, with companies like IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft beating a path to Apple's door to ensure that what they offer works well on the devices people love to use, it's clear that the bosses know where they need to be.

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