Apple – Chugging along

AirPods Pro win a fairly ordinary event.

• With Apple Intelligence being the big new feature which will come to all iPhone 16 versions and the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple relied on the tried and tested camera features and faster silicon to entice users to pay up for the Pro version.
• Once again, has just about done enough to hang onto its position at the top of the market.
• The September event saw updates to Apple Watch, AirPods and a new iPhone.
  • Apple Watch: Here, Apple spent for more time on new colours, materials and faces than on new features but there are few new bits and pieces.
  • Sleep Apnoea detection comes to the Apple Watch for which Apple expects to get FDA approval shortly and the water sport features previously exclusive to the Ultra have been put into the regular version.
  • The Ultra 2 was released in new colours but that was pretty much it as blood pressure and blood glucose monitoring which, in my opinion, are killer use cases remain distant dreams.
  • AirPods where the obvious hearing aid functionality has finally made it into a consumer device.
  • This is being made available on the new AirPods Pro and is something that the headphone industry has been procrastinating about for years.
  • Machine learning models make it easier to assist the user’s hearing once a test has been taken, and I suspect that this will trigger a rush by the industry to follow suit.
  • This is a good upgrade to the AirPods Pro and with 1.5bn people in the world suffering from some degree of hearing loss, there is a good market for this product.
  • iPhone 16 where the main feature is the new camera control button.
  • This allows the camera to be accessed with a physical click and then a picture to be taken.
  • The button can also distinguish between a regular click and a light click which brings up a series of controls which can be selected and controlled by sliding a finger along the button.
  • This is classic Apple user experience magic and is probably the biggest reason to buy a new iPhone this holiday season.
  • iPhone 16 Pro where apart from the extra camera, and a better silicon chip, there is not much that makes it stand out from the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro.
  • 4K at 120 frames per second is a nice upgrade as is the ability to adjust tone and lighting dynamically.
  • Games also received an incremental upgrade but once again these features do not provide a big incentive to make the upgrade.
  • Apple Intelligence where very little has changed since WWDC where the commentary was largely a recap of what was said in June.
  • June was about the software and this event launched four more devices that will be able to support Apple Intelligence.
  • However, these features will be rolled out very gradually and not at all in the EU which sets up an interesting game of chicken between Apple and the EU where I suspect the EU will blink first.
• The net result is that Apple is doing just enough to maintain its edge at the high end of the market.
• It brings in new features that its rivals have had for some time but it is definitely leader when it comes to health an wellness with ECG, fall and crash detection and now sleep apnoea and hearing loss.
• This is why I think that the most interesting launch was the new iPods Pro as this may well change the headphone industry once again.
• It remains to be seen how useful Apple Intelligence is and what impact it will have in the hands of users.
• Apple shares were indifferent to the event in a sign that Apple is simply chugging along at the top but with the shares on 33.0x 2024 PER I remain uninterested in having a position.