On September 10th, Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reported (Reporter Tang Zhixiao) that Apple held its 2024 autumn product launch event today, with the theme of "Highlight Moment", bringing new products such as Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods 4 series, and iPhone 16 series.
At this year's Apple Autumn New Product Launch, Apple has lowered a large number of Pro level hardware features to standard devices, which has partially bridged the functional gap between the standard and Pro versions. The Ultra series watches and headphones on the wearable product line have not undergone many hardware upgrades, mainly adding several new color schemes.
Cook mentioned the terms Apple Intelligence and Machine Learning for the first time at the beginning of the press conference, indicating Apple's emphasis on AI this year.
Apple has even created a separate chapter to introduce the AI features of the iPhone, and has spared no effort in adding a "camera control" button to the entire iPhone 16 series to increase SoC bandwidth and achieve "one touch access" to AI visual functions, in order to lower the threshold for users to use AI features.
Some analysts believe that the iPhone 16 will bring an AI driven super cycle to Apple. Daniel Ives, Managing Director and Senior Stock Analyst at Wedbush, a US investment bank, bluntly stated that the sales of iPhones in the 2025 fiscal year may exceed 240 million units. As a comparison, the highest selling iPhone 6 series in history sold 220 million units.
Unfortunately, Apple's Apple Intelligence is still unable to be launched globally with the new products, and users in Chinese Mainland will have to wait until next year at least.
Watch and headphones undergo major upgrades, with Pro features lowered
Apple's smartwatch, the Apple Watch, has entered its tenth year. This year's Apple Watch Series 10 has undergone significant upgrades compared to the previous generation, mainly focusing on two aspects: slimness and more comprehensive monitoring.
The overall thickness of the Apple Watch Series 10 series has been reduced by 10% compared to its predecessor, with a thickness of only 9.7 millimeters and a weight reduction of less than 30g. It has also added depth and water temperature sensing functions. The size of the Apple Watch Series 10 has also been upgraded from the original 41mm/45mm to 42mm/46mm, with larger display areas and a more rounded appearance.
In addition, the Apple Watch Series 10 series has added a wide-angle OLED display, which increases brightness by up to 40% when viewed from a tilted angle compared to the Apple Watch Series 9.
The Apple Watch Series 10 is equipped with a new depth gauge and water temperature sensing, featuring a 50 meter waterproof swimming design, automatic swimming posture detection, and lap count function. The new depth gauge can measure depths up to 6 meters underwater, making it suitable for snorkeling and shallow diving. When users engage in physical training for swimming in pools and open water areas, the water temperature will also be displayed in the physical training indicators.
The common practice of "detecting sleep apnea" in domestic watches has finally been added to the Apple Watch Series 10. While analyzing and reminding users of apnea, it can also generate detailed data for doctors to use as a diagnostic reference.
Unfortunately, at present, this feature is only available in more than 150 countries and regions, but not in Chinese Mainland. Moreover, the new Apple Watch Series 10 still has the same battery life of only 18 hours, only reducing 0-80% of the charging time to half an hour.
There are no new Apple Watch Ultra releases this year, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 only adds new color schemes and a matching black titanium strap.
After 3 years, AirPods 4 is the biggest upgraded product in this headphone series.
While continuing the semi in ear design, AirPods 4 has added a noise cancelling version and supports adaptive audio, transparency mode, and a wireless charging case with built-in speakers for search function, which were previously only supported by the Pro model.
After years of release, AirPods Pro 2 continues to push functional OTA. In the future, AirPods Pro can also provide over-the-counter hearing aid functionality for users with mild to moderate hearing loss, transforming AirPods Pro 2 into a clinical grade hearing aid. However, it is currently only available in over 100 countries and regions, including the United States, Germany, and Japan
The AirPods Max has been equipped with a USB-C interface, adding new colors such as Starlight, Orange, Purple, Blue, and Midnight, and bidding farewell to the Lightning interface in the headphone series product line.
Is the national iPhone 16 complete and will only come next year?
Apple Intelligence is the keyword for this generation of iPhone 16 series, and in order to make this feature a standard across the entire series, the iPhone 16 Standard Edition has been upgraded out of the box.
Let's first talk about the focus of this press conference, the late Apple Intelligence, which is basically not available in non English speaking countries in the short term.
Apple Smart will only be officially experienced by Apple users in the United States in October, and will gradually expand to English speaking regions such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom in December this year. Until 2025, languages other than English such as Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish will gradually receive support.
As for Chinese users, no matter whether you buy an iPhone in Chinese Mainland or not, or whether your AppleID country/region is set in mainland China or not, Apple Intelligence cannot be used until it is launched in Chinese Mainland.
At present, the system level features supported by Apple Smart include writing (proofreading and rewriting content), text summarization, email replies, and other text functions. However, there is currently no official timetable for supporting ChatGPT integration services, Image Playground's image generation function, and Genmoji emoji generation function.
At this press conference, Apple Intelligence has added AI visual recognition function: by pressing the "camera control" button that is standard across the entire iPhone 16 series, the visual recognition function can be activated. At present, Apple has demonstrated functions such as searching for content with images, searching for products with images, displaying business information and positive reviews of the photographed store.
It is reported that Apple's AI model, Apple Intelligent, adopts a combination of cloud and end computing: most Apple intelligent models run entirely on the device side, handling more complex and computationally intensive scenarios, and the iPhone will request Private Cloud Compute through the network.
When using Private Cloud Compute, user data is not saved or shared with Apple, but only used to process their requests. Independent experts can inspect the code running on servers equipped with Apple chips to continuously verify this privacy protection.
In addition, users who choose to access ChatGPT through Siri or the "writing tool" will also benefit from built-in privacy protection features: their IP addresses are blocked and OpenAI does not store their requests. Users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account, and ChatGPT's data usage policy applies to users who choose to associate their accounts.
In order to support Apple's intelligence, the iPhone 16 series has undergone a significant upgrade: in addition to adding navy blue and navy blue colors, the standard version also adds the Action button that was only available in the previous Pro models, as well as the "camera control" button that is standard across the entire series. This button not only serves as the start button for Apple's AI vision, but also activates camera functions and acts as a shutter button, calling out parameters such as zoom, depth of field control, and shooting style for the camera.
From the features showcased at the press conference, it can be seen that the "camera control" button is not a mechanical button, but adopts a capacitive sensing design that supports force sensing and sliding sensing, providing users with a tactile experience similar to traditional camera shutters.
On the core processor, the iPhone 16 Standard Edition has finally caught up with the "progress" by using the latest A18 series chips with second-generation 3nm process technology. The A18 has a 6-core CPU, consisting of 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, which is 30% faster than the CPU in the iPhone 15, while reducing power consumption by 30% at the same performance.
Compared to the N3B process used on the A17 Pro last year, this year's second-generation 3nm process has a greater advantage in improving energy efficiency. The neural engine speed has doubled, the memory subsystem has been upgraded, and the bandwidth has increased by 17%.
The dual cameras arranged diagonally on the back cover also return to vertical arrangement on this generation of iPhone 16 series, and bring the spatial shooting capability of the previous Pro version to the standard version of iPhone 16. The improvement in imaging capability of the standard version mainly focuses on the ultra wide angle lens. The lens aperture has been upgraded from f/2.4 to f/2.2, increasing the amount of light entering and improving the shooting ability in low light environments. Additionally, it has added the "macro shooting" capability that was only available on the previous Pro version
The overall screen size of the iPhone 16 Pro series has increased, with the iPhone 16 Pro expanding from 6.1 inches to 6.3 inches and the iPhone 16 Pro Max expanding from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches. The display border has also been further narrowed, and a desert colored titanium metal color scheme has been added.
Beyond the screen, the upgrades of the iPhone 16 Pro series mainly focus on processor performance and imaging capabilities: the main camera is a 48 megapixel "fusion" camera, equipped with a second-generation four in one pixel sensor, supporting 48 megapixel ProRaw and HEIF photo shooting, and achieving zero shutter delay.
The ultra wide angle lens has been upgraded from 12 million pixels to 48 million pixels, equipped with a four in one pixel sensor with autofocus function, and the aperture has been upgraded from f/4.4 to f/2.2, improving the sensor's light intake and enhancing the imaging quality in low light environments.
After joining Apple Log professional video recording last year, the iPhone 16 Pro series has once again added the ability to record 4K 120fps Dolby Vision video format and added four studio level microphones.
Higher specification video recording benefits from the A18 Pro chip. This chip maintains a configuration of 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU, improving CPU performance by 15% while reducing power consumption by 20%. At the NPU level, the A18 Pro has been upgraded to a 16 core neural network engine, which increases its ability to run Apple Intelligence by 15% compared to the previous generation.
As for the pricing, the iPhone 16 series will maintain the same price as last year. The standard version of iPhone 16 starts at 5999 yuan, the Plus version starts at 6999 yuan, the Pro version starts at 7999 yuan, and the Pro Max version starts at 9999 yuan.