Apple Watch: Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils new smartwatch
APPLE CEO Tim Cook has revealed key details about the hotly anticipated Apple Watch, including Australian pricing and pre-order information.
APPLE CEO Tim Cook has revealed key details about the hotly anticipated Apple Watch, which will be available in Australia next month starting at $499.
The company’s first wearable was launched alongside a new ultra-thin MacBook and suite of health apps at an event in San Francisco overnight.
Mr Cook described the Watch as Apple’s most personal product.
“It’s not with you, it’s on you,” he said.
“In addition to being a beautiful object, the Apple Watch is the most advanced timepiece every created.
“Apple Watch is super accurate — you don’t need to worry about.”
It also comes with a range of face options, from traditional analog to advance digital to the “fun” of a Mickey Mouse watch, Mr Cook said.
“You can add many details to the face that you choose,” he said. These include a stopwatch or details of your next meeting. If you swipe up from the bottom, you get weather, calendar, music control and heart rate.
“Apple Watch brings a whole new personal dimension to timekeeping. It’s never been done before.
“Right from your wrist, you can receive a message. You can read and respond to that message instantly if you want. With a built-in speaker and microphone, you can receive calls on your watch.
“I’ve been waiting to do this since I was five years old. The day is finally here.”
If you hit the side button, it brings up your friends and you can connect to another Watch. Tap your watch and your friend will feel the sensation.
You can also send someone your heartbeat.
“I think you’re going to have a blast with these digital touch features, a whole new way to communicate,” Mr Cook said.
Mr Cook highlighted the fitness and health features of the Apple Watch, which does things such as telling you if you have been sitting too long.
The Apple Watch sends you a weekly report on a Monday on your previous week, and will suggest a new target for the next week.
“It’s like having a coach on your wrist,” Mr Cook said.
The workout app will tell you calorie burn, distance and time during physical workout.
Supermodel Christy Turlington spoke about running a half-marathon with an Apple Watch, using the watch to check pace and elevation.
Ms Turlington will be running the London marathon. “Apple Watch is going to help me get there,” she said.
Ms Turlington will also be doing a weekly blog on her marathon training, and how the Apple Watch is part of that.
Special apps
Apple vice president of Technology Kevin Lynch showed off some of the notifications for the Apple Watch, including stock market, Twitter trends and flight details.
Mr Lynch uses voice command and Siri to ask for the weather forecast for the next week and a reminder to pack an umbrella.
Apple Watch will have an Apple Pay app, letting you pay for products by swiping your Watch in markets that have Apple Pay, which does not yet include Australia.
There is also an Instagram app for the Watch that lets you scroll through your feed, with the square watch face ideal for the square photo format of photo sharing site.
In a cheesy demonstration, Mr Lynch showed how you can answer calls.
The Watch communicates with your phone on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. If you’re on your home network, you can answer phones even if you’re not in Bluetooth range.
Other apps Mr Lynch demonstrated included Uber, the controversial ride-sharing app.
Mr Lynch showed how boarding passes can be added to Passbook in the Watch, letting you board your plane by scanning the QR code on the watch without the need of getting your phone out of a bag or pocket.
Another app in the Watch lets you use the device as a room key in a hotel.
The Shazam app recognises a song and brings up the lyrics of the song and displays them in sync with the music.
When you dictate a message into the Watch, you have the choice of sending that as a message or audio file.
Another app let Mr Lynch open his garage door by hitting the Watch screen, with a live feed streaming images of his garage.
Mr Cook said people would be surprised by the capabilities of the Watch that were a result of unleashing the potential of app developers.
“We think that Apple Watch is quickly going to become integral to your day,” Mr Cook said.
He promised all-day battery life, which equated to about 18 hours in typical use.
The Apple Watch Sport will come in silver or space grey, with colourful bands and an aluminium body.
The Apple Watch Sport uses a new alloy that is 60 per cent stronger than normal aluminium.
It well sell in the US for $US349 for the 38mm. The 42mm model will cost $US399.
The stainless steel 38mm Apple Watch will cost, in the US, $US549-$US1049 depending on band choice. The 42mm will cost $US50 more.
The limited gold Apple Watch edition will cost $US10,000.
April is taking pre-orders on April 10, and will have previews in Apple stores.
Australia is on the list of countries for the first round of Apple Watch release.
Local pricing
Apple Watch is available in three collections: Apple Watch Sport, priced at $499 and $579 (including GST); Apple Watch, available from $799 to $1,629; and Apple Watch Edition, crafted from custom rose or yellow 18-karat gold alloys, starting from $14,000 (all prices include GST).
Apple Watch will go on sale in Australia on April 24.
Apple TV
Earlier, the launch event kicked off in traditional Apple style, with a feel-good video.
This time the emphasis was on an Apple store in China, indicating that Apple takes that potential and growing market very seriously.
Mr Cook started the presentation with a talk about new stories in China. Apple has opened up six stores in China in the past six weeks.
As Mr Cook began his introduction, he was greeted with rousing cheers and claps from the Apple faithful, which included the design guru Sir Jony Ive sitting in the front row.
Got some extra rest for today's event. Slept in 'til 4:30.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 9, 2015Before he got into speaking about Apple Watch, Mr Cook went to the other product that has been the focus of countless Apple rumours: Apple TV.
HBO CEO Richard Plepler came to the stage to announce a deal with Apple.
“We love Apple and all the extraordinary products that have captured,” Mr Plepler said announcing an exclusive deal with iTunes and Apple TV.
In the US, the HBO Now product will be $US14.99 ($19.45) a month.
“This is a transformative moment for HBO,” Mr Plepler said.
The fine print on a Game of Thrones trailer says HBO Now is US only.
Mr Cook says Apple has sold 25 million Apple TVs. He said the price for Apple TV is dropping from $US99 to $US69.
“Apple TV will reinvent the way that you watch television and this is just the beginning,” Mr Cook said.
From Apple TV to the iPhone 6, Mr Cook says the iPhone is now the number one selling smartphone in the world.
Mr Cook said part of the success of the iPhone 6 was Apple Pay, the mobile payment system available in the US. There is still no word on when Apply Pay will come to Australia.
He said the iPhone is transforming users’ lives with services like CarPlay. “Every major car brand has committed to delivering CarPlay,” he said.
“This is only a year after we announced CarPlay, it’s unbelievable momentum.”
Mr Cook said “perhaps the most profound change” that the iPhone can make was on health.
While people came to this event expecting to hear about the fashionable Apple Watch, first came the talk on medical research and how the Apple Health app fitted in with that.
Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations, launched ResearchKit, an open source program designed with medical experts including teams from Stanford and Oxford universities.
The project has developed five apps, including one that one that measures gait of Parkinson’s patients.
The ResearchKit apps target Parkinson’s, asthma, cardiac health and diabetes. Participants in the studies using the app can see their own progress through the Health app.
Another app, for Breast Cancer research, lets survivors share their experience.
Mr Williams stressed the privacy of the ReseachKit apps. “Apple will not see your data,” he said.
Kantar analyst Carolina Milanesi tweeted her reaction to the news of ResearchKit: “ResearchKit turns iPhones into research diagnostics tools — Apple a consumer company that matters more and more to industries.”
The five ResearchKit apps are available today.
ResearchKit turns iPhones into research diagnostics tools - Apple a consumer company that matters more & more to industries.
— carolina milanesi (@caro_milanesi) March 9, 2015Mr Cook said Apple was proud to be part of the medical research program.
And while a graphic teased an image of the Apple Watch, Mr Cook launched into talking about the Apple Mac.
MacBook reinvented
“Last year the industry shrank and the Mac grew over 20 per cent, this is phenomenal,” Mr Cook said.
Mr Cook said the definition of portability had changed led by the iPhone and iPad. “We challenged ourselves to reinvent the notebook and we did it. And here it is,” he said.
Steve Jobs famously launched the MacBook Air by pulling it out of an envelope. Today, Mr Cook showed off the new MacBook model simply by walking out on stage with it in hand.
Apple marketing senior vice president Phil Schiller introduced the new MacBook, which is 13mm thick or 24 per cent thinner than the predecessor.
The new MacBook comes in a new gold colour and includes a new keyboard.
The new keyboard has keys with a butterfly mechanism which is four times more stable and allows a thinner keyboard. The new design means the keyboard is more accurate even if you hit the keys on the side.
The new MacBook has a 12-inch Retina display with 2304 x 1440 pixels and has the thinnest display in a Mac.
The new MacBook has a new trackpad with a taptic engine, like the one in the Apple Watch, which gives a sense of feedback when clicking.
The sensitivity of the new MacBook means you have a “forced click” new gesture which can initiate actions. If you perform a force click on a date in a message it adds it to your calendar, for example.
The logic board in the new MacBook is one-third the size of the previous logic board and doesn’t need a fan. That means, for the consumer, a thinner MacBook.
The extra space created by making this the first fanless Macbook means more battery space. This has “all-day battery life” which Apple describes up to 9 hours of web surfing or 10 hours of watching movies.
The one multi-featured port on the new MacBook is a USB port, a HDMI port plus a power port. The new standard is called USB-C.
The new MacBook has more than 3.3 million pixels.
It comes in silver, space grey and gold — just like the iPhone.
The MacBook was described in a video by Mr Ives, whose abilities still do not include being able to speak in person at Apple events.
The MacBook will ship on April 10. The base model, with 256GB of flash storage, will sell for $1799. The 512GB of flash storage model will cost $2199.
The MacBook has a 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.4 GHz and 8GB of memory.
Along with the new MacBook, the MacBook Air models are getting updating specs and the 13-inch MacBook Pro is getting a refresh including longer battery life.
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