Impressive, But I'll Pass

Finished watching the Awe Dropping infomercial from Apple. Quick thoughts. Impressive video production quality as usual. Apple Watch personal stories were touching. iPhone Air (not iPhone 17 Air) looks impressive without too many compromises. This iPhone 17 Pro Orange colour looks gorgeous, can’t wait to see that in person. Am I getting tired of Apple Headquarters shots? The jury is still out on that one. The AirPods Pro 3 is much better than rumours were predicting. I liked the new voice-overs for the iPhone Air design showcase as well as the iPhone 17 Pro. Somewhat similar to Jony Ive’s tone. Unibody for the iPhone 17 Pro, a first. Many features announced today are also available to previous-generation devices (hypertension for Apple Watch Series 11 is also available to Series 10). Cool. Same price as last year’s? Apparently, for a double the starting memory size configuration. Not bad. Who said Apple is greedy? Yet, I’ll probably pass this year and wait for next year. Thanks to Tim Cook’s relationship with some of the US government representatives.

Going Apple TV-Only?

Based on our experience earlier this year with Apple TV as the only way to watch TV content, along with rising costs and an unstable service, we are seriously considering cutting our cable service and keeping only our Internet service. Even though the apps on Apple TV are far from perfect, they generally allow us to replace cable service. Rumors suggest that Apple is working on a new iteration of the Apple TV, which could make the timing even more favorable.

Apple seems to be closer to repeating with Google what they do for search, but this time with AI. I would prefer Apple to do search, too, and I understand the challenge in offering LLMs that have a chance to compete, at the perception level, at least.