Quick Thoughts on Today’s New Apple Stuff

  • Product Red Special Edition iPhone 7 and 7 Plus: Looks cool. But I think I’d rather see it with a black face.

  • New 9.7-inch just-plain “iPad”: Looks like the supply chain rumor mill was almost entirely wrong about new iPads. No new iPad Pro hardware at all. Just a no-adjective 9.7-inch “iPad” to replace the iPad Air 2. It’s a nice update for the budget-conscious: the new iPad has a brighter screen and an A9 instead of an A8 chip, and costs $70 less. As predicted, Apple is clearly putting the “Air” brand out to pasture.

  • Clips: Looks cool, especially the part about dictating the titles verbally. But it doesn’t ship until April.

  • New Apple Watch Bands: None of these colors speak to me, personally, but I will say that comfort-wise, Apple’s nylon bands are my favorite.

  • Update: Also, the iPhone SE storage tiers have been bumped from 16/64 to 32/128 GB. That means Apple is no longer selling any 16 GB iPhones (or iPads for that matter).

(A thought about the missing updates to the iPad Pro lineup: it seems like the supply chain leaks are mostly related to displays. A 10.5-inch display would necessarily require a new hardware design, because that’s a new display size for iPads. But what if the next update to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro also sports a new smaller-bezel design? Same display size as the current big iPad Pro, but a smaller footprint? When Apple makes multiple sizes of the same device family, they generally look as similar as possible other than the difference in size. It would be weird if, later this year, Apple released two new iPad Pros, but only one of them sported a new edge-to-edge display.)

★ Tuesday, 21 March 2017