This was never going to be subdued, in case you had any expectations on those lines. As I had said last week, the annual iPhone keynote is where new performance and experience benchmarks are set. The ones that Android phone makers then spend the next 6-8 months trying to match. While some experts on X will repeatedly tell us how iOS is now doing what Android has been doing for 2 years now. How does it matter? Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” keynote sets the stage for Apple Intelligence, and of course, the new iPhone 16 series. As well as serious health tracking updates for the Apple Watch and a mission that now includes the AirPods Pro 2 as well. As I pointed out, it feels as though Apple has left a few cards on the table. I’ll jot down the highlights from ground zero, Cupertino, California.

• The Camera Control button, of course. Apple executives explained to HT that the innards of this new addition include a high-precision force sensor which not only enables taps, but also lighter press gestures, alongside a capacitive sensor that allows for toggling between different layers of settings without having to lift the finger off the button. That is the key—don’t lift the finger off the toggle, which as the exec explained is key to successfully navigating the camera settings. Slide the finger left or right to toggle between options, and a light tap to select an option. Functionality is same on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro phones.

“Apple iPhone 16 prices ate the same as iPhone 15 at launch, while iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are less expensive than their predecessors. A stark contrast to inflation we’ve seen with Samsung and Google flagships, raising prices with absolute nonchalance”

• Visual Intelligence, a new addition to the broad Apple Intelligence suite which I’d detailed extensively when it was announced at WWDC this summer. Visual Intelligence is linked with the Camera Control key. Click and hold the Camera Control button to open camera -> click the button again and Apple Intelligence will deliver actions based on context. If the camera saw a restaurant, Apple says it’ll try pulling up reviews, reservation details and the menu. If what the camera sees are the details of an event, it’ll invoke the calendar. Apple says this artificial intelligence processing is partly done on device, and partly on the cloud.

• For the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, there is structurally more parity with the iPhone 16 Pro phones. No changes with screen sizes, but there is a definite change in how the colour saturation has been delivered on the new iPhones. They look more attractive, and colours are a bit more pronounced than the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus. Ultramarine (that’s a really nice shade of blue) along with green and pink, join white and black. Apple A18 chip succeeds the A16 Bionic from the iPhone 15 series, which means this is essentially a two-generation leap now. Secondly, while the previous chip was on the 4-nanometer architecture, the Apple A18 switches to the smaller 3-nanometer architecture.

“If you didn’t notice, AirPods Max haven’t been updated with H2 audio processing chip. Missing on headphones priced at ₹59,900 but provide the foundation on the new AirPods 4, priced at ₹12,900”

AirPods are likely to move into the fourth generation this year, and standard true wireless earbuds likely to be joined by the latest gen AirPods Pro buds as well. More mysterious however are the AirPods Max headphones, which haven’t been refreshed in four years (and therefore, the Lightning port). Either a new version can be classified as long overdue, or Apple may have shelved it for good. Either way, we’ll know on September 9. HT will be covering the keynote in detail, analysing what exactly the announcements mean for you. Do stay tuned.

• The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max don’t necessarily feel bigger in the hand but get slightly larger displays—6.3-inches and 6.9-inches. That’s taking advantage of slimmer bezels and a few millimetres in footprint. The A18 Pro is the fastest smartphone chip, says Apple. It might give Qualcomm some sleepless nights. The 48-megapixel primary sensor is what Apple calls a Fusion camera, which sits alongside a 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor and a 12-megapixel 5x telephoto. The big addition is 4k video at 120 frames per second, or fps, and with Dolby Vision. The Photos app adds an editing option to slow down playback speeds later.
• Health tracking is clearly Apple’s big bet, so much so they’ve announced their plans even before regulatory clearances have come through (they’ll be arriving sooner rather than later, make no mistake, hence the high-stakes approach).
• Sleep apnoea monitoring and detection is the biggest health tracking update for this generation of the Apple Watch. The way this works is, the accelerometer on device will detect breathing patterns and notice any disturbances. The Watch will need 15-nights worth of sleep data, which will be the baseline for detection. This uses machine learning that’s relying on research data set—it has helped that Apple is an active participant in health research over the years.
• The AirPods Pro 2 is building on Apple’s hearing study, which in collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the World Health Organization, suggests one in three folks are regularly exposed to loud environmental noise levels that can impact hearing. The ear tips have been designed to passively reduce ambient loud noises, while the H2 chip actively reduces loud, more intermittent noises at 48,000 times per second. A new multiband high dynamic range algorithm too, specifically for loud sounds at live events such as concerts. The highlight is on-board testing to analyse for hearing loss, and if that’s detected, AirPods Pro 2 can become a hearing aid. It’ll be fun to see rivals catch up.

“With its design reconfiguration, the Apple Watch Series 10 now has a screen size that is larger than Watch Ultra 2. The latter’s supposedly the flagship, and now in a tough spot. The new titanium black will help us recover from this crushing blow”

• “The best-fitting AirPods ever”, Apple simply says. It may so be true. The AirPods 4’s foundation has 50 million individual data points such as ear shape (they say, they’ve used 3D photogrammetry and laser topography for this) to redesign the earbuds. There is a new acoustic architecture with a low-distortion driver, and high dynamic range amplifier, as well as the new H2 audio processing chip on which Personalised Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking has been built.
• Watch Ultra 2, in a new titanium black colour, will appeal to the lifestyle enthusiasts. Particularly when paired with the black Milanese loop. It is absolutely gorgeous.

LAW

Before I get into Elon Musk’s ongoing feud with Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes (I will absolutely not hazard a guess at how it’ll shape up; my point is more about behaviour befitting a tech leader and a supposed role model for society mostly lurking the depths of X), let us focus on the brighter side of things first. Now that X is banned in Brazil (with stiff penalties for anyone using a VPN to bypass the block), rival social media platform Bluesky claims to have clocked up a million new users in three days. That also propelled Bluesky to the top of the Apple App Store in Brazil. This is perhaps the app’s single biggest success story in its time of existence, which started out with the mission to be a Twitter alternative after Musk took over, and all sorts of madness was let loose on the platform. Threatening to sue advertisers who stopped spending money on X, makes sense in Musk’s logic of doing business. Nevertheless, that sort of tomfoolery doesn’t cut it, when a country’s laws are in focus. Whether you may agree with them or not. Or add a political twist to the conversation.

Irrespective of whether the original orders to X to block a handful of accounts in Brazil had any political influence to it or not, Musk’s behaviour left a lot to be desired in the months prior to X being banned in Brazil. Musk is well known for going absolutely off track at times (well, most of the time; I was trying to cushion that crushing reality) when its him and his X account, versus the world. Some examples of the sort of language Musk’s used for Moraes – called him “Voldemort” and posted a meme of a dog’s scrotum in close proximity to the face of another dog, wrote “He is a dictator and a fraud, not a justice” and wrote on Aug 31 that “We will (it should be “will”, but who’ll break it to Elon?) begin publishing the long list of @Alexandre’s crimes, along with the specific Brazilian laws that he broke tomorrow.”

In his infinite wisdom, Musk’s creation that is @Alexandrefiles went on to post a copy of the order by the Brazilian justice for the world to see, and thereby revealing the specifics of the X accounts in question, and the real names of their owners. As for the uncivilised posts and memes, Musk’s got quite a habit of that. Particularly with anyone who doesn’t have a similar opinion about things, or has a different political view. He’s recently called UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer “two-tier Keir”, in a way supporting a conspiracy theory that’s got wings on X, about differential treatment by law enforcement.

SOUND

They’re quiet; perhaps too quiet, is how I summarise electric cars and plug-in hybrids. This is something I’d been meaning to chat about, but so much happened in the previous handful of weeks, this never got a chance to figure on the agenda. There are many differences that dictate alternate fuelled motoring from the internal combustion engines (ICEs) many of us still prefer. And I say that whilst adding that you wouldn’t catch me owning an EV (a hybrid isn’t technically out of the conversation) in the near future. My reasons are simple. As an owner of a single car (with no flexibility for variables, or funds to purchase a second car on a whim), EVs may be fine for intracity runs but there are uncertainties if an intra-city run comes into the picture. Many of you may point to an increasing network of EV chargers on India’s rapidly increasing network of expressways. And I can raise each of those arguments, with instances of these much-fancies infrastructure upgrades, either broken or not working. If you have an EV battery running low and a broken charger to look at, that’d be a rather uncomfortable bookmark for that ownership (I’ve little patience or stamina for that avoidable scenario).

Nevertheless, my HT Wknd piece focused on EV makers who are currently struggling to define the future sound of motoring. I absolutely agree with my Wknd editor Zara Murao, who classifies current attempts as “bleating”. There have pretty much been two sides to the EV soundtrack coin thus far – either assassin-like silence or weird sounds to make their presence known to other road users as a warning. Who at Tesla thought a “boombox” comprising of the sounds of an ice cream truck, applause and a sheep’s bleating, were a good idea (oh wait, we actually may have a fair idea who’d have bulldozed these ideas through)? No wonder this was reversed, after transport regulators were left unimpressed.

More serious attempts are in play now. Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis is clearly not joking when he says they’ve had to change the sound of the all-electric Charger, a 100 times. Ferrari’s top bosses are also talking about “authentic” sound, for their upcoming EV. All this while, Lamborghini is getting more and more inspired by spacecraft. Hyundai, Skoda, Fiat and Toyota, some more examples, of a significant step forward in these attempts. The new Fiat 500e, for example, involves an acoustic vehicle alert system (AVAS) that “sings” a classical composition called “The sound of 500” (written by composers Flavio Ibba and Marco Gualdi), to pedestrians. We’ve not heard the last of that. You see what I did there?