Apple confirmed to CNBC on Thursday it won’t reveal opening weekend sales of its new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus after it begins pre-orders on September 9, a deviation from its past iPhone launches.
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Apple also launched Apple Watch Series 2, the next generation of its popular smartwatch, with features including a water resistance 50 meter rating for swimming, and built-in Global Positioning System so users can now run without an iPhone. Or it could herald an Apple commitment to wireless earbuds that connect to the phone via a technology such as Bluetooth. The cost of making your headphones five times more likely to fall irretrievably into a grate is a more than five times increase in price, to $159.
New colour: Company executive Phil Schiller took to the stage and said that the device, both the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 and the 5.5-inch 7 Plus, would feature an all-new colour scheme, the “jet black”, along with black, silver, gold and rose gold, reported Forbes.
A new version of the Apple Watch, called the Series 2 and with greater focus on health and exercise tracking, was also announced, including a special Nike+ version for runners. The headset also features dual optical sensors and accelerometers in each ear bud which work with the W1 chip which detect when the headphones are in your ears and only play when you’re ready to listen.
“I feel Apple must consider Reliance Jio – now the game changer in the Indian telecom space with its disrupting pricing and data plans – for a long, beneficial partnership in a country where the number of smartphones users are set for an exponential growth in years to come”, Pathak told IANS.
More recently, Apple made millions of old power cords incompatible by replacing the 30-pin charging port on older iPhones and iPads with the much smaller Lightning port in 2012. In short, the wireless and Lightning-connected headphones offer far superior audio quality compared to the 3.5mm headphone jack.
So the headphone jack is dead, long live the headphone jack.
“Apple has rethought the Apple Watch significantly since its first release”, said Jackdaw Research chief analyst Jan Dawson. “And they get in the way when you’re exercising”. Many mocked Apple’s idea of calling AirPods an act of courage.
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“The reason to move on, it really comes down to one word: courage”, he said. That would be a first step toward getting them interested in future smartwatch apps and services, she suggested. You have to buy a $49 Lightning dock. Still, she cautioned, “people don’t like change”.
