Updated ultra-wideband in the SIP for precision finding
Improved heart rate sensor
Display up to 2000 nits, twice the brightness of Series 8, also goes down to 1 nit
A new Pink color option
No more leather bands. New “Fine-Woven” bands
FineWoven Apple Watch bands are made of 68 percent post-consumer recycled material
Ultra 2
Also gets the new S9 SIP and “double-tap”
And the new ultra wide-band chip
A 3000 nit max brightness display
Already facing shipping delays.
72 Hour battery life in low power mode
Mac Rumors noted that Apple tweaked the test parameters with fewer time checks, two-hours of workouts (vs 15), did up the app usage to 180mins, vs 35mins
Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 now come with 64GB storage.
iPhone 15 and 15 Plus
Basically the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max in new packaging with one less camera
A16 Bionic
New ultrawideband
6.1-inch and 6.7-inch displays, but with a max brightness of 2000 nits
USB-C
Limited to USB 2.0 speeds of up to 480 Mbps, same as Lightning
New 48-megapixel main camera, which allows up to 2x optical zoom
Dynamic Island
New colors with dyes embedded in the glass. Pink, yellow green, blue, and black. Textured matte finish.
Same starting prices, iPhone 15 starts at $799, and iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899.
iPhone 13 mini has been discontinued, but Apple still offers an iPhone SE, iPhone 13, and iPhone 14
Did not get color matched cables as was rumored
iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
New A17 Pro chip
3nm
USB-C IO, up to 10GB. No Thunderbolt?
New 6-core GPU that is 20% faster with hardware-accelerated raytracing
Double the neural engine speed with 16-cores
Now with 8GB RAM, vs 6GB previously
New Ultra-wideband support
Support for the Thread mesh networking protocol
Titanium, thinner bezels, more rounded edges. Textured matte backglass
Improved camera system
48MP main camera with 24, 28, and 35mm modes.
Portrait mode now offers focus control (apply after the fact)
Up to 5x telephoto lens on Max only (120mm). Uses a “tetraprism” lens system.
Ultra-wide 13mm for landscape and macro
Shoot directly to a Mac or external storage
Later will be able to capture spatial video for Vision Pro
Action button
Default press and hold to mute/unmute
Can also start recording in voice memos, launch the camera, flashlight, Magnifier, translate, activate a favorite accessibility, feature, or run a Shortcut.
Colors are black titanium, white titanium, blue titanium, and natural titanium
Pricing starts at USD $999 for the Pro at 128GB storage and USD $1199 for the Max at 256GB storage
Already delayed into mid-October or November on many combos
Started slipping within a couple hours
Kuo, 15 Pro Max showing higher demand than the iPhone 14 pro max last year, iPhone 15 pro is slightly lower. The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus demand seems about the same as last year.
The “other” stuff
New cases, not leather, FineWoven.
Warns that MagSafe adapters and accessories may leave “slight imprints” on the material
Emergency roadside assistance via Satellite coming to iPhone 14s and iPhone 15s in the US with service from AAA
Qi2 Wireless charging
iPhones will support it and the specification has been finalized, but no devices have been certified yet
Means, that for now, if you want 15W wireless charging you need to use MagSafe. Qi2 should support it eventually, but you’ll probably need to wait.
Can now charge the AirPods or Apple Watch directly from your iPhone 15 via a USB-C cable at 4.5W
Charging rates for new iPhones over USB-C still seem to max out at 27W
Cheaper back glass repairs on iPhone 15 Pro models
USD $169 or $199 to repair the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max with back glass damage. By comparison, these fees are set at $499 or $549 for the iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max.
AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C charging case
Case is not sold separately
Has better dust ingress protection than previous AirPods Pro 2
Worse, only the USB-C AirPods Pro 2 will support Apple Vision Pro lossless audio.
If you get a 128GB iPhone 15 Pro the max video recording to internal storage is capped at 1080p quality at 30 frames per second ProRes
Models with more internal storage can do 4K quality at 60 frames per second
The 128GB model will do the higher resolution when saving directly to external storage
USB-C EarPods
There is a $29 USD, the USB-C to Lightning Adapter
Non-US iPhone 15s across the line will still offer a physical SIM tray
New iCloud storage tiers, in US first
6TB - USD $29.99 per month
12TB - USD $59.99 per month
Basically… $10/mo/2TB
macOS Sonoma arrives September 26th
iOS 17, iPad OS 17, watchOS 9, tvOS 17 are all here now
Likely, according to Gurman, that USB-C versions of the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard will be released alongside the next iMac, probably next year.
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Feedback, commentary, opinions
Apple Event Feedback
Play comments from Gary
Clean iOS upgrade?
Ryan is planning to get an iPhone 15 Pro which will be his first new iPhone in 3 years. Currently rockin’ a 12 Pro
When upgrading from year to year he’s always just transferred all of my data, apps and settings to the new phone.
Now he’s wondering if it’s time for a “clean” install. Starting from scratch and re-installing apps and reconfiguring things “by hand”
He wants us to talk about the benefits of having a “fresh” start and any advice we might have for cleaning up our devices.
I used to be a big proponent of doing “clean” installs on the Mac every few years.
Good way to remove a lot of cruft and old stuff you no longer need
I’ve changed a bit
I also feel very differently about iOS
The convenience of just doing an iCloud backup and then letting the Phone transfer everything with a tap is magical
iOS I feel is also much more “siloed”. It’s a lot harder for data to spill all over the place. Not impossible, but I feel like it’s less of an issue.
I’m also even starting to feel that way with macOS.
On iOS I think likely the place where we wind up with the most “cruft” is Apps
I know I’m really guilty thanks to using the App Library. Apps are installed and go into purgatory on that last page. Only the apps I really use regularly get elevated to their own page for me.
I use “Offload Unused Apps"
Settings > App Store > Offload Unused Apps
This will remove apps that you’re not actively using but retain their documents and data. If you launch the app later it will re-download it from the App store
Review unused apps in Settings > iPhone Storage
Sort by Last Used date
Scroll to the bottom
Swipe left on an app and tap “Delete” or “Offload”
And using a Raspberry Pi4 to run it headless using open source RAID management software "mdadm”
And can use other Raspberry Pi apps, like Plex
Harrie has a Synology, but points out it’s a good idea to maybe factor the cost of electricity with a NAS
His Synology DS920+ runs at 40 Watts and hour, not too bad maybe but when the war in the Ukraine started energy prices increased and now the Synology runs about 400 euro a year if left on 24/7.
Many systems offer power management or lower power modes you might want to explore
Just something to think about.
Migrating Time Machine
Jose is wanting to update his Time Machine drive to get more storage and be able to maintain more version history.
Going from 500GB to 5TB
He asks, how can I transfer the existing backups to a new drive and maintain my history?
The article says MacOS Extended (Journaled) with GUID Partition Map scheme.
After it’s formatted you need to change the “Ignore ownership” setting
Select the volume in the Finder
Choose “Get Info…”
Under Sharing & Permissions, click the lock icon and then enter your password.
Deselect Ignore ownership on this volume.
Open ‘System Settings > General > Time Machine’
Disable “Backup Automatically”
In macOS Ventura or later, click Options, choose Manually from the "Back up frequency" pop-up menu, then click Done.
In the current Time Machine drive find the `Backups.backupdb` folder and copy that to the new drive.
You’ll need to enter your admin credentials to start the copy
Now wait… could take a long time if you have large backups
Set-up the new drive
Connect your new drive and choose System Settings > General > Time Machine from the main Apple menu.
Select the Backup Disk and choose your desired drive from the list.
Click Use Disk.
Select Back Up Automatically.
But now… with APFS and newer versions of macOS I don’t think it’s not really possible due to how Time Machine handles the data and linking.
One thing you might try is connecting and setting up the new drive as a Time Machine backup and letting it backup. That might bring over all the historical indexing?
Your best option is to start from scratch. You could keep your old Time Machine drive and backups around if you want that history.
