It's the second week in September, a traditional time for Apple to host an event and show off new products. This time around, CEO Tim Cook unveiled some more details and trailers for TV shows the company has produced for the rollout of its Netflix competitor Apple TV+, as well as a new 10.2-inch iPad, Apple Watch Series 5, and the new iPhone 11 models that are just supercharged versions of the ones that came out in 2018.
Apple had its biggest event of 2019 back in March, when it announced Apple TV+ for the first time, and invited a bevy of Hollywood names — and Oprah! — to its shiny new Cupertino campus. For this morning's event, Apple TV+ was the top-line item as Cook kicked things off, announcing that November 1 is the official launch date, and the price will be a mere $4.99 per month. The big pitch: All new iPhone and iPad purchases are going to come with a free one-year subscription to Apple TV+ — a move clearly meant to boost the company's flagging iPhone sales.
Cook bragged from the stage in Cupertino that the trailer for the Jennifer Aniston/Steve Carrell/Reese Witherspoon show The Morning Show is "One of the most-watched trailers of any TV series ever," which... I guess we have to take his word for it. He then played the sweeping, should-we-say epic? trailer for Jason Momoa-led futurist series See. (Long story short: In a post-apocalypse where people are living in huts, most human beings are blind, until suddenly a couple of babies are born who can see, and all hell breaks loose. Also: Alfre Woodard.)
Trailer for Apple's new streaming show 'SEE' starring Jason Momoa. Thoughts? #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/mKfxdhHJrg
— Lights, Camera, Pod (@LightsCameraPod) September 10, 2019
Also, Apple Arcade, the company's gaming subscription service, launches September 19 for $4.99 per month.
For Apple Watch, the new Series 5 has a display that's always on — i.e. just like an analog watch, which doesn't go black — with the same all-day, 18-hour battery life. Prices start at $399 for the GPS model, and Apple Watch Series 3 is being discounted to $199.
In the new iPhone model, iPhone 11, there are new colors (green! yellow!), and a more sophisticated camera with an "ultra-wide" lens capability, a night mode that comes on automatically, and some new portrait options like a "mono" one that erases backgrounds and turns them white. Also, "ultra-wide" works for video too, with 4K, and the front camera now takes "slofies," i.e. slo-mo selfie videos.
The company is touting that iPhone 11 has the highest quality video camera of any smartphone ever.
And there's faster Face ID, the new A13 Bionic chip (the "fastest CPU ever in a smartphone"), and a battery with an hour more of life than the iPhone XR. The biggest news: It's starting at $699, way down from the thousand-dollar figure that came with the XR.
But the final big announcement was iPhone 11 Pro — the first phone that Apple has made with the "Pro" label. The back has a new matte glass finish, the body is made of surgical-grade steel, there are three 12MP cameras instead of two (telephoto, wide, and ultra-wide), and an upgraded display they're calling Super Retina XDR. And of course there's one step above, the iPhone Pro Max. There's also a new neural engine for the camera that they're calling Deep Fusion which is being called "computational photography mad science."
Pricing for the Pro model starts at $999, and goes up to $1299 for the largest Pro Max.
Pre-orders for all the new phones start Friday, and they will all ship starting September 20.