Notes on Apple’s ”Awe dropping” event

Right on schedule, this year’s Apple September announcements arrived in yesterday’s “Awe Dropping” event, bringing updates to iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watches.

Everything announced seems like a solid update. It’s great to see AirPods Pro 3 get next-gen noise cancellation, better ear fit with new foam-infused ear tips in five sizes, and heart rate monitoring, and the satellite connectivity in the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is a welcome addition to an adventure watch.

As to the iPhones, the new iPhone Air is very cool looking. I find it a really tempting design and I’m sure it will feel really great in hand, and it’s great that bumpers are back, though I want to hear how battery life actually works out in the real world. Of course, I’m camera obsessed enough that I’ll probably skip the Air and upgrade instead to the iPhone 17 Pro — especially now that both sizes feature the same camera specs. And, I’m actually glad that they’ve taken the Pro back to aluminum for heat dissipation. Sure, titanium is nice, but my current iPhone 15 Pro definitely feels the heat in the summer.

There’s always something that only gets mentioned in the supporting material that I get excited about which isn’t ever shown in the events. This time, it’s that Final Cut Camera 2.0 brings open gate recording as well as the ProRes RAW and genlock support that were mentioned. Of course, most people won’t care about being able to do open gate recording — which is where video is captured using the entire 4:3 sensor so that you can choose your crop later — but for those that do, it’s really exciting. It’s the kind of detail I wish I had on some of my big Sony cameras.

One other thing that wasn’t mentioned at the event is that release candidates were released for all the operating systems. I’ve sat out of most of the beta cycle this time, but now that the RCs are out, I’m diving fully in across all my devices. And… I kind of like a lot of what they did with Liquid Glass on iOS in the end. Certainly, I like it more than I thought I would after seeing the demos during WWDC. On the other hand, the big rounded corners on windows in macOS are going to take getting used to.

The event itself was like all of Apple’s events of late, shot on iPhone, tightly edited, and super-produced with swoopy aerial transitions. It’s nice to see them using locations outside of Apple Park, including Apple’s signature stores in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, and Brooklyn. They have built up a really amazing portfolio of architecture and it’s cool to see them showing it off. On the other hand, it’d be nice to see Apple break a bit out of their current presentation formula. They’ve perfected it to the point where it’s missing something. A je ne sais quoi. They lack emotion and are too clinical now.

But even with that critique, this event has become part of the end-of-summer and back-to-school feel of September. And this year, everything I’m interested in gets a solid update. I have quite a few friends that work at Apple, and I’m always happy to see the things they work on come out.