Sanity Returns – Day after Apple Event

It’s inevitable when you’re watching the Apple event you’re thinking “Oh, that looks nice I’ll have one of those.” Everything looks so lovely and the adverts they show are just so beautiful. The lure of something pleasurable, new and sexy and you’re looking in the Apple Store to see how much it would cost. The Apple iPhone I would want would cost me just under €1000 and that’s with a trade-in of my iPhone 10. It’s kind of crazy in these days when the new iPhone is only going to give you a small update on the previous one. There is only so much they can do to improve tech when the law of diminishing returns comes into effect. You can’t make it any thinner. There’s not much scope for changing the shape of it. The processor can only get a tiny bit faster. How many more cameras can you add to it?

I promised myself last year I would stick with this iPhone XS Max for at least three years. It does everything I need it to do and probably more. I really don’t need to change for a new and only slightly improved version. The iPhone photography might have improved with the extra lens in the camera bump. How often is that going to come into play and be worth spending a whole pile of money? Never mind, it was good to dream and to look at the new products.

It’s the iPhone 11 Pro which takes my fancy although the iPhone 11 looks pretty good too. As Apple says, it has just the right amount of everything. It does iPhone 11 for a good price too. Most people won’t need to get the top of the range iPhone 11 Pro.

Series 5 Apple Watch

I’m working with a Series 3 Apple Watch and I use it every single day. I use it for sending and receiving messages. I love it for giving me the notifications of emails arriving. It’s great to have it for the reminders from the Day One application. I am a fanatical journal writer and like to make sure I have something new in the application every single day. The Apple Watch also tells me when Day One has previous posts in my journal. It’s great to look back and see what happened on this day going back over six years.

The Apple Watch is brilliant for the health features. I use it to keep track of my sleep as well as for standing, exercise and how many calories I’ve burned. The ECG capabilities of the newer models would be useful, but not absolutely necessary. Not necessary to dive in with both feet and get the version which connects to the mobile network. The watch I have still has a good battery inside it. One of the reasons I changed to the series 3 was because the original watch had a battery which was getting a little tired. I easily could talk myself out of buying the new Series 5 Apple watch. I have to admit though, I’m still tempted to get the one with the bigger screen. The new Apple Watch also does that thing where it’s shows the time constantly rather than you having to lift your wrist to see. The physical action of moving the watch into view does a quick enough job of showing the time. I’m sure I could get away without the new and improved time telling capabilities. Then again, the newer watch with a bigger screen does show more information and that would be super. It’s good to see you can go to the Apple Watch Studio in the Apple Store and choose the exact watch strap you’d like to go with your new Series 5 Apple Watch.

The New Apple iPad

The new entry point Apple iPad is not one I would buy. I’m happy with my large iPad Pro. Occasionally I think it would be handy to have a smaller second one for carrying around the house. The iPad I have sometimes feels a little bit heavy. I do carry it around quite a lot as I move around from room to room. The new entry level iPad is going to be a good iPad for people coming in to test the water of the Apple ecosystem. The new iPad is priced well and people will probably buy it rather than going for something inferior. You really don’t want to see the look on the face of the kid who was hoping for an iPad and gets an Android device instead. You can even get one of those folding keyboard covers and an Apple Pencil to go with it. It is the series 1 of the Apple Pencil, but that’s still good. This new iPad has all the features coming with iPad OS and is an excellent tool.