At 1:00 a.m. on March 10, 2015, Apple officially announced the price and launch time of the Apple Watch at the press conference of the Fangcao Art Center in San Francisco, and released a new MacBook notebook.
First, the most important
Apple Watch： The sports edition starts at 2588 yuan, and the rose gold edition starts at 126800 yuan. It is reserved from April 10 and will be sold on April 24. The first batch of sales areas include mainland China.
New MacBook: The 12 inch Retina display screen has no fan, and the body is only equipped with a five in one USB-C interface. It has three colors like the iPhone, gold, silver and gray. The weight is less than 1 kg, and the starting price is 9288 yuan. It will be sold in the United States from April 10, and the launch time in China is unknown.
At the same time, Apple has released the iOS 8.2 system with the Apple Watch app pre installed. Now you can open the iPhone and iPad to receive update alerts. As a reference, my iPhone 5s update file is about 440 MB in size. The screenshot is the first screen of the Apple Watch application. After pairing, you can install a proprietary application for the watch through iPhone. Since the Apple Watch itself has no networking function, it requires an iPhone 5 and newer models to be used together. Android users go to bed.
Back to the press conference
Apple has held many events at the Green Grass Art Center in San Francisco, the most famous of which is the iPad launch conference hosted by Jobs in 2010. Apple official said in the live broadcast, "full of memories, full of stories, full of impatience..."
Apple Store, 21 stores in China
The opening video introduces the grand opening of the Apple Store in Hangzhou West Lake in January 2015. This store has made new breakthroughs in architectural design and has been published in international media for many times. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said that in the past month, Apple has opened 6 new retail stores in China, with a total number of 21 stores. Apple has 453 retail stores in the world, covering 16 countries. Last quarter, the number of customers reached 120 million, which is equivalent to that each store received 270000 customers.
Apple TV new channel HBO NOW
Tim Cook invited Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO, to introduce the new channels of Apple TV in the United States: HBO NOW。 The subscription price of HBO NOW channel is $14.99 per month, free of charge for the first month. At the same time, the price of Apple TV, which has 25 million users, was reduced from $99 to $69. By contrast, China's TV box is still unable to provide live TV programs due to policy restrictions, let alone live TV services customized for TV boxes.
IPhone sales exceeded 700 million
Tim Cook introduced the achievements of iPhone: the total sales of iPhone launched in June 2007 exceeded 700 million. Just based on the large number of users, Apple Pay has been recognized by more than 2500 banks, CarPlay has been adopted by major automobile manufacturers, HomeKit has become a compatible standard for home devices, HealthKit helps more people manage health data... In this iOS 8.2 update, the system's preset "Health" application is the software that has been improved most, except for the Apple Watch application, and now supports the input of personal height, weight and other data.
IPhone for medical research
Surprisingly, Apple spent a lot of time in this press conference to introduce the use of iPhone in medical research. Apple invited its colleague Jeff Williams to the stage to introduce the beginning and end of the research and development of "ResearchKit, a software infrastructure specially built for medical research". Several research institutions have used ResearchKit to study various difficult and severe diseases, including Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University in China. The first five apps designed based on ResearchKit are mainly used for various researches on Parkinson's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. They will be available for download in the Apple Store from now on. ResearchKit will be released in open source form in April.
New MacBook: Redefining Notebook
Cook said that Apple will apply what it learned from designing the iPhone and iPad to the design of the new generation MacBook notebook computer and decide to do something ambitious and bold - redefine the notebook computer.
In fact, the MacBook Air launched in 2008 has led the development direction of notebook computers to a large extent. After seven years, Apple decided to subvert itself. This is also what Apple is best at. It is one of the important reasons why Apple is different. Since the 1970s, there have been many "loyal fans".
Like the iPhone and iPad, The new generation MacBook (the official website calls it "the new MacBook") benefits from Intel's new ultra low power processor Broadwell architecture Core-M, which eliminates fans and can work quietly.
Like the iPhone and iPad, The new generation MacBook takes the lead in using the five in one USB-C interface on the computer, charging, data transmission, and connection to the display... all have only one positive and negative pluggable interface. Strictly speaking, the headphone jack on the right side of the fuselage should be two connectors.
Like the iPhone and iPad, The new generation MacBook uses a high-resolution screen, 12 inch 2304 × 1400, ppi 226。
Like the iPhone and iPad, The new generation MacBook is available in gold silver gray.
However, what Lei Feng really cares about is that Apple does not use touch screens on the new generation of laptops, but continues to make technological innovations on touch panels. The new Force Touch touch panel with pressure detection makes light touch and pressing become two different "gestures", and corresponds to new software functions - for example, pressing activates the dictionary word picking function, which previously required three finger light touch. It is worth mentioning that the new technology will also be used in the 2015 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro.
Summary The new MacBook: 12 inch Retina display screen, no fan, only one five in one USB-C interface on the body, three colors of gold and silver like the iPhone, weighing less than 1 kg, starting at 9288 yuan. It will be sold in the United States from April 10, and the time of listing in China is unknown.
Apple Watch： Starting from 2588 yuan, China is among the first countries to launch
If MacBook is the first protagonist of this conference, then the second protagonist is the Apple Watch that more people expect. However, at the launch of the iPhone 6 in September last year, Apple has introduced the functions and features of the Apple Watch in detail. This press conference is more about supplementary introduction, as well as announcing its price and launch time.
Apple Watch has three series with different materials and two styles with different sizes of 38mm and 42mm:
The Sport version of Apple Watch has an aluminum shell, but does not use a sapphire glass screen, that is, the Beggar version, with a small size of 2588 yuan and a large size of 2988 yuan.
The regular Apple Watch has a stainless steel shell and a sapphire glass screen, that is, the middle version, with a small size of 4188 yuan and a large size of 4588 yuan.
The Edition version of Apple Watch is a gold or rose gold watch case with a sapphire screen, that is, the Tuhao version, with a minimum of 74800 yuan and a maximum of 126800 yuan.
The price of various universal watchbands ranges from 398 yuan to 3588 yuan.
In terms of function, the Apple Watch can answer the phone, and its technical implementation should be the same as the Handoff function used by MacBook and iPad to answer the phone. With the built-in Camera Remote, this app can be connected to the iSight camera on the iPhone, turning the Apple Watch into a viewfinder.
Kevin Lynch, an Apple executive who was responsible for demonstrating the Apple Watch, demonstrated how to use the Apple Watch to send and receive WeChat at the press conference. Through the interface, you can see the "circle of friends" of WeChat on the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch app has been built into iOS 8.2 and can be downloaded from today. This app provides an app zone on the Apple Watch. You can download new apps for the Apple Watch through iPhone.
For the problem of battery life that many people are concerned about, Apple officially said that "under normal circumstances, its battery life is up to 18 hours", that is, like the iPhone, it also needs to be charged every day - through a magnetic charging module, which is very convenient.
Summary Apple Watch: The sports version starts at 2588 yuan, and the rose gold version starts at 126800 yuan. It will be reserved from April 10 (or tried in the Apple Store), and will be launched on April 24. The first batch of products will be sold in mainland China.
summary
The new generation MacBook is a notebook computer truly born for mobile Internet. In it, we see Apple's vigorous innovation ability and ambition to continue to change the world. (by Hao Xiaoru)
Apple Watch essentially shares some functions and attention for the iPhone, so that people don't have to take out their phones all the time. In terms of the choice of functions, it retains more functions and more complex operations than Google's Android Wear. Perhaps this is the prelude to Apple's plan to subvert the iPhone.
If you are using an iPhone 5 or a newer iPhone, don't forget that on April 10, next month today, you can pre order Apple Watch on Apple's official website. Gold and stainless steel can't afford it, and we can't afford aluminum.
Appendix: Video review of the official whole press conference
