(Photo by Stephen Lam/Getty Images)
Apple is hosting a big event in San Francisco today to show off what is widely expected to be the debut of the Apple Watch, its first major innovation since the iPad. Follow along with us, as our tech team brings you the latest from the event.
Highlights: HBO Now is an Apple TV exclusive | Apple’s new 2-lb. MacBook | Apple Watch features
Here’s the breakdown:
Watch Sport: $349 for the smaller screen; the larger screen will be $399.
The Apple Watch (mid-tier): $549 to $1049 for the smaller screen, while the larger screen will be $599 to $1099. The price depends on the type of band.
The Watch Edition (in 18-k gold): $10,000 in select stores only. Wowsers.
Cook said the Apple Watch is to be sold at “select retail stores,” leaving it unclear where shoppers will be able to buy the device when it goes on sale April 24th outside of Apple’s own fleet of stores.
There has been speculation that perhaps big-box retailers such as Best Buy are not the right environment to sell this product–especially the high-end version of it, which costs $10,000.
Perhaps a better environment to sell such a product would be an upscale retailer such as Nordstrom, Barney’s New York or Bergdorf Goodman. Reuters has reported that Nordstrom “has engaged in discussions” with Apple. In the same report, Reuters said that Saks 5th Avenue and Bloomingdale’s said they had no immediate plans to carry the watch.
No concerts of free albums this time. Heading to the hands-on area now. Thanks for following along, everyone!
He’s going over everything we heard about today, the Macs, the research framework and — of course — the Watch.
“All of our energy is on making the best products in the world that can power people, that enrich their lives,” Cook says.
Now we’re getting to breaking news:
The mid-tier watch will be $549 to $1049, while the larger edition will be $599 to $1099.
The “Edition” will be $10,000, and will be in limited quantities and available only in select stores.
Pre-orders start on April 10.
Critics of Steve Jobs’ infamous “reality distortion field” may see some parallels here with Tim Cook’s claim that the Apple Watch can last for 18 hours without a recharge.
Until we actually get to test this under real-world conditions, we won’t know whether Cook’s claims are accurate. He could pluck virtually any number out of the air and claim that “your mileage may vary” — and he wouldn’t be wrong.
Cook is back on stage, talking about the way you get all your apps on your watch — through your iPhone.
There will be a special section of the App Store just for watch apps, but you’ll have to download and curate apps through your phone.
He also said that the watch has “All-Day Battery Life,” which Cook defines as 18 hours. It charges with a magnetic charger.
Having to charge every day might be annoying– another thing to have to plug in every night.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
Lynch has taken a call from his dog groomer, called Uber, promised you can use your Watch as a hotel room key, and showed off a feature that lets you scan your watch in the security line at the airport. As one may have expected, this is all about explaining ways the Watch will make your life easier.
Apple’s clearly put a lot of work into building up partnerships here. Lynch has dropped a ton of names — SPG, Shazam, ESPN, Alarm.com — presumably to make sure consumers know this product has plenty of features at launch.
Via live stream, Lynch even opened his garage door from the stage in real-time for his daughter.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
I’m on the record as being a touchscreen skeptic on smartwatches generally. But in the touchscreen, Apple benefits tremendously from the fact that you can customize the watch face. If you don’t like a traditional analog clock? Switch it to another view. Or add elements that give you more information.
Apple’s clearly hoping that this flexibility will encourage adoption. Sticking with a choice of one or two watch faces runs the risk of deterring folks who might be on the fence.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
Okay, so we’re not all marathoners and models. So Cook is now moving into the more difficult part of the presentation: the sell to the average consumer.
He starts by pointing out that you can put all kinds of apps on the Watch, including those from ESPN and Facebook to provide convenient news and social updates.
Kevin Lynch, VP of technology for Apple, is on stage to walk us through the daily use features. Nothing ground-breaking yet: checking stocks, Twitter trends and flight info. It will also remind you to stand up if you’ve been sitting too long. (Which is about how I feel right now.)
You can also access Siri by taping the “crown” or the knob on the side of the phone — as per usual she can check weather, set up reminders, etc. You can also get your messaging apps hooked up to watch – Lynch demonstrated WeChat on stage, showing again the Apple focus on the Chinese market.
And, of course, you can also use the Watch with Apple Pay.
Hayley noted earlier that shares of major watchmakers were down before the Apple event. Now that trend is deepening — Swatch, Movado and Fossil are all still trending downward:
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
Cook also touted some features we already knew about, such as the ability to share doodles, taps and your heartbeat with your friends. (Gimmicky? Sure. But Cook is pretty excited.)
It’s also a fitness device, of course, with tools that let you know your step count, how long you’ve been sitting, standing and moving and — of course — your heartbeat. Apple tapped health advocate and model Christy Turlington Burns to star in a video and appear on stage to show off the features of the watch. She’s the first person to run a half-marathon using an Apple Watch.
She said she used it to measure her pace and monitor her health signs while running a race at Mt. Kilimanjaro.
She also makes a case for the Apple Watch as fashion, saying that the band she’s wearing on stage is her “fashion” band.
As a health advocate and a model, she’s actually a pretty smart pick for Apple to talk about the device. She’ll also do a blog for Apple about her next race.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
Tim Cook is back to talk about the Apple Watch, which he calls Apple’s most personal device yet.
“It’s not just with you, it’s on you,” he says.
Cook’s showing off a number of different faces, including a Mickey Mouse face for fun. He also notes that you can pin certain apps to the corners of the watch, such as a stopwatch or your next appointment. You can also quickly access apps by swiping up from the bottom of the face.
“You can also check your heart rate,” Cook said, standing in front of a measurement that says 60 bpm. “This is clearly not mine at this point in time,” he added with a grin.
You can also grab calls on your watch.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since I was 5 years old!” Cook said.
He’s clearly just getting started.
As part of its new laptop, Apple is collapsing many of the ports you typically get with a computer into one. Soon, connectors for power, external displays, USB drives and other peripherals that need hooking up to your Mac will share a single shape.
This raises immediate questions about how you have your Mac hooked up to power at the same time that you want to, say, hook it up to a monitor or transfer files to an external drive. But more broadly, the USB Type-C connector — which Apple says is going to become standard across the computing industry — could cut down on all the separate components that are necessary today to serve different types of devices.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
One port to rule them all.
The USB-C port on the new MacBook acts not only as its power cord, but also functions as the USB port, HDMI port, Lightning port, and VGA port.
It’s also reversible, so you won’t ever have to fumble with the cord to make sure it’s going in the right way. Of course, having only one port can also be pretty inconvenient. If you have multiple peripherals, I’m not totally sure what you’re supposed to do. I also see a boon for adapter makers.
The new laptop will ship on April 10 for $1299. And, a color update: it comes in silver, space gray and gold.
Basically, Apple is getting to have HBO on an exclusive basis primarily for the Game of Thrones season premiere, and that’s about it. BuzzFeed reports:
per HBO rep: “the exclusive agreement with Apple is for 3 months among new digital distributors.” http://t.co/HX6K5w2bCc
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) March 9, 2015
Dear All Those People Who Keep Asking Me When They Should Get A New MacBook,
Now might be a good time, if you want a Mac. This new notebook has a 12-inch retina display, is thinner than the MacBook Air and has a redesigned keyboard, a “Force” touch pad that is supposed to feel the same no matter where you press on the touchpad.
Still no price.
(Photo by Hayley Tsukayama)
Tim Cook is back, saying he’ll talk about “…the Mac.” With a grin. He knows we aren’t here necessarily for Mac news, but they’re going to give it to us anyway.
And this is a very thin MacBook.
“I can’t even feel it!” says Cook from the stage, holding the new MacBook. It does look ridiculous thin, and is just 13.1 mm thin. It’s 24 percent thinner than the 11-inch MacBook Air.
It comes in gold, too, for when you really want to bling.
Looks like the arrangement — not sure how long it’ll last — is angering people who aren’t already hooked into the Apple ecosystem.
$15 for standalone HBO sounds like a lot, but it’s not that much more than you pay to add to a cable package
— DL (@DrunkenLezzie) March 9, 2015
Apple’s taking a little detour now from the product sales, announcing a new program for medical. On stage now: Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, to talk about Apple’s involvement in medical research.
“One of the biggest challenges researchers have is recruiting,” Williams said, outlining the problems that researchers face in collecting accurate, objective data on a regular basis from patients. Users provide which research they would like to participate in and how it’s shared. Apple will not see your data, Williams vowed.
Researchers can tap the iPhone and HealthKit as a diagnostic tool, when patients allow. For example, there’s a tool that lets you test how quickly those diagnosed with Parkinson’s can tap their phones — to measure tremors — or check the evenness of their walking gait. Apple also worked with Mass General to measure glucose levels, and a heart health app with Stanford.
There’s no clear info yet on how FDA regulation applies in this instance, though the agency has proposed that it regulate apps that diagnose or claim to be part of a treatment program. The apps Apple described on stage seemed to be more about measuring statistics that you can use to inform the management of care, meaning that it probably won’t run into those regulations — but we’ll have to see.
ResearchKit joins HealthKit and HomeKit as another developer framework from Apple, which has been building up its partnerships with other industries for more business and enterprise applications rather than focus on consumers alone. ResearchKit is getting released next month and is open source.
The fact that HBO is partnering exclusively with Apple gives Apple a huge advantage over its competitors like Roku. The set-top box market is an increasingly crowded place, and it’s often hard to distinguish among them. This is a game-changer.
We’ll just have to see how long the exclusive arrangement will last.
Tim Cook: “Home Kit is changing the way we control our devices at home.”
It’s easy to see how the Apple Watch in particular would tie into this universe — allowing you to use your watch as a key to unlock doors with as you approach, or acting as a new input method that lets you use gestures to control various interfaces.
Cook is touting iPhone sales, saying that Apple’s growing at twice the rate of the industry. He also said that the iPhone has a 99 percent customer satisfaction rating, which he’s very proud of.
He’s also talking Apple Pay, bragging about the growth of its partnership ecosystem, paying particular attention to the popularity of Apple Pay on vending machines.
Having actually used Apple Pay, I do have to say that NFC payments at vending machines is pretty darn convenient.
Tim Cook just announced that Apple TV would drop to $69, from $99. No new hardware or software discussed.
Those who are holding out hope that Apple will eventually release a brand new TV got this tantalizing line: “Apple will reinvent the way you watch TV, and this is just the beginning.”
Richard Plepler, chief executive officer of HBO, is on stage to say Apple TV will be its exclusive launch partner for its streaming service.
That’s huge.
Apple TV has been sort of neglected in recent years, despite being a product that’s in a very hot product category right now. (Everyone wants in on the sweet, sweet streaming.) To have HBO’s standalong service on Apple TV — as well as iPhones and iPads — is a big content boon for Apple, though it’s not clear how long the exclusive arrangement will last.
The product is coming in April for $14.99 per month, and if you subscribe in April you will get the first month free in time for the Game of Thrones premiere.
As it has almost every year for the past few years, Apple is again signaling its commitment to the Asian market with a promotional video of its new retail store in Hangzhou, China.
“It’s an incredible place,” says Tim Cook.
Apple is kicking off this event with a video, showing off its new store in China in a city called West Lake. Apple executive Tim Cook took to the stage to tout Apple’s classic store design, which of course may have to change when the Watch shows up.
“They are the heart and soul of our retail team,” Cook says of the stores. Apple has opened six stores in China in the past six weeks and plans to open 40 by mid next year.
He says over 120 million customers visited the stores last quarter.
On the livestream, we’re watching roving cameras, multiple viewing angles — it’s like following the Oscars. This bodes well for the main event; last year, Apple’s video was plagued by a Chinese audio track that made the English presentation almost impossible to watch.
People are pouring through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the event, which is set to start in about 10 minutes.
Already spotted? Apple’s head designer Jony Ive, who’s up front and sporting — what else? — an Apple watch on his wrist.
There’s also more than just the typical tech crowd here in the press section, with journalists from magazines such as Vogue here to cover the event in addition to the usual suspects.
Hello from the courtyard at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts!
We’re checked in and waiting to go inside. It’s a pretty nice day here in San Francisco, though I see it’s two degrees warmer in D.C. (I’m still happy to have ditched my coat.)
There’s lots of chatter here as the people who pay the closest attention to Apple are all gathered in one place — from where I’m eavesdropping…er, standing … it sounds mostly like curiosity over what the Watch’s price will be.
The center isn’t as decked out on the outside as I’ve seen for other Apple events, but people here are definitely excited to hear what will come out of the day’s event.
The full list by Emergent is here, and it’ll get updated as they (and the rest of us, too) learn more about what Apple is unveiling today. A $4,500 price point for the gold-plated watch?!
As we wait for the doors to open at Yerba Buena, get caught up with a few of the things we’re keeping an eye on during today’s event. Chief among them will be details about the Apple Watch’s battery. I’ve previously explained why battery life is such a high priority for smartwatches, and how the Apple Watch’s touchscreen undermines it.
You’ll also want to listen for pricing — it’ll be a sign of the kind of market Apple’s going after with its higher-end watches. If they’re priced high, says The Switch’s Hayley Tsukayama, it’ll be a clue that Apple views its watch more as a fashion accessory than a piece of technology, with big implications for the business and other watchmakers.
Finally, we’ll want to know what kind of features this thing has that sets it apart from all the other smartwatches on the market. What kind of sensors and wireless technologies will developers be able to access and design for? How flexible and future-proof will it be?
(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
Ahead of the big Apple Watch event today, shares of watchmakers were down slightly this morning. Movado — which makes watches for brands such as Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger and Coach — was down over 2 percent ahead of the 1 p.m. event; Fossil was down just .38 percent in late-morning trading. Even shares of LVMH, which counts Tag Heuer and Bulgari among its brands, was trading down .60 percent on the exchange in Paris.
If you’re interested in just how much Apple will disrupt the traditional watch industry, keep an eye on these stocks, especially Movado and Fossil, which cater to buyers looking for a $500 or $600 watch. Companies such as LVMH and Swatch are better insulated against an upstart such as Apple, because they make a wide range of products beyond watches.
You may see these stocks move once the prices of the two more expensive editions of the Apple Watch are announced. The high-end one, made of 18K gold, could fetch a price tag of thousands of dollars, maybe even a whopping $10,000.
Um, I probably won’t be buying that one anytime soon.
