Apple introduces real-time collaboration for iWork alongside new iPhone 7 - and wireless EarPods
Apple Watch Series 2 also unveiled in long-awaited launch - but no new Macs unveiled
Apple has introduced real-time collaboration with its iWork cross-platform suite of office productivity tools, enabling people to work collaboratively on the same iWork documents across iPhone, iPad, Mac laptops and iMac desktops.
Susan Prescott, vice president of worldwide apps product marketing at Apple, demonstrated the new feature by putting together a new slide deck live on stage with colleagues located elsewhere.
At the same time, the company also announced a new programme, called ‘Everyone Can Code' to encourage children to learn to code - or, at least, to learn to code using Apple's own Swift development language.
The first element in this initiative is the Swift Playground, unveiled in June, which is intended to teach the basics of Swift in a simple, fun and interactive way.
The main event
It came as the company also - as expected - unveiled its new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
As rumoured, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus feature a dual-lens camera - one telephoto and one wide-angle. The dual lens system is intended to improve the zoom range and image quality. It remains, though, at 12-megapixels, but purportedly offers a six element lens with a wider colour gamut and four-LED ‘True Tone' flash for better evening and night photography.
A key feature highlighted by CEO Tim Cook is that the new devices will offer improved water resistance and longer battery life.
"iPhone is the industry gold standard, the phone by which all other smartphones are compared," claimed Cook kicking off the launch of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus to whoops and hollers from the assembled audience. He described the new device as "the world's most advanced smartphone. It's the best iPhone we have ever created. This is iPhone 7," said Cook.
Chief design officer Jony Ive described it as "the most deliberate evolution of our original, founding design".
The exterior design features an aluminium body and a formed sheet of glass.
"Our obsession remains to continuously simplify and improve," said Ive, "from sculpting the camera housing directly out of the aluminium body to embedding the antenna within the enclosure, essentially making it disappear, each refinement serves to bring absolute unity and efficiency to the design."
As expected (and about time too), the company has dropped the inadequate 16GB base model in favour of a line-up that includes 32GB, 128GB and 256GB of storage. Black and jet black have been added to the colour choices of both the 7 and 7 Plus, but are only available with 128GB and 256GB storage models.
Their respective weights is 128 grams and 188 grams. Water resistance has been improved and the devices are now rated IP67 splash, water and dust resistant.
The Apple A10 microprocessor
At the heart of the devices is an Apple A10 microprocessor, a quad-core 64-bit ARM architecture-based part with an embedded M10 motion coprocessor. The device features two cores intended to handle demanding tasks, such as gaming, along with two more energy efficient (ie: slower) cores to handle everyday tasks. Apple claims 40 per cent more CPU performance and 50 per cent better graphics performance compared to the Apple A9.
Apple introduces real-time collaboration for iWork alongside new iPhone 7 - and wireless EarPods
Apple Watch Series 2 also unveiled in long-awaited launch - but no new Macs unveiled
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, highlighted a number of key enhancements, including to the ‘home' button, making it force sensitive, which will work alongside a "new generation" haptic-feedback engine, providing feedback for notifications, messages and other features.
The device had been completely re-engineered from the ground up to enable the company to achieve its IP67 compliance, claimed Schiller, while the camera is "entirely new", too, he added. It includes improved optical image stabilisation features, and a wider f1.8 aperture lens.
The iPhone, added Cook, provides users with the "best experience available" by tightly integrating hardware, software and services.
The new devices are open for pre-order from Friday and will be available from 16 September and, as expected, will come with headphones that plug-in to the Lightning port. While a dongle to enable standard headphones to be plugged in will be supplied, Apple is no doubt hoping that users will buy a pair of the wireless EarPods it unveiled at the same time.
The twin decisions might address widely held misgivings over the removal of the headphone socket, a decision taken partly in order to improve the iPhone's water resistance. The new EarPods will be available from October.
iOS 10 and HomeKit
While many of the new features in the forthcoming iOS 10 operating system upgrade have already been well-trailed, Cook claimed that its release would be the biggest iOS release ever. "It's jam packed with new features to enrich your daily experiences. You can simply lift your iPhone to wake it; we've added Siri capabilities to apps from the app store, so I can say ‘give me a lift to SFO' [San Francisco Airport] - you can book a ride using just your voice."
The keyboard has been improved with machine learning to improve its contextual prediction capabilities, while Apple Maps - the focus of a débâcle when it was introduced in 2012 - "has been beautifully redesigned" and now offers to make reservations or book rides in apps without leaving the Maps app.
Other features of the launch included HomeKit, Apple's home automation tools, which can be run from apps on the iPhone. "Virtually every major manufacturer of home automation devices now supports HomeKit," claimed Cook.
However, Apple users crying out for new and upgraded Macs and iMacs will have been disappointed with the lack of any new announcements, especially given the various rumours that have circulated in recent months - and the age of some of Apple's traditional computing devices.