Signal: Apple Event Hidden Gems (and Coal) 📧
A special edition of Spyglass Signal today, as I furiously try to catch up on every little nook and cranny of Apple news hidden in yesterday's iPhone event. And, of course, I wrote 2,000-ish words covering my own high-level thoughts about the event, the announcements, the products, and the state of the company below...
M.G. Siegler
Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow...
Apple Notes...
- At last, a new MagSafe battery pack made by Apple! Oh wait, it only works with the iPhone Air apparently. Why? The camera "plateau" (the artist formerly known as "camera bump") on the other devices is too large. [Verge]
- The battery pack is slimmer than the old version (which Apple no longer makes), but it's thicker than... the iPhone Air itself. [Verge]
- Will you need the battery pack for the iPhone Air? While the stated battery life is certainly less than the other new models (though still "all day"), specs claim that the Air's battery should last just about as long as last year's iPhone 16 Pro, which is wild if true. Thanks, new Apple wireless chips? [9to5Mac]
- The $99 MagSafe battery pack will take the iPhone Air from 27 hours (when watching videos) to 40 hours. Which is one hour longer than the iPhone 17 Pro... [MacRumors]
- The iPhone 17 models (so, not the 'Air' which is technically not a '17') feature faster charging than previous models – up to 50% in 20 minutes with the right kind of power adapter. [MacRumors]
- All the models (including the Air) can also now support capture from the front and back cameras at the same time. Time for a Frontback comeback? [9to5Mac]
- With the new iPhone models, Apple is also touting major security enhancements in the form of Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), which, honestly, is hopefully as hard to penetrate as it is to parse. [Verge]
- Sure enough, while Apple isn't explicitly saying it, the iPhone models with the A19 Pro chip (including the 'Air') have 12GB of RAM – up from 8GB last generation, where the iPhone 17 remains. [MacRumors]
- The iPhone 17 Pro graphics may be faster than those found on the M2, which still powers many, many MacBooks, of course. Wow. [Xitter]
- While the iPhone Air weighs less than other recent iPhone models (as you'd hope given how thin it is), the other new iPhones are actually all a bit heavier. [MacRumors]
- Which I'm totally in favor of if it's mainly due to bigger batteries and thus, longer battery life (as seems to be the case).
- Apple is giving iPhone 14 and 15 users another free year of their satellite service, which has been free from the get-go, but always with the notion that they would eventually charge for it... [Verge]
- Maybe Elon and Starlink have changed that equation?
- While having an eSIM-only iPhone Air was clearly going to be a problem for Apple in China, they seem to have struck a deal with one carrier, China Unicom, to launch it... [MacRumors]
- This situation is tied to needing to link a phone to a government-issued ID in China, so China Unicom will require people do that in-store to activate the phone...
- Might this lead to a carrier switching surge as we saw in the early days of the iPhone when it rolled out with specific carrier partners? If it's deemed desirable enough, sure!
- FiveWoven lives! I mean, it probably shouldn't, but apparently Apple thinks something about the material is um, fine for iPhone wallets, just not full iPhone cases. [SixColors]
- The entire Apple Watch lineup has the same chip, the S10, which is the same chip as the last generation of Apple Watches also featured... [MacRumors]
- In the past, Apple has at least rebranded the chips with a new number even if the CPU was technically the same, so this is weird/interesting...
- The new foam ear tips of the AirPods Pro 3 apparently feel quite a bit different in-ear, so say some hands-on – er, ears-on – folks. [Engadget]
- While the AirPods Pro 3 have better battery life than the AirPods Pro 2, the case, which is smaller, actually has less battery life capacity. Sort of a weird trade-off to make. [9to5Mac]
- While not announced during the event, iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS26 – "Tahoe" – will officially launch next Monday, September 15. [MacRumors]
- And yes, tvOS 26 and watchOS 26 as well. Even visionOS 26 too for all 2,000 Vision Pro owners worldwide – I kid, I kid!
- Interesting that macOS is on that list as Apple often waits until a later fall event when they announce new Macs – which may suggest no new Macs this fall (which aligns with current rumors).
- You know when you connect a MagSafe case and it conveys the color of the case on screen? That's actually being put to use in the new iOS release candidate build: you can tint your icons to match your case color. Not my thing – still not into the tinting – but fun. [MacRumors]
- Orange is the new black. Both perhaps in fashion right now, and in the fact that there literally is no black variant of the iPhone Pro models. [Verge]
I Spy...
There's also the iPhone 16 at $699 and iPhone 16‌ Plus at $799 (if you really want a bigger screen than the iPhone 17 at the same price, I guess). I pretty much nailed the pricing line-up six months ago – not too hard to do except for the fact that the Air was still obviously just rumored at that point and I suspected they might try to bump it up $100 versus the price that the 'Plus' was sold at – which is exactly what they did. And that also let them bump the entry 'Pro' from $999 to $1,099 – but they did so alongside a bump to 256GB minimum storage.
And that leaves a hole at the $899 price point. Perhaps this year's iPhone Air will fill that next year? Speaking of next year, I'm more curious if my guess on 'iPhone Fold' pricing ends up being right as well: $1,999. Which, incidentally is now the price of a fully maxed-out iPhone 17 Pro Max (with the new 2TB storage option).