All eyes were focused on the watch, but Apple CEO Tim Cook also unveiled a new MacBook and announced other deals at a company event on Monday in San Francisco.
The watch
Apple calls it “the most personal Apple device ever.” And potentially the most expensive.
Starts at $349 with Apple Watch Sport, aimed at fitness enthusiasts, in anodised aluminium in silver or space gray, with colourful band choices. Apple Watch stainless steel starts at $549, in traditional and space black. And for those who eat cake - Apple Watch Edition, an 18-carat yellow or rose gold version with a starting price of $10,000.
Includes – swipe-able “glances” that show you the information you use most; customisable faces for the dial of your choice, and lots of features for both fitness buffs and others who need a reminder to get out of their chairs.
“Taptic feedback” (a subtle tap) notifies wearers of new emails and other messages. By tapping a finger on the watchface, wearers can control music, send Instagram photos, sketch and send a dynamic drawing to a friend, and see who’s calling. Return calls with voice or a voice-to-text messaging functionality.
Substitutes for - A hotel room key, boarding pass, even your wallet Apple Pay promises to enable grocery store checkouts with a single tap of your wrist.
“All-day” battery promises about 18 hours of life. Charge it by snapping a magnetic charger to the back of the watch.
Pre-orders begin on April 10. In-store sales start on April 24 in the U.S., Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and Britain.
Shiny happy MacBook
Weighing in at just 2 pounds and with no fan or other moving parts, it’s the lightest, thinnest and quietest Apple laptop yet, with “all-day” battery life, which Apple defines as 9 hours of web browsing and 10 hours of iTunes movie playback.
Comes in three colours - silver, “space gray” and wait for it gold.
Control it with a new pressure-sensitive track pad. Screen has the 12-inch higher-resolution Retina display now available only in higher-end, heavier MacBook Pros.
Charge it with a new kind of connector cable and port, “USB-C,” that combines power with functions now requiring HDMI, VGA or USB connections.
Shipping on April 10, it starts at $1,299 with 256 gigabytes of storage. A faster processor and double the storage can be had for $1,599.
Apple will still make its MacBook Air and Pro models. Upgrades were released on Monday.
To help sell a computer designed to be pressed to the flesh all day, Apple is pitching the watch and iPhone as medical research tools that will turn wearers/users into volunteers for medical studies.
ResearchKit, available next month, is Apple’s open source set of tools that researchers can use to build apps aimed at diseases. Users can sign up for studies, take tests, describe symptoms and begin sending their data to researchers.
The first five apps for Parkinson’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and breast cancer are available on Monday in the App Store. Apple says it won’t see any personal health information.
Apple will be the exclusive partner of HBO’s upcoming standalone subscription service, HBO Now. There will be a new HBO Now channel on Apple TV. It will be possible to get it on iPhones and iPads, too. No cable or satellite subscription necessary.
Cost - $14.99 a month. Available in early April just in time for the season premiere of Game of Thrones .
