Apple Special Event (Sept 2017) | Hacker News Reader

Apple Special Event (Sept 2017)

apple.com

71 pointsHeinZawHtet49 comments

An announcement of an announcement, the most off-topic kind of offtopicness.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20an...

These events are like clockwork. You've got to ride out the unsubstantiated pessimism and outrage before you can have a healthy, reasonable, productive discussion about Apple and their role in technology and the world.

That's the price of admission for being such a cultural and economic force I suppose.

I for one, am incredibly excited. Their last keynote was packed with stuff, and it seems this one will be too. Lots to dissect.

Off the top of my head: iPhone, HomePod, Apple Watch, Apple TV, iOS/macOS/watchOS/tvOS public releases, updates on their new APIs like ARKit/CoreML, and whatever else they have up their sleeve.

Are there particular views you see trending that are unsubstantiated?

I don't know why being pessimistic should matter.

The main ones are that innovation has rotted and quality has slipped after Steve Jobs.

Honestly the new iPhone's main design - the screen occupying most of the front - is a continuation of something Samsung took mainstream in the S6 Edge, S7 and S8. I love iOS and the iPhone but I do feel things slowing down.

Being pessimistic isn't the problem in and of itself...at least not if you're willing to have a reasonable discussion around the topic and back up your views in some respectable manner. There are entirely valid reasons why you may not like Apple's ethos, Apple's products, or even just specific decisions Apple has made in the past.

It's the blind rage and almost meme-like pessimism that always seems to surround big Apple events that I'm talking about though. It's in part because people just love being angry, in part because people like the "wars" and taking sides, and in part because the media absolutely loves to get clicks by perpetuating the outrage. It's almost the perfect tsunami of emotions when you consider that Apple is immensely popular and has been on top for a long time which in and of itself amplifies everything.

I mean you can go back and look at the MacRumors forum threads for every single Apple keynote in the past two decades - no joke - and you'll find hilariously consistent discussion patterns. It's to the point where you can make a very accurate bingo game about the topic of people's outrage without even knowing what the announcements are.

You just gotta ride it out and wait for things to settle to have any real discussion.

Packed with stuff maybe, but utterly boring and conventional.

I'd trade all these announcements for just one that's actually innovative and a sign that Apple is back to being about innovating rather than milking ten year old franchises.

Here's to hoping that the highlight will not be a new iPad, iPhone or a laptop.

Except innovation doesn't work like you're suggesting it does. Real innovation takes an insanely long time to manifest and it comes in waves. It often builds on top of stuff that's incredibly familiar to us and doesn't look like innovation except in retrospect.

Even the iPhone falls into this category.

I like to contextualize the concept of innovation with the "S" curve: https://osmoticinnovation.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/tech-c...

So, what exactly are you referring to? It certainly wasn't unsubstantiated when people found out Apple was dropping the headphone jack on their iPhone or forcing everybody to use USB-C dongles on their laptops.

That's the price of admission for taking things away that people actually want or just plain doing the wrong thing.

Anyway, I don't see how one could be excited about an Apple event. Their products are completely boring and sterile. You get zero choice, zero freedom and as a developer you get even less than that.

I think I'd get more excited about an actual pair of golden handcuffs.

In events gone by, Apple has hidden little hints or easter eggs in their invitations.

I can't help but see a blurry MacBook through the Apple. Like it's some kind of looking glass...

Apple resurrects Looking Glass Studios. System Shock 3 confirmed Mac exclusive?

Ouch, that reminds me of Halo...

Let's hope! It can be also 2 iPhones.

Hints at infrared face detection to me.

"lol jk it's actually just a 12 foot long Touch Bar"

Well, colorful iPhones? Like the iPhone 5c?

I always loved the announcements back in the Jobs era. Nowadays, even though they try hard, it just misses the magic.

> Requirements: Live streaming uses Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later, a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or a PC with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.

So this event is only intended for people who already are Apple customers? MS Edge as the only other way seems very weird.

How common is this HLS thing, what would be the more open alternative and what advantages do they believe HLS has over it?

This question is asked literally every time there's an Apple event :)

HTTP Live Streaming streams can be viewed with VLC. It's also a open standard[0] (though not yet a formal standard); it's not proprietary.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/streaming/

HLS has been around a long time (8 years), and is pretty widely supported. There is an internet draft describing how the protocol works.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

I really hope they release some ar glasses or something. I've been working on the arkit since they announced it and I can't express enough how excited I am about AR.

Perhaps this will be the "Big Bang" for consumer AR that everyone has been hoping for. Whatever they have up their sleeves, I genuinely have a feeling it's going to be big this year.

Institutional investment in Apple is at an all time high as well. Perhaps they know what's coming as well...

Amazon and Google both have the voice devices as well which have been very successful so perhaps they're launching a similar product.

I'm definitely hoping for something AR though.

Does anyone legit use the voice assistants?

I don't know whether I'm legit, but I use my Google Home all the time (and my Echo on rare occasions).

A lot of my coworkers rave about echo and google home products. I didn't like those. I bought an android phone recently and have been using 'ok google' quite a bit. I think I like using the 'ok google' thing because I say something then i can look at my phone and confirm. The mix of audio and visual makes it useful for myself.

I use Siri on my phone all the time, but my wife has trouble being understood by it.

Not sure I would use a home pod / echo etc though

I use Google Assistant through my Google Home daily. For simple fact lookups, setting timers, playing music, asking for a video from YouTube or Netflix, and most recently making outgoing phone calls when my phone is elsewhere.

For everything else my phone is easier. It's very good at the above list though.

Oddly I don't use the assistant much on my phone. Usually when I have a screen in front of me I want to be more detailed than the assistants currently allow.

I use Google assistant to add stuff to my shopping list. It's handy in the kitchen, when something runs out, I just add it to the list on the spot. Also useful for metric conversions.

Do you mean Home Pod? https://www.apple.com/au/homepod/

You're talking about Apples Homepod? https://www.apple.com/homepod/

Huh I guess so. Didn't realize they already announced something. Shows how close I follow tech products.

> Perhaps this will be the "Big Bang" for consumer AR that everyone has been hoping for.

I wouldn't expect it this year. ARKit is clearly their open beta so developers can get their apps ready, consumers can get used to the idea etc. ... if they are making something like AR glasses, I wouldn't expect it for a year or two yet.

I personally don't think the glasses will come just yet. IMO it would make sense to let ARKit sink in, and have a healthy corpus real, published applications use it for a while before releasing a product around it. Moreover, I'm sure there still are improvements to be made, and they will come after it's used in the real world for some time and developers voice their feedback.

I'd put a year or two more on some glasses, but boy do I hope they are coming. I'm super hyped about the possibilities, especially if you combine super-fast on-device computer vision (Core ML?) with AR.

The problem with delaying the glasses imo is that AR developers can lose interest in it. Viewing AR content through an iphone screen will become a gimmick

Chrome: Your browser doesn’t support live streaming of the event.

So which one support it?

Safari? :)

Just saw this at the bottom

> Requirements: Live streaming uses Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 9.0 or later, a Mac with Safari on macOS v10.11 or later, or a PC with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. Streaming via Apple TV requires an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) with software 6.2 or later or an Apple TV (4th generation).

Edge or Safari

Why is there the Czech national flag in the Apple logo?

It's a placeholder page for an event with nothing but a date. It's twelve days left. It's on the top of the front page.

This is too contemporary.

It's news.

frothing at mouth

This event will prove whether or not Apple really is serious about keeping Macintosh fresh and not stagnant.

I'm not yet convinced that their recent claims that "Mac matters" will be maintained in the long or even medium term.

The fall event is always about iOS.

That's my point. So much is about iOS - it's the first class citizen.

According to rumors this will be primarily an iPhone/Apple Watch/Apple TV event…so make of it what you will.

Why wasn't their Mac segment in the WWDC keynote convincing?

No new Mac minis? [1] With the lacklustre performance of the Late 2014 models [2] it has effectively been 1774 days (4 years, 10 months, 9 days) since they were last updated.

[1] https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_Mini

[2] http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/mac-mini-alum...

Compared to the "Late 2012" Mac mini models, the "Late 2014" Mac mini models are between 1% and 9% faster in single core tasks but between 5% and 43% slower in multicore tasks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com