Apple Sep 2023 Event: “Wonderlust” | Hacker News Reader

Apple Sep 2023 Event: “Wonderlust”

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61 pointsjlaneve96 comments

I have been looking forward enthusiastically to upgrading across the board so I can finally go all-USB-C and ditch my aging phone/airpods/watch.

But somehow over the past few months my interest has flagged, to the point where I am now "Meh. It's all good enough. Maybe next year".

Why have you lost interest?

No big hopes in innovation.

iPhone 15 seems very similar in terms of specs to iPhone 14

(though they will likely improve a bit this relatively "meh" camera that has some weaknesses to focus at short distance without external apps like Halide)

and iPhone 14 was already quite similar to iPhone 13

How do you know what it comes with yet?

Because Apple leak it all summer to build up the hype!

I tend to believe the specialists who are running Apple-related news websites.

Many of these sites have deep connections within Apple, their suppliers and partners, and can give rather accurate predictions (especially now that the phones are actually already produced).

They're pretty incremental changes year by year, but it should be a solid bump if your phone is a few years old.

If they really will have a model with a periscope lens for the camera, I would be pretty interested. Of course it will likely only be in the huge 15 Pro Max model, which is annoying difficult to lug around.

The sensor size for periscope lenses are so small that even the flagship Sony Xperia 1 V's periscope lens with a Sony sensor produces garbage pictures. How Apple solves this will be interesting.

I have an iPhone 13. When I upgrade (which will not be this year) I will get all the features in between, which means that it will be a substantial upgrade.

But it will feel less than that, because I have read so many of them in between.

Still I am looking forward to the action button.

Dont you find it all Samey Samey and yet the same old problems exist?

Perhaps summed up as Hype Fatigue.

In some respects the silicon valley layoffs of last year and earlier this may also have catalysed it for this year, as it ripples around the globe, perhaps demonstrating the interconnected nature of industry's.

A bit.

I admire Samsung for taking the risk to innovate with their Samsung Galaxy Flip 5 / Fold 5.

I miss this ambition that existed in the "old" Apple (like how the MacBook Air, or the Airpods were born).

I want a proper keyboard, dont like touch screens much, something like an updated HTC SPV M1000, that was a nice phone with its slide out keyboard.

Its bad enough the US tech sector dominate the offerings and so many people feel they need to follow suit, but when you master the sciences, you master the population, in ways the legal system can do nothing about it.

For me it was when they stopped the iPhone Mini. I don't want a 6.5" phone. In 4 or 5 years I'll have to update but it works great now.

In the same spot - good enough requires 0 change. I don't see any reason to replace my $1200+ phone just to make a few cables go away. That's waste and cost for optimizing something that is solved by making 0 changes.

At 6.9mb with minimal (obvious) noise that animation is a serious feat of compression... I had to check it wasn't a live shader

The motion looks stable/"predictable", I assume that helps a lot with the compression.

I wonder if this is a consideration in designing the animation.

It most likely also looks better than random noise.

Looks inspired by the moving pigments in Apple's Foundation series.

First thing I noticed as well

The animation appears to be the hologram/paint effect from Foundation (an Apple TV+ show I'd highly recommend)

Looks like no AR version, though, which is a departure from previous announcements.

Why does bespoke animation not show on iPad?

My wife and I are upgrading to the iPhone 15 if the ports are USB-C. My wife has held out on two generations of iPhones for this.

The products we use outside of Apple are generally USB-C based that it'll be nice to not have to carry / have around lightning and USB-C cables.

I wonder how many others are thinking the same.

> My wife has held out on two generations of iPhones for this.

Is that a lot? I'm still using an iPhone 11 and honestly don't see a reason to upgrade. My friends who use iPhones are rocking the old ones that are round at the sides. Yet on public transport etc I see iPhone 14's everywhere. Buying a new phone every year or every other year is cringe imo.

I'm not sure. She's on a 12 mini where the battery life has crapped out and a 3rd party replacement didn't make it any better (thought iFixIt's batteries would be better, but guess not), so she has a lot of incentive to swap over.

For me, I'm on a 13 Pro. If the 15 didn't have USB-C, I'd probably have skipped the iteration. Since there's USB-C and most likely WiFi-6e support, and I play MOBAs on the iPhone that are sensitive to latency and have WiFi-6e APs, it's reason enough for me to upgrade.

I'm still on my iPhone 11 too.

I only recently started getting annoyed at how sluggish apps have felt compared to using my friends' newer phones.

I buy every other year, if for no other reason than my phone is physically worn after two years.

A $2 plastic case might help?

I use the Apple leather case and after 2 years, the case may have worn a bit, but the phone itself is pristine.

There is a set of people (like a friend I have) who doesn't like using cases and feel that the point of having a case-less phone is that the phone is meant to be shown off in its bare glory.

I do use a case.

But I will end up wearing out the oleophobic coating on the screen and the battery will no longer last a full day

Screen protector. I use a tempered glass one for $10 that has been replaced once due to just wear from constant mobile gaming in the thumb area.

I have worn a hole in the oleophobic coating on the screen, tbh.

Also the battery typically will no longer last a full day.

It's not a lot. It's not a little. It doesn't have to be a competition of who's more whatever.

I bought a bunch of USB-C to Lightning dongles with lanyard that tie to the end of the cable. Now I have exclusively USB-C cables with dongles attached to them, and it's almost as good as a native USB-C iPhone.

You still have to carry an additional set of accessories, though. I understand they're tiny dongles.

Were did you get these? I have been looking for a USB-C female to lightning male connector for some time, but I don't think they exists. What you have found seems to be the closest thing.

I bought mine at a local phone repair shop, but Amazon is rife with them. Here's a random result which I'm sure you can improve upon. They generally come with a little lanyard of nylon or silicone to permanently tie to your USB cable.

https://www.amazon.com/TechMatte-Lightning-Compatible-Headph...

Thanks. I swear when I searched for them, there wasn't a single one.

really bummed that they discontinued the Mini line, looks like I'm going to be the last Lightning user in like 10 years…

yeah, last year, eventhough the current models were the iphone 14, needed a new phone and bought the previous generation's iphone 13 mini, because probably like you, wanted the smaller form factor. It's awesome!

Yeah, like you, going to have to hold on to this phone forever...

... although, might buy a foldable when Apple releases one (the Samsung zflip 5 seems really compact and nice!)

I've waited 4 years to upgrade. First it was because our phones were good enough and now it's because the 14 didn't have USB-C.

We’re in the same boat. USB-C mandatory going forward.

I kinda hate that the new MacBook Air went back to a MagSafe charger for this reason.

Having the MagSafe and the Thunderbolt 3/4 ports is a great combination. it's a welcome change on the road to have magsafe but I use TB3 at home with a dock.

You still charge through the USB-C / Thunderbolt ports (and use a USB-C to USB-C cable with the provided power brick to do so). The MagSafe plug is just for convenience (and perhaps slightly higher wattage than is normally specced for USB-C on the beefier MBPs).

Also if you happen to trip over the magsafe cord, the possibility of snapping the connector is non-existent compared to the risk of using a USB-C cable.

It's of course a possibility but the Type C connection was designed to sacrifice the cable part first, both on the "repeated insertion" metric and for cases like this.

It's more about the computer flying off a table and into a hard surface in the USC-C trip case.

Are you not able use the USB-C port to charge on the Air (or is it more that there's less ports available if you do that)? I'm able to for my M2 Macbook Pro and it has a magsafe port.

Something was wrong with their design of the last MacBook Airs with USB-C charging port. I'm very gentle with my electronics and yet the charging port broke two times in a row (fixed under warranty). My daughter's MacBook Air had the same internal break as well (fixed under warranty).

I suspect they didn't properly support the internals so the force of inserting a USB-C plug caused a crack or break over time (and a short time!).

I went out and bought cheap "MagSafe" like USB-C connectors for my machines and my kids (in college) machines. I personally WELCOME the return to MagSafe!

>I went out and bought cheap "MagSafe" like USB-C connectors for my machines and my kids (in college) machines. I personally WELCOME the return to MagSafe!

Be very careful with these; they can misalign as they come apart and put 20V onto pins not capable of handling it, blowing out the electronics for the port (and NOT covered by warranty).

Thanks for the warning. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I'm kind of up against a wall. I need to use my laptop for work, but I can't keep sending it in for repairs (and I can't afford out-of-warranty repairs). I'm extremely gentle, but my MacBook Air needed the USB-C port replaced TWICE in just one month.

So, I went with the "let's not somehow magically break the physical port" route. I certainly hope the unofficial MagSafe connectors don't blow it out...

You can still charge through the USB-C ports, fwiw.

You can still charge via USB-C and Thunderbolt. I already had a bunch of USB C chargers and see no reason to buy additional USB-C to MagSafe cables when most the time USB-C to USB-C works just fine. At my desk I plug into a thunderbolt 3 dock and it works great. Seamless.

I have been holding out as well. I will be upgrading from iphone8plus in 2017.

At least for me, not a huge deal (have one lightning cable and one usbc cable in my backpack amongst a lot of other odds and ends).

As for using the port itself, am using magsafe charging so can't remember the last time I plugged anything into my iphone's lightening port.

Just my two cents and thanks for the interesting question.

I’ve held out for two generations as well and although USB-C would be nice, having to carry one more cable or an adapter just isn’t enough for me to justify spending >$1,000 on a new phone.

My iPhone X is full (someone is gorging it with cat pictures...). So, I'm awaiting this event and the release. The phone is down to about 80ish% battery life as well.

I think we might have the same malware installed. My phone suffers the same problem. Luckily, they conveniently look just like my two fur babies

My XS is still at 87% battery capacity, which is noticeable but totally fine.

That's the one thing I'm worried about with upgrading; I've seen multiple reports of newer iPhones dropping below 90% within a year or so.

My 14 Pro is at 94%. It was purchased on day 1 availability last year. I charge it daily (overnight). I haven’t noticed those 6% degradation in real life. Actually, since 13Pro, I noticed my phone could last almost two full days.

This is a good time to upgrade. The X->15 transition is worth it. My 12 Pro (upg from 6S) is still perfectly adequate -- there's nothing I miss.

Keep your X and use it as a webcam. I recommend using Camo, but you can just use Apple's built-in software for this.

I wonder if Apple will ever go back to in person presentations, or if they really enjoy the flexibility of shooting these whenever the presenter is available vs scheduling everyone at the same time in a live fashion. It's the WFH version of a live presentation, they are so much better. The annoying fanboi applause breaks are hopefully a thing of the past

There is no way they will go back. Rando vps/execs don't like that.

The in person events was due to steve jobs and was only kept going after he died due to it started by him.

The presentations were really fun when it was Steve up there, with his unique charisma.

Without him it's just another corporate event, so the videos are fine, and probably better.

Also I'm sure there's a lot of people very happy about not having to plan, test, rehearse the live demos. Rerecording or splicing the bits that didn't go well saves time/stress.

If you think they are not planning and rehearsing the bits as is, you'd be mistaken. Of course they like the ability to do multiple takes. If you've never been on set with someone that's never used a teleprompter or maybe just their first time on camera, it is not always smooth sailing. You can tell they are doing that in the final video with some of the edits they make. I've seen people that are amazing at talking to a group of people freeze on camera. Keeping your eyes from scanning while reading is actually a nice skill, but the distance of full length shots helps hide that.

Oh I'm sure they rehearse. But it's completely different for "this has to go right the first time, the whole world is watching" and "we've rehearsed - if it's not perfect we'll shoot again". I mean, there's a whole story about how the first iPhone presentation was a perfectly rehearsed number of steps to make sure the device still under heavy development didn't crash.

USB-C would be nice but it probably won't happen until Apple is forced to do it.

I have an iPhone 11 that is starting to fail so I guess its time to upgrade but honestly there's nothing feature-wise I can think that I need in newer models and it's been that way for years.

One thing I wish they'd do is have Touch ID as an option on all iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch. I absolutely hate Face ID. In fact it's ableist, often failing for people who through lack of normal vision have to hold their phones closer to see them.

Just put a touch sensor on the back like the Samsung Galaxy phones used to (and still do?).

But that won't happen. Still, I ditched a perfectly good iPad Pro (with Face ID) to buy an iPad Air (with Touch ID) but that one and only reason.

As long as I move my head back a bit, I have no problem getting the scan to work.

Fingerprint on the other hand is a no go if you are wearing gloves. And I live in a northen country.

USB-C is required by law in the EU by the end of 2024. That is probably their reason to switch.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/24/tech/eu-law-charging-stan...

Where is the name "Wonderlust" coming from? I don't see it anywhere on the page

Was in the email invite image

Will the new iPhones' USB-C ports support connectivity with AR glasses? My current AR glasses work with my iPad but an iPhone would be ideal!

Wouldn't it depend on port speed and whatever protocol the AR glasses need to use? Here's what rumors say about the port:

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/17/iphone-15-usb-c-rumor-r...

"While all iPhone 15 models are expected to have a USB-C port, only the Pro models will support at least USB 3.2 or Thunderbolt 3 for faster data transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps, according to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He expects the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus to remain limited to USB 2.0 speeds of up to 480 Mbps like Lightning."

It's weird that so many are still holding on to a transfer standard launched year 2000 in the year 2023..

If you were wondering: yes, the animation loops seamlessly, pretty cool

and I could only see the animation on Safari (or Firefox) on iOS, not on my Mac :O

You may want to reload the page. Safari on MacOS plays the animation just fine for me.

I've tried that, tried without extensions (in Safari), tried even a blank browser profile (in Firefox)...

beautiful animation!

An impressive seamless loop that's only 10 seconds long

Hats off to whomever it was who made the logo for the thing. That is super pretty.

It is beautiful.

If you watch the Foundation series on Apple TV+ the opening sequence uses a similar technique and I imagine that this event logo was inspired by that production. When watching a series, I usually skip over the opening sequences, but I like to let that one play and just watch the animations.

The animation looks like sand in the shape of an Apple.

Sand is made of silicon.

Apple Silicon.

M3 announcement!

That's like some of the same logic flow I'd expect on a Q message.

It all checks out. Also M3 -> 3 -> Half-life 3 announcement!

M3 is also a globular cluster which kind of looks like the anim

No, no, no, you are all wrong.

M3 means Broad money (M3) in economics. Money supply increased -> This iPhone is going to be more expensive!

"Introducing the most expensive iPhone ever"

sadly, this is probably the most correct interpretation even if the reasoning behind it is a bit different

That's a little harsh, Q boards are way less logical. This is seriously a top upvoted image on a Q board:

https://imgur.com/1fLBI66

I mean some of these people think JFK is coming back, so I didn't really need the evidence, but it is a very compelling piece of evidence. It's like in the movie where the person has a ton of strings connecting all of the cut outs on the wall. It's just in a sharable format

It looks a lot like the Foundation credit sequence.

I hope they announce an affordable apple vr.

No better than that, they'll announce mainstream availability of Apple Pay Later

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