Just a few years ago, I would not care all that much about the latest Apple Update. But now that I have a selection of their products based on the company, I used to work for having almost everything they could Apple. I switched / was given a few devices, and now I am happy with Apple.
Now that that is out of the way, Apple had an update of mostly “consumer products. These are the Watch 6, Watch SE, iPad Air, iPad, Fitness+, and Apple One. No phone, no laptops, no proline, and not all that much changed.
Watch 6 is more or less a processer update, with a new oxygen sensor and the regular software update. There was some mention of a brighter display but nothing on battery life. They did take the hardware of the Watch 3 and added a few updates and slapped Watch SE on it. Watch 4 is discontinued but not Watch 3 for whatever reason also. I have the Watch 4, the beta worked just fine, and I do not see a reason to update for at least another year.
The Family Setup for Watch is nice if you have kids, but it needs a separate data plan. It looks like you can do it on the GPS version. This also does not work with older models. I just got my kids some Garmin bands, and they seem happy with them without running around with an expensive watch on a younger kid. My wife might want one if we were to get on board with the Fitness+ because it is required to have a Watch.
So, about Fitness+, it seems to be a workout video service that takes real-time data from the watch and combines it into the videos to help you work out better. It does require an Apple Watch and another Apple screen to play like an iPad, iPhone, or Apple TV. The price is a little high at $9.99, but there are ways to make it less, and with governments keeping gyms close, those types of people are happy to move their money into this. There should be different workouts that do need equipment but its cool for workout people.
Moving along to the iPad Air, it gets a new processer and some new colors. The fingerprint reader is now in the power button, and the second generation Pencell works with this one along with a new style folio keyboard. With USB-C it but not as good of a screen, it would be hard to justify the iPad Pro 11 inch over this for most people.
The standard iPad also got updated with an updated processer, and that is all. The price is fair if you want a solid tablet. I learned that after going thought several Android tablets with myself and my kids. But this update is not anything significant. It is just the new one you want to get if you were getting another one. Even the price is the same.
Finally, Apple One. The Apple subscription bundle service. This seems right for a family because you get Music, Arcade, storage space, and TV for five people for $20 a month. That storage is shared, and TV is useless in my experience. I would like to see some of these services get better but meh. If my entire family were all on Apple devices, I would jump at it, but Spotify family plan is still okay, I don’t use iCloud for anything, and the kids do use Arcade for games sometimes. If you jump up to $30 a month, it includes the Fitness+ and News+, so you’re getting News+ for free at that point plus 2TB of storage, so it is good if your family is already invested.
This update does not have me running out, wait we cannot do that, clicking buy on their website because I am okay with what I have, not being the Apple fanboy that needs the newest thing. If you want the most recent, the only thing I see most of them getting is a Watch 6 and Apple One subscription with Fitness+ rolled together to save a few bucks and have the workouts. I read one comment on a video about this, and it was making fun of Apple saying something along the lines of “Tim Cook: Guys we are out of ideas, what do we do” then the reply “Let’s make more watch band colors.” Obviously, this is not the most significant update this time. New iPhones and AirPods, along with laptops, will get people excited. I do not think the lack of updates has too much to do with COVID, as most of these people sit at desks looking at computers designing things already, moving to use FaceTime more shouldn’t have limited their work.