Like other people, I do think these audience-less Apple events are very well filmed and produced. At the same time, they inadvertently enhance a feeling I’ve increasingly felt about Apple under Cook’s direction. Apple feels like a company that is simultaneously close to their users, and detached from them. On the one hand, you see those emotional stories about how Apple Watch can help and take care of people. On the other hand you have Apple Park’s eerily empty spaces, making the place feel completely isolated, even artificial. And you have the lives represented in Apple’s product videos — these perfectly clean cool-looking people living good, orderly lives, blissfully immersed in Apple’s ecosystem.

I know, if you take product videos from other tech companies, they very often share this same ‘sterilised mood’, but in Apple’s case the contrast hits more noticeably given their insistence on presenting themselves as a company that’s intimately close to their users, caring about their privacy, manufacturing devices that “improve and enrich people’s lives”, and so on. Perhaps I’m just rambling here, but what I kept feeling as the event unfolded is that Apple both gets and doesn’t get their customers; that Apple’s genuineness is part real, part façade. For better or for worse, there was a honesty and candidness in Jobs’s Apple that I don’t feel at all with this Apple. Apple’s smile feels like the smile a banker wears when you say you want to open an account there.

Apple Watch

Apple Watch is a fantastic device I don’t particularly care about. I am fully aware of what it can do, and I realise how useful and important its health features are. It’s not for me simply because it does too much. And it does more and more at every iteration. During the event, I tweeted that With this level of feature creep, the Watch Series 10 will basically replace an iPhone. And I was only half joking.

I still use a Pebble as a smartwatch. It’s simple. Its interface is straightforward and discoverable. It does the basic three things I want in a smartwatch: tracking my steps (and sleep), and forwarding selected notifications I receive on my phone. And I can have a lot of fun trying out dozens of custom watchfaces.

About the Watch outer design, again, I said on Twitter what I think: I know that you shouldn’t fix what is not broken, and I’m not necessarily saying I don’t like it, but the Watch design is essentially the same as five years ago. You look at the Watch Series 6, the Watch SE, and the Watch Series 3, and they’re virtually indistinguishable.

I understand the move of keeping the Series 3 in production, but it’s a hassle for developers, and it’s even starting to feel too entry-level even for budget-conscious customers.

I also understand the idea of not including a power adapter with the Watch, but I still have doubts about its effectiveness in reducing the impact on the environment. The reasoning is, You very likely already own a power adapter, it’s wasteful to put one in the Watch’s box. If I want to gift an Apple Watch to a non-techie person, I’ll certainly err on the side of caution and will purchase a power adapter anyway. Also, you have no idea how many times I’ve heard this from non-techie folks and even from some moderately tech-savvy people: Hey, I can’t find my iPhone charger; can I use the one that came with my old iPod? Can I use the iPad’s adapter? etc. They’re not particularly fond of mixing-and-matching when it comes to chargers. I’m sure a fair amount of people will purchase the Watch’s power adapter separately anyway.

Apple One

If you’re really invested in Apple’s services, this is a win-win situation. If you, like me, are not, you won’t care. 

But one thing I’ll keep saying until I’m blue in the face: the iCloud 5 GB free storage tier is ridiculous and completely anachronistic.

The new iPads

If I’m not mistaken, the new eight-generation iPad is essentially the seventh-generation iPad with a newer CPU. The A12 Bionic chip, while not the latest and greatest, will provide enough performance to make this iPad a very good-value device for all those casual users who aren’t particularly interested in the ‘Pro’ features. Apple is raising the bar so much when it comes to the iPad, that even the humble iPad 8 doesn’t really feel like an entry-level device.

Having said that, there’s one detail that keeps bugging me. The base iPad 8 model still has 32 GB of storage space. Given what you can do with an iPad today, this is starting to feel like when Apple shipped the 8 GB iPhone 4S and iPhone 5C. 32 GB felt right back in 2012 when I got my third-generation iPad, but today I think 64 GB should be a more suitable minimum storage size. 

The new iPad Air is really, really nice. I am surprised by the whole updated package: it feels very close to the current 11-inch iPad Pro. In its design, in the display size, in its features (that Touch ID sensor in the power button is indeed a nice touch, and something no other iPad currently has). The new colour variants are very cool, and I’m partial to Sky Blue. 

Admittedly, the first thought I had after the iPad Air introduction was: If these are now the specs of a middling iPad, I wonder what they’re going to do with the next iPad Pros.

Finally, as someone who is about to get a newer iPad at last, I’m mulling over what to do. The new iPad Air is very attractive, but in my country the base 64 GB model is 649 euros, and for the way I typically use my iPad it’s simply too much. Last month I was considering buying the 128 GB iPad 7, but now the 128 GB iPad 8 has a better processor and performance at the same price (479 euros here). However, this is the time when stores are going to put the remainder of their inventory on sale and make offers and discounts. If past years are an indicator, for me it might have sense to purchase last year’s iPad 7, and I would definitely consider last year’s iPad Air 3 if their discounted price is good enough.