Why Do You Have To Go and Make Things So Complicated?

Apple held its annual iPhone event today, and the biggest thought in my mind about is that Apple’s product messaging has gotten confusing.

Apple Watch

For years, rumors have claimed that the Apple Watch Ultra would fall off the annual release cycle the standard Apple Watch enjoys, and it happened today, with the Ultra picking up the saddest label I’ve ever see on Apple’s website:

I mean, the satin black finish looks incredible, but why didn’t the Ultra receive any other updates, especially as it sits at the high-end of the product line? I understand that the Apple Watch SE doesn’t need annual refreshing, but the Ultra being in that bucket just doesn’t make sense to me.

Then there’s the Apple Watch Series 10. The keynote made it seem that the smaller size had been cancelled, leading to much handwringing until apple.com was updated, showing both sizes. The larger of the two is bigger than the Ultra 2.

What is the strategy there? The Ultra certainly retains many advantages over the Series 10, and Apple did rattle those off, but the product strategy that the Ultra is the most advanced Watch seems to have died.

Had there been a new Ultra, maybe the company would be more comfortable comparing two new models with each other, but pitching the new Series 10 against a year-old product would be weird. It’s all very messy, for reasons that aren’t all that clear.

AirPods

I assume that Apple is trying to move away from the “older ones stick around for less money” complications, but 1) Apple employs that strategy all over the place and 2) I think people understood the differences between the AirPods 2 and AirPods 3.

…but now there are two models of AirPods 4, with vastly different features and a $50 price difference. Granted, it’s probably the best $50 you can spend in an Apple Store.

I have seen some people poking fun of the “AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation” name… but honestly I think it totally works, and is a necessary given the lineup.

Then there’s the not-dead-yet AirPods Max. Apple swapped in USB-C for the old Lightning port, but the rest of the product is basically unchanged. It still ships with the old H1 chip, meaning the new AirPods Max miss out on many modern features. The Max reuses same somewhat-flawed design, and is sold for the same high price. Apple left a lot on the table in terms of improving the product, and that’s always disappointing and a little head-scratching.

Camera Control

Let me start this by saying I love how this feature looked in the video. The UI looks fun and I’m sure the technology is going to be fantastic to use, but I worry Apple overloaded the button. Here’s a bit from Jason Snell’s hands-on:

The button itself feels really good. It’s a real button — if you push it all the way down, you can feel it depress with a pleasing tactile response. But it’s also a touch- and pressure-sensitive button that lets you “push halfway” to bring up another set of options, for things like zooming in or switching between photographic styles. If you keep your finger on the button and half-push twice in quick succession, you’ll be taken up one level in the hierarchy and can swipe to different commands. Then half-push once to enter whatever controls you want, and you’re back to swiping. It takes a few minutes to get used to the right set of gestures, but it’s a potentially powerful feature—and at its base, it’s still very simple: push to bring up the camera, push to shoot, and push and hold to shoot video.

There was a time where Apple would have introduced this as a way to launch the camera, set focus, and take a photo. That’s it. Three jobs; just one button. (Are you getting it?)

Many of the features in Apple’s Camera app are hidden behind swipes. It’s one thing when there’s a whole screen to show what’s happening, but I have no doubt people will get this new button into a state that makes them feel lost, spending more time tinkering with their phones than taking the photo they wanted to capture. Sometimes less is more, and I fear the Camera Control feature may be on the wrong side of that divide.

Apple Intelligence

As expected, Apple spent quite a bit of time on Apple Intelligence.¹ but Apple refuses to draw clear lines around what it considers to be part of this suite of features. I know Apple feels pressure to retcon features as “intelligent,” slapping a new sticker over old “machine learning” labels. I just wish Apple didn’t bow to that pressure so often.

In his segment, Craig Federighi showed off the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro’s ability to use the Camera Control button to process visual information. He briefly mentioned sending images to Google and sharing data with ChatGPT, but it was so fast that my notes have a lot of “?????” in them.

Then there’s the hardware. When Apple was describing the differences between the new A18 and A18 Pro systems on a chip, I assumed we’d hear about some AI-powered feature that was made possible only by the better chip, but as far as I can tell, that wasn’t the case, but it felt like Apple was teeing something up.

I have very little idea about what normal folks have heard of Apple Intelligence.

In the months since WWDC, I’ve had friends ask me hand-wavy questions about Apple and AI, but nothing specific. That is going to change with these phones… except that the features won’t be present at launch. Some of them won’t be here for months. I think Apple’s been clear about that in its communication, but I wonder if that will break through to the masses who are going to be ordering new phones in the meantime.

The Trend

In writing this, I couldn’t help but think about that Apple Pencil chart from a year ago:

As Apple has grown, it has to offer more products, at more price points, to sell to more people.

Sometimes, that means selling older products at discounted prices, but it feels like today’s event was a new chapter in that story. Some of the announcements today were hard to understand, even as someone who has written about Apple for nearly 16 years. The event felt undisciplined in areas, and felt somehow both too long and too short for what Apple had to introduce.

As I have been writing this post, I’ve been surprised at my own feelings concerning this event. New iPhones are always fun, and the 16 and 16 Pro look like great updates. The Apple Watch Series 10 is only going to widen Apple’s lead over everyone else in the smartwatch market. AirPods are basically magic. And that’s not to mention any of the very impressive health features these products will bring to the market. That’s all good stuff, regardless of my complaints with the stagecraft.