Some notes from the iPhone 16 launch event – Six Colors

I’m just back from Cupertino and a morning spent at Apple Park, including a visit to the Steve Jobs Theater. You didn’t get to see it, but we were greeted by Tim Cook, who came out on stage to say “Good Morning” at least six times (!) and then express his excitement at showing us the big new iPhone announcement.

The video we saw, you saw. But I did get to ascend the stairs afterward and enter a packed hands-on area, where I picked up a few tidbits about the new announcements. Presented here, in no particular order, are some observations and notes about Monday’s big Apple announcements.

Welcome (again), Apple Intelligence. Those who pay close attention to Apple will know that Apple Intelligence was announced in June at WWDC, and that portions of Monday’s video were essentially a rerun. But the fact is, Apple’s iPhone event is the single Apple event that most of the world pays attention to, and it’s not even close. Apple can’t assume that the general public knows anything about iOS 18 or Apple Intelligence, at least not before today. (The marketing blitz over the next few months will continue to spread the word.)

It’s what they needed to do, so they did it. But the late arrival of Apple Intelligence does put the company in a bit of a tricky spot. They’re promoting a key feature of their new iPhone… that won’t be there if you order one for delivery on September 20. Maybe it’ll be there, in beta, a few weeks later. But only some of it. The rest of it will come in December, or maybe early next year, or maybe next spring. In dribs and drabs over time. Apple risks annoying new iPhone buyers who are expecting more substantial functionality from Apple Intelligence, and it also risks not selling new iPhones because the currently shipping AI features are meager.

It’s an awkward time. It was always going to be like this, really, as Apple scrambles to catch up to its competitors in the race to differentiate their smartphones via AI-related features. We’ll see how it goes, but I suspect it’ll be at least a year before selling the iPhone and Apple Intelligence together isn’t awkward.

Camera Control in action. I got to spend some time with Camera Control, the second button Apple has added to the iPhone in as many years. I should say up front that I’m a huge fan of adding physical buttons to the iPhone, because physical buttons build muscle memory that software interfaces can never quite build in the same way. Taking a picture on the iPhone should become second nature, just as it is with point-and-shoot cameras. The Camera Control button should enable that—and, by the way, it allows the Action Button to officially become a “do whatever you want” button.

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.

The button appears to support third-party camera apps via an API, so it’s not going to be a waste if you prefer to use Halide or Obscura or even Snapchat, as Apple’s video suggested. No sign of support for the button for other apps—it’s called Camera Control, after all—but again, the Action Button can serve for a second input for whatever you want.

The Color Czar comes for the iPhone 16. One of the advantages of going to the iPhone event is being able to see the products close up, especially the colors, which don’t always come across in event photography. I’m here to applaud the choices Apple made in the regular iPhone 16 models this year. That Ultramarine color is lucious and beautiful. The Teal really pops, too, but as a survivor of the 1980s it just screams “prom dress” to me. Your mileage should probably vary. I have it on good authority that the Pink phone is very nice, but Pink’s not a color I see very well, so don’t take my word on that. (On the iPhone 16 Pro side, welp, it’s monochrome and Desert Titanium, which looks… sort of gold with tan? Even more colorless than last time, alas.)

I’ll give some praise for the styles of the Apple Watch, even though they’re not colorful. The Jet Black aluminum Series 10 is shiny and beautiful, and the Slate Titanium model also looks gorgeous. (There are also other gold and silver shades, should you prefer.) The Apple Watch Ultra might not have gotten an update, but they added a black version of the Ultra 2 that looks very good, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Presenting… “Intelligence.” Despite the event being a re-introduction of Apple Intelligence as a concept, some products just can’t do Apple Intelligence. What’s an Apple Watch to do? The answer is to put up a box that highlights “Intelligence”—unbranded, generic “Intelligence”—to show off machine-learning-derived features like crash detection, voice enhancement, and even sleep apnea detection. The problem with creating a brand around Apple Intelligence is that it creates a quandary when it comes to describing machine-learning stuff that isn’t in that particular bucket.

And more broadly, Apple’s going to need to figure out a way to explain how Apple Intelligence can interface, if it can, with products like the Apple Watch, Apple TV, and HomePod that are unlikely to get the specs to run Apple Intelligence themselves for quite a while. I’d be satisfied with a simple statement that my Apple Watch kicks queries to my iPhone for use with Apple Intelligence. In any event, this issue will only become more noticeable as time goes on.

Photographic Styles forever. Three years ago Apple introduced Photographic Styles, which let users dial in their preferred photographic looks deep down in Apple’s photographic pipeline, letting them choose just how they wanted all the photos they took to look. The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro get a new generation of Photographic styles that’s different in some notable ways.

First off, it’s editable after the fact. They mentioned this in the video, and I have to admit that I sat there kind of baffled. How can you… edit something generated from deep down in Apple’s photography pipeline… after the fact? Isn’t that just what we’d call a “filter”?

It turns out, not so much, as Camera and Photos Product Marketing Manager Della Huff told me afterward. These new iPhones actually save additional data every time they take a photo, giving Photographic Styles the ability to reconstruct and rebuild photos after capture. Huff shot a picture using a black-and-white Photographic Style, then jumped into Photos and moved it to a different style, one with color—and color appeared in the image. This extra data takes up some extra space in the image file, but it allows users to make creative changes to their photos after the fact, which is pretty amazing.

Still, isn’t applying looks to photos what the Filters feature in the Photos app is all about? Isn’t this duplicative of that? Well, yes, and that’s why for iPhone 16 and 16 Pro users, that Filters interface is gone—because now Photographic Styles are all you need. Given all the presets as well as the fine adjustments you can make to styles, I’m not sure most users will mind.

A strange lack of detail. I was puzzled by the lack of detail in a few portions of Apple’s video. The two different sizes of Apple Watch were never mentioned or detailed. There was a superlative—the largest Apple Watch screen ever!—but without any detail. At least they mentioned the new thickness of the Apple Watch.

On the iPhone side, Apple mentioned the size of the new iPhone 16 Pro screens, but not the overall size changes of those models. (Greg Joswiak said something about holding back “product growth”—or was it “bloat?”—by reducing the bezels around the display, but never actually said more than that.) Even more puzzling, all iPhone models got battery boosts, allowing Apple to make a claim that we’re seeing the longest battery life ever in iPhones—but never followed up that superlative with an actual number, either. It’s weird. Has Apple just decided not to quote specs at all in event videos? Boasting about long battery life sure connected better with an audience if there’s something tangible, like a number, attached.

Product updates that aren’t updates. I’m not sure I understand the state of the AirPods Max, which got an “update” that amounts to new colors, a USB-C port instead of lightning, and a single software feature—support for personalized spatial audio. That’s not an update. It doesn’t have the H2 chip that’s in the other AirPods. It doesn’t support all the new adaptive audio modes, the nod/head shake gestrues, or really anything introduced with the AirPods Pro 2 that’s also now on both AirPods 4 models.

And if the AirPods Max isn’t an update, are the AirPods 4 two updates in one? Apple is shipping two distinctly different models—one with noise cancellation, one without—but has decided to call them both the same thing. The product line is simpler this way, I suppose, in the sense that there are only AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max, but it’s not really simpler since one of those products is actually still two products. Still, if those $179 AirPods 4 really do a good job at noise cancellation, that strikes me as a pretty nice value. (Meanwhile, the old AirPods Pro 2 are also hearing aids now, via a free software update? Now that’s an upgrade.)

Expected clearance. Speaking of using AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids, it’s interesting that Apple went ahead and pre-announced that feature, as well as the Apple Watch’s sleep apnea detection, despite not receiving final approvals from regulators. Apple announces products on its schedule, so it expressed extreme confidence that the two features will be approved—and I’m sure regulators are well aware when one of the world’s biggest companies makes statements like that. Hopefully there are no hiccups, because again, it would not be great if you bought an Apple Watch for sleep apnea detection, or AirPods to use as hearing aids, only for a regulator in your country to put the kibosh on the whole thing. (And again: this is Apple announcing hardware and selling features that aren’t actually shipping on the hardware, but enabled via a software update. I understand why it’s happening, but it’s a dangerous game.)

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