Hello,
On March 9, Apple hosted the March 2015 Special event. Tim cook presented the new products and innovations that Apple has been working on.
Personally, I am more excited about the new 12″ MacBook and the Apple Watch.
General Announcements
- iPhone Sales: iPhone 6 and 6 Plus generated 700 million devices sales combined
- Apple TV
- Price decrease. Get it for 69$ instead of 99$
- HBO streaming will be available on Apple TV in April for a 14.99$ monthly payment
Medical ResearchKit
Apple introduces the “Medical ResearchKit” with the aim to help the medical industry and empower the users to play a big part of the research.
- The kit provides a set of powerful diagnostic tools
- The goal is to get the users to share their medical data and other feedback in order to help the medical community and app developers
- It will be an open source project and will be released next month
Medical apps
Traditionally, medical data used to be collected once in a while. The premise of the medical apps is to put the patient in the center of the research, and have him/her participating in research by providing continuous feedback.
Some medical apps:
- Parkinson research (tap test, or say ‘ah’)
- Balance test
- Diabetes
- Cadiovascular diesase
- Asthma
- Breast cancer
Tim also spoke about the importance of privacy in regard to medical data:
- The users decide what to participate and send
- Apple will not see you data
New MacBook
Tim comes to the stage holding a very tiny MacBook and said that we reinvented the MacBook.
- Weights 2 pounds
- 13.1mm thin (The previous MacBook Air is 17.3mm). Thus 24% thinner
- All metal enclosure
- Full size keyboard
- Going all the way to the edge
- All new keyboard keyboard keys with the butterfly mechanism
- 12 inch Retina display with resolution up to 2304 x 1440 ; 0.88mm thin for the panel
- ForceTouch trackpad with 4 sensors
- It gives tactile feedback
- Same feel all over the trackpad
- Configurable by software
- Force click can be used for some built-in apps, for example:
- Automatically get a definition of a word in a browser
- Force click to auto create appointment from an address in the email
- Force click is programmable
- Force click the “fast forward” button to speed up the normal fast forward skip rate
- First fanless Macbook, thus totally silent when operating operate in silence
- Eliminate most mechanical components
- Processor
- It uses “Intel Core M” processor with frequencies ranging from 1.3 Ghz up to 2.9 Ghz with just 5 Watts power consumption
- Prices
- 1299$ 8gb, 256SSD
- 1559$$ ; 512gb ; 8gb memory
- Ships in April
- Battery technology
- Terrace battery structure to allows 35% greater battery usage
- 30% less energy consumption for the same brightness
- All day battery life
- Single port using the new USB-C universal connector that can be used for:
- Charging
- Video output
- Data (mass storage devices)
- You can buy a “USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter” from here
- Colors: silver, space gray and stunning gold
- It is a green product and the world’s most energy efficient notebook
New updates to the existing MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were also announced:
- MacBook Air:
- Thunderbolt 2
- Now available with Core i5 and i7
- The flash drives is times faster
- MacBook Pro
- Force touch track pad
- The flash drives is times faster
- Bumped the battery life with one more extra hour, thus bringing the total time to 10 hours
Apple Watch
For Apple Watch announcements, please see my other blog post.