The Red Apple iPhone 7 And Other Updates

Within the past few days, Apple has announced a bunch of updates and products. Some of the updates are minor but others are pretty major and looks to potentially shake up social media stalwarts Snapchat and Instagram. Let’s get started:

Product (RED) iPhone 7/7 Plus

Apple has released a new red color variant of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The update continues Apple’s tradition of offering red versions of their products to support Product (RED), a global initiative to fund AIDS research. Part of every Product (RED) sale goes to fund the initiative. Previously, Apple made red versions of their phone cases but this is the first time that the actual product itself is red. Per Apple CEO Tim Cook, “Since we began working with (RED) 10 years ago, our customers have made a significant impact in fighting the spread of AIDS through the purchase of our products, from the original iPod nano (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition all the way to today’s lineup of Beats products and accessories for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.” The red iPhone 7/7 Plus was available on March 24th starting at $749 for the 128GB model.

Clips

Do you enjoy sharing videos and photos on social media? Do you spend half of your day on Instagram and/or Snapchat? If you answered yes to any of those then Apple has something for you. The company also released a new app called Clips, which allows you to create short videos with text, pictures, emoji, and music. It’s Apple’s attempt to make it easier to create video clips that can be shared on various social media outlets. The concept is quite simple. You press a button to start recording and then release your finger to stop recording. You can do this several times to make various video snippets. Those snippets can then be edited together with music, pictures, shapes, emoji, and more. The most intriguing feature of Clips is called Live Titles. According to Ars Technica, “You can record what you want to say, and Live Titles will translate it into text that appears over the video. It’s almost like an easier way to close-caption a video, and it’s certainly a quicker way to add a lot of text over a video clip than typing it out yourself.” Clips will be available to download in April and will work on all iPhones from the iPhone 5s on up, the iPad Air/Pro, iPad mini 2 and later, and iPod Touch 6th generation. It requires iOS 10.3 to run which leads me into the next new announcement…..

iOS 10.3

….a new iOS update! This is likely the last major update for iOS 10 but includes a few new interesting features. The update is available now for any device that can run iOS 10. One of the more noticeable changes is surprisingly in the Settings app. To start, the iCloud settings are now at the very top. Tap that and you’ll get a list of every single device that you’ve signed in using your Apple ID. This allows easier access to device specific information such as serial numbers, IMEI numbers, and device backup status. There’s also a “Password & Security” that allows users to easily change their iCloud password and set up two factor authentication (which I highly recommend using). The other major feature is the new Apple File System (AFPS) which is more under the hood but still very important. Previous iOS and macOS versions used the HFS+ file system which wasn’t made specifically for mobile devices with flash storage. Most people won’t see that much day to day changes while using their iDevice but the new file system seems to calculate disk space differently which can result in users having slightly more space to use.

There are other minor changes in iOS 10.3 such as Find My AirPods, additional Siri support for payment apps and support for automobile apps such as checking fuel level, turning on lights, and locks. There is support searching for your parked car in Maps. There are also improvements for VoiceOver, Maps, and Location and Privacy.

New Apple Watch bands and new iPad (kinda)

For the Apple Watch owners, Apple announced new watch bands which include:

• Striped Woven Nylon in Berry, Tahoe Blue, Orange, Red, Pollen, and Midnight Blue colors
• Sport Bands in Pebble, Azure, and Camellia colors
• Hermes bands in Blue Zephyr Epsom leather, Fauve Barenia leather, Lime Epsom, and Colvert Swift leather.
• Nike Sport bands in Anthracite/Black, Pure Platinum/White, and Black/Volt

There was also a very mild iPad update. Apple has dropped the iPad Air line and just renamed simply “iPad”. It includes the Apple A9 chip (not A9X) and starts around $329, which is $70 less than the previous starting price. According to Ars Technica, the LCD is no longer laminated and also lacks the anti-glare coating that the Air 1, Mini 4, and iPad Pros have. Outside of that, the primary specs seem to be the same as the iPad Air 2.