A comprehensive look at Apple's most significant event this year, iPhone 16 fully supports Apple AI, with the first batch of features launching in the US next month

On Monday, September 9th at 1:00 PM Eastern Time, Apple held an event called "Glowtime" to unveil its latest products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to set the tone for the event, calling it "undoubtedly the biggest event of the year for us." He announced that Apple will be launching new products including the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch.

The highlight of this event is the iPhone 16 series, which will be powered by Apple's personal intelligence system, Apple Intelligence. The first batch of Apple's advanced AI features will be rolled out as early as next month. The base model iPhone 16 will feature a 3-nanometer A18 chip, significantly boosting speed compared to its predecessor. The iPhone Pro will come with the A18 Pro chip, offering even faster and more efficient performance, along with a 48-megapixel camera that supports faster data read speeds. The Apple Watch has been improved in terms of thinness, visibility, and now includes a new health feature that detects sleep apnea. The AirPods have also seen a significant improvement in sound quality.

Some critics have mentioned that this event failed to generate much interest among investors and did not bring any breakthroughs, at least not compared to the previous media exposure.

During the event, Apple's stock price mostly remained in a downward trend. It briefly turned positive at the beginning, gradually followed the market rebound after the event, erased losses towards the end, and ended with a slight increase, almost flat, stabilizing at the low closing level since August 12th.

Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2

The first new product unveiled by Apple is the redesigned 10th generation smartwatch, Apple Watch Series 10. It is the thinnest Apple Watch to date, with a thickness of only 9.7 millimeters, 10% thinner than the previous Series 9. Apple's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jeff Williams stated that the new watch will have "the largest wearable display we've ever built," with a 30% increase in screen area.

Due to the large OLED display, the Apple Watch Series 10 also features an additional line of text display, allowing users to easily view messages, emails, or news. When viewed at an angle, the screen brightness will increase by 40%, enhancing visibility. In Always On mode, the screen will update every second, instead of once per minute as before.

From the outside, the Apple Watch Series 10 features a polished aluminum surface and a new metal backplate with integrated antennas for various smartwatch functions. It is waterproof up to 50 meters under standard atmospheric pressure. The aluminum material of the Apple Watch Series 10 is 10% lighter than its predecessor. In addition to rose gold and silver, the new Apple Watch also introduces a jet black casing for the first time.

Internally, the Apple Watch Series 10 is equipped with the Apple S10 chip with a quad-core neural engine, which can suppress background noise for clearer calls. It features a larger charging coil, making it the fastest charging Apple Watch to date, with the ability to reach 80% battery in just 30 minutes and a battery life of up to 18 hours.

In terms of fitness functions, the new Apple Watch offers new ways to track exercise. For kayakers, canoeists, and rowers, the exercise app on the Apple Watch can track routes and rowing activities, along with an app called Tides and new depth and water temperature sensors. Apple has introduced a feature for detecting and alerting users to sleep apnea for the first time.

Apple stated that 80% of sleep apnea patients are undiagnosed. The Apple Watch Series 10 uses an accelerometer to measure breathing disturbances during sleep and analyzes relevant breathing data every 30 days. This feature is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is expected to receive approval from the FDA and other regulatory agencies "soon."

Apple has also introduced the black Apple Watch Ultra 2, which boasts the "most accurate GPS in a sports watch" and is the perfect companion for fitness enthusiasts. Its features include a dive depth gauge, dual-frequency GPS, advanced positioning software, pace functions, automatic stroke detection, and lap counting. Users can customize workouts, and the watch's advanced compass app provides information on latitude, longitude, waypoints, and backtracking, with offline maps for guided navigation even when the iPhone is not nearby.

Both the Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 are available for pre-order starting this Monday, with a release date of September 20. The former starts at $399, with a cellular version starting at $499, while the latter starts at $799.

After Apple introduced the Apple Watch Series 10, Apple's stock price, which had fallen by 1.7% in early trading, rebounded in midday trading.

AirPods 4, Upgraded AirPods Max, and AirPods Pro 2

Following the smartwatch, Apple launched the new AirPods 4 headphones. Apple claims that these headphones are the "most comfortable AirPods ever worn," with their design developed using 3D modeling and laser mapping technology. Equipped with the H2 chip, the sound quality has been greatly improved, making it the "best-sounding AirPods ever" according to Apple. It also features personalized spatial audio, which Apple says will help reduce environmental noise.

The charging case of AirPods 4 is compatible with USB-C, making it the smallest charging case ever, and it also supports wireless charging. The starting price for AirPods 4 is $129, with the version featuring Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) priced at $179.

Apple also introduced an upgraded version of AirPods Max with USB-C charging capability, offering three new colors: orange, purple, and starlight. The starting price remains the same as the original at $549, and both AirPods 4 and AirPods Max are available for pre-order this Monday, with a release date of September 20.

Apple also unveiled the second-generation AirPods Pro 2 with three new health features. It will default to a new feature called "Hearing Health" in all listening modes, aimed at helping prevent and raise awareness of hearing loss. Through this feature, users can undergo clinically validated hearing tests, which can be completed in just five minutes using AirPods Pro and an iPhone to check for existing hearing loss.

The new generation of AirPods Pro will also feature built-in clinical-grade over-the-counter hearing aid functionality, which will be used in conjunction with the hearing profile created after the user undergoes a hearing test. After users take the hearing test, AirPods Pro can easily transform into personalized hearing aids. The user's robust hearing profile generated by the new feature will automatically apply to music, movies, and calls on all of the user's devices.

These new health features of AirPods Pro will be launched in over 100 countries worldwide later this fall

The first batch of Apple Intelligence features will be launched in the US English version in October, and will be launched in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish versions starting next year.

The new generation of smartphones, the iPhone 16 series, became the highlight of this launch event, specifically designed for Apple's Apple Intelligence. It has been optimized for running large-scale generative AI models, with the speed of the neural engine doubled.

The most eye-catching feature of the iPhone 16 series is the Apple Intelligence function.

Wall Street News previously mentioned that on June 10th at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple introduced that Apple Intelligence leverages the powerful functions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models based on personal scenarios. It is deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, allowing for various cross-app operations, combined with personal scenarios to provide context-driven notifications, writing improvements, image generation, and other functions to simplify and speed up daily tasks for users. At the end of July, Apple Intelligence landed on the iPhone for the first time, only available to paid developers, and some features including ChatGPT assistance were not enabled.

During Monday's event, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, introduced Apple Intelligence, stating that it can operate across languages, images, actions, and personal backgrounds on the phone. He emphasized that user data on the phone will never be stored or shared with Apple, and independent experts can verify this privacy commitment.

Federighi highlighted the new feature of generating emojis, namely creating contextually appropriate Genmojis, which will allow users to create custom emojis by entering a few words. Users can also enter words to pull up the photos and videos they want to find.

Federighi mentioned that Apple Intelligence marks a new era for Apple's voice assistant Siri. He mentioned some new Siri features supported by Apple Intelligence that were "limited" launched at the end of July: users can input text prompts to Siri, even if users speak hesitantly, Siri can understand their commands and extract specific details from text conversations.

The first batch of Apple Intelligence features will be launched in the US market in October as a beta version, limited to the English version. In December, it will be launched in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the local English version. Starting next year, it will be launched in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish versions

iPhone 16 adds a new capture button, basic model equipped with A18 chip, starting at $799

In addition to Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 16 series has some features different from its predecessors.

Consistent with previous media reports, the entire iPhone 16 series features an action button for the first time in the basic model. Users can customize the action button, for example, using the flashlight at night and the calendar during the day.

Another feature in line with previous media leaks is the capture button. This is a new feature that allows users to access the camera with one touch and adjust various camera functions by sliding their fingers.

The basic iPhone 16 is equipped with the new A18 chip using 3-nanometer technology. Its six-core CPU has two high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. The A18 CPU is 60% faster than the iPhone 12 CPU, challenging high-end desktop computers, and its five-core GPU is 40% faster than the iPhone 15. When playing games on the new phone, this chip can boost sustained performance by up to 30%.

The basic iPhone 16 has a 6.1-inch display, while the iPhone 16 Plus has a 6.7-inch display, with starting prices of $799 and $899 respectively.

iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999, equipped with A18 Pro chip, 48MP camera, 4k video recording

Apple also released two high-end models, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. The former has a 6.3-inch display, while the latter has a 6.9-inch display, both larger than their predecessors which were 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches respectively.

Apple stated that the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have "the thinnest borders of any Apple product" and "the best iPhone display we've ever made." The weight of titanium is almost half that of stainless steel, and it is "more scratch-resistant than other forms of titanium." The iPhone 16 Pro Max has "the best battery life performance of any iPhone to date." The iPhone 16 Pro is available in four colors: white, black, natural, and the new desert color. It is equipped with the all-new A19 Pro chip, using the second-generation 3-nanometer process, featuring a new 16-core neural engine, and increasing the system's total memory bandwidth by 17%. Apple claims it is "faster and more efficient than the A18".

The A18 Pro chip supports new camera features, including a new 48-megapixel "fusion camera" for the iPhone 16 Pro, with data read speeds doubled, as well as a 48-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, a significant increase from the 12-megapixel camera on the iPhone 15, allowing for more detail in wide-angle shots. The 5x telephoto camera provides more detail for zoomed-in photos.

The iPhone 16 Pro also features 4K video recording at 120 frames per second, the highest resolution and frame rate for an iPhone camera to date. The Pro models come with four noise-canceling "studio-quality" microphones, equivalent to carrying a professional studio with you, designed in part for recording vocals and acoustic sounds, as well as spatial audio capture. Apple states that the new "audio mix" feature is an industry first, using machine learning to identify and separate background elements from the user's voice.

The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999, while the Pro Max starts at $1199. Both models, like the base iPhone 16, are available for pre-order starting this Friday and will be released on September 20th.