Apple Watch and the new MacBook
Is it just me that was left disappointed with Apple's announcements yesterday, or are Apple losing their shine?
Let's start with the Apple Watch; whilst some of the apps look very cool and bring a whole new way in which we can interact (I'm thinking about Maps and Messages), I'm left disappointed by the product.
First off is the price - the cheapest version is £299, going all the way up to an eye-watering £13,500! And to top it off, the difference between some models is just the watchstrap, which Apple seem to feel it's acceptable to add up to an additional £340 to the price - crazy and outrageously expensive.
Price notwithstanding, the battery life of an Apple Watch is just 18 hours! It's bad enough phones can't go a day without being charged and now watches too!
Finally I have to wonder what the shelf life of the Apple Watch will be. The original iPad only got updated with iOS for two years for example, and the battery won't last forever, so you could end up with a device the costs you £13,500 and is obsolete within 2 years. I think within the next few years wearables will become more and more common, and as technology improves so will the devices, but in the meantime I would advise waiting until at least version 2 of the Apple Watch.
Now let's move on to the new MacBook. This is a nice looking laptop, light and thin with a Retina display.
However on the downside, it has only a single port (USB-C) that's also used for charging - this makes it impossible to use the port when being charged for anything else without the use of extra dongles. At least 2 USB-C ports would have been nice.
To make the MacBook fanless, Apple had to use Intel's new Core M processor. The negative of this is that it is not as powerful as Intel's i5 and i& processors, and only time will tell if the Core M is adequate for OSX.
Like the Apple Watch, the MacBook has been priced way too high in my opinion; an 11" MacBook Air is more powerful and cheaper, although slightly heavier - a small price to pay for savings of a few hundred pounds.
Apple devices have always carried a premium however I think with these new devices the premium is just too high for what is on offer.