Tech giant Apple's annual launch event served up another year's worth of new iterations for its iPhone and Apple Watch product lines Monday, with a medical twist.
The special Apple event, broadcast from the company's Steve Jobs Theater, showed off the newer and bigger-than-ever iPhone, iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, which verges on the size of a tablet computer, and a thinner-than-ever Apple Watch, the Series 10.
But in between the lines, the event revealed much about the company's plans to expand their tech empire into the $518 billion medical device market — with AirPods that double as hearing aids and an Apple Watch feature that will track sleep apnea.
Apple's stock price, however, slipped over 1 percent ahead of the event — a sign of its rocky year facing strong competition from rival mobile-maker Samsung and the weak launch of its much-hyped, but less appreciated VR headset the Vision Pro.
Some industry observers speculated that the annual event, which has been typically held on a Tuesday, may have been strategically moved ahead to avoid becoming drowned out of the news cycle by the upcoming US presidential debate.
The Monday timeslot may have also been an attempt to distance the upbeat event — dubbed 'Glowtime' — from an awaited ruling from the European Commission that could see Apple being forced to pay $14 billion in back taxes.
With these clouds looming over the company, Apple's latest business strategy to revive sales, maintain its industry dominance and reputation as an innovator, appears to be a headlong move into medical tech.
Its latest AirPod ear bud updates, for example, offered a variety of surprising innovations both to protect and to assist its users' hearing.
AirPod Pro 2 through the new AirPod Pro 4 will feature noise reduction technology to provide hearing protection, with the devices also becoming able to perform a clinical hearing test in just five minutes to check its user's hearing health.
'After you take a hearing test, your AirPods Pro are transformed into a personalized hearing aid,' one Apple VP put it, 'hosting the specific sounds you need in real time.'
And the results, according to the company, will be stored 'privately and securely' in the Health app along with the rest of your health data.
But the company still devoted time to its flagship mobile gadgets. Below are some of the key new features and design innovations they promised for the new iPhone 16 and the Apple Watch Series 10.
What's new in the iPhone 16?
One of the iPhone 16's most obvious improvements, to the average consumer, will be its new and improved camera equipment.
There's a new 48MP fusion camera for iPhone 16 Pro that will boast a 2nd generation quad-pixel sensor to capture information faster. Pro phones will also get a 12MP telephoto lens with 5x zoom.
In other words, unlike the iPhone 15 Pro models, now both the 16 Pro and the 16 Pro Max will get a high-performance tetraprism telephoto camera capable of long-distance, high quality photography.
The phones' New Photographic Styles will also allow you to edit on the go more easily: adjusting color, highlights and shadows on skin tone in your images; or selecting specific areas in an image to only adjust the appearance of one section.
This year, the company's iconic flagship mobile phones will also have slightly bigger screens, making them record-setting and almost iPad tablet sized: 6.3 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro Max. (For comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max were 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively.)
Under the hood, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max will be powered by an A18 Pro chip, with a 16-core neural engine that Apple said will offer 'amazing performance' to help power its branded artificial Intelligence features: Apple Intelligence.
That souped-up hardware, they said, promises 15-percent faster performance than the iPhone 15 Pro as well as improved graphics performance, delivered via a six-core GPU that is 20 percent faster than last year's iPhone.
In a departure from iPhone's recent history — where its color choices seemed pitched towards austere elegance — iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will also come in bold pastels, ultramarine, teal, and pink, as well as more no-nonsense black or white.
The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999 and the Pro Max is on sale for $1,199.
Both models are available for pre-order now and ship on September 20.
What's new in the Apple Watch Series 10?
'Rugged' was the adjective of choice as Apple made its pitch to consumers that their new Apple Watch Series 10 would be the ultimate wearable for outdoor adventuring, fitness and health tracking.
Those new design features — including an exterior of polished aerospace-grade titanium — promised a device that manages to be both lighter and more durable.
During the company's livestream Monday, Apple boasted that the device was their thinnest Apple Watch ever at just 9.7mm thick (0.38 inches) with an extra wide-angle OLED display crafted to extend off its watch-face by curving over its rounded edges.
That screen will make the Series 10 display 40 percent brighter than Series 9 when viewed at an angle, the company said, making it easier to read with a quick glance.
And Apple expects owners of its Series 10 watch to be moving pretty fast as they take the device scuba diving or track their progress training to run a marathon.
A host of software and hardware upgrades were expressly designed for aquatic activities, including a new Tides app that will deliver a seven-day forecast of tidal information (high and low tides, height, direction and more) for coastlines around the globe.
A new depth gauge on the wearable can tell an Apple Watch user how far down they've swam up to 19 feet (6 meters), as well as the water temperature around them via a built-in Depth app they described as 'highly legible for easy underwater visibility.'
Pending authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration and other global health authorities, Apple hopes to have Apple Watches fitness trackers soon alerting its owner to a common breathing issue with their sleep.
The new sleep apnea detection feature will tracking breathing disturbances while you sleep and then analyze that data every 30 days to determine whether you may be suffering from this condition.
'At Apple, we believe that technology can help you live a healthier life,' Dr Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple's VP of Health, said.
'We're excited to enable incredible new health capabilities for serious conditions that affect billions of people around the world while continuing to keep user data private.'
Some viewers of the event were surprised by the limited battery life for the new Apple Watch Series 10, however, which is sure to put a damper on users globe-trotting adventures.
'18 hours for a smartwatch is f***ing embarrassing,' as one observer on Reddit's r/Apple noted.
Apple said the price for its Series 10 watch will start at $399 for a GPS-only variant.
A more phone-like GPS and cellular model starts at $499.
Apple Watch Series 10 will be available in jet black, rose gold and silver aluminum.
