[NewsPoster]

It's all over but the analysis. Apple's fall release event has come and gone, with the entire A-series processor line by Apple refreshed, all the way down to the Apple TV. Released today are details on new Apple Watch products, the iPad Pro, the long-awaited Apple TV refresh, and the only solid lock on the event -- new iPhones. Join some of the MacNN team for their thoughts on the releases.

You can buy one thing from the event, and only one. What is it?

Mike Wuerthele, managing editor: As much as I want to say that I love the new Apple TV, I don't. More on that in a while, though. My choice is the iPad Pro, by far. Brutally fast A9X, optional Apple Pencil input, and more. Not a big fan of the keyboard, but it's not like every Bluetooth keyboard I own just erupted into flames with the Apple cover.

Malcolm Owen, staff writer: Based on my current situation, I'd probably end up getting the Apple TV. My current home viewing setup involves the Google Chromecast, which is an admirable device but with its flaws.

Charles Martin, editor: Next to the iPhone 6s, that's the main item I plan on getting. In my case, it will mean getting an HDTV (we don't watch much TV in our house, so we just kept our tube TV that came with the apartment), but it is still worth it thanks to that remote as much as anything else.

Mike: If you listen to the podcast, you know that I have a Dell XPS 18, an 18-inch tablet. It weighs about seven pounds, and is great as a coffee table station, which is exactly how Dell positions it. The iPad Pro more suits my use as a media extender. The 12.9-inch diagonal is just a bit smaller than a 8.5x11-inch piece of paper, and I'm perfectly fine with reading on a Retina iPad mini, so this is two full pages of just about anything I want to read, simultaneously.

I'm not a producer on the iPad, I'm a consumer. Reading, video, surfing, you name it. So, the keyboard that I don't particularly like is a nonissue. The pencil, while nice to have, won't be for me, but may be for other members of the family.

Charles: That Apple Pencil blew the whole rest of the iPad segment out of the water, and I was watching that instantly regretting that my drawing skills are not up to the level where I would feel really qualified to review it, but then I'd need an iPad Pro. While I think it will solidify Apple's natural alliance with all kinds of artists, I'm not inclined -- personally -- to buy an iPad Pro. I'd been skeptical that this device even really existed, but Apple not only produced it but made a reasonably strong case for it.

As a very happy iPad Air 2 owner, I'm certainly not going to sell it for an iPad Pro -- next year's iPad Air will likely have all these features incorporated in the 9.7-inch size, which would suit me fine. I already have full-size iPad-centric BT keyboards I can use with my present device, and while I lust for the Apple Pencil, I'll wait a year for that tech to migrate down. I had an original iPad, and really don't want anything that heavy to hold the way I do the iPad Air 2 -- maybe I need to work out more, but even given the justification of the larger screen, the weight and the lack of any real need for it in my workflow leaves me happy with what I have.

The Apple TV. It appears on the surface to be superior to the Apple TV third generation in every way, and also vastly different. Is this going to be a "drop in" for existing Apple TV users? Are we foreseeing any problems with integration?

Malcolm: The addition of unified search on the Apple TV would be a fantastic thing to have, since there is no easy way to do that with the Chromecast. If that was available to me, I'd still be subscribed to Prime Instant Video.

Charles: This is, if we are to believe Jobs via Walter Isaacson, the last thing that bears his mark. He said he had "cracked" the future of the TV interface -- and while apps may not be the ultimate future, it is indeed how we want to consume TV now. There are channels and shows I would gladly pay a subscription for, but I save $60 a month not having cable currently, and there is a lot of free ad-supported TV content already to be found in the App Store, which allows me to keep up with a couple of shows I still find worthwhile. The second leg on the stool of TV reinvention is easy search and discovery, and Siri seems to have picked up quite a few capabilities and intelligence to make it a very good interface. Google and Samsung (et al) will counter with their own technologies, but the hardware integration -- working with the iPad, iPhone, even the Apple Watch and Mac -- will be harder for them to match.

Malcolm: I'd guess the majority of existing Apple TV users will find the new additions to the device attractive enough to warrant the upgrade. Being able to nag Siri from your couch, doing voice search for content is certainly a good thing to have, especially if you've already invested into the iOS ecosystem in other ways. The only real competition that offers a similar suite of services, namely apps and voice search, is the Amazon Fire TV Stick, but that is hampered by involving yourself in Amazon's Android fork-based system and store.

Mike: From a hardware perspective, it is better, but not where it counts. The A8 processor will do well for games, but can't do 4K -- which the new Apple TV won't ever be able to do, regardless of firmware update. It's still single HDMI, as opposed to HDMI in and out, like the XBox One. Optical out is gone!

Charles: I don't think the 4K is a big factor for 95 percent of buyers -- the price on 4K has come way down, which is great, but the content really still isn't there. When 4K is the standard format for TV shows, people will need an Apple TV that can do that -- so I suspect Apple has somewhere between two and five years to make a version of the new Apple TV that can handle that.

Mike: I didn't see a "Computers" menu, which makes me concerned that Apple is going all-in with its iCloud storage philosophy. Making this worse, alternative media players might have a tough time with the 200MB hard limit on binaries, and a complete lack of permanent local storage. No buffer is a pretty small one!

Malcolm: I don't think that there will be much in the way of integration problems. Developers are getting hold of their SDK in the near future, with the only two main stumbling blocks being reworking their apps to use the new remote control, and having to stay within that 200MB size limit Mike mentioned. While the former takes a bit of getting used to, the latter will surely hamper those wanting to bring games to the platform.

Mike: I'm going to bite the bullet and get one for review, likely with my own cash. I don't think it'll push out my second and third generation units in the house, though -- it certainly won't if I can't connect to an iTunes library stored on my local network.

Charles: I'm pretty confident that Apple has simply integrated Home Sharing into the system by default, so I'm not worried about the lack of local storage -- in fact, the addition of apps means that an "alternate player" that can handle more formats is likely to come along, making life easier for many of us. But Mike's concern also points to a looming issue that is coming up fast -- more bandwidth for streaming video is going to become an overwhelming need as we go forward, and I don't see much of anything going on apart from fiber installations that is going to bring dramatically higher bandwidth to mainstream homes in the near future.

The iPad Pro is pretty big, and also pretty serious hardware. Is this going to do well in the consumer market, or just in enterprise?

Mike: This is going to explode the enterprise market, as I'm pretty sure somebody at Intel once upon a time said "hey, what about a bigger screen?" The weight is the same as the original iPad, which was declared as "so light" back in the day, but brick-like today. This device is aimed squarely at the door of business, and the land of briefcases and desks.

Malcolm: There are probably very few people who would really need the iPad Pro on the consumer market. Artists or amateur designers wanting to have their own personal and portable Wacom-style drawing device will certainly pony up the extra cost, but it is probably out of the price range of folks who just want something to surf the net on from their bed at night.

Charles: This is also great for education, and I think that will turn out to be a big if not primary market for this device. If Apple can find a way to make a good deal with schools for these, I think the Pro will do well at the university level, while the smaller (and now cheaper) iPads will do well in K-12 as they are already doing. Will it reverse the decline of iPad sales in the consumer sector? Absolutely not.

Malcolm: In enterprise, again it will be extremely useful on the design side, but its extra size will make it useful not only for people working collaboratively on the same device, but also in situations where the employee is using the iPad Pro in some way to interact with a customer or a member of the public. If someone was showing me the results from an Xray on an iPad or an iPad Pro, I would want that extra size, not only for me to see what came up, but to also know that the doctor or surgeon will be able to see it too.

Mike: Education will have some impressive applications as well, but I think that maybe the full potential of the device is more as a herald to the future with the A9X that will ultimately be seen on the smaller-screened devices in the future. While it seems like the iPad Pro is a product made specifically for me, I'm not sure the larger consumer market will see it as a good value, considering two iPad Airs or iPad Mini 4 units can be had for the same price as one iPad Pro. We'll see.

Charles: Good point. As I said earlier, I won't be in the market for another iPad until next year at least, so my position on this is "call me when the iPad Pro's technology migrates down to the Air."

Are these the first products that are totally under the aegis of Cook? What's left of the Jobsian influence?

Malcolm: Are these Cook's products? Partly. There are certainly elements of the event that may make Jobs fans unhappy, such as bringing in Microsoft for an important demonstration of a new Apple product.

Charles: Nah. That introduction of Microsoft was awkward! I feel that, although they make some good efforts, Microsoft has been the main factor holding back productivity on computers for the past 35 years, in my opinion. Office for Mac and many of the company's recent efforts have been pretty well-received, and their early support (for a change) of Pencil and the iPad Pro seems solid and genuine. The Mac-Windows war is over: Apple won with an iOS flanking attack.

Mike: There's also the infamous decree by Jobs at the launch of the iPad regarding styluses could rub some people the wrong way, but then again, it was ages ago and things have changed.

Charles: That remark very clearly applied to styluses to do general tasks and work with the machine as a whole, and never applied (then or now) to fine drawing tools. While you can use the Apple Pencil for more than just drawing, it's quite clearly a drawing tool that, combined with the pressure sensitivity in the iPad Pro, makes it primarily a drawing stylus and thus not a sin against Saint Steve's edict. The move to a bigger iPhone display was much more of a direct contradiction to a Jobs pronouncement, but even that has qualifiers on it, and of course the results of that decision (and that of Apple's entry into subscription music) show that the company is not afraid to buck Steve's advice if the circumstances under which he issued those "rules" change.

Mike: I think the Jobsian influence on the company now, years after his passing and many more years after his illness took him away from day-to-day, is overrated. I think that Cook had his hands in the company for years before Steve's passing. I'm really super-tired of statements like "this never would have happened if Jobs was still alive."

Yes it would have, and the fecal matter hit the rotary ventilation device under his not-so-benevolent rule. Often. The refrain about Jobs is old and tired, and generally trotted out when Apple does something that Consumer X doesn't think is aimed at them. As a reminder to the OS X and Mac faithful, Apple is a mobile company, and this was a mobile-centric event. If you don't like the new Apple, for all it entails, there are other options.

We'll see you when you get back, because as ugly as it can be on the Apple side, it can get uglier in the "open" wild frontier of Windows and Android.

Charles: I concur completely. Other platforms can be great for other needs, and I don't believe even Jobs himself would have wanted to create a "One Apple To Rule Them All," as Microsoft wasted decades trying to do to no avail. Competition is good, and there will (or at least should) always be an option to use something other than Apple stuff -- though I think just going for "poor man's Apple" imitation is in poor taste, there are genuine alternatives and that's what keeps everyone on their toes, which I think is healthy and beneficial to consumers.

Malcolm: At the same time, remember that Apple still has a lot of people who adhere to the core values of the company, and in turn Jobs himself. You have Jony Ive as the head of design for the company, someone synonymous with Jobs and the company's most successful products. The devices coming out are almost certainly going to carry the style linked to Jobs, and it will probably do so for quite some time, regardless of whomever is at the top.

Apple is trending big mobile-oriented releases for the year in September or October. Good for the company, customers, or both?

Mike: I don't think it matters one iota to the company. The stock price does what the stock price does, seemingly in Bizarro World. I don't think Apple cares so much about big releases before the holiday season. Stock-wise, as of this writing, the AAPL price is down almost two percent in a market that is overall down one percent, and Tim Cook has said that he laughs at the volatility of Apple stock for no reason.

Charles: Yeah, he just goes out and buys back a ton more of it when it drops for no good reason (see the last month) -- but I do disagree that Apple doesn't care about the holiday season. Quite the contrary: there's a reason iPhone releases moved forward from June and then August, and iPad releases moved from April to the fall. There's a reason why new bands and watchOS 2.0 are coming out now, and a reason why the new Apple TV appeared today (even without some rumored services that may appear later). Christmas is crucial to Apple, though its true that iPhone sales are so strong now that it matters less than it did before the iPhone 6 came along. Apple wants the Apple Watch and Apple TV to be the big sellers (alongside the iPhone 6s) this season.

In fact, that Apple Upgrade Program has a good shot at being the top-selling gift this holiday season, and was an under-appreciated stroke of genius, though I think the Apple TV and Watch will also do quite well. We've heard whispers of Apple Pay finally arriving in some key countries soon, which will really help the Watch break out of "hobby" territory, but I was disappointed that nothing about that got mentioned today.

Malcolm: I believe that most things that are good for customers end up being good for the company, be it in increased revenue or in goodwill. The continued upgrade cycle of the iPhone will almost certainly have fans clamoring for the latest iteration, and carriers and retailers too will also benefit.

Mike: As far as consumers go, with the exception of the short-cycle year on the iPad a few years back, they know when a new model is coming out, and can plan accordingly. However, sales figures don't ever seem to be that impacted by the known upgrade release date! So, while good for the consumer, again, I'm not sure the "consumer" as a whole, cares.

Charles: This is not the release that will save the iPad from its gentle decline. What will save the iPad, ultimately, will be the continuing addition of technologies like those seen in the iPad Pro. As the tablet (at all sizes) becomes more useful, more people who we would call "light-duty users" will decide they can use it rather than a conventional desktop. The more powerful Siri and other voice technologies become, the more we'll move to that as a primary input method for the main web apps we use now: browsing, messaging, Facebook, video. Not so much games, of course, but I'm thinking of the group that isn't big on anything more than casual games. Those already work great on iPads, and will work even better on next-generation iPads and Apple TVs.

Malcolm: The iPad launches? Not so much for consumers. The iPad Pro is a machine that benefits enterprise more than the general public, but since it will inevitably sell highly, it will be a good thing for Apple. The only other iPad launch was the iPad mini 4, which is a slight increase in specification in the same frame. Consumers may not necessarily see the relatively minor internal upgrade as being worthwhile, if they already have another aging iPad.

Mike: The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus did very well for the company, and the 5s did as well. The 6s and 6s Plus will also do very well, with some significant technological improvements, with nearly as many people available for two-year contract upgrade as for the six. So, there's no reason to believe that the phone will do poorly. We'll see how the other products today sell.

Charles: I'm not qualified to give investment advice, but I think AAPL will do very well over the next year or two because of the move to installment-plan financing, the new revenue streams it keeps opening up, the cool products it appears very capable of producing, and because it lacks much in the way of serious competition in any area other than price. The current lull in the price is, in my own personal opinion, a nice buying opportunity. We might well see the billion-dollar valuation before the end of this decade.

[djbeta]

I did not take from the keynote that the iPad pro has a pressure sensitive screen. Did I miss something? I thought this pencil thing is transmitting pressure information to the iPad via bluetooth, like other competing styli do now.. am I wrong on that. If it is bluetooth, I hope they've done a better job with latency and inconsistency than the other styli out there.

[DiabloConQueso]

Correct -- it appears that pressure sensitivity, unlike the iPhone 6S and Apple Watch, is exclusive when using the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro.

Still, the iPad Pro also has double the sensitivity of Multi-Touch over other iPads, making precision targeting with your finger much, much better.

[climacs]

"We might well see the billion-dollar valuation before the end of this decade."

Surely you meant "trillion" :-)

[Mike Wuerthele]

haha, yes he did. I'll fix it later.

[benj]

Yes, I had an HP Graphics workstation with plotter and pen input tablet in the 90's so I've secretly wanted macbook, cinteq, bigger wacoms ( I bet i have 1 or 2 serial wacom tablets in the basement) but i quit pen things pretty much after the Newton died. This iPadpro/Pencil thing looks yummy..

[JohnT]

I was curious to see that there is up to 64GB of storage available on the new Apple TV. I presume for local music/photo or movie storage? I did like that previous generations of the Apple TV allowed some outboard hard disk storage. I'd have to say, based on my viewing experiences, that the quality of streamed video (local network and the Internet) on these units is pretty disappointing- and, not certain it would be any better coming straight off of local storage anyway. But having these be mostly reliant on streamed viewing is a minus, especially at the quality I'm seeing with the older version. Still- may be interested enough to give it a go at some point.

[Mike Wuerthele]

The second and third generations of the ATV needed to be modified for direct storage, but stream from an iTunes library on the local network just fine. The original Apple TV was pretty hamstrung on bitrate, but had local storage. The third generation can handle 6500kbit/s pretty easily off of iTunes on a network. The A8 can do more, which I will fiddle with over the weekend on an iPad.

Again, I'm concerned that this functionality, streaming from a home iTunes install, is now gone. We'll see.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Yes the iPad Pro is a bone to the creative types (and will probably become popular in the enterprise, as it's easier to deploy and 'lock down' if it can accomplish the role it needs to)... but I'm not sure the iPad, in general, needs any saving. The rest was pretty much as expected.

I'm bummed over the phones, as I'm still one of those odd-ducks who want's a phone sized phone, not a phablet and an even bigger phablet.

And, the big thing about the Apple TV *would* be precisely the apps, especially if something like Plex would run on it. It needs to play any content out on the network, not just iTunes content. Otherwise, I'll stick with the one I have.

But, Mike... 4K? Unless you're a total home-theatre nerd, 4K is irrelevant... which is probably why it's absent. And that isn't because of lack of content, it's because up until about 60"+, just go with the 1080p unit. 90% of those 4K TVs you're seeing in the stores are just gimmicks to lure unsuspecting shoppers into buying a new TV.

[Steve Wilkinson]

And re: Jobs... do you really think he'd have put out a 32GB $160 Apple TV while keeping the $700 iPhone at 16GB? I think the bean-counters are firmly entrenched now at Apple, and running the show. And, customer-happiness is probably it's own department.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Steve: Yeah, 4K. The iPhone shoots 4K video now. Sure would be good to be able to display that on a TV. Plus, future proofing would be good. Annual Apple TV hardware updates are going to be... unusual.

Also related, Apple updated its Apple TV page to discuss that Home Sharing requires an iTunes account. So, in theory at least, playback from a local network's iTunes library is still intact, so that's good.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Mike: Just for clarification... 4K video isn't irrelevant, it's that trying to display it in the average living room is.

Most people don't have big enough screens or close enough couches for it to matter. Trying to do so comes with lots of downsides, and no upside. I'm sure, eventually, there will be enough public outcry for 4K content, that Apple will have to give in... but that's years down the road.

But, for people editing source footage, or working on it up close on a 27" iMac, etc. it certainly can make a difference. And, for people with huge screens and the right equipment, I guess it can too. But, they aren't the Apple TV target market, nor would they probably be interested, as they understand the whole chain of challenges to 4K. (i.e.: they are going to hook some kind of high-end media player to their huge 4K screen.... and probably realize the issues with streaming, compression, low-end 4K displays, bandwidth, etc.).

[Charles Martin]

Steve: I absolutely thing Jobs would have kept that, for precisely the reasons Apple has: it encourages upsizing, which is more profitable, and the 2015 Apple is cloud-centric -- you're not supposed to be storing your music and photos on the device anymore, which frees up typically 75 percent of the space currently used on iPhones. Steve would have been totally behind that.

People need to stop pretending to speak for Jobs if they never actually met him or corresponded with him (I did both), and they need to stop pretending he was this flawless creature whose tastes coincidentally matched theirs, and would "never do" stuff when in fact he was famous for completely reversing himself when new facts, changes in the situation, or more persuasive arguments came around.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Hi Charles,

That's not actually my argument though (that Jobs was flawless, didn't change his mind, or matches my taste, etc.). (BTW, I did meet him briefly once... but it was more of 'hi' than a discussion.) My argument is that Jobs cared more about user experience, in principal, than Wall Street and spreadsheets. I'm not so sure about Apple in that regard in the last few years.

My point is that it's silly to try and save a few dollars per unit, or even make a bunch of money via up-sells, if it damages user experience and customer loyalty. That's a bean-counter short-term tradeoff that I'm not sure Jobs would back based on his concern over user experience.

Now, yes, he might have considered the cloud to be a sufficient substitute. That sound like kind of Jobs type thinking. In actuality though, since Retina devices and increased app sizes have come along, along with very expensive cloud transfer-fees, the cloud really isn't a suitable solution. I guess we could debate over whether Jobs would have recognized that... but my argument is that he was more driven by principal than spreadsheets. (He demonstrated that time and time again over his career... what decision he'd make on this particular point, yes, I'm only guessing.)