Christmas in September? Or... it's new Apple stuff day!

It’s early September… back to school? Sure. But more importantly to folks around the world like me who like nerdin’ it out, it’s the time of year when Apple announces a whole bunch of cool stuff! It’s not just new iPhone time, but it looks like there will be a few other things announced today…

– So to start, not to be outdone by the world’s music superstars, the day starts with Tim Cook doing a little Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, and Pharrell. Nice touch and pretty cool intro!

– For nerds like me, you’d know that game company Nintendo and Apple really haven’t done much together over the years, not so now… a new Mario Run app is coming and Pokemon Go is coming to the new Apple Watch! If you thought Pokemon Go was on the way out, nope not in any way, shape or form…

– First big product announcement is for the new Apple Watch… some pretty neat new features…

– Let’s get this out of the way… this new one is called Apple Watch Series 2

– here’s the skinny on the new Apple Watch… looks the same, however this one is water resistant to 50 meters… that’s big for folks like me who held off on buying the first one…

– cool thing about the water resistancy is that there is a new speaker design on the watch which will eject water from it.

– looks like the new Apple Watch will be less reliant on your iPhone as it now has GPS.

– The previous Apple Watch, will now be called Apple Watch Series 1. Both series will be available next Friday (Sept 16).

Ok, now on to Tim’s showstopper for today… the new iPhone…

– Yes, it will be called iPhone 7 (why mess with our minds?:) )

– If you didn’t like the Space Grey colour, rejoice… it’s gone. Jet Black replaces it now! Or if you just have a case like me that covers the colour… no big deal 🙂

– don’t go deep sea diving with this new iPhone just yet, but it’s now water and dust resistant to something called IP67 Waterproofing standards. Probably similar to the new Apple Watch, but don’t hold me to it… at least you won’t have to go to the beach with your phone in a ziplock bag anymore…

– so it looks like the camera has got big improvements – better low light picture taking, faster camera processor, new image stabilization, and higher resolutions overall… yes, this looks like a big improvement!

– next big change, is that the venerable headphone jack is now gonzo from the iPhone 7! Included headphones will now plug into the existing lightning connector, but that’s just with the included headphones… but not to worry. iPhone 7 will include an adapter so you can use any of your existing headphones.

– Next new thing… and this goes along with the new Apple-no-headphone-jack-movement… wireless earbuds…

– sure, there are a bunch of wireless bluetooth earbuds out there, but of course, Apple’s got their own showstopping version…

– Called Apple Wireless Airpods, they look pretty cool, but have a bunch of control options for your iPhone directly through the Airpods.

– Do they look cool? Yes, will they work better than anything else with your Apple devices? Yes. Will they sound good (of course, important to us, when you are streaming us online)… don’t know… yet.

– should be priced around $200 Canadian

– Don’t forget that Apple owns a big headphone company… Beats… three new models of headphones being released from them today too

– Now on to Apple Pay

– it’s been here in Canada for a while, and I admit, it’s pretty slick… let’s see if there’s anything new for us north of the border…

– False alarm. Nothing new to Apple Pay in Canada

More iPhone 7 stuff now

– this new one, of course, will have a better and faster processor. If you’re keeping track, this new processor is called A10 Fusion… said to be 3x faster than the A8 chip in the iPhone 6, and 240x faster than the original iPhone from 9 years ago!

– They’re saying that battery life will be much better on iPhone 7. Up to two hours more use over iPhone 6S. That’s pretty signigicant. We will have to see.

– How much will it cost? Don’t know Canadian prices yet, But it looks like similar pricing to the iPhone 6S

– Orders start this Friday, Sept 9, and in stores next Friday Sept 16

Tim’s back out on stage now… will we see a “one last thing” moment? It would be nice, after going quite a while without one (yes, I know that was Steve’s thing…). But doesn’t look like it…

Ok, there was “one more thing”… it’s a performance by Sia! She’s doing her new song The Greatest… pretty cool. She also did a great job of Chandelier.