Major announcements at Apple’s ‘Time Flies’ event

The news from Apple’s first event in the fall

Arnav Gupta, Online News Editor|September 15, 2020

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The Apple Watch Series 6 was the first product introduced, and it received some important upgrades. [Obtained via Creative Commons]

Apple’s “Time Flies” event was their first fall event of the year, and they revamped two major products: iPad and Apple Watch.

Viewers watched the event from a live stream online, either on Apple’s website or on YouTube.

Their first major announcement was Apple Watch Series 6, in which they upgraded the specs and improved the quality of the display. The most major improvement is the blood oxygen monitoring. Their system uses infrared lights to measure your blood oxygen in seconds, and can make measurements while you sleep. The Apple Watch Series 6 starts at $399.

They also introduced Apple Watch SE, a middle-ground where you get most of the same specs as the Series 6, but it at $279, offering a very intriguing option to customers who want the latest watch but don’t like the $399 price tag.

While Apple did make important improvements to the Apple Watch this year, some customers were expecting a more exciting refresh.

“The Apple Watch Series 6 felt a little underwhelming,” senior Chris Kang said. “Blood oxygen level measurement was the biggest upgrade, which not many people will use. It’s still good to see Apple keeping its smart accessories up to date.”

Next, Apple introduced some software services, Fitness+ and Apple One.

Fitness+ is a fitness system designed specifically for Apple Watch. It will be $9.99 a month and $79.99 a year. Customers who buy a new Apple Watch will get 3 months free.

Apple One is a collection of all Apple’s services (iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and Fitness+) under one umbrella. The individual plan contains Music, TV+, Arcade, and iCloud, and will cost $15 a month. This same plan will be $20 a month for families. The premium plan adds Fitness+, News+, and 2 TB of iCloud storage for $29 a month.

The next product announcement was the iPad 8, Apple’s base-level 10.2 inch iPad. It’s receiving the A12 Bionic processor and keeps support for the Apple Pencil. It starts at $329, or $299 for education users.

The star of the show was iPad Air 4, which received a major refresh this year. The display has been enlarged to 10.9 inches, Touch-ID has been implemented into a side-located home button, and it packs the super power A14 Bionic chip. It also comes with a 12 megapixel camera which is capable of shooting 4K video and up to 10 hours of battery life. It starts at $599, and customers can choose from sky blue, green, rose gold, and silver.

“The iPad Air received a very marginal upgrade compared to other years, which I think is very ample,” Kang said. “It is already on par with the iPad Pro for $400 less.”

Though the event wasn’t super special like some customers hoped, most viewers were happy after seeing Apple refresh some of their most popular products.

“There wasn’t anything super special about this event, but I definitely didn’t feel disappointed,” Kang said. “I think the event showcased a lot of cool updates to Apple’s product line, which is important for keeping up in the tech market.”