Hello and welcome back to another week in the world of Apple news. This past week was the 10th anniversary of the passing of Steve Jobs — may he RIP. Honestly, as much as I continue to enjoy my Apple products, everything just seemed much better when Jobs was at the helm. It had a certain nuance to it, you know?
This past week, we also had a major Facebook outage, which affected not just Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp. In fact, a lot of things seemed to not work on Monday. However, I found it a little refreshing, if I'm going to be honest. I was much more productive throughout the outage because I simply didn't have any reason to be distracted, aside from Twitter. It was a nice break. However, the great Facebook outage of 2021 also showed how Facebook is pretty much too big at this point — while it may not be true in the U.S., other countries depend on WhatsApp for communication with friends and family, and well, that wasn't possible for about six hours. I yearn for the days when Facebook wasn't involved with pretty much anything and everything, but alas, here we are. Regardless, I could use more Facebook breaks, I suppose.
Moving into Apple-related news, the Apple Watch Series 7 preorders went up this past Friday, and boy, did they go fast. I personally have zero interest in the Series 7, as I've been massively disappointed with what we got this year. No major redesign, battery life is still the same, and no new health sensors of any kind. To me, there is nothing worth upgrading for from my Titanium Series 5. Hopefully, the Series 8 next year will be worth upgrading for. Still, if you have been using a Series 3 or older, then the Series 7 is a worthy upgrade. I just hope you managed to get your order in on time because I heard they went fast! We'll have a full review of the Series 7 for you in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Now, let's move on to things that we may be getting in the future, starting with the third-generation iPhone SE. According to a report, we may see a brand new iPhone SE sometime in 2022, but it will use the same design as the current model. To be honest, I think keeping the iPhone SE with the same design would be a good thing — I know quite a few people in my personal life that would not do well with an iPhone that lacks a Home button, such as my mom, my mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and I'm sure this can be applied for many people besides me. I also think it would be a great iPhone to buy for younger kids if you're going to get them an iPhone at all. I mean, it's a classic iPhone design that satisfies a lot of people, all it really needs is updated internals and perhaps a better camera every so often. For the price, you just can't beat the iPhone SE, so it only makes sense. Of course, that isn't stopping people from making far-fetched next-generation iPhone SE concepts.
While we're talking about iPhones, it seems that the latest iOS 15.1 betas have enabled ProRes on the iPhone 13 Pro devices, as well as manual control of Macro mode. While I don't have the latest beta on my iPhone 13 Pro, arguably the best iPhone yet, I'm excited to get my hands on these new features once it's out for the public. I'm not a professional filmmaker by any means, but I would like to have ProRes for future home videos with my little one. Though it's pretty outrageous how big the ProRes files will be — apparently, 12 seconds of ProRes video will need almost 1GB of space. Good thing I got a 1TB iPhone, I suppose.
And while we were hoping for another event from Apple this month with new M1X MacBook Pros, who knows if that will be the case? After all, we are approaching the middle of the month, and still no word from Apple about any events. Perhaps next month? While we're definitely expecting the next iteration of the M1 chip and 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, Rene Ritchie also expects mini-LED displays, an M1X iMac Pro, as well as AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2, and more.
Finally, our own Adam Oram reviewed the iPad mini 6 this week, and as it turns out, it's a fantastic little device. If you haven't read it already, I'd highly recommend it.
Anyways, until next time!
- Christine Romero-Chan
