12:52PM EDT - Today Apple is hosting its 2020 fall launch event. This year due to circumstances, we'll be going virtual and remote, however we'll still be live blogging the show for those who prefer non-video formats. Apple's WWDC online event had been a great success and we expect a similar format for today's announcements. What will we be seeing today? Rumours state that the new iPhone won't make it to the September event this time around, although we're still expecting a set of different other new Apple devices. Maybe a new iPad? New Apple TV? Stay tuned as the event starts off at 10am PT (17:00 UTC).

12:58PM EDT - Hello folks, the event is starting now. Excited to see what Apple has in store for us in these unusual times!

12:59PM EDT - Intro starting off with Tim Cook.

01:00PM EDT - Today's topics: Apple watch and iPad

01:00PM EDT - Starting off with the Apple Watch

01:01PM EDT - "The most beloved watch in the world"

01:02PM EDT - Video clips about Apple Watch users and how the device augments their daily lives.

01:05PM EDT - Still discussing the health benefits of using Apple Watch monitoring and identifying early issues before symptoms appear.

01:06PM EDT - WatchOS 7 recap with the new features.

01:06PM EDT - Ability to measure VO² Max

01:07PM EDT - New Apple Watch Series 6

01:08PM EDT - New health sensor with new abilities

01:08PM EDT - New blood oxygen sensor

01:09PM EDT - Blood oxygen measurement in 15 seconds through the new sensor

01:09PM EDT - Tracking in the health app, also during sleep

01:11PM EDT - I'm wondering if Apple has received certification for the new sensor outside of the US- Samsung previously had such a sensor capability in past Galaxy devices, but it was locked regionally due to regulatory limitations.

01:12PM EDT - New S6 SoC inside of the Apple watch, using Thunder CPUs from the A13

01:12PM EDT - Better always-on display that's more efficient. 2.5x brighter than the previous generation.

01:13PM EDT - Altimeter measurements that's constantly available.

01:13PM EDT - New watch faces

01:14PM EDT - Memoji faces, animated with touch

01:15PM EDT - New "Solo Loop" watch band - made out of stretchable silicon

01:16PM EDT - Also a braided variant (out of silicon still)

01:16PM EDT - "The most advanced Apple Watch"

01:17PM EDT - Family setup - pairing an Apple watch with different iPhones than your own - for example pairing your kid's Apple Watch with the parent's iPhone

01:19PM EDT - (Requires a cellular enabled Apple Watch)

01:19PM EDT - New Apple Watch SE

01:20PM EDT - Same large screen, but uses the S5 SoC chip

01:20PM EDT - Same sensors than on the Series 6, however seemingly without the blood oxygen sensor

01:21PM EDT - Starting at only $279

01:21PM EDT - Series 6 falls in at $399, Series 3 remains at $199

01:22PM EDT - Switching topic now to renewable energy and Apple's carbon footprint

01:23PM EDT - Apple is removing the USB power adapter from this year's Apple Watches.

01:24PM EDT - (I guess this means, if you don't have one, you'll have to buy it extra)

01:24PM EDT - Availability of the new Series 6 and SE starts Friday, pre-orders starting today.

01:28PM EDT - Intro about a new fitness service.

01:29PM EDT - Apple Fitness+ - a service for the Apple Watch in order to keep you fit.

01:30PM EDT - Integration with TV, iPad, iPhone for training sessions

01:31PM EDT - New workouts every week by a range of trainers and instructors

01:34PM EDT - Costly subscription and again very limited regional availability.

01:35PM EDT - Talking about subscriptions, now Apple is introducing Apple One amalgamating all their services under one single subscription....

01:36PM EDT - Scales from $15 per month to $30 per month.

01:36PM EDT - Moving onto iPads

01:37PM EDT - This year marks the 10th anniversary of the iPad

01:37PM EDT - 500 million iPads sold to date

01:37PM EDT - #1 customer satisfaction device

01:38PM EDT - "This is a big year for iPad"

01:38PM EDT - Updating the remaining iPad variants this year

01:39PM EDT - New iPad 8th generation, includes the A12 SoC

01:40PM EDT - Recapping various performance metrics about the A12 and how that augments the new iPad experience

01:41PM EDT - Works with the Apple Pencil

01:42PM EDT - Recap of new iPad OS features as introduced earlier this year at WWDC

01:42PM EDT - We recommend reading our overview article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15873/apple-announces-ios-14-and-ipados-14-an-overview

01:44PM EDT - 8th gen iPad starts at $329

01:44PM EDT - Availability starting Friday, with pre-orders going live today.

01:44PM EDT - iPad Air next

01:45PM EDT - New redesign similar to the iPad Pro's

01:46PM EDT - New Liquid Retina 2360 x 1640 10" display

01:46PM EDT - Highest quality screen experience

01:47PM EDT - Touch ID - in a new capacitive fingerprint sensor format

01:47PM EDT - Uses a custom sensor to achieve better performance and accuracy

01:48PM EDT - New chipset

01:48PM EDT - Debuting the new A14 Bionic

01:48PM EDT - A14 is the first in the industry to use a 5nm manufacturing node.

01:49PM EDT - 11.8B transistors, 40% more than the 7nm A13

01:49PM EDT - 40% faster CPU performance

01:49PM EDT - 40% faster CPU performance

01:49PM EDT - I wonder if this is ST or MT performance?

01:50PM EDT - New 4-core GPU with +30% performance

01:50PM EDT - 2x performance over a comparable laptop

01:51PM EDT - New Neural Engine with doubled up core-count to 16 cores, with up to 11TOPs inference performance

01:51PM EDT - Second generation matrix-multiplication ML accelerators in the CPU cores

01:52PM EDT - "By far the most advanced chip we've ever made"

01:54PM EDT - USB-C connector in the new iPad Air

01:54PM EDT - USB-C connector in the new iPad Air

01:54PM EDT - Same cameras as on the iPad Pro

01:57PM EDT - Starting at $599 with availability starting in October

01:59PM EDT - iOS 14 will be starting deployments tomorrow.

02:00PM EDT - Tim Apple is wrapping up the show- that's all for it folks! Hope we'll be seeing the new iPhones be announced in the next several weeks.

02:00PM EDT - .

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  • name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    SVE/2 has nothing to do with ARMv9. Was introduced as an addendum to ARMv8.2
    Fujitsu is an ARMv8 machine.

    AMX is unclear but SGEMM (matrix multiply instructions) are part of ARMv8.6 Still unclear after a year if Apple has implemented those or added custom instructions.

    There is more or less full support for SVE in LLVM right now.
    There has been on-going work (led by Apple...) to add fully-fledged matrix support to LLVM (in the same way that there's already full vector support) so one keeps hoping that once that is done AMX will be visible to developers and we'll see what's actually there!
  • name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    Seems like the 40% in article is misleading. The article suggests it is speed of A14 over A12, but elsewhere what I am reading says
    - 40% refers to A12 over A10 (nice, true, but uninteresting except for iPad buyers!)
    - no sort of performance indication was given for A14 except the usual "more faster"
  • name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    Hmm. Arstechnica ALSO says A14 is 40% faster.
    The A14 seems definite, the "predecessor" is unclear. Maybe meaning is it's 40% faster than previous iPad Air, IE A12, so 20% faster than A13.

    Nice, as expected, not crazy spectacular!
  • GC2:CS - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    iPad is 40 % faster CPU 2X faster GPU (12 vs 10)

    ipad Air is 40% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU, 2XML (10X OnCPU matrix multiply) “Compared with the previous generation” accordinng to Apple website.

    But the event explicitly states “compred to previous iPad Air” for CPU, 30% faster for GPU “as well”.
    A13 makes martix multiply on CPU 6X faster. 20% faster in other things compared to A12.

    So CPU is 16% faster, GPU is 8% faster and ML is 83% faster compared to A13.
    That is Meh enough for Apple to try to hide it.
    For A13 they gave perf/efficiency at iso perf breakdown by component.

    They will probably reveal more in the future.
  • trivik12 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    Cheaper Apple Watch/Ipad will sell very well. Not sure if Ipad Air is that much more value compared to 11" Ipad which generally is available around 700 with deals. But Ipad Pro still uses A12 series chip though enhanced for Ipad. Reviews comparing A14 with A12Z should be interesting. Plus Apple will be updating Ipad Pro with A14x and Mini Led early next year. Though that will be at a higher price.
  • Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    I'm heard rumors the 11" pro will be going away and they're trying to shift buyers of it to the air anyways.
  • sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    Anyone else leave feeling distinctly underwhelmed? The iPad Air is cool, I guess, but at $599 feels kinda expensive for something that's still a couple stops short of a real computer. At $499 it'd be very compelling, though.
  • Alistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    minor improvements, large price increase...
  • Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    The base ipad is the only exciting thing. An a12 for $329 isn't bad at all. Too bad they didn't mention a base memory upgrade. 32gb is nearly unusable these days with the size of iOS now.
  • A5 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link

    If past base iPads are any indication, you'll be able to get the 128GB model for like $350 every 6 weeks starting on Black Friday. At that price I'm really not sure why they make the other models.

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