Apple hosts conference to release new iPhone, IOS upgrade and accessories
The yearly Apple press conference was last week and while most of it went as planned, there were a few things that really showed a growing change in the tech world. We are, indeed, getting a new iPhone and an Apple Watch series 2, but Shigeru Miyamoto showed up to the conference and that maybe the strangest part of the regular press release in years.
The new phone will include an upgraded processor, speakers and camera, a new operating system and will only allow for wireless headphones. Of those upgrades, the most controversial is the wireless headphones, called AirPods. The AirPods will connect via the port at the bottom of the phone, the same port as the Apple lightning charger, which is a problem for those of you who wanted listen to music while you charge your phone as now you are limited to one at a time.
The new Apple Watch series 2 has the same a10 chip the iPhone 7 ships with as well as a host of biometric measuring devices to help with tracking your fitness. Which are slightly more useful as the water-resistance on the watch has been brought up to “diving standards” according to Apple. It is being marketed solely as a health device — that is to say telling the time and using the phone qualities seemed very secondary.
Shigeru Miyamoto, of Nintendo. In 1977 he approached the Nintendo company with the idea for a duck hunting game (“Duck Hunt”) and “Donkey Kong” (the original “Mario” game). Later he went on to make “Mario Bros.,” “Super Mario,” “Metroid” and “The Legend of Zelda.” So what was he doing at an Apple conference? To help boost a new “Mario” game coming to iOS this year.
This is a drastic turn of events from all of the Nintendo Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press releases. In case you don’t obsessively watch every moment of E3 coverage every year, Shigeru Miyamoto stated in 2010 that Apple was their number one competitor. Satoru Iwata, the late former Chief Executive Officer of Nintendo, stated at the 2009 E3 conference that he wouldn’t use an iPhone or a Mac on principle, and in 2013 before his death, he stated that if Nintendo made games for the Apple they would cease to be Nintendo. This new partnership with Nintendo and Apple, which “will help bring him [Mario] to more people,” Miyamoto said at the press conference, really shows how much these console sales have fallen over the last two decades. According to Microsoft and Nintendo, neither company has turned a profit from the sale of their most recent console generations.
Nintendo has stuck to their guns for the last 12 years as Iwata revived the company from the early 2000 flop of the Nintendo Gamecube. Iwata had dreams of one day entering the mobile market as a competitor to Apple, and this total reversal of the company after his death is a clear sign of the changing market. Nintendo does seem to be growing though, with many highly anticipated titles this year, this along with the Apple partnership is likely to bring them back into the public consciousness and make them a clean profit in the process.
More important than a new watch/heart-rate-monitor, a new slightly annoying — but overall better — headphone design, and a watch that tells you how fast your heart was beating during your 3 hour diving expedition, is the fact that at an Apple conference we saw the final signs of the end of the era of Console Video Games — the era that took up most of our lives. This is a sign that Consoles have gone the way of the Arcade, lingering only for the sake of nostalgia.
@Cat_StClair