A graphic designer’s perspective of Apple’s fall line
Apple is a company constantly at the forefront of technological innovations, pushing the boundaries of devices that we use to enhance our daily lives. As a graphic designer I use my Macbook Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone 8 Plus every day as tools to share my creativity with the world. So, sit back because I’m about to fangirl over the new tech Apple is releasing this fall while touching on the broader societal implications of the company’s advances.
Apple Watch
Apple really pushed the boundaries of the Apple Watch with the new Series 4 model. The adline “A guardian for your health” is not only catchy but fits the device’s capabilities. The new Apple Watch is an electrocardiogram (ECG) on your wrist. That’s right – it can perform an ECG test with the touch of a finger on the digital crown (spin dial) and can give you low and high heart rate notifications throughout the day. The new watch can also detect a fall and immediately contact your emergency contacts listed in your Health ID profile. With the ability to perform an ECG, detect a fall, automatically detect your workouts, and cellular capabilities so you can leave your phone at home, it’s not hard to see why Apple is marketing this as the number one watch in the world.
As a healthy, young adult with no apparent family history of heart disease, why would I care about my smartwatch being able to perform an ECG? Preventative medicine. It’s the sense of reassurance. By having a guardian on my wrist monitoring my health in ways that I can’t, I can be at ease knowing that if my heart health were to take a turn, my watch would be able to detect it before I started to notice it. The Apple Watch can aid physicians in collecting medical information and has the potential to help catch issues before they escalate. The implications this could have on the healthcare industry are enormous.
Camera Upgrades
The camera’s upgraded Smart HDR feature makes it possible to take multiple photos at once and combine the best components from each into one beautiful photograph. So, you can expect to see punchier highlights and deeper shadows in your photos. There’s also a new sensor that creates greater colour accuracy and better low-light shots.
What really blew me away were the upgrades Apple made to portrait mode. Portrait mode was introduced with the iPhone 7 Plus and it’s an amazing way to create professional-looking photos with a phone camera. With the XS, XS Max, and the XR, Apple has introduced a new editing feature that allows you to change the depth of field after you take the photo. This has never been available in the photography world before now.
Portrait mode also got an upgrade on its bokeh effect. Bokeh refers to the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. The bokeh effect has been improved using new image mapping so that the edges of the subject in your photo are even more accurate. Another innovation is that portrait mode is now available on the front-facing camera, meaning users should get ready to take their selfie game to a whole new level.
With technology like the iPhone so easily accessible to the general population people don’t necessarily need an education in photography or filmography to be good at it. Just Google the principles of photography on your iPhone, take a photo with Portrait Mode, then Google how to edit in Photoshop with your iPhone on the mobile iPhone app. Post your content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram to gain a following, and brands will want to start advertising with you to reach your millions of followers.
Technology like the iPhone has opened up an entirely new world to people. Some millennials and those in generation Z have never grown up without the Internet. They have never experienced a world where they can’t get the answer to something in 0.0000039 seconds on Google. It will be interesting to see what future generations may never have to grow up without.
Sure it starts here with a watch able to monitor your health in ways you can’t and an amazing camera on your handheld device, but where does it end? Who’s to say that we don’t already have the technology to make photographs move in print like in Harry Potter? Technology is a beautiful thing that is forever evolving and changing the way we interact with the world around us, and I think we can expect to see Apple at the front of every innovation that is to come.
Photos courtesy of Apple