Apple iPhone event review: sales pitch gets biggest upgrade

Once upon a time, back in 2019, new iPhone launch day meant Tim Cook and his handpicked lieutenants paraded themselves live on stage, doing live demos that were, by their nature, risky. Since 2020, we've seen only pre-recorded product launches that reduce the risks of demos as much as the risk of disease.

More than that, the packaged events previously allowed Apple to craft playful visual messages aimed at certain markets, such as yay California! and we love stoners.

Now COVID risk (at least in California) has abated to the point that Apple is inviting select press (including Mashable) back into its Spaceship HQ theater...to watch a pre-recorded product launch. Apple executives: they're just like us! (In that they want to work from home as often as possible). Oh yeah, and they're clearly fans of the controllable message.

What message did this particular pre-recorded product launch want to send? Not that the iPhone 14, saved for last, is any great shakes by itself. What we saw over and over was that it's part of a trio of products, alongside the Apple Watch (now in extreme and extremely expensive Ultra form) and Airpods, that Cook kept insisting work great together.

So better check 'em out next time you're in the Apple Store, right? Because if you don't have all the devices...you may die. Here was the real gut-punch message barely buried under the surface of this show: We can save your life.

Of course, Apple isn't classless enough to pitch it the way a local broadcaster might (why not having an Apple Watch could kill you, news at 11). Instead, Cook opened with a video montage of people reading letters they'd apparently written him (on pieces of paper?) detailing situations where a Watch had saved a life. One guy had been rescued from a garbage truck, another from a bear attack. A woman read the harrowing tale of a plane crash from a set where Apple had gone to great expense to reconstruct the crash.

Similarly, the new "crash detection" feature, which will offer to call 911 for you on the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch (Series 8, SE and Ultra), received full-on Fast and Furious sequences of fiery upturned cars and dramatically popping airbags. You'd be forgiven for thinking Apple had invented crash detection, and not that it was already available on several Pixel models.

Much safety, little change

More safety segments abounded. The iPhone 14 will allow you to make free SOS calls via satellite (at least for the first two years you own it). The event gave its prime third-party slot to Oceanic, an app focused on safety warnings for scuba divers. The Apple Watch Ultra, which can now be worn by divers, will also offer an 86-decibel siren that can be heard up to 600 ft. away. Now go tackle the great outdoors! Apple seemed to be saying, and then adding in a low whisper: with this device, you'll never get eaten by bears.

Left unsaid: Why Apple needs to make us pay $800 for an "Ultra" Watch that lasts 36 hours on a single charge. The regular Apple Watch series 4 will soon do the same, but only if you put it in Low Power Mode; that's right, four years after its launch, the Series 4 is introducing a power-saving Watch feature that has been available on the iPhone for over a decade.

As for the iPhone 14 — well, for those who care only for upgraded cameras and chips, or for shades of purple that seem more like charcoal, it was a win. For those Apple fans hoping for a USB-C slot (so we can carry just one cable for our phone, iPad and MacBooks), or who like the ability to switch out SIM cards, it was a bust.

Those of us hoping for an end to the cursed camera notch cutting into every iPhone screen since the iPhone X had half a victory with the arrival of the Dynamic Island. The very name is a masterpiece of Apple marketing, a bid to turn a bug (there's still a front-facing camera buried in the screen) into a feature: but now it has notifications! And they're less obtrusive than regular notifications!

Could the Dynamic Island be even more annoying than its notch predecessor in certain situations? Apple's pre-recorded demos may all run perfectly, but even they couldn't hide how it looks when watching a movie or TV show on your phone: like there's a black strip actually buried in your screen now, instead of just lurking at the edges.

Only time, and a whole host of iPhone 14 early adopters, will tell. In the meantime, longtime Apple watchers will still be waiting for the company to take risks on VR, or AR, or a car, or indeed any new major feature that isn't a bold new form of marketing.