In just a few minutes, the 2025 live Apple Event will begin. Will we see new iPhones? A new watch? other new Apple things? Generally, this is where all the shiny new Apple stuff is announced — at least most of it. I’m going to be watching it live and, as an experiment, am going to try and live blog my thoughts and observations as replies to this thread. If you’re reading this live, refreshing the thread should show any new comments. If you’re reading this after the fact, the replies section should show any new comments. If this experiment totally fails, well, then I’m not sure what will happen. 🙂 Either way, I’m excited to see what Apple has in store for us during their 2025 event.
The 2025 Apple Event and my attempt to live blog from an accessibility perspective
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8 responses to “The 2025 Apple Event and my attempt to live blog from an accessibility perspective”
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That concludes the event — and my attempts to live blog it. I’m curious if people found this useful, annoying; is this something I should do going forward or is this something we should never speak of again? Equally important, are you planning to get any new Apple stuff and if so, what?
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iPhone 17 Pro: Cosmic Orange, that’s a color? Um OK, there are more important things here, but seriously? Cosmic Orange?
Lots of redesign, especially around thermals which help it provide far more performance.
As with the iPhone Air, lots of cool innovative things, but I’m not really sure yet what accessibility implications might be, beyond having additional choice of course.
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iPhone Air: This is the newest addition to the iPhone family. 5.6MM, thinnest iPhone ever made. 6.5″ display. OK, there’s a lot of stuff here and admittedly this seems incredibly cool, I’m not sure if this will provide advancements in accessibility though other than to have another iPhone option available. I know, I know, Apple does something incredibly cool and I’m sort of down playing it, I just know that other tech sites will blog about the new features better than I will while I’m looking for accessibility advances.
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iPhone17: larger 6.3″ display. Brighter display which will help with reading outside, likely also a huge help for low-vision users. A19 processor which is faster and more efficient… Camera upgrades.
From an accessibility perspective, I can imagine the bigger better display being helpful for low-vision users.
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Apple Watch: Apple Watch Series 11. New cellular model works on 5G. New sensor can alert to possible hypertension. They explain that this won’t identify all instances, but it may help warn people who are not aware that they may have hypertension. Sleep: Apple Watch will now provide a sleep score which looks at sleep stages and other factors to calculate the score. Series 11 now gets up to 24 hours of battery life so it can be worn all day and night.
Apple Watch SE3: Finally has always-on display. Supports hand gestures like the pinch gesture to perform default actions. Also has the sleep and temperature sensors of the regular watch. 18 hour battery life and fast charging. Also SE can use its speaker to play audio for when you might not have AirPods available.
Ultra3: Largest display ever in an Apple Watch. Ultra also has satellite connectivity to send messages, share location, and get emergency help. Up to 42 hours of battery life.
From an accessibility perspective, I’m not sure what advantages are gained although the better displays may benefit low-vision users. Admittedly, the rest of the features are incredibly cool.
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For anyone who might not know this, Apple provides audio description of their events so that even the incredible visual effects are made accessible. To check it out, enable descriptive audio, AD, under the audio settings in the player.
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Next gen AirPods Pro introduced. AirPods Pro 3. Newer ear tips made of foam help with noise cancelation. 2X better noise canceling than the previous version. 4X more effective. Better transparency. Live language translation which can be triggered with a gesture. Transparency adjusts volume so that you can focus on the translated phrases. New AirPods Pro will also have heartbeat sensing. You can track up to 50 diffreent workout types using just AirPods Pro. Longer battery life: from six to eight hours with noise cancellation. For users using them as hearing aids, 10 hours with transparency.
From an accessibility perspective, improved transparency and noise cancellation could have a major impact.
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And we’re under way, teaser that we’ll see updates about AirPods and Apple Watch. This is exciting.
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