Tim Cook walked onto the stage at the Steve Jobs Theater and, honestly, the vibe felt different this time. We’ve all seen the memes about how every iPhone looks the same since 2020. But the Apple event Sept 9—internally dubbed "It’s Glowtime"—wasn't just about a slightly faster chip or a new shade of "Desert Titanium" that looks suspiciously like gold. It was the moment Apple finally went all-in on AI, even if they insist on calling it Apple Intelligence.
People stayed up late or woke up early to see if the hardware could actually keep up with the software promises.
The iPhone 16 lineup is basically a vessel for a massive bet. Apple is betting that you care more about a physical button to take photos and a smarter Siri than you do about a radical redesign of the chassis. It's a gamble. Most people look at their phones and see a tool, but Apple wants you to see a creative partner.
Whether that’s true or just marketing fluff is what we need to dig into.
The Camera Control Button is the Real Star
Everyone expected the A18 chip. Nobody was shocked by the slightly larger screens on the Pro models. But the real talk of the Apple event Sept 9 was the Camera Control button. It’s not just a button. It’s a capacitive, sapphire crystal-covered surface that feels like a physical click thanks to the Taptic Engine.
You can slide your finger across it to zoom. You can light-press to lock focus. It’s weirdly tactile.
Most smartphone manufacturers are trying to remove buttons, yet here is Apple adding one back. Why? Because they realized that digging through a lock screen to find the camera app is annoying when you’re trying to catch a kid’s first steps or a cool bird in the park. It’s about reducing friction. It also serves as the gateway for "Visual Intelligence," which is Apple's answer to Google Lens. You point your phone at a restaurant, click the button, and boom—the menu and reviews pop up. It’s clever, if a bit derivative.
👉 See also: Why Are People Mad at Elon Musk? What Really Happened
Bigger Screens, Thinner Borders
The Pro moved to 6.3 inches and the Pro Max hit 6.9 inches. It sounds huge. It is huge. But they shaved the borders—the bezels—down so thin that the actual footprint of the device hasn't ballooned as much as you’d think. If you have small hands, you’re still going to struggle, but for the "bigger is better" crowd, this is the peak.
Apple Intelligence and the A18 Divide
Usually, the base model iPhone gets last year's hand-me-down processor. Not this time. Because Apple Intelligence requires so much local RAM and NPU (Neural Processing Unit) power, the standard iPhone 16 got a brand new A18 chip. The Pros got the A18 Pro.
Basically, Apple couldn't afford to sell a "dumb" phone in 2024.
The features they showed off at the Apple event Sept 9 were ambitious. We’re talking about system-wide writing tools that can rewrite your angry emails to be polite, and an Image Wand that turns a rough sketch in your Notes app into a fully rendered illustration. It’s cool, but there’s a catch: most of this stuff didn't even ship on launch day. It’s coming in waves. This is the first time Apple has sold a phone based almost entirely on a "coming soon" promise.
- Siri’s New Look: The glowing border around the screen looks futuristic.
- Priority Notifications: AI summarizes your messy group chats so you only see what matters.
- Clean Up Tool: Finally, a native way to remove that one tourist from the background of your vacation photo.
The nuance here is that Apple is doing this differently than cloud-based AI. They are pushing "Private Cloud Compute," which means your data isn't being stored to train a model. For the privacy-conscious, that’s a massive win.
The Apple Watch Series 10: Thinner and Faster Charging
While everyone was obsessed with the phones, the Apple Watch Series 10 actually saw a pretty significant overhaul. It’s the thinnest watch they’ve ever made, yet it has a larger display than the Ultra. That’s a wild engineering feat.
🔗 Read more: The Brutal Logistics of the World Trade Center Construction
The new OLED display is "wide-angle," meaning you can actually read your notifications when your wrist is tilted away from you. We’ve all done that awkward wrist-flick that doesn't work; this fixes that. They also added sleep apnea detection, which is a genuine healthcare milestone for a consumer wearable, pending FDA clearances in various regions.
It charges fast, too. 80% in about 30 minutes. If you’re a sleep tracker, that’s the feature that actually changes your life because you can charge it while you shower and never have to leave it on a nightstand overnight.
AirPods 4 and the End of the Lightning Cable
One of the quieter but most important updates from the Apple event Sept 9 was the total transition to USB-C across the audio line. The AirPods 4 now come in two flavors: one with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and one without.
Putting ANC in an open-ear design—meaning no silicone tips jammed into your ear canal—is technically very difficult. Early reviews suggest it’s surprisingly good at cancelling out the low hum of an airplane or a bus, though it won't beat the AirPods Pro 2 for sheer silence.
The AirPods Max also got a "refresh," but let's be real—it was just new colors and a USB-C port. No new chip, which felt like a missed opportunity for a $549 pair of headphones.
Why Some Fans Felt Let Down
There is a segment of the tech world that found the Apple event Sept 9 a bit boring. There were no "one more thing" surprises. No foldable iPhone. No Apple Ring.
The focus was purely on refinement and AI integration.
If you’re holding an iPhone 15 Pro, there is almost zero reason to upgrade unless you absolutely need that 5x telephoto lens on the smaller Pro model. But if you’re on an iPhone 12 or 13? The jump is massive. The battery life alone on the 16 series has seen a jump thanks to better thermal management and the efficiency of the 3nm chips.
Moving Beyond the Hype
The reality of the Apple event Sept 9 is that it marked the beginning of a long-term transition. Apple is no longer just a hardware company; they are trying to become an AI company that happens to sell the best hardware to run it.
The success of these devices won't be measured by the sales on day one, but by how useful "Apple Intelligence" feels six months from now. If Siri is still hitting us with "Here is what I found on the web," the iPhone 16 will go down as a beautiful but underwhelming bridge to the future. If Siri actually becomes the personal assistant they promised, it changes everything.
What You Should Do Next
If you are looking to buy, don't just look at the shiny new colors. Think about your actual usage.
Check your current battery health. If your current iPhone is at 80% capacity or lower, the efficiency of the A18 chip will feel like magic.
Evaluate your storage needs. With the new 4K 120fps video recording on the Pro models, files are going to be gargantuan. If you’re a creator, 128GB is no longer enough; you’ll want to start at 256GB or look into high-speed external SSDs that you can now plug directly into that USB-C port.
Wait for the reviews of Apple Intelligence. Since much of the AI software is being released in stages, it might be worth waiting until the October or December iOS updates to see if the features actually live up to the stage demos before dropping $1,000.
✨ Don't miss: Why the Apple Old Orchard Mall Move Actually Changed Everything for Skokie Shoppers
The hardware is excellent, as always, but for the first time in years, the software is the part that needs to prove itself. Keep an eye on the iOS 18.1 and 18.2 developer betas to see how the "Glowtime" promises are actually holding up in the real world.