Everything that Apple announces in its Spring Forward Event

There were a lot of newsworthy happenings at Apple’s “Spring Forward” event. In this post we will try to sum up everything that Apple announced yesterday.

HBO Now on Apple TV

The event kick started with HBO CEO Richard Plepler announcing HBO’s standalone streaming service HBO Now, exclusively available on Apple TV and iOS. Tim Cook invited Richard Plepler on stage to break the news. The service is available at a $14.99 per month and will consist of all of HBO’s catalog of original content as well as movies. In order to make the service more lucrative for users, Apple TV will now be available at a reduced price of $69.

ResearchKit

Apple introduced ResearchKit, an open-sourced framework for developers to build apps that can help medical institutions collect data for diagnosis and other medical usage. For example, Stanford Medicine has introduced a new iPhone app called MyHeart Counts. The app is one of the first apps that uses ResearchKit and iPhone’s built-in motion sensors to easily track participants’ physical activity to collect data during a 6 minute walk test.

MacBook

The event also introduced a new MacBook with a 12-inch screen along with a Retina display that’s 0.88mm thin. The full laptop measures in at 13.1mm thin. The new MacBook features a newly designed keyboard with new spring-mechanism, a new trackpad with “Force Touch” technology that threatens to kill the right-click. It also consists of a single USB-C port that replaces USB, DisplayPort, HDMI, and charging ports. The new MacBook ships on April 10 starting at $1,299, and comes in silver, space gray and gold.

Apple Watch

The most awaited arrival is here. According to the event, the Apple Watch will arrive on April 24, starting at $349. It features an 18-hour battery life and various builds, from stainless steel to aluminum to gold. Apple successfully demonstrated app usage on its Apple Watch with apps like Instagram, WeChat, Uber and Apple Pay. Moreover, the new update to iOS 8.2 will also include the Apple Watch app.

Numbers Game

Apart from all the new arrivals, Apple also disclosed some numbers to soothe its stakeholders. For example, Apple has now sold more than 700 million iPhones thanks to the massive surge in sales due to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch. Moreover, they have gained increased support for Apple Pay with 700,000 retailers and 2,500 banks.

Wrap Up

There are a lot of things unveiled at the event, which was earlier promised in the September 2014 event. Perhaps the most impressive feat of engineering was the impressively thin new MacBook. Whether or not the Apple Watch sinks or swims remains to be seen, and it is something we will be closely monitoring over the coming weeks.