Another Set of Shitty Hot-Takes on the Apple Announcement

• The LTE watch could be nice. Example - I decided to pop down to the beach and catch a few waves for my 'lunch break'. I couldn't leave my phone just sitting there on the beach, so I couldn't take it. An LTE Apple Watch would've been very useful for that. Not real excited about tossing Verizon another 5 bucks a month for it though. @snipe likes to go running with the dogs, but she usually takes her phone. The idea of going without it might be nice for her? She doesn't seem to care though.
• Kids have been unlocking their parents iphones when they were asleep for ages. Cops have been making people unlock iphones via TouchID for a while now (forcing a fingerprint isn't a fifth-amendment violation; forcing a password is). The face recognition is not vulnerable to the sleep-attack, because it requires eyes open, and 'paying attention'. Also, there's a new iOS 11 feature that helps - quintuple-clicking the power-button disables TouchID and FaceID.
• The wireless charging things are a dumb gimmick. It will charge slower than regular lightning-charging. And it will charge way slower than the new fast-charge thing (using a USB-C power supply and a USB-C to lightning cable). I do like the idea of being lazy and just plopping my phone down though. Though the last wireless-charging doodad I had I found really annoying; trying to keep things aligned.
• I don't care about the iPhone 8 or iPhone X. I'm not particularly interested in either of them. If my current iPhone (a 7) happens to implode or something, I guess I'd get the X one? No particular rush. The biggest things for the X seem to me to be: a plus-sized screen in a 'plain' body, and this:
  
  
  That's million to one contrast ratio in the screen. That might even be readable in direct sunlight!
• I still think they should've gone USB-C for charging. That would've been great; I could've charged my phone, my laptop, my Nintendo Switch, my friend's Android phones - all with the same thing. But they still haven't gotten enough "courage" to do that.
• I still think they should've tried to find a way to do a headphone jack. I know; waterproof, blah blah. But still, it really can put you in quite a bind.
• AppleTV 4K - nice. Might upgrade. In general I find the AppleTV to be a disappointment though.

It's funny, I'm finding I'm far more excited about the new OS releases than anything else:

• iOS 11 means better multitasking and dock in iPad. I love my iPad; it's the only device that never lets me down. I would love to be able to do my actual job with it. I don't know that iOS 11 is enough to do that, but it certainly is steps in the right direction. Also new control center seems less 'fiddly' - I use flashlight and swapping inputs to my wireless headphones often, and those are a little awkward to get to.
• tvOS 11 means that Cox, my cable provider, becomes a supported single-sign-on provider. When you've added enough apps to your Apple TV, this can be great. I hate having to keep re-logging in to authorize all kinds of new apps and everything, it's a pain.
• macOS High Sierra means that the ancient, aging, and heavily-patched HFS filesystem finally goes away and is replaced by something really and truly modern (APFS). While I'm terrified of some of the practical implications of this, I'm also really excited to get the rest of MacOS up to date with the rest of the world. (And really, would it've been so damned hard to call it "macOS 11"?). Should be much faster, if it all works out OK.
• watchOS 4 I don't think I care about at all. Some kind of Siri watchface? Meh.