The many talking points from Apple iPhone 16 keynote & behaviour of tech leaders

This was never going to be subdued, in case you had any expectations on those lines. As I had said last week, the annual iPhone keynote is where new performance and experience benchmarks are set. The ones that Android phone makers then spend the next 6-8 months trying to match. While some experts on X will repeatedly tell us how iOS is now doing what Android has been doing for 2 years now. How does it matter? Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” keynote sets the stage for Apple Intelligence, and of course, the new iPhone 16 series. As well as serious health tracking updates for the Apple Watch and a mission that now includes the AirPods Pro 2 as well. As I pointed out, it feels as though Apple has left a few cards on the table. I’ll jot down the highlights from ground zero, Cupertino, California.

AirPods are likely to move into the fourth generation this year, and standard true wireless earbuds likely to be joined by the latest gen AirPods Pro buds as well. More mysterious however are the AirPods Max headphones, which haven’t been refreshed in four years (and therefore, the Lightning port). Either a new version can be classified as long overdue, or Apple may have shelved it for good. Either way, we’ll know on September 9. HT will be covering the keynote in detail, analysing what exactly the announcements mean for you. Do stay tuned.
Before I get into Elon Musk’s ongoing feud with Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes (I will absolutely not hazard a guess at how it’ll shape up; my point is more about behaviour befitting a tech leader and a supposed role model for society mostly lurking the depths of X), let us focus on the brighter side of things first. Now that X is banned in Brazil (with stiff penalties for anyone using a VPN to bypass the block), rival social media platform Bluesky claims to have clocked up a million new users in three days. That also propelled Bluesky to the top of the Apple App Store in Brazil. This is perhaps the app’s single biggest success story in its time of existence, which started out with the mission to be a Twitter alternative after Musk took over, and all sorts of madness was let loose on the platform. Threatening to sue advertisers who stopped spending money on X, makes sense in Musk’s logic of doing business. Nevertheless, that sort of tomfoolery doesn’t cut it, when a country’s laws are in focus. Whether you may agree with them or not. Or add a political twist to the conversation.
Irrespective of whether the original orders to X to block a handful of accounts in Brazil had any political influence to it or not, Musk’s behaviour left a lot to be desired in the months prior to X being banned in Brazil. Musk is well known for going absolutely off track at times (well, most of the time; I was trying to cushion that crushing reality) when its him and his X account, versus the world. Some examples of the sort of language Musk’s used for Moraes – called him “Voldemort” and posted a meme of a dog’s scrotum in close proximity to the face of another dog, wrote “He is a dictator and a fraud, not a justice” and wrote on Aug 31 that “We will (it should be “will”, but who’ll break it to Elon?) begin publishing the long list of @Alexandre’s crimes, along with the specific Brazilian laws that he broke tomorrow.”
In his infinite wisdom, Musk’s creation that is @Alexandrefiles went on to post a copy of the order by the Brazilian justice for the world to see, and thereby revealing the specifics of the X accounts in question, and the real names of their owners. As for the uncivilised posts and memes, Musk’s got quite a habit of that. Particularly with anyone who doesn’t have a similar opinion about things, or has a different political view. He’s recently called UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer “two-tier Keir”, in a way supporting a conspiracy theory that’s got wings on X, about differential treatment by law enforcement.
They’re quiet; perhaps too quiet, is how I summarise electric cars and plug-in hybrids. This is something I’d been meaning to chat about, but so much happened in the previous handful of weeks, this never got a chance to figure on the agenda. There are many differences that dictate alternate fuelled motoring from the internal combustion engines (ICEs) many of us still prefer. And I say that whilst adding that you wouldn’t catch me owning an EV (a hybrid isn’t technically out of the conversation) in the near future. My reasons are simple. As an owner of a single car (with no flexibility for variables, or funds to purchase a second car on a whim), EVs may be fine for intracity runs but there are uncertainties if an intra-city run comes into the picture. Many of you may point to an increasing network of EV chargers on India’s rapidly increasing network of expressways. And I can raise each of those arguments, with instances of these much-fancies infrastructure upgrades, either broken or not working. If you have an EV battery running low and a broken charger to look at, that’d be a rather uncomfortable bookmark for that ownership (I’ve little patience or stamina for that avoidable scenario).
Nevertheless, my HT Wknd piece focused on EV makers who are currently struggling to define the future sound of motoring. I absolutely agree with my Wknd editor Zara Murao, who classifies current attempts as “bleating”. There have pretty much been two sides to the EV soundtrack coin thus far – either assassin-like silence or weird sounds to make their presence known to other road users as a warning. Who at Tesla thought a “boombox” comprising of the sounds of an ice cream truck, applause and a sheep’s bleating, were a good idea (oh wait, we actually may have a fair idea who’d have bulldozed these ideas through)? No wonder this was reversed, after transport regulators were left unimpressed.
More serious attempts are in play now. Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis is clearly not joking when he says they’ve had to change the sound of the all-electric Charger, a 100 times. Ferrari’s top bosses are also talking about “authentic” sound, for their upcoming EV. All this while, Lamborghini is getting more and more inspired by spacecraft. Hyundai, Skoda, Fiat and Toyota, some more examples, of a significant step forward in these attempts. The new Fiat 500e, for example, involves an acoustic vehicle alert system (AVAS) that “sings” a classical composition called “The sound of 500” (written by composers Flavio Ibba and Marco Gualdi), to pedestrians. We’ve not heard the last of that. You see what I did there?