Apple’s events have never been known for their music. Outside of a 2014 snafu when it forced a U2 album on its customers, regardless of whether they wanted it, the firm likes to play it safe.
Muzak and the occasional foray into popular, mainstream acts are generally the official soundtracks of its launch events.
You know, the stuff you could play in front of your grandparents and at worst, they’d just look slightly confused, but probably find a way to happily tap along nonetheless.
But during this year’s iPhone launch, rather than the dulcet tones of Bono or whelps of Chris Martin, as the event trundled on, it was Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s voice that was ringing loud and clear – at least in my head.
Specifically, the iconic lyric “no alarms and no surprises” from the band’s 1997 banger of a single, No Surprises, was playing on repeat as the firm rattled off this year’s offerings.
Why? I’m not smart enough to pretend there’s any deep or philosophical meaning behind the thought.
It’s just that, as a serious music and movie nerd, that’s precisely what Apple delivered: no alarms and no surprises. Which made it a far better soundtrack than the official one – which I’ve already forgotten – and the reason I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Unlike days of yesteryear, when founder and former CEO Steve Jobs would famously always have “one more thing” to surprise fans, the pre-event rumours proved to be bang on the money.
New iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max handsets, with the standard smattering of tech upgrades, headlined by a new A20 Pro chipset and an assortment of AI upgrades. And then the new folding iPhone Duo handset people have been harping on about for just shy of half a decade.
Then the new AirPods 5 with ANC, as rumoured by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman before the event, which look like a nice refinement on the AirPods 4 with ANC – though I wish Apple had spent more time talking about the audio quality upgrades rather than all the clever AI gubbins, and had managed to deliver more than five hours of playback with ANC on.
Finally, the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 wearables, which come with yet more AI-powered health features and an Audio Intelligence live transcription service that lets you record, transcribe and check conversations in realtime – but sadly not the hi-res local music playback I’ve long asked for.
Yes, I like some of the stuff on offer, especially the 18 Pro’s new burgundy (Apple missed a trick not calling it Ron) colour and the in-frame camera mode for audio, which lets you cut out background noise when capturing a live performance.
And yes, technically Apple did say "and one more thing" before unveiling the Duo, despite every man/woman and their dog already knowing about it.
And, finally, yes, the two AirPods 5 models look decent, though I’m not impressed with either pair's quoted battery life with ANC on.
But that was it. There was nothing else on show to give us the old Apple “and one more thing” experience where we saw something we really were not expecting, and that, for me, is a crying shame.
Remember when Jobs' “one more thing” unveiled the Apple Cinema Display (a monitor with an atypical, at the time, 16:9 aspect ratio that was ideal for watching films)?
Or 2005, when he surprised us with the iPod Shuffle, and then, one year later, the first Apple TV?
Heck, he may not be as much of a showman as Jobs, but I can still hear the collective “ooh” from the team after Tim Cook’s “one more thing” unveiling of Apple Music in 2015.
To be clear (before I get hunted with torches and pitchforks by the Apple fans among our readers), that’s not a dig at the new hardware from the event – the new iPhones are as interesting as mobile devices can be for AV aficionados.
The firm has a strong record of delivering decent audio and picture quality on its iPhones, after all. That’s why, if you look at our list of Award-winners over the past decade, you’ll tend to see an iPhone on top as our recommended handset for serious music fans. So even a minor spruce-up to its offering is at least partially of interest.
And its foldable iPhone Duo has piqued my interest more than usual, as it has a similar movie-friendly aspect ratio to the five-star Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8.
If either AirPods 5 manages to fix our minor issues with the previous generation's lack of punch and dynamism, they could be great. So again, it's not about the tech it unveiled being particularly bad. We need to review it before we make any judgements like that.
I just wish it had something more meaty to show serious AV fans. Forget the Apple OLED TV or Dolby Atmos soundbar the team and I have been asking for; at this point, like our senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, I’d settle for a new Apple TV 4K.
Truthfully, I just want new stuff that hasn’t already been fully revealed in the sea of pre-event rumours to start appearing at Apple’s events again, as right now it all feels a bit stagnant.
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