What We Did Not See During Apple's Hey Siri Event

Apple's "Hey Siri" event saw the introduction of several new things, incuding Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad updates. Even the Apple TV finally got some love. There were some things that weren't discussed though, and I thought it would be worth a look at some of them.

First up, we got a pretty impressive iPad Pro debut. With a giant screen and some new accessories, it is certainly an exciting announcement. However, the iPad mini got only a casual mention. Taking the power of the "current before the announcement" iPad Air 2 and using that to update the iPad mini is a big deal that barely got mentioned. And you can still buy the iPad mini 2, in all its non-Retina, non-TouchID glory.*

We also got, at long long last, the Apple TV update. And during the Apple TV portion of the program the word "HomeKit" wasn't uttered even once. In the half-hour spent on introducing the new Apple TV, we saw a new remote and Siri and an App Store, and all those things were great, but none of them turned on a light or adjusted a thermostat. It's sort of disappointing that after all the attention given to HomeKit when it was introduced, it's been quietly ignored. Sort of like the Apple TV, now that I think about it, so there's hope for the future HomeKit.

This was mostly an iOS event, and would have been exclusively iOS except that the Apple TV is getting its own version. That's why this next moment was so confusing: During the demo of the new 3D Touch feature on iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Craig Federighi brought up an email from Phil Schiller...

Behold! A supar seekrit email! Boy howdy is Hair Force One in trouble now...

...that mentioned the El Capitan ship date. I wouldn't have noticed the lack of Mac, except that this mention reminded me Apple makes all this other stuff. So it sort of seemed out of place, but also seemed like a subtle way to let the word out. Usually the desktop/laptop lineup doesn't keep company with the mobile stuff, which is fine, but that's why this struck me as odd.

We also had a decided lack of Sir Jony Ive. Sure his voice appeared in the videos, but his face didn't. We used to at least get a look at him during the product videos, leading to the conclusion that he spends all his time trapped in a white room. Much like we have seen less Tim on stage during events, perhaps Jony is trying to make a graceful exit from the videos. 

If I thought I had enough to talk about, I'd also mention the lack of karaoke jokes made at Eddy Cue's expense. But I don't have much to say on it other than I wish we had seen them and I can't believe after all the goofy things Eddy has done in the name of media events that we didn't see a karaoke app demo on the Apple TV. So I guess I won't add that to my list.

*Not really glory.