An interesting presentation from Apple today. On the iPhone side, I was surprised that we no longer have a small 4" model to choose from. One handed operation has become more cumbersome than it used to be, and there are enough people out there with small enough hands to find 4.7" already on the large side. But this is something that we can only properly judge with the phone in our hands. But it could well mean that 5S sales will remain stronger than they used to be.
Even though Apple was doing its best to hide it, by basing the comparison on the first model, this was by far the smallest advance in computing power ever for the iPhone. A 25% increase in speed means that with desktop class performance comes also only desktop class performance improvement. Should this stay this way, and it is likely that it will, given all the problems Intel has in getting its 14nm process under control, then we will see the same lengthening of the replacement cycle coming from PCs to phones: 25% annually instead of 80% means we need now 5 years instead of 2 for the same improvement.
Payments could well be a much larger deal for the US than Europe, given the relatively archaic state of the US payments infrastructure. Given the high cost of an iPhone, Apple Pay would in Europe not be able to become the sole or cheapest way for a customer to pay (there must by law be a common, surcharge free option to pay, and iPhones are just not common enough to be that option), but together with Continuity it could become a great way to pay on the web.
The watch is nice, using fitness as the angle for people to start using it. What it’s true value will be, we will see. Notifications and universal access control token seem two promising options; I would have loved to have Touch ID as well on the device. As long as battery life is sufficient, it would seem to me that it will have low replacement cycles, with the option of deferring processing to the iPhone it necessary.