Neil Cybart:

The iPhone, iPad, and Mac are converging into one central "brain" while new platforms will be formed focused on key aspects of our lives including transportation, home, and body (wearables). In this new era, the iPhone is positioned as the center point of our digital lives with iCloud and Apple services representing the glue connecting everything together. […]

Neil believes, as do I, the iPhone will eventually fade away and the Apple Watch will become the real personal computer.

In the future, the iPhone may melt away, and a range of devices will be able to provide an unimaginable level of personal technology. Apple Watch will likely be able to stand on its own in due time. As the definition of work changes, more and more will be designated for the wrist, further strengthening the appeal of wearables. Transportation and the connected home will be looked at as providing the same kind of personal experience.

Jay Torres:

Now that I've had my watch for a few weeks, I definitely notice what people are wearing on their wrists. Maybe because I live in the Bay Area, with a lot of tech savvy people, I'm starting to see more people with Apple Watches on their wrists. [...]

The Apple Watch seems to be the iPod of this generation. When the iPod first came out in 2001, people were quick to criticize it. [...]

Soon enough, iPods were the gadget to have. People were sporting the iconic white headphones. An entire ad campaign centered around those ear buds. But in the early days, it was common to give a nod to others with the white ear buds since you knew they had an iPod as well. It's pretty crazy to think that before the iPod, no one else made white ear buds; all you had was standard black.

This reminds of the months leading up to my first iPod, my first Apple product ever. I remember walking around my college campus and just noticing everywhere, people wearing white earphones.

I started out noticing just 4-5 per day. And slowly, over time, I'd notice 4-5 an hour. On students leaving the dorms. On guys waiting for the campus shuttle. On people working out at the gym or eating alone. I distinctly remember those iconic white earphones appearing in the Winter Olympics, on NBA players warming up before marquee games, and the cult classic teen drama, The OC.

Nowadays, it's the Apple Watch that I'm noticing everywhere. On people at fast food restaurants. On shoppers at the mall. On tourists walking the Vegas strip.

And with social media, it's even easier to notice the Apple Watch on celebrities and politicians. Off the top of my head, there's been: Jay Leno, J.J Abrams, Kevin Durant, Santana, Bloomberg anchors, Larry King, Jeb Bush, and the Russian Prime Minister.

Sure, we're still early in the adoption cycle and more and more competing watches are coming onto the scene. But only one comes in that iconic rounded rectangle that is just so easy to spot from a distance.

This is how brand awareness begins.

Joshua Topolsky:

And that’s part of the reason why Apple’s “me too”s end up feeling like “me-first”s. In the age of digital, execution is staggeringly important, and there isn’t a single company in existence that can pull off polish and simplicity like Apple. While other companies struggle just to get all of their devices and services talking to one another, Tim Cook and friends are worrying over the details that actually make consumers pay attention. The products don’t just work the way they should; they feel the way they should. Reducing friction, even a single click, can change the way a user perceives an entire product. […] [Emphasis mine]

That’s partly Apple’s magic show: being able to blend the familiar, the known, and the obvious with something (even a little bit) totally new. The company’s senior vice-president of marketing, Phil Schiller, told Businessweek “You can’t just say, ‘Here it is. It does the same thing 5 percent better than last year.’ Nobody cares.” But that five per cent is often the difference between making something that people talk about, and making something they forget. That five per cent is where Apple lives.

Charlie Warzel:

Most importantly, Apple has the massive user base to push its vision of the future into reality. The App Stores and Apple Pay sit on top of more than 800 million iTunes accounts with credit information. Put simply: Apple is adding features — its vision of the future — to devices you already use. That’s a great way to ensure that the future you are building works, instead of promising something world-changing you can’t deliver on.

While the tech media and everyone else argues over which company copied which, this is the one thing that no other company in the world can duplicate.

So every time Apple decides to launch a new paradigm — whether Apple does it first or not doesn't matter — the sheer number of Apple customers instantly makes it the gold standard for the rest of the industry to beat.

Jan Dawson:

So why is this a big deal? Well, the reasons are fairly simple: it allows Apple to take over the primary relationship with the customer, relegating the carrier to a secondary role in relation to their device purchase. Yes, you’ll absolutely still have a direct relationship with the carrier, but it will now be exclusively around the service plan and you’ll no longer be dependent on the carrier for upgrading your device. You’ll now be able to put your carrier on autopilot while you have a much more active relationship with Apple, upgrading annually on a set schedule.

My favorite part about this is how it forces the carriers to compete. Looking forward to better reliability, customer service, and more competitively-priced service plans as the carriers bend over backwards to retain customers.

Viranch Damani:

One possible solution is for Apple to sell refurbished devices in countries like India. In the US, the shift to leasing plans such as T-Mobile’s Jump on Demand and iPhone Forever program will make people return their iPhones every time they upgrade.

If these returned iPhones are refurbished, packed and sold again by Apple in emerging countries such as India at reduced rates they would sell very well. This will have two possible solutions:

1. Apple would not have to develop a low-cost iPhone for emerging markets and risk possible cannibalization of the high-end.

2. These refurbished iPhones, sold at reduced rates, will not only help Apple boost sales significantly but will help them maintain a good experience for the end users which is very important for Apple’s business model.

While all of the carriers are moving away from subsidizing to on-demand upgrading, all of these returned iPhones at the end of each lease will have to end up somewhere.

This is something that Android or Windows will never be able to do, simply because they don't have Apple's brand strength or smartphones that maintain a high enough resale value.

For Apple, U.S. carriers, iPhone users in the U.S, and potential iPhone customers in emerging markets, this is simply a win-win-win-win.

Joe Casabona, a self-proclaimed iPhone-hater, concludes his two-week review of an iPhone 6:

I didn’t hate my time with the iPhone, but I definitely wasn’t convinced to convert. There are things I’m just used to on Android and prefer. I know it seems close point for point, but the things I didn’t like are weighted much more than the things I liked.

I still plan on using the device for testing, and will likely use it on trips or longer days when I need the battery and want to take nice photos. It will likely be my primary device in Disney World, and when I do some more traveling this summer.

Six weeks later, Joe humbly admits his two-week review wasn't fair:

There were 2 factors in my first trial with the iPhone that stacked the odds against me ever liking the device. I wasn’t using it as my only full time device, and I didn’t use all the features.

The first factor made my user experience with the iPhone more like this: “Ugh. I don’t like this; I’m just going to do it on my Android phone.” That means I never used the iPhone enough to not have a frustrating (read: different from Android) experience. The second factor was the real kicker. I was excluding the features that make using iOS great. I didn’t turn on iMessage. I wasn’t using Passbook or Apple Pay. Handoff was something that was hands-off for me (pun totally intended).

He concludes:

This has been a strange experience for me. I’ve been such an outspoken proponent of Android. It was more like anti-iPhone. That means making the switch has been one of begrudging acceptance. At first, I didn’t like that I liked it.

But as I use the iPhone more and see how well it actually works, it’s clear that Android is great for some things. But needs to mature in other aspects. And I think Google knows that too. The change in treatment of Android over the last few years has been noticeable. It’s like Google said, “GUYS. We need to fix this mess.”

But still. As I write this post using iA Writer on my iPad, I know I will be able to proof it on my iPhone while I wait at Baggage Claim. Then I will hit publish from my Mac, all without having to push a sync or refresh button. And that’s some powerful stuff.

After fully embracing the iPhone, Joe is able to realize the powerful benefits of the Apple ecosystem, the seamless integrations, and how it simply feels with real first-hand experience.

Because at the end of the day, real people don't care about how impressive the tech specs or feature lists look on paper; people care about how well technology feels when it's integrated into their lives.

Ethan Smith:

These changes mean that users can now search for app content directly from Google search and even have app content pushed to them within the Android operating system. Apple recently announced its own search engine, launching with iOS 9 and El Capitan this fall. Users will be able to search for content directly from their devices via Spotlight and Safari search.

All these changes signal that Google and Apple are actively working to move search from the web directly to your device and to make app content as easy to discover as a web page. […]

In the new world of SEO, those who own the operating system own the search experience. Google’s Android operating system will give Google further leverage to increase its share of search. And with 43 percent of mobile users powered by iOS, Apple will immediately become a major player in search. The biggest losers will be companies like Microsoft, which has struggled to gain traction with Windows mobile devices, and Yahoo, Ask, and AOL, which have no mobile operating system strategy.

As an Apple enthusiast, this excites me.

As a web developer, this terrifies me.

As a person UX designer, I know that people will always naturally take the path of least resistance, which means this could very well become a reality.

Mark Gurman:

New to the Force Touch experience, a user can look up a point of interest in the Maps application, and then Force Touch on the destination to immediately begin turn-by-turn directions. Currently, if a user wants to start navigating to a destination, she must search for the point of interest, click the navigation logo on the map view, then click another button to actually start navigating. In this case, the Force Touch gesture will skip two steps.

In the Music application, a user can Force Touch on a listed track to be presented with some of the most commonly-used actions. For instance, if a user deep presses on the listing for a song, a menu will appear to quickly add the song to a playlist or save it for offline listening. This Force Touch gesture would act as a substitute for clicking the actions button on the right side of each track listing in the Music app.

Another feature in testing, according to one source, are shortcuts that appear after Force Touching an app icon on the Home screen. For example, if a user deep presses on the Phone app icon, he could choose to shortcut directly to the Voicemail tab. This could also apply to deep pressing the News app icon and being taken directly to either the Favorites or For You tabs.

Some of the Force Touch gestures will come from Apple’s latest MacBooks. For instance, a user can Force Touch a link in Safari to see a preview of that webpage. The gesture also works for deep pressing on an address or contact name to see a preview of a map view or contact card, respectively. Similarly, a user can Force Touch a word to look up its definition.

A very welcomed feature for iPhone to make it easier for small hands to navigate large touchscreens.

Jonathan Matus:

We stand on the threshold of what can realistically be described as the largest and most important shift in transportation in a century. The benefits will be enormous: An 80+ percent reduction in the cost of transportation. Reduced pollution. Reduced stress and road rage. A dramatic decrease in accidents and traffic deaths. Gaining back time lost to commuting — and the associated increase in productivity. Freeing up two lanes on many urban roads by eliminating parked cars. Even the reclaiming of the space allocated to home garages.

Driverless, Uber-style fleets of electric cars will change the way we live. The same way the steam engine created cities and the automobile created suburbs.

Suddenly, all these reports/rumors of Google and Apple researching and developing driverless cars seems much more than just a cool side project.