Apple plays it safe with iPhone 11 as it pushes new services like Apple TV Plus (The Daily Charge)

Today on the Daily Charge, young upstart company Apple Incorporated showcased some promising new prospects in the smartphones, smart watch, and home entertainment fields. We're looking at prices, features, and looking ahead to the next innovations. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to Cnet's Daily Charge, I'm Ben Fox Riven. I'm [UNKNOWN]. And here are today's stories [MUSIC] Okay, so after months of rumors, leaks and speculation Apple revealed its new iPhone 11 Tuesday it starts at $700. It has an upgraded camera and processor. But beyond those headlines, there's really not much else to encourage customers to storm Apple stores to buy it. So john, this event wasn't expected to offer much as far as new iPhone and innovations. Do you think those expectations were pretty accurate? Yeah, yeah. I would agree. [LAUGH] Contest over. I mean what are the things that is suppose to innovated is a kind of artificial but it's like the price is the fact that, it's like a little bit cheaper than like what you would expect considering that you have tape these prices so high. The idea that, like, the mass availability phone, he one that's being pegged as being the one for, you know, the general consumer, isn't like a bazillion dollars. There are those pro phones, but they're kind of being pitched as being really for like professionals. They even say pro. Yeah. They even say Pro, as opposed to what they were saying last year which were. Was the iPhone 10 **** and the 10 S max. Obviously the max gives you some sort of indication that this is for more pro users, but they took both of those and basically made them pro phones. I would assume that the expectation that everybody was buying the XR, the XR last year was priced at $750. Right. This year the iPhone 11 is priced 700. Right. When was the last time Apple actually lowered prices? They lowered the price. That's a great question Right by like $50 this time for their entry level folks. They saw the fall. Folly and what they are doing. I mean, everybody all handset makers are having difficulty getting people to buy these phones when there's not a lot of new things you can do with a phone other than stick up more powerful processor, slam or better camera. And gave it a little bit better battery life. That's really all anyone can do. And that's all that Apple's doing here but at least they're not doing it and being like also will take another extra hundred dollars this time around. Okay, but don't you think they were doing that in previous years? And it didn't work out. It's true. ->> people are buying the iPhone ->>their iPhone, their iPhone business has been declining they still make billions upon billions of dollars and they're the envy of the entire smartphone industry but at the same time it does appear to me. If you you know, read through the tea leaves here the writing on the wall is Apple realized they needed to restrain their prices with the pro and the pro max. This year, the prices stayed the same. They stabilized from last year as well. So yeah, okay. Beyond the price. Let's talk about the features. But you're right, you're right. Absolutely. The price was really the most interesting part. So night mode, this is kind of catch up to the Google Pixel. Right. What did you think of that? That's cool. They were really emphasizing. Yeah. How magical it is. I mean, these things, they all look good except for Slowfies, Slowfies- I was about to get to Slowfies. What did you think of that? I mean, it's fine. I like Slowfies. What is there to say? I like Slowfies more than the talking poop emoji thing- Right. From previous years, so- Right. I could dig a Slowfie. Come on it doesn't, wait, it does talk, doesn't it? I guess so. I was going to say, it doesn't talk. Yeah. Doesn��t talk Ben. Come on, give him some credit [UNKNOWN]. So, some of the new colors, I hate mentioning new colors obviously, that��s not an innovation. [CROSSTALK] The candy colored iPhones, it��s not an innovation bit it��s something that it��s appealing, people like that. It was something that people really liked about, that seriously [UNKNOWN]. Okay. And the other element is with the prophones Longer battery life. Yeah. Once you get those three cameras rather than the two so that you have not only the wide angle but the telephoto. Another reason why people that are serious about shooting video and shooting photos would be maybe more interested in up selling themselves to that. Yeah. So Scott Stein or Heroic phone reviewer was at Apple's headquarters for this event. Let's check out some of his first impressions for the iPhone 11. So what you're looking at here is the battery life gains, the case, extra durability claims for water, and for a glass string, and it's the camera, camera, camera, camera. How good is the camera? By the way, that front facing camera can do slow-mo selfies now and has a wider area to look at, well, we'll see. Night mode which also looks fantastic is not unique to this, in fact it's also on the iPhone 11 and that's the question is, do you maybe wanna get the iPhone 11 which starts at 699. Includes the same age 13 bionic chip. It's an aluminum design. Still sports really good battery life, it seems. And it only has a white and ultra white camera, not the telephone. We are not gonna Okay, so I also want to jump to Apple TV plus so while the iPhone 11 was kind of a snooze this time around, we were kind of expecting that to happen. Apple TV plus the announcement there was that it was going to be coming out November 1 right $5 a month and also if you buy new hardware from Apple you get the first year free. So john, is this a compelling offer when you compare it to the competitive set? Well I mean, there's nothing more compelling than free. Sure. And that's about how much Apple should be charging for the service and the sense that they're not they're gonna have nine things to watch when it launches like nine. Okay to be fair to Apple these two seem like high spec shows like. Sure.>> I don't know how cool C is going to be but at the same time. Nobody does. No apples never made programming before they've hired like smart people. They've cast really big stars and they're throwing a lot of money at it which is you know some of the ingredients that generally can help you get a really good show but they're not going to have a lot of them. They aren't going to be releasing them all at once. So if you do want to watch the whole thing. You're either gonna have to buy an Apple product to get that free subscription, pay the $5 month subscription or wait till they all come out and then have the seven day free trial that they're actually gonna have for everybody. Right. So I think it's pretty safe to say that there's been a lot of scepticism in the marketplace that Apple TV plus is really going to make significant waves, right? Especially when there are a lot of competitors that are coming out. To go up against prime video, Netflix, so I I don't want to say the dead in the water or anything like that No, no I mean people are gonna watch it for sure especially if they're giving it away for free as a little bonus perk for all these new iPhones that people are buying. In addition to During the holiday season when people buy Apple TVs for friends and family and themselves, there's gonna be people that just get it for free. And so of course their gonna watch it. I don't think it's gonna be dead. And you know, maybe they'll have big hits. It's just difficult to see why people that aren't prompted by getting it for free and aren't super fans of One of those particular actors like Reese Witherspoon, or Jennifer Aniston, or Jason Momoa. It's hard to see how there's going to be a mass audience unless they really like find lightning in a bottle and get something that's ridiculously popular. Yeah, Buzzy. Yeah, never count Apple out. That's always an important thing to remember. But at the same time, yeah, they do have Quite a tough road going ahead with this one. For the Daily Charge, I'm Ben Fox Rubin. I'm Joan Solsman. Thanks everybody for joining us. [LAUGH] [MUSIC]