Apple is starting to show its age

Apple is almost 50 years old. It’s acting like it.

During Apple’s hardware event today, Apple felt older than ever. To wit: Company executives mentioned “sleep apnea” a dozen times and introduced a new feature on the Apple Watch that measures breathing disturbances. The AirPod demo discussed “hearing loss” way more than sound or audio quality, as they showed off noise reduction features as well as a clinically validated hearing test. Indeed, the AirPods Pro 2 will now double as hearing aids, which will benefit anyone with a hearing impairment, regardless of age.

Generally, a brand that once felt young and hip seemed to be acting its age, trading in super sexy styles for features that seemed to be genuinely useful for a user base that is getting older. Bye-bye skydiving and rock climbing. Hello heart monitoring and fall detection. Apple’s preoccupation with style seems to have given way to a focus on durability and substance. The company’s obsession with high-end materials — sapphire, titanium, ceramic — felt more in line with renovating a bathroom than promoting the next hot technology.

But rather than trying to pretend otherwise, the iPhone maker seems to be leaning in. Apple and many of its customers are aging, and it’s meeting them where they are. And as they say, with age comes wisdom.

Today Apple laid out the biggest update to its flagship iPhone to date: the iPhone 16 has incorporated AI, or Apple Intelligence, throughout the device. If the demos are to be believed, the new iPhone will be able to anticipate your needs, understand what you say, and do things for you by pairing artificial intelligence with the fact that Apple knows everything about you. In other words, it will be a far cry from the Siri of yesterday.

That means some potentially very helpful and time-saving features: Being able to tell Siri to find and text someone images from an event. Having it play music or add dates to your calendar based on what comes up in your text conversation. Giving you context about where you are or what you’re looking at through your phone’s screen. Prioritizing and summarizing your notifications. (Apple was sure to emphasize privacy at every step because all this stuff sounds very invasive, too.)

Of course, that all means Apple could further lock people into its ecosystem. You can almost hear the antitrust case writing itself. But until then, Apple seems to be aging gracefully.