Apple Never Expected to be 'At Odds With Our Own Government,' Cook Says

“We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data and over our privacy,” Cook said in opening remarks. Cook has been “humbled,” he said, by the outpouring of support Apple has received since it refused to create a “back door” for the FBI to access a terrorist’s smartphone after the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Apple didn't expect to be in the position of being “at odds with our own government,” said Cook, “but we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you to protect your data and to protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers and we owe it to our country,” he said. “This is an issue that affects all of us, and we will not shrink from this responsibility,” Cook said.

Before announcements of a new, smaller iPhone, a downsizing in the iPad Pro line, updates in iOS 9 and updates to Apple TV, company executives noted initiatives in recycling and healthcare. Vice President-Environment Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson introduced a recycling robot called Liam that deconstructs an iPhone into parts and then separates the parts into materials that can be reused. In a video, the company said cobalt and lithium can be separated from the phone’s battery, gold and copper from the camera and silver and platinum from the main logic board so the materials can be recovered and introduced back into “the global supply,” said Jackson. Tungsten from the iPhone alert module can be used to make a precision cutting tool, and silver from the motherboard can be used in a solar panel, she said, but the parts won’t currently go back into another iPhone. The ultimate goal is to “create breakthroughs” to use the materials in Apple’s own products, she said.

Apple’s environmental initiative, called Apple Renew, includes sustainability efforts and consumer recycling. Jackson said consumers can take old iPhones into an Apple store for recycling or fill out a form online, and they'll get a prepaid label for free shipping. Worldwide, 93 percent of Apple facilities run on renewable energy, she said, with a goal of 100 percent.

Updates available beginning Monday for Apple TV add folders for organizing apps on the home screen; the ability to use voice to enter text on screen, including inputting user names and passwords; and the ability to access photos, including live photos, from a user’s cloud-based photo library and view them on TV, said Cook. The App Store has 5,000 apps for Apple TV, he said, including an NCAA app that allows users to view two games simultaneously.

Last year Apple sold 30 million 4-inch iPhones, said Vice President-iPhone, iPod and iOS Product Marketing Greg Joswiak, which led the company to offer a new 4-inch iPhone at a new price point. Target customers are those who prefer smaller phones and others who are buying their first iPhone, he said. Camera features include a 12-megapixel iSight camera with True Tone flash, upgraded image signal processor, focus pixels and panorama up to 63 megapixels, said Joswiak. The A9 chip has an embedded M9 motion co-processor, giving it the same processing performance as the iPhone 6s for gaming, said Joswiak. The always-on capability allows the iPhone SE to track steps and use Siri, and it has 802.11ac and Wi-Fi calling, he said. The SE has near-field communications and Apple Pay is built in. Twitter users were impressed by the iPhone SE specs but several were disappointed in capacity that started at just 16 GB. Starting price is $399 with pre-orders beginning Thursday and availability given as March 31.

Smaller was also the trend with the iPad Pro, with the 12-inch iPad Pro adding a 9.7-inch little sibling. Mashable tweeted: “Everything big is small again.” Introducing the iPad Pro, Senior Vice President-Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller took playful aim at Microsoft, making the claim that the majority of people buying the iPad Pro “are coming from a Windows PC -- a desktop or a notebook,” he said. He attempted to place Windows PCs in the dark ages of tech “before there was an Internet” or social media or app stores. In another jab, he said more than 600 million PCs in use today are over 5 years old, calling it “really sad.” Prices are $599 for 32 GB, $799 for 128 GB and $899 for Apple’s first 256 GB tablet, he said. Shipping is also scheduled March 31.

Apple Watch updates were largely about fashion and accessories. Cook touted new accessory watch bands and said a third of Apple Watch users “regularly change their bands.” He showed a new woven nylon band ($49) available in seven colors and additional sport band ($49) colors, bringing the number to 22.

In a research note emailed Monday, IHS said Apple has a “significant opportunity” with the four-inch iPhone SE because most iPhone models in use are small-screen models. Of the iPhone models in use, 29 percent are iPhone models with four-inch screens and 23 percent are older models with three-and-a-half-inch displays, IHS said. With the iPhone SE, Apple is aiming at an “underserved” consumer segment that prefers smaller screens and has been reluctant to upgrade, IHS said, while its competitors have chosen not to target the segment.

But iPhone SE “will not change the market trajectory for the iPhone,” said IHS. In a slowing smartphone market, Apple has to find ways to entice current smartphone owners to upgrade from their "good enough" existing smartphones. The iPhone SE will help do that for part of the installed base, but Apple “needs bigger bolder ideas to drive a significant uplift in iPhone shipments and accelerate the upgrade cycle,” it said.