Apple’s Color Offerings Continue to Amaze and Astonish

Apple’s big fall announcements have come and gone with new entries in both the Apple Watch and iPhone lineups. The focus, of course, was on improvements to the devices’ hardware and the capabilities enabled by those improvements. New case materials, processors, and data connectors are exciting, but I’m here to talk about the real change customers care about: color. People are passionate about the colors of their devices, and Apple always delivers an interesting mix of options. This year is no different.

First off, congratulations are in order for fans of Pink. Between Barbie and Apple’s fall hardware offering, this is your year. Pink is the featured new color for both the Apple Watch Series 9 and the iPhone 15, and I have to say it looks great. The anodized aluminum shade is clearly pink without being overstated, and the pink frosted glass back of the iPhone 15 is truly eye-catching. Apple made the right call choosing this hue to lead the lineup.

As far as the other color options for the iPhone 15, the device is available in pale shades of Blue, Green, and Yellow in addition to Black. These desaturated finishes aren’t going to please everyone, but they are sophisticated in a certain way. They’re varied enough that every customer looking to buy an iPhone 15 will find one that suits them well. The lack of a Silver finish is an odd choice, leaving Black as the only non-colorful option.

Let’s talk about Black for a second. Most products announced at the event come in some shade of black, but no two finishes are the same. Here are the different options introduced this year:

  • iPhone 15 and 15 Plus: Black

  • iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max: Black Titanium

  • Apple Watch Series 9: Midnight (aluminum), Graphite (stainless steel), and Space Black (Hermés edition)

That’s five unique black finishes across three different product lines and three different materials. I find it interesting that the aluminum Apple Watch Series 9 continues to come in Midnight while the iPhone 15, which is also made of aluminum, is offered in a finish that is distinctly black without any hint of Midnight’s blueish undertones.

This situation makes me the miss the days when everything just came in Space Grey. Sure, it was more of a spectrum than a specific shade, but at least I knew what to call the color of my phone.

I continue to be sad that my favorite Apple Watch color, Space Black, is limited to the Hermés collection and thus starts at $1,249. That’s a high markup to get something slightly darker than Graphite. But I guess looking good comes with a price.

The Apple Watch Ultra continues to only be offered in a single Natural Titanium finish. Alas, there’s still no dark color option for the most extreme Apple Watch users. For those who like the Natural Titanium look, though, you can now buy a pro iPhone in the same finish, and it really works.

The iPhone 15 Pro also comes in Black Titanium, White Titanium, and Blue Titanium. (Have you heard the iPhone 15 Pro is made of titanium now?) The blue version is this year’s “fun” option, and it’s quite nice. It follows in the footsteps of last year’s Deep Purple by keeping things dark and muted while still clearly incorporating color.

Fans of the gold iPhone will be sorely disappointed with Apple’s new offering. It looks like gold and titanium just don’t fit well together, or at least not yet. You can still buy an Apple Watch Series 9 in a stainless steel Gold finish, but there isn’t a current-gen iPhone to match it with.

The Apple Watch Series 9 also comes in Silver, Starlight, and PRODUCT(RED) for the aluminum models, in addition to the previously-mentioned Midnight and Pink. For the stainless steel version, your options are Gold, Silver, and Graphite unless you want to pay extra for the Hermés version in Space Black.

And that’s Apple’s color story for this year. If you’re looking to color match your phone and watch, I’d recommend going with Pink for the non-pro models or Natural Titanium on the higher end. The black finishes this year are all over the place, and gold is completely missing from the iPhone lineup.

That said, most people probably don’t care as much as I do if the color of their iPhone matches perfectly with their Apple Watch. The majority of customers just want some good options to choose from so they can pick something that fits their unique style. In that regard, I think this year’s color lineup is a success.

I won’t to try make any guesses about what this set of options means for the future. Trying to predict Apple’s color offerings is a fool’s errand. Instead, we can just appreciate the chaos for what it is and spend our time arguing over which color is the best.

What Should Have Been You

Content warning: This blog posts contains references to miscarriage.

A year ago, we received the news we feared more than anything: The child we’d been expecting wasn’t going to arrive.

It hadn’t been long since we found out we were pregnant, but it had been long enough for us to dream of what our child could be. To excitedly anticipate their arrival, to calculate when their major milestones would come, to imagine what life would be like with them in our family.

Suddenly, all of that hope vanished into thin air.

In its place was a void, a hole in our hearts the precise size and shape of our love for our child. There were moments when it felt like everything we had could be swallowed by that void at any moment. We’d staked our future on this tiny person in the making, and then they were gone.

A year changes a lot of things. We are unendingly grateful for the life we have now with our son Noah. He’s the greatest blessing we could ever ask for. But we’ll never forget our little one we didn’t get to meet. They were—and always will be—bigger than the whole sky in our eyes.

Life is full of so much joy and so much pain, often at the same time. Learning to hold both is an endless endeavor, but I like to think we’ve gotten better at it over this past year. God’s faithfulness and the support of our loved ones carried us through.

To those mourning a future they thought they could depend on, to our past selves and those who find themselves in a similar place, we say this: There is life after loss. The heartache will never fully go away. It’s a part of you now, like the one you love is a part of you. You will carry them with you into tomorrow, but there will be a tomorrow. And there is always, always hope for beautiful things yet to come.

In loving memory of our unborn child. We will hold you in our hearts forever, and we will never be the same because of the time we had with you, brief as it may have been.

I've got a lot to pine about
I've got a lot to live without
I'm never gonna meet
What could've been, would've been
What should've been you

The Curious Case of My Paramount+ Subscription

I want to tell you a weird and specific story about the world of streaming TV and the seemingly fragile stack of technology our entertainment is built on. I doubt there are many people who can relate to this experience or my reaction to it, but I think it’s worth sharing anyway. Here’s how I’ve been watching Paramount+ for free despite my best efforts to pay for it.

It all started back when Paramount+ was still called CBS All Access. My wife wanted to watch Criminal Minds, and I knew we’d have to subscribe to the service in order to get access. Apple had just teamed up with Viacom to offer a discounted bundle of CBS All Access and Showtime to Apple TV+ subscribers. It was a bit confusing, but it turned out to be a good deal, so I signed up.

At that point, I had a subscription to CBS All Access and Showtime, both via Apple TV Channels. I was billed monthly through my Apple ID, and I streamed Criminal Minds, The Stand, Young Sheldon, and everything else the service offered through the Apple TV app.

I was also able to access my subscription in the CBS All Access app and on the service’s website. The site allowed me to create an account and link it to my Apple-mediated subscription so that I could watch whichever way I preferred. (I almost always did so via the Apple TV app.)

When the service transitioned to Paramount+, I was curious what would happen to my subscription. I was pleasantly surprised that everything moved over smoothly. The branding changed overnight, but I was still able to access all of the content the same I always had: via the Apple TV app, the Paramount+ app, or the website.

This setup worked great for me. I loved being able to watch Paramount+ shows and movies without leaving the TV app, and I even appreciated the simplified billing through my Apple ID. I wish every streaming service was offered through Apple TV Channels, because that’s definitely how I’d choose to access them.

I likely never would have touched the subscription again had it not been for a change in another part of my life: I started using Walmart+ for grocery delivery and fell in love with it. And one of the perks that Walmart+ offers to subscribers is free access to—you guessed it—Paramount+.

Not wanting to waste money paying for something I could get for free, I went to the Subscriptions page in my Apple ID settings and turned off auto renew for Paramount+. Apple told me I’d have access to the service until the end of my billing cycle, and then I’d have to resubscribe to use it again. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just wait for my current month to run out, and then I’ll activate the free subscription through my Walmart account.”

Wow, was I wrong.

I waited for my subscription to run out and move to the Inactive section of my Apple ID settings. Then I logged into my Paramount+ account on the website to active my subscription through Walmart+, and I was greeted with the following message:

It looks like you’re subscribed to Paramount+ with Apple TV channels. Please visit Settings on your Apple TV, iOS, or Mac, or select Edit to manage your subscription in iTunes.

“Okay,” I thought. “There must be some kind of delay in their processing. I’ll wait for this to work itself out.” In the meantime, I kept on binge watching, thinking the situation would resolve within a few days.

I kept checking, and checking, and checking. One week went by. Then two weeks. Then a month. Three months.

Here I am writing this blog post over eight months after canceling my Paramount+ subscription, and my account is still in this odd limbo. The company has not received a cent from me in that time, nor have they (I assume) been compensated by Walmart for my subscription since I haven’t been able to active that perk. All the while, I’ve had full access to the Paramount+ streaming service.

I’d feel bad if I hadn’t tried so many times to fix this. I still check in every once in a while to see if my account status has changed. And every time I hit play on a Paramount+ title, part of me anticipates a message saying, “You’re no longer subscribed.” But so far, so… I guess you’d call this good?

On my end, it’s mostly a wash. I wouldn’t be paying for the service myself anyway since I should be accessing it through my Walmart+ subscription. Instead, the ghost of my Apple TV Channels sub lives on to stream another day. The end result is the same: I get to stream Paramount+. But it does come with a few annoyances.

Apple are aware that I don’t have an active Paramount+ subscription, which breaks some of the niceties built in to the TV app. Often when I try to launch a Paramount+ title from my Up Next queue, my device will prompt me to resubscribe, and I have to manually open the title in the Paramount+ app instead. Sometimes, Apple TV will recommend I watch via the CBS app or some other means since it knows I’m not paying for Paramount+. Listen, Apple: I’m trying, okay?

Oddly, Paramount themselves somehow know that I’m not paying for premium Showtime content even though they think my Paramount+ subscription is active. When I try to play a Showtime title, I’m prompted to go to my account page and upgrade to a plan that includes it—something I can’t do. The account page simply redirects me to my Apple ID subscriptions page, which says I’m not subscribed. No Showtime for me, I guess.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, I apologize. I find the whole situation more funny than anything else. And a little bit sad.

We went all-in on internet technology for our entertainment, but in doing so, we simply trusted that the technology was solid. In this case, at least, it seems to be more shaky than I’m comfortable with. I’m an edge case for sure, but I can’t be the only one who’s found themselves backed into a weird corner like this. It’s working fine for me; who knows for how long.

Oh well. At least the play button still works, right?

Noah Glen

Sunday, August 13, at 3:16 pm, Noah Glen Dundee was born! Katherine and I are elated to welcome our son into the world. She and baby are both doing great.

The past few days have been wonderful: meeting our son, getting to take care of him, introducing him to our loving and supportive family. We’re home now, learning together what this new life is going to look like for all of us. It’s already so rich; I am truly blessed.

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes, congratulations, and inquiries on how Katherine and the baby are doing! It means a lot to know so many people are rooting for little Noah.

 
 

Pride is not the word I’m looking for
There’s so much more inside me now