 By the time you watch this video, you'll already know what I've seen inside here, the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. It's the new iPhones. But here's a question. How badly does Apple really need to do these big, hypey keynotes anymore? And why do they do them? Okay, so the keynote is over. It happened behind me and I'm walking into the hands-on area. And I'm doing this because I want to show you the first answer to that question, why does Apple hold the events? Well, it's really obvious, honestly. The most obvious answer is hype, because look at this hype. There's just a lot of it. And Apple wants to have all these people here. It wants to show off all its phones. It wants to have a big media moment. And so, of course, they do a keynote. They invented this thing. Everybody's copied it. But I think hype is just one part of it. And I don't even think it's the most important part. See, this is an S year, which means that the updates to the phone aren't as obviously exciting as they were in a bigger year. So the iPhone X came out, it was a whole new design, blah, blah, blah, blah. This year, the new features are better camera, faster processor, slightly nicer screen, slightly nicer glass, you know, S updates. And so, in order to make that thing build up this level of hype, Apple needs to do more than just present the phone, read the specs, and let us come take pictures of it. Apple needs to tell a story, because if Apple can tell a story, that means that Apple can set a narrative. And there are a couple of moments in this keynote where Apple set a narrative that I really want to talk about. Welcome to the Steve Jobs Theater. Let's get started with the Apple Watch. Everything about it has been redesigned and re-engineered. This is iPhone XS. We are very excited to show you the iPhone XR. We're back. We're back in the studio. Processor is back. I'm back. It's good to see you, except I can't see you. You can see me anyway. In this video, I want to talk about that narrative thing I mentioned. I'm not making a video about the specific specs or features of the iPhone XS. Not really. There's a lot to get into, and we're going to do all of that in the official Verge review. Instead, I want to talk about how Apple tells a story, because I think it's just as important as the specs and features of that phone, especially in an S year. The first moment I want to talk about in the keynote is when Apple introduced the new camera system on the iPhone XS. XS. Whatever. The name is bad. Every time Apple introduces a new feature, they tend to go through a three-step process. Step one is, look at all the amazing stuff we've done in the past. Step two is, look at all this cool tech and specs and crazy stuff that we've enabled on this new thing. And then step three is, you get to participate in this amazing future. So watch this clip, and when you do, don't think about the specific features. Think about the way that Apple is talking about them. Over 10 years, customers have been taking incredible photographs with their iPhone cameras like this. It is a remarkable new dual-camera system. It has a 12 megapixel wide camera, 12 megapixel telephoto camera, and an even more improved true tone flash. This is a new era of photography. Some people call it computational photography. And the benefits of this are not only for photography, but for video as well. It's a new era of videography as well, with this new sensor and the power of that H12 Bionic chip. Okay, so why is this three-step narrative important? Well, first of all, the big innovation on the iPhone XS is the camera, really. And what's interesting is they're trying to do some very similar stuff to what the Pixel 2 already does. It takes multiple photos at once, it stitches them together, it does a whole bunch of computation on it. But do you know what didn't get mentioned at all in Apple's keynote? Any other smartphone cameras. In Apple world, there's only iPhone cameras and DSLRs. To me, the clearest example of this whole Apple world thing was when Shiller was introducing this new feature on the XS that lets you take a portrait mode photo and then edit it after the fact to change the background blur on the picture. We're going to slide the depth of field and watch the background as it changes the depth of field of your photo. This is done after you've taken it. This has not been possible in photography of any kind of camera. This is something that iPhone can now do with the power of the H12 Bionic chip. Now, maybe he was referring to all the features being a first, whatever, but we all know, or at least, I don't know, I know that Samsung has let you do this after the fact bokeh editing thing since at least the Note 8 last year. Just saying. The point here isn't to dunk on Apple, because honestly, I was super, super impressed with how the blur editing worked in my hands-on at the event. No, the point is to see how Apple introduces a feature. It's always part of a story, and again, that story is always how Apple was great before, how it has great tech now, and how it's going to get better in the future. The term for this is framing, basically, which has always been a thing in politics, political framing, framing the narrative. And in this method, Apple sets the terms of the world and the things that exist in it. That's the frame. And then within that frame, it tells a story where one thing leads to the next, a little bit like the plot of a movie. All that means is that even in an S-year keynote where the announcements aren't really that game-changing, Apple can still use this narrative setting structure to change and shape how people think about their products. Here's another example of how all this works. It's the moment when Apple introduced the new heart sensing features that are coming on the Apple Watch Series 4, and specifically the new EKG feature. The optical heart sensor has been essential to Apple Watch from the beginning. We've added electrodes into the back sapphire crystal and the digital crown, allowing you to take an electrocardiogram. When you open the app, this is what you see on the watch face. It's really, it's really beautiful. People in general don't like things that are medical. This kind of makes you want to take an ECG. Because narrative framing is a commonly used tactic in political discourse, it's a pretty short jump from talking about this rhetorical method to assuming that it's just propaganda to cover up lies, or that it's there to cover up a pretty meh set of product announcements. Now to be clear, I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that Apple is pretty masterful at this method, and it does it over and over again in its marketing. Sometimes it's super effective and sometimes it's not. But the funny thing is, I think Apple executives really do believe the stories that they're telling. I mean, I don't know, look at any other tech company keynote where LG or Samsung, whoever, is touting a new feature. It feels way more scattershot. Apple takes its time in its keynotes. It goes a little bit slower. Because those keynotes don't exist just so you know what the new feature is. They exist so that you can see yourself as a character in Apple's story. And you know what? Apple's always done it this way. Here's a way older keynote that uses the same method. It has the same great design of the iPhone 3G that we just launched last summer, but what's inside is entirely new. It has amazing hardware and software that work together as Apple is known to do. We make these things work hand in hand, and this has auto focus, auto white balance, auto exposure. Let's take just a gorgeous photo for you. You can take videos with you everywhere you go. It's just as simple as that. That was taken in iPhone 3GS. You just tap to record it when you're done. The best thing is you can now share it with anyone right here from your iPhone. You know the long-running joke about Apple keynotes. They create a reality distortion field. And back in the day with Steve Jobs, that field was mostly created by sheer force of charisma. Yes, I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go please. No, just kidding. Wrong number. Thank you. Bye-bye. And yeah, now there's just a little bit less charisma maybe. But there's still a story that Apple wants to tell, and that's why they do these keynotes every September. Hey, thank you so much for watching. It's really great to be back on the YouTubes with you. Leave a comment down below. What did you think of this keynote? And you know what? Honestly, you should hit that subscribe button, because we're about to enter silly season for new product announcements, and we're going to have a ton of videos, and you're going to want to know about them.