Each September for the previous decade, Apple has convened media from world wide for a advertising occasion that celebrates the artistic feats behind its latest iPhone. It has hyped the shine of the telephone’s exterior, the sculpting round its cameras and the facility of its processors.

However this 12 months, Apple’s elite designers and engineers have bent their artistic course of and advertising extravaganza to the design calls for of European regulators, who handed a rule mandating USB-C charging throughout digital gadgets.

On Wednesday, Apple revealed that its latest product line, the iPhone 15, will drop the corporate’s proprietary Lightning port in favor of European-mandated USB-C ports. The corporate’s latest iPhones function a charging plug that’s barely larger and rounder than its predecessor however able to delivering a quicker cost.

The rule was geared toward decreasing digital waste and saving clients cash by making one port suitable throughout an array of gadgets. Although Apple resisted the change, warning that authorities mandates might stifle innovation, it’ll make it doable to make use of the identical USB-C twine that powers a Mac to cost an iPhone.

Along with the iPhone, the corporate unveiled its wi-fi earbuds, the AirPods Professional, with a USB-C charging case.

The change speaks to how regulators are altering Apple’s enterprise. Apple has positioned itself as the first gatekeeper for a couple of billion iPhone customers worldwide by constructing proprietary {hardware} and companies. To succeed in these clients, app builders have given the corporate as a lot as a 30 p.c minimize of their gross sales, and accent corporations have paid charges to make cords with Lightning ports.

However amid rising issues about tech corporations’ energy over the worldwide financial system, governments have handed guidelines and issued warnings which can be forcing Apple to open up. In Europe, a brand new antitrust legislation would require that Apple permits the sale of iPhone apps exterior its App Retailer. In the USA, regulators are investigating the corporate’s observe of blocking others from utilizing the iPhone’s tap-to-pay capability. And in China, there is a authorities crackdown on workers’ use of iPhones at work.

The federal government challenges are buffeting Apple on the similar time it’s making an attempt to reignite its enterprise. Tumbling gross sales of iPads and Macs have sparked its most extended droop since 2016. IPhone purchases, which account for greater than half of whole income, are slowing. And the sale of apps and companies may very well be clipped by authorities laws.

“Apple is a sufferer of its personal success, and everybody goes after the massive targets in tech,” stated Mike Frazier, president of Bedell Frazier Funding Counselling, an funding agency in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Along with the USB-C port, Apple touted different enhancements with the iPhone 15, together with higher cameras and smaller borders across the display screen. Its two high-end Professional fashions, which begin at $999, function a lighter titanium physique and processors made with a cutting-edge manufacturing course of that the corporate stated considerably will increase efficiency. It replaces the mute change on earlier fashions with a brand new button that may be pressed to make use of the telephone’s digital camera or begin an audio recording.

The high-end telephones even have the flexibility to file three-dimensional video, which will be considered within the augmented actuality headset that Apple will launch subsequent 12 months.

Apple raised the value on the iPhone Professional Max, the corporate’s high mannequin, by 9 p.c to $1,199. The bigger telephone options the lineup’s most refined digital camera with a fivefold optical zoom, which contributed to the primary value enhance for the iPhone lineup in 5 years.

The iPhone 15 base fashions, which value $799 and $899, undertake lots of the options out there on final 12 months’s iPhone Professional fashions, together with final 12 months’s processor and the Dynamic Island, a software bar on the high of the display screen. The complete iPhone lineup gives wi-fi charging.

“That is underwhelming,” stated Gene Munster, managing companion at Deepwater Asset Administration, an funding and analysis agency primarily based in Minneapolis. “However for the common particular person with a three- to four-year-old telephone, this is sufficient to improve.”

Apple complemented the brand new iPhone lineup with updates to its Apple Watch choices. An up to date processor and software program developments enable individuals who put on its newest watch, the Sequence 9, to reply telephone calls by tapping their thumb and index finger collectively twice. It billed the watch as its first carbon-neutral product, saying it’s made with one hundred pc clear power, carbon offsets and smaller packaging to chop the emissions related to delivery the product.

The Apple Watch Extremely, which is geared toward out of doors fanatics, incorporates a brighter display screen and a larger altitude vary. It additionally gives new capabilities for cyclists who wish to join it to different gadgets that measure efficiency.

Apple unveiled the merchandise in Cupertino, Calif., on the Steve Jobs Theater, the 1,000-seat underground auditorium on the corporate’s campus. The venue was filled with journalists and workers. Tens of millions extra tuned in on-line to observe the infomercial that Apple made for its new merchandise.

Tim Cook dinner, Apple’s chief govt, used the iPhone occasion to remind clients about its new augmented actuality headset, which it unveiled in June forward of a launch subsequent 12 months.

However even after the headset’s launch subsequent 12 months, the iPhone will nonetheless drive Apple’s enterprise. The corporate sells greater than 200 million iPhones yearly, gathering about $200 billion.

Although gross sales of its marquee gadget are down barely this 12 months, the iPhone has expanded its dominance of the smartphone market. It has elevated its proportion of the overall smartphones bought world wide. In the USA, the gadget now accounts for greater than 50 p.c of smartphones bought, up from 41 p.c in 2018, in line with Counterpoint Analysis, a know-how agency.