By: Nick Gambino
After last September’s Apple keynote where the trillion-dollar company unveiled its new line of iPhones, we hardly expected any more exciting hardware news before the end of the year. It seems we were wrong in our assumption.
At this week’s event held in Brooklyn (the company’s first event in New York), Apple primarily focused on the iPad, MacBook Air and Mac Mini, two of which got major upgrades, and one, a second chance at life.
MacBook Air
We’ve not seen any major updates to the popular Air, so the newest unveiling was welcome. The new MacBook Air sports a Retina display which contains an impressive 4 million pixels. The vivid and crystal-clear display will work beautifully with the souped-up guts of the lightweight laptop.
It’s powered by an 8th-gen Intel Core i5 processor and can hold up to 16GB of RAM and store 1.5TB on its SSD.
The lightweight design is even more lightweight with 17% less volume. It’s lighter, thinner and even features smaller bezels.
You can order the MacBook Air right now. It starts at $1,199.
iPad Pro
Aside from the full-screen design that deep-sixes the home button and a smaller body that still retains its 12.9-inch display, Apple has finally integrated Face ID into its iPad Pro tablet. This means more security for a device that’s seeing its role in the professional sphere increase as it begin to edge out laptops.
Inside we’re seeing an A12X Bionic chip that’s supposed to make the iPad perform 35% faster with 1,000 times faster graphics. It’s also got USB-C connectivity going both in and out, allowing you to charge your iPhone or technically, if it produces enough power, another iPad. The new port will also allow you to connect up to other equipment like a camera.
Apple consumers that are still salty over the loss of the 3.5mm headphone jack in their iPhone, won’t be any happier that they’ve now done away with it in the iPad Pro. The same group may also take issue with the missing lightning port, but something tells me that’ll be easier to grapple with.
The iPad Pro is ready to order now, starting at $799.
iPad Mini
We haven’t seen the iPad Mini in about four years so it’s nice to see the return of the much-smaller tablet. I’ve always argued that the Kindle-sized iPad has a place amongst Apple’s array of devices, and should be made available.
It sees an 8th-gen 6-core i7 processor (or i3 quad-core) which is five times faster than any previous model. It can hold up to 64GB of RAM or up to 2TB SSD.
Connectivity has been seriously bolstered with an Ethernet port, 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, HDMI port and 2 USB-A.
The iPad Mini is available to order now. Prices start at $799.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Gambino is a regular script writer and tech beat reporter for NewsWatch. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.
