Apple Announces iPad Air

Today Apple held a press conference to unveil its updated software and hardware products. The biggest news was the announcement of the 'iPad Air,' which has a 9.7" Retina display. It's 7.5 mm thick, which is 20% thinner than the older iPad. The weight has dropped from 1.4 lbs to 1.0 lbs, and it runs on a 64-bit A7 chip with an M7 motion coprocessor. Apple claims performance has doubled over the previous-gen iPad. The iPad Air will be available on November 1st. The iPad Mini is getting a new revision as well. The display has been upgraded to 7.9" at 2048x1536, which is the same resolution as the iPad Air. The new Mini has an A7 chip as well.

Apple also announced that the new version of Mac OS X (10.9 Mavericks) is available now and is free to all Mac OS X users. It includes better multi-monitor support, tabs in Finder, and a number of performance optimizations. The Macbook Pro is getting updates to the 13" and 15" models, which are now running on Intel Haswell processors. They both have PCIe SSDs, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Thunderbolt 2 support. Apple also talked about the redesigned Mac Pro line. As you may recall from WWDC, the new model takes up about about 1/8th of the volume as the old one. It's cooled by a single fan, uses 70% less power than the earlier model, and puts out 12 dB of noise when idling. It'll be available in December. On the software side, Apple has been updating a lot of their software to add 64-bit support and mesh with the new iOS 7 style of design. This includes iPhoto, iMovie, and Garageband, as well as the iLife and iWork software suites. iWork is also getting collaborative work features, and it's now free with new Macs and iOS devices.

Comments

Major shot at Microsoft, too.

[jcr]

iWork is now free, and include collaboration features that MS Office will have a hell of a time trying to match.

-jcr

Re:Major shot at Microsoft, too.

[BLToday]

iWork is surprisingly very functional on a Surface. Don't laugh. I've used iWork for iCloud on my Surface (no keyboard cover) and works much better than the built in MS Office that comes with the Surface since Office pretty much requires the keyboard cover.

Re:Major shot at Microsoft, too.

[AmiMoJo]

Actually I'm thinking of making a complaint under UK data protection laws. They are only allowed to keep personal information as long as they have a legitimate reason to do so, and since I no long have any relationship with them I can't see a reason why they should not delete my email address.

At most they should store a hash of it if their systems are so shitty that signing up with a previously deleted email address will break them, but that's the absolute limit.

Re:Major shot at Microsoft, too.

[smash]

This is by design. You are not an apple customer.

I gotta admit

[Andrio]

That's pretty impressive engineering. Think it allows Android to be installed on it? :)

Why is iPad so much better than iPhone?

[WiiVault]

Not to bash the iPhone, but how is it that Apple seems to be so much ahead of the pack when it comes to the iPad but the iPhone seems to be just another high-end smartphone? I mean the new full-size iPad seems so much better especially in size and weight than anything else out there, while the 5s is just a nice spec bump.

Re:Why is iPad so much better than iPhone?

[BaronAaron]

The OP said the iPad seem so much better then anything out there.

My point is both tablets are in the same class. Not arguing the new iPad edges out the competition. It should, it's the newest high end tablet, but it's not revolutionary or anything. It will quickly lose the spec crown when the next round of high end Android tablets come out.

Re:Why is iPad so much better than iPhone?

[locopuyo]

1920x1200 is actually a lot better than 2048x1536 for video playback because 1080p video won't have to be scaled and will look much, much clearer.
They should just stick with that 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 until they can make the jump to 4K resolution and get nice 4:1 pixel mapping so 1080p video doesn't look like crap.

Re:Why is iPad so much better than iPhone?

[CanHasDIY]

that's just utterly ridiculous. Outside of slashdot, people don't root their phones and install a custom build of android.

No, but they do ask Slashdotters to do it for them.

At least, that's my experience.

"Hey, man, how do you keep that old Droid X running so smooth? Cyanogenmod, what's that? Can you put it on my phone for me?"

...in 1-2 years, they'll toss it and get another one... They'll play angry birds and dick around with wallpaper and ringtones and never give a shit...

That I cannot disagree with.

Unix Workstation

[psergiu]

Apple haters or not, the saddest thing to realize is that the only UNIX(R) Workstation on the market is now the Mac. As Apple is the only UNIX 03 certification holder who is still making desktops and laptops. All the other UNIX 03 hardware produced at the moment is Datacenter-only rackmounted servers.

So $2999 for a powerful UNIX(R) Workstation is a fair price.

A shot at other OS, computer *and* device makers

[perpenso]

iWork is now free, and include collaboration features that MS Office will have a hell of a time trying to match.

-jcr

A major shot at other operating system, computer *and* mobile device makers. Free (as in beer) major OS update (computers) and free productivity apps (computers and mobile devices). Bundling the productivity apps with new computers and mobile devices will help Apple maintain their price points. Once again, Apple demonstrates that they are a hardware company at heart, that software is a tool to sell that hardware.

Getting to be too many models, again?

[gman003]

Remember the mid-90s, when Apple had dozens upon dozens of Macintoshes, Power Macs, Quadras, and so on? And how one of the first things Jobs did when he returned was slash all of those, which put them back on the road to their current success?

Yeah, they're up to four different iPads now, all currently being sold. The iPad Mini, "iPad Mini with Retina", iPad 2, and iPad Air, and I'm sure they still have some "Fourth-Generation iPads" to sell off. Each of these has a few variants for WiFi/3G and storage. And they also have a trio of iPhones - the 4S, 5C and 5S - again with storage capacity variations.

On the desktop, a pair of laptops (the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro) with a few size options, and trio of desktops (Mini, iMac (two sizes) and Mac Pro) has worked pretty well for them. They really need to cut down on their other models - using the old iPhone as the "cheap" model worked, discontinuing the old one in favor of a low-cost second model would also have worked, but as it is I see little purpose to keeping both the 4S and 5C around. And for the iPad? A Mini and a Pro would have been fine. Google is actually being smarter than they are on this - they have a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 10, updated as needed. Clear product differentiation - you want a small, cheap tablet? Nexus 7. Larger and more powerful tablet? Nexus 10. Apple is less clear - their high-end "Mini" costs the same as their low-end "full-size". They could probably make the iPad models make sense (iPad Mini, iPad Pro Mini, iPad, iPad Pro), but the way they currently are is crap.

iPad 2? Why?

[Cinder6]

It's somewhat baffling that anyone these days would want an iPad 2. The Mini outstrips it in every area but screen size, at the same price. I would also imagine that continuing to support it is obnoxious for developers.

Anyway, I was planning on buying the iPad Air, but the Mini is looking a lot more tempting, given that the only difference anymore is screen size. I just wish one of them had Touch ID.

Not even a tiny bit irrelevant

[SuperKendall]

For consumer use, the advances in technology are largely irrelevant at this point.

Actually, the motion coprocessor alone is a huge boost for the millions of people that already use device like the Nike FuelBand, or FitBitâ¦

And the 64-bit advancement has very real performance gains in software which will also be noticed in many applications.

The next advance is going to be battery life that lasts for weeks or months, and no one has that yet.

It's going to be a long time before we see weeks⦠but Apple is focusing on battery life far more than any other company, with a lot of aspects of iOS7 made to improve just that (and again the motion coprocessor comes into play by making motion sensing one sensor that doesn't drain the battery additionally with use).

Re: Incompetent Press

[BorgDrone]

64 bit - better performance, but it's still fewer cores and lower performance than high end Android devices.

I'm assuming you're referring to the snapdragon 800, which seems to be the top performing SoC in Android devices at the moment. Have you seen the benchmarks ?

The dual-core 1.3Ghz A7 whoops the quad-core 2.4Ghz Snapdragon 800's ass. Which just shows how awesome Apple's chip designers are.

Re:Only 16GB

[Kjella]

Psychology. A lot of people will stay on the base model and pat themselves on the back for $100 well saved. The people who want more space will by sold up to the 64/128 GB model and pat themselves on the back for getting so many more GB/$. I think the subset of people who are:

a) certain 16GB won't be enough
b) certain 32GB will be enough
c) willing to pay $100 extra for the privilege

is in an extreme minority. People have no idea what NAND prices are, they just need to feel good about their own choice and the easiest way is to give them a bad choice to make it look good against. So raise your hand everyone with a 32GB model ;)