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Apple Announces iPad Air

Posted by Soulskill on from the listening-to-this-press-conference-is-like-mainlining-the-essence-of-marketing dept.

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.

5 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. Major shot at Microsoft, too. by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Major shot at Microsoft, too. by BLToday · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. I gotta admit by Andrio · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    --
    The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
  3. Unix Workstation by psergiu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  4. A shot at other OS, computer *and* device makers by perpenso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.