Author: Ned Dymoke / Source: Big Think
- Inside the new iPad Pros are the new A12x Bionic chip, which are apparently faster than 92% of the laptops out there.
- MacBook Airs come with Retina display, first true update in 8 years.
- The iPad Pro starts at $799 while the MacBook Air starts at $1,199.
Apple product launches are sort of like sports drafts in that there’s a lot of pageantry and hullabaloo surrounding what is ostensibly just an introduction to a slightly updated lineup.
99.5% of the people out there are going to be doing roughly the same thing they’re doing on these new machines as they are on their current ones, so it’s not that big a deal—right?Well… perhaps it is this time. Apple just launched not one but three updates to its lineup: new iPad Pros, updated MacBook Airs, and even a revamp of the Mac Mini.
Watch the full keynote event here.
The new iPad Pro
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 30: Apple unveils a new iPad Pro with new Apple Pencil during a launch event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on October 30, 2018 in New York City. Apple also debuted a new MacBook Air and Mac Mini.
This is probably the biggest deal of the three. It not only looks futuristic, but it’s… well… it’s super cool. It has a processor that’s faster than most desktop computers and as much graphics power as the latest XBox, in a package that’s just a few millimeters thick and the size of a piece of paper. That’s pretty incredible.
The keynote spent some time showing just how good this is as a gaming device, too, with a vaguely humorous demonstration of what 2K Games’ NBA 2K looks like on the new iPad Pro. You can really see every bead of sweat on the players and movement in the stands, a far-cry from the crummy graphics of most mobile games.
It looks like last year’s iPhone X, itself a big deal, and for good reason. Anyone who has used an iPhone X (or XS or XR) can attest to how quickly the gesture system starts to feel natural—there’s no reason to go back to the home button after you use this thing. At risk of sounding too hyperbolic, this update turns the iPad from a “squashed / really big iPhone” into a laptop replacement. This is arguably what computers will look like in five years; the kind of design that actually looks like it’s from the future.
- Comes in both 11″ and 12.9″ sizes. The 11″ is the same body size as the 10.5″ previous generation of iPad Pros, just the screen is bigger. The 12.9″ size is almost exactly the size, measured diagonally across, as an 8″x11″ piece of paper.
- The A12X Bionic chip is by all accounts one of the fastest mass market chips out there. It’s faster than those in Apple’s iPhone XS, and can handle “up to five trillion operations a second”. Which is a lot, I’m told. The keynote addressed that the A12X Bionic is faster than 92% of current notebook computers out there.
- The new iPad Pro is unlockable no matter how you hold it.
- USB-C should alleviate charging problems, as they are much more energy efficient than lightning. Likewise, battery is advertised as “all day battery” — in the real world, though, that should amount to anywhere between 6 hours (heavy use) to 12 hours (simple use).
- An updated Apple Pencil can now respond to ‘tap’ gestures. Which is great for illustrators who…
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