Apple had an out of schedule event this October focusing on innovation and creation. This time, the event was not in Cupertino as usual but at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. With the invites, Apple also created more than 350 unique Apple logo graphics, some of them you can see in the image below.
Somebody even stripped all 372 logo graphics from Apple’s website, and they’re available online here if you are interested.
The event took off with the importance of the Mac to its users. The Mac reached 100 million installed base, and it stays #1 on Customer Satisfaction. The first Mac to talk about in the event was the users favourite – MacBook Air.
Redesigned MacBook Air
Apple finally released the long-awaited redesigned MacBook Air. It features a retina display (about time), Touch ID and has a fairly similar design to the current MacBook and the MacBook Pro. It is available in three colours (silver, gold and space grey). It features 2 USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports and a headphone jack. The aluminium bezels are gone, replaced by thin black ones, which makes the new Air even smaller than the successor. In addition, it is also thinner and lighter.
Under the hood, it has the new 8th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, in standard 8GB 2133 MHz of RAM (up to 16GB) and a faster SSD with a standard size of 128GB (up to 1.5TB). As mentioned before, Touch ID is also included with the T2 security chip (the same from MacBook Pro and iMac Pro). The T2 chip, among other safety techy things, protects the Touch ID data.
The keyboard is the 3rd generation Butterfly keyboard, the same as on the MacBook Pro, alongside the Force Touch touchpad.
The price is the biggest disappointment, in my opinion, jumping from 999$ to 1199$, which is a bit pricey for a dual-core 128GB laptop. Adding another 100$ will even get you the Pro model. In addition, the old MacBook Air is still available and priced at the same 999$.
You can order the new MacBook Air already, and it will be available from November 7th.
New Mac Mini
The Mini. After four long years, it’s finally here. Refreshed and updated to today’s hardware. The case itself is fairly similar to the current one – except that this time, the chassis is in space grey!
The biggest changes were made under the hood though. With the totally redesigned internal structure, the base model starts with the 8th generation Intel i5 Quad Core processor (6 core upgrade available) and the Intel UHD 630 graphics, bumping the performance up to 5 times, compared to the current Mini. The standard model also has 8GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM (configurable up to 64GB). SSDs are also a lot faster and configurable up to 2TB, and it also includes the same T2 security chip as the new MacBook Air. Apple says it re-engineered the cooling system too, which, in my opinion, was a must do, since the current cooling is complete crap, making the Mini cook from the inside!
The ports. Yes. The important theme to talk about in 2018. It features 4 USB-Cs (Thunderbolt 3), a 10Gb Ethernet, 2 USB-As (YAAAY), an HDMI 2.0 and the audio jack!
The price starts at 799$ for the base model and is available for purchase.
The new iPad Pro
It’s here! The edge to edge iPad Pro! Gone is the Home button, new is the outer look with sharp iPhone 5 alike edges, and… the worst in this chapter – no audio jack. All in all, the new iPad looks amazing, It features Face ID, a new A12X Bionic chip and new this year in the mobile department – USB-C for charging and syncing. The A12x is a total beast with 8 cores, making it 35% faster than the current generation. Alongside the new A12X, it features 7 GPU cores, delivering up to 2x the performance – they even compared graphics performance to the Xbox One S.
With that much power, you can do a lot. Apple invited Adobe to show off their work. They had a live demo of the upcoming Photoshop CC for iPad Pro with the focus to bring the (almost) full version of Photoshop to the iPad.
It comes in two sizes – 11 inches and 12.9 inches, but note since the screen has fewer bezels, the tablet itself is smaller than the current Pros with the same screen size.
The thing I also loved to see updated was the Apple Pencil. It has a new way of charging – it is now purely wireless and attaches to the new iPad Pro magnetically from the side. It also features a new tap gesture – double tapping the pencil will now trigger a custom action on the iPad.
The new iPad starts from 799$ and is available from November 7th.
