Apple gives the iPad its most drastic makeover yet.
What's going on. I'm rich Demiro.
This is Rich on Tech, sitting here in New York City, just getting out of Apple's event in Brooklyn where the company got right down to business, showing off a new Macmini, new MacBook Air, and the new iPad pros.
We all knew we're coming. Now.
These devices aren't as sexy as the iPhone. Yes, their designs are beautiful, but these are more utility devices. They're not the things that make the giant headlines. But when you go into an Apple store, you need one of these things, or you want one of these things.
That's when you become interested. Now I've never.
Owned an iPad Pro or a Macmini, but now I kind of want both. And no, I'm not ready to give up my MacBook Pro just yet, but the divide between the MacBook Air and the Pro is slowly closing. Now let's start with the iPad Pro. This got the iPhone ten treatment. Gone is the home button and face ID is now the way to unlock. Apple stretched a screen all the way to the edges, and the design is now reminiscent of the iPhone four or five if you can believe it, think squared off edges instead of
smooth and round. That's not a bad thing. These new iPad pros are beautiful, and they keep getting closer to the ideal of that paper thin display that becomes whatever you want it to be, a movie screen, a book, a photo viewer, whatever in hand.
They are just perfect.
The twelve point nine inch model is still enormous, but it's thin and light. The eleven inch model is about the same size as the old ten point five inch model, maybe the size of a piece of paper, but you do get more screen on the new model. Now the other change, the lightning poor is gone. This is pretty crazy. It's now replaced with USBC, which Apple says will help
you connect more accessories. It's also kind of nice since the world is turning towards USBC and now it seems like Apple is as well.
So the question is.
Will they drop lightning on the next iPhone At this point it seems like all signs are pointing in that direction. One cool side effect of this you can now use the iPad pro to charge your iPhone. Yeah, the iPad pro is kind of like a giant mofy.
If you have a lightning to USBC cable, which I do.
You can just plug your phone into the iPad Pro and yes, it will charge. I tried this out in the hands on demo area and it worked now. To be fair, I also did this last night with two Android phones when my brother needed a charge for his phone. Unfortunately, Apple also has a habit of dropping certain ports, and the headphone jack is gone from the iPad Pro. Kind of sad considering it's a nice thing to have in a pinch. Plus, you're paying a really high premium.
For these iPads, but it is gone.
You can now get up to a terabyte of storage on the iPad Pro. They start at eight hundred dollars for the eleven inch model with sixty four gigs of storage. The twelve point nine inch model starts at nine hundred and ninety nine dollars for sixty four gigs, and again Apple is playing the pricing games with its storage. The next step up above sixty four is two hundred and fifty six gigs, which I think is a much better fit for an iPad Pro, something that you are paying
a premium for. You're gonna be doing a lot of stuff on this, maybe loading a lot of movies as well, so you definitely want.
That extra storage.
Now, if you max it out, you can go all the way with cellular and one terabyte of storage. You are now looking at nineteen hundred dollars. And by the way, that does not include the two accessories you're gonna want if you're spending this much on a tablet. Those two accessories are the Apple pencil and the keyboard case. The Apple pencil picks up some new tricks. It is now magnetic, so it sticks right on the side of the iPad,
and when it's sticking there, it's also wirelessly charging. That's handy because it seems like every time I go to use the Apple pencil it is dead.
And I must not have been the only one.
Because charging that thing was such a chore. The Apple pencil is now also tap sensitive, so you can tap it twice quickly, and it will do certain things like switch between the pencil and the eraser tool when you're in notes. This is not a button on the side of the pencil. It's pretty much you can tap it anywhere. You can also tap the iPad screen when it's sleeping with the Apple pencil and it will spring to life and fire up notes instantly. Now where have I seen that?
Oh?
Yeah, the Microsoft Surface and the Galaxy Note nine both do this. But again, it's not a bad thing. I'm just giving you some perspective on what other gadgets are able to do. The Apple Pencil also gets a price bump. It is now one hundred and thirty dollars instead of one hundred dollars. The keyboard case, meanwhile, starts at one hundred and eighty dollars. I'm not even gonna do the math for you to add it all up. This is an expensive proposition.
But I'll be clear here.
If I wasn't producing so much content on my MacBook Pro, like editing video and audio, and I was just doing emails and spreadsheets and things like that and surfing the web and watching movies, I would much rather have an iPad pro that works as both an entertainment screen and a productivity device.
When you need it. Now, let's move on to the MacBook Air. This got a nice upgrade.
It finally has that retina display folks have been wanting for a long time. According to the mac Rumors Buying Guide, which is the handy website. By the way, The last time this device was updated was in June twe twenty seventeen, or over five hundred days ago, and that wasn't even a big update. The MacBook Air now has a thirteen inch screen. It's a great size, with two Thunderbolt three ports which also double as USB C ports, and they
do other things as well. But this one does have a headphone jack, so a little bit of a head scratcher there. Apple doesn't hate the headphone jack completely. The power button also doubles as a fingerprint sensor, so there's touch ID to unlock your computer and also make purchases online with Apple Pay. Apple says they also improve the keyboard, but I'll be honest, I typed on it for a little bit and I did not feel like it's very improved over my MacBook Pro, which I find really tough
to type accurately on, especially when I'm typing fast. In fact, I feel like the keys on the MacBook Air had even less travel than my MacBook Pro, which is how far they pressed down. Kind of seems worse to me, but maybe I just need to get used to the new design. The MacBook Air starts at twelve hundred dollars but still comes with the paltry one hundred and twenty
eight gigs of storage. You'll fill that up really fast, but you can max it out with up to sixteen gigs of memory and one point five terabytes of storage. You might not need all that storage, but my advice with laptops is always to get the most memory and the most storage that you can afford. Because these things last a good four years. You want the best possible specs right.
From the get go. One neat thing about the MacBook Air.
The body is made from one hundred percent recycled aluminum, so that's a pretty neat feat by Apple.
Way to go.
Finally, the Mac Mini. Not much to say about this one except it's not dead. You can outfit it with quad and six core processors, up to sixty four gigs of memory and two terabytes of storage. On the backside, you get a ton of stuff. You get an Ethernet port, you get four thunderbolt, three slash USB C ports, an HDMI port, two USB A ports. Those are like just your standard USB and a three point five millimeters audio out. Yes, this thing has all the connections you need. I think,
let me think, is there anything missing? I don't think so. I was really excited to get one of these things to set up as my home server and replace my Synology NASS and dump all my photos and other documents on here until I heard about the new price tag. It now starts at eight hundred dollars. I think the old one used to be closer to four hundred and ninety nine dollars. I still kind of want one, though, but it might be overkill compared to Asynology ness if
I'm using it in that capacity. And that's about it. No mention of AirPods, no mention of airpower, no new iPad Mini. But guess what, friends, there's always twenty nineteen. But let's go back to the iPad Pro for a second. It's a really, really nice design, but very expensive for the average person. The standard three hundred and twenty nine dollars iPad is going to be just fined. But now that we see what's happening on the high end, the design for that iPad Pro will probably trickle down to
the low end iPad as well. And by the way, I get this question all the time, the iPad yes is still the best tablet out there, hands down, mainly due to the design, the accessories, the speed, the performance.
And the apps.
You just won't find a better selection of apps on any other tablet. So there you have it. Updates from Apple's big event in Brooklyn. Just want to tell you one funny story before I go. So the event was held in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This is a grand old theater outside Manhattan and just a few blocks away from where Samsung had their August event for the
Note nine. Now irony aside, Apple ended the event with a performance from Lana del Rey, who sang live on stage, but she told the audience she wasn't allowed to swear, which is kind of funny. I'm sure Apple didn't want her to say that, but this goes along with Apple's notoriously clean cut image. But the funny part, both her new album and the name of one of the singles she's saying have swear words in them, so she couldn't
mention the title of either. Kind of tough to promote your new stuff when you can't say the name of it.
Well, there you have it.
If you have questions about the new devices, feel free to drop me a line. You can find me on social media at rich On tech or my website richontech dot TV. There you can go to my Facebook page and watch my hands on with a new iPad pro, or watch my KTLA TV segment on all.
The new gadgets. Thanks so much for listening. I'm rich Chamiro. I'll talk to you real soon