Apple finally has waked up to the customer’s needs and brought the much-awaited upgrades and here is all about it.
October was all about smartphones and gadgets with numerous top of the line and groundbreaking gadgets releasing and going on sale consecutively all targeted for the holiday season. And if you were not regular and attentive with the tweets am sure you should have missed out on a few. Here is what Apple brought to the table on the October 30th event at New York where they introduced a lot of upgrades to their existing line up of devices.
MacBook Air
Most of us get a nostalgia with this name from the date Steve Jobs pulled it out of an envelope. Recently though, it didn’t get any major upgrade for at least 3 years and longtime MacBook Air users felt abandoned and could not find the exact alternative though 12inch MacBook and MacBook Pro without touch bar were close enough. Tim Cook opened the event with the announcement of the new redesigned and updated MacBook Airs which was received with exclamations from the press seated in the arena.
The new MacBook Air 2018 comes with the latest Intel 8th gen i5 CPU with integrated graphics. It is good but not the best as it does not have the quad-core version of the i5 processor but the dual-core version favoring better battery life and less heating inside the compact body. Regarding the RAM it comes in 8 Gb or 16 Gb highspeed memory. Storage options can be expanded up to 1.5 TB SSD from 128 GB on the base model. The touch ID makes its way to the MacBook Air with a T2 security chip to store your fingerprint and encrypt data on the inbuilt SSD.
The most welcome change in the MacBook Air is the display. Apple equips all their hardware line with impeccable displays with the older MacBook Air as the exception. But not anymore, they now get a 3480 * 2160 resolution retina display that offers wide and vivid colors and no color shifts. The aluminum bezels were refreshing then but now the smaller glass bezels look more elegant.
The size too has gone compact while retaining the screen size of 13.3†with the reduction of bezels and the thickness has reduced by 10%. Ports were the controversial part of the recent MacBook line-up. It is the same USB-C only for MacBook Air – two USB-C thunderbolt ports with a headphone jack constitute the whole of the I/O.
Speakers are improved and moved to either side of the keyboard. The Keyboard is gen3 and said to offer more reliability. The trackpad has grown in size and does not click anymore, just haptic feedback. You get all this for a price starting at 1199 USD for the baseline 8 Gb, 128 Gb SSD version. It is still the best option in the Apple line-up for a casual notebook but looking out of the house you get a lot more options at a better price.
Read About: Upcoming Apple iPhone’s For 2018-19
Apple iPad and Pencil
iPads are sure another revolutionary product from Apple. Though they have had updates now and then not much has changed from the inception of the line-up except internal upgrades and the introduction of 12inch iPad Pro targeted at professionals. This year there is a whole new refreshing design and some interesting changes we never expected from Apple.
The screen and the design itself have seen an overhaul which can be noticed at a glance. People have started growing hatred for bezels after all the bezel shrinking mechanisms carried over in the smartphones. Bezels are not gone completely but shrunk to a much appealing extent where you can still hold the iPad to its sides without interfering with the display.
The display panel has seen minor improvements like offering rich colors as like the iPhone XR’s liquid retina display. Older features like the true tone and pro-motion are not left out either. The screen sizes have moved from 11†from the previous 10.5†inch model with same body size, whereas with 12.9†model the screen is left the same and bezels are shrunken.
The hardware underneath is a modified version of the latest chipset in the iPhones. A12X Bionic chipset is powerful enough to run every application available on the App Store. There is a newer version of the smart keyboard and Apple Pencil to go with the new iPads and surprisingly it charges wirelessly when rested on the side of the iPad through magnetic connectors. And the UI also has got gestures like on the iPhones. Shrinking bezels means no home button and touch ID, face ID hardware is integrated and tuned to work in all orientations of the iPad.
The unexpected is the USB-C instead of the lightning port, opening doors for professionals to make use of peripherals without using a dongle. Another unexpected change, rather disappointing is the lack of headphone jack which professionals working on audio and video might miss badly. The storage starts at 64 Gb and goes up to 1TB which is quite large for tablet device however professional users might need. The price of the smaller iPad starts at 799 USD and the 12.9-inch version starts at 999 USD.
Also Check:Â Apple Watch Series 4 Review
Mac Mini
Mac Mini was a hit when it was launched but went overshadowed by the mightier Macs and MacBook Pros later. It was considered by a very few people because of the very old internals and finally, it gets a good upgrade. The chocolate box size package packs in a lot of power as expected with the all-new space grey color option.
As expected it comes with the latest processors from Intel. The 8th Gen processors are not the low spec-ed laptop processors instead of the high-power processors with either 4 or 6 cores offering great performance benchmarks coupled with MacOS Mojave. Apple has incorporated high-speed RAMs that can be bumped up to 64Gb. The T2 chip helps in data encryption and lot other improvements like video codecs.
It has all the I/O you think of – 4 USB-C ports, 2 USB ports, HDMI, Ethernet, and headphone jack to be specific. The cooling system has the efficient airflow and hence remains to be silent even at the highest fan speed. The base variant with 8th gen quad-core i3, 8 Gb RAM and 128 Gb SSD start at a surprising price of 799 USD.
The new product line-up is up-to-date and checks all the boxes. The only thing missed is the upgrade for Macs which is also long overdue. All the announced product is on sale already in the US and will start shipping starting November 7.
