Hope past the break to see what Apple had to show us today! It's well worth a read!
There has been a lot of announcements today! So lets start with what everyone was expecting;
New iPads!
The iPad Mini.
It was rumoured, leaked, snapped and caught on tape before it's release but we now officially have the iPad Mini!
The specs on this thing are rather disappointing in all honesty! It's essentially an iPad 2 in a different form factor! The screen has a 1024x768 resolution which is spread over 7.9", so it's safe to conclude that this device is set to take on the Nexus 7's and Kindle Fire's of this world!
During their announcement Apple went out of their way to highlight the differences between the Nexus 7 and their iPad Mini. It was a very interesting comparison, which centred on the differences of the two devices when it came to web browsing. For example in portrait mode the iPad Mini has 49% more screen real estate dedicated to the web page when Android's navigation buttons are removed. The same phenomenon is indeed even more noticeable in portrait mode, where the iPad Mini's screen offers over 60% more of the website. We ask that you reserve your judgement on the validity of Apple's points here until you see the pricing for the iPad Mini. You will after all be paying for a device in a totally different price bracket!
The price is set at $329 (£269 in the UK) for a Wifi only 16GB version which is a large premium over the Nexus 7 which will be dropping down to $199 before christmas! The internals though, don't necessarily reflect the iPad Mini's price and are very much last year; there's an A5 chip powering the device and a front facing camera which is capable of 720p 'facetime'.
The 4th Generation iPad.
There may well be a few disgruntled iPad owners out there at the moment because a mere 6 months after the release of the 'new' iPad, Apple are at it again! They've churned out a new model and this one has a few notable changes.
Firstly, there's a couple of new features which are; a new lightning port for charging and outputs and an all new A6X processor. The new processor will effectively double the tablets' CPU and graphics power compared to the 3rd generation. Aside from that the front-facing camera is now capable of Factime in 720p, the device will retain it's wonderful 2048×1536 resolution display and battery life will still be around and about that 10 hour mark!
As usual with Apple, both tablets will be available in 16, 32 and 64GB options and of course you have your choice of Wifi or Cellular capabilities, the prices of which can be seen in the picture below, in an image which is courtesy of Slashgear! The 4th generation iPad and the iPad Mini are compatible with a few extra carriers now too you can choose from one of these!
- AT&T
- Deutsche Telekom- Sprint
- Verizon
- EE- Rogers
- Bell
- Fido
- Koodo Mobile
- Telus
- Telstra
- SingTel
- KT
- SmarTone
- SK Telecom
- KDDI
- StarHub
- SoftBank
- Optus
- Virgin Mobile
- Hong Kong Telecom
There's New Macs too!
All of which come with Bluetooth 4.0, at least 1 USB 3.0 port and Thunderbolt ports.
The 13" Retina Macbook Pro.
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| The 15 and 13 inch Macbook Pro's side by side. |
The 13-inch MacBook Pro is Apple's most popular Macbook. Today Apple made some pretty serious changes to the little powerhouse, making it thinner, lighter, faster and adding a stunning new display.
That last point seems like a good place to start; the 13 incher is now equipped with a 2650 x 1600 Retina Display. The new device has shed a few pounds too; it's now a mere 0.75-inches thick, it's 20% thinner than the last generation and it’s an entire pound lighter too, at just 3.75 lbs.
The new configuration offers you Intel’s new dual-core i5 or i7 chips, Intel's HD 4000 graphics, as well as the normal combination of WiFi, BT, 8GB Memory, and SSD flash storage. You also get a nice array of connections: USB 2.0, USB 3.0, HDMI out, Magsafe and SD card slot are all on board and there's a solid 7 hours of battery life too! The computers are shipping right now and will make your wallet at least $1699 cheaper.
iMac 2012.
Apple has also announced their new range of superslim iMac computers. These have a slight bulge in the middle behind the screen but on the outer edges they are a mere 5mm's thick!
Apple has managed to slim them down by ditching the optical disk drives and doing some engineering wizardry. If you're interested the desktops will come in two configurations; the first of whcih has a 27-inch screen and is priced from $1,799. It will have a 2.9GHz quadcore Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard-drive and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M GPU. The second option is the smaller 21.5-inch iMac which can be yours from $1,299. This one's rocking a 2.7GHz quadcore Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard-drive too, but it switches out it's GPU for the marginally lesser GeForce GT 640M.
Mac Mini
There's also a brand new Mac Mini with configurations starting with 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5's, from 4GB of RAM, and 500GB hard-drives. That sort of package will set you back $599.You can choose to have up to 1TB of HDD storage or 256GB SSD packs. Intel’s HD Graphics 4000 will power your display via HDMI.
There’ll also be a Mac mini Server version, with a 2.3GHz Intel quadcore Core i7 processor instead. There's a solid 4GB of RAM and a pair of 1TB hard-drives. You can get them in configurations with up tp 16GB of RAM.
Other gems:
- Apple has now surpassed the 100 million iPad sales mark!
- Apple has announced a new iBooks Author!
- Apple also sold more iPad's than any of their competitors sold computers in Q2 this year!
- iOS6 is now on over 200 million devices! Making it the fastest software rollout ever as far as we are aware!
- Apple's iPhone 5 is the fastest selling phone in history!
- Apple has already sold over 3m iPod touch 5G and iPod nano 7G's since they were made available earlier in the year!
