Another Apple press event has come and gone, and after suffering through some terrible commentary on livestreams, here is what we've learned. The event was focused around many Mac and iOS devices and updates, yet the objective of the event was to announce the new iPad. Tim Cook, after taking some digs on Netbooks and Microsoft services, announced that Apple has sold their 170 millionth iPad earlier this month. Not to mention, Apple is up to 475,000 iPad apps on the App Store.
After spending several minutes too long seemingly justifying the existence of the iPad with statistics and defensiveness — including a video showing what the iPad is used for in reality, Cook finally made the big announcement. Well, Phil Schiller did. So, the iPad Air is finally revealed. Thinner, lighter and more powerful than ever before. After that hard sell though, are we more convinced that the iPad is the only tablet device we should be caring about? Was the commercial really necessary at Apple's own press event?
iPad Air stats:
- 7.5mm down from 9.4mm. 20 percent thinner.
- 9.7-inch Retina Display with narrower side bezel. 43 percent thinner.
- Lightest iPad ever at only one pound.
- A7 chip, same as the iPhone 5S. 64-bit, and comes with M7 motion coprocessor.
- 72x faster than the original iPad in GPU performance.
- 10 Hours battery life.
- Comes in silver, white and space gray. No gold. Price starts at $499 for 16GB WiFi Retina Display and ships November 1st.
Apple wasn't done with iPad news. He went on to the iPad Mini. The new mini runs retina display (finally) and also carries the A7 chip. Additionally, MIMO Wi-Fi support, extended LTE bands, $399 for 16GB and also will be available in November. Apparently, the original iPad Mini and the iPad 2 will be sticking around. The only reason to keep these products around at the price points (below) will be to pressure people into buying the new ones as a basis for comparison.
Aside from the iPad news, Apple has decided the price of their new operating system will be free. That's right, OS X Mavericks will be free. While some made a quick comparison to Windows products and their high costs for operating system upgrades, in the end it all balances out due to the prices of the hardware. You'll pay a lot more for a Macbook Air than you would an Acer Windows laptop. Either way, there is going to be some cost associated somewhere. However, offering an operating system update for free is a good way to retain customers who may have had frustrations with the previous operating system.
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