Apple Unveils New MacBook Air and iPad Pro with Significant Upgrades

Enjoy 2x performance, 2x storage and a new keyboard on the MacBook Air coming in at $999 and a new iPad Pro equipped with LiDAR scanner tech, trackpad and keyboard support

Yesterday, Apple announced the release of two new products — an updated MacBook Air and iPad Pro. Let’s take a closer look at the MacBook Air first. The new MacBook Air, Apple’s most popular laptop, is equipped with two times the performance with a faster CPU and graphics performance, two times the storage at 256GB for the baseline model and a new upgraded Magic keyboard for better stability and ease of use. MacBook Air comes with a beautiful Retina display, large trackpad, macOS Catalina, all-day battery life and is equipped with Touch ID for easy login and buying online. You can breeze through activities whether they are graphics-intensive like a video game and editing video online or daily productivity tasks.

As always the MacBook Air is appealing for its thin and light design — something Apple founder Steve Jobs first showcased brilliantly by placing the notebook computer in a manila envelope.

Key Features include:

2 times faster performance through 10th generation Intel Core processors up to 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.8GHz
80 percent faster graphics performance via Intel Iris Plus Graphics
2 times the storage at 256 GB compared to prior models, offering upgrades to 2TB SSD
Magic keyboard with more stable and comfortable scissors mechanism first used on the 16-inch MacBook Pro replaces old butterfly mechanism
Built-in security and privacy via the Apple T2 Security Chip that protects data encryption, boot process software loading and Touch ID information
Equipped with macOS Catalina including free software such as Pages, Numbers and Keynote
3-mic array design for better voice capture
Force Touch trackpad for precise cursor control
Improved stereo speakers for immersive, wide stereo sound
Voice Control lets users control their Mac entirely with their voice
Thunderbolt 3 ports for data transfer, charging and video output in a single connector
Support for up to a 6K external display
Unibody wedge design from 100 percent recycled aluminum
Available in 3 beautiful color finishes — gold, silver and space gray
$999 for 13” base model
1 year of free Apple TV+ using the Apple TV app

Magic Keyboard with Scissor Mechanism

All of these upgrades are useful. By far, what we value the most is the improvement to the keyboard by switching it out to the Magic Keyboard. By replacing the butterfly mechanism, which at times could be unstable or lead to faulty individual key function in prior models, with the scissor mechanism already in use in the MacBook Pro, Apple now provides a more seamless and reliable typing experience consistently.

Continuity Support Through macOS Catalina, Retina Display, Security Features and Apple Services

In addition, the Continuity feature in macOS Catalina is a huge plus. If you start out working on an iPhone, you can copy and paste images, video and text straight from iPhone or iPad to a nearby MacBook Air. You also can even unlock your iMac with your Apple Watch. We love that you can make and receive phone calls without picking up your iPhone and also extend your workspace using an iPad and Sidecar.

Of course, the beautiful Retina display is very attractive and compelling to use for all graphics work. We also greatly appreciate the new Security features that help users stay better protected, particularly during the start up boot process by automatically checking software to verifying user Touch ID information for safe purchasing online and for preventing unauthorized access as well as the “on the fly” encryption capabilities.

Apple’s well thought out ecosystem is apparent in the seamless transition from any Apple device so that you can access Apple Services and more with all the latest versions of what you are doing available at your fingertips.

New iPad Pro with Lidar Scanner, Magic Keyboard and Trackpad Support

Now let’s take a look at the new iPad Pro.

Apple also launched a new iPad Pro yesterday equipped with a powerful A12Z Bionic chip, Ultra Wide camera, studio-quality mics, liquid Retina display and a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner. With its Retina display, the new LIDAR scanner that has amazing depth-sensing capabilities, professional cameras, performance and audio, and new motion sensors, the iPad Pro offers tremendous capabilities for augmented reality (AR).

Key Features include:

Powerful A12Z Bionic chip faster than most Windows PC laptops with eight-core GPU and Neural Engine
New 10MP Ultra Wide camera for larger perspectives
Breakthrough LiDAR Scanner
12MP Wide camera for capturing stunning photos and 4K video
Motion sensors
Studio-quality mics for professional audio
Liquid Retina display
New Trackpad support
Equipped with macOS Catalina including free software such as Pages, Numbers and Keynote
Available in 3 beautiful color finishes — gold, silver and space gray
$799 for 11” base model
1 year of free Apple TV+ using the Apple TV app

Pro Display, Pro Camera and Pro Audio

The beautiful Liquid Retina Pro Display available in both 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes, with True Tone, high brightness and an anti-reflective coating, offers vivid detail and working in tandem with ProMotion technology, helps you scroll smoothly and enjoy the best viewing experience possible. The iPad Pro has Pro Cameras with a 12MP Wide camera for capturing stunning photos and 4K video and a new 10MP Ultra Wide camera that zooms out two times to capture a much wider field of view.

The iPad Pro also offers Pro Audio via five studio-quality microphones for clean audio, capturing little details and delivering an immersive sound experience at any orientation. Combined together, the Pro Display, Pro Camera and Pro Audio offer a strong mobile studio for creative professionals.

Breakthrough LiDAR Scanner

The breakthrough LiDAR Scanner with its powerful depth sensors and photon-level detection helps you scan and measure objects as far as 5 meters away, which works well for placing furniture for homes, for use in professional architecture and construction work, augmented reality and even as a mobile assessment tool for physical therapists and their patients.

Advanced Trackpad Support

One of the best upgrades to the new iPad Pro is Trackpad support available through iPadOS 13.4 for more precision during writing and selecting text and a more natural typing experience for the iPad. Designed to work well with apps you use everyday, the new Trackpad support makes it easier and faster to scroll through web pages in Safari, edit text in notes, view and organize email or scroll through your photo albums in Photos. This also improves the natural functionality of apps such as Pages, Numbers and Keynote, all of which have new templates and features. Trackpad support makes it easier to collaborate.

The new iPad Pro also can pair up with an Apple Pencil and the new Magic Keyboard that attaches magnetically to the iPad Pro and offers easy access to the Multi-Touch screen on display, with cantilevered hinges for easy adjustment for viewing. The Magic Keyboard features convenient USB-C pass-through charging.

Finally, in addition to the two large new updates, Apple also updated its Mac mini, which today functions often as desktop computer, a music and movie storage hub for the family, or as a code compile server for Xcode. The new $799 configuration comes with 256GB — double prior models. All Mac minis are made from 100 percent recycled aluminum.

Apple's Brooklyn Event Part 1: Newly Redesigned, Gorgeous MacBook Air

Apple Announces A Long-Waited Update to the MacBook Air and more at its Special Event today at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House

Apple’s Special Event today was held in Brooklyn at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), indicating a creative bent to the event. Journalists invited to the event received unique invitations as indicated by the image below.

After the live stream event, Apple also provided a demo room for journalists at Skylight One Hanson, providing a dramatic and gorgeous setting.

In Part 1, we cover the new MacBook Air. Apple also released an updated iOS 12.1 for iPhones and iPads. See our coverage here. The new MacBook Air is available for purchase today at Apple starting at $1,199. It will be available in Apple retail stores and via Apple Authorized Resellers by Wednesday, November 7. Tech specifications, configuration options and accessories are available here.

Newly Redesigned MacBook Air

Apple revealed a long-awaited update to the MacBook Air, beloved among existing Apple users for its powerful functionality and lightness that Steve Jobs famously demonstrated in 2008, by pulling the thin laptop out of an envelope. The laptop has been surpassed over the years by the MacBook Pro and the newer MacBook, both of which had additional functionality and high resolution Retina displays. Today’s event brought the MacBook Air to the forefront with its first redesign in eight years, by adding a high-resolution Retina display, Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) and Touch ID, while still being smaller and lighter than MacBook Pros.

The new MacBook Air is thinner and lighter than prior models, but still maintains its distinctive wedge-shaped design, while adding up to four times the prior resolution in prior models with the addition of a new Retina display. Aluminum bezels around the old display have also been removed, offering a closer edge-to-edge display. With a third-generation butterfly keyboard that is quieter and presumably more dust-resistant than prior laptop models, and precision build quality with a 10 percent recycled aluminum, the MacBook Pro is the greenest computer available today. The custom aluminum alloy used helps decrease MacBook Air’s carbon footprint by almost 50 percent.

“MacBook Air has become the most beloved notebook ever.”

— Tim Cook, Apple CEO

You can open the lid with just one finger and use the large touchpad (20 percent larger than prior models) that has Force Touch. The new 13-inch MacBook Air is available in three finishes — gold, space gray and silver. The newer version also sports faster SSDs, wide stereo sound, the Apple T2 Security Chip and Thunderbolt 3, while running Apple’s latest software system, macOS Mojave. The newer MacBook Air has lost a few of its old ports, replacing them with a pair of Thunderbolt ports on the left side and a solo headphone jack on the right side. Still compact and portable, the new MacBook Air delivers up to 12 hours of battery life. The latest model also is thinner and lighter, taking up 17 percent less volume while being 10 percent thinner, measuring only .61 inches at its thickest point, and weighing 2.75 pounds - up to a quarter pound lighter than the previous model.

Retina Display

By adding Retina display to the MacBook Air, Apple brings the thin laptop up to par with its other high end model, MacBook Pro to provide high fidelity image processing and access to higher quality screen resolution. The new MacBook Air has a gorgeous 13.3-inch Retina display with 4 million pixels of resolution for stunning imagery and video displays via macOS Mojave and with 48 percent more color than prior versions.

The 13.3-inch Retina display comes with a native resolution of 2560 x 1600, and scaled resolutions of 1680 x 1050, 1440 x 900, and 1024 x 640. Using the Intel UHD Graphics 617, The new MacBook Air can support an external display with 5120 x 2880 resolution up to 60Hz or can support two external displays with 4096 x 2304 resolution at up to 60Hz via Thunderbolt 3.

The new MacBook Air has two Thunderbolt 3 ports, enabling you to charge your laptop, transfer data via USB and Thunderbolt, output video in three formats and connect to a variety of devices ranging from external storage, 4K and 5K displays, docks for ports and eGPUS for fast graphics processing.

This is further enhanced by the addition of the 8th generation Intel Core i5 processor, Intel UHD Graphics and quick 2133 MHz up to 16GB in the MacBook Air that features SSDs up to 1.5TB in capacity. The MacBook Air has faster and more powerful processing for daily activities that include editing photos and videos.

Group FaceTime

The new MacBook Air has a built-in FaceTime HD camera, allowing you to do Group FaceTime calls for up to 32 people via iOS 12.1 and benefits from the new laptop’s better sound quality via the microphone and Siri’s enhanced voice recognition.

Enhanced Security via Touch ID and Apple’s T2 Security Chip

The new MacBook Air now has Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor built right into the keyboard. This enables you to quickly unlock your MacBook Air, authenticate your identity and purchase items online securely with Apple Pay.

MacBook Air comes with a new Apple T2 Security Chip to protect your Touch ID information and to ensure that software loaded during the boot process is not been tampered with. The T2 has an SSD controller with data encryption for everything stored on the SSD, thus making the MacBook Air have a secure boot process and the most secure storage of any laptop. T2 also has a processor that enables Hey Siri features for quick requests like finding files and opening apps.

The new T2 Security Chip also proactively prevents hacking via MacBook Air microphones via a mechanism that terminates the laptop’s microphone from functioning when the lid is closed. This in effect means that no malware installed on the laptop will be able to listen to your conversations after you close the computer via any software hacks and tricks. In new documentation about Apple’s T2 Security Chip, Apple explains, “All Mac portables with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures that the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed."

Better Audio Quality

The new MacBook Air also improves upon prior model’s microphone audio quality. The latest model features advanced speakers and better audio processing technology for better stereo playback, louder speakers (25 percent more) with greater bass, dynamic range and fuller sound for a fuller and more immersive audio experience.

Apple Announces Special Oct 30th Event in Brooklyn

Each Media Guest Received a Unique Apple Logo Invitation with the words “There’s More in the Making,” Hinting at New Product Launches and Software Updates For 2018

What You Can Expect

Apple surprised media outlets with a new product event launch scheduled for Oct 30th in Brooklyn, NY instead of its HQ at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA. The event is expected to showcase products other than the iPhone, which was heavily featured back in September. It is rumored that a new iPad Pro model will be announced with slimmer bezels and introducing Face ID into the first product beyond the iPhone. The iPad Pro is also expected to switch over from Lightning to USB-C and be available in 11- and 12.9-inch display sizes.

An updated version of the MacBook Air is also expected with a a high-resolution Retina display and slimmer bezels than prior models, while still being the most cost-effective of Apple’s laptop series. Additional updates include a new Mac Mini and new desktop model as well as updated software release for iOS 12.1 and watchOS to power the EKG functionality in the new Apple Watch Series 4.

Fun Invitations Hint at Art Theme

The special invitations, unique to each media outlet, hint at possibly an art theme to the event. Here is a look at some of the invitations below.