As previously predicted Apple made a whole set of announcements on 22 October-- revealing the 5th iPad generation (now called "Air"), a Retina-equipped iPad mini and a MacBook refresh, as well as more details on the latest Mac Pro and OS X Mavericks.
Of course, you can have an Apple event without some big Apple numbers. Apparently the iPhone 5C/S launch was the biggest yet, with 9 million iPhones sold during the post-launch weekend. How many of devices actually belong to the latest generation is anyone's guess though, seeing how Apple gives no breakdown of the totals in question.
Meanwhile iO7 devices clocked at 200 million just 5 days after launch. As for the iPad, CEO Tim Cook says “iPad is used more than any of the rest, and not just a little more…a lot more,” after revealing the company sold 170m tablets to date.
As these things tend to be, the iPad Air is the thinnest (7.5mm) and lightest (453g) iPad yet. Apparently the "Air" monicker refers to a number of admittedly subtle hardware changes, namely rounded edges on the an aluminium rear plate, a shiny metallic bezel, a 5MP front-facing camera and dual microphones.
Powering all is the same A7 chip seen in the iPhone 5S, while the display handles Retina (2048x1536) resolutions. Options include 16, 32, 64 and 128GB storage in either White/Silver or Gray/Black.
Meanwhile the iPad mini gets a new version with an addition many argue should have been in the first generation-- a Retina display. The 7.9-inch tablet also gets an A7 chip, a battery promising 10 hours of use and White/Silver or Gray/Black colour options.
All new iPad models should be available "in time for the holidays."
As well as tablets, Apple dedicated some time to reveal Haswell-equipped MacBook Pros. Available with 13- or 15-inch displays in Retina or regular flavours, the new MacBooks promise battery lives of up to 8-9 hours and feature 802.11ac wifi and Thunderbolt 2 ports.
In a perhaps snide remark, CEO Tim Cook remarks “our competition is different. They’re confused. They chased after netbooks, now they’re trying to make PCs into tablets and tablets into PCs. Who knows what they will do next?”
And to conclude, the event also hosted the reveal of final specs of the sinister black cylinder that's the new Mac Pro (quad-core 3.7GHz Xeon CPU, 128GB RAM, dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs, 256GB SSD) and the cheap-as-free availability of OS X Mavericks, starting from today.
Go Apple
