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Apple’s Special Event, Hardware News – 30th October 2018

Home » News » Apple’s Special Event, Hardware News – 30th October 2018

Apple’s all-new Hardware Announcements – 30th October 2018.

Here’s our report of Apple’s surprise event held today at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York.  To keep things brief and easy to digest we have written the article below in more of a short paragraph format keeping everything easier to read plus it’s more short and snappy.  We have only covered the hardware announced by Apple and if you would like to see the whole Keynote then please click here to visit the Apple website.



The all-new MacBook Air

New MacBook Air

The brand new Mac Book Air was announced today with a brand new Retina Display which is a much overdue update coming to the MacBook Air range.  It has the same design language as the other MacBooks in the range but smaller and thinner.

The new MacBook Air’s display now features a sleeker bezel display which is now 13.3 inches in size. The screen resolution is now four times the resolution of the current display which now measures, at its highest native resolution, 2560 x 1600 pixels.  Text and images are now sharper with 48% more colour built into the 16:10 aspect ratio Retina display.  It also still keeps the 720p Facetime camera at the top within those smaller glass bezels.

Touch ID is now installed into the MacBook Air, to the right of the F12 key, so it is now even easier to unlock with the added T2 security chip, giving you a more secure notebook experience.

The new MacBook Air features the same keyboard that is used in all of the current range of MacBooks with backlit illumination.  It also has a 20% larger trackpad which allows for Force Touch and multi-touch gestures.

Audio performance is 25% better in the new MacBook Air compared to the older one and has 2 x the amount of bass compared to the outgoing model.  It also features three microphones for better Facetime experience as well as being more accurate at capturing your voice when talking to Siri.

The new MacBook Air is now powered by an 8th generation Intel Core i5 CPU and has a minimum of 8gb of RAM, which can be boosted up to 16GB.  The base model also comes with 128gb of onboard storage which can be upgraded to 1.5TB of storage, which would need to be specified at the point of ordering.

In terms of size, the new MacBook Air possesses 17% less volume than the older version and measures 30.41 cm (11.97 inches) wide x 21.24 cm (8.36 inches) deep with a weight of approximately 1.25 kg (2.75 pounds).   It is also thinner than the outgoing version.

When it comes to the battery you will get 12 hours of web surfing, 13 hours playing iTunes movies and if you keep the MacBook Air in standby mode, it will stay that way for up to 30 days!

The unibody for the new MacBook Air now uses 100% recycled Aluminium to help reduce the brand new machine’s carbon footprint by about 50%.

Prices start at £1,199 and you can order today for it to ship November 7th 2018.

The brand new Mac mini

New Mac Mini Internals

The all-new Mac mini is now encased in a Space Grey aluminium enclosure mirroring the look of the iMac Pro.  The CPU in the brand new Mac mini has now been given a leg up in terms of performance as the base model now sports an Intel 4 core i5 processor running at 3.6 GHz and can be specified to go all of the way up to a 6 core 8th generation i7 Intel processor which can make it five times faster than the older Mac mini, when you compare like for like system performance.

Memory wise the new Mac Mini starts out with 8GB worth of DD4 2666MHz RAM and can be upgraded, during the ordering process, to a colossal 64GB of RAM.

Storage is now based on an SSD flash drive system, which you can now choose from 128GB all the way up to 2TB worth of flash storage which is great for possible small server solutions.

The Mac Mini features a brand new cooling system with a redesigned power supply, bigger fan setup and larger vents.

Connection wise, the big news is that it can now be specified to have a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port built into the system and as well as that you also get 4 x Thunderbolt ports, 2 x USB 3 connectors, an HDMI 2 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Prices for the new Mac mini start at £799 for the base system and if you go mad you could get close to nearly £4,000 for a top of the range Mac mini.

The all-new iPad Pro

All new iPad Pro

The all-new iPad Pro is not only sleeker, more rounded but it has done away with the Home button to allow for much smaller bezels and a bigger screen to body ratio, just like the newer iPhone XS, XS Max and XR.

It features a Liquid Retina screen, like the iPhone XR, and the smaller iPad Pro now measures 11 inches with 250,000 more pixels.

As well as the 11-inch iPad there is also the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.  The 11-inch measures 178.5mm wide by 247.6mm tall and is 5.9mm thick while the12.9-inch version measures 214.9mm wide by 280.6mm tall and is the same 5.9mm thickness as the 11-inch version.

They are 5.9mm thick, giving it 25% less volume than the previous iPad Pros.  It also half a kilo lighter than the outgoing version.

It also now features FaceID which is more secure than any other tablet or computer.  FaceID is powered by the true depth camera that is built into the front of the new iPad Pro.

The home button is now replaced by the gesture control which is as per the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR.

Powered by the A12X Bionic chip, which is more powerful than the chip currently powering the new iPhones, makes it faster and more energy efficient.  The iPads are 90% faster than the older models and now feature a 7 core GPU giving it 2 x graphics performance.  It can perform as well as the Xbox One S console in terms of graphical horsepower, which is impressive for such a relatively small piece of tech.

It can now feature up to 1TB of onboard storage and now has a USB-C connector, allowing your iPad Pro to charge your iPhone on the go!  The USB-C connector can also allow for connections to an external monitor for that dual screen synchronisation.

The new Apple Pencil, featured at Apple’s Special Event, can be magnetically attached to the brand new iPad Pro and when it is attached, the iPad Pro will wirelessly charge the Apple Pencil to 100% while pairing with the device.

The iPad Pro has been given a bit of a camera bump with a 12MP camera at the rear of the device, with Smart HDR, and a TrueDepth camera at the front allowing it to feature Portrait Mode, Animoji and the all-new Memoji.

Powering the all new iPad Pro is a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery which gives you 10 hours of web surfing, watching videos or listening to music and can be charged either via it’s USB-C charging adaptor or via a USB-C to any computer system that has a USB port.

One final thing to note is that the new iPad Pro doesn’t have a headphone jack, the only port on there is the USB-C.  This may be a problem for pro users like DJs and the like but it is the way things are going and Apple as always is leading the way with the headphone jack delete.

When ordering you can either choose Silver or Space Grey and prices start at £769 for the 11-inch display and £969 for the 12-inch version.  They will start to ship by 6th November 2018.

 

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