Taking a little trip down history lane, ten years ago, Steve Jobs announced the first ever MacBook Air. It was a device unlike any other. A laptop so thin, so lightweight that you could take it anywhere with you. While Apple arguably redefined the light portable laptops market, the company over the years has neglected to do a full refresh on at-the-time revolutionary laptop. But that all changed today.
Refreshed Retina MacBook Air
Today, Apple announced the refreshed MacBook Air. The newly refreshed laptop comes with a 13.3-inch Retina display, Touch ID, and a Force Touch trackpad. This is pretty much standard on higher level MacBook Pro‘s. In addition to bringing a faster processor to the MacBook Air, it comes with the latest-gen butterfly keyboard, and a few USB-C ports. Here’s something even more interesting: it weights in at 2.75 pounds, and takes up 17 percent less volume than the previous MacBook Airs. This makes the laptop even lighter than ever.
The new MacBook Air is made entirely from recycled aluminum, which makes sense because Apple’s new pledge includes using more recycled materials on its devices.
The new Retina MacBook Air starts at $1,199, which gets you 128 gigs of storage, and goes up from there. There are a lot of options to choose from, don’t worry.
Refreshed Mac Mini
Remember the Mac Mini? Yeah, we do too. The little device had not been touched by Apple for quite some time. After a long-awaited update, the new Mac Mini has fresh life. The new Mac Mini comes in a new gray color option now, a quad-core chip, with option to upgrade to six cores, and up to 64 gigs of RAM, should you need more power under the hood. In terms of ports, the Mac Mini comes with lots of ports, including four Thunderbolt 3 ports and one for Ethernet, supporting up to 10 gigs.
Like the MacBook Air, the new Mac Mini is made from 100 percent recycled aluminum.
For those interested, you can order one today, starting at just $799.
Refreshed iPad Pro
The MacBook Air and Mac Mini weren’t the only ones that got a refresh. Apple‘s iPad Pro got some love as well.
The new, smaller and thinner iPad Pro was announced. Apple touts that this one has 25 percent less volume than its predecessor. One of the main things you will notice immediately: there’s no home button, and no headphone jack. Yes, you read that correctly. Apple is essentially moving in the same direction it did with the iPhone.
The new iPad Pro comes with a giant Liquid Retina display, bringing 11-inch display into the same form factor as the previous 10.5-inch model that has been on the market. With no physical home button, this means that Apple‘s new iPad Pro will rely heavily on a new gesture-based interface and will unlock with Face ID.
In terms of horsepower, the iPad Pro comes with a seven-core GPU and a new A12X Bionic chip with a lot of power under the hood. Apple says that the new iPad Pros are faster than 92 percent of all portable PC, and while quite the bold claim, it does provide the option to get this over the new MacBook Air’s.
If you’re interested, the new iPad Pro’s come in two sizes: 11-inch that starts at $799 and up, and 12.9-inch version that starts at $999 and up.
iOS 12.1 Update
Hardware isn’t the only thing that Apple announced today. The company announced the release of iOS 12.1 version, which brings quite a number of things to iOS device owners, such as 70 new emojis and the ability to FaceTime with 32 people at once.
The software update also brings some new nifty features, such as depth control in Portrait mode and dual SIM support for the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max.
