Highlights:
- Apple unveiled during its ‘Spring Loaded’ event the new 24-inch colored iMac and the fifth-generation iPad Pro with M1 chip.
- Apple SVPs chat about the iPad Pro, merging with the Mac and its new unified processor strategy.
- Apple launched a ton of new products including AirTags, new Apple Card family sharing, a new Apple TV, a new set of colorful iMacs, and a purple iPhone 12 shade.
- Apple’s new 12.9” iPad Pro is the most interesting from a market positioning perspective.
Apple launched a ton of new product including AirTags, new Apple Card family sharing, a new Apple TV, a new set of colorful iMacs, and a purple iPhone 12 shade.
Apple’s first product event of 2021 ticks over. They had already made 3 announcements we knew it was going to be a packed one. In a tight single hour this week, Apple launched a ton of new products including AirTags, new Apple Card family sharing, a new Apple TV, a new set of colorful iMacs, and a purple iPhone 12 shade.
Of the new devices announced, though, Apple’s new 12.9” iPad Pro is the most interesting from a market positioning perspective.
Apple has essentially ported its enormously good $5,000 Pro Display XDR down to a 12.9” touch version. It came with some slight improvements. But the specs are flat out incredible. 1,000 nit brightness peaking at 1,600 nits in HDR with 2,500 full array local dimming zones. All this compared to the Pro Display XDR’s 576 in a much larger scale.
It’s brighter than any Mac or iOS device on the market and could be a big game shifting device for professionals working in HDR video and photography. But even still, this is a major investment to ship a micro-LED display in the millions or tens of millions of units with more density and brightness than any other display on the market.
The iPad Pro now runs on the M1 chip.
The iPad Pro now runs on the M1 chip — a move away from the A-series naming. And that processor part is identical to the one present in the iMac. They announce the device this week. Also, MacBooks launched earlier this year.
As the M1 was rolling out and I began running my testing.This includes the power per watt aspects that really became the story. That really is the big differentiator for M1. For decades, laptop users have been accustomed to saving any heavy or intensive workloads. This is true for the times when their machines were plugged in due to power consumption. M1 is in the process of resetting those expectations for desktop class processors. In fact, Apple is offering not only the most powerful CPUs but also the most power-efficient CPUs on the market. It’s doing it in a $700 Mac Mini. This includes $1,700 iMac and a $1,100 iPad Pro at the same time. It’s a pretty ridiculous display of stunting. Yet, it’s also the product of more than a decade of work building its own architecture and silicon.
