On previous Apple event, Apple paid overdue attention to its stalwart MacBook Air and Mac mini, introduced a much leaner and more powerful iPad Pro, and fixed the design disaster that was the Apple Pencil’s charging.
The new Air is the most familiar and predictable scenario. Its strengths are known knowns: long endurance, densely packed, high-quality construction, and all the good things that make macOS attractive. Windows laptops have also failed on the battery life, which is where the MBP underwhelms, and so Apple has a significant opportunity to stand out by living up to its promised 12 hours of battery life with the MacBook Air 2018. Woohoo :"o
The iPad Pro, on the other hand, is the more exciting and adventurous choice. A few of the advantages that attracted to me in iPad Pro: the display, with its fast refresh rate and True Tone color adjustment; the new Apple Pencil 2, which magnetically docks to the side of the tablet and even charges wirelessly; and LTE.
Adding LTE to your most-used portable computer is truly a transformative upgrade. The small efficiencies of being able to just pop your computer open anywhere and start working without fiddling with wireless network credentials or setting up a mobile hot spot eventually add up to a big productivity win.
In the years since Apple last upgraded the MacBook people noticed much of thier work time gradually shifting to his smartphone, with the laptop taking a secondary role, deployed only when I need the larger screen and more comfortable keyboard. That’s in large part because of the always-on connection of the phone, and the connectedness to all of the most popular social and work communication apps.
At its outset, the iPad was dismissed as being merely a “jumbo iPhone,” but in 2018, we might want to start asking if that’s a criticism or a form of praise. The best apps today are being developed for the iPhone and, by the extension of iOS, as the common platform for the iPad. iOS is the operating system of Apple’s future, macOS is the operating system of Apple’s past.
Apple refuses to offer LTE, Face ID, or touchscreen options on its Mac line, while limiting the ports on its mobile devices. (The latest iPad Pro loses the headphone jack, and its new USB-C portdoesn’t support external storage.) The 11-inch iPad Pro fits into bags and pockets that are inaccessible to a 13.3-inch MacBook Air, but then the Air is vastly more stable.
The big commonality shared by these attractive new devices is Apple’s typically luxurious pricing. You’ll have to spend $1,599 for a 2018 MacBook Air with 512GB of storage or $1,498 for an 11-inch iPad Pro with a Keyboard Folio, LTE, and the same storage upgrade. Those are MacBook Pro sort of prices.
Reviews will determine exactly how good Apple’s new products are, but it’s not too soon to say that Apple has differentiated their form and function to a sufficient degree that an iPad Pro, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro can all happily coexist on store shelves. Until this week, Apple was still offering some embarrassingly out-of-date computers, but now, it has replaced them with an embarrassment of diverse riches
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