The Apple Keynote from yesterday – new products, software and my views

So yesterday Apple streamed its keynote speech live to the world. It was a rather dull affair but a fair amount was announced or confirmed.

First of all the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have been off the charts successful. OS X Yosemite will be free as well as iWork for the Mac. iCloud Photo library beta goes live. iOS 8.1 launches on Monday as brings back the camera roll, fixes loads of stuff, and for US citizens incorporates Apple Pay. Other improvements are occurring for iOS 8.1 too.

Hello to the iPad Air 2. Thinner at 6.1mm. Faster processor A8X. Better camera with more shooting modes from burst, time lapse, panoramic. The screen is laminated on this time, producing the same great visuals as that found on the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Touch ID was added. The screen also had a anti reflective coating. Faster wifi too and more LTE bands on the cellular version.

The iPad Mini 3 hardly got changed. Faster wifi and Touch ID.

Both the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3 will be available now in a 3rd colour, gold.

Apple mentioned a WatchKit would be available next month for developers.

Apple announced a 5K iMac Retina and a new Mac Mini.

Apple SIM – Each cellular iPad will now come with its own Apple SIM card. This SIM card will work with multiple US carriers—AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile—and allow users to not only enable or disable a cellular plan as they see fit, but also switch back and forth between carriers to find the plan that works best for them at the moment. It will also work with EE in the UK. Verizon isn’t supported on the Apple SIM at present.

Apple is now selling 5 iPads. The original iPad Mini. iPad Mini 2. iPad Mini 3. iPad Air. iPad Air 2. Confused? Apple has dropped the 32gb memory option. Just 16, 64 and 128gb. If you want the full specs head over to Apple http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad/

So what are my thoughts?

First up Apple seems to have been trying to focus more on the software, the 2 new iPhones (6 and 6 Plus) and only the larger iPad. This makes me wonder if it thinks that the iPhone 6 Plus will kill off the iPad Mini. All the other changes were really small changes, but if you were looking for a new tablet, Apple reduced the price of everything by $100. So clearly it is a competitive world. My worry is can the tablet arena really get any better where people actually care about buying the better specs. I for one will not be considering any of the new hardware Apple announced. What I already have works just fine and I am sure that will apply to many of you. However, I am sure the new iPad Air 2 is far more exciting in person than on paper.

So what do you think? Has Apple done enough?

2 thoughts on “The Apple Keynote from yesterday – new products, software and my views

  1. If Apple had released the larger iPad Air I would have ditched my Wacom Tablet in a heartbeat.
    Other than that I would love to see Apple getting into the vehicle industry with a combined iOS/OS X system at the helm.

    Like

Leave a reply to Mike Paterson Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.