Apple held one of their press events today to announce a bunch of new product. Let me hit the highlights for you:
- OS X Mavericks was first up on stage. Apple highlighted laptop battery life improvements, better memory management, graphics improvements including better management of the memory a integrated graphics chipset uses and the porting of Open CL to integrated graphics chipsets. New features in Safari such as enhanced notifications, tags in the Finder, big improvements to multiple display handling and new Maps and iBooks apps. The big news is that OS X Mavericks will be FREE available today in the App Store.
- New Macbook Pro models were announced today. 15-inch, 2.0GHz quad-core i7, 8GB memory, Iris Pro Graphics, 256GB flash storage, shipping today starting at a price of $1,999 USD. There’s also a 13″ with 1 2.4GHz dual-core i5, 4GB DRAM, Iris Graphics, 128GB SSD. Shipping today starting at a price of $1299 USD. Both come with somethign called Thunderbolt 2 and 802.11ac.
- The Mac Pro was also mentioned today. The base model features a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, 12GB DRAM, two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs, and a 256GB SSD. it starts at $2999 USD and available in December.
- Back to the software side, Apple announced iLife and iWork for both Mac and iOS with new iCloud integration. iLife has brand new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand. Ditto for iWork which on the Mac has been rewritten from the ground up to be easier to use. There’s a pile of new features that I cannot possibly cover. But here’s the part that you care about. They’re both available today and they’re free with a new Mac or iDevice purchase.
- Then there’s the iPad. Apparently Apple has sold 170 million of them. Not bad. One suspects that they’re going to sell millions more because they’ve announced the iPad Air which is thinner and lighter with a 9.7″ retina display and the same A7 processor and M7 motion co processor that’s in the iPhone 5S. It has better LTE and WiFi support. It comes with a 5MP iSight camera, FaceTime HD camera and is now the top of the food chain starting at $499 USD for WiFi and $629 USD for cellular. It’s shipping November 1st.
- The iPad Mini got a retina display today along with an A7 chip. 2x faster Wi-Fi with MIMO antennas with expanded LTE support. 5MP iSight camera, FaceTime HD camera. Expect to pay $399 USD for the 16GB/Wi-Fi version, $529 USD with Cellular.
- New covers and cases for the new iPads will be available as well.
I will add links to every product that was announced as they become available. If you want to watch the keynote video, it will be available here. I will also be looking around Apple.com as Apple tends to make other product changes that they don’t announce in a keynote. When I find them, I’ll update this post.
UPDATED: I have added links to all the new product announced today.
UPDATE #2: Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum has the following initial comments:
“As expected, Apple took some cues from the iPad Mini in launching the new iPad Air, which is thinner and lighter, while adopting many of the internal improvements first seen in the iPhone 5S. This represents a good enough boost to the previous version to trigger good upgrade sales and get iPad shipments growing again, which was a key objective for this launch. However, the company also took a step back from the strategy it adopted when it launched the first iPad Mini. When that device launched, it was with a sub-par display and specs that matched the older iPad 2. The new iPad Mini and iPad Air both have top-of-the-line specs, and start at $399, meaning that the minimum price for a high-performance iPad has actually gone up. Meanwhile, the iPad 2 and iPad Mini will remain on sale at lower prices, but with significantly less appeal given the gap in specs between them and the new iPads. It seems as though Apple is trying to push average selling prices for iPads back up again after they’ve dropped steadily over the past year. Both devices should sell very well, especially over the holiday period, but Apple held off being as disruptive as they might have been by pricing them relatively high.
“This is the clearest statement Apple could have made that it is only interested in competing in the premium tablet space. The yawning gap between the specs of the cheaper iPad Mini and iPad 2 and the new iPads signifies that it is only willing to compete at the lower price points with older models. This leaves a huge chunk of the tablet market unserved by Apple while others such as Google, Amazon and a raft of others aggressively target the sub-$400 market. This reinforces our view that Apple’s share in tablets will continue to fall as Android’s share rises over the coming years.
“Though the iPad news will generate the headlines, the changes to Apple’s software licensing for Mac OS X, iLife and iWork is also important, not least for Microsoft. Microsoft generates 96% of its operating margins from operating system and productivity software licensing, and Apple is now teaching people to expect both of those things to be free. While this won’t disrupt Microsoft’s business overnight, it will create further pressure on Microsoft to bring down prices for its productivity software and especially for Windows.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
This entry was posted on October 22, 2013 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
So, What Did Apple Announce Today? [UPDATED X2]
Apple held one of their press events today to announce a bunch of new product. Let me hit the highlights for you:
I will add links to every product that was announced as they become available. If you want to watch the keynote video, it will be available here. I will also be looking around Apple.com as Apple tends to make other product changes that they don’t announce in a keynote. When I find them, I’ll update this post.
UPDATED: I have added links to all the new product announced today.
UPDATE #2: Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum has the following initial comments:
“As expected, Apple took some cues from the iPad Mini in launching the new iPad Air, which is thinner and lighter, while adopting many of the internal improvements first seen in the iPhone 5S. This represents a good enough boost to the previous version to trigger good upgrade sales and get iPad shipments growing again, which was a key objective for this launch. However, the company also took a step back from the strategy it adopted when it launched the first iPad Mini. When that device launched, it was with a sub-par display and specs that matched the older iPad 2. The new iPad Mini and iPad Air both have top-of-the-line specs, and start at $399, meaning that the minimum price for a high-performance iPad has actually gone up. Meanwhile, the iPad 2 and iPad Mini will remain on sale at lower prices, but with significantly less appeal given the gap in specs between them and the new iPads. It seems as though Apple is trying to push average selling prices for iPads back up again after they’ve dropped steadily over the past year. Both devices should sell very well, especially over the holiday period, but Apple held off being as disruptive as they might have been by pricing them relatively high.
“This is the clearest statement Apple could have made that it is only interested in competing in the premium tablet space. The yawning gap between the specs of the cheaper iPad Mini and iPad 2 and the new iPads signifies that it is only willing to compete at the lower price points with older models. This leaves a huge chunk of the tablet market unserved by Apple while others such as Google, Amazon and a raft of others aggressively target the sub-$400 market. This reinforces our view that Apple’s share in tablets will continue to fall as Android’s share rises over the coming years.
“Though the iPad news will generate the headlines, the changes to Apple’s software licensing for Mac OS X, iLife and iWork is also important, not least for Microsoft. Microsoft generates 96% of its operating margins from operating system and productivity software licensing, and Apple is now teaching people to expect both of those things to be free. While this won’t disrupt Microsoft’s business overnight, it will create further pressure on Microsoft to bring down prices for its productivity software and especially for Windows.”
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on October 22, 2013 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.