Apple had their “Spring Loaded” event today and as a dutiful Apple Fanboy, I watched with great interest. Like the other Apple events over the past year, this was a virtually attended event with slick video and impressive editing. I’m assuming the entire production was created using Apple products. I say this because one time a Windows event was produced with Apple products and that was somewhat smirk worthy.
I was pleased to see everything that was announced today. The highlights of the event for me included the new AirTags and the new iPad Pro.
AirTags are small devices that attaches to various things you have a habit of misplacing. Luggage. Car keys. Your spouse. AirTags work with the existing Apple “Find My” ecosystem, so you can locate these tagged items using your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. With Apple’s focus on privacy and security, all of this location data is anonymized and encrypted but still available to your iDevices with pinpoint accuracy. You’ll never lose your car keys again. Totally useable in our household.
The new iPad Pro, especially the 12.9″ model (I currently have the 2018 version) is especially impressive. The new iPad Pros will have the same chip as the newest iteration of Macs, the Apple Silicon M1 chip. Up until last year, Macs used the same chip, and “industry standard” Intel chip, to power their Macs. These were the same chips you’d find in any Windows computer on the street. They tend to run hot, require a lot of power, and have other limitations, so Apple designed their own chip. I bought an M1 Mac mini for my work setup last week and it has been fantastic (more on that later this week). Moving to the M1 in the iPad Pro ramps up the already very capable device. I’m certain my next “laptop” will be this iteration of iPad Pro. Someone tell my husband to prime the credit card later this year.
Apple also announced a completely redesigned iMac and, surprise!, they come in an assortment of colors with matching keyboard, mouse, and/or trackpad. The new iMac is incredibly thin and is now powered by the aforementioned M1 chip. This will make the machine absolutely silent, something I really enjoy about any computer.
Side note, today I moved the NAS, or hard drive storage device, out of my office and into another room of the house because it was making too much noise and distracting me from work. While there are times I enjoy some music playing, most the time I try to work in complete silence. And when I want it silent, I want it silent. This was another reason for purchasing the M1 Mac mini last week; my older mid-2015 MacBook Pro fires up the fans a lot, especially during video calls.
Apple also announced a new Apple TV 4K and more importantly, a completely redesigned remote. Bonus feature, the newly designed remote will work with existing Apple TVs. While we already have an Apple TV 4K (the current version), we are both ready for a better designed remote. We’ve had too many instances where we couldn’t figure out which way was up when holding the remote, or hitting the wrong button because we were lost in the navigation, and mistakenly backing completely out of a show we were watching. The new design of the Apple TV remote looks promising and I’m anxious to add one to our collection of iDevices.
Overall I enjoyed the event very much and I just added another notch to the inevitable status as an Apple Fanboy. There are a lot of choices out there these days, I simply believe Apple does consumer tech in the best way available. They’re far from perfect, but when compared with other platforms, it just works.
