As many of you going in, I was watching yesterday’s event with mixed feelings, and I’ll get to that later on. For now let’s dive in. Here’s my take, step by step.
– Tim Cook looked mostly relaxed, although I felt that – at times – he tensed up. No big deal, just an observation.
– Tim, by the way the presentations are organized, makes clear who’s the boss, but he lets his VP’s share the limelight.
– Unsurprisingly, Apple sold a gazillion iPhone 5’s. Sold out in the opening weekend, making it the best phone launch ever – not just for Apple. This actually is amazing.
– Over 200 million iOS devices are already running iOS 6. This seems a little low considering Chitika’s numbers of a 60+% adoption, but it’s a HUGE amount of devices. Something others can only dream about, for sure.
– 300+ billion iMessages sent in a year – that’s close to a billion a day. Wow. I can’t believe mobile service providers aren’t feeling the sting of that, and that Apple gets away with it.
– 35 billion downloads from the AppStore, and 6.5 billion bucks paid out to developers. “Eat this Google. Micro-who?” is clearly what Tim is really saying.
– There’s a new version of iBooks with continuous scrolling. This is obviously aimed at a smaller iPad.
– Talking about the Mac: It has outgrown the growth of the PC market by a factor of 7, and for 6 years straight. That’s got to hurt PC vendors. No wonder they’re trying to copy Apple’s products, right HP?
– Phil Schiller talks about the Mac. He seems to get less nervous with each keynote. Good for him, and good for us. Phil’s one of the guys you just can help to like.
– MacBook is the first he talks about:
The 15″ rMBP has the best display in the industry, but the 13″ MPB is actually the best-selling Mac, so they made it even better. 13″ rMPB with 2560×1600 resolution on 13,3″. 0.75 inches (1,9 centimeters) thin. Wow. 3.57 pounds (1.6 kilograms). Wow again. Up to 7 hours of battery life. 300 nits of brightness, 2nd highest resolution display in the industry. That is pretty funny, actually. I imagine the 15″ is geared towards photographers, and video editing folks, and the 13″ towards regular people.
It will be interesting to see when the Airs will get the Retina treatment, but I’m guessing this is still about two years out, because of battery constraints. The 13″ starts at 1.699, the 15″ at 2.199, USD that is.
– Phil’s talking about the Mac mini, saying that everybody knew today’s presentation would be about something “mini”. Again, pretty funny.
So the Mac mini gets a refresh with Ivy Bridge i5 and i7, and all around better internals. The look stays the same, so does the price at 599 USD. This is actually something I would consider for my 12-year old, but maybe an Air is the better choice. Not sure.
– Next up: iMac.
Wow! I didn’t really see that coming! Well, I did think the iMacs would be upgraded to Ivy Bridge, but this?! Holy cow…look at how thin this is! Unbelievable…a complete redesign.
Suddenly my top of the line 27″ Sandy Bridge i7 with 256GD SSD and 2TB HDD (the works) looks…old! I hate Apple. Well, not really, but it’s going to be a long year and a half before I will upgrade to the new iMac. Damn…
Oh yeah, “friction steer welding” is way cool, and so is that it sheds around 8 pounds (!) over the previous generation, and comes with 8GB RAM standard.
Did I mention “Fusion Drive”? It makes one logical volume out of your SSD and HDD, moving apps you use the most to the SSD without you having to interfere. Performance is almost at SSD level. This is nice. Finally, no optical drive, unless you have an external SuperDrive.
– iPad.
Tim announces over 100 million iPads sold in just about 2.5 years. That’s just crazy. For reference: iPhone took 4 years to reach that number.
– iPad 4!
Just half a year after iPad 3…ok. Basically a refresh with an A6 processor – same as in the iPhone 5. Twice as fast, yada, yada. Not for me, to be honest. If it were thinner than the iPad 3 I have, then I’d buy one in a heartbeat, but this is clearly aimed at iPad 2 buyers who feel they want a Retina display now.
Still, unbelievable that they are introducing a new generation just six months in. It does have a new LTE chip, again from the iPhone 5, which supports lots of carriers around the world, so I guess this will make it an easy upgrade choice for many. I guess it makes sense in a way.
It also has the new Lightning connector. Decent upgrade, but it’s still weird. I’m thinking they want to get as much out of the holiday quarter as possible, but that leaves the other quarters a bit bare looking. Hmmm…
– iPad mini!
This was expected. 7,9″ at 1024×768, same as the iPad 2. A5 chip from the iPad 2, which should be more than enough to power that display. Anodized aluminium (Hi Jony!), just like the iPhone 5.
Comes in black and white. 7.2 millimeters thin, weighing 0.3 kilograms, half as thin as iPad 3/4. Holy..damn… Somebody tweeted after the event that he had a Nexus 7 with him and that the iPad mini was much lighter, thinner, and much better build. He also said the display was so much better. What’s really important to remember:
This thing will run all iPad apps, without any tweaks needing to be made by developers. Phil went on the rip on “competitors”. If I’m not mistaken the example used is a Nexus 7, and it does pale in comparison. iPad mini has 35% more screen, and comes with LTE.
16GB WiFi version for 329…my first thought was: This is steep. My second thought is: Apple’s not competing with Android or WinRT/8/Pro/Whatever. Those guys are competing with Apple.
Apple sells a premium product, at a premium prize to premium customers. Preorders start on October, the 26th. Ships on November, the 2nd.
– Tim recaps his promise from early in 2012 that we would see lots of innovation coming this year, and he’s actually kept his promise. Mountain Lion, iOS 6, new rMBP’s, new MBA’s, new Mac mini, new iPad 3, new iPad 4, new iMacs, iPad mini.
This was, and still is, a lot to take in.
Here’s my take after about 14 hours:
It will be interesting to see the sales numbers for the September quarter. I wonder why they felt they needed to update iPad 3? I don’t mean to say that it sold less than stellar – I’m actually sure the opposite is true – but you have to wonder if they needed to update it just for the holiday season? Maybe, quite possibly, they know something about a competitor that we don’t?
I think the 13″ rMBP will be even more popular than it’s predecessor, but if I were to buy a pro machine, it would be the 15″.
The Mac mini serves lots of purposes: Entry-level Mac, media server, business server (with the two HDD option available). It is tempting to get a full Mac for just 599 USD, but I’m still wondering if an Air isn’t the better choice for most.
The iMac redesign caught me off guard. I want one! Now! But I’ll wait till my mid-2011 iMac has at least three years of service under it’s belt. It’s still as awesome as it was yesterday.
I talked about iPad 4 already, so on to iPad mini:
I can see that lots of people will be buying them for christmas. Hell, I’m thinking about getting one for my son just so I can actually get my iPad 3 back!
I will have to withhold judgment on the screen size, but at almost 8″ is seems to be big enough for a market that’s obviously out there. I’m predicting, which I usually don’t do, that iPad will be Apple’s biggest business by 2014. Yep, bigger than iPhone.
In closing you can see why I initially said I was having mixed feelings, and I still do.
This has not changed from 14 hours ago. I did make up my mind about what I like, need, want, but the main attraction of the evening, iPad mini, is still something I’m not sure about. Oh, I know Apple will sell them by the boatload, but I’m not sure if Steve wasn’t right about this anyway.
Time will tell.
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