I live in partial fear of the day when my parents and in-laws have to get bezel-less iPads. They need the bezel to hold on to it b/c their arthritic hands would trigger all sorts of havoc without a bezel.
There are now three iPad tiers; cheap, Air, and Pro.
The new iPad Mini has the laminated screen, supports the pencil, and has a current SoC so even with gigantor bezels, it’s in the Air tier.
The new 10.5" Air fits a bigger screen in the same physical size device, just like the 2017 10.5" Pro. Much smaller bezels than the 9.7" models. Unlike the 2017 Pro it doesn’t have the 120Hz screen or stereo speakers, so if you find a deal on the 2017 Pro for the same price, definitely get that. The SoC speed difference is meaningless outside benchmarks, but the smooth motion and better speakers are immediately noticeable. My 11" iPad is buttah smooth.
I… don’t want to know if that’s the bathroom one.
No, I keep a 9.7" Pro in the bathroom, if you know what I mean.
I am going to go into my love/hate relationship with my iPad Pro.
I have the 1st gen 12.9. I love it. It is probably my second or 3rd favorite device. My all-time favorite is my old 2011 15" MacBook Pro that I was able to upgrade most of the internals and the device got me through a transitory period during my divorce.
The 12.9" is tied for second with my 11" MacBook Air. The Air was underpowered, but for writing on the go it was great. I still use it. It’s in my bag with me today, even though I have a 2016 15" MBP.
The 1st gen Pro is still a powerful machine. It never once feels slow. For writing and drawing on the go, it’s great. Ulysses is great. Procreate and the Affinity suite are awesome. The problems I have won’t be solved my hardware. I don’t like there isn’t a way to tell Files 'This folder should be always downloaded". Even if I use the Dropbox feature to force a folder to be downloaded, apps like Word don’t respect that and complain about the lack of a network connection.
Scrivener’s iOS version still uses manual Dropbox sync. Word doesn’t let me add ToCs or modify styles. Too many applications view the iPad as a second-class citizen. It is making me think that my next truly mobile device might just be a one-port MacBook.
That’s what i eventually did, iPad Mini, Macbook 11 and iMac. I picked up a 2015 Macbook w/ 512 ssd back when the gnomes at B&H seemed to undervalue it briefly when the 2016 model came out. I could still probably sell it for 75% what i bought it for, however it iss probably going to be a forever device for me because getting anything newish from Apple with the same 512 is going to cost me 300-600 more than i spent… 4 years ago.
Apple Pencil v1 requires a lightning port to pair with the device. So either redesign the case and build wireless charging hardware into all devices (which is probably going to be wasted money for the vast majority of minis and basic ipads), or stick with lightning.
I am waiting to see what iOS 13 brings. I am still a long ways from needing an upgrade. While my 15" 2016 MBP is large, it’s not like the old days of dragging a 6 pound computer around.
But yeah, the new iMacs with a Vega and a regular one-port is a good combo.
Did Apple just release new iMacs?
Ok so apparently they released new iMacs this morning, pretty much on the same upgrade jag that the Mini was… basically a spec update and nothing else.
Super annoying that it will cost you around $2,000 just to get a 512ssd or else your stuck with spinny drives. The early Fusion Drives were better, they had 128? gb of flash. Apple has cut that down to 16 or 8 for the 1 TB drives and only uses 64 or 128 (i can’t remember which) for the 2 TB drives.
Would have also like to see support for HDR/HD10/Dolby Vision.
Only 8th gen for most of 'em too, when 9th gen came out three months ago. Of course 7, 8, and 9 are all Skylake refreshes so it’s not a huge deal, but still.
I bought a 1TB external SSD and ran my iMac off of that for a couple years until (i think) it began to flake out - i just switched back to internal a couple months ago. And that off USB 3.0, since my older iMac only has those horrible large Thunderbolt 2 ports that nobody makes peripherals for anymore. Still a lot faster than the stupid spinny drive.
Unfortunately finding a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure that isn’t batnut expensive still seems hard to do.
USB3 is actually quite fast, it’s 625MB/sec. Of course you’ll see less than that in the real world, but SATA SSDs don’t write faster than a couple hundred megabyes per second in the first place so you’re unlikely to be bottlenecked.
I updated my Dad’s Late 2011 iMac with an SSD and 16GB RAM (under $200 total) in January and it was like a whole new machine. Things that took a minute to load before load in 5-6 seconds. And a couple of thousand dollars cheaper than getting a newer iMac for him.
On the bezels, etc, the vast majority of users likely don’t care. And frankly, with my 2018 iPad Pro 12.9 inch, if the damn thing had decent sized bezels I probably wouldn’t see “Camera is covered” 25% of the time I try to unlock it while holding it. Bezels aren’t necessarily a bad thing with tablets you hold in your hand…
Sure you would. The smaller bezels aren’t the problem there, it’s that the device is perfectly symmetrical, so you don’t know which end is up unless you give the ol’ iPad a reach-around for the rear camera.
You should always give the goddamn human courtesy of a reach around. - Sgt. Hartsman
New AirPods today: longer talk time, faster connect time, Hey Siri support, optional wireless charging case. Run by a new chip, “H1,” instead of an upgrade to the W chip, I guess. I ordered them since I use the first gen so much and hit the talk time limit on longer calls.
I’m on the fence of doing the same thing.
Hmm… no sign of the rumored higher-end model with noise-cancellation?
That’s a shame. It would truly be a killer feature.
I wonder if Apple’s Beats line of headphones will see updates. I like the PB3’s for the gym but would love a slimmer model without the wire, and auto-shutoff when I take them out of my ears. (basically I want AirPods designed for gym use, without resorting to using 3rd party ear hooks.)