Apple event: New MacBook Air, iPad Pro and Mac Mini unveiled – everything you need to know
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Your support makes all the difference.Apple has unveiled a huge suite of new products, including a brand new MacBook Air, Mac Mini and completely re-designed iPad Pro.
The launch comes just weeks after the release of the iPhone XS and XR, where the Apple Watch was also updated, and serves to tweak all of the products that got left out of that event.
The MacBook Air brought a completely new look to Apple's most popular – and until now roundly neglected – laptop. It finally added the long-requested Retina Display, but also changed up the computer's look and brought entirely new features like its Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
Apple repeatedly referred to the laptop as its "greenest ever computer", because of a new process that allows it to be made using a new process that allows it to use completely recycled aluminium.
As well as its broad redesign, vastly improved screen and new features, the internal components of the computer were vastly improved to make it far quicker than the computer it replaces.
It starts at $1199 in the US, or the same number of pounds. It is available to order now ahead of a release date on 7 November.
Alongside the MacBook Air came a new Mac Pro, which benefits from the same recycled metals, a new look, and vastly upgraded internals. Both the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air have been neglected for years, with so little attention that some feared it was more likely they would be killed off than refreshed.
The iPad Pro came with a similarly radical redesign, which removes the home button from the bottom and almost entirely gets rid of the bezel that has traditionally wrapped around the sides of the screen. That also meant Apple brought a new way of unlocking it, with the introduction of Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology into the tablet for the first time ever.
Apple removed the Lightning port on the bottom of the iPad, and swapped it for USB-C. That has been used on some of Apple's laptops, but will mean that owners will no longer be able to charge their iPad and iPhone with the same cable.
Apple also introduced an upgraded version of the Apple Pencil, which was first introduced with the first iPad Pro. It now charges by clicking onto the top of the tablet, and features a button on the side that can be press for extra controls.
Alongside that came a new look for the Smart Keyboard that is sold alongside the iPad Pro.
The new iPad Pro comes in two sizes: an 11-inch version, which because of the smaller bezel takes up the same space as the previous 10.5-inch one, and a bigger 12.9-inch size.
The smaller one starts at $769 and the bigger at $969. Both are available to order now and will also go on sale on 7 November.
Below is our live blog from the event, detailing Apple's announcements as they happened.
Please allow a moment for the live blog to load.
The size stays the same as the existing iPad Pro. But the display gets bigger, because the bezel has disappeared.
With the bigger version of the iPad Pro, the screen size has stayed the same but the thing itself has got smaller. (It's now almost exactly the same size as an A4 piece of paper.)
And it has Face ID, just like the newest iPhones. It works in the same way: by using a True Depth camera tucked away in the bezel at the top. (There's no notch, unlike the iPhone, because there's still a bezel.) It does the same things, allowing you to unlock the iPad and do other things like buy stuff.
Without a home button, you use the screen in a similar way to the iPhone: you pull up from the bottom to go home, and you can use a range of other gestures to do other things, like swapping between apps and things. Those gestures actually arrived with iOS 12, which was a bit of a clue that this might happen.
The new iPad Pros are powered by the "all new A12X bionic". Just like the one in the iPhone, that involves a new architecture that allows it to be much faster. Some workloads are up to 90 per cent faster, Apple says. It's a "huge step forward".
The new iPads are "faster than 92 per cent of all portable PCs sold in the last 12 months", apparently.
The chips also have entirely new GPUs, allowing for improved graphics. Two times the performance of the previous generation, apparently. The graphics are now 1000 times faster than they were in the original iPad.
The iPad Pro delivers Xbox One S class graphics performance, apparently.
Plenty of extra big numbers coming in. Such as, for example, up to 1TB of storage capacity!
And the new iPad Pros are moving to USB-C. (And, therefore, away from the Lightning Port that charges the iPad and iPhone at the moment.) It will allow it to be connected to external displays and other accessories such as musical equipment.
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