Spring came with Apple’s annual event. It is true that some of the products were less interesting compared to some other products Apple announced. However, there were still great products to look at.
Apple has upgraded the iPhone SE to use the A15 Bionic, the same chip that’s in the iPhone 13, as well as 5G. It retains the home button and Touch ID, and has better battery life and an improved camera system thanks to the more powerful computational capabilities offered by the chip. It starts at $429 (£419, AU$719), $30 more than before. Preorders start Friday and it ships on March 18.
The first upgrade to the Air lineup since 2020, the all-new iPad Air brings Apple’s powerful M1 chip, a 12-megapixel ultra wide front camera, 5G connectivity and other updated features, all in a similar design to the fourth-gen iPad Air.
Pricing for the new iPad Air starts at $599 and preorders start on March 11.
M1 Max has a die-to-die interconnect, which lets Apple link two of them to create the Ultra, giving it basically double servings of everything — processor and GPU cores and so on. It uses high-bandwidth memory and supports up to 128GB, but combined it takes less power than two separate chips.
The chip debuts in the new Mac Studio, a computer that looks like a double-height Mac Mini, though the base configuration comes with the M1 Max. Apple has positioned its performance as equal to or better than the Mac Pro, making it what sounds like a great option for the bulk of creators who really don’t need the expandability of the Mac Pro.
The new Mac Studio is full of venting and a big cooling system, has six Thunderbolt 4 ports and can drive up to four Pro XDR monitors. It’ll cost you $1,999 (£1,999, AU$2,499) to start or $3,999 (£3,999, AU$6,099) for the version with Apple’s new M1 Ultra chip. You can order it today and it ships starting March 18.
Apple also hinted that there’s a Mac Pro upgrade coming, “but that’s for another day.”
