by Brian Booher

Did you see it?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Don’t tell me you missed out on the greatest announcement in the history of forever!  It was the October 2013 announcement of new Apple products!  Every Apple announcement should be made into a holiday so everyone can watch!  LOL

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So in case you did miss it live on Apple’s website and don’t feel like watching it later, here is a recap.  If you do want to watch it, you can find it here.

iWork and iLife

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Apple is updating their iLife and iWork apps for both Mac and iOS.  They are adding lots of new features and capabilities like Collaboration which allows live editing in a group setting, much like what Google Docs has been able to do.

iLife and iWork apps are being made free with the purchase of a new Mac and iOS device.  This was not unexpected since they announced the free apps for iOS last month.

Mac OS Mavericks

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Mac OS Mavericks was announced back in WWDC in July 2013.  Today they are releasing it for FREE.  Yes, I did say FREE.  The download through the Mac App Store is 5.29GB.

Apple says you get over 200 new features with Mavericks; like file tagging, iCloud Keychain, and multiple displays.

Did I mention that is was FREE?!  They even made fun of Microsoft charging $200 for Windows 8 Pro.

Mavericks ships today!  SO GET IT NOW!!!

Macbook Pro

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New Macbook Pro computers were also announced today.  Apple is not releasing any non- retina display models, so I am going to assume that is going to stay.  The Pros come in 13-inch and 15-inch.

Some of the hardware features on both models include:

  • 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports
  • 1 HDMI port
  • 2 USB-3 ports
  • 720p HD Facetime camera
  • 802.11 ac wireless

As for the internal components:

  • Battery life
    • 9 hours for 13-inch
    • 8 hours for 15-inch
  • Processor
    • 13-inch – Intel Core i5 (Haswell)
    • 15-inch – Intel Core i7 (Crystalwell)
  • Memory
    • 13-inch – starting at 4GB DDR3L integrated
    • 15-inch – starting at 8GB DDR3L integrated
  • Graphics
    • 13-inch – Intel Iris Graphics
    • 15-inch – Intel Iris Pro Graphics

Both models come with Mac OS Mavericks installed as well as iLife and iWork app suites.

Apple dropped the price by $200 for both models.  The 13-inch will start at $1299 and the 15-inch will start at $1999.

Available today.

Mac Pro

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This is the one thing people have been waiting for since it was announced in July at WWDC ’13.

The system is assembled in the USA. (Yay!)

It is one quarter the size of the previous generation of Mac Pro.  It stands 10 inches tall and less than 7 inches wide.  It comes in 2 models; quad-core and 6-core.

Internal components:

  • Processor
    • 4-core – 3.7GHz “Intel Xeon E5 with 10MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz”
    • 6-core – 3.5GHz “Intel Xeon E5 with 12MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz”
  • Memory
    • 4-core – 12GB DDR3 ECC memory
    • 6-core – 16GB DDR3 ECC memory
  • Graphics
    • 4-core – “Dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics processors with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM each”
    • 6-core – “Dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics processors with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each”

External Components:

  • Both systems can connect six Thunderbolt displays or three 4K displays.
  • Both start with a 256GB solid state drive
  • Dual gigabit network ports
  • 1 HDMI port
  • 4 USB 3 ports
  • 802.11 ac wireless
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks

This is a very powerful system in a little space.  The 4-core system starts at $2999 and the 6-core starts at $3999.

The Mac Pro will be available in December, so start saving up!

iPad and iPad mini

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These were expected to be the main attraction of this announcement.

The new iPad model is now called the iPad Air.  The biggest feature is that the bezel from the left and right sides are 40% thinner as compared to older models.  The screen stays the same 9.7 inches, so you don’t get any more screen real estate.  It is, of course, lighter and thinner than before.  It still has the retina display as before.

The iPad mini stayed the same as for appearance in size, but this time Apple put in a retina display into it.  It now has the same 2048-by-1536 resolution, but in the smaller 7.9 inch display.

Both come with the A7 processor like in the new iPhones and range in size from 16GB to 128GB.  There is NO fingerprint sensor on them!

The iPad Air starts at $499 for Wi-fi and $629 for Wi-fi + celluar.

The iPad mini with retina starts at $399 for Wi-fi and $529 for Wi-fi + cellular.

Apple still sells the 16GB models of the iPad 2 for $399 and the original iPad mini for $299.

Conclusion

Wow!  That’s a lot of information to give on such great devices.  I guess it’s time to start saving that money up for some great technology that you can always count on from Apple.

Have Fun and Geek Out!