Apple Launches New 10.5-Inch iPad Air With A12 Bionic Chip and Apple Pencil Support, Starts at $499

[lartola]

1) There is only a single iPad model without a laminated screen: the entry-level $329 9.7" iPad. iPad Mini, 10.5" iPad Air, both iPad Pro models all have laminated displays.
2) The new pencil (including its inductive charging) only works with the (new) iPad Pro models as one of the feature differences that differentiate the Pro models from the rest. The new design is another one of those aspects that differentiate the iPad Pro (and enables the inductive charging). The non-pro iPads keep the older designs to (a) save money on a redesign, (b) ensure that all previous accessories still work, and (c) keep them different and less 'exciting-because-it-is-new' then the Pros and this makes them unable to work with the new pencil (well, the might work but have no way to charge the new pencil).
3) The 'old' industrial design (with no camera bump) also necessitates lesser cameras on the new Air and Mini than the Pro models have. The iPad Mini 5 and 10.5" iPad Air thus have the same camera as the iPad Mini 4 and the iPad Air 2. But this is naturally also a differentiating factor of the Pro models.
4) The new iPad Air is not thicker than either its namesake predecessor the iPad Air 2 or its technical base, the 10.5" iPad Pro, 6.1 mm all-around. Ditto for the iPad Mini 5. Only the cheapest, entry-level $329 iPad is thicker. Only the Pros are a tad thinner with 5.9 mm.
5) Air means a category below Pro (also following the shape of previous models with the Air name).

Hope this answers your questions.

regarding the parentheses in 2) (c), I would assume the new pencil couldn't work with non-pro iPads and older iPad Pros at all because in addition to the inductive charging, the magnetic attachment is also used to pair the pencil with the new iPad Pros (with the pencil 1 and previous iPads the pairing was done by connecting the pencil to the lightning port, just like for charging).

 

[cmaier]

Is there really a reason to purchase the iPad Pro at this point?

Size. Pencil 2 (which is much nicer than pencil 1), etc.

 

[lartola]

Is there really a reason to purchase the iPad Pro at this point?

Also the Bezelless display, USB-C port and face id. But of course you have to shell out the big bucks.

 

[AgentAnonymous]

Obviously, this is a subjective thing. I use Pages and Keynote regularly on my iPad Air 2 (no keyboard) and find little difficulty writing and preparing slideshows. Then again, I’m not a touch typist, so a separate keyboard would be of only minor benefit to me, I suspect. ☘️

It's not subjective. A full-sized keyboard with real keys and key travel, on a desktop operating system with full-featured apps, is a much more comfortable and capable experience.

 

[kazmac]

If no white spot or touch disease issues, I may pick one up on sale if the Mini proves to be too small for using split screen with Procreate.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Why?

If Apple is selling a lot of these at $499 - they'd be stupid not to keep selling them at $499.

If you had a tomato stand with 1,000 tomatoes which cost you 10 cents each in labor/materials to create....

You sold them at 25 cents a piece - and they were all gone in 5 minutes.
Now you jack up the price to $1.00 each and sell them all in 4 hours. Is this wrong for some reason?

I’d bet that if the supermarket, gas station, bank etc did that you would thing it was wrong.

 

[bbeagle]

I’d bet that if the supermarket, gas station, bank etc did that you would thing it was wrong.

No. Hot Dogs cost 50 cents at my grocery store.
Hot Dogs cost $2 each cooked at a local fast food joint.
Hot Dogs cost $8 at the baseball stadium.

That's life.

 

[lec0rsaire]

And excellent points you made. Consumers don’t know what 120 HZ is, nor do they care about a bezel-less design. They see the [price point] with updated specifications. Those are the key selling points here. The problem with the iPad Pros, as they are great devices, but they are priced exorbitantly and a lot of the features/capabilities may not be appealing to the consumer that doesn’t want to spend that amount of money.

The iPad Pro is a really nice product. The problem is the price unless someone is replacing their notebook with a high-end configuration. However, the sort of people that would choose the high-end configs are those that need a notebook or desktop for their work so the Pro ends up being an expensive pretty iPad for consumers who always want the latest and greatest.

 

[Austin Chow]

Yup. 120 hz iPad for the average consumer is similar to the infotainment tech overload in today’s cars that (in my experience, particularly with older relatives) isn’t even used.

Bezeless design at this point seems more for a feather in the designers’ caps than for a well-balanced benefit for the average consumer. What defines “success?” When is enough enough (when do you stop)?

What is truly gained and what is possibly worsened by a 100% truly bezeless design that can only be gripped gently at the edges or else parts of the screen are either blocked or accidentally pinch-zoomed?

A buddy has one of the android phones (a Samsung maybe?) with the screen that curves/wraps around/into the side - the case for that bezeless design is completely ridiculous. Way too bulky to allow access to the edge just for the sake of a unique feature for Marketing high-fives. I don’t even have an iPhone with the notch and find the notch laughably ridiculous just for the sake of pushing the bezeless envelope. Lots of lily-gilding.

Mate, 120 Hz makes all the difference in the world. Scrolling is so much smoother. Everything feels more fluid. And apps and games are on a completely new level. If you are poor and cant afford to try it in real life, dont make nonsense excuses.

And the push to bezel-less devices is a huge step forward for everyone. Bezel-less phones look amazing and are far slicker than those with thick bezels. And I love the curved edges on S10, makes movies more immersive and contents look better. Just hold the damn device more carefully to avoid "accidental" gestures.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Mate, 120 Hz makes all the difference in the world. Scrolling is so much smoother. Everything feels more fluid. And apps and games are on a completely new level. If you are poor and cant afford to try it in real life, dont make nonsense excuses.

And the push to bezel-less devices is a huge step forward for everyone. Bezel-less phones look amazing and are far slicker than those with thick bezels. And I love the curved edges on S10, makes movies more immersive and contents look better. Just hold the damn device more carefully to avoid "accidental" gestures.

I agree with you on the scrolling part. It makes a big difference, but did you really need to attempt to insult the poster you were responding to?

Regarding the curves on the Samsung devices - they just suck. They reflect light, and interfere with the screen as much as the notch on the iPhone with Face ID. At least Face ID serves a functional purpose...

I‘ll also agree with smaller bezels, but IMO, once they get too small, it causes the user’s hand / fingers to impede on the display. There has to be some bezel or usability goes out the window.

EDIT: added “functional”, corrected capitalization

 

[chucker23n1]

If you are poor and cant afford to try it in real life,

That’s uncalled for.

 

[Tozovac]

Mate, 120 Hz makes all the difference in the world. Scrolling is so much smoother. Everything feels more fluid. And apps and games are on a completely new level. If you are poor and cant afford to try it in real life, dont make nonsense excuses.

And the push to bezel-less devices is a huge step forward for everyone. Bezel-less phones look amazing and are far slicker than those with thick bezels. And I love the curved edges on S10, makes movies more immersive and contents look better. Just hold the damn device more carefully to avoid "accidental" gestures.

I would have to experience the screen refresh rate, and then I would probably agree with you. However, I’m not going to ever agree about the bezel because you reach a point where grabbing and handling a mobile device is cumbersome when so little of the edge is available. I’ve experienced this often with my iPad when holding or repositioning it or working with it while watching video or using some apps, with more unintended taps on my iPad Air 3 than with my previous device. Or, for those of us pragmatic consumers who put our thousand dollar phones in cases, the smaller bezels get, the more difficult it is to protect it while still allowing access to swipe from off screen to handle all of the gestures. Oh the irony in developing small bezels due to apple‘s incessant search for something smaller than last year, only to force users to seek bulkier cases that add back the “smallness that was removed” while still allowing that function.

For something like a MacBook, OK. For something like a phone or iPad, absolutely no way - then it’s all about fashion and advertising, putting robust function second before form and flash, Which has been Apple’s biggest since since Johnny was anointed too much power around 2013.

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As far as your snide comments, every consumer object has trade-offs, where some decisions result in the biggest payback for the customer while other decisions wind up in a bigger pay back to the designer, engineer, and developer. Brutalism architecture has long been criticized by many as appealing more to the architect than the common person viewing/using said building. I have long criticized flat design and many unnecessarily reinvented interface aspects of the iOS 7-esque minimalist appearance of the current iOS since 2013 (and much of the dumbed-down OS X elements since Mavericks) as appealing far more to Jony Ive and certain short-sighted consumers crowing for something new and different.

 

[I7guy]

...As far as your snide comments, every consumer object has trade-offs, where some decisions result in the biggest payback for the customer while other decisions wind up in a bigger pay back to the designer, engineer, and developer.

And other design decisions are made because they just have to be made in order to move forward some technical objective.

Brutusism architecture has long been criticized by many as appealing more to the architect them the common person viewing/using said building. I have long criticized flat design and many unnecessarily reinvented interface aspects of the iOS 7-esque minimalist appearance of the current iOS since 2013 (and much of the dumbed-down OS X elements since Mavericks) as appealing far more to Jony Ive and certain short-sighted consumers crowing for something new and different.
[/QUOTE]
You can only speak for yourself regarding the flat design. Thankfully Apple went that way, ios 6 was way too much for my taste.

 

[Tozovac]

And other design decisions are made because they just have to be made in order to move forward some technical objective.

What’s a good technical objective/improvement for hiding the location status/scrubber and other typical music file controls in the iOS music app to off-screen, requiring additional taps to access what used to be out in front? What’s the benefit of not using all that empty white space in this instance, especially considering the fad of making bezels as small as possible (which tends to create more available space...for emptiness).

It’s often too hard to find (or none really exists) to see the functional/technical objective of certain ”overnight changes” in 2013, when an action results in more work for a user. For the 1,000th time, it’s not that iOS6 was perfect and should be brought back. Rather, there wasn’t this sense then like there is now that the user should be presented with the absolute minimal amount of interface cues. And, gladly, someone at Apple is realizing those mistakes and slowly bringing back more common-sense interface cues with each iOS revision.
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I have no problem agreeing that aspects of iOS6 were “too far” and unnecessary extra design fluff. Similarly, there are too many aspects of unnecessary extra design minimalism with flat design and iOS/OSX/website design (in general) after iOS and to today. It’s good to see things heading back towards a common sense middle.
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I have a similar argument for Apple hardware. As someone who records multi-track music often, it’s especially aggravating to live thru all the port-reduction, including the ever-still-so-common USB-A and headphone jack ports. Just last weekend I was recording music on my portable MacBook Air which thankfully still has a headphone jack. I however was using my AirPods and there was significant delay/latency and garble/distortion to the point that they were unusable. Had I not had a 1/8” headphone jack I would have been forced to leave my workspot and plug into my USB hub and USB audio interface, just to get access to a corded zero-latency headphone. Apple’s focus on minimalism via port reduction and abandonment too often results in noticeable pain for me that was not present before 2013.

Again, it should be form ahead of function for these technological powerhouses. Are they designing for the runway or real life?

 

[I7guy]

What’s a good technical objective/improvement for hiding the location status/scrubber and other typical music file controls in the iOS music app to off-screen, requiring additional taps to access what used to be out in front? What’s the benefit of not using all that empty white space in this instance, especially considering the fad of making bezels as small as possible (which tends to create more available space...for emptiness).

It’s often too hard to find (or none really exists) to see the functional/technical objective of certain ”overnight changes” in 2013, when an action results in more work for a user. For the 1,000th time, it’s not that iOS6 was perfect and should be brought back. Rather, there wasn’t this sense then like there is now that the user should be presented with the absolute minimal amount of interface cues. And, gladly, someone at Apple is realizing those mistakes and slowly bringing back more common-sense interface cues with each iOS revision.
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I have no problem agreeing that aspects of iOS6 were “too far” and unnecessary extra design fluff. Similarly, there are too many aspects of unnecessary extra design minimalism with flat design and iOS/OSX/website design (in general) after iOS and to today. It’s good to see things heading back towards a common sense middle.
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I have a similar argument for Apple hardware. As someone who records multi-track music often, it’s especially aggravating to live thru all the port-reduction, including the ever-still-so-common USB-A and headphone jack ports. Just last weekend I was recording music on my portable MacBook Air which thankfully still has a headphone jack. I however was using my AirPods and there was significant delay/latency and garble/distortion to the point that they were unusable. Had I not had a 1/8” headphone jack I would have been forced to leave my workspot and plug into my USB hub and USB audio interface, just to get access to a corded zero-latency headphone. Apple’s focus on minimalism via port reduction and abandonment too often results in noticeable pain for me that was not present before 2013.

Again, it should be form ahead of function for these technological powerhouses. Are they designing for the runway or real life?

Where I take issue with these discussions is the "all or nothing" aspect of it. Not to say Apple is perfect and they couldn't do some things better, but because there are areas with IOS and some of the apps, that you personally don't like, does not mean they don't come out ahead within the form and function balance.

Visual cues are great, but I remember taking a class at an apple store when I got my ipad 2 with ios 4 on it. Another analogy, we as a society have been driving for 100+ years, yet we still need to teach people how to drive. Why isn't it self-evident? I think Apple has done a great job considering the depth and breadth of new IOS releases.

Your argument also starts out as Apple has made mistakes. Continuous improvement over time makes for a better product. Glass half-empty or glass half-full.