Everything You Need to Know From Apple's Event Today
Good Monday to you. To those of you, including one of us, nursing hangovers from an up-tempo Sunday night, we wish we could wish you an uneventful Monday. But Apple will not allow it. Today marks Apple's "Unleashed" Event, the October sequel to the big ole September Keynote the company tries to whips up a frenzy for every year. And though in the last few years the announcements have been kinda not exactly groundbreaking at all, the frenzy gets whipped nonetheless.
For example, the September 2021 Keynote introduced us to the new iPad (cool), the latest iPad Mini (cool, if you like tablets-cum-cellphones), Apple Watch Series 7 (nothing huge to report besides smaller bezels), and all the iPhone 13 models (they have better cameras and better screens, which is what you'd expect after a year of technological progress). All around, nice, but not ground-breaking, especially when you consider how massively wealthy Apple is. A month later, Apple started off its event with a new home speaker and new AirPods.
Live from a recording of Tim Cook in a field on the Apple campus in California, here's the new tech Apple announced that might affect your life, and none of the boring details that don't matter.
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HomePod mini
The Home Pod, now mini, is yet another attempt by Apple to get us to use Siri. Will we do it? Probs not. Siri isn’t...great, not when compared to Google Assistant or Alexa. However, HomePod mini now comes in a few colors, including yellow, which is cool. We like yellow in our homes. Apple went above and beyond to explain that Siri can pull up Apple Music seamlessly, which ought to have gone without saying, but again, Siri doesn't have a great track record.
AirPods 3
Apple’s latest take on the AirPods look different—kinda like the love child of the OG, long-stemmed AirPods and the shorter, silicone-tipped AirPods Pro. Unlike the AirPods Pro, this third-generation of the AirPods (no “Pro”—keep up with the nomenclature) doesn’t have fitted silicone buds or explicit active noise cancellation. However, it does have a hear-through feature called Spatial Audio, allowing you to tap the bud to let more outside noise filter in. Great for commuting, for example. They also take into account head movements to make the audio sound immersive. With a full charge, you’ll get 30 hours of listening time—nice—and they cost $179.
M1 Pro and M1 Max Chips
You may or may not know this, but we’re big M1 fans. It's cheaper, more efficient, and just all around one of the best upgrades given to Macs ever. Now, the big A unveiled the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, which extend the M1 chip into two new, more refined models that save power for faster processing. While we won't get into all the numbers, trust: If it's half as promising as the original M1 chip, it’ll be an absolute powerhouse and one of the most efficient processors on the market. You can now also run iPad and iPhone apps on the Mac with new universal integration. Basically, Apple summed up the M1 chip better than we ever could with a *zoom* sound effect.
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