New iPhones, iPad Among Others Apple Announcements. Read About Them All Here

Apple finally unveiled some new products yesterday ending speculations about the September 9 event. The event was not met with the usual excitement that surrounds such announcements by Apple. That said, Apple unveiled the new iPad pro, iPhone 6s and 6s+ and big improvements to the Apple TV. The iPhone has always been a hit for Apple with a record 47 million iPhones sold in the quarter ending 27th June. So there’s little wonder they update it regularly. Let’s go straight to what was announced yesterday.

iPad Pro

The iPad Pro has a 12.9 inch screen which is a departure from the 9.7 inch iPad Air 2 screen size. Of this the Apple CEO Tim Cook said “this is the most capable and powerful iPad we have ever created.” To go with this, Apple added an accessory they didn’t usually make and that’s the smart Keyboard and Apple pencil. This is aimed at creative professionals and enterprises. The new iPad Pro demo featured Microsoft office and Adobe software. This gives you a sense of the target market for the iPad Pro.

The iPad Pro is thicker than the iPad Air 2 which was launched last year. The new iPad is 0.8mm thicker than the iPad Air 2 (6.9mm vs. 6.1mm). It runs Apple’s new A9X processor which Apple describes as a desktop class CPU. In essence, it is about 1.8 times faster than the iPad Air 2’s AX8 processor. Its 5.6 million pixels image resolution is higher than any iOS device.

The new smart Keyboard is powered by the iPad Pro and does not have any internal batteries. It’s covered in connective fibre and will be sold for $169/33,000 Naira.

You can start buying the new iPad pro from November as set by Apple. This means you can place orders from now but expect shipping from November. The costs starts at $799/159,000 Naira for the 32GB device. The 128GB version of the same product starts from $1,079/214,000 Naira.

iPhone 6S

As predicted, the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus were announced as well. The 3D touch which builds on the Force Touch Technology currently being used on the Apple watch is used to access a new feature on iPhone called Live Photos. The Live Photos captures a second and a half of footage before and after a photo is taken. When pressure is applied using the 3D Touch, Live Photos brings the images to life. “It’s a beautiful experience, unlike any other way of interacting with photos” according to an Apple official. This really makes all the difference. Fans of iPhone can expect Apple to announce a new version every year but before now, most of the differences between a new and a previous one would be slight with changes to picture quality, size and processing power but the 3D Touch adds a new style of sensitivity to the iPhone. Interaction and navigation can be greatly enhanced with this feature.

The Phone come with a 12-megapixel sensor with the ability to shoot 4K videos.

The new iPhones 6S and 6S Plus start at $199/36,000 Naira and $299/59,000 Naira. Yes for those of us in Nigeria and Africa by extension, I know the price sounds too good to be true and you’re correct because these prices are for users who want to acquire the devices on contract as is the usual practise in many advanced economies. My guess would be that the price of acquiring the same device in Nigeria would be something from 130,000 Naira. The phones become available from the 25th of this month. Pre-orders stat from the 12th of this month. The phone is really an answer to Samsung’s latest phone.

Apple TV

The Apple TV box is now bigger and “better”. It has a microphone built into it so that Siri can be your new remote control for the TV. It gets better, if you missed something said, you can ask Siri for they said and the video will rewind for 15 seconds with subtitles so you can catch. The Apple CEO this is really the future of TV. For those who don’t know, Siri is Apple’s digital assistant similar to Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Goole Now. Apple TV lagged behind popular TV rivals like Amazon TV. Games are also going to be a big part of the Apple TV.