TWO new iPads featured prominently in manufacturer Apple’s anticipated product unveiling last night, featuring enhanced performance and improved looks.
The flagship Apple iPad Air was revealed alongside the eighth generation iPad, with both products impressing Apple-watchers and generating a fair bit of buzz following their announcements.
Apple are describing the iPad Air as “the most powerful, versatile, and colourful iPad Air ever”, featuring a 10.9in screen and a 12MP rear camera – as well as several appealing case colours.
The unit is powered by the A14 Bionic chip, which Apple say “ makes it even easier for users to edit 4K videos, create gorgeous works of art, play immersive games, and more.”
From the official announcement:
Using breakthrough 5-nanometer process technology, A14 Bionic is packed with 11.8 billion transistors for increased performance and power efficiency in nearly every part of the chip.
This latest-generation A-series chip features a new 6-core design for a 40 percent boost in CPU performance, and a new 4-core graphics architecture for a 30 percent improvement in graphics.2
To deliver breakthrough machine learning capabilities, A14 Bionic includes a new 16-core Neural Engine that is twice as fast, and capable of performing up to 11 trillion operations per second, taking machine learning apps to a whole new level.
A14 Bionic also includes second-generation machine learning accelerators in the CPU for 10 times faster machine learning calculations. This combination of the new Neural Engine, CPU machine learning accelerators, and high-performance GPU enables powerful on-device experiences for image recognition, natural language learning, analysing motion, and more.
Apple are also spruiking the iPad Air’s green credentials, saying it has been designed to support the company’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Per the official announcement:
The iPad Air uses a 100 percent recycled aluminium enclosure and 100 percent recycled tin for the solder on its main logic board. The new speakers in iPad Air also use magnets with 100 percent recycled rare earth elements. iPad Air remains free of harmful substances, is highly energy efficient, and uses wood fibre packaging that is recycled or comes from responsibly managed forests.
The iPad Air will be available from next month in Australia, with an RRP of $899 for the Wi-Fi models and AUD$1099 for the Wi-Fi and Mobile Network models.
Also announced was the eighth-generation iPad, running the A12 Bionic chip featuring a ‘Neural Engine’.
Apple claim the chip offers 40 per cent faster CPU performance and twice the graphics capability of the previous generation device, and further claim the new iPad is “up to two times faster than the top-selling Windows laptop, up to three times faster than the top-selling Android tablet and up to six times faster than the top-selling Chromebook”.
The official announcement goes on to note:
For the first time on iPad, A12 Bionic introduces the Neural Engine for next-level machine learning capabilities, including people occlusion and motion tracking in augmented reality (AR) apps, enhanced photo editing, Siri performance, and more.
The unit also features the same environmentally friendly elements as the iPad Air.
The eighth-generation iPad is available from Friday for an RRP of AUD$499 for the wi-fi model and AUD$699 for the wi-fi and mobile network version.
For more information on the new products, visit https://www.apple.com/au/ipad/compare/ or https://www.apple.com/au/
