Dillon Mok

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Apple’s Let Loose Event Reactions

As it happened at 2am here in New Zealand, I didn't get to watch Apple's "Let Loose" event live. Instead I watched the replay of the keynote before diving into the product pages and social media.

Here are my reactions to the event, written while watching it:

  • Nice artistic intro graphics of Apple Park.
  • Is this the first event in HDR? Shot on iPhone again?
  • Biggest day for iPad. About time!
  • iPad Air up first.
  • John Ternus on the train? Makes sense.
  • 11 and 13 inch Air. Just as expected
  • Landscape camera. Finally!
  • That guy put on AirPods Max. When are they gonna update them?
  • Colours look kinda meh
  • Magic Keyboard and old Apple Pencil live on.
  • $599 is a solid starting price for the Air.
  • iPad Pro time! "It's thinpossible"
  • Black iPad Pro. Please???
  • When John said "crush", he literally meant it.
  • Thinnest Apple product. (iPad nano shoutout!)
  • Space Black!
  • Not just one OLED, but two OLED screens!
  • "Tandem OLED"
  • "Ultra Retina XDR" on both sizes- very nice!
  • John Siracusa will love this.
  • Nano-texture glass option. Rumours were pretty spot-on.
  • M4! Apple is literally racing with these chips.
  • M4 is pretty good for AI, huh?
  • "AI PC"?
  • Up to 4x faster than M2 iPad Pro.
  • Final Cut and Logic 2!
  • Live Multicam and Final Cut Camera actually look pretty cool.
  • If Final Cut Camera works as a standalone camera, it will probably replace Blackmagic Camera in my workflow (Blackmagic Camera isn't super reliable for me)
  • Session Players- Drummer, but for keyboards and bass! (When is this coming to the Mac version?)
  • Stem splitter- nice to see Apple introducing AI features before WWDC. (I need this on the Mac version of Logic already!)
  • Coloured/matte camera bump- that's new right?
  • They did it. Landscape camera with Pencil charging on top!
  • Function row on the new Magic Keyboard!
  • Aluminium palmrest... is the whole thing aluminium?
  • (That was quick.)
  • Apple Pencil Pro.
  • That Procreate transition was pretty cool.
  • Squeeze gesture with haptics. (Haptics would actually be pretty cool)
  • Gyroscope.
  • Find My on Apple Pencil. Neat
  • Procreate CEO gets airtime. Fitting.
  • Pencil Pro works with iPad Air as well.
  • (Does regular pencil work on new iPad Pro?)
  • $999 starting price. That's gone up, hasn't it?
  • iPad base model price drop. Nice.
  • iPad mini gets a shoutout
  • Yep, shot on iPhone again!

Pretty short event as expected. Rumours got pretty much everything right. While the new iPad Pros look very nice, I don't use the iPad quite enough to justify the price, although I'm kinda interested in an 11" Air to replace my 2017 10.5" iPad Pro.

Just a quick detail I noticed on the website: the new iPads, both Air and Pro, support the new Pencil Pro and USB-C Pencil. So the 1st and 2nd gen Pencils are effectively outdated, although still very much on sale.

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