Apple’s Let Loose Event Reactions

08 May 2024

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.