Apple's new iPad Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Mini: CNET editors react

Guys, we're here in Brooklyn. I am so excited. My home bourrough for an actual Apple event. I never thought this would happen. We didn't have to go to Cupertino. We didn't have to get on planes and we saw exciting stuff. It's very cold. Yeah. Well we saw some interesting stuff. I think that there, if you were looking for the answers to whether the iPad and Mac would ever do more things like each other that was not answered. Answer. There is an iPad, there is are two Macs. They continue to do parallel things, and they're very interesting products. Yeah, but they've said that for a while, that they really see them as separate products. I think for some people the iPad could be your computer. For some people, definitely. Definitely not but yeah. But the TV ad with the little girls playing with her iPAd and goes- Yeah. This is a computer. Yeah. What's a computer? So clearly they are targeting it with a key word and everything as a laptop replacement. Still doesn't quite do it. Yeah. What's a computer and then there is a computer. All right? There's also a computer and they're all kind of in a similar price range. The IPad Pro, I think doubles down on what it already did well. So it's like if you liked what it was proposing before, your really going to like where it's going next which is the smaller bezzels, the bigger screen, lighter/faster processor, face ID. So it's kind of like an IPad 10. or iPad X. The keyboard doesn't have a trackpad so I. Not nearly a laptop but it's nearly, it's all screen, all in on the screen concept. Yeah. So no buttons, nothing else, just pure screen. Your fingers or your pencil, I do say adding the thing where you can take the pencil and attach it to the top- Yeah. And it recharges through that. Well, I mean if you saw how that- Overdoing it. Yeah, the way the Apple pencil charged before was just- [LAUGH] It just, it didn't make a lot of sense. Not good, it was weird. It was a hazard. Yeah. But the way it attaches now is much more like the Surface. It's much more like, and even people are even pointing out with the double-tap To add the extra feature, it's kind of like AirPods in a way. You have this double tap to decide one function, you could put another in different apps and it's almost like a bit like the S Pen. So, that evolves but you don't get anything that pushes beyond that as [INAUDIBLE] thing. So, it gets a really nice screen starting at 799. And up, this is not a low cost. That's what that march was about. 100 more for the pencil. Yeah. And probably, what, 160, 170 for the keyboard? In that range for the keyboard, so you're spending a lot. Yeah, you've got 250, 270, almost 300 more. 799, 899, 100 so 1099. Well over 1000. Which is only 100 bucks less than the new MacBook Air, which is 1199 Which gave me a little bit of a heart attack, because the MacBook Air was famously 999. That was the Mac laptop you could actually afford. Those days are over. Well, it's still 999, they're still keeping the one. The old Air will be available. Yes. Yeah, so you can still get the That. We're not quite sure for how long. It's the kind of thing that seems like they're not making any new ones and they'll use the stuff they have, but it's certainly a much more out of date computer today than it was yesterday, and it was pretty out of date yesterday. Yeah. And this something you've been looking forward to a while, that retina display. Yeah. But the funny thing is it already existed. So there are retina display MacBooks. Yeah. This is another iteration On that philosophy, but it seems like the best one, it's just not the one I wanted. Stripped down, 13 inch Macbook Pro. Yeah. Well didn't when they redesigned the Macbooks a couple of years ago, they positioned as that lower 13 inch is kind of the Macbook Air replacement. Right, but it was much, much more expensive. Yeah, and it never really became that. And I think a lot of people before this were wondering If the air name just goes away and>>I thought it would.>>They're keeping it.>>But no the air name is still there even though it basically is a MACbook pro in all that name. It gets rid of the touch part but it keeps the best part about the touch part which everyone loves to hate on. The best part is the fingerprint reader works great and frankly logging in with your finger's a lot easier than typing in your password all the time. So I think they get rid of the fingerprint reader in the iPad's, And on the phones. They add the fingerprint reader to the last. And don't forget about all the different. Your headphones won't work on all of your Apple products anymore. Yes. So you need a different headphone for everything. That continues. Yes headphone jack on the Mac. Lightning on the iPhone. USBC on the iPad and I don't think that there are USBC headphones? So they are using headphones but Apple doesn't make them as far as I know at this point. Yeah. But yeah, so there was a move to USPC, which is great in the sense that you can now charge devices- Yeah, I'm so excited you can charge an iPhone. You can charge a Nintendo Switch, you could charge whatever- Yeah. And you've got that, it can work with accessories, it can work With 5k displays, does not work with storage but apparently you can use it for certain apss as a targeted accessory. Beam what do you do with your headphones because- Well, I just put them already in Carry Three. My theory is Carry Four and that's the down low. Android suffers from OS fragmentation, Apple sufefrs from headphone fragmentation. Well, Anil, so I still think face ID would be a really nice thing to add to a Mac, because it's facing you. It seems perfect you have to wait for that. It's got the camera in there. Yeah, so- They got the T2 chip. That's the next thing. Yeah, so then next year's Macs, then? I don't know, yeah maybe. What about the Mac mini? It's expensive. I use facial recognition on Windows laptops all the time, works pretty good, actually. Yeah. So you could do that. And then the Mac Mini was the third thing. Mac Mini, awesome. It's great. It starts at $799. If that's what you want then that's what you're gonna get, you know what I mean? It's like they didn't mess anything up, they didn't redo it in some crazy way. Same box, Yeah. I thought it was gonna. Better processors. Be round when they had that ad, though. Right. It looked like a spaceship. But, I'm like, this is interesting. Yeah, doubt, same box shape. I know. It's just, yeah. [LAUGH] People have rat gear that's built around that Mac Mini shape. Mm hm. And you have rack attachments you can put it in with all your other A/V equipment. And it's basically, it's the podcat computer. You get your whole podcasting system set up and you run it all off on that Mini. I mean, that's what we do even. And that's an old Mac Mini. So I think that. They should have called it the Mac Mini Pro, cuz that's basically what it is. It's totally pro or semi-pro. That seems like the whole proposition, and I think if you've already got all the other equipment, like the monitor, that's an easy setup versus having to buy the iMac which has the monitor built in. And, it's got on the back, yes, it's got USB-C ports, but you know what it's got? It's got two regular old-fashioned USB ports, becoming very rare, it's got an HDMI out, And it's got an ethernet jack. That's something you don't really get on any other Macs, except for like an iMac and some bits on the old MacBook Air. I guess we'll call it the MacBook Air Classic or something. We'll have to come up with a new name for that. And speaking of legacy products, going back to the iPad, they're keeping Keeping a lot of older models around. The 10.5 inch iPad Pro, much like the 999 MacBook Air. And the Mini. Yeah, and the Mini is sticking around, the Mini 4. So there are a lot of different price tiers. If you maybe wanna only spend 650 to start, there's that iPad Pro. And which one do you pick? I think obviously the new iPad Pros are the best that are out there. Yeah. But they're gonna get really expensive. They are, but they are so functionally and physically different than the previous ones. At least you can say I'm getting something that looks new and has new features and does different things. Whereas in the cases of Mac Mini it looks the same, so it's a little bit of a tougher sell unless you really know what you're looking for spec wise. And even in the new Macbook Air it's not really a different design than the Macbook Pros or the 12 inch Macbook. It's Just becomes part of that family. So there's nothing really ground breaking about it. Even adding the fingerprint reader is something they took off another device and put on there. That said, it answers most of what people said they wanted from a new MacBook Air. So good on that front but that $1199 hurts. It hurts. $1099 I could see. Obviously $999 would be perfect if that's the student computer that everyone can Save for for a couple months, and then afford and use for use. It's still the iPad Pro is the one that they can say is the most affordable of the computer things. And I feel like that that becomes a big of a, get your foot in the door, and suddenly you're spending up, and then you say- What does it start at again? 799. Okay, okay. That's for [CROSSTALK] That's the same as the Mac Mini, yeah. Yeah, same as the Mac Mini, but it's 64 gigs so you really want to get more storage on that. Yeah on the storage. I mean also it climbs up to a terabyte which cost. The pricing on that gets insane. I have to look at those configurations. That is getting close to like 3,000 when you put in the case and the pencil and then like. Well past $2,000. Like 2,700 or 2,200 something. I would get the Apple care for that. Yes. Something high. So it's a $3,000. iPad Pro, I would get [UNKNOWN]. Yeah, that's little high. It's not that high. I'll just wait for the Apple two for that. [CROSSTALK] And it's a shame the USB-C cannot be used for external storage, not that we even thought that it would. You can't? Man. You cannot use it for external storage, no, so- That's why I always, you know what? Computer operating systems have their advantage over mobile operating systems, in that you get some more flexibility for stuff like that. You totally do. I mean I think that, to me, the most Clear go to product of all of these three would be the Air for the everyday person. The one that you'd say, that's the thing I've been waiting for. Yeah. People are waiting for the mainstream laptop. It's the mainstream laptop. It's a little too expensive. It does have one cool feature that hopefully we get a chance to play around with. Which is, you can take now. You could do this with the Pro since like the summer, but now for this new Air You can take an external GPU box that has usually an AMD graphics card in them. Third party companies them but Apple approves them, and you plug it in via USB-C and you get an external graphics card. A real super high powered graphics card so you can do crazy video editing, you can do all kinds of rendering. And you can frankly play games if you're that one hardcore Mac gamer. On your new MacBook Air and then just unplug it from the GPU, take it and go away. They're giving us the hi sign and the wind is picking up on this chilly fall day here in the borough of Brooklyn. It is football tailgating weather out here. My toes are freezing, I'm spontaneously crying from the wind. But, maybe we will be back in another one of these and In New York at some point in the future. I think every year this should be the new default location for Apple events, right here in New York City, in Brooklyn. Thank you, Scott Stein, thank you, Shara Tibken. And one in New Jersey. Okay, and one in New Jersey. [LAUGH] All right, bye, thank you [LAUGH]. Okay, bye, we'll see you guys later.