14 DAY TRIAL // Apple surprised everyone today by unveiling two new iPad models that were believed to be announced later this month during the company's forthcoming "It's show time" spring event.
All-new 10.5-inch iPad Air and 7.9-inch iPad mini were announced today by Apple with high-end features and top-notch performance as the company aims to offer iPad users more diversity and compatibility with latest devices. The all-new 7.9-inch iPad mini is the first of its kind to offer support for the Apple Pencil, but also comes with an advanced Retina display and the A12 Bionic chip.
The new iPad Air also comes with support for the Apple Pencil since it borrows the design of last year's iPad Pro models with 20% larger, edge-to-edge Retina display featuring True Tone technology. In addition, the 10.5-inch iPad Air promises 70% boost in performance, great Wi-Fi performance, Gigabit‑class LTE connectivity, and built-in eSIM technology.
"iPad continues to provide magical new experiences for a growing range of uses where it is the absolute best device, from playing games in augmented reality to note-taking and drawing with Apple Pencil, from streaming HD movies and editing 4K films to learning to develop apps with Swift Playgrounds," said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
Prices and availability
Targeted at remote workers who are always on the go, the all-new iPad Air and iPad mini are available to order starting today from apple.com, the Apple Store app, and local Apple Stores in 27 countries, and they will come to more countries next week. Both the 10.5" iPad Air and 9.7" iPad mini are available in Space Gray, Silver, and Gold finishes with either 64GB or 256GB internal storage.
As for the pricing, the 10.5-inch iPad Air starts at $499 USD for the Wi-Fi model and $629 USD for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model, while the 9.7-inch iPad mini starts at $399 USD for the Wi-Fi model and $529 USD for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Customers will also be able to purchase them from Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers at different prices.
Apple also announced today that next week it would release an update to the iWork suite for iOS that will feature enhanced integration of Apple Pencil to allow users to draw animation paths for any objects, as well as an all-new graphical user interface that makes it easier to build effects like move, scale, and rotate. The new iWork version will be available for all iOS users.
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