Apple announced a lot of stuff at its Spring Loaded event, but not all of them made headlines. Here are a few things you may have missed.
There was a lot of new stuff announced at Apple’s Spring Loaded event. You’ve probably already read about the new iMac, iPad Pro, AirTag, and Siri Remote, but like us, there are a bunch of small things you probably missed: We were pretty stoked when Apple announced that the new 24-inch 4.5K M1 iMac starts at $1,299, but what we didn’t realize is there’s a pretty large asterisk. Not only is it missing one of the GPU cores versus the $1,499 model, but it also has only two USB4/Thunderbolt ports, no Gigabit Ethernet, and the keyboard doesn’t have Touch ID. Apple says they’re add-ons (not the USB ports though), but at that point, you might as well just spring for the higher model. Apple The iPad Pro has never been cheap, but the new model has some serious sticker shock. Where the previous iPad Pro topped out at $1,649 for the 12.9-inch model with LTE and a gig of storage, the same model will now cost $1,999 and you can spend as much as $2,399 on the 2TB model, the same price you’d pay for a 16-inch MacBook Pro. That’s because the base price has increased by $100, Apple is charging $200 more for the same 1TB storage, and the cellular costs have jumped by $50. Apple’s new AirTags took up a small portion of the keynote, but they’re definitely a cool addition to Apple’s product line. And they’re not too expensive either, just $29 each or $99 for a pack of four. But if you want to attach them to a bag or keychain, you’ll need a separate dongle that houses the AirTag. They start at $29 for an Apple one, but if you want the most luxurious case for your AirTag, you can buy a Hermès bag charm for $299. Not enough? How about a Hermès Luggage Tag or $449. The Hermès holders each come with an AirTag, because at that price, why not? The new Center Stage feature of the iPad Pro, which uses the Ultra Wide front camera to automatically pan and zoom to keep you in the frame as you talk, is not just for FaceTime. Apple says, “Center Stage works with FaceTime and other video conferencing apps,” so it might make the iPad Pro the ultimate Zoom meeting device. We don’t yet know whether apps need an update to take advantage of it, or if it’s a system-wide setting.
