Apple iPad Air 2, Retina iMac Event Live Blog: Follow The News As It Happened

We were up early this morning to watch the sun rise on new iPads, new iMacs and a new Mac Mini! Here’s what went down minute-by-minute.

All The News:

Apple iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3: Australian Pricing, Release Date

iPad Air 2: Faster And Thinner (And Golder) Than Ever

The iPad Mini 3 Is Just The iPad Mini 2 With Touch ID

OS X Yosemite Is Out Today — And It’s Free

It Looks Like Camera Roll Is Coming Back To iOS 8

Apple Pay Launches In The US On October 20

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Live Blog

(All times are in Australian Eastern Daylight Time)

Welcome

4pm, 16 October 2014
We’re just under 12 hours away from Apple’s next announcement. We’re pretty sure we’ll get to see the new iPads, but what else do you want?

There have been rumours of the Retina iMac about, but also curious talk of a Retina MacBook Air as well.

Personally I’m hoping for the latter!

4:05pm, 16 October 2014

So Apple may have already leaked the new iPads it planned to release early tomorrow morning.

Earlier today we saw an iTunes leak pop up featuring the iPad Air 2, as well as the iPad Mini 3.

No specs have come to hand yet, so we’ll have to wait and see what we get tomorrow morning at 4am.

4:10pm, 16 October 2014

What do you want to see from tomorrow’s Apple event? Tell us in the comments!

3:45am, 17 October 2014

Everyone in Cupertino is now taking their seats, and the show is about to begin!

3:50

Tim Cook is ready.

Of course, he’s talking about Craig Federighi, head of Software and Engineering at Apple. Get ready for new Mac announcements, including what’s probably going to be a general release of OS X Yosemite.

3:55

Don’t forget, you can watch it live right here!

3:58

Interesting that Apple hasn’t played a single U2 track before the event. Surely it’s still on someone’s iPhone…

4:00

Here we go!

iPhone 6 Launch, Apple Pay

4:02

We’re starting with a video of the Apple Store launches around the world for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Australia pretty heavily featured, as we were the first market to get the device in the world!

4:04

Tim Cook is up.

4:05

Tim Cook is talking about how the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are now the fastest selling iPhones in history.

4:06

“In a few hours from now, we will launch in China,” Tim Cook says, talking about the other 32 markets the device is in around the world.

4:07

Moving onto Apple Pay! Fingers crossed for a global rollout announcement…

4:08

500 more banks in the US are supporting Apple Pay in the US, and loads of retailers are rolling out.

4:09

“I’m excited to announce today that [Apple Pay] is beginning on Monday,” Tim Cook says.

Apple Watch SDK

4:10

Apple Watch update time now. We’re flying through!

4:11

4:11

Apple is rolling out its WatchKit SDK next month so that developers can build apps before the device ships.

4:12

“Today we’ve got some terrific updates on [iOS 8 and Yosemite],” Cook says.

4:13

Craig Federighi is up to tell us more.

iOS 8, 8.1 Update

4:14

Time for some Android shade: 48 per cent of Apple’s users are using iOS 8 in 26 days, whereas less than half as many users are running Android 4.4 KitKat after 313 days. Ouch.

4:16

We’re running through a list of what different apps do with new stuff in iOS 8.

4:17

Right. Now we’re talking about iOS 8.1. “We do get a little bit of ‘feedback’, and that leads us to improvements.”

Craig says Apple is bringing back the Camera Roll. Thank the heavens.

4:20

Time to move onto the desktop and laptop OS, OS X Yosemite.

Mac OS X Yosemite, Dad Jokes

4:22

We’re getting a top-line look at stuff Yosemite does. You know. Stuff we already know.

4:26

We’re still going on stuff that we’ve heard before. Sorry for the lack of updates.

The punchline: Apple is excited about its desktop OS.

4:27

We’re kicking off a demo of Continuity now. Apple is bringing the jokes hard to the hoop this year.

Craig is building a presentation about “doubling down on secrecy at Apple”. So good. So many Dad jokes.

Craig is calling Stephen Colbert, Apple’s “head of secrecy” using Handoff on his Mac.

Guys. We’re about to call Stephen Colbert at an Apple event.

Ok so there are more jokes in this press conference than news so far. Sigh.

4:35

Finally, some news!

Yosemite is available for free on the Mac App Store today.

4:36

iOS 8.1 will be coming on Monday.

iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3

4:36

Tim Cook is baaaaack.

“I’d like to now talk about iPad.”

Finally.

4:39

We’re circling back to the idea of the “post-PC” era: Apple sold more iPads in the last 12 months than Acer, Dell and HP did laptops.

4:41

Introducing the iPad Air 2. It’s even thinner than the thin pencil Apple compared it to last year. And it’s gold!

4:43

Phil Schiller is here talking about the “world’s thinnest tablet”.

The iPad Air 2 is 6.1mm thin; 18% thinner than the first iPad Air. You can stack two iPad Air 2s on top of each other and it still will be thinner than Apple’s first iPad.

4:45

It has an optically bonded screen with an anti-reflective coating for 56% less reflectivity.

4:46

It’s running the new 64-bit A8X chip with over 3 billion transistors on the chip.

Apple says it can deliver “console-level graphics” to the new iPad thanks to the new GPU and Metal.

4:47

10-hours of battery life is promised.

4:48

The A8x also has the M8 co-processor for tracking motion and calibrating your sensors.

4:48

Apple wants everyone to know that people unfortunately take photos with their iPad, simply because it’s “the best viewfinder” for photos. That’s true I guess.

I hope it gets a great camera for a change.

4:48

Oh it is! It’s now an 8-megapixel iSight camera with large 1.12u pixels on the sensor for great low-light capability, and it also supports 1080p video.

It also gets the new iPhone’s image signal processor on the A8x chip for great photo capture.

4:50

These iPads may make me one of those douchebags who takes photos with my iPad.

4:52

The new iPad supports 802.11ac MIMO Wi-Fi and Carrier Aggregation for faster 4G speeds.

4:53

And the iPad now finally has Touch ID too! It’s also going to support Apple Pay from Monday so you can shop online with your fingerprint from your iPad.

4:54

Aidas Dailiade from Pixelmator, an OS X photo development app, is here to talk about the new iPad client that takes advantage of the new A8x chip.

We’re looking at how the iPad handles 4K image editing. Oh my.

4:57

Jeff Boudier from Replay, a video editing tool, is here talking about the new version for iPad too. Apple is really keen to make this a great image and video tool.

BRB, downloading Replay right now. It’s essentially HTC’s Zoe app for iOS but slicker.

5:00

Phil Schiller is back, wrapping up the new iPad. It’s pretty goddamn rad. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S now has some real iOS competition.

5:01

For the Wi-Fi model, you’re looking at $US499, $US599 and $US699 for the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB.

There’s also a new iPad Mini 3 with Retina display, which starts at $US399, $US499 and $US599 for the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB.

Apple is also keeping the iPad mini 2 with Retina display AND the iPad mini, which starts at $US249 now.

Apple iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3: Australian Pricing

The new iPads are available for pre-order tomorrow and will start shipping next Friday!

We’ll bring you Australian prices soon. Update: Here they are!

iMac with Retina display

5:04

Now, onto Mac. Looks like a Retina model is coming.

5:06

The iMac with Retina display is official. It’s packing a 27-inch, 5K display.

Yep: 5120×2880. That’s 14.7 million pixels in “the world’s highest resolution display”.

Apple is calling it the Retina 5K display. It’s 67 per cent more pixels than 4K.

5:14

Time for some numbers: it’s packing a 3.5GHz Intel quad-core processor, Radeon R9 M290x graphics, 1TB Fusion Drive standard, 8GB of RAMand more.

All that comes in at $US2499. That’s insane pricing.

New Mac Mini

5:16

There’s also a new Mac Mini! Yes!

It used to start at $US599, now it’s $US499 for a faster, smaller and more energy efficient model. That ships today.

As discussed, we’ll talk Australian prices soon when we get them.

5:17

Tim Cook is back to wrap up!

5:22

Thanks for joining us this morning!


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