News

All Of Apple's Shiny, Shiny New Toys

by Clarissa-Jan Lim

On Thursday, Tim Cook released a whole host of new Apple products and upgrades at an event in Berlin. Along with iPads and something called a "burst selfie," Apple unveiled Apple Pay, originally announced at Apple's Sept. 6 event alongside iPhones 6 and 6 Plus. The mobile payment service will launch with iOS 8.1 on Monday, Oct. 20. We've previously told you which stores accept Apple Pay, and Apple will add more online stores to its already formidable list — which means you can now buy things online with a mere thumbprint. Oh, technology!

So what other shiny, shiny new things can you expect from Apple in the near future? Here goes...

iOS 8.1

The new operating system will address problems in iOS 8, of which there are many. The update will also see the return of Camera Roll, and include the iCloud Photo Library beta, which you can choose to use as a backup device or as primary storage. It's available Monday, Sept. 20.

Yosemite

The super-catchy-not-really iOS X 10.10 Yosemite is an update with a "continuity" feature that enables seamless switching between Apple devices. It also improves internet connection on your laptop through your iPhone.

And if you use either a Mac or an iPhone, you can send and receive texts and phone calls from your computer, even to and from those non-iPhone-using freaks (such as myself). It's available Thursday, Oct. 16.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The iPad Air 2

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The iPad's draw is a force to be reckoned with — Apple sold more iPads last quarter than Lenovo, HP, Dell or Acer managed to sell computers. The new iPad is 6.1mm thin (the world's thinnest tablet), has Touch ID and iSight camera.

Priced at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 64 GB, $600 for $128 GB. Pre-orders will start Oct. 17 in the U.S.

iPad Mini 3

Not much is new with the iPad Mini 3, except that its metal back now comes in gold, it's thinner, and has Touch ID. The device got about four minutes of stage time, the poor thing, and was not demonstrated at all.

Priced at $399 for 16GB, $499 for 64GB, $599 for 128 GB. Pre-orders Oct. 17 in the U.S.

Touch ID

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The Touch ID, available for the iPhone since the 5S, lets you unlock the tablet with a fingerprint and make purchases from Apple’s App Store and iTunes store. It will also support Apple Pay for online purchases.

iSight Camera

This baby is now eight megapixels, an improvement from previous iPad cameras. The iPhone 6 also has an eight megapixel camera, so your pictures on the new iPads will be just as sharp as those on your phone. Which bring us to...

Burst Selfies

With iSight, you can take panoramas, time-lapse videos, and slow-motion videos at 120 frames per second, and (what we're most happy about) burst-mode features! Internet, be ready for a deluge of #burstselfies.

Cue another thousand articles by old people about the endless vanity of Millennials, although 54-year-old senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple Phil Schiller might have already taken the crown for Typical-Dad Faux Pas of the Month by saying, “For the first time, you can do burst selfies, which the kids love to do." Aw, thanks, dad!

iMac

The new iMac retina display has a high-resolution display that's even better than HD (no, we don't know what we'd call that, either), and has seven times the pixels of a 1080p HD TV. It's 5mm thick, has a backlight system that uses 30 percent less energy than its predecessors, and a new 3.5GHz Intel quad-core i5 with an optional i7 chip.

Its graphics will be powered by a new AMD Radeon M9 M290X graphics processor, which The Guardian wrote was 40 percent more powerful than the precious Mac. The only drawback — and it's a big one — it's priced at $2,499 in the U.S.

Images: Getty Images (6); Guardian Tech/Vine