Apple is having another hardware launch event Tuesday, the second of its kind the company has hosted this fall, and the fourth major media event for Apple this year. While September’s iPhone launch was probably more exciting for the many millions of people who will buy new handsets this year, tomorrow’s announcements could in some ways be more interesting than new iPhones.
That’s because we’re expecting to see new iPads[1] and a new MacBook[2], one that could fill the years-long gap since Apple last had an “affordable” premium laptop in its lineup. And, while Apple’s iPad leads the tablet category overall, tablet sales overall have declined year-over-year for the past five years. There are really two ways Apple can go to try to make these large glass slabs more appealing: lower the cost and make them more accessible, which it did this past spring, or add some whiz-bang features to its top-of-the-line iPad Pro. Tomorrow, we’re expecting we’ll see more of the latter.
And, while Apple did just update its expensive MacBook Pro line[3] this past summer, those machines were largely aimed at professional, or, people who have $2,000 to spare for a laptop with a superfluous TouchBar. Nothing has quite come close to the lightness, power, and overall convenience of the MacBook Air, though Apple has tried to offer that with its 12-inch MacBook in recent years. Let’s see if it revives the fan favorite MacBook Air in some way.
Bezels, Be Gone
In recent years, Apple has tried positioning the iPad as something that transcends traditional computing form factors. (It has even gone so far as to put out an ad campaign featuring an iPad-toting kid who innocently asks, “What’s a computer?”) In...