The latest and greatest in Apple's full-sized iPad range is now officially available for consumer purchase. As expected, there has been a great deal of interest in the lightest, thinnest and fastest iPad yet with certain stores in the United States and around Europe having to manage queues that started forming 24-hours prior to launch. With that said, the official Apple.com website still shows that the iPad Air ships within 24-hours on all models barring the 128GB Cellular + Wi-Fi version. But what if digital purchasing isn't your thing and you'd prefer to grab one from a local retail outlet without fear of being disappointed by dwindling stock levels?
Today, November 1st, Apple opened their stores around the world to fans queuing up for the latest and greatest in their tablet line: the iPad Air. Announced in late October, the iPad Air didn't exactly come as much of a surprise to anyone who isn't living under a rock. Leaks of it's existence were occurring left, right and center until almost the only piece of the puzzle we were missing was it's official announcement from Apple.
Today is Halloween, and to most Americans, that means parties, costumes, pumpkins - the works. But for many of us geeks, it's the eve of the release of the iPad Air, and with the larger of the two new Apple tablets now ready for release, Apple fans far and wide are preparing themselves to queue overnight once again. But the iPad mini with Retina display, which Apple also announced at a special event last week, remains pretty elusive as far as a release date goes, and with yield issues apparent for some time now, it's unknown when the smaller slate will actually make its debut. Now, however, we might finally have our answer.
We think it's pretty fair to say that Apple's recent announcement of the iPad Air didn't exactly blow everyone's mind when it comes to technological innovation. The unveiling of the next-generation full-sized iPad pretty much fell in line with what the majority were expecting in the fact that it offers an improved but evolutionary upgrade from its predecessor. The introduction of the Apple A7 chipset and the improved engineering principles mean that the device will ultimately be faster, lighter and thinner than all other iPads to date, but the Primate Labs Geekbench 3 tests give us a pre-release indication of just how capable the iPad Air is.
Apple has officially published their latest financial results that give a thorough insight into how the Cupertino based company has performed in the last fiscal quarter. Many technology analysts and industry insiders have been using the days running up to the Apple Earnings Conference Call to declare their predictions that the company would fall short of projections due to lackluster demand for the iPhone 5 because new devices were on the verge of being announced. With posted revenues of $37.5 billion it seems that Tim Cook and his executive team can take a lot of positives from the financial performance.
The iPad Air is almost ready for release, and naturally, Apple's accessory partners are hot on its tail. We've already seen the first batch of what Belkin has to offer the Cupertino's rebranded slab, and now, Logitech has come through with a substantial helping of cases and accessories for the fifth-gen iPad.
Earlier this week at Apple's latest media event, the Cupertino company finally released the newest Mac operating system: OS X Mavericks, to the world. Alongside this release came a more silent release of iOS 7.0.3 which brought with it full iCloud Keychain compatibility to go along with Mavericks. If you're unaware of what iCloud Keychain allows you to do, think of it like browser saved passwords, for all of your Apple devices. Once you have set up this new feature, you'll be able to sign into all of your favorite websites in Safari without having entered any of your passwords. It even stores your credit card details for purchases. Don't worry, the data is all encrypted locally, so Apple won't be handling all of your credit card numbers without your permission.
When you find yourself in the position that Apple is in as a company, it seems that you become an easy target for replication and parody. No company is whiter than white these days, but Apple has often found their work and announcements being mimicked and mocked a lot more than the average company in the technology industry. The latest business giant to take a pop at Apple is Amazon, who is using the recently announced iPad Air to advertise their own Kindle Fire HDX tablet that is available immediately for pre-order.
The iPad Air and Retina iPad mini 2 are making rounds of the Internet these days, but that doesn’t mean the older generation devices are to be forgotten just yet. We already saw a price cut for the first-gen iPad mini alongside the announcement for newer devices, but now it appears the Cupertino company has also (silently, I must add) dropped a Space Gray version of the original iPad mini, through its select retail stores and its online store as well.
As fans of the show continue to lament the end of popular TV series Breaking Bad, the guy behind the main character of Breaking Bad - Walter White - has already managed to wrangle himself a pretty decent new role - as the voice of one of Apple's new ad for the iPad Air. The device, which succeeds the fourth-generation Apple tablet as of next month, has already caused a bit of a stir among tech fans, and with Cranston's influential tone now a part of the ad campaign, expect the tactically-entitled slate to sell well in its first week on sale.
