Apple unveils new products

Apple+recently+released+new+products+including+Airpods+3%2C+Homepod+Minis+and+a+new+MacBook+Pro.

Courtesy

Apple recently released new products including Airpods 3, Homepod Minis and a new MacBook Pro.

THEO LOCKLE, Staff Writer

Apple has announced new products on Monday Oct. 18, 2021, during their “unleashed” event. They revealed their new Airpods 3 with spatial audio, Homepod Minis that come in an array of colors and a new Macbook Pro with a fresh design accompanied with their new processors.

Apple came out with a fresh design for the Airpods 3rd Generation. These new Airpods sell for $179, and they were designed to be somewhat of a hybrid model of the standard Airpods and Airpods Pro. Apple has removed the rubber ear tips on them which means gone are the days of active noise cancellation. 

The Airpods 3 include a wireless charging case that is compatible with MagSafe and come with a phenomenal battery life of up to six hours on a single charge and up to 30 hours of total listening time when in the charging case. And importantly, they’re sweat and water resistant with IPX4 certification, meaning they are splash proof no matter the direction. Apple also heavily optimized the sound quality on the new Airpods and they now have spatial audio. This means when listening to music you will full 360 audio when both Airpods that also have adaptive sound depending on your environment. 

Alongside the announcement of the new Airpods we saw Apple announce the HomePod Mini in three new colors red, blue and yellow. HomePod Minis are one of Apple’s most popular products that are only $99 that give off great sound quality. Nothing changed with the HomePod Minis besides the color. Similar to what they did with their iPad Airs and offering the HomePod Minis in “bold” and “fun” colors to give them “personality,” as stated by Apple.

The biggest reveal of the event, of course, was the announcement of the new MacBook Pros and the reveal of their newest high-end processors the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. A new size for the MacBook Pro was also shown, it now can come in a 14-inch size that looks very similar to their previous years MacBooks Pros. The 16-inch MacBook Pro still remains that also sports this redesign. 

Apple showcased the M1 chip in 2020 with the new 13-inch MacBook Air and Pro laptops. The M1 chip offered phenomenal performance and exceptional battery life for its average user, but lacked the necessary power for certain applications that were more hardware intensive. That’s where M1 Pro and M1 Max come in. These were designed with photographers, videographers and sound engineers all in mind in order to give these users machines that will last long and outperform. The M1 Pro chip has 10 central processing unit cores and 16 graphic cores; already you can see this is a big upgrade compared to last year’s 13-inch MacBook Pro that has only a basic M1 chip with 8 CPU cores and only 14 GPU cores. M1 Max chip has 10 CPU cores and 32 GPU cores and both chips have eight high-end performance chips to assist in efficiency and background tasks. Both computers can reach up to 21 hours of battery life, and Apple has finally returned ports on the new MacBooks.

Both computers see the return of magsafe chargers, an HDMI port, four USB-C ports and finally an updated camera that supports up to 1080p. The 14-inch MacBook starts off at $1999 and the 16-inch starts off at $2499 and both computers can be customized to have either a M1 Pro or M1 Max chip.