Apple October event, new iPad/Mac Mini/ MacBook Air/iMac

[Zod]

garyhun said:

Burwood said:

Jesus that surprised me. As an aside I don't think they make it that easy to buy all the extra accessories. Not the most intuitive buying experience.
512gb is huge. What will you use that for?

Web browsing

Ha! My photos and videos will expand to fill the space, using the optimised setting. Principal reason for space is for storage of GoPro and SLR shooting when travelling. I keep running out of space on my 128 GB Air 2. And I won't have to guess how many episodes of a series I'll watch on a trip now. I'll be able to download the lot!

[anonymous-user]

Burwood said:

garyhun said:

Burwood said:

Jesus that surprised me. As an aside I don't think they make it that easy to buy all the extra accessories. Not the most intuitive buying experience.
512gb is huge. What will you use that for?

Web browsing

I typically drag content off the web to watch them delete it

Joking aside, that iPad pro looks like a superb piece of kit.

My 27" iMac is now 7 years old and will need replacing with something less bulky soon - MacBook Air or iPad Pro

[300bhp/ton]

Zod said:

300bhp/ton said:

Glad there is an updated Mini at last. Have been waiting ages to buy a new one. Shame about the price hike though..... significantly more pricey than the older model.

My 2011 iMac is now ancient in that it won't run Mojave (works fine though). I'm tempted to look at a new Mac Mini, but don't really need it, given my gaming PC is way more powerful.

I have a 2012 Mini in my front room. Has been great and recently upgraded to Mojave on it. Which seems to work fine apart from some weirdness with the Magic Pad (the right mouse click action has changed and not as good).

But I've been wanting another Mac to replace my Win 10 antique Dell. I had a MBP but it was a works machine that I had to hand back 18 months ago.

[sjg]

300bhp/ton said:

My bad. When I said "docking" I was thinking of something you physically clip the laptop into, i.e. dock it. Not a desktop widget that you plug into. Although even then, if you aren't always at the same desk/location, you might have to carry this dock about with you, rather than just being able to plug stuff into it.

It's the way most corporate laptops are going - Thunderbolt 3 is pretty cheap to implement, huge bandwidth to support lots of ports (even things like beefier GPUs), a nice small connector, and more or less generic. The traditional "drop in" docks are all model-specific and a pain once you start refreshing models. Way more flexible in places where people move about.

One client I work for provided a little portable USB-C dock with the super-thin laptop they issued. It's about the size of a deck of cards and has a full-size HDMI, VGA, ethernet port, audio jack and a couple of each of USB type A and C ports. Takes up no space in the bag, doesn't need it's own power and covers most situations.

[AB]

That iPad Pro looks great.

I think we'll be getting a couple in the office, extra £300 for keyboard and pencil though.

They do know how to extract money from you.

[Zod]

AB said:

That iPad Pro looks great.

I think we'll be getting a couple in the office, extra £300 for keyboard and pencil though.

They do know how to extract money from you.

Yes, just when you think you can stomach the iPad Pro price, you realise that there's no real point buying it without the pencil and keyboard and have to pay an extra £350.

[Burwood]

Zod said:

AB said:

That iPad Pro looks great.

I think we'll be getting a couple in the office, extra £300 for keyboard and pencil though.

They do know how to extract money from you.

Yes, just when you think you can stomach the iPad Pro price, you realise that there's no real point buying it without the pencil and keyboard and have to pay an extra £350.

I have the pencil but don't use it. I only use the iPad whilst on the sofa, using a stand/cover. The 2 X old iPads had logitech keyboards which were slick but didn't last more than 18 months before failing

[Bullitt Five-Oh]

If anything this announcement was to go by is that next year's iPhones will be USB-C based.

[RammyMP]

I was holding out for a budget mac book air but looks like I’ll be disappointed. The new one has features that I do not want or need and a lack of USB ports and the like. Might get the old model MBA when they are reduced.

[ecsrobin]

So just managed to spec a Mac mini at £4,358.98 I remember buying my first gen Mac mini for around £500

Although I’m sure 64gb of ram will keep it operating quick.

[ecsrobin]

sjg said:

300bhp/ton said:

My bad. When I said "docking" I was thinking of something you physically clip the laptop into, i.e. dock it. Not a desktop widget that you plug into. Although even then, if you aren't always at the same desk/location, you might have to carry this dock about with you, rather than just being able to plug stuff into it.

It's the way most corporate laptops are going - Thunderbolt 3 is pretty cheap to implement, huge bandwidth to support lots of ports (even things like beefier GPUs), a nice small connector, and more or less generic. The traditional "drop in" docks are all model-specific and a pain once you start refreshing models. Way more flexible in places where people move about.

One client I work for provided a little portable USB-C dock with the super-thin laptop they issued. It's about the size of a deck of cards and has a full-size HDMI, VGA, ethernet port, audio jack and a couple of each of USB type A and C ports. Takes up no space in the bag, doesn't need it's own power and covers most situations.

At work we have these docks (or similar):



They’re perfect and as mentioned very small.

RammyMP said:

I was holding out for a budget mac book air but looks like I’ll be disappointed. The new one has features that I do not want or need and a lack of USB ports and the like. Might get the old model MBA when they are reduced.

It’s not just Apple that are getting rid of USB ports it’s the industry as USB-C is far superior and most new devices are starting to switch over.

[leglessAlex]

As always, it seems to be the price of storage that ends up bumping the price right up. I get that the Mac Mini is usually for reasonably lightweight use, but I like to have a lot of storage on my desktop computer. 1TB of storage is a crazy amount extra!

[DoctorX]

RammyMP said:

I was holding out for a budget mac book air but looks like I’ll be disappointed. The new one has features that I do not want or need and a lack of USB ports and the like. Might get the old model MBA when they are reduced.

1400 quid for a 256Gb model. Why wouldn’t you just buy a Pro for the same price?

[Murph7355]

Too late for me. Crossed back to the dark side a bit ago now and nothing here tempts really...

MBA - inherits the god awful keyboard and lack of ports from its relatives. Other than that it looks a pretty good machine and spec for spec usefully cheaper than an X1 Carbon. But the first two points are the killer.

Mini - how much! I susoect the thing I'll get to replace my aging Minis when the time comes will be a NUC or similar.

Someone noted Win10 above. IMO it's not that bad now in Pro guise. Conversely there are increasing amounts of things that irritate with OSX. The gap is barely there now.

[TheJimi]

I'll be honest, a big part of why I don't want to move away from MacBooks is the trackpads & gesture software.

No-one really has answer to it, imo.

It's a bit like steering feedback; once you experience *really* nice steering feel, it ruins everything else for you

[craigjm]

leglessAlex said:

As always, it seems to be the price of storage that ends up bumping the price right up. I get that the Mac Mini is usually for reasonably lightweight use, but I like to have a lot of storage on my desktop computer. 1TB of storage is a crazy amount extra!

Trying to nudge people away from storing data on the machine.

[TameRacingDriver]

It looks really nice, but while I did fancy upgrading my 10.5 to the new 12.9 for the bigger screen, that price increase is hard to stomach. Nearly £1200 for a 12.9 with a keyboard is a hefty price to pay especially when there ain’t too much wrong with my 10.5 which I’ll probably be lucky to get much more than £400 for. Maybe one for next year (second hand) when the next model comes out.

I’m also quite interested to see what ChromeOS brings in the next year or so, particularly as I’m quite entrenched in the big G’s ecosystem rather than Apples.

[rich888]

The new 12.9" iPad looks interesting but they just couldn't resist ramping up the price could they!

I've checked John Lewis for the previous iPad Pro 12.9" Wifi 512 GB model, but they are showing as out of stock, though PC World still list them for £1,119, or £1,208 with pencil, together with a trade-in pricing offer.

When looked upon as a tablet device they do seem hellish expensive, but when looked upon as a high end laptop they do seem remarkably affordable. I still prefer using my MacBook for typing out quotes and letters though.

I assume that the real deal-breaker will be what apps will run on these all singing all dancing iPad Pro models, Photoshop certainly looks like it's come of age, I know of several colleagues who work in the graphics industry who swapped over to iPads with the pencil and have never looked back, and AutoDesk unveiling a full blown AutoCad version has great potential to shake up the CAD market.

Will have to do the man maths...

[Craikeybaby]

As I was looking forward to a new iMac I’m slightly disappointed. Having said that the Mac Mini could be an option. I probably wouldn’t bother upgrading the SSD size too much and just run an external drive for media.

The new MacBook Air looks interesting, as much as I love my MacBook, I can’t see why anyone would get one over an Air now. Touch ID and the second USB-C port is pretty much all I feel my MacBook is lacking.

Personally I’m not at all fussed by the iPads, I prefer the laptop form factor and full operating system for what I use it for.

[AB]

I think if they'd gone USB-C on the new iPhones then I'd be looking more seriously at the new iPad along with a new iPhone.

My Macbook Pro has 4x USB-C ports and nothing else and having one charger for all would be a bonus.

As it is, I think I'll be changing my EE contract to SIM only and keeping the iPhone X and not bothering with a new iPad, having given it more thought.