During the Spring Festival, Bloomberg broke the news that Apple will hold a spring new product launch conference on March 8. Recently, this news has been continuously verified, and more news related to Apple's new products has gradually been released. Not surprisingly, Apple released at least five new hardware products, including an iPhone, three Macs, and an iPad.
Apple updated the iPad Pro and iMac at its spring conference last year, and also released the AirTag. At this year's conference, the number of products is also quite large, for the upcoming products, we may wish to first understand in advance.
iPhone SE3
There are many revelations about the iPhone SE3 intermittently, but in summary, there are very few real highlights. After all, it's positioned as a cheap iPhone, and everything is a bit coping. In a word, the iPhone SE3 is still a "fork" of the iPhone 8, or the non-full-screen appearance of the iPhone 6 era. However, in this epidemic era, the original backward Touch ID now looks better than the face recognition experience, and it is also a black humor.
In addition to the price, Xiao Lei believes that the biggest highlight of the iPhone SE3 is the performance. After all, and the iPhone 13 of the same A15 is not covered, even compared to the A14 absolute performance is a bit squeezed toothpaste, but the upgrade of power consumption makes its actual performance output very capable, basically can crush the current Android camp's latest flagship chip, power-saving mode PK win Android flagship performance mode may not be impossible. In other words, although the iPhone SE3 looks crotch-pulling in all aspects, there is no suspense in terms of performance to hang Android competitors at the same price.
In addition, the iPhone SE3 will also become the cheapest 5G Apple phone. Although in the Android camp, thousands of yuan or even 100 yuan 5G mobile phones have long been popularized, but on the iOS platform, 3,000 pieces of 5G iPhones are still very lethal.
In general, the iPhone SE3 is stacked with low price, invincible performance and 5G support for three buffs, even if there are a bunch of shortcomings and backwardness, it does not prevent its comprehensive competitiveness from being very strong. After all, although we always complain about the part of the configuration of the iPhone, in terms of iOS ecology, Apple's advantages cannot be surpassed, and it can become a scarcity that Android opponents do not have.
There's a new Mac
In 2021, Apple released a new iMac, the appearance has been greatly changed, the color is more colorful, and the overall design style is lively and fashionable. In terms of configuration, this iMac uses an M1 chip and a 24-inch 4.5K screen. And this spring, news from Mark Gurman and other channels showed that Apple will release a new iMac Pro. This product basically follows the design style of the 24-inch iMac, but the configuration will be more strengthened and the positioning will be much higher.
One of the highlights of the new iMac Pro is the screen, and on the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, Apple has used a Mini LED screen that represents cutting-edge display technology, and the iMac Pro will also keep up. Ross Young, a panel industry insider and well-known whistleblower, recently released a message that the screen used by the iMac Pro will have 1,000 partitions and 4,000 Mini LED small lamp beads. For comparison, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the new MacBook Pro are 2500 partitions and 10,000 lamp beads, so it seems that the screen specifications of the iMac Pro are relatively low, but the display effect is definitely much better than the ordinary LCD screen. In addition, the new iMac Pro screen has a 120Hz refresh rate, with a size of 27 inches and a resolution of 5K.
In terms of performance, the iMac Pro will use M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, which is naturally expected. The M1 Pro is about 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, and the M1 Max is a 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU. It is not difficult to see that the new iMac Pro is still focused on professional fields such as video editing.
In addition, Apple recently submitted three new Mac models to the Eurasian Economic Commission, namely the A2615, A2686 and A2681, one of which is labeled as a laptop. Not surprisingly, these three Macs include the iMac Pro, MacBook, and Mac mini introduced above.
From the perspective of product update time, Apple released a new MacBook Pro in 2021, but the latest MacBook Air is still 2020, so it is more likely that the notebook released this time is MacBook Air 2022. However, considering that the MacBook Air 2020 has been relatively perfect in all aspects, combined with positioning, the possibility of a large upgrade of the new model is not high, and the greater probability is a small upgrade. As for the Mac mini, the main upgrade should be the chip, which could be the M1 Pro or the M1 Max.
Of the three Macs that appeared in the breaking news, the new iMac Pro should be the most bright heavyweight product. After all, the iMac Pro was only released once in 2017, using Intel chips, and was removed from the official website last year. The arrival of the new iMac Pro will attract a large number of fruit powder and professional people.
The long-lost iPad Air 5
In 2019, Apple resurrected the two product lines of iPad Air and iPad mini, filling the previously vacant mid-range price point. However, the two series have not been updated synchronously, with the iPad Air 4 released in September 2020 and the iPad mini 6 released in September 2021. From the perspective of the update rhythm, the spring conference of 2022, the iPad Air 5 should be debuted.
As early as January this year, Apple's new iPad model appeared in the database of the Eurasian Economic Commission and was considered to be the iPad Air 5. The positioning of the iPad Air 4 can basically be regarded as a shrunken version of the iPad Pro, which has a full-screen appearance, but no Face ID; there is a high-definition large screen, but no high brush. The upgrade of the iPad Air 5 is also more conventional, basically the same as the iPhone SE3, upgrading the chip to A15, while the cellular version supports 5G networks.
In Xiao Lei's personal view, the positioning of the iPad Air series is still relatively awkward, on the one hand, the configuration and iPad Pro have obvious differences, on the other hand, the price is still not cheap. If the price of the iPad Air is still high (high probability), then the appeal will not be particularly strong.
iOS 15.4, the bragged bull is going to cash in
Recently, Apple pushed the iOS 15.4 developer preview beta 3, at this pace, the official version is estimated to be launched at the March 8 conference. Through the beta version, you can find a lot of new features on iOS 15.4, although some of them were already Bragging about by Apple at WWDC last June. To summarize simply, there are probably several functions: support mask Face ID, third-party Apps support 120Hz high brushing, support for shared SharePlay, support for PS5 gamepads, etc.
Among them, the mask Face ID function has appeared in the iOS 15.4 developer preview beta 2, allowing users to enter or recognize faces while wearing a mask. This function is naturally a compromise choice made taking into account the current epidemic situation. With this feature, a large number of iPhone users can more easily use Face ID. However, at present, this feature is only available on the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 series, and it is not known whether the official version will open up older models.
The third-party App support 120Hz high brush also appeared in the beta version of iOS 15.4 firmware, which is a perfect improvement of the iPhone 13 Pro series high brush function. After all, if third-party apps can't use high brushes or LTPO, then the user experience improvement effect brought by high brushes is greatly reduced.
As for the co-broadcast sharing function, the feeling to Xiao Lei is that the speed of advancement is very slow, and the beta firmware is open for a while, and then a certain beta version is canceled. It allows users to break the geographical barrier and watch videos together, which is very suitable for long-distance couples. However, considering the network situation, Xiao Lei did not report too much expectation for its actual experience.
iOS 15.4 is not a major version update, and naturally it will not bring many new features of real significance. However, since the release of iOS 15, the number of bugs has been quite large. Compared with the stacking of new features, Xiao Lei hopes that the official version of iOS 15.4 can fix the bugs well.
Summary: The product is not less, and the surprise is not too much
From the breaking news, the number of new products to be launched at this year's Apple Spring Festival conference is not small, and the iPhone SE3, three Macs, and iPad Air 5 also have 5 products. However, most of these new products are relatively conventional products, and the sense of surprise is not high. Of course, in Apple's annual conference, the spring activities are relatively low in the sense of existence, and this time the situation is also expected.
Now, Apple's hardware products have been very complex, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, music five categories, can also be further subdivided. It is also like this, so many Apple products can not be stuffed into an autumn conference, Apple's annual conference activities have been as many as four or five, each conference can see several new products of different categories, and the update of a single product, Apple will not even hold a special conference, direct press release + official website on the new even if it is finished.
But then again, although the March 8 conference did not have any surprises, product highlights are not many, but as a cheap Apple mobile phone iPhone SE3, the starting price may not be too high new Mac mini, at least can arouse the desire of many users to buy. With the iPhone 13 without a real opponent, Apple's market performance in the past year has been called a super god, and the arrival of the cheap iPhone this time should be able to put more pressure on the Android camp.