Tag: IPad Air 2 »

Today’s Apple event talked about a lot of stuff we already knew and showcased their desperate need to hire some comedy writers, but eventually they got around to talking about the new iPads and their software (once they were done faffing about with Stephen Colbert, that is).

Two pieces of software singled out for the spotlight: a new iOS version of the OS X photo editor Pixelmator, and updates to the Replay Video Editor app.

Pixelmator (otherwise known as 'Photoshop For Broke Folks') was shown off with a live demo where the team crafted a logo screen in real-time. A herd of oryx were erased from a sea of rippling sand dunes quickly and with relative ease, leaving the shape and texture of the desert behind them intact. Showing off the muscle of the iPad Air 2’s beefy new A8 processor, everything went quickly and smoothly as they repositioned image elements and blended the text logo with the background using Pixelmator’s suite of tools.

Next up was Replay from Stupeflix. Replay, which is already available, allows for the creation of movies from video clips and photos on your device, but the developers showed off just how well it and its new updates will run on Apple’s upcoming hardware. Movies rendered with seemingly no lag time at all - supposedly 4 times faster on the A8 chip versus the old A7. And thanks to Metal, the whole affair runs 20 times faster versus relying on the CPU alone. Some neat volumetric lighting work was shown, where lighting interacted with the text titles, including real-time color changing on the fly.

Pixelmator is making its App Store debut later this month. Replay is already available for free, but
the new updates they showcased will be coming by the end of October as well.

In a move that surprised nobody, mostly because we all saw it coming, Apple has unveiled their latest iPad: the iPad Air 2. It's the new thing you need to buy, naturally.

The iPad Air 2 is, of course, even thinner than the original Air - 6.1mm, to be exact. It also uses a special anti-reflective coating to reduce reflections, which Apple claims has never been done in a tablet before. Touch ID will also be available on the new iPad, and it'll ship with iOS 8.1, but you're probably more interested in performance and such.

The tablet will use an all-new A8X processor, which (at the moment) will only be available in the iPad Air 2. The result is 40% faster CPU performance, and apps that can run over twice as fast - up to 180X faster than the original iPad. It's also got a 10-hour battery life, which is decent I suppose.

The iSight Camera has been updated as well, with 8 MP, 1080p HD video, and the ability to take all sort of fancy shots - slow-mo videos, 43 MP panoramas, burst photos, timelapse, and dual microphones. There's also an improved Facetime camera for the front that allows for improved facial detection and burst selfies (hurray?).

The online features have been improved as well, with faster wifi (up to 866MBps) and faster LTE (20 LTE bands).

The iPad Air 2 starts at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 64GB, and $699 for 128GB for the wifi models. There's also going to be a new iPad Mini 3, with a 7.9" Retina display, a 5MP iSight camera, 1080p HD video recording, the improved FaceTime camera, Touch ID, and the improved wifi (802.11n with MIMO). Both new iPads will be available for preorder starting tomorrow and they'll ship by the end of next week.