What They Say
To nobody’s surprise, after all the rumours and speculation, Apple announced a new Apple TV streaming video box and new iPads.
- The iPad Pro has been updated to use the M2 processor which should give a 20% boost to speed, but there was no change to the display. The 11″ costs from $799 and the 12.9″ from $1.099. A change is the addition of a Pencil ‘hover’ mode. There are ‘Promotion’ features for up to 120Hz support.
- There is a new lower cost iPad with a 10.9″ display (2360 x 1640) starting at $499. It uses the A14 Bionic (the same as an iPhone 12).
- The Apple TV box has been updated with an A15 processor and has 64GB or 128GB of storage while selling at a lower price of $129 and up. The 128GB version supports hardware ethernet. Support for HDR10+ has been added to the Dolby Vision and HDR10. Performance is said to be up 50% in the CPU and 30% for the GPU, while power consumption is reduced, eliminating the need for a fan. HDMI 2.1 (eARC) is supported up to 4KP60. The remote control uses USB Type-C for re-charging.
What We Think
The Apple TV box should be more attractive now. Although more expensive than other devices, there is less of a price penalty for those that want to stay in the Apple environment and the box should do well. There does not seem to be any support for AV1 decoding in the Apple TV.
The lack of change to the iPad displays was as expected (Ross Young tweeted as much, recently). (BR)
