Everything Apple announced this week: MacBook Neo, iPhone…

This week, Apple announced a slew of new products ahead of its press event on Wednesday.

Apple has been busy this week. Ahead of its press-only event on Wednesday, the company announced a new iPhone, new MacBook Air and Pro models and a new iPad. Then to a packed room in NYC, Apple debuted its new long-rumored low-cost MacBook. It’s called the MacBook Neo and starts at $599. All the new devices are available for pre-order as of March 4 and will be widely available March 11. We’re already gearing up to test out the new machines and we’ll let you know our verdicts.

In the meantime, here’s everything Apple announced so far this week. During a press event in NYC, Apple gave a short and sweet presentation with one item on the agenda: The new budget-model MacBook Neo. It comes in two configurations, one with 256GB of storage and no TouchID for $599, and one for $699 that ships with 512GB of storage and a TouchID sensor. Both have 13-inch screens and 8GB of RAM.

Four color options include Blush, Indigo, Citrus and Silver. It uses the A18 Pro chip — the same one you’ll find in the iPhone 16 Pro models — and can support Apple Intelligence, as well as browsing, streaming, photo editing and even gaming. It’ll have a 16-hour battery life and a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. The aluminum body is 90 percent recycled and uses a 100 percent cobalt in the battery.

Apples newest “budget” iPhone still starts at $600 — but you get a lot more than you did with the iPhone 16e. This time, the smartphone has MagSafe — an important feature for easy wireless charging and attaching accessories — and the storage now starts at 256GB, which is twice that of last year’s model, without an up-charge. The display stays the same size at 6.1 inches, but its now covered in the next generation of Apple and Corning’s Ceramic Shield — Apple says it’s three times more scratch resistant than last time.

The iPhone 17e will now ship with the A19 chip. That’s nearly the same as the processor as the one in the standard iPhone (the A19 chip in that model has one more graphics core). There’s also a new color, Soft Pink, to join the existing Black and White hues. The phone is available for pre-order starting March 4, with wide availability March 11. As expected, the newly announced iPad Air stepped up its processor from the M3 to the M4 chip.

Apple says the new tablet is “up to 30 percent faster than the iPad Air with M3.” It also gets more memory, with 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB on last year’s Air model. A new N1 networking chip, that first came out with the iPhone 17 series, will support Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread connectivity. Possibly the best thing about the announcement is the price. The iPad Air M4 starts at $599 for the Wi-Fi only model and $749 for the cellular-enabled slate — the same as the starting prices for the M3 slates.

Like the iPad Air, this is largely a spec bump. Both the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air laptops come with the faster M5 chip. That processor should help with faster performance, better graphics and snappier AI-related functioning. The chip has a “Neural Accelerator” which Apple says provides “up to 4x faster performance for AI tasks.” Port selection, battery life and display are all staying the same.

But both sizes of laptops will get a storage bump, now starting off with 512GB of SSD, up from last year’s starting capacity of 256GB. The inclusion of the new N1 networking chip will support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to keep up with new and upcoming devices that use those latest protocols. Unlike the iPhone 17e and the iPad Air, the starting price for the MacBook Air did increase this time around.

The price starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch size, both with 512GB of storage. That’s $100 more than last year’s starting prices. Professionals and creators might be more interested in MacBook Pro news. The 14-inch will now ship with a choice of the M5, M5 Pro or M5 Max chips and the and 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with either the M5 Pro or the M5 Max processors. Those upgraded chips are equipped with new Neural Accelerators in the GPU cores for faster AI performance.

And to store all that creativity, the machines will now start at a full terabyte of storage, with options to upgrade to a whopping 8TB SSD. Taking advantage of that capacity should be faster now, too as Apple says the SSD performance is twice as fast as last year. The displays, ports and battery life have all remained the same as the previous models, as have the color options: Space Black or Silver.

The starting price has risen on all configurations. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip starts at $2,199 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699. The prices for the M4 versions were $1,999 and $2,499, respectively. Apple announced two new displays to pair up with MacBooks and other Mac computers. Both measure 27 inches on the diagonal, have Thunderbolt 5 ports, 5K resolution and come with a choice of Nano-textured or standard glass.

The new Studio Display XDR gets a boost to a faster 120Hz refresh rate for smother graphics and has a mini-LED backlit display for brighter colors, deeper blacks and no halo or bloom effects.

Summary

This report covers the latest developments in iphone. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

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