Nokia’s event is over, unveiling some new goodies in the way to us. Apple’s
event is just around the corner and at 7p.m MEST, we will witness Apple’s
new gadgets being unveiled. What’s coming on to us? Most likely the new
iPad 5, which is anticipated much and said to have Touch ID.

But not only the iPad 5 is said to receive an update, also the little brother is about to receive some additions. Maybe the iPad mini 2 will now get a Retina display thus allowing for better browsing even on the 7 inch screen. But also LTE and WLAN up to 802.11ac are in big discussion.

The question is still, what will despite the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 come to us? Most likely, Apple will determine the Availability of the new Apple Mac Pro, announced earlier this year. A new concept, based upon a server CPU (Intel Xeon 12core) with lots of RAM aside yet all together budled into a cylindric, futuristic case which is small compared to usual PCs these days. And what about Apple TV? The TV has been announced for over a year now and yet, Apple hasn’t shown anything in that direction. Supposingly there won’t be such device this show either.

Oh and one more thing. Most likely Apple will present Mavericks together with the updated Apple MacBook Pros which will be equipped with the most actual Haswell processors from Intel. If the Apple MacBook Air will also receive such updates is, however, doubtful. So while we wait for the event to arrive, there’s still some time for specualtions, discussions and tech talk about Apple’s future.

Update October 23^th, 2013: Now it’s official!

Okay, Apple has shown us the new iPad Air. The fifth generation of the iPad breaks the standard name convention and is simply called iPad Air. Equipped also with the A7 processor and the M7 co-processor, it has the same components like the iPhone 5S. Despite of that, the iPad Air still has to go without the fingerprint home Button and thus has no Touch ID. Sad to see that as the uniformity to the iPhone 5S is now broken. It is now only 7.5mm thick and approx 450g light. Although Apple claims the title for the thinnest full-size tablet, the Sony Xperia Z tablet is slimmer with only 6.9mm! Memory-side, the iPad Air now comes with 16,32,64 or even 128GB NVRAM which means another increasement hereby! (Well Apple, it was time for you already to do this step!), RAM-wise it is equipped with 2GB, allowing the apps to run smooth(er). The camera is, like in the iPad 4 still 5MP, so nothing new here! We would have liked to see the 8.4MP camera from the iPhone 5S in the iPad Air also…

Final conclusion: Is the iPad Air for everybody an option? Definitely NO! For those, who own an iPad 4 already, there’s not much sense forking out another 900 simoleons for the largest iPad Air with LTE/WiFi. For those who still have no tablet, this may be a chance to jump on now although the other competitors have interesting products on stake already. So is the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2013 model) a blazing fast price breaker offering tremendous qualities for half the price and the NVRAM is virtually infinite as you can use MicroSDXC cards.

Wow-effect of the iPad Air: ★★★☆☆

+ has now 128GB NVRAM
+ has now 2GB of RAM
+ slimmer
+ lighter
+ faster
– lack of Touch ID
– Still bold top and bottom frame
– lack of the “must definitely have”-factor

Then there’s the iPad Mini 2 which has, as expected, a retina display thus doubling the horizontal and vertical resolution. The adaption of Apps is not necessary as the resolution is now equal to it’s greater brothers. the iPad Mini has, like it’s brothers 16,32,64 or even a whopping 128GB of NVRAM for Apps to store. RAMlike, Apple still keeps it a secret, so system analyzer apps will have to do the job! Owners of the iPad Mini will still get a new value with the iPad Mini 2, so I guess, we’ll see eBay and other auction platforms swarmed with classic iPad Minis in the upcoming time.

Wow-effect of the iPad Mini 2: ★★★☆☆

+ has now 128GB NVRAM
+ has Retina display
+ LTE support of ALL frequencies
+ faster
+ Has kinda “wanna have”-factor
– lack of Touch ID
– bolder and heavier

Also as expected, the Apple Mac Pro with it’s extraordinary design has been presented introducing a new high-power computing on small room. This may somehow be one of Apple’s new top-seller! However the price tag of 3000 simoleons is also a big number. Whoa! But imagine that you get a high-class GPU and a server CPU bundled into a fancy case.

Wow-effect of the Mac Pro: ★★★★☆

+ Has tremendous CPU power
+ Has good GPU power
+ Up-to-code hardware
+ small, yet alluring case
– price

The MacBook Pros have been updated to the newest intel platforms, meaning that they come with Haswell. Nothing new here.

Apple TV has not been shown yet, so I guess, it’ll be mid or end or 2014 until we may probably see someting in that direction.

iOS receives version 7.0.3 as update, which delivers some missing features like the keyholder for iCloud, fixes some security issues and probably will do some performance boosts here and there. MacOSX Mavericks is now available in App Store for free to upgrade (interesting!) and also the App suites iLife and iWork are for free available in App Store for owners of the new devices.

So all in all, the Apple event brought up som Whoa’s but also some Boo’s – what does Apple’s stock do according to this event: it has stayed almost the same. A loss of 0.21% is not that big loss anyways but it is no joy jump either!