Apple held their October event yesterday and announced a variety of new and updated products.
Third-generation Airpods - What's New?
The third-generation AirPods were shown with an all new deisign, spacial audio, adaptive EQ, longer battery life and sweat and water resistance. Apple have added free personalistion when ordered directly through their website. You can grab yourself a pair for £169, which is £10 more than the first-generation Airpods on launch.
Apple Airpods have been a huge success in recent years becoming one of most well regarded earbuds in its price range. There ease of use, wireless charging and intergration into the Apple ecosystem goes someway to describe why they are amoung the most popular choice. As a result, there is a lot riding on Apple's latest effort.
These third-generation Airpods come with a variety of upgrades and a re-design that is similar to the recently released AirPods Pro.
"Style from ear to ear. With a contoured design and shorter stem, AirPods are designed to direct sound into your ears — in a refined look anyone can appreciate."
"Up to 6 hours of listening time with one charge. Up to 30 hours of total listen time with the case.
Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking places sounds all around you to create a three-dimensional listening experience for music, TV shows, movies and more — immersing you in sounds from every direction so it feels like you’re in your very own concert hall or cinema.
Bass hits an all-time high, An Apple-disgned dynamic dirver, powered by a custom amplifiger, renders music in exceptionally detailed sound quality - so you revel in every tone, from deep, rich bass to crisp, clean highs."
Apple Airpods 2 vs Airpods 3
Apple have put together a convincing package for the new third-generation AirPods making significant improvements over the previous Airpods.
You might be wondering what's changed over the AirPods 2's. Well, it's more than you'd expect. The design blends aspects of the prior AirPods and AirPod Pros whilst retaining the one-size-fits all approach. The form factor has changed slightly with the new generation now having much shorter stems. They now have a fancy IPX4 rating, making them sweat and water resistant so they'll withstand anything from rain to heavy workouts.
Of course battery life is a big factor when choosing any wireless earphones and this years generation has seen a big improvement. The Apple AirPod 2's offered five hours of listening time with one charge, and 19 hours with the case. The third-generation AirPods now give up to 6 hours listening time with one charge and 30 hours with the case.
The third-generation AirPods see some big changes in terms of Sound. They'll now join the Airpods Max and Airpods Pro in supporting full spatial audio with dyanimc head-tracking, which the Apple AirPods 2's do not include. They also get Adaptive EQ which was introduced with the AirPods Pro and means the earbuds will tune the sound they produce in real-time according to how they fit in the ear.
We can't (yet!) give any information on pure sound quality improvements but if it's anything like the jump from the first-generation to the second you can expect a huge leap in performance.
Apple HomePod Mini
The Apple HomePod Mini gets three new color options including orange, yellow and blue.
Apple is now following suit with the competition here, Google's Nest Mini have various colour options and there's also a blue Amazon Echo Dot.
"Jam-packed with innovation, HomePod mini delivers unexpectedly big sound for speaker of its size. At just under 8.5 centimteres tall, it takes up almost no space but fills the entire room with rich, 360-degree audio that sounds amazing from very angle. Add more than one HomePod mini for truly expansive sound."
The new speakers with have color matched details including; the fabric mesh, volume icons, and power cable. They will cost the same as the original Mini's at £89, and will be available in November.
MacBook Pro
The long-awaited redesign for the Macbook Pro is now here, featuring configurations with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chip, a mini-LED display with ProMotion, an HDMI port and SDXC card reader, charging with MagSafe 3, a notch housing a 1080p webcam, and more.
"The most powerful Macbook Pro ever is here. With the blazing-fast M1 Pro or M1 Max chip - the first Apple silcon designed for pros - you get groundbreaking performance and amazing battery life. Add to that a stunning Liquid Retina XDR display, the best camera and audio ever in a Mac notebook, and all the ports you need. The first notebook of its kind, this Macbook Pro is a beast."
The Macbook Pro features a new design and is available in two display sizes. 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch. There are now more ports available, with the right side of the machine offering an HDMI port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and an SDXC card reader. The left side of the machine features a MagSafe 3 port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a headphone jack. The keyboard now has a full-height function key row in place of the Touch Bar and the entire keyboard area is black.
The MacBook Pro features significantly reduced display borders that are 3.5mm thick, with a notch out of the top of the display for the webcam.
