Apple's iPad and Mac event: By the numbers
Numbers because even Lana del Rey (especially, Lana del Rey) has a price.
For the second time in as many months, Apple's executive leadership took to the stage to reveal the company's latest luxury computing products. This time around we saw a new iPad Pro with a fancy magnetic stylus, a Retina-enabled MacBook Air (made entirely of recycled aluminum), a new Mac Mini, and $9 headphone dongles to make the tablet you just dropped a grand on minimally functional in polite society.
$1,200: Apple finally got around to updating the MacBook Air in 2018. The new iteration includes a Retina display, a chassis made entirely from recycled aluminum, costs double what I paid for my first car and doesn't offer an SD card reader. But hey, at least they didn't try to shoehorn in that horrendous TouchBar from last year.
$9: You can add the iPad Pro to the list of things that you need a new headphone dongle for. The new model requires a $9 headphone dongle as it switches from Lightning to USB-C as it sole physical port. Add your own joke about "courage" here.
3 years: Apple first got on board with USB-C technology back in 2015 with that year's MacBook. Now the iPad is getting in on the action. So you know what that means: time to go pay through the nose for accessory adapters for a bunch of devices you already own (see above)!
0 Wires: There's some respite though, the one thing that (we hope) never requires an adapter is the redesigned Pencil. It's magnetic and will charge wirelessly (no more hanging it out of the Lightning port). Smart, but we wonder how many real pencils you could get for the same price (TBD).
$800: That's what the 2018 Mac Mini starts at, in price. $4,200 is what the 2018 Mac Mini ends at, in price.
