Janet Ingber
On March 8, Apple held its “Peek Performance” event. Unlike their annual Worldwide Developers Conference, this event focused on hardware and had audio description.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, welcomed everyone. He spoke about the original content available on Apple TV+. Next was a video montage of current and upcoming movies.
Cook then talked about Friday Night Baseball. A video of major league players was shown. During baseball season, two major league games will be exclusively shown on Apple TV+ on Friday evenings. Following this, Apple detailed the following hardware.
iPhone SE 3
This new phone is a significant upgrade to the iPhone SE that was available in 2020. It uses the same A15 Bionic chip as the iPhone 13, which results in much faster processing. It also means that you will be able to do iOS updates for years to come. Battery life is improved, but it is less than on the iPhone 13.
Apple kept the Home button and Touch ID on the iPhone SE. For people who do not want Face ID, this phone is an excellent option. Face ID is not available on the SE. Therefore, if you want this feature, you will need to get a different phone such as the iPhone 13.
The iPhone SE has the same physical design as the previous iPhone SE. It has a 4.7 inch HD Retina display. The durable glass on the front and back of the phone is the same glass on the back of iPhone 13. Unlike its predecessor, this new phone supports wireless charging.
The iPhone SE has a single 12-megapixel rear camera and a 7-megapixel front-facing camera. Although these cameras are not as good as the ones on the iPhone 13, they are still very good and we believe should provide solid results when using OCR or image recognition.
Although the phone has 5G capability, millimeter wave is not supported. According to MacRumors, “With no support for mmWave 5G speeds, the iPhone SE models will be limited to sub-6GHz 5G. Sub-6GHz 5G is still faster than LTE in most cases, but it is not the superfast impressive 5G speed that you see in marketing materials.”
This phone does not have Apple’s U1 chip and therefore does not support Precision Finding. Precision Finding lets a U1 chip-equipped device communicate with another U1 enabled device. For example, I have an AirTag on my guide dog’s collar. I used the Find My app on my iPhone 13. With Precision Finding, my iPhone gave me step-by-step directions for where he was in my house. Both my iPhone 13 and the AirTag have the U1 chip. Any phone, including the SE 3, which supports AirTags, will still play a sound. On the SE 3, you will not get step-by-step directions.
The SE costs $429 for 64 GB, $479 for 128 GB, or $579 for 256 GB.
It is available in Midnight (black), Starlight (white), and Product Red.
iPad Air 5
This new iPad uses the same M1 chip as the MacBook Air, iPad Pro, and Mac Mini. According to Apple, the M1 chip offers up to 60% more performance than the chip used in the previous iPad Air. Like the iPhone SE 3, the iPad Air 5 has Touch ID rather than Face ID. The Touch ID is on the power button. It does not have a headphone jack but has a USB-C port.
This iPad has a 10.9 inch Liquid Retina display and a new, 12megapixel, ultra wide front camera. The camera supports Center Stage, Apple’s video conferencing feature. As with the iPhone SE, there is 5G support, but not for mmWave. The iPad is available in Wi-Fi and cellular models.
The iPad Air 5 comes in 64 GB or 256GB of storage. Wi-Fi models cost $599 for 64GB and $749 for the 256GB model. Check with your cell phone carrier for prices for cellular models.
This iPad is available in Starlight, blue, space gray, pink, and purple.
Mac Studio
Apple introduced its new desktop, the Mac Studio. If you do only basic tasks such as surfing the web and email, this new desktop is overkill. The Mac Studio is the same 7.7 inches square shape as the Mac Mini, but is 3.7 inches high. It has many ports including Thunderbolt 4, USB-C, an SD card slot, and an audio jack.
The Mac Studio offers two processors: the M1 Max and the M1 Ultra. The M1 Max is available on the MacBook Pro. The M1 Ultra is Apple’s newest processor. It uses Apple’s proprietary UltraFusion technology to connect two M1 chips together. According to Apple, the M1 Ultra is almost 8 times faster than the M1 Chip.
Apple also introduced its new Studio Display. It has a 27 inch 5K display, six speakers with Spatial Audio, three microphones, and many connecting ports. It also has a 12 megapixel wide-angle camera and Center Stage. Apple sells two stands that work with this display.
The Mac Studio with the M1 Max chip starts at $1,999. The Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip starts at $3,999. The Studio Display starts at $1,599.
