Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook took to the stage in Brooklyn on Tuesday to unveil a sleeker — and pricier — MacBook Air, as well as new versions of the iPad Pro and Mac Mini computer.
The tech exec unveiled a much-needed refresh to its ubiquitous MacBook Air laptop — which hasn’t gotten a significant redesign since it was introduced by Steve Jobs in 2010 — at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House.
“It’s time for a new MacBook Air,” Cook told a crowd of tech journalists and bloggers gathered at the BAM venue.
It was Apple’s first-ever hardware event in New York City, as the Silicon Valley giant looks to shore up sales of products other than the iPhone, which now accounts for two-thirds of its business.
Despite being Apple’s most popular laptop for years, the Air has come to look woefully outdated next to recent versions of the MacBook and MacBook Pro.
First and foremost, the new MacBook Air will get narrower screen bezels, allowing it preserve its screen size while taking up 17 percent less space. The new Air, made from 100-percent recycled aluminum, will 10 percent thinner and a quarter-pound lighter than the current version.
It also will boast Apple’s high definition Retina Display, previously limited to the MacBook and MacBook Pro, as well as a Touch ID fingerprint reader for security.
On the downside, the new Air will start at $1,199 — $200 more than the starting price of the current Air — news that sent audible groans from the New York audience.
Elsewhere, the new iPad Pro tablets, like the iPhone X, will drop Apple’s one-ubiquitous home button in favor of an edge-to-edge display featuring its Face ID technology.
The new iPads, which come in 11-inch and 12.9-inch size options, feature Apple’s fastest-ever A12X Bionic chip, which Apple says makes them faster than 92 percent of all portable PCs on the market.
Apple is also giving up its famous Lightning ports on the iPad, opting instead to move to the industry standard USB-C.
The smaller iPad Pro starts at $799, and the larger model starts at $999.
Apple also refreshed its monitorless Mac Mini computer, improving processing speeds by 5x and boosting it from 16GB of memory to 32GB. The spec boost also raised its price — the Mac Mini now starts at $799, versus $499 for the current version.
