Hasta La Gadget!

Apple wrapped its October event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco earlier today and, as promised, there was plenty to dig into. We’ve pumped out plenty of stories dissecting Apple’s myriad announcements, but in case you’re looking for a highlight reel of sorts, we’ve put together a quick rundown of everything Apple pulled back the curtain on.

The Hardware

New MacBook Pros: Yeah, people tend to swoon about new iGadgets, but the company’s refreshed batch of Retina Macbook Pros are nothing to sneeze at. Apple showed off slimmer 13- and 15-inch versions that sport Intel’s latest Haswell chipsets and bigger batteries and come preloaded with OS X Mavericks.

In the event these things struck your fancy, you can lay claim to yours in the Apple Store starting today. Here are Darrell Etherington’s thoughts on how they compare to past versions based on initial impressions.

New Mac Pro: Many a nerd has salivated over Apple’s curious Mac Pro redesign, and today we got a better look at what’s ticking away under the hood. Long story short, the back provides you all the access to input/output/expandability you could want, and the otherwise unbroken smooth cylinder evokes a ‘Darth Vader’ vibe.

It’s got dual workstation GPUs (proprietary in design but potentially upgradeable down the line) and an amazing Intel processor, making it an awfully powerful machine housed in an awfully pretty body.

The new Mac Pro will be available in December starting at $2,999, and you can see our hands-on impression of the computing powerhouse (courtesy of Matthew Panzarino) here.

iPads: And who could forget the iPads – Apple pulled back the curtain on two new models, the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina Display.

The two actually have plenty of things in common: both sport the same 64-bit A7 chip that recently debuted in the iPhone 5s, both have screens that run at 2048-by-1536 resolution (though the smaller screen on the mini will make for much crisper images), and both are going to hit store shelves starting in November. They even resemble each other to an extent – the Air essentially looks like a 10-inch iPad mini, making it significantly slimmer and lighter than the model that came before it.

If you’re not looking to spend too much, though, Apple is keeping some older models around to make sure that anyone who wants to jump on the iPad bandwagon can do so. The (non-Retina) iPad 2 is still kicking and will set you back $399 to start.

The Software

Today it seems the name of the game was ‘free.’ Apple announced that two of its most prominent software suites – iLife for content creation and iWork for, well, work – would now be free with the purchase of any new Mac or iOS device.

But that’s not all. Apple’s next big OS X update, OS X Mavericks, is also free and it’s available right now for all to download. This should help dramatically raise the rate at which users update their software, which has a benefit for security and for developers, too.

Considering that the Apple has been charging for these annual updates since the earliest days of OS X, this is an unexpected (though very welcome) change. It’s true the company has been reducing the cost of updates with each new version, but going completely free was a move almost no one saw coming.

Apple also delivered an update about how quickly people are taking to iOS 7, and the numbers aren’t too shabby. It’s been just over a month since the update went live and started getting pushed to iDevices across the globe, and so far a full 64 percent of those Apple gadgets are now running iOS 7.

And that’s about everything there is to know about Apple’s big fall event, without getting too deep into the nitty gritty. Safe to say, Apple has a lot of new stuff for people to get excited about going into the holiday shopping season.

The first-generation iPad mini was near-perfect in terms of a small tablet, with the one big shortcoming being that it lacked Apple’s impressive Retina high-resolution display. It was hard to go back to a standard-res screen after the iPad 3 and iPhone 4, which is why it’s great that the new version offers a Retina screen.

The eye-boggling 2048 x 1536 screen looks excellent in person, and for anyone coming from a generation one device it’s going to be a dramatic change. The iPad mini itself is very slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor to accommodate the Retina Display with the same battery life, adding 0.01 inches and 0.05 pounds to the specs of the original, but that makes minimal difference to the actual feel of the product in the hand.

Also new to the iPad mini is a new space gray color scheme, which is lighter than the dark black of the original version. As with the iPhone, it’s an attractive color option, and I suspect also less susceptible to scratches. It’s actually quite close when compared side-by-side to the silver version, but it’s still got the solid black front bezel.

The new case options feel about the same as the existing versions, though they come in new color variants. I’m always a fan of the smart cover, and this time around is no exception. Everything else aside, though, the big attraction here is the Retina display.

Apple may have beefed up the iPad mini’s processor power with the A7 chip and added a 128 GB storage option, plus much better global LTE coverage, but the Retina is what’s really going to make it worth the extra $70 over the original cost of the gen-one iPad mini. And considering that you do get an iPad essentially as powerful as its larger sibling in such a small, one-hand holdable package, it really is worth the minor price hike, based on my initial impressions.

Three years ago, Apple unveiled the original iPad, boxy and thick and heavy by comparison. Four iPads later, we’re here, welcoming the fifth generation iPad into the world.

And boy is it a beauty!

You’ve been waiting long enough, through a summer of rumors, so let’s just get right down to business on the new Apple tablet.

New Design

For the first time since the iPad 2, we’re seeing a brand new design for the iPad (fifth generation).

The new iPad sports the same 9.7-inch display as all of its predecessors, but with an updated shape following the design language of the iPad mini. It weighs just one pound, making it the lightest full size tablet in the world. It’s .4 lbs lighter than previous generations. Also, the iPad Air only 7.5mm thick, which is 25 percent thinner than previous iPads.

The bezel is 43 percent thinner on the sides and the edges of the device are tapered the same way the iPad mini drastically curves along the sides, as opposed to the gradual slope of older iPads.

Unfortunately, there’s no TouchID on this bad boy.

Processor

Apple has updated the new iPad’s processor to the A7, the same you’ll find in the iPhone 5s. It’s 8x faster than the first generation and graphics are 72 times faster than then the first generation iPad. Of course, it would be interesting to hear stats on fourth generation iPad comparison, but you can’t always get what you want from an Apple announcement.

The new processor is also accompanied by that M7 motion co-processor that was used in the iPhone 5s, which focuses on computing information generated from the sensors to make the device smarter all around.

The new A7 processor runs on a 64-bit architecture, like all the new Apple products, with more than 1 billion transistors. Apple also tossed in MIMO technology to help with reliable Wifi, and all that with 10 hours of battery life, according to Apple.

Camera

The camera technology on current iPad models is incredibly outdated, to the point where it’s laughable to see someone hold up their iPad like a camera.

That said, Apple has decided to pay a little more attention to the iPad camera this time around, with an updated 5-megapixel iSight camera, with 1080p FaceTime camera in the front and dual-mics for video chat.

Pricing and Availability

The iPad (fifth generation) will be available in black, white, silver, and space gray (no gold, for some reason), and will replace the current generation (fourth) iPad at a $499 starting price. Wifi + Cellular starts at $629.

Meanwhile, the iPad 2 will remain in the line up for $399.

New iPads will be available on November 1, just in time for the holidays.

This post is being updated as information is available, so please refresh.

In San Francisco today, Apple shared some numbers during its keynote. Only five days after the iOS 7 release, 200 million devices ran the new operating system. It represents a 64 percent adoption rate to date. “This blows away the other guys,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on stage.

As always, this massive adoption rate is one of Apple’s major strengths. While many believed that iOS 7 could be disorienting to iOS 6 users, the adoption rate is pretty similar to older iOS releases. Users can now update over the air, carriers don’t have a say and many older iPhones and iPads are compatible. All those key elements make the iOS adoption rate much faster than the Android or Windows Phone adoption rates.

Apple introduced a new feature in iTunes both on the mobile devices and on computers, iTunes Radio. For this feature alone, Apple touts 20 million listeners. While 20 million listeners is much less impressive than the 200 million iOS 7 user number, many of these users were already listening to music through Pandora. We don’t know whether those numbers are above or below Apple’s expectations. It’s a good start, but clearly not enough to compete with Pandora.

As a reminder, iTunes Radio is not available in every country where Apple sells iPhones. Only a fraction of iPhone, iPad and iTunes users can use iTunes Radio. As content deals are hard to sign, getting iTunes Radio into everyone’s hands will be the next difficult step for Apple.