Apple announced a ton of new hardware at their first even of the year. Some of their major product categories were refreshed and a new budget laptop has joined the mix as Apple aims to further dominate the personal computing market.

In chronological order these items were announced throughout the week with a hands on event March 4, for the press and tech creators.

The iPad Air was updated with the M4 chip. My 11” iPad Pro is now obsolete…kidding of course, but the iPad Air would still be my recommendation for the average iPad user.

I loved my iPad air 4 and it strikes the best balance in the lineup between reasonable(sort of) price and support for the “pro” accessories like the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil.

Apple claims it is up to 30% faster than iPad air with M3 and 2.3x faster than iPad Air with M1. The last Air I used had the A14 bionic chip, from the iPhone 12…it’s likely a bajillion times faster than that.

Memory jumps to 12gb likely to accommodate future Apple Intelligence workflows with on-device AI

It also gets the new Apple modem and wifi chips the N1 and C1X. This unlocks Wifi 7 support and with these chips in the M5 iPad Pro Apple was touting them as the best performing options…ever.

The Air still comes in 11 and 13 inch sizes so you can pick what suits your workflow best or wrestle with the decision and buy both, spending weeks agonizing over what the right choice is(not speaking from personal opinion or anything).

The Air also has support for Apple Pencil Pro and of course still the Magic Keyboard.

All of these upgrades for the same starting price of $599 for 11 inch and $799 for 13 inch

Pre-orders are live and it will be available March 11!

This new Air gets a center stage camera along the top edge like the pro, but still only has Touch ID and no Face ID which sort of annoys me, given the new camera placement in the Air, but I guess they need something other than a better screen on the Pro to further differentiate it.

Apple’s budget phone gets an upgrade as well, the 128gb storage model is gone and 256 is now the base, which is a much needed change. These low level storage tiers as the base model have been terrible for years.

It also get MagSafe charging…finally! Up to 15W fast wireless charging.

This is the least interesting update to me, but at the $599 price point it is a compelling entry into the Apple lineup compared to the base price of $799 for the base iPhone 17, where you get a better camera package, a better and bigger screen with promotion.

The 17e comes in black, white and soft pink, nothing crazy, but classic Apple colors.

Ceramic Shield 2 makes an appearance, which is a nice bump of durability. It has an OLED display and features the A19 chip in a similar configuration to the iPhone 17.

Similar to the iPad, it gets the C1X modem, which I was surprised to see in Apple’s marketing they said it is better than the 16 Pro. Of course this is true, but I can’t believe Apple actually said their entry level phone does something better than their flagship device.

It now has a single 48mp fusion camera, which is effectively the main camera out of the pro phones.

Overall, not for me, but great for the budget conscience buyer.

Two new monitors after years of silence from Apple! They updated the Studio Display now called the Studio Display and added a Studio Display XDR to the lineup to replace the Pro Display XDR of years past.

The base Studio Display gets a minor upgrade, with a 12MP center stage camera with better quality and a six speaker sound system.

It now has Thunderbolt 5 with two ports for daisy chaining displays, Apple says up to four, depending on which Mac spec you are connecting.

It is able to do 96W passthrough charging power which is plenty to power even the highest spec MacBooks.

You can configure it with standard or nano texture glass and standard tilt-adjustable stand, tilt and height adjustable or VESA mount option just like the first iteration.

Starts at $1599, which sure there are an increasing number of 5k displays out there today, none pair with Mac as well as the Apple Studio Display. Simple things like brightness controls and volume controls on the keyboard, the speakers are very good, it doesn’t come with a massive power brick like some other monitors I’ve tried recently.

It doesn’t really need calibrated out of the box for any non-professional work like my YouTube and photo editing, but has full P3 wide color gamut as well if you needed to be more serious about color management.

Down from a 32” screen to a 27” mini LED panel that is 5k resolution, which is a great combination of size and pixel density for MacOS.

It is full P3 and Adobe RGB wide color gamuts, 120hz refresh rate, adaptive sync, the same Thunderbolt 5 connectivity of the base model and enough brightness for HDR editing.

It features the same upgraded 12MP center stage camera, three microphones and a six speaker sound system with support for Spatial Audio.

You can daisy chain the original Studio Display with these new Studio Displays as well and have a single cable going to your Mac for a dual screen setup.

There is nothing like this in the third party world.

The XDR comes with the tilt and height adjustable stand, as it should with its starting price of $3,299 with the glossy screen.

The nano texture options will run you an eye popping $3,599.

I need to go see this in person, because the Studio Display has been the best monitor that I’ve ever owned, but how much better is this mini LED tech compared to what I already own?

I hardly need more brightness, I’m rarely over 50% on the current Studio Display.

They did a press release for the new chips that are inside of the same MacBook Pro chassis.

The MacBook Pro were updated with these M5 Pro and Max chips, in the existing chasis, with some SSD speed increase, 1TB base storage and better on-device AI support thanks to this M5 chip.

Same great display

Same great battery life

Starting at $2,199 for the 14” M5 Pro

The MacBook Air gets the M5 chip and double the base storage at 512GB. A nice upgrade for those who don’t need the thermal performance of the Pro computers or the slightly bigger sizes and better screens.

Pricing “increased” but is the same as previous generation plus the storage upgrade since the 256GB version is gone, it starts at $1,099 now, which drives a need for a more affordable option in Apple’s lineup.

And here it is!

A MacBook starting at $600, education pricing is very good at $499. This is just insane. I think back to when I went to college the absolutely horrible HP laptop that I had for well over $1,000.

I might not have wanted a Mac back then, but you cannot argue the value of this machine, even though the tech community is.

Apple put the A18 Pro chip out of the iPhone 16 Pro into this computer, which is a little crazy. It just shows the power of the processors in the phones being severely under utilized in most places for most people.

It can run full on MacOS! Run is probably an understatement, the single core performance of this A18 Pro chip is proving to be better than even early M series chips like M1.

The Neo comes in blush, indigo, silver and citrus.

You get a 13” Retina screen, there is not an option for a bigger size.

There are only two options:

On both you get a headphone jack and two USB-C ports, WiFi 6E and bluetooth 6.

As I’m writing this (March 8), pre-orders were originally shipping March 11, they are already out to the end of March.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Shows the demand for a well built laptop at a good price.

It certainly still isn’t as cheap as a Chromebook but will be miles better than any plastic windows laptop in the same price range.

I’m considering getting the base model for some review and testing and replacing a very old MacBook Pro that my wife has (2015 vintage).

That’s it! A lot of great new and updated hardware from Apple as we head into the summer WWDC season ahead of the fall phone upgrades, with rumors already floating about what will come.

Until then, thanks for reading! You can connect with me in the following places: