Apple's just announced the $499 iPad Air
at its event today in San Francisco, and we've gotten a chance to spend
a few minutes with the new device. Long story short: it looks and feels
like a larger (but not that much larger) iPad mini, and that's mostly a
really good thing. It's really beautiful, with cleaner bezels, a much
thinner profile, and sharper, boxier edges.
The 9.7-inch, one-pound,
7.5mm-thick device feels much better in one hand than it used to, though
it's certainly not as portable as the iPad mini — which now has a 2048 x 1536 screen
to match the Air's as well. Along with the new A7 processor and a
handful of under-the-hood improvements, this is just about the upgrade
we expected, but more than ever the iPad Air feels like you're just
holding a big screen full of the internet. That's probably a good thing.
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Where we're perhaps most
confused about the Air is its naming. There was a palpable tension in
the room in San Francisco when the name change was revealed, as if an
iPad Pro were imminent — and though Tim Cook and others spent time
bashing the strategies of Microsoft and Apple's other competitors, it
seems like a natural progression from the current lineup. Also confusing
is the fact that the iPad 2 remains on sale for $399, despite woefully
outdated software. Apple's known for knocking $100 off the price of its
current model as it introduces the next one, but it changed the strategy
significantly here. And when the 7.9-inch iPad mini comes with
virtually identical internals for $100 less, how does Apple
differentiate its two products other than simply screen size?
But business and branding
strategies aside, there's little doubt that the iPad Air is going to be
even more powerful and much more portable than any previous 9.7-inch
iPad. Both White and Space Gray iPad Airs look nice, the Space Gray
slightly stealthier and the White a little more fun (and a little more
prone to fingerprints, it looks like). They feel fast, though not
noticeably different from the A7-powered iPhone 5S. Even despite a
couple of surprising omissions, like a TouchID fingerprint sensor, this
device deserves a new name: it feels completely different than the
full-sized iPad once did. Apple's clearly trying to turn the iPad Air
into a full-size device you're willing to take outside your home, and
based on our first impressions we'd happily throw one in our backpacks
today.
