Apple's 'Peek Performance' keynote: thoughts

We're back for the first Apple keynote of 2022, and it promises to be all about performance- so nothing too exciting for most people, unless you're hanging out for a laptop or computer that will load your photo library imperceptibly faster than the current devices. I haven't been across any major rumours, so this will all be new for me too. Let's do it!

Overall event thoughts:

Well, when they said this was all about performance, they weren't lying. For the average consumer, the new iPad is probably the most exciting thing to be announced today. Those looking for affordable devices will also appreciate the new iPhone SE very much- it's a solid device at it's price point. The Mac Studio and Mac Studio Display continue the trend of ever astounding performance numbers with price tags to match, and I really don't see a use case for most people that aren't doing extremely intensive computing or graphics tasks all day, every day.

Intro

No real intro video today, just an animation of the Apple logo and a pan down to Tim Cook.

Apple TV+

Tim talks about some of the shows that Apple TV+ has produced so far, including talking about award wins and nominations, and then we get a montage of shows/movies that have been released on the service. Note that if you haven't tried Apple TV+ yet, I'd definitely recommend it. There are a number of great shows and movies available- I've really enjoyed a good number of them including shows still releasing weekly such as Severance, Suspicion, and Central Park, among many others like The Afterparty, Trying, CODA, Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, and Acapulco, to list a few. ??

Announcement: Friday Night Baseball. Tim spends about 10 seconds talking about Baseball coming to Apple TV+. Not at all exciting for me (although I'm sure it will be for some people), but it's Apple's first foray into live sport, which could be a positive sign of things to come. Friday Night Baseball will be available in 9 regions at launch, including Australia, and, for a limited time, will be available to users without a subscription! ??

Verdict: ??

Apple Silicon

Tim has grouped everything from here on (except the new colour announcement directly below) under the Apple Silicon headline, so I'll throw it in here for you as well.

iPhone

iPhone 13 Pro and 13 come in new colours- Alpine Green and Green respectively. They'll be available for preorder this Friday and they look pretty great.

It really feels like Tim is rushing through this event to this point. Might have a lot to say? Or just wants to get through it ????.

There's a new iPhone SE! It comes with the A15 Bionic SoC, the same chip that's in the iPhone 13. Francesca Sweet talks to the A15 Bionic, but I won't go over it as it has ben covered in the last iPhone event writeup (you can find that here). It comes in 3 colours including are Midnight, Starlight, and Product Red. The screen is 4.7", and it is IP67 weather resistant. It still has TouchID, and also supports 5G. It has a single rear 12MP camera, and a 7MP front-facing camera of course. 'iPhone SE will get updates for years to come' - little dig at affordable Android phones that tend to stop receiving major updates after about 2 years.

Pricing is from $719 AUD. Preorders start this Friday and launching March 18- so not long to wait if you've been waiting for a new affordable iPhone!

Verdict: Great for those looking for an affordable device, there's definitely still a good number of people that appreciate the SE, so this will be a welcome refresh for them. Otherwise, unless you like the colour green, not much for you.

iPad Air

Tim is announcing a new iPad Air- and he has focused on performance. Angellina Kyazike talks to the new device, and covers the specs. The iPad Air is getting the M1 SoC. That'll drive a performance increase of up to 60%, and graphics performance up to twice as fast as the previous generation. The new iPad Air is, according to Apple, 2x as fast as the best-selling Windows laptop at the same price point (potentially creative wording there). The front facing camera has been updated to 12MP, meaning all iPad models now support Center Stage. the iPad Air is also getting 5G, and the USB-C port is now twice as fast. It supports the 2nd generation Apple Pencil. A short wayside mention of a couple major updates to apps - Swift Playgrounds and iMovie. The new iPad Air comes in 5 colours- Space Grey, Starlight, Pink, Blue, and Purple.

Pricing is from $929 AUD, and comes in 64 and 256GB configurations, and it's available in wifi and cellular models (cellular models from $1159 AUD). Preorders this Friday and launching March 18.

Verdict: Incremental upgrade with the feature additions you'd expect, but definitely not something to say no to. If you were already planning to buy an iPad Air, then this is a great time to do so, but not a must buy by any means.

Mac

A quick summary of the transition to the M-line of chips so far.

Today, John Ternus introduces us to a new chip in the M1 family- the M1 Ultra. He hands to Johny Srouji. I think we have seen him before, but for some reason today he reminds a bit of Christopher Walken in Severance ??. Johny walks us through the M1 Ultra, and tells us that the M1 Ultra is 2 M1 Max chips joined together using a die to die interconnect technology that allows for the 2 chips to work as one. It has the most transistors ever in a PC chip. Memory bandwidth is up to 800GB/s, and it supports up to 128GB of Unified Memory. It's 8x faster than the M1 chip. Its power efficiency is industry leading (as we'll see a bit later). Back to John Ternus. He summarises and then hands to a video where devs talk to the performance of the M1 Ultra.

The M1 Ultra is going to be available in the all new Mac Studio (along with a new Mac Studio Display). This is honestly way over the top for 99% of users in my opinion. Mac Studio has a pretty small form factor, but an awesome fan setup. It has plenty of ports on the back (Thunderbolt, USB-A, HDMI), as well as 2 USB-C ports and an SD port on the front. It can support up to 5 displays.

Mac Studio comes with the M1 Max as a a base chip, and is much faster than both the 27" iMac and the current Mac Pro. Mac Studio comes with internal SSD capacity of up to 8TB. Mac Studio with the M1 Max is 3.4x faster than the fastest iMac, and with the M1 Ultra it's up to 80% faster than the fastest current Mac Pro. In terms of power, it will use up to 1000 kWh less per year than a high end PC desktop.

The Mac Studio Display has two stand options, as well as a VESA adapter if required. It has 14.7 million pixels, meaning it is a 5k display. It has True Tone. It has a 12MP Ultra Wide camera with Center Stage, and the display actually has an A13 chip inside it. It has a 3-mic array, and a hi-fi 6 speaker sound system. The speakers support Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos. It has 3 USB-C ports and one Thunderbolt port. You can charge any MacBook from the Display. There are new colours for the Magic Trackpad, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Mouse to match the new Mac Studio Display.

Pricing: I'm sure you couldn't wait for the pricing on this one! Just as hi-fi as the device's performance, the Mac Studio starts at $3099 AUD with M1 Max and with M1 Ultra it starts at a cool $6099. The Mac Studio Display starts at $2499 AUD. If you want to, you can order today, with availability from March 18. I certainly won't be placing an order anytime soon.

John hints that Mac Pro is still alive- but seems as though that will be released another day. Will that be more high-performing than Mac Studio? Can't imagine who it would be for. But that's none of my business.

Verdict: You can't deny that the devices look nice and they will be able to do incredible things- but is any regular user going to get anywhere near realising the potential of these devices? The numbers are amazing, both in terms of performance and cost, so if you don't have an unlimited supply of funds, you had better have a legitimate use case for one! ??

Closing:?

A pretty uneventful event, with some affordable and some very expensive products announced. The M1 Ultra is a beast, but I'm not sure how big the market for it is- and that's ok! Not every product has a wide target market. Up next is most likely WWDC, where we can expect to get a look at iOS 16! I'm looking forward to that. Hope you enjoyed reading about today's keynote, and speak then! ?