On March 21st Apple announced the iPhone se and 9.7-inch iPad Pro just weeks ahead of Apple’s 40th birthday during a special event at the Apple Town Hall.
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On the iPad front, today’s reveal suddenly made sense of the fact that there was no update to the iPad Air 2 last autumn.
The news comes the same day that Apple used a flashy product unveiling to hammer home its resolve to fight the US government’s court order as part of a larger battle. A 9.7-inch iPad Pro will join its 12.9-inch counterpart on March 31. Starting at $399 for the base 16GB model, the iPhone SE flaunts the TouchID feature that was available in the iPhone 5s and its successors, but lacks the Force Touch feature that was introduced last fall in the iPhone 6s models. But given the choice between working on a higher-quality small screen and a lower-quality (and pricier) big screen, it’ll be hard to pick for some people. And I want it. Or, at least I want the new model’s features in my bigger-screen iPad Pro. If you think that the 12.9 inch iPad Pro was sweet but a little too big for your taste, the new 9.7 inch iPad Pro is here to fit to your demand.
At $400 for an unsubsidized, no-contract phone, the iPhone SE has the lowest price ever for a brand-new iPhone model.
Apple senior vice-president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller introduces the iPad Pro during an event at Apple headquarters yesterday.
“iPhone SE is an exciting new idea – we started with a beloved, iconic design and reinvented it from the inside out”.
Apple also announced a new scheme it called “Liam” to take apart old iPhones and reuse the materials. “Everyone who wants a smaller phone is going to love iPhone SE”. Considering the iPhone SE has the most of the hardware of the iPhone 6s, giving it an iPhone 5 tag would have given an impression that it was a refresh of the almost three-year-old phone.
“We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data and over our privacy”, CEO Tim Cook said.
The other new product Apple discussed at the keynote was the latest iPad Pro with a 9.7-inch screen.
It’s tough to say how fast the stock will sell out for the iPhone se or the new smaller iPad Pro. The Apple logo is now more closely colour-matched to the phone’s back, available in four versions – space grey, silver, gold and rose gold.
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The newest feature will be the Night Shift which automatically adjusts the colors of the phone’s display “to the warmer end of the spectrum after dark and may even help you get a better night’s sleep”.
