Apple’s ‘Pro and Tell’ Event: Everything Announced This Week

Apple’s Pro and Tell experience week is here, with the new iPad Mini unveiled on Monday, a new MacBook Pro and iMac on Tuesday and a long-anticipated touchscreen laptop on Wednesday morning.

Apple’s had a busy few months, launching the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in September alongside the Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the AirPods 5, followed by the iPhone Duo going on sale at the end of last week. Apple’s refreshed smart home lineup, revealed during its recent Welcome Home event, is up next: the HomePod Mini 2 will launch on Friday; the Apple HomeView and Apple TV 4K on Nov. 13; and availability for the Home Collection products begins in December.

This week culminated with Apple hosting a special event on Wednesday, and CNET was on the ground capturing all the latest details.

Apple’s new iPad Mini

One of the two new iPad Mini colors: midnight.Apple

Announced on Monday, Apple’s new iPad Mini is available to preorder on Wednesday and will go on sale Nov. 6. It starts at $699 for 128GB of storage, $799 for 256GB and $999 for 512GB. 

Setting it apart from the last iPad Mini, which came out two years ago, the new tablet has an 8.5-inch OLED screen (versus an LCD), IP67 water and dust resistance, an Apple A20 processor, a repositioned front-facing camera and a through-screen speaker system called Acoustic Display, as well as being thinner and lighter than before.

A new iMac

Apple’s new iMac M6 comes in a choice of seven colors.

The latest iMac, announced Tuesday, features Apple’s M6 processor with a CPU and a GPU each having up to 12 cores, two more cores apiece than before, Apple said. A new dual 16-core Neural Engine delivers AI compute that’s up to twice as fast as the previous generation, the company said. The iMac also has a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display.

Preorders for the iMac M6 will begin Wednesday, Oct. 28, with availability to follow on Nov. 6. Pricing starts at $1,499 for an iMac with M6 featuring a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. It’s available in seven colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver.

MacBook Pro refresh

Apple

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro, also announced Tuesday, similarly features the M6 processor with a 12-core CPU and GPU and dual 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks. Apple says the battery life runs up to 24 hours. The laptop features a Liquid Retina XDR display, a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera and a six-speaker sound system.

The MacBook Pro with M6 can be preordered starting Wednesday, Oct. 28, and will be in stores and delivered to customers starting Nov. 6. Pricing starts at $1,999.

Finally, a touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple

At an event in Los Angeles on Wednesday, new Apple CEO John Ternus unveiled a new MacBook Pro with what Apple calls a PROLED XDR Display. The long-anticipated touchscreen MacBook Pro comes in 14- and 16-inch models, with a Dynamic Island that features Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI, up to 128GB of memory and 16TB of storage, and a choice of either the M5 Pro or M5 Max chips.

The laptops are also thinner and lighter than previous MacBook Pros, weighing 3 and 4 pounds for the 14- and 16-inch variants, respectively, and have a six-speaker sound system, Thunderbolt 5, a 12-megapixel camera and run MacOS 27 Golden Gate.

You can preorder them today, with availability on Nov. 6. For the M5 Pro chip, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR starts at $2,899, and the 16-inch model starts at $3,399; for the M5 Max chip, the 14-inch laptop starts at $4,499, and the 16-inch version starts at $4,799.

Apple Creator Studio updates

This week also brought updates to the Apple Creator Studio software suite. For instance, Final Cut Pro for Mac now includes built-in MotionVFX, a collection of visual effects, plug-ins, transitions, templates and motion graphics tools; the curated Content Hub now includes video assets and is available in Final Cut Pro; Pixelmator Pro introduces Generate Fill, which lets creators transform selected areas of an image using natural language; and Keynote, Pages and Numbers introduce new AI features in beta, including assistants that understand document contexts.

The Apple Creator Studio updates will be available in November to subscribers for free.

And as for the iPhone Duo launch last week, check out CNET’s ongoing folding test — you can watch the livestream here as we continue testing how many times the iPhone Duo can fold without cracking in the CNET lab.

Corinne Reichert

Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

See full bio

Jon Skillings

Editorial director

Jon Skillings is an editorial director at CNET, where he’s worked since 2000. A born browser of dictionaries, he honed his language skills as a US Army linguist (Polish and German) before diving into editing for tech publications — including at PC Week and the IDG News Service — back when the web was just getting under way, and even a little before. For CNET, he’s written on topics from GPS, AI and 5G to aircraft, astronauts, brass instruments, streaming services and James Bond.

See full bio

Source link