Apple launches red iPhone, updates iPad
New video editing app, boosted iPhone SE and changes to Swift Playgrounds also released
Apple is well known for unveiling new products at flashy events, but it doesn’t always work that way. In early March it decided to quietly launch or update a number of products with a simple change to the Apple Store website.
Perhaps most noteworthy of the changes, at least visually, was the introduction of a PRODUCT(RED) iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The phones come in a red finish and are available with 128GB or 256GB of storage, with prices ranging from £699 to £919. A portion of that cost will go towards fighting HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sarahan Africa.
Out of Air
The iPad range also got an important update. The iPad Air 2 has been phased out and replaced with a 9.7-inch device simply named ‘iPad’. This features a brighter Retina display and a faster A9 chip (the Air 2 came equipped with an A8X chip). It’s also slightly thicker and heavier than the Air 2, and also lacks a laminated display.
That said, it has seen a price drop, costing £339 for a 32GB model and £429 for a 128GB version. That makes it the most affordable tablet Apple has released to date. Apple also unveiled Smart Covers for iPad in charcoal grey, white, midnight blue, pink sand and red to match the PRODUCT(RED) iPhone, plus a range of new iPhone 7, 7 Plus and Apple Watch straps in various colours and designs. Apple hasn’t finished there. The iPhone SE has had a noticeable storage bump, with options being doubled to 32GB and 128GB, costing £379 and £479 respectively. The iPad mini 4 now has more capacity (128GB instead of 32GB) for the same price as before. Also, the iPad mini 2 has now been discontinued. On the software side of things, Apple debuted Clips, a free iOS video creation app. This combines video, photos and music and ‘lets users create animated captions and titles using just their voice’. There are also filters and various effects to create ‘expressive videos’ that can be quickly shared to social media and video websites. Finally, Swift Playgrounds, the coding app for iPad, now supports five extra languages: Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Latin American Spanish.