Spring has sprung - Apple announces April event
You can usually count on Apple to release new products in March each year, either through a full-fledged event or, at the very least, a press release. March 2021 brought no such announcements, and I started to worry that we might have to wait until summer for anything new. Thankfully, Apple finally announced their “Spring Loaded” event, which will take place on April 20th. Here’s a quick rundown of what we should expect to see.
iPad Pro
The surest bet for this year’s Spring event is an iPad Pro refresh. The iPad Pros saw a minor update last Spring with new chips, more cameras, and LiDAR scanners. The biggest news was the Magic Keyboard accessory for iPad Pro, which also included a trackpad and made the iPad a more viable laptop competitor.
This year, the main attraction should be a mini-LED screen on the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro. According to 9to5 Mac, “With the introduction of mini-LED, dramatically smaller LEDs are used, which provides much greater control of localized backlighting, allowing higher brightness and deeper blacks. The combination boosts the contrast ratio, as well as using less power.”
It’s also possible that Apple will change the regular USB-C port of the iPad Pro to a Thunderbolt port, opening up a whole new world of accessories and higher transfer speeds. And of course, the new iPads should include some variation of the A14 Bionic chip found in the latest iPhone 12 models.
AirTags
AirTags are rumored to be small discs that can be attached to items or hidden in bags, letting you see their location in the Find My app and, presumably, through some sort of augmented reality interface. They’ll use anonymous location services so that, if something is lost or stolen, any iPhone that comes near it will be able to ping it, showing you its location in the app.
Similar products have been on the market for years, but as usual, Apple’s integration of hardware and software will make these things hard to beat for those of us who are fully in the Apple ecosystem.
This product has been rumored for what seems like a decade (actually about 2 years), so I’d be willing to bet they’re finally ready for release next week.
AirPods
While the AirPods Max are still brand new and hard to find, the original AirPods and AirPods Pro are starting to get a little long in the tooth. The 2nd generation AirPods were released in March of 2019, and the AirPods Pro have been around since October 2019.
Apple is rumored to be working on an update to AirPods Pro, as well as a 3rd generation of the regular AirPods with a design more similar to that of the Pro. That said, it’s not clear whether or not this event will reveal those new products.
Redesigned iMac
This is what I’m most excited to see, though I’m not sure if this will be the event for it. We got the first round of Apple Silicon Macs late last year, including the MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro and Mac mini. The general belief is that a redesigned smaller iMac will be the next release. The 21.5-inch iMac is mostly unavailable, and rumor has it that the Apple Silicon version will introduce a completely new design with a larger 24-inch screen.
Since the larger Intel iMac was recently updated and Apple started at the bottom of the Mac lineup to introduce the M1 system, I think it makes sense that we’ll only see the redesigned low-end iMac first. We shouldn’t see the first round of “pro” machines until WWDC, which has already been scheduled for June 7-11.
Maybe a surprise or two?
Those are the main announcements that are expected/rumored, but of course, Apple could always surprise us.
The Spring Loaded event will be streamed live on Tuesday, April 20th at 10am Pacific, and can be viewed on Apple’s Website, YouTube, or through the Apple Events app on Apple TV.
What do you think? Have you been waiting for any of these announcements? Is there anything else you’re hoping to see? Let me know in the comments!
