MacRumors

Nearly two years have passed since Apple last refreshed the iMac, but updates are finally here for both 4K and 5K models.

Apple today announced that its ‌iMac‌ lineup has been updated with Intel's latest 8th-gen and 9th-gen Core processors, including up to a 3.2GHz six-core 8th-gen Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz for the 21.5-inch 4K ‌iMac‌ and up to a 3.6GHz eight-core 9th-gen Core i9 with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz for the 27-inch 5K ‌iMac‌.

You'll of course have to pay to get peak performance, as processors range from a 3.6GHz quad-core 8th-gen Core i3 to a 3.7GHz six-core 9th-gen Core i5 in standard configurations of the new 4K and 5K iMacs.

Apple says the new 21.5-inch ‌iMac‌ models deliver up to 60 percent faster performance than the previous generation, while the new 27-inch ‌iMac‌ models deliver up to 2.4 times faster performance than the previous generation, narrowing the gap between the high-end standard ‌iMac‌ and the ‌iMac‌ Pro workstation.

Following in the footsteps of the 2018 MacBook Pro, Radeon Pro Vega graphics options are now available across the new ‌iMac‌ lineup, including Vega 20 for 21.5-inch models and Vega 48 for 27-inch models. Apple advertises up to 80 percent faster graphics performance compared to the previous ‌iMac‌ lineup.

The new ‌iMac‌ lineup offers up to 64GB of faster 2,666MHz DDR4 memory and up to 2TB of SSD storage. The base model 21.5-inch 4K ‌iMac‌ in particular has new 32GB memory and 1TB SSD upgrade options for the first time.

Beyond the performance improvements, there is a lot of familiarity. The new ‌iMac‌ models have the same design used since 2012 and the same 4K and 5K displays as the previous generation. I/O also remains unchanged with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, four USB 3 ports, a SD card slot, a headphone jack, and Gigabit Ethernet.

While the ‌iMac‌ Pro and the latest MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini models are equipped with Apple's T2 security chip, we've confirmed with Apple that the new ‌iMac‌ models do not have a T-series chip of any kind.

Unlike the ‌iMac‌ Pro in space gray, Apple says silver remains the sole color option for standard ‌iMac‌ models.

Pricing before upgrades remains unchanged. The new 21.5-inch 4K ‌iMac‌ models start at $1,299 and the new 27-inch 5K ‌iMac‌ models start at $1,799. Both are available to order starting today on Apple.com and the Apple Store app, with availability in Apple Stores and select resellers starting next week.

Apple's senior director of Mac product marketing Tom Boger:

Customers are going to love the huge boost in iMac performance. With up to 8-core processors and powerful Vega graphics, the iMac lineup is stronger than ever. With its stunning Retina display, amazing design, twice the performance, and macOS Mojave that our customers love, iMac is by far the best desktop in the world.

The non-4K entry-level model 21.5-inch ‌iMac‌ was not updated today and remains available from $1,099.

Apple today updated its Events app for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV in preparation for the March 25th "Show Time" event that's expected to focus on the company's upcoming TV and Apple News services.

The updated Events app can be downloaded from the tvOS App Store, and features the same darkened movie theater style from the media invites that were sent out last week.

In terms of event announcements, Apple is known to be working on a $9.99 per month subscription news and magazine service that would give ‌Apple News‌ users unlimited access to stories from paywalled sites like The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Apple is also working on a streaming TV service that will include the more than two dozen TV shows and movies that it has in the works, along with access to subscription content from other cable providers.

We're still expecting minor updates for a number of Apple products, including the AirPods and iPod touch, and potentially the launch of new iMacs and the long-awaited AirPower, although given that Apple announced new iPads on Monday, it's likely any further hardware launches will come separately before or after the event via press release.

Apple's Events app, along with the Events section of Apple's website, will be used to live stream the unveiling of the new services. The March 25 event will take place at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 5.00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time) at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus.

For those who are unable to watch Apple's live stream, MacRumors will have live coverage of the event on MacRumors.com and on our MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

(Thanks, Anna!)

Apple is set to unveil its long-rumored TV service next Monday, and ahead of the event, Netflix has confirmed that it won't be participating in Apple's streaming offering.

At a briefing at the company's headquarters in Hollywood, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that while Apple is a "great company," Netflix isn't interested in offering its content on other platforms. "We want to have people watch our shows on our services," he said, according to Recode.

Netflix has never embraced Apple TV features like "Up Next" designed to allow ‌Apple TV‌ users to see all of their watched TV shows at a glance, so it's no surprise to hear that Netflix does not plan to offer its content through Apple's upcoming streaming service.

Set to be launched next week, Apple's TV offering will feature both its original content and add-on content from other cable providers like Showtime and HBO. Apple will allow customers to sign up for subscriptions to third-party services like HBO right within the TV app, which will serve as Apple's TV content hub.

Apple's video hub will be similar to what Amazon offers through its Prime Video app. Amazon provides original TV shows along with options to subscribe to premium content through a Channels feature.

In response to a question about how Netflix will compete with Apple and Amazon going forward, Hastings said the company will do so "with difficulty," though he pointed out that Netflix has already been competing with Amazon for years.

"You do your best job when you have great competitors," he said, before admitting that the increased competition has led to higher prices when sourcing content.

Apple is going to give us a first look at its video service on Monday, March 25, at an event set to be held at its Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. Multiple celebrities that are starring in Apple shows, like Steve Carell, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon, will be present.

Apple's new fifth-generation iPad mini and resurrected iPad Air were announced this morning, and both of the new tablets are equipped with Apple's latest A12 Bionic processors, initially introduced in the 2018 iPhones.

The first Geekbench benchmark of one of the new iPad models (11,2) surfaced shortly after Apple's announcement, confirming a 2.49GHz clock speed, identical to the iPhone's clock speed. The benchmarked ‌iPad‌ also features 3GB RAM, 1GB less than the iPad Pro and 1GB more than the 9.7-inch ‌iPad‌. 3GB RAM is also the amount of RAM in the ‌iPhone‌ XR, while the XS and XS Max feature 4GB.

At this point in time, we don't know if ‌iPad‌ 11,2 is an ‌iPad mini‌ 5 or a 10.5-inch ‌iPad Air‌, but given the similarity in specs between the two tablets, we suspect that both models are using the same clock speed and RAM.

The ‌iPad‌ 11,2 earned a single-core Geekbench score of 4806 and a multi-core score of 11607, which, unsurprisingly, is right on par with ‌iPhone‌ Geekbench results, though a bit faster, perhaps due to improvements in iOS 12.2.

While the ‌iPad Air‌ and the ‌iPad mini‌ 5 appear to feature similar specs and may include the same amount of RAM, we'll need to wait for further Geekbench scores to confirm. We'll update this post when more information is available.

The new ‌iPad Air‌ and the ‌iPad mini‌ 5 are both available for purchase from Apple today and will arrive to customers at the end of March. The iPad Air, which features a 10.5-inch Retina display, Touch ID, a headphone jack, and Apple Pencil support, is priced starting at $499 for 64GB storage.

The fifth-generation iPad mini with a 7.9-inch Retina display, ‌Apple Pencil‌ support, ‌Touch ID‌, 8-megapixel rear camera, and a headphone jack is priced starting at $399 for 64GB storage.

Apple has launched a new 10.5-inch iPad Air that can be viewed as a lower-priced successor to the second-generation 10.5-inch iPad Pro, which has been discontinued. Below, we compare tech specs and features.

Pricing is key, with the new iPad Air starting at $499 with Wi-Fi only and $629 with LTE connectivity in the United States. The 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ started at $649 with Wi-Fi and $779 with LTE connectivity until it was discontinued. Both have 64GB or 256GB of storage, but the new ‌iPad Air‌ lacks a 512GB option.

Design wise, the iPads have a lot of similarities, including dimensions, thinness, and overall appearance. Both have a Touch ID home button, a headphone jack, and a Lightning connector, but the new ‌iPad Air‌ has only two speakers along the bottom, whereas the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ has four speakers.

The new ‌iPad Air‌ is available in Silver, Space Gray, and a newer Gold finish that essentially merges the previously separate Gold and Rose Gold finishes that were available for the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌.

Both iPads feature a fully laminated Retina display with a resolution of 2224×1668 pixels and 264 PPI, True Tone, and support for the P3 wide color space, but the new 10.5-inch ‌iPad Air‌ has a 60Hz refresh rate while the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ has a so-called ProMotion display with up to a 120Hz refresh rate.

Processor wise, the new ‌iPad Air‌ sports Apple's A12 Bionic chip compared to a slower A10X Fusion chip in the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌. The new ‌iPad Air‌ also has dedicated hardware called the "Neural Engine" that handles artificial intelligence and machine learning tasks, while the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ does not.

In terms of battery life, both iPads last up to 10 hours per charge, according to Apple's internal testing.

With its lower price point, the new ‌iPad Air‌ has a lower-end 8-megapixel rear camera, compared to a 12-megapixel sensor on the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌. The rear camera on the new ‌iPad Air‌ also lacks LED flash, optical image stabilization, and Focus Pixels, but one benefit is that there is no camera bump.

The front FaceTime HD cameras are the same 7-megapixel sensors with Live Photos, Retina Flash, and other identical features on both iPads.

As for connectivity, both iPads have 802.11ac Wi-Fi, but the new ‌iPad Air‌ has Gigabit-class LTE versus the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌'s theoretically slower LTE Advanced support. The new ‌iPad Air‌ also gets a bump to Bluetooth 5.0 versus Bluetooth 4.2 out of the box for the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌.

Both iPads are compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil and the 10.5-inch Smart Keyboard.

Summary

• The new ‌iPad Air‌ starts at $150 less than the 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ and thus has some tradeoffs: two speakers versus four, no ProMotion display, and a lower-end 8-megapixel rear camera with no LED flash or optical image stabilization.
  

• The new ‌iPad Air‌ has the same dimensions, thinness, and overall appearance as 10.5-inch ‌iPad Pro‌.
  

• Both iPads have a 10.5-inch Retina display with 264 PPI, headphone jack, ‌Touch ID‌, Lightning connector, 7-megapixel front camera, up to 10 hours of battery life, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
  

• The new ‌iPad Air‌ has some advantages: faster A12 Bionic chip vs. A10X Fusion, Gigabit-class LTE vs. LTE Advanced, and Bluetooth 5.0 vs 4.2.

The new ‌iPad Air‌ can be ordered starting today with in-store availability beginning next week in the United States and many other regions.

Apple today seeded the sixth beta of an upcoming iOS 12.2 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the fifth beta of iOS 12.2 and two months after the release of iOS 12.1.4.

Registered developers can download the new iOS 12.2 beta from Apple's Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

iOS 12.2 will see the launch of a new subscription service within Apple News, which Apple is planning to unveil at an upcoming March 25 event. Apple plans to offer unlimited access to magazines and paywalled news services for a single monthly fee, with all of the content available through the News app.

iOS 12.2 expands Apple News to Canada for the first time, with Canadian iPhone and iPad users able to read news stories in English, French, or both. Apple says that during the beta, content will be more limited than it will be when the update is released.

There are four new Animoji included the iOS 12.2 beta, including a boar, a shark, a giraffe, and an owl. Animoji can be used within the Messages and FaceTime apps.

The software introduces initial support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit on third-party TVs in light of recent AirPlay 2 announcements, with a new option for limiting TV access joining the speaker access option in the Home app. There's also a redesigned TV remote in Control Center, and when paired with tvOS 12.2, you can ask Siri to play specific TV shows, movies, and music on your ‌HomeKit‌ devices like the Apple TV.

For some AT&T users, there's a new "5G E" icon for the cellular signal, replacing the standard LTE icon. This is a bit misleading of AT&T, because the ‌iPhone‌ does not support 5G, nor is the network AT&T calls 5G E actual 5G. Instead, it's an upgraded version of LTE, with more info available here.

The Wallet app's interface has been streamlined and tweaked because Apple is planning to introduce support for an Apple credit card that will be made available through a partnership with Goldman Sachs. The credit card could have unique features like rewards tracking, access to balance management tools, notifications about spending habits, and options to set spending limits.

The Downtime feature in Screen Time can be customized by day in iOS 12.2, Apple has made minor changes to some icons (including ‌Apple News‌, ‌AirPlay‌, and Remote in Control Center), audio messages are now better quality, and there are new Safari features, with a full list of changes introduced throughout the beta testing period available in our iOS 12.2 tidbits post.

Apple is improving Safari's privacy in iOS 12.2 through a new Motion & Orientation toggle located under Settings > Safari > Privacy >Security, which is disabled by default. The setting needs to be enabled on to allow websites to display content that relies on motion data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in the ‌iPhone‌ and ‌iPad‌.

iOS 12.2 confirms that Apple is planning to release second-generation AirPods with "Hey ‌Siri‌" support, thanks to a hidden "Hey ‌Siri‌" AirPods setup screen in the beta. The inclusion of the AirPods setup option in the beta indicates that Apple could perhaps be planning to release new AirPods when iOS 12.2 is released. There have also been hints of additional work on AirPower, suggesting that product is still coming.

Apple plans to introduce the ‌Apple News‌ service at an event that will take place on March 25, and it's likely the company plans to release iOS 12.2 shortly afterwards to provide iOS users with access to the new subscription options.

LG today detailed upcoming availability of its 2019 NanoCell LED 4K Ultra HD smart TVs with AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support.

The new NanoCell lineup is divided into the Nano 8 and Nano 9 series, with 11 models in total ranging in size from 49 inches to 86 inches. Seven models will be available starting in April, followed by one model in May and three in June. Prices range from $799 to $4,299 in the United States.

LG detailed availability of other AirPlay 2 TVs coming to its lineup last week and says more will be announced later this year.

‌AirPlay‌ 2 support will allow users to stream videos, music, photos, and more directly from an iPhone, iPad, and Mac to compatible LG smart TVs, complete with lock screen controls. ‌HomeKit‌ support will enable users to easily control the TVs using Siri voice commands or the Home app on ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, and Mac.

Samsung, Sony, and Vizio also plan to release ‌AirPlay‌ 2-enabled smart TVs this year. Last month, Samsung's new 2019 lineup of QLED 4K and 8K TVs with ‌AirPlay‌ 2 support became available to pre-order in the United States. MacRumors also reported that Roku is in talks with Apple about AirPlay 2 integration.

LG's 2019 TVs will also feature Amazon Alexa alongside Google Assistant.