Apple this week introduced multiple new products including a budget-friendly iPhone, updated iPads, new MacBooks, and display units.
The announcements span multiple product lines, indicating Apple’s strategy to refresh its consumer and professional device offerings, impacting various market segments from budget to high-performance.
On Monday, Apple released the iPhone 17e and the M4 iPad Air. The iPhone 17e retails for $599 and features an A19 chip, 256 GB of storage, MagSafe, and Qi2 wireless charging up to 15W. It includes a 48-megapixel camera and Apple’s C1X cellular modem, which the company stated is up to 2x faster than the C1 in iPhone 16e and uses 30% less energy than the modem in an iPhone 16 Pro. The device is available in black, white, and soft pink.
The M4 iPad Air, now powered by the M4 chip, is 30% faster than the M3 iPad Air. The 11-inch model costs $599 and the 13-inch model costs $799, with a $50 discount for educational customers. It features an 8-core CPU, a 9-core GPU, 12GB of unified memory, and memory bandwidth up to 120GB/s. Storage options include 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
Tuesday’s announcements included the M5 MacBook Air, new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and new Studio Display units. The M5 MacBook Air offers 18 hours of battery life and features a 12 MP Center Stage camera. The 13-inch model starts at $1,099 and the 15-inch model at $1,299, both with 512GB of base storage.
New MacBook Pro models utilize M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which Apple said were designed for intensive AI tasks, offering up to 4x faster performance than M4 predecessors. The new chips are up to 4x faster at LLM prompt processing and up to 8x faster at AI image generation. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,199, and the 16-inch model at $2,699. Models with M5 Max chips start at $3,599 for the 14-inch and $3,899 for the 16-inch.
Apple also introduced a new Studio Display for $1,599 and a Studio Display XDR for $3,299. Both 27-inch displays feature a 12 MP Center Stage camera and Thunderbolt 5 ports. The Studio Display offers a 5K Retina display, 600 nits of brightness, and supports the P3 wide-gamut color standard. The Studio Display XDR features a 5K Retina XDR display with mini-LED backlight, up to 2000 nits peak HDR brightness, and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.
On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the MacBook Neo, a lower-cost laptop starting at $599. It runs on the A18 Pro chip, also used in iPhone 16 Pro models, and features a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. The base model includes 256GB storage, and a $699 version offers 512GB storage and Touch ID.
The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips feature an 18-core CPU, with six “super cores” and 12 performance cores, boosting performance by up to 30% for pro workloads, according to Apple. The M5 Pro supports up to 64GB unified memory up from 48GB on M4 Pro, while M5 Max supports up to 128GB unified memory with increased bandwidth.
Apple also introduced new color options for accessories, including iPhone cases, Apple Watch bands, and the Crossbody Strap.
