Thoughts on Apple's October 2014 event

This year's iPad and Mac keynote was pretty tame. The first 35 minutes re-iterated stuff we already knew about iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, and the last chunk was devoted to the Retina 5K iMac and iPad Air 2.

I have just a few thoughts.

iPad Air & iPad mini

Removing the mute/rotation switch is a good idea

When Apple changed the default behavior of the iPad's rotation lock to be a mute switch instead (I'm not really sure why - maybe user confusion?) the writing was on the wall for its removal. A dedicated switch for mute makes little sense on a device that already has volume buttons and doesn't vibrate like the iPhone. Pressing and holding the volume down button does the same thing as the switch, just a tiny bit slower.

"Better" means thinner to Apple

Immediately before showing the video above (which refers to their Pencil ad), Tim Cook asked the audience:

What do you do when you make the best tablet in the world, how do you make it better?

The answer, clearly, is by making it even thinner. While I can't disagree with him, I'd say a lot of what's better about the iPad Air 2 is on the inside, although that's much harder to advertise.

(Side note: notice how the laser sound becomes higher-pitched when it's cutting through the pencil's metal cap. I like that attention to detail.)

The performance of the A8X chip is impressive, and Metal looks to be useful for something other than gaming

The A8X has a 40% faster CPU and a 250% faster GPU than the previous generation. Their processor team really kicks butt.

I still find it interesting that Phil Schiller continues to talk about game developers porting their console games to iOS while other apps like Pixelmator or Replay (both with compelling on-stage demos) are benefitting from Metal even more clearly right now. Apple really wants to attract console game developers it seems, but aside from BioShock (which doesn't even use Metal) they don't seem to be biting yet.

The lack of an update to the iPad mini is surprising

Touch ID alone isn't worth the $100 price jump from last year's model to the iPad mini 3. The fact that Apple isn't bothering to update the mini's specs to match the Air like they did last year is pretty weird. Frankly, the best thing about the the new iPad mini is that it makes the older mini even cheaper at just $300 to start.

It's odd that Apple is seemingly abandoning ship on the size that arguably made the iPad mini the better of the two iPads for iPad-like activities. The mini's one-handed holdability made it more manageable than the iPad Air for reading and light web browsing, and it seemed to be the perfect content consumption device (from what I've read, I don't own one).

I guess the iPhone 6 Plus really is putting the squeeze on the mini, and the iPad Air (and eventually the iPad Pro/Plus) will be the only iPads going forward. I don't see why Apple would intentionally leave the iPad mini a generation behind the Air in specs, so I'm not confident we'll see a big update next year either.

iMac & Mac mini

The Retina 5K iMac is a very good thing for everyone

The most exciting thing about the iMac going Retina is that it sets a new standard for the quality and prices of high-resolution desktop displays. At just $2,500 with a high-specced computer built in, the prices of current 4K monitors will have to plummet to stay competitive, and we as consumers reap the benefit.

Unfortunately the iMac's form factor isn't quite right for me personally - I much prefer the customizability of a Mac mini with an external monitor - but at least the Retina iMac's announcement makes the high-res desktop timetable a bit clearer. External 5K displays will need the next version of DisplayPort, which needs Intel's Skylake chips, which means 2016 is when we may finally start seeing decent 5K monitors unless manufacturers push Intel to step things up.

The Mac mini update is a disappointment

Phil Schiller spent a single minute talking about the Mac mini, and although what he presented on-stage sounded great, the reality of the update is very bittersweet.

I thought the RAM not being user-upgradeable was a terrible thing, but because Apple tweaked their RAM prices it's not too bad. If you go for the mid-rage 2.6GHz model (with Iris Graphics), you'll pay about $200 for the 16GB RAM upgrade - only about $50 more than you'd pay if you bought the sticks elsewhere. I can deal with that.

The unconfirmed rumor that it drops the second hard drive slot, however, leaves me heartbroken. We'll have to wait for a teardown for confirmation, but if it's true it'll be the equivalent of Apple erecting a concrete pylon in the middle of a driveway. Unless the insides of the Mac mini are radically different, removing support for a second hard drive doesn't make a lot of sense. We can only hope that they've left all the necessary connectors intact and are simply keeping the second hard drive bay a secret from the general public.

The 4th-gen Intel processors it uses will be outdated as soon as the (delayed) Broadwell chips arrive early next year. They also removed the 4-core option because it would've required them to make additional internal changes to accomodate the new chip. Adding to that, the multi-core performance of the new model is worse than the previous one by 70-80%. Crapola.

The positives? PCIe-based flash storage is a really nice upgrade that boosts disk performance considerably, 802.11ac Wi-Fi is also great, and that's pretty much it. Two Thunderbolt ports isn't all that special considering how few (acceptably-priced) accessories are out there, and it's still just one bus (meaning a weird dual-cable 5K output stopgap wouldn't be possible).

It's just not so great overall. If you're thinking of a Mac mini, the time to act would be right now while refurbs are still available in Apple's store. The resale price for previous models is still really high.

Finally, this product lineup slide is perfect

This one slide contains the entirety of Apple's product family. Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, MacBook and iMac. A bunch of lines and shapes arranged from small to large on a familiar Keynote canvas.

The best slide of the whole event, and a nice way to conclude it.