Today Apple finally held their education event that a fair amount of people were excited about, including me. While I was on the hype train hoping a new Macbook Air would be announced that never left the station, the big news was always going to be iPads. And guess what! There’s a new iPad. It now has the A10 chip in it just like an iPhone 7 as well as allowing to use the Pencil as a stylus support. Oh, and of course it costs the same price. While allowing Pencil to be used on it is huge for the standard iPad for lower cost minded consumers, there really wasn’t a whole lot else there. There is some new things for teachers, allowing them to gamify education assignments, allowing them to give students badges once they’ve completed them. Yay?
While a lot of this seems pretty cool for users, Apple still shouldn’t expect to take over the classroom. The devices are still focused on a single user rather than multi so I don’t see many schools hoping over from Chromebooks. They definitely should be purchased for art students and classrooms now that they have better support for the Pencil and stylus’.
For the single user however, there’s a lot to like if you need a new iPad. There’s better drawing features, and a better chip in it. It can do wifi and LTE, and has 1080p cameras on the back as well as the ever popular Facetime camera on the front. So if you need a new iPad, now is shaping up to be a good time to get one. Oh and if that Pencil is too expensive, they released a new partnership with Logitech, announcing the Crayon – a $50 USD Stylus because of course they did and a Logitech keyboard that auto connects over bluetooth. So if you ever wanted to be seen in public using a crayon as a full-grown adult you now totally have your chance.
If you wanna check it all out you can head over to Apple’s site dedicated to the new new new new new iPad.