Apple rolls out new MacBooks and AirPods: Talking Tech podcast
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Hey there, listeners. It's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. My cohost, Mike Snider, is off today. So another month, another Apple event. This time, Apple hosted a virtual event on Monday at its headquarters in California, where they introduced even more tech products. As you recall in September, we saw the iPhone 13, we saw some new iPads. This time around, the focus is on the MacBook Pro and a new version of AirPods. Let's start with MacBook Pro though, because that was probably the star of this whole event that Apple was hosting on Monday. We're going to get two new MacBook Pro models. There's one with a 14 inch display, and then there's another with a 16 inch display. They're going to run with two new chips: the M1 Pro and the M1 Max.
According to Apple, the M1 Pro delivers up to 70% faster processing performance than the M1, which was on last year's MacBook Pro models. The graphics processing performance is twice as fast compared to M1, so these are really good chips. And the M1 Max, even better than that. So, you're obviously going to get what appears to be a significant bump up in performance. In terms of battery life, the 14 inch model boasts up to 17 hours of video playback, on the 16 inch model, you get up to 21 hours. It also has a new quick charge feature, so you can charge it and get up to 50% of your battery life back in 30 minutes. So, really nice if you need to quickly get a little more juice from your MacBook.
They've also got an upgraded keyboard. The touch bar is gone. They have brought back the physical function buttons to replace the touch bar. Also coming back to the MacBook, ports. Remember those? Instead of having to deal with an adapter to add all these different external devices, like maybe a keyboard or a monitor or things like that, there are now more ports on the new models of the MacBook Pro. You've got three Thunderbolt ports, you've got an HDMI port, you have an SD card slot. And then of course you have a headphone jack because I can't imagine having a laptop without a headphone jack.
So, that's a lot of the new stuff that's coming to the MacBook Pro. Here's the, I don't know if you want to call it bad news/good news, however you want to think of it. Here's how much they cost. The 14 inch starts at $1,999, the 16 inch starts at $2,499. If you think that is really expensive for a laptop, that is just the beginning. So I went on Apple's website because I wanted to get a closer look at the prices for these MacBooks, because obviously the starting price is what it is, but depending on how far you want to go, you can spend quite a bit on a MacBook. If you want to get a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, which is their best chip, it's going to give you the top tier performance and speed and everything you want out of a MacBook. They're only available in the 16 inch model, and they start at $3,499.
I priced out a full-blown, all the bells and whistles MacBooks. So, I focused on the 16 inch with the M1 Max chip, with 64 gig unified memory, and the max 8 terabytes of storage. Now, just to be clear, if you need to recall, 8 terabytes is basically 8,000 gigabytes of storage. It's a lot of storage. That laptop priced out to say more than $6,000. So, you can really get wild with the MacBook Pro, and if you want something super, super high end, that's great, but it's going to cost you a lot of money.
Also, announced on Monday, at a much lower price, by the way, was the third generation of AirPods. These costs $179. They're also available for pre-order now. They go on sale October 26th, the same day as the MacBook Pros. Big features there. There's a new contour design, there's a shorter stem. It has a force sensor for more intuitive control of music and phone calls. You've also got support for spatial audio, which is good for fuller sound. There's an adaptive EQ to get a more accurate listening experience. The AirPods also have a low distortion driver, which basically makes the base sound more powerful, and gives you crisper high frequencies. They're water and sweat resistant. You get about six hours of listening time per charge. It also comes with a case that charges as well. So, between the case and then the AirPods themselves, you get up to 30 hours of listening time. And the case, finally, supports wireless charging as well.
They look really slick. They look like the version of the second generation iPods. These aren't the Pros. The Pros you notice are a little bit bigger. They're just a refined version of those second gen AirPods. And they look really nice. And that price is interesting. The price I'm more intrigued with though is the second generation AirPods. Those are now $129.99 and that's not a bad deal. I have those AirPods, they're really nice. I'm really interested to see what kind of upgrades these third generation have compared to those. Now that wasn't all. One more announcement we got from Apple, new HomePod Mini speakers. Nothing major, just new colors. You can get them in white, black, orange, yellow, and blue, they cost $99. So that's everything Apple announced, across a range of prices, from $99 speakers to $6,000 MacBook Pros, so all over the place.
And we've got you covered. You can read about everything that Apple announced on Monday on tech.USAtoday.com. Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, or show ideas? Any tech problems you want to try to address? On the Apple event front, what did you think of these new MacBooks? What do you think of the prices of these new MacBooks? Let me know on Twitter. I'm @BrettMolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech, we'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Apple releases new MacBooks and AirPods: Talking Tech podcast
