Apple’s newest iPad Air features a 10.9-inch liquid retina display and five finishes including silver, space gray, rose gold, green and sky blue. The device includes 3.8 million pixels, full lamination, P3 wide color support with a resolution of 2360×1640 at 246 pixels per inch, True Tone and an anti-reflective coating. Given the fact that many users now have a mask on their face much of the time, making Face ID complicated, the new iPad Air includes the throwback Touch ID sensor. The sensor is integrated into the top button and allows you to unlock iPad Air, log in to apps or use Apple Pay. iPad Air shares the same magic keyboard as the iPad Pro, as the difference between them is very small—11 inches for the iPad Pro. Apple’s most advanced chip iPad Air includes Apple’s most advanced chip, A14 Bionic packed with 11.8 billion transistors for a better performance and power efficiency. The A15 Bionic handles even the most demanding apps such as editing 4K videos, play immersive games, create works of art and so on. Using five-nanometer process technology, the latest A-series chip includes a six-core design for 40 percent boost in CPU performance and a new four-core graphics architecture for a 30 percent improvement in graphics. Environmentally Friendly Part of Apple’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030, the new iPad Air uses a 100 percent recycled aluminum enclosure and 100 percent recycled tin for the solder on its main logic board. Additionally, the new speakers in the device use magnets with 100 percent recycled rare earth elements so the device remains free of harmful substances, is highly energy efficient and uses wood fiber packaging that is recycled. New bits and pieces The Air moves to USB-C like the iPad...

This year’s Apple WWDC event, hosted by chief executives Craig Federighi, Phil Chiller and Tim Cook, included updates to the company’s iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS. There were also a range of hardware updates, including a new iPad Pro, updates to the entire Mac laptop line, a new iMac Pro and the new Siri-enabled speaker dubbed HomePod. iOS 11 The new version of the iPhone’s and iPad’s operating system, coming this fall, is packed with new possibilities, culminating with the usage of augmented reality in games and apps. The new OS will reveal a system-wide design revamp, tilting towards bolder fonts, borderless buttons, new animations and other small visual tweaks. The Control Center has been compressed to fit on one page, and aside from its new look, offers new customization options. The Lock Screen and Notification Center have been combined under one entity, thus pulling down access to Notification Center will also bring up the Lock Screen. The App Store has been redesigned for the first time. It now organizes and separates games and apps into their own sections, while offering a dynamic Today view, populated daily with the newest content. A much-awaited change is the new Files app. It mimics the Finder on macOS (no surprise there), including the drag and drop feature that allows to reorganize files, links and more between apps. There is also a difference: on the iPhone, drag and drop can be used within apps, while on the iPad it can be used across the entire OS. Then there’s the new Dock, Mac users are familiar with it, but for iPad users is a foundational change. Easy to customize with apps, the Dock changes as you work—the suggested apps, such as the recently opened apps and the last one...

The new holiday lineup from Apple has launched, and Tim Cook calls it “the strongest lineup of products that Apple has ever had.” Joining the iPhone line and the updated iOS are the new iPads, iMac, and OS X Yosemite. The iPad Air 2 is a 6.1mm thick tablet, down from the previous 7.5mm; this makes it noticeably thinner than the iPhone 6 which is 6.9mm thick. Design-wise, the tablet shares many of the iPhone 6’s features, with a few notable distinctions from the smartphone like the sharply angled chamfer where the screen meets the aluminum body outside the edge of the screen. Despite the ultra-thin profile, the iPad Air 2’s iSight camera sits flush against the body. The thinness of the device is achieved by laminating the different screen layers into one seamless panel. This process reduces glare and improves clarity. The resolution has not been increased, but the Retina display has been improved. An anti-reflective coating has been applied to the screen, reducing reflections by 56 percent. The device runs on an A8X chip and a GPU that Apple says is 180 times faster than the original iPad. It includes a new M8 motion co-processor that “tracks motion, calibrates sensors, and has a barometer,” said Apple. This is the first iPad with 2GB of RAM which not only will speed up overall performance, but will help with multitasking as well. The iPad Air 2 has a 10-hour battery life. New Wi-Fi 802.11ac MIMO and cell radios are in the iPad Air 2, increasing the speed performance. The home button now includes a Touch ID fingerprint scanner, which works just like those on the iPhones: unlock, complete app and in-app purchases, and works with Apple’s new Apple Pay to buy products in retailer...