Apple’s New Products Held Few Surprises. Retina Has Changed the Industry.

The faster, thinner gold iPad is beside the point. The 5K iMac brings a high-resolution display to the last screen in Apple’s product lineup that lacked one.

Apple’s October product event is over, and its announcements matched the predictions: the iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 3, and a desktop iMac upgraded with a Retina display. The rumored Retina MacBook Air was absent, but Apple still gave its existing lineup a substantial update.

The iPad lineup gets an update, and gold keeps a low profile

As earlier leaks suggested, Apple has named its new 9.7-inch tablet the iPad Air 2 and updated its 7.9-inch tablet as the iPad mini 3.

The biggest change to the iPad lineup is that both new models support Touch ID. The feature debuted on the iPhone 5s in 2013 and has now come to the iPad. That means iPad users will have access to some Apple Pay functions, including fingerprint authentication to unlock the device and pay in the App Store and within apps.

Neither iPad has an NFC chip, however, so neither can be used to pay at a point-of-sale terminal.

Apple has also added a gold option to the iPad lineup, though it barely mentioned the color at the event. Judging by the livestream, the matte finish gives it a pale shade, with little of the flashy, nouveau riche look associated with gold gadgets. Beyond the new color, Apple has refined the iPads’ design. The iPad Air 2 is just 6.1 millimeters thick, 1 millimeter thinner than the iPhone 6. Onstage, Apple compared it with a pencil to show how thin it is.

Less obvious to users, but crucial, is the iPad Air 2’s A8X processor, which delivers 12 times the performance of the original iPad released in early 2010. Its other specifications are solid too: 10 hours of battery life and an 8-megapixel rear camera that can shoot 1080p video and high-speed footage without protruding from the case.

The lock/mute switch on the side of the iPad has also disappeared from the new models. Its functions can be handled with the volume buttons and Control Center, leaving little reason for a physical switch.

Like the iPhone 6, the iPad Air 2 drops the 32 GB storage option and comes in 16 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB versions. The iPad mini 3 adds Touch ID and FaceTime HD to the previous generation’s features.

When faced with the iPad’s falling market share, Apple can usually find a more favorable comparison. This time was no exception. Tim Cook offered some interesting figures: Apple has sold more than 225 million iPads since the device launched in 2010. If the iPad were counted as a PC maker, its shipments in the third quarter of 2014 would have exceeded those of Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker.

One disappointment: the rumored iPad Pro did not appear. Anyone hoping for a larger-screen iPad for watching videos and other entertainment will apparently have to wait until next year.

The iMac’s 5K screen is the real highlight

The 27-inch iMac with a Retina display was perhaps the event’s biggest reveal. Apple computers have a 30-year history, dating back to the first Macintosh 128K in January 1984. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, called the new iMac “the best birthday present for the Mac’s 30th birthday.”

With its first Retina upgrade, the iMac has jumped straight to a 5K screen. Its 5120 × 2880 resolution makes it the highest-resolution computer display in the world today. The display is also just 5 millimeters thick.

At US$2,499, those specifications do not seem especially expensive. Apple’s phones, tablets, laptops and desktops now all offer Retina displays.

For now, though, only the 27-inch iMac has a Retina version. Apple also sells a non-Retina 27-inch iMac and a 21.5-inch model. The lower-priced Mac mini desktop got a modest processor update too.

More details on Apple Watch and Apple Pay

Apple executives also spent nearly 40 minutes looking back at the company’s products, fitting the invitation’s theme: “It’s been way too long.” The review and the other presentations offered a few useful details beyond the new hardware:

• Apple Watch will also support Continuity, which lets people work across devices. In an onstage demonstration, Apple executive Craig used a Watch to control a Keynote presentation. A WatchKit SDK for developers is due in November. Unfortunately, Apple still gave no precise release date for Apple Watch, saying only “early 2015.”
• Apple Pay goes live on October 20 alongside iOS 8.1. Apple has partnered with 500 banks and several U.S. retailers. Beyond paying in stores, users will be able to authorize payments with a fingerprint for online services such as Uber and Airbnb. Apple has opened Apple Pay’s interface to app developers so they can add Touch ID payments.

Retina has changed more than Apple’s own products

Apple users have waited a long time for a Retina display on the 27-inch iMac. The iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro already have high-resolution displays across their lineups, making screen clarity a key distinction between Apple’s products and those of its rivals. Retina has become such a draw that, at every Apple event, tech enthusiasts call for high-resolution MacBook Air and iMac models.

Apple almost single-handedly started and promoted the shift to high-resolution displays. Before 2010, high resolution was far from standard on phones or computers. The first Android phone, the HTC Dream, launched in 2008 with an 800 × 480 screen. The iPhone 3GS had a resolution of just 480 × 320 in 2009, little different from the prevailing standard.

Apple had left the iPhone’s resolution unchanged from 2007 to 2009. That changed in 2010. We do not know what prompted Apple to enter the screen-resolution race, but in June of that year it released the iPhone 4: at 960 × 640, it was the industry’s first phone with a pixel density above 300 PPI, or pixels per inch. Three flagship Android phones released that year still had 800 × 480 displays.

The figures are dull. What shoppers saw as they stood in a store choosing their next phone contract or a Christmas gift for someone in the family was that the iPhone had the most beautiful screen.

At first, Retina looked more like an advertising idea. At Apple’s 2010 event, Steve Jobs said: “We found there’s a magic number at around 300 PPI. When you hold a phone 25 to 30 centimeters from your eyes, that’s the limit at which the human retina can resolve individual pixels.” Apple called its display Retina because, it said, the human eye could no longer make out the pixels on the screen.

That claim drew plenty of debate. Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of the display-technology website DisplayMate, argued that a screen would technically need to reach 477 PPI before the human eye could no longer see individual pixels. Others said visibility depended entirely on viewing distance and that, in many situations, the iPhone could not deliver the effect Apple claimed.

None of those technical arguments stopped the iPhone from turning this particular “specification” into an industry standard over the next four years—even as Apple avoided benchmark contests and the Android makers’ battles over specifications and performance.

Phones

• June 2010: Apple releases the iPhone 4 with a resolution of 960 × 640 and a pixel density of 326 PPI.
• December 2012: HTC releases the Butterfly, the world’s first 1080p phone. Its 1920 × 1080 resolution and 441 PPI pixel density surpass the iPhone on both measures.

Tablets

• March 2012: Apple releases the iPad 3 with a resolution of 2048 × 1536 and a pixel density of 264 PPI.
• June 2013: Asus releases the Transformer Infinity tablet with a resolution of 2560 × 1600 and a pixel density of 299 PPI.

Laptops

• June 2012: Apple releases the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, a resolution of 2880 × 1800 and a pixel density of 220 PPI.
• In 2012, according to StatCounter, 1366 × 768 overtakes 1024 × 768 as the world’s most common display resolution.
• In 2013, resolutions of 1920 × 1080 and above grow from less than 5% of the market a year earlier to nearly 10%.

The high-resolution trend that began on secondary screens—phones and tablets—gradually spread to the larger screens consumers use. Computer resolutions improved, and television resolutions did too.

Apple was not the first company to sell a screen on its resolution. TV makers had advertised high definition for years. But five years ago, when you walked into a department store to buy a television, screen size was what mattered most. High definition was still an abstract promise. Apple’s marketing brought PPI to ordinary tech enthusiasts for the first time, giving them a number for sharpness.

After that, TV marketing began to focus on resolution and its numbers. Consumer demand for sharper screens helped give rise to concepts and standards such as 4K.

In the post-Retina era, consumers expect ultra-high resolution everywhere. Now even the Apple Watch has a Retina display. Ultra-high resolution is taking over the screens around us.

The demand Apple created has also driven the display-panel industry forward. Apple began with one resolution and used enormous production volumes to bring down costs. More manufacturers then sought high-resolution panels and invested in them. Such panels became an industry standard, and the pace of the industry’s upgrades kept accelerating.

Once go Retina, never go back.

Once you have used a high-resolution screen, you cannot go back.

Finally

We have now seen updates across Apple’s product lineup this year: Apple Watch, iPad, MacBook and iMac. Only Apple Watch brings an entirely new kind of product and design. The rest improve and refine existing lines.

The iPad gets a better camera and Touch ID; the iMac gets a display with the highest resolution available; OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 put greater emphasis on continuity between mobile and desktop systems. Together, these details make Apple’s ecosystem feel more complete and consistent. They may also lead more iPhone users to try a MacBook—and, eventually, more of Apple’s products.

As Cook said at the event, “The ecosystem this product lineup supports is something only Apple can create: products designed to be exceptional on their own, and designed to work seamlessly together.”