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Today Apple hosted an event that is very unusual in its history. It hosted an Apple Education event, the first of its kind since 2012. This was also the very first Apple keynote that hasn’t been livestreamed since January 2012. The event was held at the Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, rather than on Apple’s campus like most of its keynote events. The invitation described it as introducing “creative new ideas for teachers and students.”So what exactly was announced today? We’ll list the main announcements, with new products in bold below. The biggest announcements so far are new $329 9.7–inch iPad, a Crayon stylus for $49 by Logitech, and a rugged iPad case.
Tim Cook talked about iPads’ popularity in schools and efforts to bring coding classes to community colleges, along with the Everyone Can Code initiative including Swift Playgrounds. Then Greg Joswiak, a marketing exec for Apple, talked about iPads in schools and using the camera as a tool, such as with Playground Physics. He mentioned that there are nearly 200,00 apps for education.
The big announcement was a new iPad. Apple introduced a $299 9.7-inch iPad (it will cost $329 for regular customers, and $299 for schools.) It will work with the Apple Pencil. It will have the same tilt and pressure as existing Pro Pads. This iPad will have a 10 hour battery, gyroscope, 8 mp camera with 1080 HD video, up to 300 mbps LTE, GPS, and will weigh just one pound. It will also have an A10 Fusion chip. The iPad is available to order starting today, and it will ship and arrive in stores this week. Logitech is also providing a new rugged case for $99 and a Crayon stylus by Logitech for $49.
Apple also announced Smart annotation is being added to Pages. In addition, digital book creation is being added to the iPad and it’s being built into Pages. So now you can make a digital book right on an iPad, adding interactive images, photos, and videos with sound.
The event also discussed AR and Apple’s next ARKit. And the Free Rivers app from the World Wildlife Fund, and the Froggepedia app. Apple also discussed a shared iPad program for schools and the Apple School Manager for downloading apps and setting up Apple IDs for students (such as 1,500 student Apple IDs in a minute.) Free storage for education will be increased from 5GB to 200 GB.
Next, the event discussed apps for teachers, including Classroom for Mac, available in beta in June, and a new app called Schoolwork. And the event also announced Apple Teacher, a new self-paced online professional learning program. Susan Prescott discussed Swift Playgrounds and its drone/robot programming. She also talked about ARKit with Swift.
Apple will also be hosting its first Everyone Can Create session at its new Chicago store tonight.
The next big event on Apple’s schedule is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference June 4-June 8. Some of the expected announcements for that event include iOS 12, macOS 10.14, cross-platform iOS/macOS apps, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12, MacRumors reported. The event will take place in San Jose, California near Apple’s Cupertino campus. Thousands of developers from around the world will be meeting with Apple engineers and attending workshops. Apple always has a keynote event on the first day of its WWDC. These keynotes typically introduce new operating systems and some new products.
After the June event, Apple’s next big event will happen with its annual keynote in September.
This is a developing story.