Apple Announces New Third-Generation AirPods

At this morning’s keynote event, Apple announced the third-generation of its standard AirPods. The new devices feature a smaller design that is much more akin to the AirPods Pro. True to form for the non-Pro version, the new AirPods hook inside the base of your ear rather than being in-ear headphones. As such, they continue to not support the advanced noise cancelling features of their Pro siblings.

Despite the lack of noise cancelling, the new AirPods introduce Apple’s Spatial Audio technology to the non-Pro line for the first time. Spatial Audio creates the illusion of surround-sound audio for supporting media, and can even simulate the direction of that audio’s origin so that it changes when you turn your head. To aid this advanced audio experience, the new device also includes a brand-new low-distortion driver, which Apple claims will provide more powerful bass, and cleaner high frequencies.

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Apple Unveils the New 14 and 16-Inch MacBook Pros Powered by the M1 Pro and M1 Max Systems-on-a-Chip

As expected, Apple released new MacBook Pros today featuring all-new Apple silicon systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). Let’s start with the chips that drive the new 14 and 16” MacBook Pros.

Apple introduced two new SoCs, the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. Both MacBook Pro models can be configured with either SoC, which take the M1 architecture and scale it up for pro-level performance. Today’s presentation emphasized a long list of metrics in several key areas, including the speed, bandwidth, and capacity of its unified memory and both SoC’s efficiency and performance per watt.

The M1 Pro has up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth and can drive up to 32GB of unified memory. The Max doubles that with up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth and up to 64GB of unified memory.

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Apple Introduces New Apple Music Plan, Siri Features, and HomePod Mini Colors

At this morning’s event, Apple Music’s Zane Lowe made his keynote debut to announce the new Apple Music Voice Plan. Coming in at a mere $5/month, the Apple Music Voice Plan is now the lowest-cost way to gain access to Apple’s music streaming service 1.

The Voice Plan has a catch though. True to its name, it only grants full access to Apple Music via Siri. This includes a customized in-app experience in the Music app for Voice Plan subscribers. It’s not yet clear what exactly this experience entails, but based on Apple’s press release, these users will be able to access a limited set of the Music app’s features. Specifically, they’ll be able to access their playback history and Apple Music’s built-in playlists, but it seems unlikely that they’ll be able to create custom playlists using Apple Music songs. Whether or not full search of the Apple Music catalog will be available is unclear, but requesting specific songs from Siri should be possible.

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Replay Apple’s October 18, 2021 Keynote and Other Videos

If you didn’t follow the live stream or announcements as they unfolded today, you can replay it on Apple’s Events site and catch the product videos on Apple’s YouTube channel.

The keynote video can be streamed here and on the Apple TV using the TV app. A high-quality version will also be available through Apple Podcasts as a video and audio podcast. There is also an American Sign Language version of the event, which is available here.

More videos after the break.

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Apple Announces Availability of New HomePod mini Colors, AirPods, New MacBook Pros, and macOS Monterey

Apple announced the following pre-order and availability dates for the products announced today:

New Yellow, Orange, and Blue HomePod minis

  • Availability: November

AirPods (3rd Generation)

Pre-order: Today
Availability: October 26

14 and 16” MacBook Pros

Pre-order: Today
Availability: Tuesday, October 26

macOS Monterey

  • Release Date: Monday, October 25

You can follow all of our October Apple event coverage through our October 2021 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

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Our thanks to Due for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Apple Frames 2.0, an Upcoming Apple Event, and a Safari Extension for iPad

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Sponsored by: Discourse – A Powerful, Customizable Platform for Civilized Discussion

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico on Remind Me Faster
    • A Reminders tip for applying tags to tasks with Siri
    • John on the future of read-it-later apps
    • Apps, links, and more

AppStories

Unwind

AppStories, Episode 244 – iOS and iPadOS 15 Top Tips→

This week on AppStories, we share a long list of iOS and iPadOS 15 tips, highlighting lesser-known features that we are using to get the most out of the latest versions of the OSes.

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On AppStories+, John tries to convince Federico to try a robot vacuum cleaner and Federico explains the technique he’s using to bring localization to his popular Apple Frames shortcut.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

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Apple Announces October 18, 2021 Media Event

As tweeted by Greg Joswiak, Apple has announced an online media event for October 18, 2021, at 10:00 am Pacific.

Based on the latest speculation and rumors, Apple is likely to introduce new Apple silicon-based Macs. Apple has already replaced part of its Mac product line with models based on its own chip architecture, but it’s expected that the company is preparing to introduce new MacBook Pros and perhaps other models at the high end of its product line. Another product we could see introduced at the event is the long-rumored AirPods 3. With the winter holidays approaching, now seems like the perfect time to rekindle interest in AirPods.

Apple may also take the opportunity to announce a release date for macOS 12.0 Monterey. If last month’s Apple event and the timing of iOS and iPadOS are any indication, the final version of Monterey should be released to the public within days after the event.