WaterField Is Ready To Protect Your New Apple Investments

Famous for their excellent quality and attention to detail, San Francisco manufacturer WaterField has just announced a huge selection of elegant sleeve cases and bags that will protect your brand spanking new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, the new fourth generation iPad, as well as the long-awaited iPad mini. 

There are TWELVE different bags and sleeves designed for the new slim 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro for you to choose from and they all provide a different style and degree of protection. You can now preorder any of them from their website and each will run you anywhere between $29 - $239, depending on your personal taste.  

Now that preorders for the iPad Mini are coming along and in just a couple more days after that, they'll start appearing on your doorstep, it would be a smart investment to get a case or sleeve for them. WaterField has you covered. Ranging from the Outback Sleeve, the Ultimate SleeveCase, the EXo SleeveCase, the Wallet, and many others, you'll have a variety to choose from. Every design will also be available for the fourth-generation iPad. You can preorder them from their website as well and they will range from $15 - $69. 

Fourth Generation iPad Strikes With Lightning And Then Some

The Internet is buzzing with Apple activity today, with just about everything Apple trending on Twitter. At the California Theatre in San Jose, CA, Tim Cook and his team announced a plethora of brand new products including the much anticipated iPad mini, that will leave a good number of us in a heap of credit card debt. The iPad 3 was "resolutionary" with its Retina display, but Apple wasn't satisfied with that just yet. They announced a number of upgrades that will be going into the new Big Daddy of iPads now dubbed the iPad 4, which is the 4th generation iPad Apple has released.

Getting rid of the old 30-pin connector, Apple is equipping the updated iPad 4 with the new Lightning connector that we first saw debut with the iPhone 5. Some people have been complaining about the responsiveness of their iPad and how the A5X processor just wasn't enough. If you're one of those people, there is good news coming. Apple's brand new A6X processor will give deliver twice as much CPU and graphics performance than its predecessor. Despite the huge boost in power, Apple claims to have maintained its amazing 10 hour battery life. To sweeten the deal, Apple has finally upgraded the front facing camera to the iSight camera, which is capable of 720p HD quality video chats. As for the back camera, it has not changed, but you shouldn't even be using it anyways... 

This new iPad was more of a "S" upgrade, which involved mainly updates to the internal specs. The 4th-generation iPad will be available in black and white with the same size configurations as the older iPad models, starting at $499 for the 16GB WiFi model and $629 for the 16GB cellular model. The new iPad is also compatible with international LTE carriers now as well. 

Get your credit cards ready on the 26th to preorder and expect the WiFi models to ship beginning November 2nd and the cellular models two weeks after. 

The New 2012 iMac Continues Apple's Revolutionary Design

To be honest, we were well aware of a lot of today's exciting announcements and what was in store from the never-ending flow of rumors that has been flying around. What was fairly well kept within Apple was the brand new iMac. I personally consider this as the most exciting portion of Apple's event today considering the surprise of it all. Not only did the entire exterior design transform into the sexiest piece of aluminum I've ever seen on a computer, but the internal specs have been boosted significantly, and as Steve Jobs would have said, "and one more thing…" the Fusion Drive. 

The current iMacs look like The Incredible Hulk when you compare it with the new updated versions. This all-in-one desktop computer has everything from the display, processor, graphics card, memory, and a bunch more crammed into a 5-mm edged display. That's half a centimeter. Think about it. Shedding 40% of its volume, the new iMac is the lightest and thinnest all-in-one computer Apple has ever seen. 

Remember how the old screen would reflect and glare like a mirror, rendering any work with direct sunlight shining through impossible? That's about to change. Apple has reduced 75% of the screen's reflectivity to instead display what you would want to see on such a gorgeous screen -- vibrant and true colors. 

The iMac isn't joking around, so it'll start off with Intel's quad-core Ivy Bridge processors and NVIDIA's high end graphics cards for amazing overall performance. Memory wise, 8GB come standard across all iMacs. As for ports and connectors, you get four USB 3.0 connectors, two Thunderbolt ports, a  Gigabit ethernet port, a headphone jack, and a SDXC card slot. 

As you're soaking all of this up, let me hit you with one last thing. Fusion Drive. The introduction of both traditional hard drives combined with the speedy solid-state drives, you can now have both lightning fast performance as well as high capacity storage. 1TB hard drives are now standard for every iMac but if you need more, Apple provides up to 3TB of storage or up to 768GB of flash storage. 

The 21.5-inch iMac will begin at $1299 and will start reaching doorsteps in November while the 27-inch will start at $1799 and will arrive sometime in December. This gives you some time to recuperate from buying all the other devices Apple announced recently. How thoughtful of them. 

The Mac Mini Gets A Big Boost

The iPad mini wasn't the only "Mini" to get the crowd's attention today in San Jose. The seemingly forgotten underdog of Apple's computing lineup hasn't seen much of a boost in quite some time. However, at long last, Apple has given it's first Mini product the upgrade it needs. 

The updated 2012 Mac mini now sports brand new Ivy Bridge processors and will begin at the 2.5 GHz Dual Core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. There are obviously upgradable components to the Mac mini, including a server configuration option. If none of the preset configurations appeal to you, you are still able to customize your own build-to-order Mac mini through Apple's Online store. 

Prices will begin at $599 for the base model and $999 for the Server configuration. They are available right now on Apple's Online store. 

The 13-inch MacBook Pro Joins The Retina Team

Rumors have been running rampant and spreading like wild fire when it comes to Apple products, and the latest 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro was no exception. The day the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro was announced, many people were disappointed that there wasn't a 13-inch model, considering how the little brother of the Macbook Pro lineup is the most sought after. As of today, people looking for the 13-inch to go Retina can bathe in its glory soon enough. 

Coming in at a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution, the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro will join in the race to become thinnest and fastest laptop on the market. While there have been no significant changes to the internal specs of the machine, other than the choice of up to 768GB of flash storage and flash storage only, the 13-inch Retina will stun you with its exterior design. Weighing only 3.57 pounds due to it being 20% thinner than the old MacBook Pro, fans of the Pro lineup can finally be satisfied. If you recall, the 13-inch MacBook Pros had speakers placed underneath the keyboard itself, rendering the audio quality and volume to be less than impressive, but now, Apple has changed the placement of the speakers to fire besides the uniquely designed ventilation ports, which should drastically improve audio quality. 

The base model 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro will begin at $1,699 and will come with a 128GB flash storage, 8GB of RAM, an Intel dual-core Ivy Bridge processor, and Intel HD Graphics 4000. These are available right now on the Apple Online Store. 

Google Tries Again With The New Samsung Chromebook

Perhaps we can look back to when Google announced their innovative Chromebook that caused maybe a rustle, if you'd call it that? Yeah, fine, it was a flop. The specs were weak, and the price point was too high. The idea of having a completely Cloud-powered laptop was appealing when the Internet was all abuzz with excitement, but once they arrived at your doorstep and you set it all up, it was simply underwhelming. 

Now, Google and Samsung recollected themselves and decided to try their hand again with their brand new ARM-based processor Chromebook. You guys said the price just didn't justify the purchase? How about now? They're coming in at a much easier-to-swallow $249. 

Don't let this ARM processor turn you off though. Not only does it significantly drop the price tag, but it is supposedly a much better ARM chip than we've seen before. They call it the Exynos 5 Dual processor that will utilize ARM's brand new Cortex-A15 architecture. Lowered the price and stuffed in more power, Google just might have something going for them. 

Features an 11.6-inch screen, 16GB of on-board storage and 2GB of RAM, there really isn't any significant upgrades here. However, Google is throwing in 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years with the purchase of any Chromebook. 

With all the latest tech announcements and releases, I don't even know what to buy anymore. If you just want everything to be the latest and greatest, you can head on over to official Chromebook preorder page here or just wait until Monday for them to get to your local retailer.