A Few Surprises Apple Revealed At Its Ipad Event

While we expected much of what Apple announced today, the Cupertino company still managed to surprise and delight us with a few details (the top image of SVP of internet and Software Services Eddy Cue not withstanding). Read on for a few of our favorites: 

iPad Air

While we’ve expected the iPad 5 to adopt the design of the iPad mini since January, Apple delivered a rare product naming victory in naming the iPad Air.

While the name was often speculated for the smaller iPad ahead of the iPad mini announcement, I’d be impressed to find someone predicting Apple would pull this trick out of its sleeve. Sure beats the heck out of saying “iPad mini and full sized iPad,” right?

Oh and it sports the M7 motion processing chip? Fascinating.

Uncarrier iPad Plan

[tweet https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/392720302343344128]

We definitely knew that T-Mobile would be picking up the iPads this go-around (its CEO could hardly keep the secret), but we didn’t know the carrier would be giving away data! iPads with T-Mobile LTE built-in will allow customers to use 200 MB of data without charge. That’s certainly a competitive edge against AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.

OS X Updates Go Free

Okay, so plenty of folks predicted this, but now we know for sure that the days of paying for OS X updates are over. OS X Mavericks is available for free for users as far back as Snow Leopard! iWork and iLife are also free to new users on OS X and iOS.

iPad 2 Will Not Die

First announced in March 2011, Apple revealed today it will still sell the iPad 2. At $399, it’s probably the worst deal of the year. At this rate, this thing will probably outlive us all, 30-pin and all.

Collaboration

Not to be confused with the kind of collaboration Apple cited when it fired Scott Forstall, Apple revealed iWork for iCloud will feature collaboration tools like Google Docs allowing multiple users to edit a document in Pages, Keynote, or Numbers. We thank you Apple.

Let us know in the comments in anything else from today’s event surprised you and visit our round up from this morning!