Weekend News Roundup: Walmart deals, New iPads Announcement Date, more

Sorry from the bottom of my heart for not doing an article since Wednesday, and with the long absence I developed a new schedule for Seeds of Apple: Operate on weekdays, then celebrate the weekend and do a roundup of weekend news that Monday (I apologize for having to make this go into Tuesday). This time around, Friday was off school as well, so I decided to make that part of my "weekend". I just sent you Thursday's article intended to be released that day (silly of me to make the article then forget to let my parents edit it and because of that forget to add images and send it!), and here is this weekend's Monday news roundup!

First, the M1 MacBook Air was discontinued two weeks ago (that was the very last goodbye to the wedge MacBook design!) but is still starting to be sold by other retailers with some good deals, including, surprisingly, Walmart! It has partnered with Apple to sell the M1 MacBook Air for a price of just $699, which makes it in the reach of people looking for less expensive laptops (I am no laptop specialist, but I'd say that $699 is around where most laptops sell for). Too bad a) the M1 MacBook Air is 3 1/2 years old, so you're going to have to upgrade faster to get the newest macOS and b) Best Buy has undercut Walmart by $50.

Next, two new models of 4th-gen AirPods are going to be in production as soon as May with their announcement coming in either September or October, in what has been called the "biggest AirPods launch to date". As a recap, they will feature a new design with an even better fit, USB-C on the case, and of course better sound quality. The higher-end models will feature long-asked-for ANC (active noise cancellation) and a charging case speaker for Find My, suspiciously AirPods Pro (we should have to wait for longer for new AirPods Pro!) features. Both 2nd- and 3rd-gen AirPods are expected to be discontinued after the launch of these AirPods. Speaking of AirPods, iOS 18 is expected to harbor a new feature making the AirPods Pro hearing aids, with a hearing test feature in the works too (although the latter doesn't have a set release date, we can predict that it will come with the hearing aid mode).

Speaking of launches, new iPads (specifically, as a recap, the iPad Pro and (with a 12.9" model!) the iPad Air) are coming as soon as next Tuesday, if a report based on Amazon availability dates for non-Apple cases for the new iPads are to be believed. A somewhat conflicting report says that a new version of iPadOS for the new iPads might be pushed into April, but in several respects this might not be a factor, maybe just pushing the availability date of the new iPads to a week after the announcement. Another one says that the iPad Air 6 is now being mass-produced to the US (but it's not announced yet!). Update 3/24/24: Disproven by Mark Gurman, along with other iPad rumors.

Finally, Apple is rumored to be partnering with Google to use its Gemini in its devices, but I'd be skeptical about this, because Apple doesn't like to outsource too many things, and this would mean a total give-up on Apple's own chatbot project codenamed Ajax and named by employees as Apple GPT. Plus, moving on, Apple released a new website showing how many Vision Pro apps are available (now over 1,000), and speaking of Vision Pro, Nvidia (who we all know as the one whose stock surged by several times last year due to AI efforts) partnered with Apple to show off Omniverse streaming to Vision Pro at its latest keynote (Nvidia GTC 2024). Phew. Bye!