Apple is offering the new iPad model to the students at $299, while the regular customers will be able to buy it at $329, same as what the last year’s iPad 9.7-inch cost. Apple, after many years of focusing on its loyal customers and businesses, made a revisit to the school, which is what Apple is known for 40 years later. Apple has announced a new iPad 9.7-inch that comes with support for Apple Pencil at its education event in Chicago. The new iPad will work with the new range of apps that will be released under the ClassKit API. Apple is offering the new iPad model to the students at $299, while the regular customers will be able to buy it at $329, same as what the last year’s iPad 9.7-inch cost. It will be available to purchase in Apple Stores starting today in Silver, Space Grey, and a brand-new Gold colour option.
The new 9.7-inch iPad is powered by Apple’s latest processor, the A10 Fusion chip. This bit of silicon makes it easier for users to run augmented reality apps, or use iOS 11’s multitasking features to run multiple apps at once while still keeping things snappy. The iPads have Touch ID, a battery that runs for 10 hours, and the same storage options as the previous generation. Apple debuted the new iPads at a media event today at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, Illinois. The devices go on sale in this week, and will be available to regular consumers for $329. There’s a special $299 price for buyers in the K-12 education market. The Pencil is still sold separately—$99 for consumers, $89 for students. Apple is also adding a couple of other bonuses for students. Schools will get 200GB of iCloud storage instead of 5GB
The demo areas here at Lane Tech aren’t really focused on the hardware, instead it’s a ton of different software demos all focused on the classroom. That makes perfect sense for the kind of event this is meant to be. Tim Cook is making the rounds, looking at drones and AR and various other experiments, and there are lots of kids in tow with him. Going to an event that’s all about experiences instead of speeds and feeds of hardware is admittedly fun, but hard to convey. We’ll try to do that later, after we’ve sat in on a few more sessions.
Apple’s push into the education market also comes after it’s been positioning the iPad as more of a work-oriented tool in recent years. When Apple unveiled its new operating system for its mobile devices last year, it flaunted new productivity features for the iPad such as a file manager app and a refreshed app dock that could fit more programs than before. With that in mind, making more of an effort to market the iPad as an educational tool seems like a sensible move.
