Apple highlights iPad Pro, new Apple TV alongside popular accessories in holiday gift guide
Apple has some helpful tips for consumers who are having trouble deciding on gifts for their tech-savvy friends and family, launching a new edition of its annual holiday gift guide featuring the latest from Apple and its favorite partners.
The 2015 gift guide is split into six focus areas: gaming, photography, music, fitness, learning, and travel. Each category features a selection of Apple hardware alongside popular third-party accessories.
The Apple TV and iPad Air 2 dominate the gaming category, with the SteelSeries Nimbus and Parrot Bebop drone sharing the spotlight. Photography is headlined by the iPhone 6s and iPad Pro, joined by the likes of olloclip, JOBY, and Shure.
Music spotlights the iPhone 6s, MacBook, and Apple TV along with speaker options from Bose and B&O and Apogee creation tools. The Apple Watch stars in Fitness along with the iPhone 6s, PowerBeats earphones, and the Wahoo Fitness KICKR SNAP bike trainer.
The learning category promotes the iPod touch and MacBook with the Sphero SPRK and Osmo genius kit. Finally, Travel shows off the Apple Watch again along with the iPad mini 4 and noise-cancelling headphones and external battery packs.
Coordination is a theme that runs throughout the gift guide. Apple makes a point of showing off how well its products coordinate with each other and third-party accessories, a reflection of the more fashion-focused direction of the company's retail strategy.
The 2015 gift guide is split into six focus areas: gaming, photography, music, fitness, learning, and travel. Each category features a selection of Apple hardware alongside popular third-party accessories.
The Apple TV and iPad Air 2 dominate the gaming category, with the SteelSeries Nimbus and Parrot Bebop drone sharing the spotlight. Photography is headlined by the iPhone 6s and iPad Pro, joined by the likes of olloclip, JOBY, and Shure.
Music spotlights the iPhone 6s, MacBook, and Apple TV along with speaker options from Bose and B&O and Apogee creation tools. The Apple Watch stars in Fitness along with the iPhone 6s, PowerBeats earphones, and the Wahoo Fitness KICKR SNAP bike trainer.
The learning category promotes the iPod touch and MacBook with the Sphero SPRK and Osmo genius kit. Finally, Travel shows off the Apple Watch again along with the iPad mini 4 and noise-cancelling headphones and external battery packs.
Coordination is a theme that runs throughout the gift guide. Apple makes a point of showing off how well its products coordinate with each other and third-party accessories, a reflection of the more fashion-focused direction of the company's retail strategy.
Comments
I haven't been following this ... but really, you think they are sold out for Christmas already? if so wow! My best guess is this will be a 'self gift' for any Apple enthusiast that can find justification somehow as they are graphic artists or own their own companies, the latter like I always have, just kid themselves about the need 'cos they want a new Apple toy' LOL. I don't see this under the tree for little Johnny or Susie.
Those expecting an iPad Pro and Pencil for Christmas at this point have probably missed the boat.
Just ordered my pencil and keyboard, and it says December 17 delivery.
The 128GB iPad Pro Gold wifi (which the wife will "gift" me, and I'll be allowed to pre-open
) says one week for store pickup.
Those expecting an iPad Pro and Pencil for Christmas at this point have probably missed the boat.
I very much doubt it.
Meanwhile, Amazon has gotta be rethinking their decision to drop ?TV to promote their own "shit on a stick" alternate.
My best guess is this will be a 'self gift' for any Apple enthusiast that can find justification somehow as they are graphic artists or own their own companies, the later like I always have, just kid themselves about the need 'cos they want a new Apple toy' LOL.
So true. The term 'graphic artists' includes a very broad range of disciplines. For graphics professionals, probably one in a hundred are illustrators, which appears to be what the Apple Pencil is all about. For the rest of graphic professionals you are expected to be experienced in Adobe CC if you want to work in the industry. Adobe has demonstrated a few interesting tools for iPad, but in general one is expected to connect to Adobe Cloud and integrate your work with the applications in the formal CC suite for completion.
The gift guide makes shopping easy if your special someone has one of the interests mentioned. Very good marketing; slick but also helpful.
I guess I'll have to wait on ATV unless or until Apple enables storage on the device itself of photos, music, video.
I don't follow that, can you explain? I have many TBs of personal data,comprising music and photographs available on my new Apple Tv. Personal videos I use Plex and a Mac Mini with a 2TB HD I must admit.
I guess I'll have to wait on ATV unless or until Apple enables storage on the device itself of photos, music, video.
I don't follow that, can you explain? I have many TBs of personal data,comprising music and photographs available on my new Apple Tv. Personal videos I use Plex and a Mac Mini with a 2TB HD I must admit.
You mean "available" from your cloud storage, don't you?
My point was storage on the device itself, to avoid the weaknesses inherent in streaming from iCloud.
I'm not a professional photographer, which you seem to be (just going by username and previous posts.
But I enjoy streaming collections of photos I've taken, as a backdrop to listening to music. It's discouraging
to see the photostream revert regularly to the National Geographic photos which are stored - I think - directly on
ATV3's, or worse, to have to restart the ATV3 every couple of days, or, worst, reset it every couple of months
to minimize the drop-outs.
I'd like to obviate all that, by storing certain collections on the ATV4, and simply doing slideshows
directly from that, but Apple assures me that, while I can store lots of apps & games I purchase, I cannot
store other my other content on the device itself...and so I haven't purchased one. I hope this was clearer.
Sorry, yes I mean available via iCloud but also locally (see next paragraph). I was asking for more info not disagreeing. I did purchase the new Apple TV with the maximum storage assuming this might come in useful. I don't think you will ever see an Apple TV with mass onboard storage though.
Re viewing Photos photos: I've found one can avoid the drop outs and occasional lags of iCloud photos by using Home Sharing as the source of images for the Apple TV. My main Mac on the LAN then uses iTunes to select the Albums created in Photos I wish to share over Home Sharing to the Apple TV. I use this for both slide shows and the Apple TV's screen saver. I can use Siri to do this now, well partially at least. I confess i think this sharing of albums via Home Sharing would be more logically done within Photos now not iTunes. I also would like this feature (as it used to be) to be available to other Macs on the LAN as well as the Apple TV.
Except for the Siri part all of the above can also be done on the previous model Apple TV. My now demoted older Apple TV is now on another TV in another room and has access to the same Home Shared albums and works identically.
The extra RAM on the new Apple TV seems to buffer images too from what I can tell as the mother Mac can be off and the screen saver tied to it, still work. I've seen that reverting to Nat Geog images too on the previous Apple Tv and I have a very fast FiOS set up. I saw that start after Photos began. Previously I use Aperture to create albums on iCloud and they always worked fine.
@digitalclips
Thanks, I knew you were asking for clarification - sorry if it sounded like I was arguing!
I've never started up Home Sharing - the fact we are all on the same iCloud account, network,
and iTunes account seems to already do what I thought Home Sharing does, but,
from your description, I guess not.
I appreciate the suggestions, and I think I'll try them, if I can figure them out
(never been very technical, and I don't seem to 'learn' as fast as I used to, either
).
I also thought perhaps the A8 vs. A5 chip might keep its head straight better,
so it's good to hear 4 times the RAM has some effect too.
The part that had me baffled was that to share Albums in Photos on a Mac you have to launch iTunes on the same Mac having started Home Sharing. Once in iTunes the way to do it wasn't obvious to me! See attched screen shots ...
Once checked these now show up on the Apple TVs. being on the LAN they are instant and none of the annoying iCloud issues. For Movies I have locally, Plex running on the new Apple TV is the best solution I now feel. I prefer using Plex over iTunes as I can have the movies on external drives on another spare Mac, a Mac mini in my case. I am talking about both my own movies shot on cameras and DVDs I have ripped. Plex on the new Apple TV is like using Netflix only your own material.
@digitalclips
Thanks, the screens should be quite helpful. Just curious - what do you use to rip dvd's?
Handbrake, it's free too! : https://handbrake.fr
http://www.macworld.com/article/2362781/how-to-rip-a-blu-ray-disc.html
Quote:
@digitalclips
Thanks, the screens should be quite helpful. Just curious - what do you use to rip dvd's?
Handbrake, it's free too! : https://handbrake.fr
http://www.macworld.com/article/2362781/how-to-rip-a-blu-ray-disc.html
So...MakeMKV to rip, Handbrake to convert to usable format in iTunes.
Thanks for the help, and apologies to anyone who didn't really want to read about this,
or who wanted to talk about other stuff instead!
Hey no need to apologize this is all useful to any Apple TV user.
Plex doesn't even need any conversion, it can play .mvk no problem.
However, if you have .mvk already you want as .m4v you can convert it very quickly with an application called Remux.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/35968/remux
This is useful as you can burn English subs for non English dialog on an otherwise English movie. Something neither Plex not iTunes can deal with.