techaccident

Agreed with Anilu_777: loud sounds don't cause eardrums to tear, especially the levels that AirPods can deliver. 

To get real hearing damage from a sound source in a short time, it needs to be really, really loud. Like a gunshot near your head loud. An Amber alert may be loud enough to be uncomfortable, but that's about it. I doubt sincerely that AirPods are capable of producing sounds in excess of 120dBSPL in the ear, as that would far exceed design parameters.

Reference: a really loud concert is about 110dB, or half as loud as 120dB (perceptually). Certainly attending a lot of 110dBSPL shows will damage hearing, but not instantaneously and certainly not with the result of ruptured eardrums. One Amber alert isn't anywhere close.

Same as Kris2112 - my Intel MBP shows the update, but my M1 MacBook Air does not. Waiting to see what happens.

We've had both Google Home and HomePod in our house for the past 9 months. We don't use the Google much at all - turns out that the "smart" part isn't really very compelling the vast majority of the time, and I'll probably put it back in its box along with its ghastly sub-par audio. The HomePods (we have 2 now) are used constantly as music sources, they sound absolutely great. I still have nearly no use for asking Siri for anything but 1) music and 2) where is iPhone? I'd consider an Echo for fun, but can't think of anything I want to ask it to do and they sound mediocre. Not yet sold on the voice-command lifestyle except for a few specific tasks.

While some users of iPad 2 are hanging on, it's the battery that will kick them off in the end. If you rely upon the device for casual consuming, then decent battery life is part of the package - and a 4-year-old machine is probably getting funky in that regard. These people are mainly using wifi-only models with the minimum 16GB of storage. That means that they can get a massive upgrade for only $329, a whole lot less than they paid for the original. Not bad, and clearly aimed at this crowd. This product really helps to distinguish the Pro line with a sharp delineation between consumption & productivity. I expect all the marketing around this new iPad to be about fun fun fun and content consumption, and the Pro marketing to be all about making stuff. Case closed (if I'm correct).

Jdmr1701 said:

...I really don't see the Macbook getting 16GB of memory right now unless there is a beefier CPU in that thing to handle more load. I haven't any experience with that laptop but have heard it is pretty slow and noticeably so. I don't think that will every or ever has been used as a professional laptop...

Don't underestimate those little MacBooks. My wife has the base model - m3 CPU, 8GB RAM - and it is a very useful machine that she uses to run her business. She runs MS Office all day, writes extensively, sends out invoices, creates presentation materials, organizes large bodies of images, etc. - in other words, a lot of real typical work. And it's just fine. She loves that it's so small and light, and how clear and bright the screen is. She takes it everywhere. In other words, I lot of people - perhaps a majority - could use the little MacBook and never notice that it's significantly slower than a Pro, because it does everything they actually need. There are of course people who genuinely need more, and this machine is not for them.