Apple Unveils New iPads, Introduces OS X Yosemite [Read More]

The company also announced that its new Apple Pay system will be officially launched on Monday, October 20, 2014.

The new tablets – the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini – both come with TouchID fingerprint sensors, which previously were only available on the iPhone.

You can use the TouchID to make purchases online with Apple Pay, though it won’t work at cash registers in stores the way the new iPhones do.

The Air 2 is just 6.1 millimeters thick, 18% smaller than the previous iPad Air. It’s also got a souped-up processor, improved Retina display and a camera that takes panoramic photos up to 43 megapixels.

Both of the new iPads will be available for preorder on Friday and will ship by the end of next week. They’re available in gold in addition to the traditional silver and dark gray.

  The Air 2 starts at $499 for the 16-gigabyte, WiFi-only version, while the same version of the Mini 3 goes for $399.

The 64-gig Air 2 is $599, while the 128-gig version is $699; for an additional $130, you can get a version in each of those sizes equipped with cellular data connectivity. Apple is also cutting prices for the older iPads.

Apple also unveiled a new 27-inch iMac desktop computer that begins shipping today and goes for $2,499.

On the software side, Apple announced that its new operating system, OS X Yosemite, will be available for free to download in the App Store on Thursday. The latest update to its mobile software, iOS 8.1, will be available Monday.

Yosemite got a big design update, making the interface for Macs look much more iPhone- and iPad-like. It comes with a revamped “spotlight” function that searches both the Mac and the Web.

There’s also the new iCloud Drive, a cloud storage feature that syncs all Mac folders across every Mac, iPhone or Windows PC that a user owns.

Source: CNN Money