10 Biggest Blockbusters From Apple's Latest Product Release

Big Event Part 2

Just five weeks after the iPhone 6 launch event, Apple had a follow-up event to update many of its other product lines.

The company revealed upgrades and said it was releasing products and platforms announced earlier in the year, and had some news on how sales of current products are looking.

While Apple partners and tech analysts had their own predictions of what to expect, not everything came to fruition, while some others were right on target.

Here are the 10 biggest announcements from Thursday's Apple event.

iPad Air 2

The new iPad Air 2 is 18 percent thinner than the previous model at 6.1mm, about the same thickness as the iPhone 6.

It has a 9.7-inch display, like the prior model, but has a better resolution of 2,048-x-1,536, and 264 ppi. Apple said it is also 56 percent less reflective than the previous model.

Apple's new tablet features the powerful A8X processor and, despite the thinner model, it gets up to 10 hours of battery life. The iPad Air 2 also has an upgraded 8MP iSight camera. It has features available on the iPhone 6, including panorama, time-lapse videos, slo-mo and burst and timer modes.

The Air 2 sells for $499 for 16 GB; $599 for 64 GB; and $699 for 128 GB, and is available for preorders on Friday, before shipping next week.

The real big feature though is Touch ID. Turn the page to find out more on that.

Touch ID

One of the best new features of the iPad Air 2 is its Touch ID feature. With Touch ID, users will be able to securely confirm account login information with a touch of a finger, but the best part of Touch ID is Apple Pay.

Although the new iPad doesn't have the NFC capabilities to use Apple Pay like the iPhone 6, it will take advantage of the payment platform's PayPal-like e-commerce capabilities.

Users will be able to shop online right on their iPads and confirm purchases with just touch -- no more filling out credit card information, expiration dates, or billing and shipping addresses.

Apple Pay

Apple announced that Apple Pay, the company's mobile payment platform, will be available for free on Monday. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users, in addition to users of iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 (more on that later), will be able to use Apple Pay. The mobile payment platform works with most debit and credit cards of Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

Apple said all major banks are committed to supporting Apple Pay by the end of the year, including Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo and American Express, on launch day.

iOS 8.1

The first major update to iOS 8 will be available to download from the Apple Store on Monday.

The update brings with it Apple Pay, in addition to iCloud Photo Library and the Camera Roll in the photo app.

The first 5 GB of the iCloud storage are free, and costs $0.99 for 20 GB and $3.99 for 200 GB. Apple said tiers are available for up to 1 TB.

When iOS 8 initially came out, there was some surprise that the Camera Roll was missing from the Photo app. After receiving some complaints, Apple decided to give it back in iOS 8.1.

OS X Yosemite

As first demoed at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in early June, OS X Yosemite is the operating system for the Mac that brings a slew of new features.

Apple released the OS in the app store as a free download on Thursday.

One of the biggest new features in Yosemite is Connectivity and Handoff. With Connectivity, users can stay connected to their iOS devices, receiving push notifications and alerts on their Macs, or by taking or making calls or text messages from their Macs through their iPhones in another room.

With Handoff, users can be watching a movie, editing a document, or looking through a photo album on their Mac or iOS device, and seamlessly "hand it off" to another iOS device or Mac, and continue where they left off.

Retina 5k iMac

Yosemite was made available on the Apple Store on Thursday, free to download, but will also come standard on the new Retina 5K iMacs that Apple released on the day of the event.

The new iMac has Apple's Retina display, but for the first time includes 5K resolution with its 5,120-x-2,880 screen. Apple boasts the screen is the best ever on an iMac as it holds 14.7 million pixels.

Inside its 5mm thin casing is quad-core Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, available up to 4 GHz, the latest AMD graphics and up to 32-GB of memory.

The new iMac starts at $2,499.

Mac Mini

Apple released the new Mac mini at its Thursday event, the first update to the machine in two years.

With the update comes a $100 drop in the price tag, now $499, and several upgrades to the internal specs.

The entry-level model holds a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, a 500-GB hard drive, 4 GB of memory and Intel HD graphics all inside its 7.7-inch frame.

Apple's most affordable machine also comes standard with Yosemite, but monitor, keyboard and mouse are sold separately.

iPad Mini 3

The iPad mini 3 is a smaller, less expensive version of the iPad Air 2. It comes with Touch ID and will work with Apple Pay for shopping online.

It was made available for preorder on Friday, and will be shipping next week. It has a 7.9-inch Retina display with 2,048-x-1,536 resolution at 326 ppi.

Inside its 7.5-mm thin casing, it holds Apple's A7 processor and a 5MP iSight camera. Apple said the iPad mini 3 gets 10 hours of battery life and comes in Silver, Gold or Space Gray casings.

The new iPad mini sells for $399 for the 16-GB model; $499 for 64 GB; and $599 for 128 GB.

Apple Watch

We did see the Apple Watch at the iPad and iMac launch event on Thursday, but don't get too excited as it is still not going to be released until next year.

Apple used the watch as a remote to control a video on Apple TV. The only real news that Apple gave on its first wearable device is that the company is releasing WatchKit, the SDK for third-party app developers to build apps for the Apple Watch.

This is not surprising as companies such as Apple and Google do this to make sure apps are ready to go on product launch days to enhance the user experience on Day 1.

What Was Missing

Heading into the event, there were a few things experts, including Apple partners, were hoping to see, but did not.

The company did use Apple TV to showcase videos of its other products, but there was no new update to Apple TV itself. One analyst, however, said this week's news of HBO and CBS releasing web-only subscription services in the future will be big for Apple TV.

Touch ID is now on iPhones and iPads, but some partners hoped to see it on MacBooks and iMacs, as well for e-commerce purposes. That didn't happen either, but we could see it down the road as Apple Pay takes off.

We didn't see any update to MacBooks at all as some partners hoped to see a MacBook with a Retina display like the new iMacs. Those partners suspect we'll see that next year.