After months of rumors and rampant speculation, Apple held its October media event at its Cupertino headquarters to unveil the company’s latest advancements for iOS and Mac products. Following extensive recaps of iOS 8 features and a deep dive into iOS and OS X Yosemite’s Extensibility features, Apple announced a series of iOS and Mac product enhancements to carry the company into the holiday quarter. Here are the highlights.

Apple Pay will start ringing out on Monday.

Alongside public availability of the iOS 8.1 update on Monday, Apple Pay will be activated for iOS users across the country. The payment processing system will be compatible with in-store registers via the NFC chips in iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as with iOS apps updated to support 8.1 on any iOS device with a Touch ID sensor. Offering new considerations for security and encryption using the Touch ID fingerprint authentication, Apple Pay could be the first NFC-assisted mobile payments platform to see widespread adoption by actual retailers and shoppers.

To wit, Apple announced a number of new corporate partners who intend to support Apple Pay in retail locations at launch, including Urban Outfitters, Nike, and Walgreens. Combined with iOS app developers like Uber and OpenTable who intend to include support in future app updates, Apple Pay has the potential to process millions of transactions in the coming weeks. The company has announced partnerships with major banks and credit card companies, including Chase and American Express, and many smaller banks have announced plans to support Apple Pay as soon as possible. Given strong iOS 8 adoption numbers Apple CEO Tim Cook touted at the beginning of his keynote, it’s likely that 8.1 could be in millions of iOS users’ pockets immediately after the launch.

iPad Air 2 is thinner and faster and better all over.

Last year’s ultralight iPad Air was a tough act to follow. With a modern new aluminum design and bleeding-fast A7 processor, the tablet has earned tech pundits’ accolades and admiration from millions of iOS customers—to the tune of more than 80 million units shipped since its introduction last fall. This year, Apple refined its vision with the thinner, lighter, more capable iPad Air 2. Boasting an 18% reduction in thickness and an all-new A8X system-on-a-chip, the iPad Air 2 exemplifies Apple’s timeless vendetta against bulk and girth.

The iPad Air 2’s weight loss was the result of a few factors, the most substantial of which was a reduction of component thickness in the display. By removing air gaps in the display and directly laminating the front glass panel to the LCD, Apple was able to trim a few millimeters while simultaneously improving image quality. Coupled with the 56% reduction of reflectiveness in the new aluminosilicate display glass treatment, the iPad Air 2 has one of the best tablet displays Apple has ever shipped.

But Apple didn’t stop with the display—it also boosted the quality of images that the iPad screen shows. A new 8-megapixel rear shooter adopts camera hardware improvements from the iPhone line to allow unprecedented image quality and fidelity. The iSight camera shoots 1080p HD video in slow motion, as well, bringing iOS Camera features to the tablet form factor. (One omission, however: the iPad Air 2 ditches the mute and rotation-lock switch from the right corner in the interest of thinness.)

Perhaps the biggest addition was the integration of a Touch ID sensor into the iPad Air 2 home button, not only enabling seamless fingerprint authentication to unlock the iPad display, but also powering Apple Pay transactions in apps supporting iOS 8.1 next week. The iPad Air 2 starts at $499 for 16GB of storage, and inherits the jump to 64GB at the $599 price point from Apple’s iPhone lineup from September. Perhaps most significantly, the iPad Air 2 comes in a gold-colored anodized aluminum to match the iPhones 5s and 6.

iPad mini 3 is the same, but with 100% more Touch ID.

While the iPad Air saw a ground-up refinement, the iPad mini 3 saw far less attention. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller touched on the smaller tablet for a precious few seconds following the iPad Air 2 introduction, briefly touching on its price points before moving on to Mac news. Whereas last year’s iPad mini with Retina Display (now rebranded iPad mini 2) matched its iPad Air older brother in every hardware specification, this year’s model lags behind—its only modification is the integration of a Touch ID sensor.

The iPad mini 3 still sports an A7 processor rather than the iPad Air 2’s A8X, it still has a 5-megapixel rear camera like the iPad mini 2, and starts at $399. Last year’s iPad mini, meanwhile, has been reduced to $299 for 16GB and the original iPad mini lives on at $249. The iPad mini 3 comes in gold, as well, one slight aesthetic difference over last year’s model, which might be enough for some customers to shell out the extra $100 for the third-generation over the second.

 

iMac with Retina 5K Display is dense. Pixel-dense.

Some of the day’s biggest news came from Apple’s long-neglected desktop Mac lines, which saw major hardware updates beyond the brand-new OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The high-end iMac all-in-one desktops were updated with an insane “Retina 5K Display” with an immense 5120 x 2880 resolution that dwarfs both 1080p and 4K video specifications. (Perhaps most surprisingly of all, the pro-tier desktop starts at a mere $2499.) Meanwhile, the company’s long-forgotten Mac mini headless desktops received modest spec bumps and were slashed to a mere $499 entry-level price point.

These updates were welcome, and Mac enthusiasts were delighted at the Retina arrival on desktop, but the platform’s biggest news was Yosemite’s availability this afternoon. Available for free download on the Mac App Store, OS X 10.10 delivers iOS-inspired redesigns and Continuity features to bridge iOS devices and MacBooks. “Yosemite” follows Apple’s new convention of naming OS X versions after California destinations rather than big cats. While minor and limited to Apple’s marketing, the change marks an ideological step away from the days of OS X Tiger and OS X Leopard. (John Siracusa, NeXT veteran and preeminent OS X expert, released his 27-page OS X review which dives into each feature—it’s worth a read for any Mac fan.)

A stopgap between revolutions.

Apple proved a responsible steward for both iOS and Mac OS ecosystems, but teased its wrist-centric next step slightly—software head Craig Federighi used the Remote app on Apple Watch to progress through Keynote slides to the sound of excited audience applause. The company also announced availability of its long-awaited WatchKit API, which will allow third-party developers to prepare software for Apple Watch this November. While developers won’t have physical Apple Watch hardware to test their apps on, emulation additions to Xcode will tide them over until the device’s public availability in 2015.

iOS has matured as a platform, and OS X is working hard to keep up, but Apple’s two most recent product keynotes have demonstrated its focused attention on future endeavors. When the Apple Watch launches early next year, many of the company’s design and development resources will migrate to a smaller, more fashionable form factor—and developers’ efforts are sure to follow. The iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 seem lightyears ahead of dated Mac hardware designs like the Mac mini, and that trend could only accelerate as Watch OS enters the fold. Next year, when Apple gathers press and developers for fall events at 4 Infinite Loop, the most exciting revelations won’t come in 10- or 7-inch form factors—all eyes will be keenly focused on a 1.5-inch square pulsing confidently on their wrists.