Yesterday in Brooklyn, at a music venue more than a century old, Apple released its newest and most innovative computer. It's thinner and lighter than its predecessor, and it's powered by a crazy-powerful new processor.

Also, there was an update to the MacBook Air.

It's true: While the new MacBook Air was the product that people hopped on a plane, train, or subway yesterday to see, the clamshell laptop was just the opening act. The new iPad Pro announced yesterday was the headliner. It's a more technically impressive device, one that demonstrates what the future of computing looks like to Apple. Apple spent approximately 20 minutes talking about the new MacBook Air yesterday, while it took longer than a half hour to go through all of the features of its new tablet and its stylus accessory, the Pencil.

If you were to imagine a decade ago what the tablet of the future would like—the elusive glass slabs that people tapped and swiped in Hollywood sci-fi movies—the new iPad Pro is pretty close to it.

One of Apple's biggest selling tools with any Mac is nostalgia. When Apple CEO Tim Cook began talking about the Mac category yesterday, he talked about Apple's history of making products that help people "unleash their creativity." On the screen behind him, a montage of black-and-white still images appeared, featuring people both famous and unknown using MacBooks for various creative endeavors. "People love the Mac, and they use it to create all kinds of amazing things every day," Cook said. When it came time to finally unveil the new Air, Cook first offered a short retrospective on the original MacBook Air, and how it "redefined the modern notebook."

When Cook talked about the iPad, he pitted it directly against notebooks made by companies other than Apple, compared its processing power to that of a game console, and called it a "magical piece of glass that transforms instantly into anything you want it to be."

Of course, many people were just happy to hear that that the MacBook Air is not being totally neglected. The MacBook Air was first released in 2008 and has received only incremental updates since then. Now, it has a high-resolution display; an improved keyboard and trackpad; a fingerprint sensor for authentication; and internals that are, at the very least, up to date. Its reveal yesterday was met with cheers from the crowd (presumably, not including the press) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

But none of those updates are really new for Apple, or for the broader laptop market. High-resolution displays have been done for years; so have fingerprint sensors. The MacBook Air's "new" Intel 8th-generation chipset isn't even the newest.

Flat Growth

The iPad Pro, on the other hand, is a showcase of truly impressive technologies. I say this as someone who has never felt the need to actually buy an iPad. In fact, the only iPad I've ever possessed was given to me by my employer. Every time I see a new iPad, especially an iPad Pro, I briefly entertain delusional thoughts of becoming something of a digital artiste. Then I realize I don't draw very well and that my work as a journalist requires me to type frequently and at length on a traditional keyboard, something with a desktop OS. I am not the target iPad customer.

But this iPad Pro! It's enough to make anyone want an iPad. When I first picked it up yesterday in the hands-on area at the event, I was immediately struck by how light it is—and that was the larger of the two models.

The iPad Pro now comes in two display sizes: 12.9 inches and 11 inches, the latter of which fits into the same basic dimensions as the old 10.5-inch iPad Pro. The display is nearly edge-to-edge, with thin black bezels. Apple compared the 12.9-inch iPad to the size of a sheet of paper, which sounded a little like the company was trying to recreate the "manila envelope" moment, only with an iPad instead of a MacBook this time. If you were to imagine a decade ago what the glass tablet of the future would look like—the elusive glass slabs that people tapped and swiped in Hollywood sci-fi movies—the new iPad Pro is pretty close to it.