Depending on which Android-focused site you believe, either a third Pixel Tablet was apparently in the works at Google and canceled, as Android Headlines reported, or the second one, as Android Authority has it. Either way, there was reportedly a team at Google working on the next flagship Pixel-branded tablet, and now, seemingly due to profitability concerns, that work is over. At least until, maybe, a third Pixel Tablet in the future.
The Pixel Tablet, released last fall, was generally regarded as Google’s second re-entry into the tablet market that the iPad all but owns, at least at the consumer level. As such, it sought to distinguish itself from Apple’s slab by launching with a home-friendly dock and speaker cradle, taking on the appearance of a big smart home display when docked to it.
While there are no public sales figures, the device has not kick-started a resurgence of interest in Android tablets beyond the baseline sales of Amazon’s Kindle Fire devices (based on a Google-less fork of Android). Google will likely continue to support and promote Android tablets for other manufacturers and now has its own Pixel Fold devices occupying that middle space between phone and tablet forms.
Ars has contacted Google for comment and confirmation and will update this post with its response.
Apple quietly announced a new version of its iPad mini tablet via press release this morning, the tablet’s first update since 2021.
The seventh-generation iPad mini looks mostly identical to the sixth-generation version, with a power-button-mounted Touch ID sensor and a slim-bezeled display. But Apple has swapped out the A15 Bionic chip for the Apple A17 Pro, the same processor it used in the iPhone 15 Pro last year.
The new iPad mini is available for preorder now and starts at $499 for 128GB (an upgrade over the previous base model’s 64GB of storage). 256GB and 512GB versions are available for $599 and $799, and cellular connectivity is an additional $150 on top of any of those prices.
Apple says the A17 Pro’s CPU performance is 30 percent faster than the A15’s and that its GPU performance is 25 percent faster (in addition to supporting hardware-accelerated ray tracing). But the biggest improvement will be an increase in RAM—the A17 Pro comes with 8GB instead of the A15’s 4GB, which appears to be Apple’s floor for the new Apple Intelligence AI features. The new iPad mini will be the only iPad mini capable of supporting Apple Intelligence, which will begin rolling out with the iPadOS 18.1 update within the next few weeks.
Enlarge/ Apple’s M3 Max-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro. New Pro laptops and some desktops could be on tap for later this fall.
Andrew Cunningham
Apple’s newest iPhones and Apple Watches don’t come out until later this week, but the rumor mill is already indicating that Apple is planning a product announcement for October to refresh some of the products that didn’t get a mention at the iPhone event. Apple scheduled its release calendar similarly last year, when it announced and released new iPhones in September and then launched the first wave of M3 Macs around Halloween.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes that the event will mainly focus on the first wave of Macs with M4 processors, following the standard M4’s introduction in the iPad Pro earlier this year. As he has reported previously, he expects new MacBook Pro models with the M4 and “pro-level M4 chip options,” presumably the M4 Pro and M4 Max. He also expects an M4 version of the 24-inch iMac.
But the most interesting of the new Macs will still be the redesigned Mac mini, which hasn’t gotten an M3 update at all and has been using the same basic external design since 2010. This Mac mini is said to be closer in size to the Apple TV than the current mini, but still uses an internal power supply so that owners won’t have to wrangle a power brick. At least some of the current device’s ports will be replaced by USB-C and/or Thunderbolt ports, something that MacRumors apparently confirmed earlier today when they found a reference to an “Apple silicon Mac mini (5 ports)” in an Apple software update (some of those ports are reportedly on the front of the device, a nice Mac Studio design upgrade that I’d like to see on a new Mac mini).
The “five port” descriptor does imply that there will be another model with either more or fewer ports—Apple used similar terminology to distinguish the two- and four-port versions of some MacBook Pro models in the Intel days. The current M2 Mac mini models have fewer ports than the models with the M2 Pro chip, because the more powerful processor also has more I/O capabilities—assuming we get one Mac mini with an M4 and an upgraded model with an M4 Pro, we’d expect the Pro version to have more ports.
Gurman says that other Mac models, including the Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and MacBook Air, will see M4-series updates throughout 2025. Of those, the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro have gone the longest without an update—they’re all still using M2-series chips.
Apple is also said to be planning some new lower-end iPads for the October event—not the first time that Macs and iPads have shared billing for one of these late-fall product announcements. The $349 iPad 10 and the iPad mini have both gone over a year without any kind of hardware update; it seems likely that they’ll both get newer chips, if not significantly updated designs.
Today is the official release date for the public versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and a scad of other Apple software updates, the foundation that Apple will use for Apple Intelligence and whatever other features it wants to add between now and next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But for those who value stability and reliability over new features, you may not be excited to update to a new operating system with a version number ending in “0.”
For those of you who prefer to wait for a couple of bugfix updates before installing new stuff, Apple is also releasing security-only updates for a bunch of its (now) last-generation operating systems today. The iOS 17.7, iPadOS 17.7, and macOS 14.7 updates are either available now or should be shortly, along with a security update for 2022’s macOS 13 Ventura. An updated version of Safari 18 that runs on both macOS 13 and 14 should be available soon, though as of this writing is doesn’t appear to be available yet.
Apple has historically been pretty good about providing security updates to older macOS releases—you can expect them for about two years after the operating system is replaced by a newer version. But for iOS and iPadOS, the company used to stop updating older versions entirely after releasing a new one. This changed back in 2021, when Apple decided to start providing some security-only updates to older iOS versions to help people who were worried about installing an all-new potentially buggy OS upgrade.
Eventually, iOS and iPadOS users will need to install iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 to keep getting security updates. But for the handful of older iPads that can’t run iPadOS 18, Apple will usually keep supporting those specific devices with security updates for a year or two. Apple was still providing new security updates for 2022’s iOS 16 as recently as August, keeping older devices like the iPhone 8 and the first-generation iPad Pros reasonably secure even though they were incapable of running newer operating systems.
You’ll be able to write out expressions with the Apple Pencil and see them solved in real time.
Samuel Axon
CUPERTINO, Calif.—After going into detail about iOS 18, Apple took a few moments in its WWDC 2024 keynote to walk through some changes.
There are a few minor UI changes and new features across Apple’s first party apps. That includes a new floating tab bar. The bar expands into the side bar when you want to dig in, and you can customize the tab bar to include the specific things you want to interact with the most. Additionally, SharePlay allows easier screen sharing and remote control of another person’s iPad.
But the big news is that the Calculator app we’ve all used on the iPhone to the iPad, after years of the iPad having no first-party calculator app at all. The iPad Calculator app can do some things the iPhone version can’t do with the Apple Pencil; a feature called Math Notes can write out expressions like you would on a piece of paper, and the app will solve the expressions live as you scribble them—plus various other cool live-updating math features. (These new Math Notes features work in the Notes app, too.)
Apple didn’t use the word AI here, but this is surely driven by machine learning in some way. Doubly so for a new handwriting feature called Smart Script, which refines and improves your handwriting as you go, tweaking letters to make them more legible when you’re writing very quickly to take notes. It uses machine learning to analyze your handwriting, so these adjustments are meant to match your normal script. That means you can scribble as quickly and recklessly as you want during a conference or a day of classes, but ostensibly, it will be legible at the end of the day.
Not everyone’s a big Pencil user—for some of us, handwriting long ago took a back seat to typing—but Apple is aggressively selling these kinds of flashy features for those who want that experience.
The release date for iPadOS 18 hasn’t been announced yet, but it will likely arrive in September or October alongside iOS 18 and the new iPhone models that will probably be announced then.
The biggest feature in iOS 18, the one that affects the most people, was a single item in a comma-stuffed sentence by Apple software boss Craig Federighi: “Support for RCS.”
As we noted when Apple announced its support for “RCS Universal Profile,” a kind of minimum viable cross-device rich messaging, iPhone users getting RCS means SMS chains with Android users “will be slightly less awful.” SMS messages will soon have read receipts, higher-quality media sending, and typing indicators, along with better security. And RCS messages can go over Wi-Fi when you don’t have a cellular signal. Apple is certainly downplaying a major cross-platform compatibility upgrade, but it’s a notable quality-of-life boost.
Prioritized notifications through Apple Intelligence
Sending a friend an AI-generated image of them holding a birthday cake, which is not exactly the future we all envisioned for 2024, but here we are.
Apple
Example of a query that a supposedly now context-aware Siri can tackle.
Asking Siri “When is my mom’s flight landing,” followed by “What is our lunch plan?” can pull in data from multiple apps for an answer.
Apple Intelligence, the new Siri, and the iPhone
iOS 18 is one of the major beneficiaries of Apple’s AI rollout, dubbed “Apple Intelligence.” Apple Intelligence promises to help iPhone users create and understand language and images, with the proper context from your phone’s apps: photos, calendar, email, messages, and more.
Some of the suggested AI offerings include:
Auto-prioritizing notifications
Generating an AI image of people when you wish them a happy birthday.
Using Maps, Calendar, and an email with a meeting update to figure out if a work meeting change will make Federighi miss his daughter’s recital.
Many of the models needed to respond to your requests can be run on the device, Apple claims. For queries that need to go to remote servers, Apple relies on “Private Cloud Compute.” Apple has built its own servers, running on Apple Silicon, to handle requests that need more computational power. Your phone only sends the data necessary, is never stored, and independent researchers can verify the software on Apple’s servers, the company claims.
Siri is getting AI-powered upgrades across all platforms, including iOS. Apple says that Siri now understands more context in your questions to it. It will have awareness of what’s on your screen, so you could say “Add this address to his contact card” while messaging. You could ask it to “take a light-trail effect photo” from the camera. And “personal context” was repeatedly highlighted, including requests to find things people sent you, add your license number to a form (from an old ID picture), or ask “When is my mom’s flight landing?”
The non-AI things coming in iOS 18
A whole bunch of little boosts to iOS 18 announced by Apple.
On the iPhone itself, iOS 18 icons will change their look when in dark mode, and you can customize the look of compatible icons. Control Center, the pull-down menu in the top-right corner, now has multiple swipe-accessible controls, accessed through a strange-until-you’re-used-to-it long continuous swipe from the top. Developers are also getting access to the Control Center, so they can add their own apps’ controls. The lock screen will also get more customization, letting you swap out the standard flashlight and camera buttons for other items you prefer.
Privacy got some attention, too. Apps can be locked, such that Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode is necessary to open them. Apps can also be hidden and have their data prevented from showing up in notifications, searches, or other streams. New controls also limit the access you may grant to apps for contacts, network, and devices.
Messages will have “a huge year,” according to Apple. Tapbacks (instant reactions) can now include any emoji on the phone. Messages can be scheduled for later sending, text can be formatted, and there are “text effects” that do things like zoom in on the word “MAJOR” or make “Blown away” explode off the screen. And “Messages via satellite” is now available for phones that have satellite access, with end-to-end encryption.
Here’s a Messages upgrade that is absolutely going to surprise everybody when they forget about it in four months and then it shows up in a weird message.
The Mail app gets on-device categorization with Gmail-like labels like “Primary,” “Transactions,” “Updates,” and “Promotions.” Mail can also show you all the emails you get from certain businesses, such as receipts and tickets.
The Maps app is getting trail routes for US National Parks. Wallet now lets you “Tap to Cash,” sending money between phones in close proximity. Journal can now log your state of mind, track your goals, track streaks, and log “other fun stats.”
Photo libraries are getting navigation upgrades, with screenshots, receipts, and other banal photos automatically filtered out from gallery scrolls. There’s some automatic categorization of trips, days, and events. And, keeping with the theme of iOS 18, you can customize and reorder the collections and features Photos shows you when you browse through it.
This is a developing story and this post will be updated with new information.
The new iPad Pro is a technical marvel, with one of the best screens I’ve ever seen, performance that few other machines can touch, and a new, thinner design that no one expected.
It’s a prime example of Apple flexing its engineering and design muscles for all to see. Since it marks the company’s first foray into OLED beyond the iPhone or Watch, and the first time a new M-series chip has debuted on something other than a Mac, it comes across as a tech demo for where the company is headed beyond just tablets.
Still, it remains unclear why most people would spend one, two, or even three thousand dollars on a tablet that, despite its amazing hardware, does less than a comparably priced laptop—or at least does it a little more awkwardly, even if it’s impressively quick and has a gorgeous screen.
Specifications
There are some notable design changes in the 2024 iPad Pro, but really, it’s all about the specs—and it’s a more notable specs jump than usual in a couple of areas.
M4
First up, there’s the M4 chip. The previous iPad Pro had an M2 chip, and the latest Mac chip is the M3, so not only did the iPad Pro jump two whole generations, but this is the first time it has debuted the newest iteration of Apple Silicon. (Previously, new M-series chips launched on the Mac first and came to the iPad Pro a few months later.)
Using second-generation 3 nm tech, the M4’s top configuration has a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU. In that configuration, the 10-core CPU has four performance cores and six efficiency cores.
A lower configuration of the M4 has just nine CPU cores—three performance and six efficiency. Which one you get is tied to how much storage you buy. 256GB and 512GB models get nine CPU cores, while 1TB and 2TB get 10. Additionally, the two smaller storage sizes have 8GB of RAM to the larger ones’ 16GB.
This isn’t the first time Apple has tied RAM to storage configurations, but doing that with CPU cores is new for the iPad. Fortunately, the company is upfront about all this in its specs sheet, whereas the RAM differentiation wasn’t always clear to buyers in the past. (Both configurations claim 120GB/s memory bandwidth, though.)
Enlarge/ Can the M4 help the iPad Pro bridge the gap between laptop and tablet? Mostly, it made me excited to see the M4 in a laptop.
Samuel Axon
Regardless of the specific configuration, the M4 promises substantially better CPU and GPU performance than the M2, and it supports hardware-accelerated ray-tracing via Metal, which some games and applications can take advantage of if developers put in the work to make it happen. (It looked great in a demo of Diablo Immortal I saw, but it’s unclear how often we’ll actually see it in the wild.)
Apple claims 1.5x faster CPU performance than the M2 and up to 4x faster graphics performance specifically on applications that involve new features like ray-tracing or hardware-accelerated mesh shading. It hasn’t made any specific GPU performance claims beyond those narrow cases.
A lot of both Apple’s attention and that of the media is focused on the Neural Engine, which is what Apple calls the NPU in the M-series chips. That’s because the company is expected to announce several large language model-based AI features in iOS, macOS, and iPadOS at its developer conference next month, and this is the chip that will power some of that on the iPad and Mac.
Some neat machine-learning features are already possible on the M4—you can generate audio tracks using certain instruments in your Logic Pro projects, apply tons of image optimizations to photos with just a click or two, and so on.
The new 13-inch iPad Air with the Apple M2 processor inside.
Andrew Cunningham
In portrait mode. The 13-inch model is a little large for dedicated tablet use, but if you do want a gigantic tablet, the $799 price is appealing.
Andrew Cunningham
The Apple Pencil Pro attaches, pairs, and charges via a magnetic connection on the edge of the iPad.
Andrew Cunningham
In the Magic Keyboard. This kickstand-less case is still probably the best way to make the iPad into a true laptop replacement, though it’s expensive and iPadOS is still a problem.
Andrew Cunningham
The tablet’s USB-C port, used for charging and connecting to external accessories.
Andrew Cunningham
Apple’s Smart Folio case. The magnets on the cover will scoot up and down the back of the iPad, allowing you a bit of flexibility when angling the screen.
Andrew Cunningham
The Air’s single-lens, flash-free camera, seen here peeking through the Smart Folio case.
Andrew Cunningham
The iPad Air has been a lot of things in the last decade-plus. In 2013 and 2014, the first iPad Airs were just The iPad, and the “Air” label simply denoted how much lighter and more streamlined they were than the initial 2010 iPad and 2011’s long-lived iPad 2. After that, the iPad Air 2 survived for years as an entry-level model, as Apple focused on introducing and building out the iPad Pro.
The Air disappeared for a while after that, but it returned in 2019 as an in-betweener model to bridge the gap between the $329 iPad (no longer called “Air,” despite reusing the first-gen Air design) and more-expensive and increasingly powerful iPad Pros. It definitely made sense to have a hardware offering to span the gap between the basic no-frills iPad and the iPad Pro, but pricing and specs could make things complicated. The main issue for the last couple of years has been the base Air’s 64GB of storage—scanty enough that memory swapping doesn’t even work on it— and the fact that stepping up to 256GB brought the Air too close to the price of the 11-inch iPad Pro.
Which brings us to the 2024 M2 iPad Air, now available in 11-inch and 13-inch models for $599 and $799, respectively. Apple solved the overlap problem this year partly by bumping the Air’s base storage to a more usable 128GB and partly by making the 11-inch iPad Pro so much more expensive that it almost entirely eliminates any pricing overlap (only the 1TB 11-inch Air, at $1,099, is more expensive than the cheapest 11-inch iPad Pro).
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call the new Airs the “default” iPad for most buyers—the now-$349 10th-gen iPad still does everything the iPad is best at for less money, and it’s still all you really need if you just want a casual gaming, video streaming, and browsing tablet (or a tablet for a kid). But the M2 Air is the iPad that best covers the totality of everything the iPad can do from its awkward perch, stuck halfway between the form and function of the iPhone and the Mac.
Not quite a last-gen iPad Pro
The new iPad Airs have a lot in common with the M2 iPad Pro from 2022. They have the same screen sizes and resolutions, the same basic design, they work with the same older Magic Keyboard accessories (not the new ones with the function rows, metal palm rests, and larger trackpads, which are reserved for the iPad Pro), and they obviously have the same Apple M2 chip.
Performance-wise, nothing we saw in the benchmarks we ran was surprising; the M2’s CPU and (especially) its GPU are a solid generational jump up from the M1, and the M1 is already generally overkill for the vast majority of iPad apps. The M3 and M4 are both significantly faster than the M2, but the M2 is still unquestionably powerful enough to do everything people currently use iPads to do.
That said, Apple’s decision to use an older chip rather than the M3 or M4 does mean the new Airs come into the world missing some capabilities that have come to other Apple products announced in the last six months or so. That list includes hardware-accelerated ray-tracing on the GPU, hardware-accelerated AV1 video codec decoding, and, most importantly, a faster Neural Engine to help power whatever AI stuff Apple’s products pick up in this fall’s big software updates.
The 13-inch Air’s screen has the same resolution and pixel density (2732×2048, 264 PPI) as the last-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro. And unlike the 13-inch Pro, which truly is a 13-inch screen, Apple’s tech specs page says the 13-inch Air is still using a 12.9-inch screen, and Apple is just rounding up to get to 13.
The 13-inch Air display does share some other things with the last-generation iPad Pro screen, including P3 color, a 600-nit peak brightness. Its display panel has been laminated to the front glass, and it has an anti-reflective coating (two of the subtle but important quality improvements the Air has that the $349 10th-gen iPad doesn’t). But otherwise it’s not the same panel as the M2 Pro; there’s no mini LED, no HDR support, and no 120 Hz ProMotion support.
Enlarge/ One of many human-created objects destroyed in Apple’s “Crush!” ad for the iPad Pro.
Apple
Earlier this week, Apple took the wraps off of a thoroughly leaked iPad Pro refresh with a 1 minute and 8 second ad spot wherein a gigantic hydraulic press comprehensively smushes a trumpet, an arcade cabinet, a record player, paint cans, a piano, a TV, sculptures, a bunch of emoji, and plenty of other tools that one might loosely categorize as “artistic implements.”
At the end of the ad, the press lifts away to reveal a somewhat thinner, somewhat faster version of Apple’s iPad Pro. The message of the ad, titled “Crush!” and still available via Apple’s YouTube channel and CEO Tim Cook’s Twitter account, is obvious: look at all of the things we’ve squeezed into this tablet!
“Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” wrote Cook.
But it’s the apparently unintended subtext of the ad that has caused problems. Yesterday afternoon, the company issued a rare public apology for the ad following a social media uproar. Critics were upset both about the destruction of the objects themselves (whether those objects were physical or computer-generated or some mix of the two isn’t clear), and about the symbolism of a Big Tech company destroying art and the things used to create and consume art.
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” said Apple marketing communications VP Tor Myhren to Ad Age. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Apple won’t be taking the ad down, but the company has apparently canceled plans to run it on TV.
The Crush ad never once mentions or shows any kind of generative AI technology, something Apple has been mostly quiet about ahead of AI-focused iOS and iPadOS 18 updates later this month. But it still feels like the backlash to the ad is being driven by generative AI anyway.
The generative AI push of the last two years has largely been defined by two kinds of stories: tech companies’ unrelenting sprint to cram as many AI features into as many of their products as possible as quickly as possible and backlash from artists, authors, programmers, and any other human whose efforts have been used to train these AI models. When people already feel that tech companies and executives are trying to replace them with generic machine-made sludge, it’s tone deaf at best to introduce a new product with an ad where a colorful, messy, tactile tower of art, instruments, and other creative tools is literally flattened to make way for a shiny, featureless slab of metal and glass.
I understand why people at Apple thought the Crush ad was effective. Phones, tablets, and computers are useful precisely because they can stand in for so many other things. But what Apple should keep in mind, both in its future hardware introductions and as it adds generative AI capabilities to its software in the coming months, is to keep its focus on the people using the tools rather than the tools themselves.
An advert by Apple for its new iPad tablet showing musical instruments, artistic tools, and games being crushed by a giant hydraulic press has been attacked for cultural insensitivity in an online backlash.
The one-minute video was launched by Apple chief executive Tim Cook to support its new range of iPads, the first time that the US tech giant has overhauled the range for two years as it seeks to reverse faltering sales.
The campaign—soundtracked by Sonny and Cher’s 1971 hit All I Ever Need Is You—is designed to show how much Apple has been able to squeeze into the thinner tablet. The ad was produced in-house by Apple’s creative team, according to trade press reports.
The campaign has been hit by a wave of outrage, with responses on social media reacting to Cook’s X post accusing Apple of crushing “beautiful creative tools” and the “symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements.”
Advertising industry executives argued the ad represented a mis-step for the Silicon Valley giant, which under late co-founder Steve Jobs was lauded for its ability to capture consumer attention through past campaigns.
Christopher Slevin, creative director for marketing agency Inkling Culture, compared the iPad ad unfavorably to a famous Apple campaign directed by Ridley Scott called “1984” for the original Macintosh computer, which positioned Apple as liberating a dystopian, monochrome world.
“Apple’s new iPad spot is essentially them turning into the thing they said they were out to destroy in the 1984 ad,” said Slevin.
Actor Hugh Grant accused Apple of “the destruction of the human experience courtesy of Silicon Valley” on X.
However, Richard Exon, founder of marketing agency Joint, said: “A more important question is: does the ad do its job? It’s memorable, distinctive, and I now know the new iPad has even more in it yet is thinner than ever.”
Consumer insights platform Zappi conducted consumer research on the ad that suggested that the idea of the hydraulic press crushing art was divisive.
It said that the ad underperformed benchmarks in typically sought-after emotions such as happiness and laughter and overperformed in traditionally negative emotions like shock and confusion, with older people more likely to have a negative response than younger consumers.
Nataly Kelly, chief marketing officer at Zappi, said: “Is the Apple iPad ad a work of genius or the sign of the dystopian times? It really depends on how old you are. The shock value is the power of this advert, which is controversial by design, so the fact that people are talking about it at all is a win.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple’s newest iPad Pro puts an M4 chip inside a thinner frame and is available in new 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, while also upgrading the screens on both to “tandem” OLED displays for more brightness.
Compared to the last iPad Pro, released in early 2022, Apple is highlighting how thin and light these new Pros are. The 11-inch model is 5.3 mm thick and weighs less than a pound, while the 13-inch is 5.1 mm, which Apple says is its thinnest product ever, at 1.28 pounds.
The tandem OLED design, dubbed Ultra Retina XDR, delivers 1000 nits at full-screen brightness, and 1600 nits at peak HDR, equivalent to a high-end Samsung TV. The screens are “nano-texture glass,” which is essentially a matte display finish.
What’s really big is the inclusion of an M4 chip, built from a second-generation 3-nanometer process. It’s the first time the iPad Pro has included a new Apple chip ahead of other devices. Apple is touting a 50 percent improvement over M2 performance and can deliver the same performance as M2 at half the power, or one-quarter the power in certain scenarios. Notably, the new iPad Air uses the M2; this year’s lineup puts more of a gap between the use cases and price/performance points of the various iPads, even if there is still some cross-over.
The chip’s neural engine got a very specific call-out; it’s capable of 38 trillion operations per second, and Apple says it’s the most powerful (consumer-level) AI computer sold.
The new iPad Pros get a 12 megapixel camera, along with LIDAR scanners and an adaptive flash that improves document scanning. Finally, the “selfie”/conferencing camera moves to the landscape position on the iPad Pro, making that ultra-wide 12MP camera far more useful and the iPad-as-laptop experience a good deal better. On that note, there are new Magic Keyboards, Smart Folios, and an Apple Pencil Pro available soon to attach to these new models.
The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999, and the 13-inch starts at $1,299, with 256GB storage to start. They’re both available for order today, with delivery next week.
This is a developing story and this post will be updated.
Apple today announced the first 13-inch iPad Air. The company is also releasing a revamped 11-inch iPad Air next week, meaning the tablet will be available in two sizes for the first time.
The 13-inch iPad Air has 30 percent more screen real estate than its smaller counterpart, so Apple is marketing it as being for multitasking and applications like iPadOS’ Split View. During its Let Loose event today, Apple said it decided to release a 13-inch iPad Air because more than half of iPad Pro users opt for the larger (12.9 inches versus 11 inches) size.
In addition to a larger screen, the 13-inch iPad Air will offer better sound quality than the 11-inch version, Apple says, due to it offering twice the bass. Both tablets have landscape stereo speakers and Spatial Audio support.
Both iPad Airs will come with an M2 chip that Apple claimed will give the devices 15 percent faster CPU performance, 25 percent faster GPU performance, and a 40 percent faster neural engine. With improved memory bandwidth as well, the new iPad Airs will be 50 percent faster than M1-based predecessors, Apple says.
Apple also says the new chip will make the tablets more appropriate for AI-based tasks, like visual look-up, subject lift, and live text capture.
The new Airs will also have a front-facing, ultrawide 12MP camera that supports Apple’s Center Stage feature for keeping users in a central field of view during video calls. Apple moved the camera positioning to one of the tablet’s longer edges to appeal to the way people tend to use tablets for video calls.
Enlarge/ The new iPad Air cameras support 4K video and 240-fps slo-mo.
Apple
Apple’s new thin tablets will come in four colors.
Enlarge/ Apple’s new iPad Airs in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray.
Apple
The 13-inch iPad Air will start at $799 with 128GB of storage, and the 11-inch iPad Air will start at $599, with storage going up to 1TB. The tablets will be available starting May 15.
