We had the first Apple keynote of 2024 today, the new iPads were long overdue with it being over 18 months since they last saw an update. This could have just been a press release, or it could have waited for WWDC next month, but Apple did the right thing by letting the new iPads have their own event, as I feel that these are some pretty impressive hardware upgrades.
iPad Air
The first upgrade was to the iPad air, the big news is that the Air now comes in two sizes, there is a bigger 13” variant which I think will sell like hot cakes. Yesterday if you want the big iPad you had to go Pro but today you don’t need to, it’s much cheaper and you get the big screen. It’s getting the M2 chip, storage now starts at 128gb, and the starting price is the same as yesterday, so you are getting much more for what you pay for.
iPad Pro
The Design
The star and the main focus of the keynote were the new iPad Pro’s. They have been hitting the gym, I have the 2018 12.9” iPad Pro (easily the longest I have owned/used an Apple product) and they are 5.9mm thin and I never thought that Apple could have made them thinner. The new 13” (not 12.9” anymore) is only 5.1mm thin making it the thinnest Apple product yet. When this releases I am certain bendgate will make a comeback. Influencers online will have a field day making a big fuss out of it and Twitter/X is going to be full of engagement bait. The iPad looks thin enough to just bend by looking at it. I am just hoping Apple has put enough thought into the structural integrity of this product.
It is still made of Aluminium though, I would have loved to see Titanium; Titanium on my 15 Pro Max is one of the main reasons I love it over my older iPhones, it feels great and makes it much lighter. Talking about being light, the new iPad Pros are much lighter too, they definitely have been hitting the gym. The new 13” iPad Pro is a good 50 grams lighter than the model its replacing. Another factor to not go titanium might be 1. the cost and 2. to help with thermal performance.
Another noteworthy point about the design is that now the front facing camera sits in the landscape orientation, which is the “correct” orientation for an iPad. This was a long overdue change and I am glad it’s here. The new iPad Air’s also now have the front facing camera moved to the landscape orientation.
The Display
For the first time ever, the iPad Pros are getting an OLED display, Apple couldn’t just get any OLED display and call it a day but had to layer two OLED panels to get the required brightness – whilst doing this they gave it a fancy name : Tandem OLED. Because why not?
OLEDs are known for its colour reproduction and darker blacks, but brightness has always been an issue, hopefully the way Apple has done it would help with the 1600 nits peak HDR brightness it’s trying to hit. Together with Tandem OLED, Apple has ensured that content looks good and is more responsive to user input, whilst doing all this, they gave it a fancy name too : The Ultra Retina XDR. Because why not?
The best news is that these (pretty amazing) display upgrades are coming to both the sizes of the iPad Pros. To make it even better for the people who do not like glare, there will be a nano-texture glass option too. Although Apple didn’t say this in the keynote, this option seems to be limited to the 1TB and 2TB models of the iPad Pros.
The Performance
The last generation of the iPad Pros had the M2 chip, so the next iteration as you’d think would be to go for the M3, but nope, Apple is going M4, making this the first product with the M4 chip in it. It’s based on the 3nm technology. The bottom line is that it’s 4x faster than the M2, but the most impressive feat if you ask me is that, to quote Apple “M4 can deliver the same performance as the M2, using just half the power”. I know today is all about the iPad but I can’t wait for this to come to the MacBooks, imagine the battery life!
The other chip related improvements that Apple spent a long time talking about was the Neural Engine, this is what helps with AI related workloads, Apple has been talking about the Neural Engine for years now and how it helps with machine learning but for what I think was the first time Apple used “AI” instead of “Machine Learning”. And Apple kept on saying “AI” a lot today, foreshadowing what is to come at WWDC next month.
The Camera
So the exact opposite to what you’d expect, the iPad has gone to one single camera from the two camera system in the last model. I. was thinking Apple would keep the 2 camera system for recording spatial video for Apple Vision Pro but that’s not happening, at least this year.
Apple Pencil Pro
I like to imagine myself as the artsy creative person that would love all these new Apple Pencil Pro features, but they are not for me as I am neither artsy nor creative. But if you are, the new barrel roll and squeeze features will help you save much more time and give you more tools at your disposal. The feature I am most excited about is that Find My is now in the Apple Pencil Pro. It has Pro in the name but this Pencil will work on the new iPad Airs too. For just $129 this feels like a steal too.
Other Tidbits
Final Cut and Logic on the iPad have new versions which are faster and have new features. There is a new app called Final Cut Camera for both iPhone and iPad. This allows users to connect multiple iPhones to an iPad to use in multi-camera/multi-view recording. iPhones now take amazing video, I can see this being the future of content production, if not already.
The new Magic keyboard for the iPad Pros now have an aluminium enclosure, bigger trackpad with haptic feedback, the keyboard has a function row too. These are welcome changes but I feel like this is an overpriced accessory.
The 10th gen iPad gets a price cut, making it $349 making it much more affordable.
The iPad Mini got no love nor updates. It’s the only iPad that is interesting to me, give it a 120Hz screen and i’ll buy it in a nano-second.
Finishing thoughts
Technology excites me, and especially Apple technology excites me. But today, even before the event I knew this was going to be about iPads and my 2018 iPad gathers dust most of the time or is a glorified streaming device. I use it for productivity and editing photos often, but most of the time I pick it up to do something only to find it dead from not being plugged in. So my expectations for today was at low to mid level.
When I purchased my iPad in 2018 I had an Intel MacBook which didn’t have great battery and the fans would start spinning as soon as I was on YouTube, and the iPad was great for what it was. But today I have an M1 MacBook Pro and I reach for my MacBook rather than the iPad. The new iPads are absolutely brilliant hardware devices, and If my iPad was to die I still would get a new one. Now that the new Pros have an OLED screen and if it was to be a glorified streaming device it would still be worth it. The hardware on these devices are second to none.
The problem is with the software, the multitasking is not intuitive and it’s as if Apple has given up. Every other WWDC there is a new multitasking paradigm which is more confusing than the one before. Apple really needs to hit the reset button and have a rethink about window management and multitasking on the iPad.
A few years ago the iPads got the M1 chip, iPad enthusiasts were excited and all eyes were on the next WWDC hoping new software features would make iPadOS great and that the M1 chip would make sense, and nothing happened. Feels like Déjà Vu. I hope I am wrong, the rumours are that this year’s WWDC is going to be heavily focused on AI and the new iPad Pros with the latest neural engine have something going on for them.
Hopefully the story of the iPad for 2024 is not complete, and the software blows us all away next month just like the hardware did today.
