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A lot of the buzz about today concerns a new Apple Pencil. Will we see an Apple Pencil Pro? Will the new Apple Pencil have haptic feedback? What does that even mean?
Haptic feedback is a vibration response when you do something. When you tap your phone’s keyboard and it buzzes for each key, that’s a haptic response. Apple is rumored to be adding some sort of haptics to a new Apple Pencil, though its unclear what this means.
This could be a vibration motor in either the tablet or the Pencil. It could make the pencil feel more realistic as it drags across a screen. Or, it could be for another device entirely.
The Apple Pencil would make an interesting tool to use with the Apple Vision Pro. Apple has stayed away from controllers for Vision Pro, but adding support for Apple Pencil feels more natural, since Apple already makes the Pencil. It’s not an entirely new controller.
With haptic feedback, the Apple Pencil could tell you when you are tapping a virtual object, or writing on a virtual surface. Haptics in the Pencil would give it feedback in a virtual world. We’ll have to see if Apple includes Vision Pro in the announcement today, but my money is on an Apple Pencil appearing in Apple’s spatial-verse.
The Apple Store is … not down?! What?
That’s weird. It’s kind of a tradition on New Apple Stuff days that the Apple Store website is taken down an hour or so beforehand. We’re now one hour before the Apple Let Loose event starts, and the Apple Store page is still live. You can even buy a new iPad Air or a new iPad Pro right now, for immediate pickup at your local brick and mortar Apple Store.
We’ll keep checking, but it’s kind of sad that this old chestnut of Apple’s early iPhone and product launch days is going away. Of course Apple has the technical prowess to keep its store live throughout, but I remember reading frantic blog posts and Twitter updates exclaiming that “The Apple Store is DOWN” as a way to drum up excitement about new stuff on the way.
Today’s stuff should still be exciting, even if it doesn’t crash the internet in the process.
If we do get a new ‘slice’ of Apple Silicon inside the iPads today, let’s set proper expectations about what each model will get. Today’s iPad Pro 12.9 (2022) runs on an Apple M2 chipset. The iPad Air 5 today uses an Apple M1 chip. It’s therefore likely that even if Apple does offer a new Apple M4 processor inside an iPad, it won’t be available in every iPad.
In fact, Apple likes to bumps its chips down a pedestal every time it promotes a new winner to the top. It is more likely that we will see an iPad Air 6 today with an Apple M2 chip than an Apple M4 chip.
An iPad Air 6 with an Apple M3 chip is possible, but that processor is still very new and likely expensive for Apple, so it may be cost-prohibitive to add the M3 to the iPad Air. Still, Apple sometimes throws cost and caution to the wind when it comes to premium components.
As for the other iPad models? The iPad mini hasn’t been on any of the Apple Tarot cards we’ve played, so we’re not holding out hope for a new model today. That tablet uses an Apple A15 Bionic chipset. Even if the iPad mini saw an update today, it’s more likely it would get a newer iPhone-flavor Apple chip, and not a full desktop processor in the Apple M family.
Good morning New York and our USA readers waking up to this iPad live blog! I am Phil Berne, your US Mobiles editor, taking over from Roland. Let’s recap the breadcrumbs Apple has laid upon the trail leading up to the big launch today.
First, the iPad hasn’t been updated in more than a year. Not at all. The iPad mini has gone since 2021 without an update. Do tablets need an update every year? No, but Apple usually gives us an annual update anyway, so this was weird.
Second, we got an invitation to the event saying ‘Let Loose.’ It was animated with an Apple Pencil drawing on a screen. We’re now expecting a new Pencil, and perhaps other accessories, and new iPads are all but confirmed.
Third, we’ve heard rumors that Apple could jump the gun on its next Apple M4 chipset and offer the new Apple Silicon in the next iPad Pro first, before a Mac computer. If that seems odd, remember that an iPad Pro 12.9 starts at $1,099 / £1,249 / AU$1,899, so it’s already more expensive than many Windows laptops. It’s not odd for Apple to treat this like a premium computer.
Finally, on the recent Apple earnings call, Tim Cook specifically said Apple would be talking about its approach to AI, especially generative AI (which means making pictures, writing text, etc.), at the next event … TODAY! So we could finally get a glimpse at Apple’s AI future.
Speaking of gaming, I’d love to see Apple do a bit more on the iPad gaming front with the next-generation iPad Air.
With a new M-series chip it could become a great little platform for running some console quality games; Baldur’s Gate 3 runs on an M2 MacBook Air, so I’d love to have it running nicely on a M3-equipped iPad Air, although that would require some Steam access of sorts. Equally, I’d be keen to see some more advanced Apple Arcade games to take hold of the iPad’s power.
One of the things I’d really like to see from the new iPads are slimmer bezels. It’s not like the tablets have massive screen surrounds but I’d like to see them slimmed down all the same, with Apple tapping into palm rejection tech to bypass accidental touches.
I also think a virtual bezel would be decent for times when you need both hands on either side of an iPad, say when you’re gaming.
One the design side, we’re not expecting any huge changes for either the iPad Air or iPad Pro, with the exception of a larger model for the former.
Some nips and tucks, such as changes to the tablets’ edges and bezels could be expected, but don’t expect a major design change.
And so there’s scope for a M4 chip that puts AI workloads front and center, much like the Tensor G3 chip in the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
Such a chip could lay the groundwork for WWDC 2024, where we’d expect Apple to tout a lot of generative AI tech and tools. This would give developers time to try out the capabilities of this very-much-rumored chip and allow for some early Apple-only generative AI apps to be showcased in a few months time.
Apple is expected to go hard on generative AI for the iPhone 16, but there are hints that it could lean on the content-creation AI tech with the new iPads.
This would make sense as Apple has often seen iPads as creation devices for artists and other creators. So bringing generative AI into the mix could turbocharge users’ creative efforts, letting them ‘let loose’ with their ideas.
The current M3 chip along with its Pro and Max counterparts, are more than powerful enough for MacBooks, so would logically be fine for iPads.
The only wrinkle here is generative AI…
I’m going to place a bet that the new iPad Air and iPad Pro models will get an Apple M3 chip. Despite hints of a M4 chip, I feel it’s a tad premature for Apple to have a brand-new slice of silicon to debut when we’ve only just had an M3 MacBook Air 13-inch.
As for the new iPad Pro, OLED displays have been hotly tipped.
While the current 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a rather good mini-LED display, OLED still rules the roost when it comes to color saturation and contrast. So for professional users, it would make sense for the iPad Pro, both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch models, to get OLED displays.
The partial answer to the below question is a bigger model for the iPad AIr, which is tipped to get a 12.9-inch display to offer Apple tablet fans a bigger screen without needing to pay iPad Pro money.
I’m all for a larger iPad Air, as I think the combination of a bigger screen and more powerful chip would give it a more credible chance at being a pseudo laptop replacement, without neutering its tablet charms.
If you go and take a gender at our best tablets list, you’ll see it’s flush with iPads. Hardly, surprising, as Apple still offers pretty much the best tablet experience around, blending powerful software with slick hardware.
So you and I would be forgiven for asking where the iPad Air and iPad Pro could go next…
Right, let’s get into it shall we…
As mentioned, this Apple event is almost certainly going to be all about iPads. Specifically the iPad Air and iPad Pro models, both of which haven’t received an update since 2022.
That’s hardly a long time in the world of tablets, but Apple’s in-house M-series chips are now on their third generation, meaning there’s scope to pop such slices of silicon into tablets that still have M2 and M2 chips.
Good morning. Roland Moore-Clyer here, Managing Editor of Mobile Computing at TechRadar, to take you through some last-minute leaks, rumors and news ahead of the Let Loose event, and serve up some opinion and analysis on what to expect and what not to expect from today’s Apple showcase.
