Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M is for Mac. A is for iOS. iPad won’t get Thunderbolt or the extra PCIe lanes of the M1. It’ll probably be clocked lower too and have 6gb ram (8 might be possible) also probably have 6 or 7 gpu cores instead of 8.
I expect the new high end iPad to come with A14X & 8 GB of ram to be fully aligned with MacBooks, so the universal apps (Mac & iPad) can work smoothly. I also expect Final Cut Pro to arrive to iPad on WWDC ‘21, a 8 GB iPad would be perfect for that.
 
Still another rumor that doesn’t mention the 11” Pro, which makes me suspicious. Will they pull another separate launch of 12.9” model (like they did for the 1st gen) and then launch the 11” Pro with mini-LED in the fall? Curious about this. The 11” Pro is far too popular to drop.
I’m not sure the 11” Pro is all that popular, let alone far too popular to drop, though you may well be right. Maybe it’s not getting the miniLED display so there’s just no chatter. It could be a simple refresh of the 2020 with a new SoC.

But now that the Air is much closer to the Pro, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they did drop the 11” Pro. I guess the question is whether there’s room for both in the lineup.

At 256GB it’s $749 vs. $899 for the Air vs the Pro; that’s really not much price difference. The difference in features is also minimal (but rather nice!).

It would definitely disappoint some 11” iPad Pro users who want a new one if it were discontinued, but a fair percentage would buy the Air; that’s already happening. Others will move up to the 12.9” to keep the feature set.
 
MicroLED is the real game-changer, though, right? But too expensive and low-yield to mass-produce at the moment?

Years out. The core benefits are significant, Wider color gamut, significantly brighter over OLED, but with less power draw, which translates to extended battery life. In terms of suppliers, Apple acquired a company called ‘Luxeview’ years ago that develops micro-LED’ in small batches, there’s no doubt about it that it’s in the ‘works’, but I say it’s nowhere even near production value, being that OLED/mini LED seems to be the primary for at least another two years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LegCortex
The 11” is the perfect size but I hope they keep the pro variant of it. The $150 extra for more Ram, better Graphics, FaceID, better sound, better mics, more storage options, faster display tech, etc is so worth it and important for me. The 12.9 is way to big and the 4:3 aspect ratio is not nearly as nice as the √2:1 aspect ration of the 11”. I suspect they will update the 11” because not having an iPad to fit the camera hole perfectly in the Magic keyboard is kind of strange. Such a bummer that the rumors don’t mention anything about the 11”
 
Sounds about right in terms of timing and for 5G.

If you want excellent color accuracy that exceeds OLED, mini LED is the way to go.
Mini LED panels are only good if the quality is good. Which remains to be seen
 
It's too big. At that size, a macbook air would be a better value. Please give us another mini or 9" iPad Pro.
Students and artists would much prefer a big display on iPad Pro because exams are usually in Legal paper size and notes are usually in Letter paper size. Then you factor in side by side display of the textbook, and the notes, and then the Picture in Picture display of a zoom call or something like that.
 
I’m not sure the 11” Pro is all that popular, let alone far too popular to drop, though you may well be right. Maybe it’s not getting the miniLED display so there’s just no chatter. It could be a simple refresh of the 2020 with a new SoC.

But now that the Air is much closer to the Pro, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they did drop the 11” Pro. I guess the question is whether there’s room for both in the lineup.

At 256GB it’s $749 vs. $899 for the Air vs the Pro; that’s really not much price difference. The difference in features is also minimal (but rather nice!).

It would definitely disappoint some 11” iPad Pro users who want a new one if it were discontinued, but a fair percentage would buy the Air; that’s already happening. Others will move up to the 12.9” to keep the feature set.
I see the argument for getting rid of the 11” iPad Pro since it’s so similar to the current Air, but I think it would be a better idea to add more Pro features to differentiate them.

Holding an iPad Air now, I can’t say that I’d want a tablet that’s larger than this.
 
The 11” is the perfect size but I hope they keep the pro variant of it. The $150 extra for more Ram, better Graphics, FaceID, better sound, better mics, more storage options, faster display tech, etc is so worth it and important for me. The 12.9 is way to big and the 4:3 aspect ratio is not nearly as nice as the √2:1 aspect ration of the 11”. I suspect they will update the 11” because not having an iPad to fit the camera hole perfectly in the Magic keyboard is kind of strange. Such a bummer that the rumors don’t mention anything about the 11”
It is so perfect indeed. And with 1Tb of “disk” I can store everything and the kitchen sink. I’m certainly not a hoarde, but this is so goo not having to be careful with the spac and just dump and sync everything.

Students and artists would much prefer a big display on iPad Pro because exams are usually in Legal paper size and notes are usually in Letter paper size. Then you factor in side by side display of the textbook, and the notes, and then the Picture in Picture display of a zoom call or something like that.
I sometimes want a bigger one, but it is so unwieldy.
and with an magic keyboard for iPad it becomes even heavier than an MacBook or 13”!!
so I keep the 11” and a MacBook Pro 13” with a nice 27” 5K display.
and when I’m out and about (I think somewhere november 2021😭) the 11” with magic keyboard is really the perfect combination (IMHO)
 
I think the problem with iPad Pro line up is that there are very little difference between models for a user really notice.

performance wise... I can only see it from benchmark... I can’t tell when I am actually using them...

i have the iPad Pro 12.9 2018 and iPad Pro 11 2019.
 
Even with my new M1 Mac Mini, my iPad Pro is still my favorite computer I have ever owned. I look forward to a new M1 iPad Pro with hopefuly more functionality on the software side later this year. Touch and pencil support, along with better cameras are modern computing inputs that are hard to give up on. A M1 MacBook still feels like a downgrade.
 
I think the problem with iPad Pro line up is that there are very little difference between models for a user really notice.

performance wise... I can only see it from benchmark... I can’t tell when I am actually using them...

i have the iPad Pro 12.9 2018 and iPad Pro 11 2019.
But I think we have to keep in mind that future software may show those differences. When Final Cut Pro or other Pro Apps come to the iPad - those differences will likely be much more apparent.
 
Seems that the 12.9 inch defenders have not woken up after Christmas...

As an 12.9 user, I can say that 11 inch is not "the perfect size". Most of the 12.9 users need the extra canvas size for work. Last time I looked the 13 inch MB Air/pro could not be used together with a pencil.

It is curious that only the 12.9 is mentioned and not the 11 inch. It can simply be that 12.9 users gladly pay for better display, need better colour accuracy or that gains such as less weight is more pronounced with larger iPads.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mr.PT and Precursor
Why? Mini LED is worse in most ways than OLED. What would be the point?

I'm pretty sure a fair percentage of people are getting mixed up between Mini LED and Micro LED.

Mini LED simply being a LED screen like the OLD iPhones had with a fancier backlighting system, as opposed to the current OLED screens in the latest phones, where each pixel outputs it's own light.

And Micro-LED which is like OLED but without the burn-in issues.

But they can't make Micro-LED screens in production, small enough yet.
So Mini LED is just a half way step whilst we wait.

Don't really understand why they don't put OLED screens in iPads like they do in iPhones, apart from it being too expensive for Apple, as Samsung has done it a long time ago.
 
I probably missed this, but is there any reason or speculation as to why the 11" iPad Pro isn't also making this jump? Since moving to USB-C and FaceID, those two have been like Bananas in Pajamas (in terms of feature parity). Like, are we assuming that the Air will finally cannibalize it? Or is it that the 12.9" Pro will make this jump and the 11" will make it at the refresh that follows but that both will receive the same SoC upgrades? I know that none of us know for sure, but I can't be the only one asking this (and there can't just be nothing out there of prominent note mentioning this question).
 
Seems that the 12.9 inch defenders have not woken up after Christmas...

As an 12.9 user, I can say that 11 inch is not "the perfect size". Most of the 12.9 users need the extra canvas size for work. Last time I looked the 13 inch MB Air/pro could not be used together with a pencil.

It is curious that only the 12.9 is mentioned and not the 11 inch. It can simply be that 12.9 users gladly pay for better display, need better colour accuracy or that gains such as less weight is more pronounced with larger iPads.
As someone who first purchased the 12.9" iPad Pro in 2018, only to exchange it for the 11" model a week later, I will say that each has their own strengths. For me, I really loved the extra screen space of the larger iPad when reading documents in notability, but it was simply too big for me to comfortably handle with one hand, which was crucial to me as a teacher using his iPad to teach in the classroom.

2 years later, my 11" iPad Pro is still going strong, and it should have no issues lasting until the next refresh, whenever that may be.
 
The answer to these inconsistent rumors could be much simpler: supply/tech constraints based on screen-size. The mini-LED may be too big, power-hungry for the 11" form factor.

Meanwhile, Samsung and other AMOLED manufacturers may be building more lines capable of putting out larger (11"+) LPTO-style OLED screens.

2021/2022 may see the iPad Pro line bifurcated out of supply necessities with the winning tech taking over the line by ~2024
 
Mini LED is a good way to avoid the bad publicity of having all their demo unit iPads showing images burned into them. Not a good look. The thing I thing of when I think iPad Pro is at $999 for the big one the specs it has are so close to a MacBook I wish they would just put MacOS on these things. You'll end up spending a bit more to get laptop functionality or desktop functionality with the peripherals you would need but I would be happy to do so because you don't need an iPad, Laptop, and desktop. It will be redundant for many tasks. I would be much happier with an iPad as my computer I take with me everywhere and an iMac or MacBook Pro that I sit in front of when I want to do some serious work.
I take my iPad Pro 11 out with me if I’m going to do some photograph. It’s nice to be able to see shots just after the fact and retake if needed.

I think it would be a much better device if they just simply improved the file system, but I would take an iPad like device running MacOS in a heartbeat.

They could call it the iMac Air Pro mini and iMac Air Pro Max. lol
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: Precursor
As someone who purchased the 11" iPP and got rid of it to purchase a 12.9" after one week I can say that 11" felt like a toy, I had to pinch to zoom a lot, it had weird screen ratio compared to rest of ipad family. There is nothing 11" was better at compared to the 12.9" except the portability, though for that one should better buy a mini or an air.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: AnthonyHarris
I probably missed this, but is there any reason or speculation as to why the 11" iPad Pro isn't also making this jump? Since moving to USB-C and FaceID, those two have been like Bananas in Pajamas (in terms of feature parity). Like, are we assuming that the Air will finally cannibalize it? Or is it that the 12.9" Pro will make this jump and the 11" will make it at the refresh that follows but that both will receive the same SoC upgrades? I know that none of us know for sure, but I can't be the only one asking this (and there can't just be nothing out there of prominent note mentioning this question).
Read the earlier comments or the comments to any other article over the past 6 months where the 12.9” is said to get the miniLED display.
 
Seems that the 12.9 inch defenders have not woken up after Christmas...

As an 12.9 user, I can say that 11 inch is not "the perfect size". Most of the 12.9 users need the extra canvas size for work. Last time I looked the 13 inch MB Air/pro could not be used together with a pencil.

It is curious that only the 12.9 is mentioned and not the 11 inch. It can simply be that 12.9 users gladly pay for better display, need better colour accuracy or that gains such as less weight is more pronounced with larger iPads.
I have the MacBook Air M1 and 12.9 pro and must admit I love the combo I thought it might be too big to use as tablet but I was wrong. the extra space really is ideal for spilt screen and PIP so I love having that option for the bigger size.
 
  • Like
Reactions: iPadified
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.