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Buying electronic products (especially high priced Apple products) for their potential or future features is a fool's errand.

U1 / UWB is only a single feature, you buy electronics products based on whole package.

And no one is suggesting they should buy one solely on U1. And yes it is only for nerds, industry partners, industry observer and investor, because for 99% majority of customers, they dont even know what U1 is, and wont until actual application is out with usage demonstration.

I thought I would mention AirDrop with U1 makes huge difference ( Ok. may be it is me being picky )
And Indoor mapping isn't something just with "Intense Interest", they are already doing it in few places. From Airport to large shopping mall.
 
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U1 / UWB is only a single feature, you buy electronics products based on whole package.

And no one is suggesting they should buy one solely on U1. And yes it is only for nerds, industry partners, industry observer and investor, because for 99% majority of customers, they dont even know what U1 is, and wont until actual application is out with usage demonstration.

I thought I would mention AirDrop with U1 makes huge difference ( Ok. may be it is me being picky )
And Indoor mapping isn't something just with "Intense Interest", they are already doing it in few places. From Airport to large shopping mall.
People buy electronics based on one feature all the time. It's basic marketing and consumerism. My point is that anything that Apple has "intense interest" in has nothing to do with consumer choices and you appear to be connecting those two dots but I might also be reading you wrong.
 
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I copied and pasted my original post from a thread earlier this week on the iPad Pro 4th generation

Regarding the storage options on the iPad Pro Line up:
iPad Pro 1st generation had a storage options of 32gb, 128gb, and 256gb
iPad Pro 2nd generation had storage options of 64gb, 256gb, and 512gb
iPad Pro 3rd generation had storage options of 64gb, 256gb,512gb, and 1tb
iPad pro 4th generation has storage options of 128gb, 256gb,512gb, and 1tb

I know that 128gb storage isn't revolutionary. What is great about it though is Apple is now giving those who buy the base model 128gb storage. Whereas, on previous generations base storage was 32gb or 64gb for base model. Also the 4th generation base model didn't increase in price going from 3rd gen to 4th gen yet apple still gave double the storage for the base model so that's pretty cool. Although the 2nd gen iPad Pro did increase in price going from 2nd to 3rd generation.

What you missed was that 6gb was on the iPad Pro 3rd generation, but only on 1TB iPad Pro 3rd gen. The 64,256,and 512gb iPad Pro 3rd generation got only 4gb.

Now on the iPad Pro 4th generation every single model 128gb,256gb,512gb, and of course 1tb get 6gb of Ram. That's pretty neat for those NOT buying the 1tb model.

As mentioned you're going from a single to a dual camera. Also the rear camera is now for the first time in an iPad wide lens and ultra wide lens.


I know the LiDAR scanner was mentioned but it does a lot of cool things especially for those interested in augmented reality.

LiDAR Scanner measures the distance to surrounding objects up to 5 meters away, works both indoors and outdoors, and operates at the photo level. New depth frameworks measured by the LiDAR Scanner, data from both cameras and motion sensors, and is enhanced by computer vision algorithms on the A12Z Bionic for a more detailed understanding of a scene. The tight integration of these elements enables a whole new class of AR experiences on iPad Pro.

As mentioned Five “studio quality” microphones: offers improvements in sound in some scenarios and offers no improvements in other scenarios. Overall, the studio microphones aren't a major improvement, but they are an improvement albeit a very very very small one.

Wifi 6 as mentioned is new to this 4th generation iPad.

wifi6 is awesome here is more info on it: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/21/18232026/wi-fi-6-speed-explained-router-wifi-how-does-work

U1 chip -ultra wideband was first introduced in the iPhone 11 and is now being introduced in the 4th gen iPad pro


Apple U1 ultra wideband chip will give AirDrop “spatial awareness” capabilities, so it can recongnize an iPhone you are pointing at. UWB can track proximity up to 20cm by measuring the time it takes for a radio signal to pass between two connected devices. While it is slower than WiFi, UWB is much faster than Bluetooth. It is also less vulnerable to interference, as its signals can pass more easily through the walls of a room. It's like a radar. Which is why UWB is useful for finding lost keys or wallets using tags such as the Bluetooth-based Tile.


A12Z: GPU upgrade (meh but sure why not) same as previous with some core unlocked?

Not sure if the GPU upgrade is because a core is unlocked. Although I am not ruling that out. Regardless the 12x chip utilizes 7 cores and the 12z utilizes 8 cores. Thus, the small GPU improvement. The CPU is most likely exactly the same between both chips.

In the AnTuTu benchmark, the 2020 iPad Pro scored 712,218 points — slightly higher than the 705,585 points scored by the 2018 iPad Pro and its A12X Bionic chip. A breakdown of the benchmark scores indicates the CPU performance of the A12Z and the A12X Bionic chips are nearly the same — 186,186 for the A12Z vs 187,572 for the A12X Bionic. The GPU performance has seen a slight uplift for the A12Z Bionic as it scored 373,781 compared to 345,016 for the A12X Bionic. Apple itself had made it clear that the A12Z Bionic chip uses an 8-core GPU versus 7-core GPU on A12X which explains the improvement in performance.

Overall, the upgraded features in the 4th gen iPad Pro aren't groundbreaking especially for those coming from an iPad Pro 3rd gen. However, there are several really cool improvements like U1 Ultra wideband chip, WifI 6 etc. that some here don't seem to realize, understand, or acknowledge.



Now below is the new part of my post that I am adding to this post for the first time:

So we learned that the U1 Ultra wide-band chip is not in the new 2020 iPad Pros disappointing for sure. There are still alot of cool additions. Again the new things adding to this 2020 iPad is not groundbreaking or revolutionary. But the additional Ram,higher base model storage, WiFi 6, the studio quality micrphones, the extra core in the chip for better graphics, the lidar scanner, better rear cameras that are wide and ultra wide angle are all welcome additions.

Here's my opinion on what they should have done
they should have added the U1 chip to the 2020 iPads

They should have kept the 3rd gen 2018 iPad Pro around for sale and drop the price to $649 for the 11 inch base model and $849 for the base model. Which would give $150 savings off the newer 2020 iPad Pro models.
 
I’m a bit confused on what this actually means...
If I understand correctly- whereas gps is accurate to about 1m, this can be accurate to .3cm. I can see how that’s ESSENTIAL in an “AirTag” product (1m might be the difference between my keys being in the kitchen utility drawer, or on the other side of the wall, out on the patio table). As long as the iPad can still receive the accurate data from the tags w/ the U1, I suppose it doesn’t need to have one itself.
Am I understanding the situation correctly?
Both the iPad and the AirTag need precise locations, because you need differential location information not absolute at that scale. Knowing it is 30cm that way is more important than being able to give a precise map reference, especially when maps and aerial photos don't show that much detail.
 
U1 chip is so useful for me on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. It's precision is just on another level in terms of accuracy. And it makes AirDrop miles better than before.
 
So basically Mr Cook is selling us a two year model as brand new.

It passes for new on technicalities. Not usage.

I wonder what SJ would say about that.
He's dead, so nothing, but if he was still alive, I'm guessing he'd be fine with it.

It's a mid-cycle refresh; the day before this announcement they were selling the 2018 model for the same/higher cost; now customers get more for the same outlay. How is this a bad thing?....

Basically, Apple upped the tech specs - better cameras, added LiDAR, up-binned the SoC to enable the 8th GPU core, and added more storage capacity to the base models for same pricing... and simultaneously redefined the software to support keyboard and track pads, and offered that to all existing iPad customers [instead of restricting to just the new models].
All in all, seems like a great move to me.

Some complained that the hardware was "too advanced" for the software when the 2018 iPad Pro's came out, and now there's complaints because Apple haven't advanced the hardware significantly; sometimes you can never win...
 
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