I really can't wait for the iPad Air 3 to incorporate all these cool new features! Speakers, pencil, smart connector. Gonna be a good year long wait with my air 2!
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All I can think about with all this iPad pro hype
- Thread starter Ghost31
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Much ado over very little unless you must have a pensil. Even at that, the price of admission is obscene.
I don't see why it wouldn't. It really feels like something that'll trickle down to the other iPads. Apple wants to do things to encourage people to buy again (since people keep their iPads for way longer than Apple would probably like) so I would imagine the pro will be positioned as the top end, much like the Mac Pro is to desktops and 15 inch retina is to laptops. It will always have more ram and processing power and apps will probably be developed specifically for it
The air and mini will be positioned as mostly consumer end products with a much larger focus on content consumption. But with the new smart connector, a plethora of new accessories will make the iPad Air and mini a bit more interesting. The pencil will be available just because people want it and it's another feature/accessory to sell iPads but Apple will hold the idea that "if you're an artist, you'll want the pro".
I actually would bet on the screen getting updated for the Pencil before the other two.
The speakers require space, and in the Pro serve to also keep the iPad lighter. Apple could have put more batteries in, but at the expense of making it even heavier. But the speakers don't add nearly as much weight. To bring them to the Air would require carving out space the battery and logic board currently need. It isn't impossible, but I don't feel like there is a rush to re-engineer things to do it. At the very least they'd need to bring over the variable frame rate timing from the Pro as well to avoid losing too much battery life. I'd rather see them bring it to get an extra hour or two from the existing battery. Plus, if you want force touch, that also needs space for haptics.
The smart connector isn't an accessory heaven, and it's basically going to only be good for keyboards and maybe some form of power dock. It doesn't have the data rate to do anything useful in this day and age when USB2 is old news, and it makes USB2 seem really fast. I don't mind if it doesn't come, because keyboards will be somewhat cramped. I'd rather have a nice stand or Smart Cover and a wireless keyboard that is more full sized.
But if it gains Pencil support? Day one buy for me. I already gave Apple feedback saying that.
The speakers require space, and in the Pro serve to also keep the iPad lighter. Apple could have put more batteries in, but at the expense of making it even heavier. But the speakers don't add nearly as much weight. To bring them to the Air would require carving out space the battery and logic board currently need. It isn't impossible, but I don't feel like there is a rush to re-engineer things to do it. At the very least they'd need to bring over the variable frame rate timing from the Pro as well to avoid losing too much battery life. I'd rather see them bring it to get an extra hour or two from the existing battery. Plus, if you want force touch, that also needs space for haptics.
The smart connector isn't an accessory heaven, and it's basically going to only be good for keyboards and maybe some form of power dock. It doesn't have the data rate to do anything useful in this day and age when USB2 is old news, and it makes USB2 seem really fast. I don't mind if it doesn't come, because keyboards will be somewhat cramped. I'd rather have a nice stand or Smart Cover and a wireless keyboard that is more full sized.
But if it gains Pencil support? Day one buy for me. I already gave Apple feedback saying that.
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IMO the pencil is a key feature that differentiates the Pro from the normal iPad, not to mention there are extra sensors embedded into the pro to work with the Pencil, pushing up the price. So I don't see it happening.
I suspect that the only thing from the Pro coming over to the Air will be the Pencil. There's not enough space in the Air's chassis to support 4 speakers (unless something changes to reduce the footprint of other components). I think that the Smart connector will remain exclusive to the Pro.
But I hope that you're right though. I recently bought a new 128GB Air 2 (screaming deal) but will gladly hand that over to my wife and get an Air 3 if it has those things.
The flip side is, if the Pro is simply too big for a user, will the Pencil force the upsell? I'd argue that it isn't a guarantee, since I bought a Pro because of the Pencil, and then returned it because it was too heavy for my needs. So in that case, do you simply leave the 99$ accessory revenue on the table? I'd rather make the Pencil available to the Air specifically to enable the upsell for buyers who want a stylus, but won't jump to the Pro for one.
Good points. If the Pencil proves popular enough with users and 3rd party app developers, I'm sure they'd put the feature into the Air...perhaps an Air Pro? 
I think the opposite... if the Pencil is NOT popular enough, Apple will need to increase the audience by making it available for the Air and Mini. The larger the target audience the more incentive for app developers to support a thing.Good points. If the Pencil proves popular enough with users and 3rd party app developers, I'm sure they'd put the feature into the Air...perhaps an Air Pro?