Apple Announces New iPad Pro With M4 Chip, OLED Display, and More

[mrklaw]

bit on the base 13. not a bad trade in price for my M1 pro. Bit lighter won’t hurt - its a lump. Keyboard is ok, they allowed the 2018 case to work on the 2020 which was slightly thicker so its lasted me 6 years.. Pencil is annoying though, suppose I’ll pick that up and sell the old one for pennies.

I mainly use it for casual stuff but even as a portable TV OLED is nice to have. I can use my wife’s MBA for anything that needs a real computer which for me is only rare occasions like more than basic excel use, or websites like YNAB that don’t recognise desktop browser requests properly. Edge cases mostly. But the pro with magic keyboard has been by my side since 2018 so I don’t mind putting some money into it every few years.

 

[ric22]

*Up to 10 cores (4P + 6E). You have to select 1TB storage or more to get the full 10.

Yep, and pay the extra £600 for the privilege. That's more than a entire new iPad Air..

 

[Torty]

I wonder why one of the performance cores is disabled. This bothers me.

Only for 8GB devices <1TB SSD.

 

[slippery-pete]

Just cant justify spending $1299 for entry level 13 Pro.

 

[bobjonesco]

Nano glass only available with 1 or 2TB options. So a 13" with keyboard and pencil will run just under $2800 CDN. Yikes.

Just get one of these special polishing cloths for $5 and give the normal screen a good rub. It’s like magic.

 

[gatorvet96]

This is the joke. You can run a Fisher Price OS on your expensive hardware or buy a real computer.

"useless" is relative. I use my iPad Pro M2 and iPhone for 95% of my computing needs. Computer is gathering dust most of the time.

 

[dk001]

Yep, and pay the extra £600 for the privilege. That's more than a entire new iPad Air..

I cannot think of any software the iPad can run that really needs that.

 

[deevey]

The thing is, I don't want a MacBook *and* an iPad. But I kinda need to have both, for different use cases.

You are the exactly the customer Apple wants.

Apple has more than 100'000 employees and tons of cash. They should be able to figure it out.

You are the exactly the reason they will not spend time on this.

 

[gatorvet96]

They did improve the one kind of photo I've ever taken with an iPad... pictures of documents!

I use my iPhone for that too. It is lighter

 

[ric22]

I cannot think of any software the iPad can run that really needs that.

Needs 1TB storage? Or are try referring to the RAM? Or to the extra CPU core?

 

[aloysiusfreeman]

And yet - iPads can do lots of things that MacBooks can't. Why can't people understand that? Your use case is not everyone else's use case.

I feel like the hate of iPadOS is overstated, but with the amount of hardware getting put into the iPad Pro it would be at least nice to see it used to its potential.

 

[mrklaw]

"useless" is relative. I use my iPad Pro M2 and iPhone for 95% of my computing needs. Computer is gathering dust most of the time.

same. I’ve been looking at alternatives - I could remote desktop into my windows desktop but honestly we have an old MBA lying around my wife uses and I just grab that for the rare occasions I need a laptop. I would like better office apps and better external monitor support (especially now we have thunderbolt 4 on the pros) but its all edge case stuff

 

[Realityck]

It will be very interesting to see how many go with the M4 OLED IPad Pro’s compared to the M2 Airs. Thats still quite a price difference for any potential buyer? Also do more go for 11” vs 13” models With either new iPad Pro or iPad Air?

 

[Neil Harrison]

Trigger pulled traded in m2 11 inch….roll on Wednesday

 

[norbinhouston]

I agree, why make it thinner? Should have kept it the same and upped the batter life. And still waiting for that 14-15 inch iPad extreme.

 

[PaperMag]

On QD-OLED vs Tandem OLED...

• QD-OLED isn't "true" OLED. The light source is made of blue OLED diodes, and in front there is red and green micro-crystals; combined they produce an RGB image. Problem is there is no polarizer layer, so black levels become dark grey in bright ambient light (LTT video example); and the odd sub-pixel arrangement is sub-otimal for text clarity.
• Tandem OLED is "true" OLED because it has all three RGB OLED diodes—plain and simple—producing both the light and the color; plus what makes it "tandem" is there are two layers of RGB OLED to increase brightness while using less voltage per diode (which is going to minimize burn-in of static content like the menu bar). The sub-pixel arrangement is optimal for text clarity.
• WOLED is what happens when you add a white sub-pixel to RGB OLED. The white sub-pixel adds brightness to the image, but it takes a small hit in color space and color accuracy compared to the rest; and pixel arrangement of WRGB is sub-optimal for text clarity.

As far as I'm concerned, LG Display's Tandem OLED is now the best mainstream consumer display on the planet and that is what Apple is using in the M4 iPad Pros.

Tandem OLED > QD-OLED > WOLED

PS: Samsung is upset that LG Display took their business, so Samsung are dedicating a team of engineers to compete and win Apple's business back. And Chinese OLED manufacturers are also improving and trying to win bids with Apple, so the writing is on the wall that this is the future of displays. You will see this come to MacBook Pros in 2026 and regular OLED (not Tandem) to MacBook Airs in 2027.

PPS: It's going to be a long time before Apple brings Tandem OLED to external displays, but LG is in mass production on a 27-inch 5K @ 120Hz panel with 2000:1 contrast (a feature called IPS Black) that hmmm...sounds like it would fit in an Apple Studio Display version 2.

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

Didn't logic tell you not to sit on any phone in your back pocket anyway?

When something is advertised as aerospace-grade aluminum that fits in your pocket one should rightly assume it's built to be put in your pocket. 🙄

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

What’s the battery life? Why didn’t they mention that?

The same as iPad Pro w/M2 (which is what I have)

 

[darngooddesign]

Gee now they have made the jump to M4. Here we go with having Macs using M2’s and M3’s still. Have fun marketing all your other products Apple. Yes they are discussing more powerful NPU 16 times faster then the M1.

Meh. M4 Macs at WWDC in a few months. It’s a short term issue which explains the lack of an M3 Studio.

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

just buy an incoming 3rd party $150+ case for it

I currently use the Logitech Smart Keyboard/folio cover. I am not sure I like the fabric cover anymore. I got a pen mark on it I can't get rid of. #thestruggles

 

[familychoice]

I'm more confused why the 2nd gen Pencil doesn't work with the new iPads.

It’s not listed with the new Air’s either, which is weird, since it supports the older pencil.

 

[darngooddesign]

When something is advertised as aerospace-grade aluminum that fits in your pocket one should rightly assume it's built to be put in your pocket. 🙄

You can put it in your front pocket to avoid sitting on it.

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

You can put it in your front pocket to avoid sitting on it.

Luckily I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and that's no longer an issue.

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

You can put it in your front pocket to avoid sitting on it.

And TBC it wasn't about "sitting" on the phone while having it in my back pocket...the GD thing was bending just from BEING in my back pocket and curving to fit my curves. 🍑

 

[mrklaw]

M3MBA has 1 extra performance CPU core but two fewer efficiency cores - and slightly faster ram vs the M4 base in the normal pros (not counting the 1TB models as normal) - makes me think this ‘M4’ is mainly a number bump and they had to make changes to accommodate the screen driver with the dual layer OLED?