Apple Expected to Update Entire iPad Lineup Next Year

[nick42983]

At what point do the MacBook Air and iPad Pro merge into a single product with a detachable keyboard?

At the point Apple has squeezed all the revenue they can out of selling the two products separately.

There's no technical limitation to having MacOS run on an iPad when its attached to the Magic Keyboard (which also is way overdue for an upgrade). Unfortunately I don't think we'll see something like this for another 5 years (after every penny has been milked from the 2024 refreshed iPads).

Despite the growth in services Apple is still a hardware company and their priority is for customers to buy as many Apple products as possible, even if they overlap in all kinds of ways even though increasingly strained family budgets and attention spans would be better served with just an iPhone and a hybrid MacBook/iPad for most of our computing needs.

 

[Howard2k]

At the point Apple has squeezed all the revenue they can out of selling the two products separately.

There's no technical limitation to having MacOS run on an iPad when its attached to the Magic Keyboard (which also is way overdue for an upgrade). Unfortunately I don't think we'll see something like this for another 5 years (after every penny has been milked from the 2024 refreshed iPads).

Despite the growth in services Apple is still a hardware company and their priority is for customers to buy as many Apple products as possible, even if they overlap in all kinds of ways even though increasingly strained family budgets and attention spans would be better served with just an iPhone and a hybrid MacBook/iPad for most of our computing needs.

Agreed, people shouldn't have to make their own decisions. Apple should be trying to find the lowest cost product for each user, and switch to a charity operation.

 

[cb3]

Hope there are deep discounts on iPads this Christmas.

 

[lartola]

The base iPad has been updated annually for quite a long time with that trend breaking this year. The iPad Air and iPad Pros tend to be updated every 18 months while the mini is updated whenever Apple gets around to it.

I think the base iPad trend and the iPad Air trend was broken this year because Apple wants to completely revamp the entire line, similar to what they did with the iPhone last year and the Mac laptops this year. They will try to solve the problems of the mini seeming to have no fit in the lineup and the Air being too close to the Pros. Expect the Pros to be significantly upgraded while the Air will have a minor upgrade in order to separate the two.

It's possible the Airs could take the slot of the Pros and the Pros might be updated to Ultras. What supports that guess is the rumors of two iPad Air sizes along with OLED upgrades to the Pros. One possible reason why the M3 Pro has more efficiency cores and fewer performance cores is that the M3 Pro may be destined for those iPad Ultras, which need very high power savings along with heat dissipation since iPads have smaller batteries and very thin bodies for keeping out heat. Meanwhile the iPad Air will get the ordinary M3.

It’s not annual. The base ipad, like the pros and air, has been updated some years in september and some in the spring. That’s actually longer than a year between updates for qll ipad categories even though no entire year had gone without ipad updates before. The reason they’re not updating any of the ipad categories this year is that in the fall of 2022 they updated all three categories at the same time: air, pro and base. Thus, this fall wasn’t time to update any of them yet following Apple’s 1.25-1.5 year pattern.

 

[Crow_Servo]

It’s not annual. The base ipad, like the pros and air, has been updated some years in september and some in the spring. That’s actually longer than a year between updates for qll ipad categories even though no entire year had gone without ipad updates before. The reason they’re not updating any of the ipad categories this year is that in the fall of 2022 they updated all three categories at the same time: air, pro and base. Thus, this fall wasn’t time to update any of them yet following Apple’s 1.25-1.5 year pattern.

Sorry, there’s a lot of things wrong with your observations here.

The base iPad has been refreshed in the fall of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. All approximately one year apart from each other. Prior to 2019, yes, they released the base a different time of year, but the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th generation iPads all released in the fall of their respective years.

Also, the Air 5 (the most recent Air) was not released in the fall of 2022. It was released in the spring of 2022, so actually it is due for a refresh now.

The Pros are due next year, as expected. So you’re right about that.

The Mini is a wildcard. It could be released anytime next year or not at all (but the rumors are that all iPads will be refreshed next year).

So Apple broke the release pattern on the base and Air this time around.

 

[normwood]

Who wants an ipad

Me

 

[FrozenDarkness]

At the point Apple has squeezed all the revenue they can out of selling the two products separately.

There's no technical limitation to having MacOS run on an iPad when its attached to the Magic Keyboard (which also is way overdue for an upgrade). Unfortunately I don't think we'll see something like this for another 5 years (after every penny has been milked from the 2024 refreshed iPads).

Despite the growth in services Apple is still a hardware company and their priority is for customers to buy as many Apple products as possible, even if they overlap in all kinds of ways even though increasingly strained family budgets and attention spans would be better served with just an iPhone and a hybrid MacBook/iPad for most of our computing needs.

A lot of things can be true at once like apple prob made a business decision not to invest in turning ipad into macos. But i disagree that theres no technical limitations. If there aren't any and it's truly like a flip of a switch, we'd see a flood of windows + android pcs out in the wild. There aren't any. Everybody's trying to like make something more like the other, but there isn't any dual booting device AFAIK.

 

[tobybrut]

This is so convoluted. You're trying to argue 'replace your Windows computer with an iPad Pro' is completely different to 'replace your Windows laptop with an iPad Pro'? A Laptop is just the traditional portable form factor of a PC. Whether or not the iPad does things slightly differently is an aside, Apple made the comparison and told people replace your Windows laptop with an iPad Pro - Phil Schiller actually says this directly in the March 2016 keynote.

No he never mentioned laptop. That is the problem I have with this whole “laptop replacement” thing. It’s a computer replacement. The iPad is a computer, but is not a laptop. That means it’s never going to work like a laptop, but almost everyone here expects it to BE a laptop. it’s not. it’s a tablet. There will always be crossovers between tablets, laptops, and desktop, yet none of the three can ever completely replace either of the others since all of them have unique characteristics that mean we have three separate product lines. A tablet has its ultraportability, touch abilities, and ease of use. Laptops have moderate portability and more power than tablets. Desktops have the ultimate power (just imagine sticking an Ultra in a laptop. Not happening) with better thermals and generally higher expandability at the cost of portability.

But the obsession of making the iPad a laptop just makes no sense. It’s a tablet and will always be a tablet. Why in the world would you want it to work just like a laptop when it can’t, especially when it comes to battery life and thermals. This was always the Achilles heel of the Surface Pro. It had to cripple the laptop portion of it to have reasonable battery life, and it was hamstrung by apps and OS that were designed for a mouse, making it a miserable tablet. Even if the OS were somehow touch friendly, the apps aren’t. This is why Microsoft continues to fail.

I bought one of those to try it out, thinking it was a great idea to combine a tablet and a laptop. That experience turned me against it because the usability was awful. It was the worst tech purchase I had ever made in the last 10 years (the worst being a Mac IIcx for $6000 that was replaced 6 months later with the Mac IIci). People who want the iPad to be a laptop have never once stopped to think how miserable the touch experience would be and also how terrible the thermals and battery life would be compared to a laptop. They think, hey, it’s got an M2. It must work just like a MacBook Air. No, it doesn’t because they are not the same machine, sharing only a single common part. iPads under clock those M2 chips in order to preserve battery life due to a much smaller battery and play all sorts of tricks to save power, none of which exist under macOS.

 

[tobybrut]

Focus does not separate apps and data. While separate accounts (logins) are probably not practical for iPad, having ability to switch profiles where data is sandboxed by profile would enable a true separation. Imaging having Work profile and your mail accounts, bookmarks, zoom, slack accounts are only work, then having Personal profile where those application use their own data. Right now I either have to use separate apps where possible (Apple Mail for personal and Outlook for work or Safari for personal and Firefox for work) but with apps like Slack or Zoom it is not.

It does separate apps if you set it up right. You can select which of your Springboard screens appear in each focus mode. Put your personal apps on one page and your work apps on a second page, making the correct page appear in that focus. If you have common apps between the two, make a separate page that shows up under both focus modes.

Yes, I agree a separate account would be cleaner, but it can be done with focus modes. I don’t know if Apple ever plans on doing that since it seems they consider the iPad to be a personal device like the iPhone. I wouldn’t mind seeing them do it, but hey, until they do, here’s the workaround.

 

[tobybrut]

I am more and more convinced there's going to be a M3 Pro variant on an ipad pro. I was wondering why apple took out bionic and renamed A17 to pro. however, i think what this means is that the lineup will be confusing. Just like how the watch lineup is confusing.

I think it'll be

Ipad Pro 11 + 13: m3 + promotion
iPad pro ultra: m3 pro + OLED
ipad air: m3 + no promotion.
ipad mini: a17 pro

what would make the most sense is

iPad Pro 11 + 13: m3 Pro + OLED
ipad air / mini: 7 +11 + 13: m3 regular ol lcd.

But the issue here is the rumors peg oled ipad at 1500 which creates a huge price vacuum

Agreed. I made this exact prediction yesterday. I think it’s one of the reasons Apple went with 6 efficiency cores on the M3 Pro instead of the usual 8/4 mix. Conveniently, it also helps segment the Mac laptop line to put separation between the M3 Pro and M3 Max. When they revise the entire iPad line, they plan to separate further all the iPads in the line to avoid the confusion of the iPad Air being too close to the Pros. The Air gets the M3 while the Pro gets the M3 Pro.

 

[tobybrut]

At the point Apple has squeezed all the revenue they can out of selling the two products separately.

There's no technical limitation to having MacOS run on an iPad when its attached to the Magic Keyboard (which also is way overdue for an upgrade). Unfortunately I don't think we'll see something like this for another 5 years (after every penny has been milked from the 2024 refreshed iPads).

Despite the growth in services Apple is still a hardware company and their priority is for customers to buy as many Apple products as possible, even if they overlap in all kinds of ways even though increasingly strained family budgets and attention spans would be better served with just an iPhone and a hybrid MacBook/iPad for most of our computing needs.

There are technical limitations. The form factor and battery size are limiting factors when it comes to making a device run a desktop OS. No one stops to think about how different a MacBook Air is to an iPad. They may share one common important part, but nothing else is similar. The iPad has a smaller battery, incredibly thin chassis, and much worse thermals than the Air. iPadOS has a zillion mechanisms to save power, such as forcing apps to sleep and creating an entire server-based notifications system to avoid having to have apps stay awake. None of these things exist on macOS. People thought thermals were not great on a MBA, but think about an iPad. It’s a lot thinner with no room for a decent heat sink and nowhere to vent heat. The Air has ventilation holes to drive out heat while the iPad has none of those things, with the only holes being the speakers.

It isn’t just a simple matter of dropping macOS onto an iPad, which Apple could have done in a day, since the OS’es are essentially the same underneath, just with different libraries to support the differing UI’s. Apple said they did try it and it was not a good experience. This is why they won’t do it.

 

[tutubibi]

It does separate apps if you set it up right. You can select which of your Springboard screens appear in each focus mode. Put your personal apps on one page and your work apps on a second page, making the correct page appear in that focus. If you have common apps between the two, make a separate page that shows up under both focus modes.

Yes, I agree a separate account would be cleaner, but it can be done with focus modes. I don’t know if Apple ever plans on doing that since it seems they consider the iPad to be a personal device like the iPhone. I wouldn’t mind seeing them do it, but hey, until they do, here’s the workaround.

Thanks and yes that would address apps but that's a smaller part of the problem. In my case. the main issue is data separation/sandboxing. This is one area where Android is ahead of iOS/iPadOS, unfortunately Android implementation is somewhat clumsy and does not work well with biometric authentication methods, that's why I would prefer profiles (one user, multiple profiles) instead of accounts (multiple users). Implementation could be as simple as adding an option per application to use global or focus-scoped data store.

 

[Tagbert]

Only if they're completely rewritten for touch. Apple will never allow a solely mouse-based program on an iPad. This is why it took them an eternity to release Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad.

As it happens, I use a mouse with my iPad Pro so it would seem a natural.

 

[Tagbert]

I think it's spelled:

Che sarà, sarà

That is an Italian song.

The English song, uses an English phrase dating at least to the 16th century “que, sera, sera” of uncertain origin.

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Tagbert]

It has the exact same file system as macOS. Apple deliberately hides it due to the fundamental security of iPadOS. They WANT to hide it from users because users have no business messing with the underlying file system. Remember that the prime tenet of iPadOS is to protect apps from outside interference. That is why all apps are sandboxed. App developers were told from the beginning that no app could touch other apps, and Apple went through hoops to create inter-application communications methods to prevent direct access. Opening the file system would throw all that in the toilet.

People keep confusing the files system (APFS) with the (Mac OS) Finder and (iPad OS) Files apps.

 

[svish]

Glad to hear that all models will be getting updated. Maybe a new Pencil will be released along with the new Pro iPad

 

[Tagbert]

I am more and more convinced there's going to be a M3 Pro variant on an ipad pro. I was wondering why apple took out bionic and renamed A17 to pro. however, i think what this means is that the lineup will be confusing. Just like how the watch lineup is confusing.

I think it'll be

Ipad Pro 11 + 13: m3 + promotion
iPad pro ultra: m3 pro + OLED
ipad air: m3 + no promotion.
ipad mini: a17 pro

what would make the most sense is

iPad Pro 11 + 13: m3 Pro + OLED
ipad air / mini: 7 +11 + 13: m3 regular ol lcd.

But the issue here is the rumors peg oled ipad at 1500 which creates a huge price vacuum

What would be the functional advantage to putting an M3 Pro in instead of an M3? Would that support large scale multi-tasking and interactivity? Or would it just be a checkbox feature?

 

[Brien]

Here’s hoping for steep discounts this season to clear inventory at least?

 

[FrozenDarkness]

What would be the functional advantage to putting an M3 Pro in instead of an M3? Would that support large scale multi-tasking and interactivity? Or would it just be a checkbox feature?

I don't work for apple's marketing department

on a more serious note, apple has already told us two: content creation and vidya games.

 

[scorpio vega]

At what point do the MacBook Air and iPad Pro merge into a single product with a detachable keyboard?

I am shocked it hasn’t happened yet.

 

[nick42983]

There are technical limitations. The form factor and battery size are limiting factors when it comes to making a device run a desktop OS. No one stops to think about how different a MacBook Air is to an iPad. They may share one common important part, but nothing else is similar. The iPad has a smaller battery, incredibly thin chassis, and much worse thermals than the Air. iPadOS has a zillion mechanisms to save power, such as forcing apps to sleep and creating an entire server-based notifications system to avoid having to have apps stay awake. None of these things exist on macOS. People thought thermals were not great on a MBA, but think about an iPad. It’s a lot thinner with no room for a decent heat sink and nowhere to vent heat. The Air has ventilation holes to drive out heat while the iPad has none of those things, with the only holes being the speakers.

It isn’t just a simple matter of dropping macOS onto an iPad, which Apple could have done in a day, since the OS’es are essentially the same underneath, just with different libraries to support the differing UI’s. Apple said they did try it and it was not a good experience. This is why they won’t do it.

Like I said, MacOS could run on the iPad when connected to a keyboard/base. I'm not the first to suggest it. The device could both be both the sports car and truck Steve Jobs spoke of, in one.

I'm confident though that MacOS on my M1 iPad Pro with my Magic Keyboard would be an awesome upgrade to have today, even with the most basic touch functionality. It's primarily a business decision not to give customers this option rather than a technical problem.

Apple also said that Stage Manager on 2018/2020 iPad Pros was not a good experience and then backtracked after there was an uproar. Unless Apple demonstrates why something is a bad experience for users I wouldn't take what they have to say at face value.

 

[tobybrut]

As it happens, I use a mouse with my iPad Pro so it would seem a natural.

Except it's not a mouse cursor. Apple spent a lot of time creating a context sensitive cursor that simulates a finger, which is why it's a circle, not a pointer. It wouldn't work well with Mac apps, which have much smaller contact points. You'd probably find a bit of frustration trying to click on the right spot.

 

[tobybrut]

People keep confusing the files system (APFS) with the (Mac OS) Finder and (iPad OS) Files apps.

Yes, they do for some reason. Finder and Files are ways to access the file system, but are not the file system, themselves.

 

[tobybrut]

Like I said, MacOS could run on the iPad when connected to a keyboard/base. I'm not the first to suggest it. The device could both be both the sports car and truck Steve Jobs spoke of, in one.

I'm confident though that MacOS on my M1 iPad Pro with my Magic Keyboard would be an awesome upgrade to have today, even with the most basic touch functionality. It's primarily a business decision not to give customers this option rather than a technical problem.

Apple also said that Stage Manager on 2018/2020 iPad Pros was not a good experience and then backtracked after there was an uproar. Unless Apple demonstrates why something is a bad experience for users I wouldn't take what they have to say at face value.

You may not be the first to suggest it, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Apple's already tried it in their labs and found it to be really bad, according to Craig F.

I already mentioned why macOS won't work on an iPad, much of due to the inferior battery and thermals, not to mention you'd need a minimum of 512GB just to accommodate two OS'es, not leaving much room for two kinds of apps. If you thought a 512GB iPad was expensive, just wait till you have to get a 1TB iPad for $1800 without a keyboard considering the people who are demanding this feature think 512GB should be the minimum for just macOS. Now tack on iPadOS and its apps. Just because it has an M2 doesn't make it a laptop since there's so much that goes into making a laptop that isn't just the CPU. Microsoft tried it for over a decade, but people somehow still ignore their failures and want Apple to replicate those mistakes.

 

[mlody]

I also hope Apple takes this time to cleanup and streamline the iPad line-up. They finally did that with MacBooks, so one can expect the same to follow with iPad’s.


In my opinion, the iPad line does not require a lot of work. They can keep the existing Pro line and sizes, that is fine, but I think the iPad mini more reassemble the Air then regular iPad so they should call it perhaps Air Mini or Air with different size, and create feature parity with the regular size Air.

As far as the cheap iPad, they call call is by generations and continue to offer the cheapest and most entry iPad, following, re-using 2-3 old year tech and chipsets.

For the most part, the lineup looks solid and does not require a lot of re-doing and they mostly need to focus on cleaning up the entry iPads and and offer better pricing. The 10 gen iPad is overpriced, and should not come at more than $399. If they can offer an appealing ‘for EDU” pricing, they perhaps could drop the previous gen all together and just use only the current model in the line (make that iPad only available via special channel and not via regular edu store) and they would help with the confusion


iPad Pro 11” / 13” $800 / $1100- (use latest M series Apple Silicon, full TB 4 port, and camera tech)

iPad Air 8” / 11”- $500/ $600 - (use 1-2 old M series Apple Silicon, full USB-C Gen 2 port and camera tech)

iPad 11” - $400 - (use 1-2 old A series Apple Silicon, USB-C 2.0 speeds and basic camera tech)



iPad 11” -$399

iPad Air 8”. - $499

iPad Air 11” - $599

iPad Pro 11” - $799

iPad Pro 13” $1099