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The reason Apple releases every year (or so) is because of people who want or need to update older devices. Since you just purchased, Apple releasing another model should be irrelevant to you. Not sure why you are complaining.
I thought iPads were on an 18 month schedule. Every two years would be fine. The only product I don’t think they can get away with not updating every year is iPhone.
 
iPadOS needs some fundamental under the hood reworking to help get us all to 80-90% usable day in day out. Apple can do this and the iPads certainly have the horsepower to do it. I’m not upgrading my M1 iPad Pro at this point as the limitations just happen faster with M4. OLED and worse/less cameras are not factors that are going to get my cash. Apple’s strategy isn’t as cute as they think it is and isn’t working as well as one would be lead to believe.
 
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Probably the most unnecessary and pointless Apple update one could think of

Is Apple ok?

Absolutely no iPad Pro user needs an updated model ... they are all hilariously overpowered given the usages and constraints of iPadOS
So your assumption is that if Apple puts 16Gb instead of 8Gb memory on cheaper iPads Pro it gonna be unnecessary and pointless update, right?
 
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I thought iPads were on an 18 month schedule. Every two years would be fine. The only product I don’t think they can get away with not updating every year is iPhone.
Close. The iPad Pro cycle is a little less than 18 months, at about 16-17 months on average.

Anyhow, the last release was May 2024, so if the new one came out say October 2025, that would be 17 months. If it came out in say July, that would be 14 months.
 
I thought iPads were on an 18 month schedule. Every two years would be fine. The only product I don’t think they can get away with not updating every year is iPhone.
They usually are, and if it releases close to the end of 2025 it will still follow that schedule.
 
iPadOS needs some fundamental under the hood reworking to help get us all to 80-90% usable day in day out. Apple can do this and the iPads certainly have the horsepower to do it. I’m not upgrading my M1 iPad Pro at this point as the limitations just happen faster with M4. OLED and worse/less cameras are not factors that are going to get my cash. Apple’s strategy isn’t as cute as they think it is and isn’t working as well as one would be lead to believe.
iPads are constantly rated very high by users on any retailer you can check. They sell in much bigger volumes than the Mac. It seems like users are very happy with iPadOS — it doesn’t mean that Apple shouldn’t improve, but I think it wouldn’t be very intelligent to scrap the foundations of a very successful OS.
 
😂 iPad sales slumping so leaving it largely unchanged will boost sales? Give it a $500 price drop at base and far more on higher spec models. If not, enjoy even worse sales.

This is the kind of behavior that got Apple in trouble a long time ago. They're drowning themselves in product launches that don't benefit the consumer or the company. IMHO, the current iPad HW doesn't have any limitations, it's the software (iPad OS).

Exactly. At these prices and as good as Macs are now, the niche for iPads is just as a great display for showing content. People bending over backwards to try to do more with them are just hurting themselves. There’s a place for the iPad but it’s not at the extremely high end.

They should just focus on getting good displays at the lowest prices, if they’re going to continue to just make the iPad a big iPhone. The internals of everything these days have gotten quite good, especially since we’ve finally settled at 8GB of RAM minimum across the board.
 
I just upgraded my phone and tablet to the iPhone 16 Pro and the M4 iPad 13" Pro in September. My old devices were getting long in the tooth and weren't AI compatible.

It's no fun to see a device you bought get 'old'. But consider cars, trucks etc. No difference there. A new model comes out every year, So anyone who bought a 2024 Honda in September now has last year's model.
 
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Glad I opted not to buy the newest one! Really took every last iota of my willpower not to splurge.
 
if folks at the top of apple were smart (other than financially, LOL) they would differentiate the pro line by selling it with a dock and allowing it to run macos if desired.

What I don't mean is to merge the two OS's into some monstrosity, but an easier way - if docked it will run macos... when not docked it will run ipad os. since the hardware is identical at this point, all it requires apple to do is simply partition the onboard storage space. Both partitions can access a shared data partition so you can work on files with either OS. this requires little to no re-engineering of hardware/software or even apps, interfaces, etc. for that matter - they could probably do this today with just a new bootloader.

I would love to carry an ipad that can convert to a full mac in such a portable form factor when i'm at a desk for real work - this would justify the pro price tag and power. if not, the segment seems very niche and they should just make the air the top tier and give it the premier hardware and save the manufacturing overhead which would hopefully make it more affordable.

(what the heck, do the same with the iphone pro, so my full working desktop comes with me in my phone when traveling (and a small dock with ports) and i would buy it now! LOL. - come on apple think outside the box and this is really so simple at this point in your hardware cycle it would take little to no time on your part)
 
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I feel like at this point if the iPad Air only supported FaceID there would be no reason for most people (like myself) to want the Pro model. I have the 13 inch M4 Pro and my wife has the 13 inch M2 Air. I look at her Air and the only reason I bought the Pro was for the new Magic Keyboard and for FaceID.
but the screens have a big difference doesnt it, i *think* the ipad air is not promotion nor does it have the higher refresh rate of the ipad pro. That made no difference side by side?
 
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That's what I said last year with my M4. :) Until I got my M4 Mac mini, my M4 iPad Pro was by far the fastest computer in my house... but I didn't actually do any real work on it.
I think that’s the problem with me, I’d love one just for the sheer technology aspect but I’d just be watching YouTube and reading MacRumors on it :) I can at least be honest with myself there. Definitely people out there that use the iPP to its potential but man that’s gotta be an extraordinary low number…
 
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Chips are more important nowadays than they were 2-3 years ago though - because of Apple Intelligence. I think they'll want to enable the upcoming features on as many devices as possible - and they've always been cheap on memory.
What magical thing would Apple do with Apple "Intelligence" that would require so much processing power and memory? Especially when they are not able to do basic things right. And I mean it not only in regards to Apple "Intelligence".
 
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😂 iPad sales slumping so leaving it largely unchanged will boost sales? Give it a $500 price drop at base and far more on higher spec models. If not, enjoy even worse sales.
LOL!

Ipad base price is $349 for the iPad 10 base model. A $500 price drop would me the new price was Apple paying its customers $151. I am sure Apple could raise sales if it were paying its customers instead of the other way around, but that is just not real.
 
I think that’s the problem with me, I’d love one just for the sheer technology aspect but I’d just be watching YouTube and reading MacRumors on it :) I can at least be honest with myself there. Definitely people out there that use the iPP to its potential but man that’s gotta be an extraordinary low number…
I have LumaFusion on my iPad Pro, but I rarely use it. I do very occasionally edit photos on it though. For this reason I bought an Apple Pencil Pro, even though I don't use that much either. Apple Photos on my Mac links to the iPad Pro markup, etc.

BTW, that reminds me. I wonder how the free DaVinci Resolve compares to LumaFusion.
 
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We don't want OLED in MacBooks unless Apple has robust burn-in protection.
Is OLED really needed? All I can see on my MacBook Pro is a fantastic display with true blacks. I don't know te technical comparison too deep, maybe OLED would increase battery life a little bit. I don't worry about burn-in because displays in iPhone and Apple Watch. No issue at all with Apple OLED.
 
Anyone or any software utilizing all of this potential power offered by M2, M4 and now possibly M5.

Cost seems to be going up and the economy has not recovered but it seems Apple’s answer is release new iPad’s when the Mac hardware line is months if not years behind.
M4 Mac mini is out now, with a pro chip option. M4 MacBook Pros out now with M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max, M4 Mac Studio heavily rumored for Q2 with possible M4 Ultra. Releases may indeed be spread out over a year but not really behind.
 
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