What to Expect From the iPad Air 6 in Early 2024

[Seanm87]

aaah yes, iPad - The famous flawed Apple product, that they dont know what to do with it.

Basically has the same computing power as most notebooks on the market, yet it cant do even 1% of what notebooks can.

The ipad air isn't really designed to be a laptop replacement. Its a consumption device.

 

[Smartass]

The ipad air isn't really designed to be a laptop replacement. Its a consumption device.

It used to be, until apple introduced keyboard and mouse for it.

 

[Seanm87]

It used to be, until apple introduced keyboard and mouse for it.

That doesn't change its purpose. Its there if people want to use it but its still ultimately a consumption device.

 

[AppleTO]

aaah yes, iPad - The famous flawed Apple product, that they dont know what to do with it.

Basically has the same computing power as most notebooks on the market, yet it cant do even 1% of what notebooks can.

A lot of people and businesses (including me and mine) purchased many iPads (mostly Pros) during the dark ages of the Mac (2016-2019) as a sort of attempt to use them as a desktop replacement, but since AS there is hardly a need anymore.

 

[ric22]

Thinking back to the early iPads I used- they were very useful for travelling/commuting,
weighing very little but with a screen that was massive compared to phones. Also, a lot of websites were still horribly optimised for mobile use, and the iPad was much better for browsing the internet than the iPhones were. It could replace the desktop/laptop for browsing, light gaming, editing photos, etc. The iPad 3 also brought an excellent screen that was much nicer than the Macs of the day.

Fast forward 11/12 years and the internet is well optimised for phones, phone screens are far larger, phones are much faster, and I haven't even bothered to use my current iPad once this year. The phone caught up, while the iPad continued to lag behind the Mac for productivity, while Mac screens kinda caught up.

 

[BorisDG]

I wonder if the A17 Pro is a better fit than M2? I think Apple should focus on making the Air reasonably priced consumption device. If it is consumption device, the ray trancing for gaming might be very useful.

I'd put the A17 Pro in the mini, and like I said M3 in Air. Wishful thinking.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I just bought an M1 iPad Air as a gift. I don't see how M2, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 are anything other than an incremental improvements. I'm still using my 4th gen Air and it's perfect for what I need.

Larger size is interesting but the current size is pretty big so I can't see much demand for an even larger model. It makes sense with the Pro but not too sure about the Air.

WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 can be very relevant. YMMV obviously, but be aware that for some the benefits far exceed incremental. Especially for folks accessing WiFi in crowded locations, as routers evolve to WiFi 6E the users capable of WiFi 6E are likely to see far better performance than those w/o 6E; 2x better or more, or usable versus unusable rather than incremental.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

...(and once recently because my RAM died, killing my MacBook- thanks for soldering that **** down, Apple.)

Read up on Unified Memory Architecture. I for one do not want Apple to go back to slower plug-in RAM.