Apple announces iPad Pro with M2 chip and Pencil hover support

[millgeek]

What just happened? Apple has announced the latest iPad Pros sporting Apple's M2 chip. The tablets also bring new features to improve useability with the Apple Pencil and support for ProRes video capture. Pricing starts at $799 for the 11-inch model and $1,099 for the 12.9-inch model.

Apple announced its latest iPad Pro series of tablets today. The 2022 iPad Pro design remains unchanged from the previous generation with 11-inch and 12.9-inch display options, but there are plenty of incremental upgrades to entice power tablet users.

The most notable upgrade in the 2022 iPad Pro is Apple's M2 chip. The M2 features an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, offering a 15 percent and 35 percent improvement over the M1 chip in the previous generation. The M2 also boasts 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, 50 percent more than the M1 Models. Storage capacities range from 128GB to 512GB, with 8GB of RAM. One- and two-terabyte models bump the RAM to 16GB.

A new media engine and image signal processor give the 2022 iPad Pro support to capture ProRes video. Apple previously limited ProRes video capture to iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro devices. Cupertino is also promising that the latest iPad Pro can transcode ProRes video up to three times faster.

When iPadOS 16 becomes available on October 24, users who combine the 2022 iPad Pro with a 2nd generation Apple Pencil will unlock Apple's new hover experience. Hover allows the iPad Pro to detect an Apple Pencil up to 12 mm above its display. This feature allows users to see their mark before they make it, and text fields will automatically expand when the pencil gets near the screen. Apple will allow third-party developers to utilize the hover feature within their apps.

Rounding out the notable updates, the 2022 iPad Pro picks up support for Wi-Fi 6E. Apple also promises that Wi-Fi + Cellular models now support more 5G networks worldwide.

The 2022 iPad Pro pre-order started today, with shipping and in-store availability coming on October 26. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 (Wi-Fi-only) and $999 (W-Fi + Cellular), while the 12.9-inch model goes for $1,099 (Wi-Fi-only) and $1,299 (W-Fi + Cellular).

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96366-apple-announces-ipad-pro-m2-chip-pencil-hover.html

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Too bad the clowns didn't announce it was finally going to come with a real OS.

 

[umbala]

What's the price of the highest end model? $10,000?

 

[Watzupken]

I am skeptical this will sell well. On paper, it is more powerful, but we know how the M2 performs in the Macbook Air versus the M1 version and especially so as it throttles faster. It is hardly an upgrade, but will cost more. The GPU performance is likely better not because of more cores, but rather because of the higher memory bandwidth. Furthermore, the software is excruciatingly limiting regardless of the hardware. Sure iOS 16.1 may remove some of these limits, but knowing Apple, they will deliberately gimp the experience just so they can get you to buy another device or look forward to the next refresh.

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmm ..... for that kind of coin you can get a decent laptop .... don't think it will do well until they drop the price by several hundred bucks ....

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Meh.

 

[Fearghast]

As an iPad Pro user myself, the only thing that would sway me to make an upgrade is if the software made any progress since 2015, when the first iPad Pro hit the market.
To me, iPadOS still feels like a stretched iPod.
3rd party apps are usually great, but the core OS is ... incompetent.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It's a shame the cellular upgrade is $200 now instead of $130.

It's also a shame it's still gimped with iOS.

It's strange, ios/ipadOS is so limiting, yet the apps for apple are far more optimized for tablet usage VS, say, android. Android apps rarely support tablet use properly, and frankly the windows tablet experience is let down by subpar hardware design (looking at you surface go).

 

[AlexIL]

Clowns present another useless device for tons of money. Make MacOs on Pads then I'd consider it until then I find it hard to understand what for would I need that device.