iPad Pro refresh with M2 silicon expected any day now

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Apple is reportedly just days away from launching a refreshed version of the iPad Pro featuring an upgraded processor. The upgraded models, codenamed J617 and J620, will be offered with 11-inch and 12.9-inch displays like the current versions. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, they'll be powered by the same Apple M2 processor that is already shipping in the MacBook Air.

The refresh will be the first for the iPad Pro line in roughly one and a half years. All variants of the current generation iPad Pro utilize the M1 chip, which is comprised of an eight-core CPU (four performance cores and four efficiency cores) alongside an eight-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. The slate can be configured with either 8GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of onboard storage.

Gurman believes the new iPads will look similar to the existing lineup, with the flat edge design sticking around for another cycle. Apple's recently released iPhone 14 family uses the same design language.

Apple is also expected to release iPadOS 16.1, the first iPad version of iOS 16, next week. The release could be timed with the launch of the new iPads and will almost certainly happen before October 27 when Apple hosts its quarterly earnings call.

In related news, Apple is also said to be working on a new entry-level iPad with a USB-C port. The revised slate will additionally receive the iPad Pro's flat edge treatment, bringing it more in line with Apple's premium lineup. The entry-level iPad typically only gets a processor bump, meaning this will mark a significant update to the line.

The new iPads are expected to launch on Apple's website without the fanfare that comes with a dedicated press event. That is likely due in part to the fact that they will deliver par for the course spec bumps and previously-seen designs. Apple may also want to save its marketing zest for the Reality Pro headset in 2023.

Image credit: Daniel Romero

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96343-ipad-pro-refresh-m2-silicon-expected-any-day.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I feel like we need the obligatory 'Y tho?' as the painfully obvious continues to be true year after year: Why would anyone need a powerful 'professional' tablet? I'm sorry to say, gimped by having only ipad os. Year after year Apple introduces a few new half-way patches that still make you go "Oh you can kinda multi task on this tablet now!....Now where are the pro apps to use these new features?" and then crickets for another year.

Just enable the full macos to run if it's docked on your overpriced keyboard/trackpad combo ok? That's when you will finally convince people of 'You really can replace your computer with this pro tablet' instead of this endless repeat of the same conversation: No professionals want to use ipados no matter how much you tweak it. They might have to if for any reason they can't actually carry an actual macbook of any kind with them while working, but chances are most of them can and the tablets remain primarly there to consume media and such: just a bigger phone.

Give it an actual OS and people will actually use it with dual purpose instead of gimmicky stuff that they might as well just use the much cheaper ipad air for instead.

 

[R00sT3R]

More overpriced toys for the hipster in your life...

 

[punctualturn]

A shame that Apple continues to hamstring that SOC with the useless iPadOS.

They need to open that up like Android and let the market decide.

But since Apple wants that you have one device per function and per person, this wont change.

 

[torchyear]

I feel like we need the obligatory 'Y tho?' as the painfully obvious continues to be true year after year: Why would anyone need a powerful 'professional' tablet? I'm sorry to say, gimped by having only ipad os.

Agreed. There's never been a compelling reason for the hardware upgrades when iPadOS is hobbling file management, memory access, external monitor use, and so much more. Having attempted to use Adobe CC and Office 365 suites on an iPad with USB-C for actual work, the bottleneck has never been the hardware, it's the gimped-on-purpose feature set of the software platform.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Totally pointless to use a M2 SoC in the iPad Pro whilst it's is handcuffed by iPadOS. For crying out loud why won't these morons give it a MacOS lite, add 1 usb-A 3.1 2x2 along with the usb-c port, and allow mouse support.

If the Macbook Air had 4G/5G capability built-in I would buy that in a heartbeat. Second hand the Macbook Air with M1 is cheaper than iPad Pro 12.9" with M1 second hand in Australia, often much cheaper. I'm not going to pay for a mobile data dongle as they are much more than the data only sims you can get for iPad.

 

[torchyear]

Totally pointless to use a M2 SoC in the iPad Pro whilst it's is handcuffed by iPadOS. For crying out loud why won't these morons give it a MacOS lite, add 1 usb-A 3.1 2x2 along with the usb-c port, and allow mouse support.

Just FYI there actually is mouse support in iOS but it's under Accessibility, and just mimics a finger. The mouse cursor is a vague circle. Trying to select text to cut-and-paste with any precision is an exercise in frustration.

 

[rmcrys]

Why would anyone need a powerful 'professional' tablet? I'm sorry to say, gimped by having only ipad os. Year after year Apple introduces a few new half-way patches that still make you go "Oh you can kinda multi task on this tablet now!....Now where are the pro apps to use these new features?" and then crickets for another year.

A shame that Apple continues to hamstring that SOC with the useless iPadOS.

Unfortunately iPad buyers still pay a lot of money even if the updates and functions are very minimal, which makes Apple update things very slowly and earn tones of money.

As an example, my "old" Samsung Tab S6 Lite just received the One UI 4.1.1 with excellent multitasking and DeX (already there) capabilites on a cheap tablet. It is much more like a PC than an iPad Pro. But if the iPad still sells, why update?

Ipad's hardware is already much more powerful than the software and would allow everything that the iPadOS had but Apple limits over the software what each generation is capable of, to create a "need" to buy a new model.

I think the future is an hybrid as the Surface line as the iPadOS as it is today will be soon dead.