As anticipation builds for Apple’s fall iPhone event featuring the iPhone 15 series and Apple Watch, the tech giant has another ace up its sleeve for next year: a revamped iPad Pro. Aimed at reigniting a stagnant tablet market, this will be the first major overhaul for the iPad Pro line since 2018, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Sunday PowerOn newsletter.
The current iPad Pro has received incremental upgrades in recent years, including new chips, cameras, display technology, and sensors. However, the upcoming models—codenamed J717, J718, J720, and J721 according to sources—promise more foundational changes.
Slated for a 2024 release, these next-gen models are set to switch to Apple’s next M3 chip and will be the company’s first tablets to feature OLED displays. This move aligns the iPad Pro with Apple’s iPhones, which have used OLED technology since the iPhone X model in 2017. OLED displays offer better brightness, sharpness, and colour accuracy.
The overhauled iPad Pro will reportedly come in 11-inch and 13-inch models, slightly increasing the size of the current largest model from 12.9 inches. Alongside the hardware improvements, sources have also revealed that a new Magic Keyboard accessory is in development. The enhanced Magic Keyboard is said to address customer complaints about its predecessor, which debuted in 2020, by featuring a larger trackpad and offering a design that makes the iPad Pro look even more like a laptop.
While the announcement of the revamped iPad Pro will likely boost sales in the long term, don’t expect to see the new models during next month’s product launch event. Apple’s September showcase will focus primarily on the iPhone 15 and the Apple Watch. Industry insiders predict the new iPad Pro won’t hit the market until spring or early summer of 2024. Minor updates to Apple’s other tablet offerings are also expected before the big launch.
Back in December 2022, we also heard a report of an OLED iPad Pro with 11 and 13-inch screen sizes.
It’s unclear if these major upgrades are enough for consumers to upgrade their existing iPad Pro models. We need more Mac-like features for the iPad Pro at this point—what do you think?
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What we need is something that runs MacOS when plugged to an external monitor, and reverts back to iOS when in tablet mode, with a unified file system. But Apple will never do that because it would cannibalize the Mac market and decrease revenue. But that’s what we need.
The screen has nothing to do with the OS. Give people the option to boot into whatever is they want, regardless of whether there is an external screen or not.
That’s a fair point, considering the size of iPads these days.
Again, the size is irrelevant.
I have a 12.9 but only bought it for drawing because thats the ONLY thing it excels at vs any other device. people buying it to replace a laptop are deluding themselves. they fall for the trap because it looks super sleek than convince themselves it was so worth it to spend $1500 on a glorified youtube and web browser device.