Apple will reportedly make some changes next year, which it hopes will make it easier for people to customize a specific iPad to their needs. For example, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman wrote in his To turn on newsletter today that the next iPad Air will have an M2 chip in addition to the larger rumored second model.
One of the other ways Apple is reportedly addressing this issue is by ditching the 9th-gen model, which has been dangling from the front of the lineup since the launch of last year’s pricier 10th-gen iPad redesign drop. Gurman says that by putting the 9th generation iPad out to pasture, the company can “slowly phase out some of its older pencils.” Presumably, the Apple Pencil from 2015 will be the first to disappear, as soon as there is no iPad with a Lightning port to which you can awkwardly connect it.
Gurman has set March for the launch of the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Air, which could keep Apple in the middle of the pack after a two-year upgrade cycle. His report today that the Air will get an M2 chip while the Pro models get the M3 nod would leave the Air one processor generation behind. But that doesn’t mean the iPad Air will suffer, nor does it mean Apple should even give it an M3 chip. Barring drastic changes to the way iPadOS functions, making iPads practical laptop replacements for more varied and compute-intensive tasks, the rumored OLED screen on the iPad Pro will be a bigger differentiator for most people than the Apple silicon chip that does the job. .
Gurman also wrote that the new 12.9-inch Air will work with the same Magic Keyboard available today for the iPad Pro. If that’s true, it would make sense for Apple to give the next iPad Air models iPad Pro-like camera arrays. After all, I doubt we’ve entered an alternate dimension where the company wouldn’t go crazy if they saw a keyboard case with a large square camera hole on the Air’s single small, round camera.
These are good moves for Apple, even if the updates don’t completely solve the iPad’s sticky situation. Today’s iPads are just too different from each other. Choosing based on power needs and hardware features is so much easier when certain other features, like screen size, are the same or at least close enough. But if you really want a big tablet and aren’t concerned about high refresh rates or high-contrast displays, it’s annoying that only the iPad Pro offers this; the larger Air solves that. Now if only the company could provide a solution to the iPad accessory situation.