iPad's success or failure has been completely detached from Apple's business.
Author|Jesse
Editor |Jingyu
To some extent, Apple has finally revitalized the iPad Pro.
This year's new iPad Pro is the thinnest and lightest in history, and at the same time uncompromising in performance, especially in screen performance. Compared to the past few years, the use of mini-LED screens has led to significant increases in thickness, weight, and power consumption of the machine. It can be said that the latest iPad Pro has finally returned to the right track of hardware iteration.
However, this best generation of iPad Pro did not receive the highest attention.
The event ended within an hour, and the feedback from the public can only be described as lukewarm. What people are looking forward to is no longer a generation of lightest, thinnest, and strongest iPad, but Apple's big move in AI. This big move will not be announced until the next month's WWDC24.
After the event, Apple's stock price remained flat in a slight fluctuation. The development and destiny of Apple is no longer directly related to the iPad.
If you are an old iPad Pro user, this will be a generation of iPad Pro that you will find it hard to pick faults with.
On the one hand, it has finally returned to being thin and light. Compared to the previous 12.9-inch model, the 13-inch model has reduced weight by 15% and thickness by 20%, making it the thinnest product in Apple's history, thinner than the iPod nano. The 11-inch model is almost the lightest iPadPro in history, with a weight of 446g compared to the smaller 9.7-inch iPadPro from years ago.
However, in the core screen performance, the iPadPro has not made any compromises. The new dual-layer OLED screen not only maintains the same HDR peak brightness of 1600 nits and the same maximum 120Hz dynamic refresh rate as the mini-LED, but also synchronizes this most advanced screen with the 11-inch model, no longer an exclusive feature of the 12.9-inch model.
With the new OLED screen, Apple also added an anti-glare nano-textured glass option for the iPad Pro, which is $800 more expensive than regular glass, but is only available for models with 1TB or more storage. This means that even the cheapest frosted screen iPadPro, the 1TB 11-inch model, will also come to a price of 14,899 yuan.
In addition to the improvements in thickness and power consumption brought by the OLED screen, the new iPad Pro also skipped M3 and directly adopted the M4 chip. Compared to the M3, the M4 chip uses the same 3nm process but adds two CPU efficiency cores, making the CPU a 10-core architecture with 4 big and 6 small. The M4 also comes with a new display engine that can be used to control screen brightness, color accuracy, and most importantly, control the dual-layer OLED screen on the iPad Pro.
It is difficult to say before actual testing how much these changes will improve actual performance and power consumption, but it is clear that Apple hopes to further enhance energy efficiency for the iPad Pro and return to being thin and light.
This has been the biggest problem for the iPad Pro in the past few years: having the most advanced chips and screens, the iPad Pro has become increasingly heavy. The previous 12.9-inch iPad Pro, when combined with the Magic Keyboard, is even heavier and thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Now, the portability of the iPad Pro has finally been revitalized. The new Magic Keyboard has been redesigned, with materials changed from plastic to aluminum and a larger glass trackpad. Apple did not disclose the exact weight of the new keyboard, but it is certain that it is thinner and lighter than its predecessor.
In addition to the keyboard, Apple also released the new Apple Pencil Pro , equipped with more sensors, improved interaction, priced the same as the previous generation at $999, and did not increase the price with the addition of Pro.
Finally, Apple also released a new iPad Air. The new iPad Air is aligned in size with the iPad Pro, with 11-inch and 13-inch options, but they are thicker and heavier than the iPad Pro of the same size.
So here, the Air may only represent the weight of money you need to pay.
For old users, especially a large number of nail households still using the 2018 iPad Pro, the new iPad Pro may be a generation worth updating, but it is still difficult to solve the real dilemma of iPad's positioning.
Since the launch of the iPad Pro, Apple has been pushing the iPad into the productivity field. In the early years, Apple released an ad in which a little girl did all sorts of things with the iPad Pro, and when her mother asked her what she was doing on the computer, she asked, What is a computer?
Apple has always hinted that the iPad will become the computer of the next generation of young people.
Over the past few years, the iPad Pro has indeed been constantly moving towards the MacBook in terms of form and technology, not only supporting a mouse, equipped with the same M-series chips as the Mac, but also this generation’s Magic Keyboard has also started to use an aluminum shell and glass trackpad like the MacBook to increase its strength and texture.
Two detailed designs on the new iPad Pro also indicate this change. One is the front camera, which has been moved from the top similar to the iPhone to the side. Early users often took selfies or made video calls with the iPad held vertically, but now, more and more users are starting to lay it flat on the table for conference calls. Also, Apple has removed the camera sync configuration of the iPad Pro with the iPhone and downgraded the rear camera to a single lens. Obviously, there are not many users who will use the iPadPro to take pictures.
Hardware-wise, the iPad is indeed becoming more like a Mac. At the same time, its software capabilities are still limited by iPadOS. Along with the release of the new iPad Pro, Apple also released new iPad versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, adding a series of functions. However, they still cannot be compared to the macOS versions, and even Apple said during the introduction that the existence of these apps allows Mac users to extend their workflows.
The problem is not only in the apps. macOS has a Web ecosystem accumulated over decades, from the most basic email, documents, Office suites, to the AI that is most focused on today. 90% of the work of ordinary office workers may revolve around browsers. However, until today, iPadOS still does not have a truly full-featured browser.
Technically, Apple can certainly install macOS on the iPad to make it a real computer. However, this would inevitably encroach on the ecological position of Mac. So in the end, the usage scenarios for iPad users still revolve around watching videos, playing mobile games, and these entertainment functions of mobile scenes.
At the beginning of its launch, the positioning of the iPad was a larger and cheaper iOS device with capabilities more similar to the iPhone, just without the convenience of communication and network capabilities of the iPhone. Later, with the popularity of large-screen iPhones, Apple began to move the iPad closer to the Mac, launching the iPad Pro until today.
From start to finish, the iPad has always been a device that has been caught in the middle and has never been able to break free from its awkward positioning.
According to Apple's financial data, due to lack of updates, iPad's sales revenue decreased by about 20% compared to 2022, to $24.8 billion in 2023. Its share of Apple's total revenue dropped to 6%, below Mac, wearable devices, software servic es, and the iPhone, becoming the smallest puzzle piece in Apple's portfolio.
Considering that AI is gradually becoming a hot industry, if Apple's focus shifts further towards AI development and successfully translates it into revenue growth. In the future, Apple's performance growth will increasingly depend on software services rather than iPad.
It can be said that the future development and key fate of Apple will be increasingly detached from the iPad.
Perhaps this is not just a problem for Apple alone.
For more than a decade, the evolution of consumer electronics has revolved around hardware. From CPUs and graphics cards to screen resolutions and body thickness, the iteration of digital products can be said to be chasing the goal of lighter, thinner, and stronger. Every leap innovation is based on hardware and design.
But now, the situation is no longer like this, at least for the currently hottest generative AI products, core models run on servers, and users can access them through any computer's browser, regardless of the performance of the terminal device.
At this point, introducing a powerful and beautifully designed tablet, even if it is excellent, still needs to provide users with a more complete reason to buy, which has always been a problem that the iPad Pro cannot get around since its inception.
Finally, the new iPad Pro also adds a 2TB storage option, meaning that if you choose the highest configuration, you can spend a maximum of 27,746 yuan to buy an iPad Pro.
Let me think about it, may be the first reaction of most consumers.
This article is from the WeChat public account: Geek Park (ID: geekpark), author: Jesse.