iPad Pro rumors have been like a tennis match the last couple of years- back and forth and all over the place. There were rumors one would come late last year. That obviously didn’t happen, but we did get a slight refresh in the Spring. Very slight, but that’s ok. As early as last year, we also started hearing rumors of Mini-LED displays and 5G coming to the Pro line.
Courtesy of a couple of reports from Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPad Pro has re-joined the Apple rumor carousel. It seems that the company and it’s manufacturing partners are having some success getting Mini-LED ready for prime time, and the iPad Pro may be the first device to benefit from that. Well, sort of.
I’ve seen where a lot of tech bloggers and Apple fans are talking about the irrelevance of the iPad Pro in the wake of Apple’s hardware announcement earlier this week. I get it, so much so that I’m buying a new iPad Air, myself. It has most of what the typical users would like from an iPad Pro at a much more reasonable starting price of $599. I think it strikes a great balance between performance and affordability and it’s also compatible with all the same accessories as the 11″ iPad Pro.
However, while it is true that the iPad Air is now encroaching on the territory of its higher-end sibling, I’m not ready to write off the Pro quite yet. Here are a few reasons why.
Two and a half years ago, I wrote an article asking a simple question. If Apple were to create an iPad hybrid in the body of a MacBook, would you buy it? There were patents and speculation at the time that made it reasonable to consider such a question. That, and the iPad Pro was beginning to push the boundaries of what we expect from an Apple tablet.
Things have certainly changed today and such a device doesn’t seem nearly as far away. Over the last two years we have gotten a new iPad Pro design, a new Apple Pencil, iPadOS, USB-C and full touchpad support. We even have a Magic Keyboard with built-in touchpad that can virtually transform an iPad Pro into something very, very close to a laptop. However, I still think the question of an iPadOS device in the shell of a MacBook is relevant, at least enough to speculate over.
Tim Chaten from the iPad Pros podcast recently reached out and invited me to be interviewed in an upcoming episode. We met on Twitter recently discussing Apple’s new Magic Keyboard and from there started talking about how we both use the iPad Pro, especially for work. I definitely appreciate his point of view and his podcast’s focus on how much you accomplish with Apple’s tablets.
I just want to say a big thank you to him for the invitation. Mr Chaten is a very good host and interviewer and it was a lot of fun being on the show.
While shipments of all tablets, including Apple’s iPads, were down over the first quarter of 2020, Digitimes Research is predicting a big rebound coming up. We should know more about the last three months after Apple announces its earnings later today, but what’s coming up sounds pretty exciting for iPad users and fans.
For a solid year, there have been rumors of multiple iPad Pro releases in 2020. Early on, they seemed to conflict with reports of the new 11″ and 12.9″ Pros that were released a month ago, but it eventually became clear that this other device would be something different. It would come with 5G and a new Mini-LED screen. Some of the rumors said it would only be available in the 12.9″ flavor. However, despite the small variations, most of the reports of this device were pretty similar and all were clear about a release in late 2020.
Mark Gurman and Company at Bloomberg were back in a big way today, predicting the design of the coming premium iPhone 12 models, as well as delivering some additional details on AirTags and the HomePods 2. Several of these details have already been covered extensively elsewhere today, so won’t bother rehashing them again. I am only interested in one at the moment.
It’s only been a few days, but I think I’m entering new territory here. After kicking the tires on both 2020 iPad Pro sizes, I just don’t see a compelling reason to upset my apple cart (yeah, I know) and get rid of my 2018 12.9″ Pro. I don’t have a need for LiDAR and most of the small upgrades that are included don’t impact the way I use the device at work or at home.
I’m an iPad fan and have been user since the original back in 2010. And here we are. This is an iPad-centric site and new iPad Pros are coming tomorrow. Normally I would be really excited. Normally there would be exclamation marks trailing the title of this post and I would be anticipating getting home from work to get my hands on new toys. Normally, we wouldn’t find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic.
Apple has just announced and hasn’t even delivered the latest refresh of their iPad Pros and the news of the new just can’t be stopped. The new 11″ and 12.9″ models are modest upgrades, but they are arriving along with the new mouse and trackpad features included in iPadOS 13.4, and the new Magic Keyboard that is coming in May looks pretty amazing. However, even after these announcements earlier this week, the rumors of another iPad Pro update in the Fall still persist.