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Comment by Austin_Conlon | Hacker News Reader

What kinds of iPadOS workflows benefit from this most? The device never seemed lacking in performance.

Maybe it's not even about more performance, it's simply about economics of scale. It's cheaper to just make more m1 chips than to create a new process to create a worse m1-mobile version. Paradoxically you might get more speed for less cost.

Their entire current lineup has all 8 cores plus 7 or 8 GPU cores too.

I was thinking that they'd sell a 6-core M1 in the AppleTV, but I guess that's not happening and the package is too big to go in a phone. Given their die size and even amazing return rates, there are hundreds of thousands of m1 chips that simply aren't being used. That seems like a lot of waste for a company that talks about going green. Maybe they have another project in the works.

Apple ships hundreds of millions of iPhones that has Axx chip with full CPU cores for all SKUs. Much smaller amount of M1 would be dropped than A14.

I agree. Are there really that many people using iPads for high performance video/audio editing? Everyone I know uses their iPad as a video player or recipe displayer.

Isn't that where the regular iPad and iPad Air come in? I know a couple of graphic designers that could get by with the regular, consumer iPads but the Pro is far more ideal for them.

Probably doesn't qualify as "high performance", I've done video editing which stitches together a few 4K video sources. Gen 3 handles it without any stutter, lag, or heat.

I see no compelling reason to upgrade, but also, I didn't expect to. This just means that people who get an iPad Pro will now get a nicer one. Good for them.

I agree with the ones below who say that it’s because of economy of scale, but I also think they made this choice because we’ll see more at the WWDC and in the next years. Apple keeps saying the iPad is a computer, when in fact it isn’t. But the iPad is capable of many things the Mac can’t do. It has the pencil, it can become more portable when used alone, it has 5G, cameras, the lidar and more. As long as they can sell both, they’ll keep doing it, but I think at some point 13” Macs (at least the Air and the cheapest Pro) will be replaced by the iPad, when it will have a better software. After the Apple Silicon announcement many choices started making sense, and in a similar way this iPad will be a way to test in which direction the computer market will take.

I suppose it's not as much a major change but more like an upgrade or evolution to get feature parity. If it turns out you can make more devices use a SoC you already have you can scale up production of that SoC and get the benefit of scale.

I have the previous version with the keyboard, and I love it as a general tablet. I use it for writing down ideas, reading, and an occasional game. But, there’s nothing in this new model that seems to be worth upgrading for.

I could never see my iPad Pro as a workstation replacement. Is that what they plan on doing? I don’t see the benefit.

The ram boost will be useful for procreate. It limits the number of layers you can use and that limit is on the verge of in the way for me on the 4gb ipad.

It could also enable better external monitor support with a browser on one monitor and an app on the internal.

My thoughts as well, I freaking love my iPad pro and it already is good enough at anything I throw it. I reminds me of the iPhone 6s which I kept for like 5 years, until recently where the scheduled obsolescence forced me to change phone.

You can run drawing apps on it in conjunction with Pencil. Those could benefit from increased power if you're working with many layers.

Lightroom is still sluggish on current gen

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