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42772827

Here’s a guide for quick decision making re: iPad purchase:

* iPad is for kids/edu

* iPad Air is for adults (most people)

* iPad Pro is for adults who want to flex or who have a company credit card.

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IPad Pro is if you prefer an OLED/120 Hz/optional matte screen and Face ID. There are many more differences, but these are the major ones.

I bought the iPad Pro in 2020 (13”, last on the A series of chips) and the screen is so much nicer than on any iPad I’ve ever used before. I was planning to buy a new one this year if there’s a notable release but OK with waiting another year.

That said, with the Air having M3 and being available in 13”, I’ll have to take a long hard look at whether that screen is worth the extra money to me. I’d imagine that’ll remain one of the differentiators between the Pro and Air.

I do get an iPad about every 5 years and I don’t use a computer at home so splurging on the high end isn’t a huge concern for me. So not sure if I’ll be willing to give up the really nice screen.

I bought an 13" M4 iPad Pro when it was released and returned it a week later because I didn't like the magic keyboard. I went back to my 2018 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio.

I've been waiting and hoping for some third party to come along and clone the Smart Keyboard Folio. If they did, I'd repurchase an M4 iPad because other than the keyboard it was great.

I was just looking at the apple website to see if the Smart Keyboard Folio is available for the new iPads and it looks like that product line is gone for all iPads. Such a shame because it was a great product. I suspect it didn’t feel premium-enough for Apple management.

I was also hoping they'd bring the Folio back. I've got an old Air that does need replacing and have thought about buying an M2 Pro just to find a used Folio with.

I love the Magic Keyboard's usefulness despite how crappy the durability is for such a high-priced accessory.

I also have the Smart Keyboard Folio and like it will enough but the angles it sits at aren't what I prefer and I really got used to the trackpad on it. The fabric-y feel of the keys is very nice and durability wise it seems to be holding up better than the Magic Keyboard (but to be fair, I probably use the Magic Keyboard 75% of the time).

I was trying to think of a reason you'd need the full power of an M3 chip in an iPad...any ideas?

Nobody on earth needs an M3 in an iPad.

Why not? Honest question.

Because there’s nothing you can do on an M3 that you can’t do on an M2. Or M1.

But can't you do it faster on a faster processor?

If shaving milliseconds off of your workflow is so mission critical that spending an additional few hundred to few thousand dollars is worth it, you don’t need a snarky HN post to tell you which iPad to buy.

And I’m not convinced that person even exists except in their own minds.

I read M4 is about 20% than M3 in editing photos from Lightroom. That's seems significant.

I don't have skin in the game here, as I don't own anything from Apple. I was just curious.

640K of RAM should be enough for anyone.

As someone struggling to find the limits of his M2 iPad air, you don't.

Hopefully 7 years from now you'll still be able to use it with modern apps, websites, and video content. IMO, The benefits of these chips are in longevity rather than pushing them to the limit today.

I don't think there's any amount of processing power that can keep up with website bloat long term, but you out to get an extra year or two from the M3

This is the pretty obvious answer. I'm looking at replacing my gen-3 iPad Air from 2019 because it's feeling pretty pokey now. (And my wife's gen-1 iPad Air from 2013 is entirely unusable.)

Gaming and local LLM to name two specific things I use my m4 iPad Pro for. I have no idea if an M1 or whatever would have the same performance. I think it's really cool that I can have the same processor-ish in my laptop and my tablet, but that's not a reason to spend $2k.

To sell more ipads.

Supply chain consolidation. Supplying newly manufactured iPads with chips no longer in production isn’t really a winning strategy. Honestly it’s a bit surprising they didn’t just jump to M4s since the iPad Pros debuted with that about a year ago.

I believe the “you” in the “you’d” that the comment refers to is the customer, and the customer certainly doesn’t “need” supply chain consolidation.

I mean, as a potential customer “you’d” probably like to be able to buy the product announced. Fitting new products with A15 or M1 chips that aren’t in production anymore will impact the ability to buy one unless Apple is sitting on a big stockpile of unused chips.

Probably those who do 3D modeling, sculpting, illustration video editing, photography etc.

Beats me, but in prior iPad release posts on HN, people would swear up and down that AR work would be a key use case, because Apple had put in an AR-capable camera in the Pro. These people have since moved on to posting fantastical visions of what the Apple Vision Pro will be capable of.

That’s because if you’re on the forefront of AR you’re probably targeting Vision 2. The people doing AR work have moved on to different hardware.

Meta smart glasses are selling well. Apple smart glasses will arrive eventually, based on VisionOS.

3D design/sculpting, Procreate with many layers, intensive gaming, video editing.

Though I agree most workflows aren't remotely capable software-wise compared to Mac counterparts.

Because you plan on keeping it for as long as possible. I'm still using my 2018 iPad Pro (it's my favorite computer to use).

Video editing apps like DaVinci Resolve will take advantage of this nicely, as will similar multimedia apps.

Local AI models and gaming also come to mind.

I wanted to say x86 (and PPC) emulation for gaming, but Apple doesn't allow JITing unfortunately.

That's an interesting take that I've never heard before. Why do you feel this is the case?

This person is almost certainly firmly and vocally in the camp of “The iPad hardware is wasted because of the software.”

Then they extrapolate from this, “If you buy an iPad Pro you are just doing it to flex.”

Do they all support the Apple Pencil? Or only certain versions? Thank you for this.

All support Apple Pencil. Just get the one that the check out flow says goes with the one you picked and be done with it.

But Photoshop doesn't support the Pencil in all iPads... I had to return 2 pencils and 1 iPad.

No, there are 4 different Apple Pencil versions and each has a list of compatible iPads. Here is the full list. https://support.apple.com/en-us/108937

I thought you were joking about this but they are still selling 3 different pencils. At least one has been retired. But Jesus what a mess of a lineup.

I'm assuming/wishing/hoping they are going to get to Good Pencil and Great Pencil and Good Pencil works on everything and Great Pencil works on a limited set of products.

* iPad Mini is for neighbor Nursultan Tulyakbay

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