In one thing of a “excellent news/dangerous information” report, Bloombeg’s Mark Gurman has confirmed that Apple’s new iPad Air and iPad Professional lineup has formally entered manufacturing. The dangerous information? It appears to be like like they aren’t coming till Could.
In a new report today, Gurman shares extra particulars on Apple’s thrilling early 2024 iPad fashions. Whereas there aren’t any surprises right here after all of the rumors we’ve heard over the previous a number of weeks, issues look like locked down now that the iPads are on the meeting line.
The brand new iPad Professional fashions are codenamed J717, J718, J720, and J721, presumably accounting for the Wi-FI and Wi-Fi + Mobile variations within the two totally different sizes. They’ll pack in Apple’s M3 chip and get “crisper new OLED shows.” They’ll even be designed to work with “redesigned variations of the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil,” though it’s nonetheless unclear precisely what these design modifications will likely be.
In the meantime, the iPad Air will get an enormous brother within the type of a 12.9-inch display measurement, bringing the bigger kind issue to a broader viewers that may not in any other case need to splurge on the dear iPad Professional. Gurman doesn’t provide any specifics on what chip will energy these new iPad Air fashions, however for the reason that present 2022 model makes use of an M1, it could be logical to imagine these will get the M2 to maintain them a notch being the premium iPad Professional.
There aren’t many different upgrades anticipated within the new iPad Air, though persistent rumors have prompt that Apple plans to maneuver the digital camera from the quick edge to the lengthy edge, making it extra usable in panorama orientation. A sizeable variety of iPad customers have been clamoring for this for years, however regardless that this transformation got here to the usual Tenth-generation iPad in 2022, the M2 iPad Professional fashions launched across the identical time left the digital camera in the identical place as earlier than.
Nevertheless, that will not have merely been intransigence on Apple’s half. Within the iPad Professional and iPad Air, a magnetic charging dock for the Apple Pencil occupies the area the place the entrance digital camera would want to go, and it’s in all probability telling that though Apple introduced a new USB-C pencil last fall that magnetically attaches to the Tenth-gen iPad, there’s no charging assist.
This could possibly be why Apple is making ready to introduce a brand new Apple Pencil, which could possibly be redesigned to resolve the magnetic charging downside by docking elsewhere on the brand new fashions. There’s been some hypothesis about different new options Apple may deliver to its third-generation stylus, however those rumors have been making the rounds for years, but we’ve heard nothing concrete in regards to the Apple Pencil that’s coming aside from that will probably be “a redesigned model.”
Ditto for the Magic Keyboard, which isn’t more likely to be greater than a form-factor change to accommodate the brand new iPad Professional fashions, that are anticipated to be considerably thinner because of the brand new OLED display know-how.
As for the delay, Gurman maintains that Apple wanted to have the new iPads out by the end of March, however between “ending software program for the units” and coping with some “advanced new manufacturing strategies” for the screens, the timeline has slipped again from late March to mid-April, and now into Could.
We’ve already been by way of what Gurman calls “a drought” within the iPad product lineup. 2023 was the primary yr within the 13-year historical past of Apple’s pill that not a single new mannequin was proven, and by the point Could rolls round, it’s going to have been 554 days, or over 18 months, since a brand new iPad mannequin was launched.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]