New iPad Pro rumored to debut with M4 chip
A new rumor claims that the forthcoming iPad Pro, scheduled to debut on May 7, could be the first Apple product with the next-generation M4 chip powering it.
New iPad Pro logo on the back
It seems unlikely that the iPad Pro would skip the M3 chip outright, or that it would appear in an iPad ahead of any Mac. However, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims in his Sunday newsletter there is "a strong possibility" that it will have the M4 on board.
He added in his Power On newsletter that he believes Apple will market the pro tablet as "its first truly AI-powered device."
The iPad Pro is also expected to gain an OLED display, which could help make the device thinner than previous models. Apple is also said to be planning to reposition the FaceTime front camera, and release redesigned accessories including a new Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil.
He suggests that an iPad Pro debut of the M4 chip could set the stage for more M4-based Macs and A18-based iPhone models. If the M4 iPad Pro debut is accurate, it would be the shortest cycle of Apple Silicon updates yet, with the gap between releases being only seven months, versus about 10 from M2 to M3.
An expanded Neural Engine and greater machine learning or AI capabilities in forthcoming products are expected to be a major part of this June's Worldwide Developer Conference. That event will be held on June 10-14th, and again be mostly online with a special in-person event at Apple Park.
Rumor Score: Possible
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Either way, the new large iPad Pro & new Pencil are likely going to perform brilliantly with the upcoming ZBrush for iPad 😁
Even worse for Air as it will be obsolete on arrival.
Launching M4 now will make MBA M3 "the last student computer without AI". It is, but Apple shouldn't put back-to-school sales at risk.
Same for iPhone. We're 4-5 months from next gen. No way that Apple will go full Osborne and kill all shipping products now without new products.
WWDC should be XCode AI + frameworks using very limited memory + the message that everything is possible with 18 TOPS and 6-8 GB as that is A16/M3.
A18/A18 Pro/M4 can deliver a new level of performance but iPhone has to be first.
$3000 for an optioned out iPad Pro 13? For a model with 4 TB storage, 24 GB RAM, cellular and nano-texture? I will be getting whatever option offers the most RAM. The keyboard accessory is going to be expensive!
Apple doesn’t initially need third party developer support for new AI stuff. It could initially be about improved Siri and other first party apps.
Health and Fitness could benefit greatly from ML/AI. I see no end of uses other than Chatbots, although Chatbots with licensed data would be refreshing with authors, artists and any originators of the data getting compensated.
Automated (smart) footnotes comes to mind as a much better Chatbots creating content derived from other creators.
The ecosystem of multiple devices owned by a user could afford having the device eg. Mac, with the most memory and storage that could house local data, compressed in a new tighter compression tailored for ML/AI retrieval and interpretation available over your local Wi-Fi for smaller devices like the Apple Watch, AirPods, even the iPhone.
The key to its performance is whether Microsoft has followed thru on the their end.....Also no one outside has been allowed to properly test them yet. Qualcomm's current mobile socs are far behind Apple (4-5 years behind) I don't think Qualcomm laptop/desktop soc is going to equal or exceed the M2 let alone the M3.
https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks s24 ultra is just barely ahead of the iPhone 12 Pro smartphone? And is behind the iPhone 13 the lower end 13 which has LiDAR by the way same as all iPhone 12's. Also note the iPhone are 6 cores and Samsung are 8 cores and they still get trounced by Apples socs which also have a smaller battery and less memory still hold their own in battery life tests too.
https://www.semiaccurate.com/2024/04/24/qualcomm-is-cheating-on-their-snapdragon-x-elite-pro-benchmarks/ Something doesn't add up.....If you look at Qualcomms mobile chips current performance even with the latest soc.
The total package OS and hardware is what wins the day in the end for Apple.
Will Apple use a M4 my bet is on a M3 in the iPad but if Apple uses M4 SOC'S across all product lines thru the end of this year that would great for users and bad for the competition.
The idea that Apple would up the release date because of the X Elite is, IMO, ridiculous.
I also think an M4 only 6 months after the M3 is highly unlikely. More likely is a different version of the M3 more suited to the iPad.
With LLM chatbots breaking into mainstream consciousness, these SIMD units are now advertised as AI units in hope that people will buy new hardware. Since these LLM models will require a bit more performance than current SIMD and GPUs can muster, there is some optimism that AI features can drive an upgrade cycle. It all depends on AI providing features people would upgrade hardware for. I'm a bit skeptical. It's all part of the complex of compute hardware in the SoCs. There's a lot of transistors to spread around.
A bit of roundabout way to say that the hardware is already here and Apple doesn't need to wait to ship SoCs with more NPUs. Furthermore, they made this decision about 3 years ago, at least. Who knows if these iPP models will come with the M4 SoC though. Kind of a big thing to keep secret. We should expect it to be M3 SoCs.
I could conceivably imagine an iPad mini with an older generation M-series SoC as a debut. Apple is still peddling devices using the M1 SoC so that's always an option.
Anyhow don't bet the farm on it. Best of luck.
+1^^^^