Apple’s event, in which the American company revealed the latest versions of its iPad tablets, and its new M4 artificial intelligence processor, has ended.
This is a summary of the most important things that Apple announced in its latest event.
iPad Air
At the start of the event, Apple announced the iPad Air 2024, which is the first update to the iPad Air since Apple introduced the M1 chip two years ago.
The new model will now come in two sizes for the first time since the 13 inch model was introduced, and the company has also updated the 11 inch model. This year’s models come with Apple’s M2 chip, and will be available in blue, purple, starlight, and light gray. The 11 inch version will start at $599, while the 13 inch version will start at $799.
The new iPad Air will feature a single 12 megapixel rear camera and a 12 megapixel front camera, and as previously reported, Apple has placed the front camera on the longer side of the device. This year’s model also gets support for Apple Pencil charging, which was previously exclusive to the iPad Pro.
The new version can use the current iPad Pro accessories such as the Magic Keyboard, and will come with stereo speakers on the top and bottom.
The new iPad Air is available with 128GB of storage for the base model, which is twice as much storage as the 2022 version.
iPad Pro
Apple has moved on to announce the long awaited updates to the iPad Pro models. The new models come in the same 11 and 13 inch sizes as before, but with design changes, a more powerful processor, a thinner appearance, and an upgraded display.
As previous reports indicated, Apple has moved to OLED displays in both sizes, providing full blacks, color saturation, and contrast, the company noted. In addition, the front camera has been relocated to the longer side, like the new iPad Air models, which is the ideal position for video calls.
This year’s iPad Pro models are thinner, due to Apple’s switch to OLED displays, which reduces the thickness of the device by a few millimeters. For example, the current 11 inch iPad Pro is 5.9mm thick, while the new version is 5.3mm thick. The current 13 inch version is 6.4mm thick, while the new version is only 5.1mm thick, which Apple calls its “thinnest device ever.
Both models now have a base storage capacity of 256GB, and prices start at $999 for the 11 inch model and $1,299 for the 13 inch model.
As recent reports have suggested, Apple has ditched the M3 chip in the new iPad Pro and moved straight to its latest processor, the M4. The company says the new chip is 50 percent faster than the M2 chip in the previous generation of iPad Pros.
As for gaming efficiency, Apple claims that the M4 chip can deliver the same performance as the M2 chip while consuming only half the power, and improves the chip’s thermal performance by 20%.
Instead, it has moved to use OLED screens in iPad versions, which provides full blacks, color saturation and contrast (Apple)
AI chip
The company announced that the new M4 chip will come to the next generation of its devices, starting with the iPad Pro, and the chip will focus on improving performance in artificial intelligence related tasks in the iPad OS.
Apple has focused heavily on the AI capabilities of the new chip, thanks to the new Neural Engine, which the company describes as a very powerful chip for artificial intelligence. It claims that it can compete with AI chips from other companies such as Intel and Qualcomm, as it is capable of performing 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
It is supposed to be 60 times faster than the neural processing unit in Apple’s A11 chip, a chip from 2017, but this number is still less than the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite chip, which is 45 trillion. However, Apple confirms that the new M4 chip can deliver the same performance as the latest personal computer chips while consuming only a quarter of the power.
The chip comes with a manufacturing accuracy of 3 nanometers of the second generation, and the central processing unit comes with 10 cores, with 4 cores for performance and 6 cores for efficiency, which makes it 50% more powerful than the M2 chip, as the company indicated.
The new M4 chip will come to the next generation of Apple devices, starting with the iPad Pro (Associated Press)
New accessories
Along with the new iPad models, Apple also released an updated version of the Magic Keyboard, with an aluminum palm rest, a larger trackpad with haptic feedback, and finally added a row of function keys.
The new keyboard comes in two sizes, one for the 11 inch iPad Pro and the other for the 13 inch version, and in black and silver, similar to the colors of the iPad Pro. The smaller version costs $299, while the larger version costs $349.
This is the first updated version of the iPad Pro keyboard since its launch in 2020, and its goal since its launch was to transform the iPad into a laptop. The company also announced the third generation of the Apple Pencil for the iPad, adding the Find My feature to it, along with new capabilities that allow the pen to be used for various creative tasks. The company has called this version of the pen Apple Pencil Pro and it comes at a price of $ 129, which is the same price as the second generation of the pen.