On May 7, Apple announced the iPad Pro with the M4 chip, the iPad Air with the M2 chip, the new MyoControl keyboard, the Apple Pencil Pro, and introduced new features in Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro.
The iPad Pro features a new design and comes in 2 versions, 13-inch and 11-inch. Apple says the 13-inch version of the iPad Pro is the thinnest Apple product available. For the screen, the new iPad Pro features dual-layer tandem OLED technology that can display SDR and HDR content at 1000nit brightness across the screen, with peak brightness of 1600nit for HDR content, ProMotion support from 10Hz to 120Hz, and an optional “nano textured display glass” version.
In terms of hardware, the M4 chip, with up to four performance cores and six power cores, delivers 1.5 times faster CPU performance than the M2 version of the iPad Pro. The GPU remains 10 cores, the same as last year’s M3 chip, with support for dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing; and the M4 chip performs up to 38 trillion operations per second. The M4 also supports AV1 decoding.
The cameras are a single 12-megapixel wide-angle camera on the rear with Adaptive Color Flash, which uses the new Adaptive Flash to instantly take multiple photos of a recognized document with shadows, generating sharper scans through AI; and a horizontal camera on the front, instead of a vertical one.
In terms of connectivity, the new iPad Pro’s USB-C port supports 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 protocols, while wireless performance supports up to Wi-Fi 6E.
The iPad Air is also available in 2 versions, 13-inch and 11-inch. In terms of hardware, the iPad Air adopts the M2 chip, which can increase the performance by up to 50% compared to the previous generation iPad Air with the M1 chip. In terms of cameras, the rear camera is still a 12-megapixel wide-angle lens that supports 4K video recording, but with the addition of HDR 4 shooting; the front camera has been moved from its original vertical position to a horizontal position, just like the iPad Pro.
Elsewhere, the iPad Air adds support for the Apple Pencil hover function, and the 13-inch version’s SDR maximum brightness has been increased from 500 nits to 600 nits.
The design of the Apple Pencil Pro isn’t much different from its predecessor, but new sensors in the body of the pen support new interactions like side swivel and pinch, as well as Find My Find. The pinch gesture can be used to quickly bring up the tool palette for switching between tools, line thicknesses, colors, and more, while the side swivel allows you to rotate the body of the Apple Pencil Pro to more accurately control different shapes of brushes and more.
The Apple Pencil Pro also has a built-in vibration motor, so you can feel the feedback from the Apple Pencil Pro when you pinch, tap, and more. the Apple Pencil Pro is only compatible with iPad Air with an M2 chip and iPad Pro with an M4 chip. The Apple Pencil Pro is now available for order on the Apple website and will go on sale on May 15th.
The keyboard also has a new design, which is not only lighter and thinner, but also provides a whole row of function keys for users to easily adjust the screen brightness and volume control, and the touchpad is larger and provides haptic feedback.
Final Cut Pro for iPad and Logic Pro also received feature updates. Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad added real-time multi-camera functionality, allowing users to connect up to four devices on their iPad to monitor remotely in real time, while Final Cut Pro for Mac introduced AI-based “Optimize Lighting and Color” and “Smooth Slow Motion” features. AI-based “Optimize Light and Color” and “Smooth Slow Motion” features are available in Final Cut Pro for Mac. Logic Pro 2 for iPad adds AI-driven Accompaniment Musician, Large Track Splitter, and ChromaGlow Analog Mixing.