Tim Cook described today’s Apple iPad event as “the biggest day for the iPad since its introduction” – and hype or not, he may be right. Finally, the Let Loose event saw the launch of new iPad Airs and iPad Pros, a new Apple M4 chipset, plus new accessories and software. No, it doesn’t compare to what we expect to see at WWDC 2024, but it was a pretty big deal.
What were the highlights – and low points – of the 40-minute presentation? Here’s everything we learned from the May 2024 Apple iPad event.
1. The new iPad Pro 2024 looks seriously powerful and impressively thin…
Let’s start with the big one: Apple has announced the new iPad Pro in two sizes, 11 inches and 13 inches.
These are Apple’s thinnest tablets ever, with the 11-inch model being 5.3mm thick (or more accurately, thin) and the 13-inch just 5.1mm; that makes them 0.6mm and 1.3mm slimmer than the previous generation models respectively. In fact, Apple says the 13-incher is the thinnest product it has ever made – yes, it’s even thinner than the iPod Nano.
A few more records the 2024 iPad Pros set are that they’re the first to use OLED screen technology, and they’re also the first to use Apple’s new M4 chipset – which represents a big performance boost over the M2-powered Pro from 2022 tablets (more on both features below).
Both sizes are available to pre-order today (May 7) – prices start at $999 / £999 / AU$1699 for the 11-inch and $1299 / £1299 / AU$2199 for the 13-inch iPad Pro, with orders shipping from May 15.
2. …but the iPad Air 2024 will have to make do with 2022 technology
In addition to the new iPad Pro models, Apple also unveiled two new iPad Air 2024 tablets. Like the Pros, these are available in 11-inch and 13-inch variants, but that’s where the similarities end. There’s no OLED screen technology, obviously – you wouldn’t expect there to be – but it’s possibly surprising that the chipset is Apple’s M2, which debuted at WWDC 2022, rather than last year’s M3.
On the other hand, that’s still plenty fast enough for most applications, and will have helped keep the price down to $599 / £599 / AU$999 for the 11-inch tablet and $799 / £799 /AU$1,299 for the 13.
And it’s not like there’s nothing new either. Firstly, there is the fact that the Air is now available in two sizes for the first time. There’s also a landscape-facing front camera – great for video calls – and landscape stereo speakers with spatial audio. It also comes with up to 1TB of storage and will be available in Blue, Purple, Starlight, and Space Gray colors. Considering the significant savings over the Pro models, this might make more sense for most people.
3. The new Apple M4 chip is a powerhouse
The iPad Pro has skipped a generation in terms of chipsets, moving from the M2 to the new M4 – arriving on Apple’s tablet before (presumably) making its way to MacBooks and Macs later. That’s a pretty big deal for the iPad, and it’s a huge gain in power.
The M4 chip brings mesh shading, hardware ray tracing and dynamic caching to the iPad, and has a 10-core CPU that Apple says is 50% faster than the M2. On the graphics side, meanwhile, the 10-core GPU is supposedly 400% faster than that of the M2. Yes, 400%.
And then there is AI, because without AI a launch in 2024 would of course not be complete. Apple says the Neural Engine can perform 38 trillion operations per second, making it one of the fastest NPUs on the market. This can only bode well for future AI-related advancements from Apple.
4. OLED technology
It’s taken a while, but Apple’s iPad Pro tablets finally have OLED screens – and they’re not just any old OLED panels. Instead, Apple has created the ‘Tandem OLED’ display to form the ‘Ultra Retina XDR’ screen of the new Pro iPads.
Tandem OLED is so called because it places two layers of OLED pixels on top of each other to create one consistent screen. The benefit of this is that it doubles the resolution of the screen while reducing the concerns surrounding OLED burn-in.
Although OLED pixels are self-emitting, they tend to struggle to achieve the brightness of LCD or mini-LED panels, and increasing brightness requires pumping more power into the pixels, which reduces the heat of a OLED screen increases and can lead to the dreaded burn-in, where parts of a static image – think icons and taskbars – can be permanently visible on a screen even when something else is being displayed.
But by layering two OLED panels on top of each other, the individual pixels can operate at lower brightness than a single-layer OLED display, yet still reach a peak brightness of 1,600 nits in the new iPad Pros; that’s a cut above even some of the best OLED TVs.
This Tandem technology should also provide a more energy-efficient OLED screen that has a longer lifespan than traditional OLED screens. So not only could Tandem OLED offer an improvement in display quality over previous-generation iPad Pros, it could also evolve OLED screen technology as a whole.
5. Two OLED screens are about $200 more expensive than no OLED screens
There’s good and bad news when it comes to iPad prices. On the plus side, the iPad Air costs almost the same as the previous model: $599 / £599 / AU$999 for the 11-inch base model, which is unchanged from the 2022 version in the US, but a slight increase in the UK and Australia (where it was £569 / AU$929). However, you now get 128 GB as standard instead of 64 GB.
Plus, there are now 512GB and 1TB versions – although the latter of which costs $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,879, by which time you’ll be in Pro territory.
The bad news comes with the Pro, which now starts at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699 for the 11-inch model, compared to $799 / £899 / AU$1,399 for the 2022 model. Once again, you get a storage upgrade, this time from 128GB to 256GB, but that’s still quite a jump.
On the other hand, you’re getting an OLED screen here – and a ‘Tandem OLED’ screen at that (see number 4 above) – and the difference that should make can’t be underestimated. Moreover, it has the effect of further distinguishing the two models from each other; if you want to go cheap, you should go for Air.
Either way, the new iPads are available for pre-orders now and will ship next week (May 15).
6. You’ll want to squeeze the new Apple Pencil Pro
It almost goes without saying, but the Apple Pencil Pro looks like the most impressive version of the iconic stylus yet. Living up to the ‘Pro’ name, the new Pencil offers a barrel sensor that lets you squeeze the Pencil to bring up a new wheel of tools and brushes on the screen (the same way you squeeze your AirPods to play music to pause), in addition to haptic feedback.
Longtime users of the Apple Pencil will be happy to know that the Pencil Pro will finally support Find My too – so you (hopefully) won’t lose your smart stylus again. On the software front, meanwhile, Procreate and Procreate Dreams are also primed with a range of new features specifically for the Apple Pencil Pro, including new brushes that take advantage of the barrel roll feature, plus the ability to hover and pinch the pencil to select and switch between layers.
The Apple Pencil Pro charges and stores magnetically just like older models, but is currently only compatible with the latest M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro. Do you like the sound of it? It costs $129 / £129 / AU$219 and will be available from May 15. We can’t wait to get our hands on it.
7. Apple turned the iPad into a live multicam studio
Professional video photographers will now look even more seriously at the iPad as a live production tool, thanks to a pair of new Apple apps.
The updated Final Cut 2 app features a new Live Multicam mode, allowing you to connect up to four cameras simultaneously. And to help video teams get those photos, there’s a new, free Final Cut Camera app for both iPhone and iPad. This connects to Final Cut 2 and lets you control exposure, white balance, focus and more on each camera, then transferring and syncing those shots to your iPad in the Final Cut app.
If you don’t want to deal with all that, Final Cut Camera can also simply be used as a new standalone iPhone app that lets you create better videos with much finer controls than the standard Camera app. Now we just need Apple to do the same for photography…
8. Function keys are back, back, back on the new Apple Magic Keyboard
You can’t underestimate the usefulness of function keys – although we would prefer if they weren’t stuck on a Touch Bar like on some older MacBooks. So it’s good news that the new Apple Magic Keyboard has a row of function keys across the top, making it easier to control settings like brightness and volume on your iPad Pro.
It will cost $299 (about £240 or AU$450) for the 11-inch version, and $349 (about £280 or AU$530) for the 13-inch version, and will ship from May 15.
9. Apple is holding back the big AI weapons for WWDC… or is it?
You may be a little disappointed that there was only a passing mention of AI at today’s Apple event. But don’t be.
Apple is widely expected to unveil its own take on AI at the WorldWide Developers Conference next month, with the smart money being that it will unveil a range of upgrades to iOS, iPadOS and macOS that will bring on-device generative AI to all mobile and computer lines .
But while there was nothing here about generative AI coming to the iPad or iPadOS, the reveal of the M4 is still a big part of the picture. The M4 chip should make it possible for the iPad (and MacBooks, at some point) to handle some big AI-related tasks, and Apple indeed provided the example of how Final Cut Pro can easily create a wallpaper insulate with just a tap. . It also boasted that the M4’s Neural Engine makes it “an insanely powerful chip for AI.”
These mentions indicate that Apple is making plans for the AI revolution – and we can expect much, much more about it at WWDC in June.