Apple Event Rumors: iPad Pro With M4 Chip and New Apple Pencil With Haptic Feedback

[MacRumors]

In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman outlined some of the new products he expects Apple to announce at its "Let Loose" event on May 7.

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First, Gurman now believes there is a "strong possibility" that the upcoming iPad Pro models will be equipped with Apple's next-generation M4 chip, rather than the M3 chip that debuted in the MacBook Pro and iMac six months ago. He said a key new feature of the M4 chip will be an upgraded Neural Engine that boosts performance for AI tasks, and he believes Apple will market the next iPad Pro as an AI-powered device.

Second, he said that the new Apple Pencil that is expected to be announced at the event will feature haptic feedback for the first time. While he did not provide any details about how this will work, perhaps the Apple Pencil will have a small Taptic Engine that vibrates when switching between drawing tools, and using the rumored "squeeze" gesture that MacRumors previously discovered within the iPadOS 17.5 beta's code.

Third, he reiterated that Apple will introduce a first-ever 12.9-inch version of the iPad Air, and a redesigned Magic Keyboard for iPads.

Apple's event begins on May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a video stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube.

Article Link: Apple Event Rumors: iPad Pro With M4 Chip and New Apple Pencil With Haptic Feedback

 

[Populus]

Oh? Now Gurman believes it’s likely we see an M4 powering the next iPad Pro? After we’ve been discussing it for well over a week…

 

[Delivered]

Wow. That would be something if apple debuted the m4 on an iPad Pro months after releasing m3 on MacBook Air. 😅 I’m going to say this isn’t going to happen and hope I’m wrong.

 

[Red_Bran_Porridge]

I'm sort of curious what Apple's motives are for their chip skipping between devices. I know the obvious answer is just because M1 -> M2 for the iMac was not a particularly large upgrade while M1 -> M3 was. I wonder what they're thinking over in Cupertino.

 

[hovscorpion12]

We’re officially two weeks away. The hype is going to continue to grow daily.

Personally, I’ve tried the “all iPad workflow” for 2-years and it did have its drawbacks. Lack of dual monitor support, lack of clamshell, pro apps lacking, lack of proper cooling.

if Apple can give us these with the M4 iPads I’ll be very happy.

While there is very little to no chance I’ll replace my M3 Max MacBook Pro with the M4 iPad Pro, I’m incredibly excited to see what Apple has in store.

I’d love to see the iPad Mini get the M2 chip at least.

 

[mikethebigo]

I'm sort of curious what Apple's motives are for their chip skipping between devices. I know the obvious answer is just because M1 -> M2 for the iMac was not a particularly large upgrade while M1 -> M3 was. I wonder what they're thinking over in Cupertino.

I strongly believe it's a cost thing. M3 is on TSMC's N3B node, which is unoptimized and more expensive to produce chips on. Apple will move to N3E (the optimized node) as soon as they can, due to the cost benefits. Moving nodes means a new iteration of the chip (they wouldn't move to a new node and still call it M3), hence why M4 seems so near.

That said, I was expecting it more in the fall than in the spring, but who knows.

 

[Populus]

We’re officially two weeks away. The hype is going to continue to grow daily.

Personally, I’ve tried the “all iPad workflow” for 2-years and it did have its drawbacks. Lack if dual monitor support, lack of clamshell, pro apps lacking, lack of proper cooling.

While there is a VERY little chance I’ll replace my M3 Max MacBook Pro with the M4 iPad Pro, I’m incredibly excited to see what Apple has in store.

I’d love to see the iPad Mini get the M2 chip at least.

For me, lately, the struggle with my iPad Pro is finding a good, reliable, non-subscription based media player. I use VLC, nPlayer, and more recently I purchased OPlayer, and none of them have a reliable UI when using it on an external monitor while reading files from an external hard drive. The UI glitches, or doesn’t work well between the iPad and the external monitor.

Any suggestion is welcome.

 

[boak]

Skipping a gen for the chip while going OLED + redesign? Too many upgrades in one update. Does not sound like Apple.

 

[klasma]

While he did not provide any details about how this will work, perhaps the Apple Pencil will have a small Taptic Engine that vibrates when switching between drawing tools

Maybe it will vibrate to give the impression of a pencil on paper, or of chalk on a blackboard.

 

[MayaUser]

still hard to believe N3E will come first on ipads and not on iphones...maybe the yields are very strong

 

[klasma]

Of course, if the vibration is made controllable by apps, it could find a whole lot of other uses…

 

[newyorksole]

it’s finally time. I’m excited AF to replace my 2018 12” Pro.

I haven’t used it much lately because I’m longing for something current lol.

 

[Geoffb9]

This guy keeps saying anything and at some point he'll get something right.

 

[MayaUser]

Skipping a gen for the chip while going OLED + redesign? Too many upgrades in one update. Does not sound like Apple.

Exactly , so hard to believe...but Mark G says that are chances and not that "he was told" so careful on his speech

 

[hovscorpion12]

For me, lately, the struggle with my iPad Pro is finding a good, reliable, non-subscription based media player. I use VLC, nPlayer, and more recently I purchased OPlayer, and none of them have a reliable UI when using it on an external monitor while reading files from an external hard drive. The UI glitches, or doesn’t work well between the iPad and the external monitor.

Any suggestion is welcome.

Let me look into this See what I can find.

 

[MayaUser]

This guy keeps saying anything and at some point he'll get something right.

that pencil, oled ipads will be a true thing and he called it first...anything? he told us about an Apple helicopter? please

 

[Geoffb9]

Noway M4.

 

[NMBob]

M4 chip with the Model T software.

 

[klasma]

Maybe Gurman misunderstood and it is using M4 screws.

 

[icymountain]

I wonder how many iPad users feel the CPU is problematic in any way. It seems to me that software is in most cases. For pretty much anything I want to do on the mac, there are plenty of well supported, often open source options. On the iPad, I see subscription based apps that interact poorly between each other or with the cloud that they crucially depend on. While this does not change, I do not understand the hype here. Why should I care the next gen gets M3 or M4 ?

 

[wilhoitm]

Has Apple ever released its fastest chip first in the iPads before?

 

[MarkDeMoss]

Seems unlikely considering Apple does yearly small incremental improvements and there’s nothing major in the works for a redesign other than the OLED display. Which is somewhat major for the 11” variant. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they release the M3 variant on the rumored 14” wide model said to be released Q4 of 2024.

If they’re releasing a 12.9 IPad Pro with M4, there must be some immediate profit motive with AI neural engine. OLED and M4 wouldn’t be enough to upgrade for me unless there was some real function that only the M4 could do such as run Mac OS. To me the upcoming new Magic Keyboard is more interesting than M4 on an iPad.

 

[mrbkk]

Maybe it will vibrate to give the impression of a pencil on paper, or of chalk on a blackboard.

I can’t imagine the impact that would have on the battery.

 

[mrbkk]

Has Apple ever released its fastest chip first in the iPads before?

No.

 

[klasma]

I can’t imagine the impact that would have on the battery.

You can use it wired like the USB-C Pencil.