Nothing so extravagant, just highlighting the "Vibrant colors!" part of the press release and remembering the days when colored (and transparent!) cases were popular. Aka the late 90s / early 2000s.
Most surprising for me was the landscape-friendly selfie camera. That will be very helpful for video calls. Also, they added USB-C but I don't think it was mentioned explicitly in the intro video (just noted in the final slide).
That would actually be a bit confusing since the iPad and iPad Pro have different features, and comments in dedicated threads don't distinguish which one is being described. Would have been nice to have an omnibus thread from the beginning, but the way Apple does their press releases resulted in two threads.
This is a new level of asking me to reject the evidence of my eyes and ears. I'm also not sure "completely redesigned" rings true. It looks more or less exactly like the iPad Air?
Yea, didn't the iPad Air already have the touch to unlock sensor on the power button? Are they claiming it is completely redesigned because they just "renamed" the iPad Air to iPad? Apple has always had misleading content if not outright lies in their marketing.
Well, that thing adds like five inches of bevel so it doesn’t seem like a response to shrinking bevel sizes. If it only added an inch, the observation would make more sense.
Yeah, Apple has normalized misleading marketing speak.
Here's one from 2017 about the iPhone
> iPhone X: Apple's new 'edge-to-edge' screen includes strange notch at the top
> The screen doesn't actually go edge-to-edge, despite descriptions that refer to it that way. Or rather, it goes to three of the edges – leaving a little cut-out at the top, where the screen can't quite reach to the top of the display.
In the Steve Jobs era, their marketing was extremely clever. In those times, Apple did not claim something objectively false, like in this case; they only oh-so-subtly suggested that their technology was superior to everything else.
Apple's copy since Jobs left has become wordy and unfocused. I can't stand it.
Yeah, I mean I know what they mean (no more larger bezel on two sides like before, bezels on all sides are all now smaller/equal) -- but that's not the right way to describe it.
Why would I even want it to? The bezel is functional. It allows me to hold the screen or prop it up without obscuring the display or GUI. I wish bezels would come back.
> Wi-Fi models of the new iPad are available with a starting price of $449 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $599 (US). The new iPad, in 64GB and 256GB configurations, comes in blue, pink, yellow, and silver.
> iPad (9th generation) will remain in the iPad lineup. Wi-Fi models of iPad (9th generation) are available with a starting price of $329 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $459 (US), in silver and space gray finishes.
They're keeping the older model and making this sort of a price hike, which I'm not a fan of, but at least I can stop recommending the $600 iPad Air just to avoid the old iPad design ecosystem.
Also, funnily enough: the new iPad comes with A14 Bionic and the new Apple TV 4K comes with A15 Bionic. I get that it's due to binning and such but it's still a bit funny.
They designed it from scratch: rounded corners, black bezels, glossy screen, side buttons. It's pure coincidence that it looks exactly like the previous design
The old 9th gen iPad still had a home button, fun colors, and a totally square screen. This update removes the home button, brings rounded display corners and colors and a new processor. And brings the non-Mini, non-Pro iPad into the same design language as the iPhone and the Mini/Pro iPads.
There might still be a fingerprint sensor in the lock button, though.
These small changes are "big news" because the iPad is not (yet) a fashion statement, unlike the iPhone, who suffers enough small changes each iteration so your peers can guess what model you have and how cool you are.
I don't know if it's common, but I associate iPads with small kids, and maybe Apple wants to change that perception.
Came here to notice that. This price hike will somehow put cheap Android tablets on the map, again. Previously there was hardly a justification to get any of them if iPad was $299 — and frequently could be had for even less than that.
any android table entering the fray now will need at least a decade of existence before it can hope to challenge the ipad as a tablet. As much as i dislike apple, the ipad is synonymous with tablets.
This process involves eating losses for several years and only the likes of google or samsung are capable of doing so. Samsung have so many models of tablets available with such poor software support that it is a complete non-starter.
Yes, since Apple started selling devices with OLED screens, they have called new products with LCD screens Liquid Retina. See iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPad Mini 6, etc.
The "liquid" in liquid retina refers to the corners of the display being rounded to match the bezels. Retina is a now longstanding Apple term for high enough resolution to not see pixels at normal viewing distances. Hope that clarifies things, they should keep a glossary page up for things like this, hah.
They finally killed the headphone jack in the plain-jane iPad, what a shame. I'm not exactly a tablet person -- my ereader suits me just fine for reading, which is all I'd want to do on a tablet, anyway -- but why do people put up with this? I understand that phones are small, and thus "hard" to fit the jack into... but why remove it from tablets?
Those wired headphones used to be cheap enough to include in the box.
Now you're upsold $169 airpods from apple, or $79 power beats (also from apple). The experience is better, sure, but they also left nothing to chance here by closing the door on your existing cheap wired headphones.
https://www.scarbir.com/truewireless : This guy has done a ton of reviews on cheap TWS. I've picked a few 25$ ones off his recommendations and they work fine.
They had to because it's impossible to water proof the iPad with a headphone jack, or because there's not enough space inside the device, I forgot what was the official reason they used for the iPhone. The unofficial reason is that no headphone port means more AirPod sales.
Lots of waterproof android phones on the market had a 3.5mm jack before their brand of wireless headphones was ready to upsell, which I think points pretty conclusively to the "unofficial" reason being the real reason.
The iPad is not waterproof anyway, and I'm currently holding a smaller, waterproof Android phone with a headphone jack (Samsung Galaxy S10e), so whoever gives that as an excuse doesn't know what they're talking about.
At this point all my headphones are bluetooth anyways. One less port water and stuff can get into (although I agree they probably should have kept it here).
OTOH my earpods have gone though the wash several times, I don't think the bluetooth headphones will cooperate with a rainstorm much less the laundry machine.
At this point I’m over wired headphones. I carry a couple of pairs in my backpack for use on airplane seat back entertainment systems, but otherwise I prefer Bluetooth earbuds.
I prefer the bluetooth ones for convenience, but the option to go wired would be nice. Especially since some VOIP and conference software does weird stuff with latency compensation when you're on bluetooth.
Yeah! And why can't don't they have ports for SD cards, USB sticks, and floppy disks!
At some point, things change. We're at that point with wired headphones. You can already share Bluetooth headphones across a Mac/iPhone/Tablet with extreme ease. And if you really want, you can adapt regular wired headphones to bluetooth.
And on iPads specifically, it's not like people are carrying them around in their pocket to listen to music.
Hilarious. SD card support in phones and tablets is another requirement for me, and yet another reason why I won't buy Apple products in those categories. Built-in storage is expensive and anemic. SD cards are especially appropriate for photo and music storage, since they're read-heavy workloads and convenient to transfer between devices when you want to move the data around.
I don't care what anybody says: bluetooth is still trash:
- I routinely block bluetooth signals with just my body, for instance when I exercise with my phone in my pocket.
- Bluetooth headphones live on borrowed time since batteries are not repairable in most over-ear models, much less buds.
- I don't want to manage another set of batteries.
- Bluetooth audio suffers from an order of magnitude greater latency than wired audio.
- Bluetooth audio is noticeably worse quality, and codec compatibility is a mess between devices.
- Using bluetooth for audio input and output simultaneously inevitably results in garbage quality for both. Just ask any of my coworkers in an audio call where they use AirPods.
Obviously floppy discs are not needed anymore, especially in mobile form factors.
By "USB sticks," I assume you're referring to USB-A ports, and guess what: I still have a ton of USB-A devices, and I'm not about to generate pounds of ewaste by throwing out the devices and/or cables. That port is going to be useful for years still. But you bring up a good point: why can't we at least have two USB-C ports on the iPad Pro? Wouldn't it be useful to charge and use a peripheral sometimes?
People play games and watch videos all the time on iPads. The aux jack is useful. There's almost certainly enough free space in the chassis to fit the port. It's great that you're utterly in love with bluetooth and you can't imagine using anything else, but it really sucks for everyone else that we don't even have an option any more.
The main use case for my current iPad is to connect the audio-jack to my guitar amp and use GarageBand - which currently works great because I can charge the iPad at the same time. I guess in the future one can only use the audio out OR charge - which is a shame.
Edit: No, I can't really use bluetooth here since a) 99% of guitar amps have no BT support and b) the latency is noticeable.
One can always keep using the old iPad. By the time you decide to upgrade devices, yeah, you probably will need to "buy more stuff". This has been true, along varying timelines, for all computers at least since USB was released.
All the Apple devices I've used have notoriously buggy Bluetooth implementations. Maybe their implementation for communicating with Apple headphones is less buggy, but even when I have working Bluetooth, I'd much rather charge fewer devices and not have to deal with dongles when switching devices.
K-12 schools will have to replace their existing headphones with USB-C models, but that's not too bad, the headphones take a lot of abuse in that environment. EOLing the lightning charging infrastructure they have is going to be more impactful.
Note that Apple still sells the Lightning iPad with 3.5mm jack, so this is only a concern post 2024 (the EU mandate comes into force at the end of 2024).
> K-12 schools will have to replace their existing headphones with USB-C models
No, they just need adapters. These are fairly cheap, especially when purchased in bulk (which is what a school would do).
I agree re charging, and personally I wish things stayed on Lightning for a while longer. But USB-C charging cables are also fairly cheap, thankfully.
There is always a transition cost. I don't personally believe there is much benefit going from Lightning to USB-C except for transferring large files (videos), but it arguably means we need to carry fewer cables when traveling.
What is the alternative? Android tablets are no drop-in replacement. Ipads are great for music production. Many great apps only exist on iOS. Bluetooth audio introduces a delay which makes playing software instruments live impractical. So dongles until Apple comes to reason.
Oh, since it was posted as a highlight and seeing that iPhones still have the proprietary connector, I naively thought it was a novelty. Glad I was wrong, let's see when they fix this in iPhones as well.
It's a very confusing announcement because "iPad" here means "the budget-model iPad", which has had the old design with lightning and a physical home button until now, while the other models (Air and Pro) haven't had either of those in years
My iPad Pro from years ago has USB-C. Apple has been moving that way for a while. My guess is they're saving iPhone for last because they know more people will complain about having to buy new cables than are complaining now about continuing to use 10 year old Lightning cables.
As far as I can tell this is the exact same design the iPad Air has had for a couple years now, but "iPad" (no descriptor) is a separate product, which until now still used the old-school form factor with the physical home button, etc. So this design isn't new at all for "iPad the line of devices", but it is new for "iPad the budget-tier iPad"
...but even with that information- is this model still worse than the Air somehow even though its design has been updated? In what ways? Is it just slightly less powerful or something? Or did their positions flip? Why didn't they just drop this model, making the Air/Pro duality consistent with the MacBooks? Are they going to drop the Air instead? And most importantly for folks who haven't/can't research the technical details: "the iPad and iPad Air look identical [and have names that don't tell me how they're different]; which one should I buy??"
> is this model still worse than the Air somehow even though its design has been updated?
Yes, in a myriad of ways! This iPad doesn’t have a laminated touchscreen, and it still uses the Gen. 1 Apple Pencil weirdly so no magnets and you need a type c to lightning adapter to charge it up.
Lol wow, I thought that was a typo but you're right:
> Apple Pencil (1st generation) is compatible with the new iPad. A new USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter is required for pairing and charging and is included in the box with a new version of Apple Pencil (1st generation) for $99 (US).
I didn't think they even still made the first-gen Apple Pencil
So now we get to explain to grandma why this will work with some Apple Pencils but not others
That's been the case for a long time. The "basic" iPad line has always only ever supported first-gen, it's never supported second-gen. You've had to explain this to grandma for years now.
They really would have done better to brand them "Pencil" and "Pencil Pro", rather than 1st/2nd gen.
There's a good reason for it though -- when schools etc. have all invested in buying tons of Pencils, they don't want to have to toss them for a new iPad. At $99 they ain't cheap.
I'm not familiar with the internals and what goes into supporting Gen1 vs Gen2 but is it not possible they could have allowed this new iPad to support both?
Gen1 for those who have already invested in one and Gen2 for new customers they hope to attract or those who already own a Pro device and want a secondary tablet as well.
None of the iPads that support Gen2 have ever supported Gen1 (and vice-versa).
I've never found any public details as to why. Obviously the charging and pairing mechanism is entirely different, but Gen1 can be charged with any USB charger, and Apple now sells a USB-C <-> Lightning adapter for pairing as well.
I have no idea if there's anything about how the pencil interfaces with the screen that has changed between them. It almost makes me suspect there might be, for example since the new iPad Pro supports a new "hover" feature for Gen2.
I hate this idea. I am not going to throw out my keyboard, earbuds, touchpad, iphone, etc just so that they will all have USB-C connections.
Given that, it will take me at least 5 years to replace everything so I only need to use USB-C cables. 5 years where I will have to use two different sets of cables.
This is incorrect. As recently as 2019, just under 70% of phones from samsung, huawei etc used USB C. Phones using micro usb are still on the market or still being used. The dominant connector on phones is still micro USB.
Mine sat around too, until I began using it as an extended display on a stand. The recent Mac OS auxiliary display features are pretty good (brilliant in some ways, maddening in others).
This iPad has the flat sides from the Air and Pro, but it's not compatible with the 2nd gen iPad pencil. Instead, they're releasing a USB-C adapter so you can charge it directly from the iPad (1st gen plugged directly into the iPad's lightning port).
The Pencil is one of the more irritating product choices Apple has made. Plugging the first gen directly into a Lightning port end-first was a stupid idea from the get go. Version 2 got that right. But why did they need to make them incompatible otherwise? Other than to make a few extra bucks, of course. Forcing people to upgrade for no particular reason, and on top of that continuing to sell both versions for different devices. It's ridiculous.
USB-C on this is not the big news. The USB-C on Apple TV remote controller is the sign you're looking for. Apple is end of life-ing Lightning connector after all
I imagine AirPods and the iPhone will be next year, considering the EU USB-C deadline is approaching and it doesn't really make sense for the AirPods and the iPhone to have different charging cables.
This certainly tightens up the iPad -> iPad Air -> iPad Pro line, The Air -> Pro gap was already small(it widens a bit today with the M2 Pro, but not by much), but the iPad -> Air decision was between dated budget tablet or more full featured modern tablet, but now it's a little less clear.
This is still only compatible with the 1st gen Apple Pencil which charges with a male lightning connector. Since this new iPad no longer has a lightning port you now need an adaptor which, at least, they include in the box.
nope it doesn't include the adapter, its a $9 extra purchased on top of the pencil, also the adapter is female on both sides so the dongle doesn't plug in directly to the ipad, it requires a cable
Apple unveils the ... Microsoft Surface? I'm not seeing a "complete redesigned" iPad, if anything, it's a desperate gasp at the Surface and Chromebook markets.
The camera is now side mounted and for some reason the new basic iPad only has 1st gen pencil support with an asinine $9 adapter to charge it. Oh and a non-laminated display on the basic iPad still.
Yeah, I've seen several people trying to say this is related to the iPad Air, but... other than some similar design aesthetics, this device does not appear to be related to the iPad Air at all. The exterior dimensions are all different, and this new iPad is missing several important features from the iPad Air. The screen doesn't even support the P3 gamut that the 2020 iPad Air supported.
Dang I completely missed that. I assumed this was USB-C and pencil 2 and planned to order one for my wife once I figured out which color/model to buy, but I guess I’ll hold off a bit more :(
The charging mechanism for the second-gen pencil probably conflicts with the landscape camera. Also, they don’t have enough differentiators to the iPad Air.
Does the Apple Pencil still have the bug where if you store it near an iPad the battery drains and can even die permanently? All because form over function and there's no off switch.
I misplaced an apple pencil recently. The $30 amazon "replacement" was perfectly serviceable and I no longer had to worry about losing it... (The original turned up a few weeks later - down the wife's side of the sofa :-)
334 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 331 ms ] threadNo it doesn't.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/ipad/standard/...
> unveils completely redesigned iPad
More: "unveils just slightly upgraded with nearly the same design"
Here's one from 2017 about the iPhone
> iPhone X: Apple's new 'edge-to-edge' screen includes strange notch at the top
> The screen doesn't actually go edge-to-edge, despite descriptions that refer to it that way. Or rather, it goes to three of the edges – leaving a little cut-out at the top, where the screen can't quite reach to the top of the display.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/iphone-x-apple-screen-dis...
Apple's copy since Jobs left has become wordy and unfocused. I can't stand it.
> Wi-Fi models of the new iPad are available with a starting price of $449 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $599 (US). The new iPad, in 64GB and 256GB configurations, comes in blue, pink, yellow, and silver.
> iPad (9th generation) will remain in the iPad lineup. Wi-Fi models of iPad (9th generation) are available with a starting price of $329 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $459 (US), in silver and space gray finishes.
They're keeping the older model and making this sort of a price hike, which I'm not a fan of, but at least I can stop recommending the $600 iPad Air just to avoid the old iPad design ecosystem.
Also, funnily enough: the new iPad comes with A14 Bionic and the new Apple TV 4K comes with A15 Bionic. I get that it's due to binning and such but it's still a bit funny.
The iPad mini is $50 more but it has A15 and Pencil 2.
There might still be a fingerprint sensor in the lock button, though.
I don't know if it's common, but I associate iPads with small kids, and maybe Apple wants to change that perception.
This process involves eating losses for several years and only the likes of google or samsung are capable of doing so. Samsung have so many models of tablets available with such poor software support that it is a complete non-starter.
Retina is Apple's name for a high pixel density display, in this case it's 2360x1640 pixels at 10" so 264 PPI?
(I agree with artimaeis the marketing is confusing and they should publish a glossary page with definitions for these terms).
Now you're upsold $169 airpods from apple, or $79 power beats (also from apple). The experience is better, sure, but they also left nothing to chance here by closing the door on your existing cheap wired headphones.
…… anonymous Apple designer.
At some point, things change. We're at that point with wired headphones. You can already share Bluetooth headphones across a Mac/iPhone/Tablet with extreme ease. And if you really want, you can adapt regular wired headphones to bluetooth.
And on iPads specifically, it's not like people are carrying them around in their pocket to listen to music.
I don't care what anybody says: bluetooth is still trash:
- I routinely block bluetooth signals with just my body, for instance when I exercise with my phone in my pocket.
- Bluetooth headphones live on borrowed time since batteries are not repairable in most over-ear models, much less buds.
- I don't want to manage another set of batteries.
- Bluetooth audio suffers from an order of magnitude greater latency than wired audio.
- Bluetooth audio is noticeably worse quality, and codec compatibility is a mess between devices.
- Using bluetooth for audio input and output simultaneously inevitably results in garbage quality for both. Just ask any of my coworkers in an audio call where they use AirPods.
Obviously floppy discs are not needed anymore, especially in mobile form factors.
By "USB sticks," I assume you're referring to USB-A ports, and guess what: I still have a ton of USB-A devices, and I'm not about to generate pounds of ewaste by throwing out the devices and/or cables. That port is going to be useful for years still. But you bring up a good point: why can't we at least have two USB-C ports on the iPad Pro? Wouldn't it be useful to charge and use a peripheral sometimes?
People play games and watch videos all the time on iPads. The aux jack is useful. There's almost certainly enough free space in the chassis to fit the port. It's great that you're utterly in love with bluetooth and you can't imagine using anything else, but it really sucks for everyone else that we don't even have an option any more.
Edit: No, I can't really use bluetooth here since a) 99% of guitar amps have no BT support and b) the latency is noticeable.
Can still be done with a dongle at least.
>> Rockstar -> ...looks like Belkin still does user research ;-)
Regular people these days use Bluetooth audio.
That leaves people who just want wired headphones. Plenty of cheap USB-C to 3.5mm adapters out there.
> K-12 schools will have to replace their existing headphones with USB-C models
No, they just need adapters. These are fairly cheap, especially when purchased in bulk (which is what a school would do).
I agree re charging, and personally I wish things stayed on Lightning for a while longer. But USB-C charging cables are also fairly cheap, thankfully.
There is always a transition cost. I don't personally believe there is much benefit going from Lightning to USB-C except for transferring large files (videos), but it arguably means we need to carry fewer cables when traveling.
What is the alternative? Android tablets are no drop-in replacement. Ipads are great for music production. Many great apps only exist on iOS. Bluetooth audio introduces a delay which makes playing software instruments live impractical. So dongles until Apple comes to reason.
As far as I can tell this is the exact same design the iPad Air has had for a couple years now, but "iPad" (no descriptor) is a separate product, which until now still used the old-school form factor with the physical home button, etc. So this design isn't new at all for "iPad the line of devices", but it is new for "iPad the budget-tier iPad"
...but even with that information- is this model still worse than the Air somehow even though its design has been updated? In what ways? Is it just slightly less powerful or something? Or did their positions flip? Why didn't they just drop this model, making the Air/Pro duality consistent with the MacBooks? Are they going to drop the Air instead? And most importantly for folks who haven't/can't research the technical details: "the iPad and iPad Air look identical [and have names that don't tell me how they're different]; which one should I buy??"
Yes, in a myriad of ways! This iPad doesn’t have a laminated touchscreen, and it still uses the Gen. 1 Apple Pencil weirdly so no magnets and you need a type c to lightning adapter to charge it up.
> Apple Pencil (1st generation) is compatible with the new iPad. A new USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter is required for pairing and charging and is included in the box with a new version of Apple Pencil (1st generation) for $99 (US).
I didn't think they even still made the first-gen Apple Pencil
So now we get to explain to grandma why this will work with some Apple Pencils but not others
They really would have done better to brand them "Pencil" and "Pencil Pro", rather than 1st/2nd gen.
There's a good reason for it though -- when schools etc. have all invested in buying tons of Pencils, they don't want to have to toss them for a new iPad. At $99 they ain't cheap.
Gen1 for those who have already invested in one and Gen2 for new customers they hope to attract or those who already own a Pro device and want a secondary tablet as well.
I've never found any public details as to why. Obviously the charging and pairing mechanism is entirely different, but Gen1 can be charged with any USB charger, and Apple now sells a USB-C <-> Lightning adapter for pairing as well.
I have no idea if there's anything about how the pencil interfaces with the screen that has changed between them. It almost makes me suspect there might be, for example since the new iPad Pro supports a new "hover" feature for Gen2.
Nice! Please, the iPhone next. Ditch the legacy and outdated lightning jack.
Given that, it will take me at least 5 years to replace everything so I only need to use USB-C cables. 5 years where I will have to use two different sets of cables.
It's only arriving in the end of 2024, so in theory even the 2024 iPhones could still use Lightning.
I'd imagine the Pro iPhones would ditch Lightning first, hopefully for Thunderbolt/USB4 for fast transfer speeds for video files.
The non-Pro iPhones would probably move over to USB-C the year after the Pro phones do.
https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-air-4th-g...
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQLU3AM/A/usb-c-to-apple-...
I am disappointed in the lack of 2nd gen pencil support though.
I suppose there's no reason at this point not to try opening one up and have a go at replacing the battery.