New iPad Air, powered by M4

Between the iPad Air and iPhone 17e it's definitely the "value" day. It will just be a ramp up to the MacBook Pro. Makes a good contrast and marketing scheme.

zamadatix2• 5 months ago

The next day and the cheapest thing seems to be $1k (base M5 MacBook Air) sitting alongside new MacBook Pro variants and Studio Display XDR :D.

I hope the budget MacBook appears this week nonetheless.

bm5k• 5 months ago

Heavier than the iPad Pro. Again. Still.

unstatusthequo2• 5 months ago

FFS I cannot believe this. I went and looked it up, and you’re 100% right. It’s slight, but it’s real.

deviation• 5 months ago

I know it's semantics, but Apple has never actually marketed their Air products as lighter than their Pro counterparts. The 11" variant is ~460g.

halapro5• 5 months ago

What are you talking about? Air literally always meant thin and light. Now they're treating it a premium product between normal and pro instead (see iPhone Air too)

knallfrosch• 5 months ago

Are we meant to associate it with "hot air" marketing or what else?

vintagedave• 5 months ago

My current iPad is the iPad Air 3 (the one with the backlight issue that's never been acknowledged, to my understanding.)

Can someone explain to me why an iPad at all, let alone an iPad Air, needs as powerful a processor as a M4? That's stronger than my laptop (a M2) where I run multiple VMs and more.

AnthonyMouse• 5 months ago

In theory an iPad is a computer and then you could run whatever you want on it. So maybe the better question is, why can't you run whatever you want on it?

nozzlegear2• 5 months ago

They make those, don't they? They're called MacBook Air?

aNoob7000• 5 months ago

They don't need it. Apple is introducing new hardware for the sake of introducing new hardware.

Personally, they need to put the iPad on a two-year release cycle and focus on improving iPad OS.

kandros• 5 months ago

Pure marketing, in a couple years it will start lagging doing basic web surfing, like every other iOS device

NetMageSCW11• 5 months ago

That has never been true. My iPhone 15 Pro and iPad M1 have no lag.

surajrmal• 5 months ago

In theory it improves battery life by doing more for less power. It also future proofs it for future workloads giving it an extended lifespan. Also note that thermals will limit what this is capable of compared to your laptop.

stetrain• 5 months ago

There are some decently powerful apps available, like Final Cut Pro, and there is multi-window support including external displays.

I think the percentage of iPad users actually using this level of processing power is small, but there are some ways to do it.

I do really wish they would just allow running a VM on an iPad though at this point. Running a linux or even MacOS VM would be a nice escape valve for a lot of things that can't be done natively.

tiffanyh• 5 months ago

It's Operations Management 101.

It's cheaper to use an old generation CPU, than the effort needed to design and manufacture a custom iPad-only chip.

Same reason why the Studio Display uses binned iPhone chips.

sh3rl0ck• 5 months ago

I assume it's an economies of scale thing now.

It's not like Apple is putting any thought into either the UX or the engineering side of utilising the compute properly (except calculating those glass effects extra inefficiently).

Minimise SKUs and get some use out of the binned chips who have a few failed cores.

pchew• 5 months ago

I have an iPad for the purpose of 3D modeling in Nomad Sculpt and Shapr3D. It’s an M2 Air, it’s still way overkill, and I’m regularly frustrated at how limited every piece of iPadOS software is compared to the hardware. The dichotomy of prioritizing iPad hardware but iPadOS being arguably their worst actively developed software is baffling.

Maybe there are people out there doing 8k video editing on their Pros, but I’ve yet to meet them.

piekvorst• 5 months ago

Now you can bring the power and convenience of your laptop to iPad with just a single VNC connection. Oh wait…

spectre3d3• 5 months ago

VNC and other Remote Desktop solutions work, I use an app called Screens to remotely manage my Macs and PC from an iPad with keyboard and mouse.

Or did you mean the other way around? It would be great to have the iPhone mirroring feature on iPads.

Aurornis• 5 months ago

The newer CPUs are more efficient and faster. In a mobile format you want the CPU to process everything as fast as possible and then return to a low power mode for battery life.

Apple re-uses the same core across their lineup because it’s cheaper to build 100 million of the same core than to design and maintain two separate CPUs that go into 50 million devices each.

nothercastle• 5 months ago

The cpu is better but the software is worse and more bloated so they fight against each other

LoganDark2• 5 months ago

Do they really do it just because it's cheaper? I thought they did it for each generation to offer the best of that generation; it makes sense for more powerful chips to have more cores and higher capacity, but it doesn't make sense for each core to arbitrarily be less efficient or less performant just because you didn't buy more of them. Especially because this approach makes the base models an extraordinarily high value compared to base models from competitors.

Noaidi3• 5 months ago

Can someone explain to me why an iPad at all, let alone an iPad Air, needs as powerful a processor as a M4?

Because marketing? Seriously, the people I see using iPads in coffee shops are rich retired dudes looking at the news on it.

bookofjoe• 5 months ago

Because fanbois don't want to wait another year for M5?

dagmx• 5 months ago

Can you explain, why not? If it’s easier for Apple to just maintain a fewer series of chips going forward, why not keep it up to date?

If your question is what do people use it for? Well thats different. iPads have a range of users from people who just browse the internet and will never stress this out, to people who do concept art and CAD who will appreciate the power.

But again, why do people always complain that a device got a spec bump?

wlesieutre2• 5 months ago

I have an iPad Pro (2018) with A12X processor which at one point was a "holy crap this this is incredibly fast for how thin it is" device.

8 years later the local apps still run fast, but it struggles with web browsing.

Which is to say, you need a fast processor or web developers will out-bloat your device capabilities in a few years.

neurostimulant• 5 months ago

The processor is still fast enough, the ram is too small for modern web apps.

cosmic_cheese3• 5 months ago

Yeah, devs using top of the line MBPs and taking a “works on my machine” attitude keeps web bloat on a constant incline.

I sometimes wish it were an industry norm for devs (a group of which I am a member) to be required to use a $300 Walmart special laptop for a week every two months.

tonymet• 5 months ago

Poor software quality, especially websites

harrall2• 5 months ago

Photoshop and video editing. Until the M chips, the app options were slim, and now iPads get new M chips as they come out.

You might ask — doesn’t it suck to do either on an iPad? Yep, yet even on my iPhone, I use Photoshop all the time.

VMs are not very CPU demanding usually — usually more RAM demanding.

varispeed• 5 months ago

How do you do any productivity on it if getting files in and out is such a pain?

I had M4 iPad PRO and is just collecting dust. Too clunky to use.

layer84• 5 months ago

It doesn’t necessarily need it other than for niche use cases, but they can’t well have the SoCs stagnate for many years, because SoC updates drive upgrades, whether the buyers really need it or not.

Marsymars3• 5 months ago

Besides what the other commentators have said — if you're buying an iPad today, wouldn't you rather have the newest/best processor in it?

piazz• 5 months ago

Some creative workflows genuinely benefit from the tablet form factor. I often do serious photo editing on the iPad because I have access to Apple Pencil, and, somehow, holding the thing in my hands like an actual physical object activates some different more analog brain region for me than using a laptop / desktop, and it’s helpful to my creative process. Lightroom for iPad is quite capable but it requires some power.

And then visual artists are often using Procreate, and those files can get heavy as well.

Plus, it’s nice to carry my iPad around with me in a sling and work in a cafe whenever I feel like it. I wouldn’t want to do that with my 16” MBP.

rahimnathwani• 5 months ago

Try running liuliu's 'Draw Things' app, or any other tool that generates AI images locally.

https://drawthings.ai/

dwayne_dibley2• 5 months ago

I wonder if a big part of it is simplification at Apples end. It’s just easier and more cost effective to make more M4s regardless of where they end up?

easton• 5 months ago

Memory increase to 12GB, guess they still have reasonable pricing.

jghn• 5 months ago

At this scale, don't companies lock in their prices well in advance instead of paying spot prices?

functionmouse• 5 months ago

Don't vendors as big as Apple lock in their prices and contracts years in advance?

wpm• 5 months ago

Rumor has it that Samsung hit them with a 100% price increase on RAM and Apple took it without even trying to negotiate

mathis• 5 months ago

The base model has only 128GB of storage. IMO they are pushing uses to upgrade storage more aggressively than ever. This should make up somewhat for the increased cost of volatile and non-volatile memory.

chorkpop• 5 months ago

I wish Apple hadn't decided that colors weren't for pro users. I would love to have any of those.

criddell• 5 months ago

I'm still upset that they dropped the Smart Keyboard Folio. For me, that was the perfect keyboard case. I was hoping some third party would copy the design and release a new case but it never happened.

Marsymars3• 5 months ago

The Smart Keyboard Folio is great! I got one on clearance a few months ago and use it whenever I'm using the iPad around house/town. (If I'm travelling out of town with my iPad where I won't be able to use my desktop keyboard, I bring my Magic Keyboard instead.)

It's so good that if Apple changes the form-factor of the iPad Air, I'll probably take that opportunity to buy the last Smart Keyboard Folio-compatible iPad Air to stretch my use of it as long as possible. (Though I worry that at that point I'll wear out the internal ribbon connectors eventually.)

mayoff• 5 months ago

Somehow Woot still has a supply of the Smart Keyboard Folio for certain 11" iPads Pro/Air.

My wife is still using an older gen 11" iPad Pro and her keyboard folio stopped working (they fall apart after a few years ), so I took a gamble and ordered one. It arrived in the original, sealed packaging. As far as I can tell, it had never been opened, and it is perfect condition and works great. My wife is very happy. I bought a second one for when this one falls apart.

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Smart-Keyboard-11-inch-iPad-Pro...

jajuuka3• 5 months ago

That's true of most OEM's. Most phones will be cases so I can at least understand that argument, but I don't think as many tablets are in cases.

spudlyo4• 5 months ago

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced.

It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, which is fine. I can only imagine that these new generation iPads will easily go for the next 10 years.

Almondsetat• 5 months ago

They can only go as far if Apple doesn't deprecate them, unfortunately

dylan6042• 5 months ago

Depends on how you look at it. While the hardware might keep functioning and current software might keep running, some devs also deprecate their software. I have an old 6S+ that I keep software that I don't want to install on my actual device. Slack informed me that it will no longer function after a date set later this year. Other apps have already stopped working on it because the devs do not want to deal with it.

TL;DR sometimes it's not Apple, it's the app devs that deprecate them.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 5 months ago

I use a 2012 MacBook Air 11" for Zoom meetings. Still runs like a champ. It's stuck on Catalina, but Apple still sends out patch releases.

t-3• 5 months ago

How is the battery doing? I find sudden rechargeable battery/controller failures in the 5-10 year range to be my most common cause of upgrade or repair.

swiftcoder2• 5 months ago

Kind of luck of the draw on that one, I think. I have a first-gen iPad Mini on its original battery around here somewhere. Doesn't run for more than a couple of hours on a charge, but it also hasn't exploded yet...

spudlyo4• 5 months ago

It usually lasts 3-4 sessions. I power it off between uses to preserve battery.

kkylin• 5 months ago

I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the factory reset, and since the server it wanted to talk to was no longer up (or perhaps the address changed?) I couldn't factory reset the iPad.

If someone has a work-around I'd love to hear it. Until then, or until Apple changes this design, I think I'm done with iPads. I don't want to pay that much to "own" something that Apple can simply make obsolete by reconfiguring or turning off a server somewhere.

Edit: fix typo

saltwounds• 5 months ago

You should be able to DFU, but when it phones home it'll require a software upgrade

stasomatic2• 5 months ago

There are “service providers” on EBay that I’ve used in the past to unlock iPads used by former unresponsive employees. Not sure about exact situation, in my case they defeated the iCloud lock. Was about a $100 a pop. All done remotely.

walletdrainer• 5 months ago

There’s simply no way this happened, Apple has servers running that’ll talk to even the earliest idevices.

Temporary downtime? Maybe.

maCDzP• 5 months ago

I bought magnetic self adhesive tape and mounted in on my fridge. Now it’s the family calendar. So nice.

Insanity• 5 months ago

That seems incredibly overpowered for a calendar lol. I imagine doing this with a kindle / e-ink display might also be more energy friendly.

nicbou• 5 months ago

My iPad Mini from 2020 is also surprisingly good today. It's one of those devices that just quietly do their job forever. They are a dying breed.

layer84• 5 months ago

It's one of those devices that just quietly do their job forever.

Except for the battery, which isn’t that easy to replace on an iPad. And apps relying on anything online (including browsers) stop functioning at some point, because you can’t replace the OS or install arbitrary apps.

qingcharles• 5 months ago

Have a 7th gen iPad from 2019 I use as my daily driver. Has iOS 18 and works great. Was $80 on eBay a year or so ago.

davio• 5 months ago

I have an iPad 4 that is now a single purpose scorekeeper for darts

__patchbit__• 5 months ago

Would be good for all players to punch the score in on their own iPhone and see the score on the common iPad.

Or, to use an app on the comfy smaller pocketable hypothetical iPhone and to see on the paired iPad when wanting the luxury of a larger display

game_the0ry2• 5 months ago

Just curious, why don't you just use your iphone? Why the ipad? Why do you prefer it over an iphone?

dogma1138• 5 months ago

Can’t speak for the OP but I do the same because the screen is bigger and you don’t have to look down as much and strain your neck.

spudlyo4• 5 months ago

The big screen fits perfectly over the elliptical’s display, the readability of ebooks (my most common use) is superior.

user34283• 5 months ago

I have an iPad 9th generation here, from 2021, and it appears to be at the end of its life.

I expected it to last a little longer, despite the cheap price of around $350 in 2022.

After the Liquid Glass update it became so sluggish that I had to turn off animations in the Accessibility settings. And it still is not enjoyable.

silveira2• 5 months ago

iPad Pro (4th generation) 2020 here. Life was good then updated OS with liquid glass. Big mistake.

tstenner• 5 months ago

That's what I use a 2014 Sony tablet for. The battery last surprisingly long, but heavy websites are an exercise (well, the other form of exercise) in frustration

enraged_camel• 5 months ago

When cleaning out my deceased father's electronics closet, I found a 1st gen iPhone. Fortunately its charging cable was nearby. I charged it and, miraculously, it turned on, and was in fact fully usable (minus calling, due to no SIM card). Note that the device is almost 20 years old at this point.

In contrast, none of the various Android devices he collected over the years turned on. One came close, then errored out right after booting.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 5 months ago

Might actually be worth something, as there's not that many of them around (especially that work).

Sorry for your loss.

Someone• 5 months ago

(minus calling, due to no SIM card)

Could also be due to incompatible radios. 2G GSM isn’t available everywhere anymore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Phase-out), nor is 3G (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Phase-out).

inerte• 5 months ago

I bought and iPad Mini Nov 20th, 2013, and it still works. Slow, but it does. Enough for my daughter to watch YT Kids here and there.

seanmcdirmid• 5 months ago

I have the 2g iPad pro (I think I bought it in 2020 before the pandemic?). I keep looking for an excuse to replace it but it just works so well there isn't much to get from a new one.

baby4• 5 months ago

Yeah same here, stuck on the 2018 one coz its still great.

pkulak• 5 months ago

Same! Reading through that announcement about MOAR power and AI and all I can think is, "This can't possibly play YouTube videos at me on my spin bike any better than my iPad from 8 years ago..."

binsquare• 5 months ago

I had this thought until I actually replaced my iPad with the m1 chip.

It was actually better at youtube by being more efficient, I could watch videos for a full day before needing to charge.

this-is-why• 5 months ago

In the 1990s we referred to this dilemma as needing a “killer app” to drive an upgrade. Fortunately everything needed more mips, but unless you’re a niche gamer, consumers hit the wall in maybe 2010. Which is why every oem is pushing Ai. Sell moar !! Fill the landfills !!!

jimbokun• 5 months ago

There is no greater punishment for a corporation’s shareholders and employees than making a product so good and so reliable it doesn’t need to be replaced for a very long time.

atoav3• 5 months ago

Which is why we need regulations on the subject.

Cthulhu_6• 5 months ago

Which is... an odd thing to say because Apple's support is ~7 years nowadays, which is more than most of their competition, and their devices are not EOL by then. And yet they're one of the biggest / wealthiest companies in the world.

I think your comment is incorrect. some companies / shareholders push for planned obsolescence, but I can't accuse Apple of that.

PyWoody• 5 months ago

Same here. Sucks that Netflix is no longer supported but YouTube works great.

asdff5• 5 months ago

Lightning cable unfortunately has a shelf life. My current SE2 barely seats the cable appropriately in the connector and if you look at it wrong it stops charging.

digitalslr• 5 months ago

If you haven't already, check the port for lint. Scrape it out carefully with a wooden toothpick.

wodenokoto• 5 months ago

My iPad 2011 is still going strong, except that my Airpods Pro won't talk with them anymore.

So should I buy a second pair of work-out earphones or a new tablet? A new tablet would give me back access to app store and many apps, which are no longer compatible with this old slab, but at least Amazon Prime Video and most importantly, VLC still works.

sgerenser• 5 months ago

I’d buy a new (or used) tablet. An iPad 10th gen can be had lightly used or refurb for under $200. Or go with the brand new 12th gen that is supposed to be coming out tomorrow at $349 if you’re not on a super tight budget and want it to last you as long as that ancient one did.

bariswheel• 5 months ago

How was the battery held up? I have the same one, but the battery lasts only 25 minutes max, pretty sure it's shot. Any tips on making sure battery lasts a while? I might even switch out the battery myself.

AndriyKunitsyn• 5 months ago

An old iPadOS means an old safari, which means some of the websites are going to get suspicious. I remember one day not being able to open any Cloudflare website.

apparent3• 5 months ago

How old was the device? I have a Late 2018 iPad Pro and have never encountered anything like this. It still works perfectly fine, and having invested in the nice keyboard case for it, I'm hoping to not have to upgrade for a while longer. It honestly might last me 10 years without breaking a sweat.

dwayne_dibley2• 5 months ago

Honestly this is iPads biggest problem. My is from 2019, and there’s just no reason to upgrade, unlike a phone I don’t need it to have a better camera or be lighter or whatever. They nailed it years ago and the hardware is so good the software never really challenges it.

coffeefirst• 5 months ago

On the other hand, that’s also one of the best things about it. Part of what makes it worth the cost is that nothing important changes and it can last for a long time.

nop_slide• 5 months ago

Old ipads are great until apps start not working with the OS. I have a 2017 and Disney+ just dropped support for my current OS version and I can't update further.

Cthulhu_6• 5 months ago

Maybe the web version still works? Worth a try.

red_hare• 5 months ago

I also have and use this iPad. Mainly for procreate and watching things.

Even at 9 years old, I don't see myself upgrading in the foreseeable future.

Reebz• 5 months ago

My iPad Pro must by the model ahead of yours. I just upgraded the OS to v26 and it’s awful - sluggish, jittery, inconsistent typing experience - borderline unusable for a fast work environment. With no downgrade option I’m forced to buy a new one for work and relegate the older device to entertainment or kids use only.

Being stuck on v17 is a feature for the older A-series chipset.

niek_pas• 5 months ago

I'm in the same boat. Thankfully, I only use my iPad for watching videos while I'm cooking, but if were using it for anything else, I'd have to replace it.

duxup2• 5 months ago

Lifespan of Apple products continues to amaze me even if it should not.

harry82• 5 months ago

if you can put up with each update making it worse, slower, less precise user interface. There's a reason old macs run linux rather than macos or go to landfil.

For the amount charged they should be usable for 15-20 years. Enschittification is very much an apple thing. Cue outraged apple cult memebers.

tootie• 5 months ago

Yeah, I think the number 1 use case for tablets is "portable TV" followed by "makeshift touchscreen kiosk". It really doesn't need a lot of features. I have an iPad setup as a little home dashboard and it's literally stuck on iOS 9 but it does it's job.

gentleman11• 5 months ago

The newer have worse ergonomics than the old ones. I used to use my previous ipads all the time for reading, but now I find them all fairly uncomfortable for reading and end up not using them. Slightly tempted to sell them and get older models tbh

css_apologist4• 5 months ago

This is an incredible piece of hardware, I just don't know what to do with it

how is music production on it these days?

dgxyz• 5 months ago

I had the same problem with my M4 Pro. So I sold it.

piva00• 5 months ago

Still subpar, only real DAW available is Logic Pro, the audio stack behaves differently than macOS, no support for VSTs but has support for the AU format.

A friend who I make music together had an iPad that we tried to add to the setup, in the end after some months we chucked it aside and just got a MacBook for our shared studio instead.

css_apologist4• 5 months ago

no support for VSTs

yup, that kills it for me

mauflows4• 5 months ago

I agree you won’t find a DAW as powerful, but some of the purpose built DAWs are so much fun. Loopy Pro you can build whatever interface you want via widgets.

And while VSTs don’t run, the AUv3s on the App Store tend to be much cheaper.

If for nothing else, I think it’s an excellent replacement for a guitar effects processor like Helix. Plus everything is backed up / restorable and you don’t have to suffer with a knob-based interface

DamnInteresting• 5 months ago

GarageBand is fun, and capable of making surprisingly complex music. Logic Pro is also available on iPad now, but it's only available with a $15/month subscription, so I haven't tried it.

For artists, there are a lot of good tools: Procreate, Art Set 4, Adobe Fresco, Artrage, etc.

Archit3ch3• 5 months ago

It runs PlugData, the plugin version of Pure Data! You can easily bring down the best iPad processor with the circuit~ object. ;)

css_apologist4• 5 months ago

i've been meaning to checkout pure data, this is cool thanks for sharing

silveira2• 5 months ago

I really like this setup:

iPad + Korg microKEY-37 + KORG Gadget 3 + all a bunch of KORG apps

No subscriptions. Keyboard is wireless but no noticeable latency. In my workflow I pretty much never need more keys but if I do I just use a MIDI adapter and plug a larger keyboard.

KORG apps go on 50% sale several times every year.

baby4• 5 months ago

Drawing on it is incredible, reading papers work well also but a folding phone is better.

magnio• 5 months ago

To me, the tablet form factor is dead with the arrival of the trifold.

90% of the people who use tablets I know (including myself) only has four use case: watching video, reading PDF and comics, taking notes, and playing mobile games.

All of which are very mobile-oriented tasks that are done on tablets solely for their screen sizes. With trifold bridging the gap between screen sizes and, more importantly, screen ratios, I would love to merge them into one device. This is in contrast with laptops, whose differences in OS and use cases are, to me, much bigger and necessary.

Of course, right now they are very much afar from consumers' pockets due to price and reliability. But normal foldables were once in the exact same state, and the fact that Apple is releasing one soon is a sure tale sign of the future of foldables.

LoganDark2• 5 months ago

Dunno if Apple's foldable will support Apple Pencil. (For that matter, not sure a touchscreen MacBook would either.) That's one use case for a properly rigid, solid, flat surface.

herrherrmann• 5 months ago

I wouldn’t put too much hope into foldables, at least not because of Apple’s involvement. They also released the Vision Pro. And there’s still the unsolved(?) problem of the screens getting easily scratched/destroyed if they’re not heavily protected and kept clean. (There are some informative teardown videos, e.g. by JerryRigEverything.)

nerdjon• 5 months ago

A properly built tablet OS UI would also have those differences in the OS that make it more than just a larger phone screen, which so far seems to be most of what the foldables are doing with a gimmick thrown in here or there.

iPadOS may not fully be to the point of being an OS UI that really utilizes the benefits of a tablet sized device, but it does have elements that are unique to it that would not really make sense on a phone.

That being said, if your tablet use case really is just a larger phone than a foldable would be great. But i know for myself the way I use my iPad it would not be a suitable replacement. Especially not now, maybe in 5+ years once someone figures out how to make an OS that actually manages different ways of interacting with it in different form factors work, but that has yet to happen.

Hamuko3• 5 months ago

I have a hard time justifying buying a trifold when my 13-inch iPad Pro was 1263€ and the Samsung trifold is probably gonna be closer to 3000€ for a 10-inch display. If I assume that it'll be 2999€, you can get a 13-inch iPad Pro (1519€), a Magic Keyboard for the iPad (399€), an iPhone 17 (999€) and still have money left over. And this is straight from Apple.com. It's possible to get better deals elsewhere.

pokstad• 5 months ago

I’d rather have no moving parts in my screen.

raw_anon_111118• 5 months ago

I can get a foldable phone that extends to a 13 inch screen.

halapro5• 5 months ago

IMHO technology (and price) is just not there yet. I can buy a phone and 2 tablets for less month than a foldable.

I'd love a 10 inch screen in my pocket but maybe in 2035. Nokia imagined this 20 years ago and we're barely there yet.

franze• 5 months ago

I love my iPad, best TV i have ever owned.

Noaidi3• 5 months ago

Ha, yes. I have a Galaxy A7 lite that is my TV. Much cheaper and has a 500GB SD Card in it as well.

manmal2• 5 months ago

Tangential, iPadOS 26 is absolutely unusable on iPad Minis. Who needs window management on an 8" screen?

crims0n• 5 months ago

-you can turn it off globally in settings

-some people use it docked

-if it wasn't available, someone else would be complaining about that

bigyabai6• 5 months ago

if it wasn't available, someone else would be complaining about that

Really? I genuinely know no one that uses Stage Manager.

hbn3• 5 months ago

The Apple of the past never thought twice about people complaining about the lack of them implementing something that would be bad UX because they were confident in their design prowess.

manmal2• 5 months ago

Click targets on window controls are too small to ever make sense. Nobody needs this.

layer84• 5 months ago

As the sibling says you can turn it off, but even the non-windowed UI is still not well-adapted to the small form factor. Apple doesn’t put any work into it. One can hope that some improvements might carry over from the upcoming foldable iPhone, whose inner display will only be slightly smaller, but I’m not holding my breath.

jonplackett• 5 months ago

Bet they were hoping for a quieter news week for these announcements.

Noaidi3• 5 months ago

Please do not buy any Apple products until Tim Cook takes that gold bar back from Trump? Thanks.

Mindwipe• 5 months ago

The Pro really looks like it's struggling for a reason to exist given how much cheaper this will be and the difference in feature set.

Hamuko3• 5 months ago

I fucking love my OLED display on my iPad Pro.

butterlettuce• 5 months ago

i hate mine. when watching movies, scenes that slowly transition to another view look jaggy. Does that happen to yours?

game_the0ry2• 5 months ago

FWIW, my wife is a student and her ipad has probably helped out her out a lot, for a lot of reasons:

* compact form factor allows her to study anywhere easily, especially on public transportation

* can access the internet almost anywhere

* note taking and drawing diagrams with apple pencil

* communication wit for both personal (imessage) and school study buddies (discord)

* can entertain herself with netflix, youtube, games etc when she wants to wind down

* ai apps like perplexity has helped her a lot with writing and research

She also has a laptop, but is rarely used. She even tends to type on her ipad keyboard. The larger form factor for the pro helps with that too.

bubblewand6• 5 months ago

Maybe a minor thing, but the largest pro in landscape is just barely smaller than a two-page spread in a comic book, making it possibly the best way to read digital comics.

Though, I personally don’t need all the horsepower and would get lower-end iPads in that size if they existed and were cheaper.

squidsoup• 5 months ago

The pro has the perfect form factor for sheet music. Absurd over kill in terms of other hardware, but there's really no alternative for musicians (other than paper).

t1234s2• 5 months ago

Any chances of getting a new Apple TV 4k this week in time for F1 launch on AppleTV+?

mikestew• 5 months ago

Sure, there’s a chance. Don’t know why you’re asking, though, because those that know aren’t talking and those that are talking…

raw_anon_111118• 5 months ago

What’s wrong hardware wise with the current one?

t1234s2• 5 months ago

I think its at least 3 years old

amoss• 5 months ago

No side profile pics on the page. My only concern would be can it lay flat on a table for taking notes or does it have a camera bulge that makes it wobble?

fumeux_fume• 5 months ago

FWIW, the iPad Air I bought a couple years ago has a small protrusion for the single camera lens, but does not wobble when laying flat and is not really noticeable. This latest iPad Air has a similar design.

morganw• 5 months ago

does it have a camera bulge that makes it wobble?

Yes https://www.apple.com/v/ipad-air/af/images/overview/closer-l... from https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/

halapro5• 5 months ago

I hate apple. Can't they just add a second bump on the other side? They're being a PITA with this wobble and it's been going on for like 15 years now (iPhone 7 forward)

eknkc• 5 months ago

I still have no idea wht to do with my previous gen iPad Pro..

ErneX• 5 months ago

imo the Pro are for serious creative types who do either 3D modelling, illustration, photo editing, video editing or music.

If you just browse the web and stuff like that you might just get a regular iPad.

waynecochran3• 5 months ago

When will I be able to run Xcode on one of these?

css_apologist4• 5 months ago

looks like never

waynecochran3• 5 months ago

fudged71• 5 months ago

Wait for the alleged touchscreen MacBooks to drop, possibly this week

waynecochran3• 5 months ago

wait .. what ... for real? Take my money Apple.

revolvingthrow• 5 months ago

I don't understand the target audience of ipad air.

The base ipad is "really big iphone, with a few laptop-esque features". It's reasonably cheap for what it offers, especially if you want a highly mobile media consumption device and handwritten input.

Then there's ipad pro, which is wildly overpriced for its specs -- m4 pro has half!! the ram that the cheaper m4 macbook air has, which is laughable for a 'pro' anything, especially if you have apple intelligence enabled - you get what, 3GB of usable ram once you take OS and apple intelligence into account? Yet, aside from the crazy sticker price, the hardware is a lot better - the 120 Hz OLED display looks amazing and is way brighter, the speakers are quite an upgrage, full blown thunderbolt port for external display and so on. The OS is still toy-like, and ram is pitiful, but there is place for an ipad pro.

And then there's air which is... base ipad with an M-series chip and pretty much nothing else? The display is barely any better than base ipad, the storage and ram are pitiful, the speakers are from the baseline ipad and so on. Just about the only saving grace of the M4 one announced here is 12GB ram, which is the absolute lowest those really ought to have, and really puts into perspective how utterly miserly Apple was about ram pre-AI. I don't understand the value proposition - you want the baseline you buy a much cheaper base model, you want more you get the pro, right?

To be fair the asking price is far less than pro but the upgrades over base model seem so minuscule that I just don't know.

piyh• 5 months ago

It's the cheapest iPad that supports pressure sensitivity on the better apple pencil.

halapro5• 5 months ago

I live in Asia and I see all students using iPads instead of laptops. The limitations of the OS are really not felt by the general public. Whatever you listed doesn't even make sense to them, they buy things based on what they can afford. Every iPad works the same to them.

cj2• 5 months ago

You're not wrong, but I hate the idea of an entire generation growing up without ever using a full powered computer. (Full powered is the wrong word, more like fully capable computer)

We have an entire generation who only knows how to interact with "usability optimized" interfaces with zero friction and zero learning curve.

Not knowing how to use a regular computer creates a barrier to entry for programming and other computing industries that didn’t exist before.

raw_anon_111118• 5 months ago

Because it has a large screen and my wife uses it as her only computer and uses it with a regular $30 Bluetooth keyboard and mouse

layer84• 5 months ago

The Air has a better display (laminated, AR coating, P3 colors).

Marsymars3• 5 months ago

I don't understand the target audience of ipad air.

For me — 13" laptop replacement with cellular connectivity.

If a 13" version of the base iPad existed, I'd probably get that, but as-is the iPad Air is the cheapest 13" iPad.

happyopossum• 5 months ago

Larger screen option, much better screen, better pencil support - not better support, but a much better pencil (this is HUGE for my daughter for example).

It's crazy to me that someone can look at a $350 device and a $1000 device and say there's not room for something in the middle...

lotsofpulp• 5 months ago

My kids (4 and 6) like to use the iPad Air with the pencil.

miohtama• 5 months ago

Is it fast enough to run Liquid glass?

sneilan12• 5 months ago

That's very funny. Bravo.

sneilan12• 5 months ago

If it can be used for inference, who cares right? Just have claude vibe code some objective-C or run the Enclave app.

anentropic• 5 months ago

and Claude is remote inference anyway, just an http api

Havoc• 5 months ago

To what end?

I genuinely don’t get the purpose of these high end processors in a tablet. Like more power is nice but what would I do on it that needs it?

Serious gamers mostly steer clear of Apple. Video editors presumably use desktops/laptops. Browsing doesn’t need power. Video watching doesn’t need it. Programming on iPads is cumbersome.

Who is the target audience that gains from this?

etchalon• 5 months ago

People who buy things, mostly.

_neil• 5 months ago

But is that really a market worth going after?

spudlyo4• 5 months ago

It's a spec bump, soon they'll introduce M5 powered iPads. More GPU cores, more neural engine cores, more unified memory -- eventually iPadOS features will spring up to take advantage of this stuff. I assume the target audience for this is folks who want to make future-proof purchases or those who likely have more money than sense.

singularity2001• 5 months ago

Bill Gates, is that you?

HaloZero2• 5 months ago

You'd be surprised by the horsepower some games require, my wife plays Love and Deep Space and she recently just bought a new iPad because the game requires some good specs and a LOT of storage space. She's not a "serious gamer" as your parlance.

isodev• 5 months ago

But the iPad is not a console … it doesn’t even do Steam. All that horsepower to play … a couple of forever titles and that’s it. I have the M1 iPad Air and it has never used that processor to its fullest. I think iPad is just an odd device for most people

ezfe• 5 months ago

People complain when Apple doesn't do spec bumps. But when Apple does do spec bumps, people complain again.

monocularvision• 5 months ago

It’s as if there are a bunch of different people out there.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy

asdff5• 5 months ago

People complained when apple doesn't do spec bumps back in the intel era when their computers were getting legitimately clapped.

pornel2• 5 months ago

It's just such a shame that really good CPUs are wasted on an OS that still acts as if it had hardware limitations of the 1st gen iPad.

Whenever I need to get anything done on iPadOS, I feel like I'm wearing boxing gloves.

The device's speed is limited by fiddly animations and DUPLO-sized siloed applications.

Its multitasking power is capped in software.

KeplerBoy• 5 months ago

Those are not high end processors? You can get them in apple's most basic laptops. They are just good, but not high end.

bottlepalm2• 5 months ago

iPad is the most absurd device ever. It is fully capable of running a full blown general purpose OS, but artificially restricted to be a YouTube machine. Something you give kids in a restaurant to be quiet. Putting an M4 in it is like Apple rubbing our faces in it. Look at this device that could do everything, but can't do anything.

malshe2• 5 months ago

Comments like yours just go on to show how narrow the worldview of many HN users is. Just because you don't know how people are using their iPads doesn't mean iPads "can't do anything". It defies common sense, too. If iPads couldn't do anything, why would people buy them consistently? I can imagine people buying them once because they don't know any better. But iPad is more than 15 years old now.

baby4• 5 months ago

Ive been using mine since 2018, the ipad pro. If you do any drawing then it’s a no brainer, and that’s why I got it in the first place.

Then it was so good that I used it to travel and to watch videos in bed in place of my computer. If I need to work I’ll take my laptop though.

IMO if you don’t use your laptop to work it doesn’t make sense to use a laptop instead of an iPad.

mort962• 5 months ago

It's great, sure. But why release an M4 iPad Pro when essentially no software can make use of the processor power improvements since 2018?

Tade03• 5 months ago

Banks see it as a mobile device and thus place restrictions on certain things like payment limits.

bombcar2• 5 months ago

They're half a second away from offering an iPad running MacOS (or a tablet MacBook, take your pick). They're baby-stepping their way to this, obviously.

I've yet to figure anything you can do with these but watch videos and play some games; I always end up grabbing the laptop.

asimpletune• 5 months ago

They're amazing for digital art. That and reading PDFs at near true-life size.

kibwen• 5 months ago

Doubt. Apple doesn't see hardware sales as a primary revenue driver, rather they're a rent-seeking company that makes money by being the iron-fisted middleman for the app store. They don't see any benefit from user freedom if it makes them less money in the end.

mauflows4• 5 months ago

Music production is the killer feature that benefits a lot from CPU performance.

I only recently bought an iPad for the first time this year after realizing this was feasible. I’ve always preferred digital music workflows, but hated dealing with a laptop and DAW. iOS supports AUv3 plugins and cross app audio, so it’s pretty much a full DAW experience (I use loopy pro). The form factor forces AUv3 devs to design smarter interfaces.

Plus, I dislike using the iPad for literally anything else, so I’m less likely to get distracted :)

snypher• 5 months ago

hated dealing with a laptop

Can you expand on this, as im having a hard time comprehending. At the least, a laptop is a tablet with a built in stand :). How is a laptop hard to deal with?

Retr0id• 5 months ago

It lets the iPadOS/app devs write slower software without you noticing too much

seemack• 5 months ago

Artists benefit hugely from the extra horsepower. My brother works in the animation industry and uses an ipad as his primary work device when travelling.

hu32• 5 months ago

At the very least it is one less TSMC 3nm chip in the hands of competition.

So even if they break even, which I highly doubt, they would rather use it in a kids tablet than let the competition use it to power a flagship phone.

k_bx• 5 months ago

Web browsing modern websites like Github (or some worse ones)

gehsty• 5 months ago

Better chip = better performance per watt = longer batteries for similar levels of performance, running cooler. Also it never hurts the smoothness of the interface.

It just ultimately makes it a nicer device to use.

robotpepi2• 5 months ago

But it's such an overkill. In any case, the question was a bit rhetorical, and highly subjective.

drw85• 5 months ago

Since there is FinalCut and Logic Pro on iPad now, larger projects absolutely benefit from this.

JV00• 5 months ago

I don't understand why they still have such thick borders, compared to smartphone screens that almost get to the edge. Anybody knows if there's a technical reason for it?

OberstKrueger• 5 months ago

Tablets need an edge where you can grip it. Without thicker bezels, it’s harder to hold it without your fingers being on the screen. This is much less of an issue for phone-sized devices.

starkparker• 5 months ago

This has always bugged me.

- Why is grip a feature of the bare tablet and not part of a case accessory?

- Why is the grip point the flat glass front of the display, instead of anything more ergonomic for actually holding it?

Phones don't do this, not even 7" phablets, nor for holding them horizontally, nor holding them with two hands gamepad-style during gameply. Why do tablets?

davidcollantes• 5 months ago

I don't think it is technical. Because of their size, they would be hard to hold without covering portions of the screen, if the bezels were thinner. As is, my fat fingers get in the way already.

Y-bar• 5 months ago

To each their own, but I would rather have a larger border where I can rest my thumb without causing an accidental press/scroll a few times a day. The software-based rejection is not good enough and I am very willing to go back to the older look of the iPad if offered.

jajuuka3• 5 months ago

I think it's an ergonomic issue. Phones (even the Pro Max size) can be held with one hand or two hands without resting your palm or pinching the edge to hold it. You could but it could cause some erratic behavior.

A tablet though doesn't hold well when just pressing on the sides. So having some place to grab and rest your palm is more necessary here. They probably could go thinner with borders but it's a balancing act of usability and aesthetics. Also have things like the camera to account for and on tablets you don't have to make a punch-hole or teardrop. The iPad Pro's also package in FaceID cameras so it could be a product consistency choice too.

hbn3• 5 months ago

I already have a hard time not accidentally touching the screen while adjusting my hands' position or whatever with today's iPad's "thick borders"

ohcomeonlol• 5 months ago

So base iphone 17 is 256 GB, and the iphone 17e which is the cheap version is 256 GB, and… the base version of the midrange ipad is 128 GB?

What a spiteful company

hbn3• 5 months ago

I'm not really sure what's spiteful about that

I'd hazard a guess that people use significantly less storage on iPads than their phones. Phones get filled with photos and videos, whereas people use iPads primarily to browse social media and stream videos.

russelldjimmy• 5 months ago

I have an iPhone and an iPad Pro, and I use far less local storage on my iPad than I do on my phone. I know it sounds counter intuitive. I wouldn’t be surprised that this is the norm.

crazygringo2• 5 months ago

People take tons of photos and videos on their phones. Download 40 GB of music and podcasts on Spotify. Keep 50 GB of videos in their messages. All at once.

iPads usually aren't used as much for these things. They're used for browsing, streaming, gaming, reading... mostly things that don't take up nearly as much space.

It's not spite, just matching device capabilities to user needs without unnecessary upgrades that will lead to a higher price point.

I use tons of storage on my phone. Not much on my iPad. Pretty much just downloading TV shows before a flight, but 128 GB gives you plenty of hours of that.

jbellis2• 5 months ago

When the M1 ipad came out I said I'd upgrade from whatever my model year 2020 ipad is once I could run a Linux VM on it without rooting it.

Still waiting.

mervz• 5 months ago

nozzlegear2• 5 months ago

Why did you get an iPad if you wanted to run a Linux VM? Wouldn't a Macbook Air have been a better choice?

bigyabai6• 5 months ago

Because they like the hardware? The better question is why Apple pretends these devices can't run VMs.

jbellis2• 5 months ago

I bought an iPad for the same reason ~everyone does, for media consumption. But if I could use the hardware to do more interesting things then I'd be willing to spend more on a more powerful model.

thewebguyd3• 5 months ago

The iPad Air is in such a weird spot.

Heavier than the Pro, 60Hz, but more Ram in the M4 Air than the M4 Pro? It makes no sense. Who is this for?

pjmlp7• 5 months ago

Ideally Apple would finally do their Surface/2-1 with iPads, but Apple being Apple, rather sell an overpowered tablet, and a Mac laptop to go alongside with it

Some places even do a bundle "discount".

thewebguyd3• 5 months ago

I don't think even Apple knows what they want to do with the iPad.

I could buy the "companion device" niche for a while until iPad OS 26 came along, which took away most of the "touch first" multi tasking and replaced it with a model that heavily favors mouse and keyboard use. I actually use my iPad less now since the update, because I still primarily used it as a tablet, I don't even own the magic keyboard/trackpad for it.

Now it's essentially a gimped macbook, and it's not really clear on where it fits in their product lineup. Is it supposed to be a laptop replacement? A companion device? An art tool? An expensive e-reader? No one, not even Apple, knows.

So yeah, they either need to come up with a clear vision for what it's supposed to be, or finally just let it be a 2-in-1 macbook with apple pencil support.

tempaccount5050• 5 months ago

I can say they are used heavily in the construction industry for Autodesk Cloud to render drawings for field workers. Very resource intensive.

grogenaut• 5 months ago

Can you run openclaw on it?

sccxy2• 5 months ago

Can you connect it to USB-C/Thunderbolt monitor/dock and use it with keyboard and mouse?

znpy2• 5 months ago

I was about to ask the same. I'd like to get an ipad for the same purpose. The iPad pro can for sure, but I don't want to spend ipad pro money.

rllearneratwork• 5 months ago

yes. Has been possible since at least M1.

Buy M-based iPad, nice monitor, keyboard and mouse. Connect mouse and keyboard to monitor via USB. Then iPad via USB-C/Thunderbolt to monitor. Everything "just works" and you can handle surprisingly high amount of work this way

eagerpace• 5 months ago

Can you share more about this experience please? To me, you're still left with apps that are designed for a touchscreen and consumption.

SenHeng• 5 months ago

It's been possible since the iPad 2.

I used to code HTML/CSS that way back in... 2011?

sccxy2• 5 months ago

Specs show that Pro models got Thunderbolt and Air only got USB-C.

Very vague specs.

Can iPad Air USB-C deliver 4k 120hz or how much bandwidth that USB-C got?

jeroenhd• 5 months ago

Has been for a while, assuming you can get work done on the iPad UI. It doesn't do a normal mouse and there are some limitations to things like screen dimensions.

Works in a pinch but Apple is not going to compete with themselves on this front, they're expecting you to buy a macbook for serious work and an iPad for work in a pinch.

ivanjermakov2• 5 months ago

Had no problems connecting iPad Air 4 to external display via USB-C DP. Have not check whether periphery devices work this way though - I used BLE keyboard.

jmyeet• 5 months ago

I have an M3 iPad Air. I only upgraded after my M1 iPad Air 4th generation (IIRC) stopped turning off and it was way too expensive to get a replacement board.

I am desperately clinging on to these because they still use TouchID. Words cannot describe how much I hate FaceID as a person with poor vision. When I'm forced to use it on my iPhone (which is all the time), I have to move it away from my face or I get the "Try again". Super-annoying.

But it gets worse: after a certain number of unsuccessful tries, you're forced to use your passcode anyway and FaceID has false negatives ALL THE TIME.

It's even worse on n iPad form factor where the iPad often isn't facing you directly. It might be attached to a keyboard, on a stand, on your lap or on your chest (when lying down). Many of these angles just don't naturally work with FaceID.

If only Apple would give me a FaceID OPTION on an iPhone.

I haven't bought a keyboard or anything. If I wanted a device to work on in any way, I'd still use a Macbook Air. But I do love my iPad Air.

quesera2• 5 months ago

I prefer TouchID over FaceID also.

But I'm curious, why does FaceID work less well if the user has poor vision?

aalam• 5 months ago

As always, I _wish_ I had a use case for an iPad. Seem like such powerful machines hindered by where they live in the serious-computing space. The iPadOS being much more restrictive doesn't help either.

I wish they could repurpose macOS to touch screens... Oh well.

zikduruqe• 5 months ago

Same here. I have tried my dangedest to want to need an iPad. Once the new wears off, I just cannot find a use for them.

joshkojoras2• 5 months ago

I had a 2008 iPad until few years ago and I think it was the most impressive device I ever owned. I couldn't believe how much performance and longevity you can get out of such a small and simple device, for the price which hasn't changed in 8 years. I sold it because I spent most of my time on a laptop, but looking at this new M4 Air iPad makes my wallet tingle. I first want to see what the low cost Macbook is like, hopefully that's tomorrow.

pier25• 5 months ago

The iPad 1 was released in 2010

kridsdale3• 5 months ago

Unless you had a prototype.

joshkojoras2• 5 months ago

I made a typo, it was supposed to say 2018.

mythz• 5 months ago

Had an M4 iPad Pro for nearly 2 years. Everything's so fast and fluid I doubt I'd notice if the CPU were twice as fast.

If this ever died I'd likely replace it with an Air - the Pro is overkill for what's basically a consumption device.

codeptualize• 5 months ago

I think the big difference why I would go for a pro if I ever replace my mini is ProMotion. It seems like even in this new model you are stuck with the old lower refresh rate which is quite jarring.

Performance wise, even older ipads were well beyond what I need so if you can handle lower refresh rate for sure a better deal.

moolcool10• 5 months ago

The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It'd be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in the household can pick it up and be logged into all of their stuff.

Windows XP had this feature. Chromebooks have this feature. It's inexcusable that such an expensive gadget can only have one user.

lreeves• 5 months ago

Could not agree more, it's wild my AppleTVs now ask for which profile is using it but the iPad still hasn't gotten this.

moolcool10• 5 months ago

Profiles don't work well on Apple TVs at all though. You choose a profile on the device, and then you still have to choose a profile whenever you launch any given streaming app as well. I don't know what changing profiles on an Apple TV actually does.

dewey2• 5 months ago

In my household we have two Apple TVs sitting next to each other, and two remotes with the names of my partner and mine on them as most apps don't properly support profiles so that's the easiest solution. If they do that so people buy more devices...it's definitely working.

btucker• 5 months ago

I am convinced they’ve done research that says they would sell a meaningfully smaller number of units if they added this feature. Sigh…

zer0zzz2• 5 months ago

Obviously. I’m considering buying one of these when we already have one in the family for exactly that reason.

raw_anon_111118• 5 months ago

iPad is around 10% of Apple’s revenue. How many parents are going to give their kids their $1500 iPad Pro instead of just buying them a $300 low end iPad?

zer0zzz2• 5 months ago

I really agree with this. Right now I have a folder on my wife’s iPad Air 13 with Claude, brave, and other nerdy apps. This is totally a workaround for not having profiles/multi login.

SOLAR_FIELDS2• 5 months ago

Apple has historically never been good at multiple users at the same machine. Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. IMO incentives are not aligned here, they want everyone purchasing their own iPad, so i suspect that their strategy is to not invest too much into profile management as it risks cannibalizing their hardware sales.

JadeNB• 5 months ago

Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it.

What problems do you see with multiple users on macOS? I don't use it intensively, but I've never noticed issues.

mikeocool• 5 months ago

Like 20 years ago OS X server had pretty great support for it.

I worked a university lab and had an account on the lab server. I could walk up to any computer in the lab and login and get the exact same desktop experience with all my files and settings. The computing power was all on the local machine, but it basically mounted my user folder from the server.

That was the only time I worked anywhere with that setup on Macs, but it worked so well. Though it was admittedly not your standard office environment — there were frequent compelling reasons for me to be using different machines in different parts of the lab, and not a lot of compelling reasons for me to use that account from a computer on a remote network.

lysace• 5 months ago

"Fast user switching" has been a feature since OS X 10.5 Leopard. It kind of requires an instructional video though.

Here's an early one I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJKRgs2IUg4&t=7s ("18 years ago")

tomaskafka5• 5 months ago

Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS.

For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

nesky• 5 months ago

The flip side here is if I could use an iPad to replace the MacMini on my desk and connect to a monitor with the same support my Mac does I'd most likely have a top end iPad Pro as opposed to my mildly spec'd MacMini M2 and iPad Air M1. I'd literally spend MORE money on that 1 iPad than both existing iPad and Macs I have today.

ectospheno2• 5 months ago

I’ve always found this funny because everyone in my family has an iPad and none of us have a Mac.

moolcool10• 5 months ago

I could excuse it if the iPad was a $200 novelty like the Amazon Fire tablets, but they're putting M-series chips in them and marketing (and pricing) them like PC replacements.

rvanmil2• 5 months ago

I mainly use my iPad Pro like a MacBook with the Magic Keyboard and a Razer mouse (I can even play ARC Raiders perfectly on it, streamed from the gaming pc in another room; having a completely silent gaming setup in the living room is amazing) connected.

My macOS muscle memory works most of the time, but there are also quite some details which are slightly different or missing. If they would allow a macOS “mode” on iPad I would choose it over a MacBook instantly for work.

apparent3• 5 months ago

trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

TBH, if you buy an iPad and their nice keyboard case, it costs almost as much as an MBA. This is one of the reasons I simply cannot justify getting a new iPad these days. The other is that my 8 year old iPad Pro still works just fine, in case I ever need to do iPad-ish things like draw with the pencil.

bigstrat2003• 5 months ago

they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

Which is really silly, because if someone needs to do actual work they are not going to do it on an iPad no matter how capable it is. The form factor simply does not work for getting work done. Apple has nothing to fear here.

alistairSH• 5 months ago

I may be an outlier, but multi-user support might make me buy more iPads. Basically, an iPad Air for each major room in the house. Then my wife and I, plus guests, could pick up which ever one is closest.

Today, we just have on each and have to run around the house whenever we want it.

zadikian4• 5 months ago

Yeah, everyone I know who owns an iPad for personal use, they also own a laptop. It's possible they use the iPad more than the laptop, but they still need the laptop, which might be a Mac.

zitterbewegung• 5 months ago

Playing devil’s advocate the only real device I truly would want to have multi user switching is the Vision Pro due to cost and features . If multiple users were to be added to the iPad would there be enough people to justify the long term use of the device ? I feel like this is a HN filter bubble desire just like small phones .

scotchmi_st• 5 months ago

They spend plenty of time adding "pro" features and apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, which they wouldn't do unless they wanted people to use them.

I'm willing to bet it's as simple as that no Apple SWEs or anyone who has to edit video or sound uses an ipad for work. As soon as Apple forced some to use one, they'd fix all of the UI problems that make them a nightmare.

AlphaSite• 5 months ago

I think if people had a use case for it they’d buy more of the damn things. Right now I’d never need a device separate from my spouse since I just don’t need one.

Make is useful and buyers will come. The never had issues selling multiple macs frankly.

alwillis2• 5 months ago

trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

This clearly isn’t the case—the iPad Pro got the M4 processor in May 2024; the Mac didn’t get the M4 until October. So for a few months, Apple’s most powerful chip was only available for the iPad Pro.

And while the M5 MacBook Pro and the M5 iPad Pro were announced together in October 2025, none of the other Mac models have been updated to the M5.

It’s possible more M5 Macs will be announced this week; we’ll see.

I don’t think it matters to Apple whether you spend $1,000+ for an iPad or for a MacBook.

alwillis2• 5 months ago

The huge advantage for some people: you can get a cellular data connection for an iPad.

If you need internet connectivity on the road regardless if Wi-Fi is available, only the iPad has that option.

Yes, you can use a Mac laptop with your phone acting as a hotspot but unless you have unlimited data, that gets expensive real fast.

Now that Apple makes their own cellular modems, it should be feasible to add them to MacBooks in the near future.

hyperbolablabla• 5 months ago

I don't understand how a trillion dollar company can't at this point say "you know what, I think we're good on the profit front, let's convert some of that into improving UX"

user_78323• 5 months ago

...but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

Kinda ironic for a company when it was Jobs who said"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will"...

I have an ageing iPad, but the crap software really makes me reconsider ever wanting to spend so much money for a shiny toy.

sinnsro• 5 months ago

Bean Counter Tim is going to drive Apple into the ground before he does anything useful. Just look at the current state of the ecosystem when it comes to UI/UX and software stability.

giobox4• 5 months ago

I find this especially galling on the high-price configs, which essentially cost the same as well specified MacBooks. I am in the situation right now where I have 4 iPads in my home which could easily be replaced by 1 to 2 with support for multiple user accounts.

Apple have built much of the software infrastructure to support multiple users on iPadOS, the feature exists for education market customers etc:

https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...

I also suspect someone at Apple has run the numbers on device sales and has decided the status quo where an iPad is a 1:1 device and makes more money for the company is preferable.

I was pretty surprised when the AppleTV of all things got multiple-user account login support before the iPad did!

piyuv• 5 months ago

I hate this so much that I strongly considered creating a family Apple ID. Nowadays I’m just considering leaving Apple ecosystem altogether. Hopefully soon.

amelius• 5 months ago

This is the only logical conclusion.

If a company is hostile against its users, then walk away and don't look back.

informal007• 5 months ago

Apple is a closed ecosystem, multiple users feature is a opposite of that.

For example, it's hard to manage app store purchased Apps if it's easy to switch users in iPad. It's hard to manage iCloud sync when switching, it's also related with privacy.

intrasight• 5 months ago

I would not be surprised if Apple fully commit to the one person per portable device scenario for privacy and CSAM laws.

It would solve the age verification challenge by tying a device to a person. Since they can, I think they might.

tsycho• 5 months ago

I agree that this would be an awesome feature, and it would also significantly enhance iPads' value for me.

That said, having worked on account/identity systems at another FAANG, I think that the commenters saying that Apple is holding this back purely to sell more iPads are underestimating the complexity of this feature.

This is not a feature that you just bolt on to the top. It will require a significant ground up rewrite of iOS' fundamentals if you want to support account switching without a full shut down of the device (and even with that, there are complications with shared storage).

There are likely tons of singletons across the iOS codebase for the "current account", and switching between users will easily lead to bugs where the new account shares/accesses state from the previous account.....and these "violations" are much harder to detect via static analysis than you might naively imagine.

UPDATE: I wasn't aware that Apple already supported a bunch of this via MDM. My only point was that if they didn't already build this into the foundational layer of the OS, then this is a very difficult feature to add later. If they already have this, then I don't have any defense left for them.

dmd• 5 months ago

How does your assertion hold up give they've already written this code and it's used every day by millions of people?

You just have to turn it on with a MDM profile. It's just consumers they don't let use it.

bubblewand6• 5 months ago

I’m guessing the main (technical) hang-up is that it messes really badly with one of the most distinctive things about iPads vs other devices, which is extremely low time-to-interactive from any sleep state. Device been sitting on your desk untouched for three weeks? Pick it up and it’s ready to go almost before you are, and still with a useful amount of battery left (offer void for cellular models).

ewoodrich• 5 months ago

  Shared iPad overview

  Shared iPad allows more than one user to sign in to an iPad. The iPad needs to be supervised before Shared iPad can be used. Shared iPad can be used not only in education but also in business. Multiple users can use the iPad, and the user experiences can be personal even though the devices are shared.

  Shared iPad requires a device management service and Managed Apple Accounts that an organization issues and owns. Users with a Managed Apple Account can then sign in to an organization-owned Shared iPad. Devices need to have at least 32 GB of storage and be supervised. The following devices support Shared iPad:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/deployment/dep9a34c2ba...

jtbayly• 5 months ago

Isn't it already possible with MDM? If so, do these problems all exist? I've considered using MDM just to get this feature, so I'm curious if anybody has experience with it.

modeless• 5 months ago

Android has this feature, even on phones where it barely makes sense

nthdesign• 5 months ago

I agree 100%. When I purchased my Steam Deck, I was actually surprised that it was so easy to switch between Steam profiles. Last year, my wife and I tried Apple Vision Pro. While we aren't the target audience for a $3,500 headset, we might be tempted at $1,200. But not if each of us needs to buy our own.

hoherd• 5 months ago

I was also going to point out how awesome the Steam Deck multi-user experience is:

    1. Turn on Steam Deck
    2. Open Steam on your phone
    3. Scan QR code
    4. Choose whether or not to stay signed in on the Steam Deck

It is such a great UX that makes using the hardware very easy for any random Steam user who picks it up.

I'm sure the security angle would be something a lot of people would bring up, but if iPad had this feature, they could make great use of Apple's Data Protection Classes[1] to ensure that all per-user data is encrypted when that specific user is not logged in and actively using the device.

1. https://support.apple.com/guide/security/data-protection-cla...

progforlyfe• 5 months ago

wow, had no idea. that's honestly hilarious!

thewebguyd3• 5 months ago

The stupid thing is that iPad does have this feature natively, but you need to use an MDM (or apple configurator profile) to access it.

I'm still of the opinion that there's a market, albeit a small one, for a "consumer" MDM product for use cases like this, better parental controls, etc. but almost all are for business and come with some kind of minimum device purchase like 30+ devices.

wffurr3• 5 months ago

I found a thread on macpowerusers.com that recommended Jamf or Zoho that both have a free tier for Apple MDM. https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/mdm-for-family-home/39714/8 I'm kind of curious to try it out on my kids' iPads to make them interchangeable.

rsync• 5 months ago

"... there's a market, albeit a small one, for a "consumer" MDM product for use cases like this ..."

When my children were younger I used configurator to adopt, and configure, their ipod touch devices. It was a bit of a pain but not too bad.

Anyone can do this - configurator is free and runs on any old macbook ...

jonny_eh2• 5 months ago

Apple wouldn't approve a consumer focused MDM provider.

Aerbil313• 5 months ago

https://techlockdown.com is the better parental controls (even capable of self-control) that uses Apple MDM. (not affiliated, just a user)

nine_k• 5 months ago

An iPad is a great art production device. It's great for drawing / painting using Apple Pencil and software like ProCreate. It's good for doing music.

It may be a fine media consumption device (browsing, reading, watching); it's a bit heavy but has a large battery.

I don't see any other serious applications for a home user, such that would play the iPad-specific strengths.

asdff5• 5 months ago

You pick up the ipad off the coffee table, then what? This is the issue with the ipad since it has been released. What is the value proposition? Bigger iphone? Clumsier macbook? I guess it sells somehow or else tim cook would have shitcanned it already.

benhurmarcel• 5 months ago

I mainly use it to read HN

moolcool10• 5 months ago

My library gives free Libby and PressReader, so it would let me read The New Yorker more comfortably than I can on my laptop of phone.

Aaargh20318• 5 months ago

I use my 13” iPad Pro M4 almost as much as my MacBook Pro. I’m typing this on it right now. It is by far more comfortable for consuming any kind of media than a laptop.

If I’m researching something and I need to read any significant amount of text I’m going to grab my iPad and find a comfortable spot instead of sitting at my desk. Even though I have 2 big monitors.

I also have a Magic Keyboard that I can simply pop on if I need to write any significant amount, like this, and pop it off again for pure consumption.

It’s an amazing device for watching video (the tandem OLED looks incredible) and I often use the pencil to sketch out ideas.

bsdetector• 5 months ago

Wouldn't just good screen sharing solve your coffee table problem?

Just have the coffee table iPad be a display for your own iPad. You could even have a virtual iPad on your mac that you show on the coffee one if you don't have your own.

MacOS has 'high-performance' screen sharing using hardware encoder/decoder now. Windows has had this for years and it's so fast it's like actually using the remote computer. It's not like old-school VNC, the only real functional drawback is that you can't leave wifi range.

moolcool10• 5 months ago

The point is that I only want one iPad.

baxuz• 5 months ago

Absolutely the same thing here. It's why we went with a Galaxy tab, even though the iPad would have been a better fit (sheet music + MIDI)

etempleton• 5 months ago

I think the iPad could be a full desktop replacement if they rebuilt the OS as a branch from Mac OS vs as a branch of iOS and allowed for automatic switching based on what it is docked to. That would not be a small task and would fundamentally change the product, but it would be interesting especially for the iPad Pro. When in portable mode it functions as an iPad, but plug into a keyboard folio an it switches to a laptop; plug into a monitor and have it switch to desktop. Plug into a certain mag safe 3 charger in the kitchen and it switches to tvOS; unplug and it is right back to an iPad. I think this kind of user controllable context switching would be really compelling for an iPad, but it would be a complete reengineering an I am not sure the incentive is there.

PythagoRascal• 5 months ago

I'm interested in the opposite direction too. If the iPad could do real phone calls and sms, I would ditch mobile phones. In the process I'd hope to reduce some screen time. I could live with Pod+Pad+Watch, but I doubt they'd ever make that happen :(

teekert2• 5 months ago

Same here. Ours is just a streaming device. Because nobody can really own it. I won't put my password manager on it when the kids can use it, and without that it's near useless. It has my Signal profile so I can transfer stuff (and passwords) to the device but I already feel bad about that. My wife won't put Teams on it because it would bother others and conflict with all other MS accounts. The kids laptops have accounts for all 4 of us.

We switch in apps (ie in netflix). This whole "one person one device" just makes the iPad a shallow consumption device and keeps the laptops for work (and also often for streaming because of this. Btw they are all 2nd hand business laptops running Linux; for the Kids Gnome is very iPad/ChromeOS like and familiar).

It would be so much more useful a device, and maybe we'd even then start buying more, if we could just switch user profiles.

Oh, because it's just a consumption device when we "needed" another one, we got a Xiaomi. Who cares about al the niceties of the iPad anyway when all it does is show video.

NetMageSCW11• 5 months ago

So you have one laptop per user?

waterproof• 5 months ago

How would you handle user switching? Would users have to go through a password screen to use anything?

zamadatix2• 5 months ago

The way Apple TV allows doing it is fine but the iPad could probably make things even easier since it has Face ID authentication as an option too.

The bigger limitation is that most apps don't tie into the profile well yet, but it has not also been around long in a just a niche product as well.

pixelesque• 5 months ago

Fingerprint?

moolcool10• 5 months ago

TouchID. I’d I tap, I get to see my stuff. If my wife does, her profile comes up.

Zambyte• 5 months ago

It's inexcusable that customers must beg the vendor for features, especially such trivial ones. It's your device. They shouldn't have any ability to stop you from adding it yourself, or paying someone to add it for you.

matthewfcarlson• 5 months ago

It's doubly frustrating as iPads do support multiple profiles! Just education MDM managed iPad only. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...

k12sosse• 5 months ago

From what I hear it works okay at best. You basically want to allocate a subset of iPads to a subset of users. You can't just throw 30 ipads onto a cart and let all 30 students randomly pick them, or you'll be evicting profiles unnecessarily. Would do fine in a small household. You reserve space based on # of profiles you want to cache.

hedgehog• 5 months ago

It was rumored to be in the original prototypes and cut before launch. I don't know why. They also have very restrictive device limits per account / family and installing apps across accounts is a huge pain. I've mostly given up on solving that problem.

dainiusse• 5 months ago

I an afraid the same will happen with iPhone foldable. No, it doesn't need to have multiuser support, but how does Tim make you still want an iPad? And macOS - through limitations.

dzhiurgis• 5 months ago

Definitely needed, but also, personally I don't have a need for yet another screen in my life. My iPad is powered like once every two weeks, only when kids beg the shit out of me. I don't particularly enjoy it using it over macbook either. Perhaps OK as your main device if you don't need a laptop I guess.

rock_artist• 5 months ago

Let’s see how the cheap rumored MacBook will do. It’ll have user profiles

Teever• 5 months ago

I hope that the EU can legislate this kind of functionality into iOS devices.

martin-adams• 5 months ago

This is actually one of those things I think the EU should consider regulating. It then means kids can have proper parental controls as they often get introduced to things by being handed a parents phone every now and then.

projektfu• 5 months ago

I was recently given an iPad Mini and I thought, great, I'll just set up a few profiles for the users around the office.

What?

Sometimes the culture shock from Android is just too much. You expect things to be there that simply are not.

bullen• 5 months ago

For me it would need vanilla linux or atleast MacOS.

bravoetch• 5 months ago

I have two iPad minis, but they're so unfriendly to use they exist only to display home assistant dasboards. It's overkill, but only because I thought they would be good for other things when I bought them.

rconti2• 5 months ago

The mini is the only iPad I'm interested in. I finally bought one after years of dragging my heels waiting for multi-user support.

Still, I don't use it much. Mostly I'm not a tablet person, but also, the UX is just so bad. It's total abandonware and it shows. The keyboard often covers more than half the screen. The side drawer on maps will cover the "you are here pin" that's in the middle of the screen. And so on. They just don't even try.

j2bax• 5 months ago

It's insane to me that Apple TV has this feature and iPad still doesn't.

raw_anon_111118• 5 months ago

The Apple TV doesn’t have to worry about user data.

insane_dreamer• 5 months ago

my youngest uses our iPad. My wife and I have iPhones and MacBooks and never see the need to use an iPad (I much prefer keyboard input, I like to read paper books and I don't play games; I prefer watching movies on the laptop too). Our teen has a phone, does everything on there, and wouldn't use the iPad either, + laptop for school and some entertainment.

neya• 5 months ago

It's not just that. The "Pro" nomenclature is useless if you work in software. It can't run anything despite all that power. The OS is basically crippled. For a few years, I used to run the GitHub cloud environment to work on software, but the latency would just make it insufferable. Any other alternatives, you would need to pay (replit, for example).

It's also quite heavy and bulky, so often times I would have to choose between carrying it or my Macbook Pro. And over time, I realized the MBP still was irreplaceable. I switched back to my MBP and physical books after lying to myself reading book on an iPad Pro was somehow better for nearly 3 years. Sold it off at a loss, but feels better without the useless paper weight in my bag.

There's nothing Apple can tell me to make me buy another iPad ever in my lifetime...unless it runs OS X (non-crippled).

wraptile• 5 months ago

It's by design. Even Vision Pro - a 4k usd device - doesn't have user profiles because Apple wants to milk every last penny out of their users.

herval• 5 months ago

Same for the Vision Pro. Locking down a $3k media consumption device to a single user is such a greedy move, it's unbelieavable

rconti2• 5 months ago

They finally added user profiles to tvOS. So there's hope. Maybe.

winterbloom• 5 months ago

how does this work from a security standpoint? per user encryption?

girvo• 5 months ago

The funny thing is that my Apple TV has profiles! Surely the iPad can too.

shwetanshu21• 5 months ago

If you are married to Apple Ecosystem then yeah but Samsung Tablets have this feature. Plus better S-OLED screens for content consumption.

AdamN• 5 months ago

Interestingly Apple TV now has this - which I find kind of annoying since it asks every time I turn on the tv. Agree though that profiles should be there.

KoolKat23• 5 months ago

I mean Android tablets have this feature.

veidr• 5 months ago

You can thank short-sighted, busy, unprincipled-asshole parents (like me and my wife) for this.

Would I buy each of my 3 kids an iPad every 2-3 years[1] if they had this capability? Hell fuck no. I'd let them use my iPad, which I myself don't even use that much.

But as soon as my kids started texting weird shit to business contacts, or accidentally declining meeting invites because they were playing ROBLOX and the notification was annoying — there was no choice. They'd already experienced the iPad, and I'm too busy to do the super-dad job of weaning them off screens in favor of paper books. Plus, iPads are actually really cool for kids, in a lot of ways.

But the lack of multi-user on iPad is unforgivable user-betrayal. It feels a lot like the gas station charging $25 for a 2L bottle of water right after the earthquake.

Might not be illegal, but... fuck you. The iPad is a great product but it leaves me with a burning napalm hatred for Apple in my heart, just the same as when I try to cancel a US newspaper subscription. Fuck you.

[1]: because, while admirably durable, kids do just wear them out and break them

plussed_reader• 5 months ago

The profiles work fine in Apple Classroom mode. Just a question of SSD space for the active profile(s) and a cloud source that can be used to swap them around if the SSD saturates.

janaagaard• 5 months ago

The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles.

I am crossing my fingers that that Apple's rumored Home Hub will change this.

Rebles• 5 months ago

I went to setup my iPad, and it had an option to add multiple icloud accounts! I don't know if this is equivolent to user profiles, or just munge all of icloud data like notes, contacts, calendar, apps all together

DiabloD32• 5 months ago

This would go from "toy for children" to "instant buy" for me if it ran Linux and not an entertainment pipeline with a captive app store.

CafeRacer• 5 months ago

Yes, exactly. Second this.

I've run nixdarwin + aerospace now for a while on the older macos version and it's insanely how the customized workflow can improve productivity.

Recently I started experimenting with nixos/asahi and it's waaaaay more better than even what I had on macos.

ivanjermakov2• 5 months ago

Even JIT-enabled Linux VM on an iPad would make it a perfect travel workstation. Too bad Apple won't let iPad eat the MacBook pie.

ta90002• 5 months ago

“If this was not remotely like what it is it would be an instant buy for me”. Ok.

DiabloD32• 5 months ago

Not true.

Apple made a non-technological and purely artificial and somewhat capricious decision to not sell a product that was worthy of the Apple brand.

They continue down this road because next quarter is more important than next year, and sycophants continue to buy unusable products just to show off the Apple logo to people who don't view it as a Veblen good.

Apple could choose to sell to everyone, but instead sell to a minority. This is a choice. During recessions, it is not a good choice, and we have been in an almost persistent global recession since 2008.

As long as Apple can claim they have a $1T market cap, nobody wants to hear that the emperor is buck naked.

siva7• 5 months ago

I still have the 2017 pro and i can't imagine a good enough reason to buy almost 10 years later a new gen. And i'm the guy who loves buying new stuff without need. It's a dumb consumer device with the hardware of a pro device but you can't use it as a pro device. So what's the point of upgrading? Watching Youtube with 10x more powerful hardware than 2017? Really?

upmind2• 5 months ago

I owned a few iPads as a kid but as I get older I see less and less reason to buy one.

It kinda sits in the middle of usefulness of a phone and laptop for me. Larger screen than phone yes, but can't run any of the applications I need from a laptop. If it had MacOS, I'd be much more inclined to buy it.

selectodude2• 5 months ago

I'm kind of surprised that Apple hasn't full throttle on foldables. I'm more apt to spend $2500 on a foldable iPhone than I am $1500 on an iPhone and an iPad. I don't think I'm alone here.

stackskipton• 5 months ago

Rumor has it this year will be release of iPhone fold. They wanted to fix the creases.

Which seems pretty standard Apple. Let others do something, see how it plays out then launch their version of it.

CharlesW• 5 months ago

When they introduce their first foldable device this year, keep in mind that Apple has been ideating on and prototyping concept devices with foldable displays long before working prototypes of foldable screens existed. The first Apple patent related to devices with flexible displays was filed in 2011. The first Apple patent related to hinges for foldable devices was filed in 2015.

Foldable device prototypes were publicly demonstrated in 2013. It took five years for the technologies required to enable foldable devices to become mature enough to ship bad products. It took another five years for them to mature enough to meet Apple's scale and quality requirements.

This isn't a "moonshot" (which take decades to build), but hardware innovations like this regularly take a decade to properly productize.

upmind2• 5 months ago

They're quite scared to take risks I think, from what I heard it seems it was meant to be released already but they've delayed it a bunch, I wonder if in part due to AVP failure.

bsimpson• 5 months ago

I've never owned one.

My dad was at Stanford in 84, when the original Mac was announced. We were a Mac family from even before I was born. I watched Steve Jobs give the Macworld keynotes back before everyday people knew who he was.

When I was in college, I actually bought a TabletPC. I still identified as a Mac user - I even tried making it into a Hackintosh - but being able to draw and use gestures was interesting enough that I tolerated Windows on that device.

The day the iPad was released, my parents impulse-bought one. They were heading on an overseas trip that week and thought it would be a fun gadget to bring along.

They had me set it up for them, and I did exactly that. I didn't tinker with it, play around on it, pretend it was mine for an evening… It's the first time I remember a gadget not feeling like a new toy, even though I had spent my formative years dreaming about how cool a Mac you could draw on would be. It was just an object, and I had no interest in it beyond being a helpful family member.

Making "just a big phone" when their phone platform has always been so locked down has done the iPad concept a major disservice.

MattGrommes• 5 months ago

Mine is 98% for reading comics and 2% learning to draw on Procreate. Most everything else I find awkward to do on it.

asimovDev• 5 months ago

same here. Drawing on my 13in M3 Air is a delight with the pencil. I sometimes try to do productivity stuff on it like sitting in zoom calls while multitasking on an external monitor, but it's not a very good experience on iOS 18.6

Haven't tried 26 yet, maybe it will be better

stasomatic2• 5 months ago

My current gen Mini is my Reeder, HN, and Balatro machine. Balatro is intolerable on my 15 Max. $400 well spent and i dont care to share it anyone else.

rossant• 5 months ago

Thank you for making me feel old. The first iPad came out when I was doing my PhD. When I was a kid, Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the web.

marrone12• 5 months ago

I remember sitting on my friend's couch drinking beer when they announced the iPad and debating if it was ever going to be popular. Time marches on.

alliao• 5 months ago

entire generation of kids have grown up since introduction of iphone/ipad... I'm sort of glad I got to live what world was like before internet though, still escape into the mountains with kids so they can some of that disconnected feeling but with starlink hovering overhead nowadays just don't feel the same anymore

Brajeshwar2• 5 months ago

Haaa! I also paused reading at “as a kid.”

I bought the 1st Gen iPad for my daughter while I was in the States for work (2010). Not a phone, big enough, and can be Internet-connected with a SIM. Lots of Games, and later my feeling of having bought something amazing was that my daughter learnt to speak brilliant English with Peppa Pig, way before her formal school started.

Palo Alto Stanford Shopping (USA) › FedEx to a Relative in Maine (USA) traveling to Manipur (India) › he trimmed a local SIM to fit the Nano-SIM tray › Happy Daughter on her 2nd Birthday.

mmaunder• 5 months ago

There's a small army of pilots who can't live without one thanks to Foreflight.

SchemaLoad• 5 months ago

I got one a few years ago for drawing on, so far I haven't found it useful for much else. I got the 12.9" one which makes it hard to hold so it sits on a stand.

Later I plan to use it as a lighting control panel but other than that the use cases are limited.

dyauspitr• 5 months ago

My mom has loved the form factor, currently loves it and will continue to love it. That’s basically her hour or two of downtime at night. It’s the perfect form factor for consumers.

driverdan• 5 months ago

I would have been using iPads as my primary computing device for the past 10+ years if they gave us root access. Without root they aren't usable and I refuse to buy them.

sagarpatil• 5 months ago

Anyone who has all three and found iPad still useful? I’m mostly on my MacBook and use iPhone when I’m not on my MacBook, or Apple TV.

BashiBazouk• 5 months ago

I have a 6 with cracked glass and won't buy another one until 3rd party browsers can release without webkit. The net is an awful place without uBlock, which I am reminded about every time I try to surf with the ipad...

silentOpen2• 5 months ago

DNS-based blocking is the way (possibly via conditional VPN if you can tolerate the minimal latency bump).

lucasverra• 5 months ago

nextdns.io works fine on my iphone so ipad shall be fine

brycewray• 5 months ago

You might try wBlock:

https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock

Jaxan• 5 months ago

Doesn’t AdGuard work?

spectre3d3• 5 months ago

Yes, AdGuard works. That’s what I use, although I appreciate the other recommendations in the sibling comments above.

potwinkle• 5 months ago

You can get Wipr 2 for iOS and (for me) it's been as good as uBO.

n8cpdx• 5 months ago

After having tried Firefox with UBO on Android, I can’t say I noticed any difference compared to Orion on iOS.

yard2010• 5 months ago

Your answer is Vivaldi, it has a built-in ad blocker that in my few years experience works exactly the same as ubo out of the box. If it wasn't for Vivaldi, I wouldn't buy an iPad because of what you described.

jhatax• 5 months ago

I have uBlock Origin Lite for Safari [1] on all iOS and iPadOS devices in my household. No one complains about ads anymore.

1. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

shepherdjerred• 5 months ago

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr-2/id1662217862

speedylight• 5 months ago

I have the M3 iPad Air… I won’t have to replace it for at least 4 years because it’s stupidly powerful but both of its hands are tied because of iPad OS. Apple needs to get serious and make a version of MacOS for the iPad otherwise these upgrades are meaningless for most users.

pmdr• 5 months ago

I bought a regular iPad in 2017, I'm really impressed that almost 9 years later it's still working and the batter is still great (especially for reading).

KolmogorovComp• 5 months ago

Was I the only stunned by the quality of the video ad? It’s really advert at its peak, to the point yet artistic.

ijustlovemath• 5 months ago

I wonder how well local inference would work on these.

bigyabai6• 5 months ago

The M4 has been out for a while, it's not anything special for inference.

fgfvbh• 5 months ago

feflefkwekwflry

MerrimanInd• 5 months ago

The iPad and MacBook teams have been in market competition for nearly a decade now while clearly Apple corporate strategy has been trying to nerf each line to prevent them from actually competing. It's an artificial tension that gets more pronounced as the devices get more capable in other ways and the induced limitations are more glaringly obvious.

stingraycharles3• 5 months ago

Things are only to get more interesting with the MacBook with an A chip instead of an M chip, and the MacBook Pro with touchscreen later this year.

I fear at some point we’re going to lose macOS.

kristianp2• 5 months ago

Hopefully linux support improves by then to take the defectors if MacOS goes away.

tristor2• 5 months ago

Let me know when I can buy an M5 Max Macbook Pro that can run local open weight LLMs. Until then, nothing else is particularly interesting, everything I already own gets the job done.

tristor2• 5 months ago

Apparently today: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...

godelski3• 5 months ago

I still don't get what they're for. Most people I know end up in the same situation as me, buying one thinking you'll use it mostly as a writing device but then either it ends up in a closet or just a web browser you use while sitting on the couch watching TV. In that case what does any of the improvements matter?

With first party native apps it's not great for writing, editing pdfs, nor drawing. I mean the notes app doesn't even have simple things like letting you zoom in. You'd think a common use case would be to use it as a drawing tablet for your computer? Maybe not a common use case but I think something a lot of people would end up using a few times a year (countless times I'd love to have a whiteboard on a zoom call but setting that up is annoying)

There's great third party apps to do this but I think it just shows that either Apple is disconnected or just trying to get money from developers.

It's also not great as a computer. I mean in another thread I've mentioned my laptop (macbook air) is a glorified ssh machine and frankly, an iPad should the perfect device for that because its size. But it seems they don't want me to use it like a computer and idk why iOS locks down third party terminals so much.

It also sucks as a second monitor (why is everything monitor related so bad with Apple?). Keeps disconnecting, I need to restart Bluetooth/airdrop constantly to detect it, and the angle it sits at when sitting on my desk... really?

I really want to know what you guys use it for because mine just really feels like expensive ewaste.

skybrian• 5 months ago

The iPad mini is great for reading books (what I bought it for) and if you don't have an iPhone, any other iOS apps you want to run. I also use Chrome a lot for general web browsing.

Also. I inherited an older, full size iPad that I plan to leave on my piano for sheet music.

godelski3• 5 months ago

For reading I've honestly found e-ink way better. Not just on the eyes (neither blinded at night nor makes me squint if I'm outside or by a window) but the UI. The iPad gets the job done but it just feels like Apple doesn't want people to be using it that way and god Fitbit if you do something the non-Apple way.

For browsing the web, yeah I think my comment reflects that experience. But I won't go to places like HN because typing is just a shitshow on iOS. Don't get me started on swipe... and how is it 2026 and there isn't a universal gesture for back?

Idk, anyone with a remarkable browse the web? How is it? I'd get one in a heartbeat but that price is outrageous

or_am_i• 5 months ago

Have owned a couple iPads starting ~2010 -- mainly for reading pdfs, and comics in electronic form. Occasionally drawing / jamming some tunes - almost all via 3rd party apps. There are still plenty of decent apps in the ecosystem, even though their eventual obsolescence is as good as built in, and a lot of stuff I previously loved the platform for has now been gone for years with no replacement. Native apps have never been great at pretty much anything, with a notable exception of Garage Band which is an absolute banger for its money. Books is... passable I guess?

But the reading pdfs part is important -- and really hard to beat for me, the iOS drag/scroll/pinch/zoom UX perceived responsiveness is still unmatched IMO. It would take some real creativity beyond liquid glass to enshittify this aspect out.

godelski3• 5 months ago

I find the last part really surprising. That seems, and feels (I do have an iPad), standard to me. But markup is, to put it lightly, fucking terrible.

I lean towards the iPad's success mostly being brand name and advertising because I've never experienced the "just works". I understand that from the non techie people, but not when talking to nerds

jadenPete• 5 months ago

Apple’s hardware teams are seriously running laps around their software teams. Which is odd, because historically, it’s been the opposite.

Until iPad OS actually becomes capable for complex work and multitasking, I can’t see what the benefit of strapping such a powerful chip to an iPad is.

NetMageSCW11• 5 months ago

iPad OS is already capable of complex work and has been capable of multitasking since it was iPhone OS v1.

bigyabai6• 5 months ago

ChromeOS is "capable of complex work" on $200 tablets. And it can compile C++, run Windows games and use full-fat web browsers.

In a head-to-head comparison with real desktops like macOS or Windows, iPadOS can be generously described as a no-show.

pixelmonkey• 5 months ago

If you were utterly confused, like I was, how the iPad Air M4 compares to the iPad Pro M5 and the iPad Pro M4, this 3-column comparison table from Apple's website might help:

https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-air-11-m4...

The quick summary:

- iPad Air has 2 stereo speakers, rather than 4 speakers as Pro models

- Touch ID in top button rather than FaceID as Pro models

- iPad Air is slightly heavier (???) than either Pro model

- screen of iPad Air is a bit less bright

- no nano-texture display option on iPad Air

- no true Thunderbolt connectivity through USB-C port on iPad Air

- all devices can use same Apple Pencil Pro...

- ... but the iPad Air takes a special Magic Keyboard (supposedly due to form factor)

- camera array is slightly different on iPad Air (no ProRes video)

TheAngush• 5 months ago

You left out IMO the biggest difference (and the only one I'd pay for): the Pro is the only iPad model with ProMotion (aka. 120Hz refresh rate).

moriero• 5 months ago

what's a computer?

jraph• 5 months ago

There's even a paragraph saying it's good for the environment. This means Apple really cares about the environment. That's good! So I suppose I can install my community OS of choice painlessly after Apple decides to stop supporting it so it doesn't turn into e-waste that day despite being perfectly good hardware for many more years?

I also suppose parts can be easily replaced without also replacing everything including the motherboard should something stop working?

Sarcasm, obviously, but until they do these things, their environment selling point is just irritating and scandalous and they should just focus on the other selling points.

NetMageSCW11• 5 months ago

Apple will repair or recycle for you.

hu32• 5 months ago

Recycling when it could run Linux after Apple stops supporting it? That would be much better for the environment.

swe_dima2• 5 months ago

Maybe my pockets are not deep enough, but I completely fail to understand the value proposition of iPad Air vs the regular iPad. If you want something powerful or big - go with Pro, if not - choose the "regular", much cheaper.

What am I missing?

gyomu3• 5 months ago

Better chip (A series vs M series), better screen (sRGB vs antireflective fully laminated P3), more options available (1TB, 13”), little qol things like a better WiFi chip.

It’s just a nicer device for a bit more money ($349 to $599). Not everyone wants to jump all the way to $999 for the Pro.

swe_dima2• 5 months ago

fair enough, thanks for elaborating

NetMageSCW11• 5 months ago

So you drive a Chevy Spark or a Mercedes Benz S-class?

journal• 5 months ago

ipad is one of those devices that doesn't need to exist, along with apple watch.

elAhmo• 5 months ago

I don't understand people complaining about Apple using ~nearly latest processor on a device refresh. What are they supposed to do, not put a year old CPU inside, use something from a decade ago?

If you are on an iPad from 5 or so years ago there, or happy with your device, sure - there is no reason to upgrade. But the very same reason that you do not have to upgrade is that Apple put a fairly powerful chip in your device a while ago that is still holding today.

It should be a common sense that these devices are for first time buyers or for users of very old devices that finally end up upgrading, and why would those people not be treated with a fairly recent internals?

sh4jid• 5 months ago

I doubt the gripe has ever been about putting the latest tech in it. It’s more about putting the latest tech in it and then having very little to actually do with it.

darkr• 5 months ago

iPad Air is a fantastic value

TIL American English treats “value” in the financial sense as a countable noun

rcarmo• 5 months ago

I just hope they update the iPad mini. That's the only model worth the money for me, at least.

yalogin• 5 months ago

iPad’s seem to be in some netherworld with no real purpose to them. They are not phones or laptops and so the main use case outside of consuming media at times is for conference room and reception kiosks?

unstatusthequo2• 5 months ago

You lay not travel much where opening a 16” MacBook Pro even in economy plus is a lean back risk and typing misery situation. iPad much better for tray table things. I have the 11” just for this purpose

batiudrami• 5 months ago

I didn’t understand iPads for years. As a half engineer half email monkey, doing work on them is still next to impossible, especially with nerfed versions of Office applications.

But, they are excellent for media consumption, particularly reading and marking up PDFs. I am able to focus while reading in a way I cannot on a computer. Procreate is amazing (drawing brushes with a pressure sensitive pen and layer/mask support all in one). Great for playing Civ on a flight. And it does all those things in a comfortable form factor while being fundamentally a pleasant device to use.

All that considered, the iPad Air is not that expensive, and it will probably last you a decade before it needs replacing.

nashashmi• 5 months ago

I am still waiting for iPad to support docking stations and multiple 2-3 monitors. Until then, they are not serious about productivity and making ipad a forst class product.

They should do the same for iPhone.

CharlesLau• 5 months ago

I think the perfect combo is a powerful Mac Mini plus a portable iPad — let macOS handle the productivity work, and just use the iPad as a big-screen AI terminal.

kristianp2• 5 months ago

So no new Macs today, but there may be 3 days of announcements in total.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/02/apples-next-launch-star...

grahar64• 5 months ago

HOMM3 on an iPad mini was peak iPad

lazycouchpotato• 5 months ago

Disappointing to see 128 GB base storage. I thought they were done with that after all the iPhone 17 models got the bump to 256 GB.

ulfw• 5 months ago

I honestly don't know why anyone would want to get this over an Honor MagicPad 4 with OLED, more storage and a less restrictive OS environment

aljgz• 5 months ago

My iPad wins by a large margin the lowest bang for bucks of any competing device I ever purchased A locked down device with no multitasking, even the browser download is interrupted if I switch away.

The true embodiment of paternalism, it protects you from all the scam in the world, except the noble ones who are willing to pay the 30% share.

gyomu3• 5 months ago

It’s 15% if you’re not a (revenue) millionaire.

bigyabai6• 5 months ago

Not automatically, you have to apply and qualify for Apple's Small Business Program: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...

It's 30% until they approve you.

mr_toad• 5 months ago

It has some multitasking on the latest versions of iOS. You can drag a YouTube window up by the bottom right corner and open a Reddit window on another part or the screen if you truly need to be distracted from distraction by distraction.

lostapathy2• 5 months ago

You're complaining about things that were changed years ago.

roysting• 5 months ago

That’s nice. Now how about Apple put some engineering resources on squashing the seemingly proliferating fundamental glitches all across their OSs.

I’ve recently started experiencing a new-to-me glitch where the Safari unibar just drops the input. Apparently, it’s been a thing that’s been around for several years though. How is it a thing to drop inputs in your browser and it’s not fixed at least 9 years later?

On a related note; that’s what always concerns me the most about things like AI and robotics, the frontier is constantly pushed, in spite of the rather major, fundamental flaws and glitches … as people are pushing AI and robotics into taking over everything.

What happens when the glitch is in the do not start Ai robot nuclear war routine?

gverrilla• 5 months ago

Yes buy an iPad and have it be laggy like a 90's computer within 2 years because of "updates".

dkrich• 5 months ago

I’ve been astonished at how bad the battery is in my base iPad I bought last year.

Granted I’m switching to it from an iPhone 17 pro max but still the thing goes from 100% to 80% overnight without being used and a 40 minute Zwift ride routinely drains 15-20%. Makes me much more reluctant to buy another as it has to be tethered to a charger.

bitsoda• 5 months ago

Does nobody care that iPadOS lost its old Split View workflow? I would never consider another iPad until it's brought back. Their multitasking story is a total mess at the moment. Hopefully Lemay can work it into iPadOS 27

New iPad Air, powered by M4

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