The most important iPad release? The thinnest version of the Pro qualitative AI device, which is equipped with the M4 chip for the first time, has a sharp increase in starting price

The Paper

2024-05-08 07:34Posted on the official account of Jiangxi Surging News

Apple's new iPad was released, but it was almost the same as the previous spoilers.

At 10 p.m. on May 7, Beijing time, Apple released a new generation of iPad product series, including iPad Pro and iPad Air, both series of products have 11-inch and 13-inch versions, of which Apple first used the latest chip M4 for iPad Pro.

As of the close of the U.S. stock market on the 7th, Apple's stock price edged up 0.38% to close at $182.4.

The new iPad Pro is powered by the M4 chip

Apple unveils the new iPad Pro

The iPad Pro series has always emphasized its professionalism and ultimate experience. The new iPad Pro features a SuperPrecise Retina XDR display, an M4 chip, AI performance, and the next-generation Apple Pencil Pro.

Apple CEO Tim Cook played up the atmosphere at the press conference and said, "This is the most important day since the iPad was introduced. ”

The iPad Pro uses a dual-layer tandem OLED technology ultra-fine retina XDR display for a better visual experience. With support for full-screen brightness of up to 1000 nits, it can present both SDR and HDR content, with HDR peak brightness of up to 1600 nits.

This time, the iPad Pro directly crossed the M3 chip and used the more powerful M4 chip, which is the first time that Apple's product line has used the M4 chip, which shows Apple's positioning and expectations for the new generation of iPad Pro products. Previously, Apple generally put new chips on the Mac product line.

Apple uses the latest M4 chip for the iPad Pro

According to Apple, the M4 is built using the second-generation 3nm chip process, which further improves energy efficiency, and the new CPU contains up to 4 high-performance cores and 6 energy-efficient cores, and uses a new generation of machine learning (ML) accelerators, compared with the M2 chip carried by the previous iPad Pro, the CPU performance can be improved by up to 1.5 times3. The M4's 10-core GPU builds on the M3 chip's GPU architecture and brings dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing to the iPad for the first time.

Compared to M2, the M4 chip can provide the same performance with half the power consumption; Compared to the latest chips in thin and light laptops, the M4 chip can achieve the same performance at 1/4 power consumption.

As the consumer electronics industry continues to emphasize the AI performance of devices, Apple, which rarely directly mentions AI devices in the past, has also characterized the iPad Pro as an "AI device" this time.

The M4 chip integrates Apple's most powerful Neural Engine to date, delivering up to 38 trillion operations per second, up to 60 times faster than the original Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip.

According to Apple, the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip uses Apple's most powerful neural engine to date, which can perform up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60 times faster than the first Apple neural engine used in the A11 Bionic chip. The new iPad Pro is undoubtedly a powerful AI device that can further speed up all kinds of AI tasks.

It's worth noting that the 11-inch iPad Pro is only 5.3mm thick, and the 13-inch iPad Pro is only 5.1mm thick, making it Apple's thinnest product to date.

The performance is strong, and the price is indeed expensive. The iPad Pro has an entry-level storage capacity of 256G, and the price of the 11-inch version starts at 8999 yuan, and the price of the 13-inch version starts at 11499 yuan. Compared with the previous generation of products, the price has increased by 2,200 yuan.

Apple has released the new iPad Air

The iPad Air product line introduces the new 11-inch and new 13-inch iPad Air with M2 chip. This is the first time that the iPad Air family is available in two sizes, with the 13-inch model offering more display area for work, learning and play. This time, the storage capacity of iPad Air has been increased to 128G, and the 11-inch model starts at 4799 yuan, and the 13-inch model starts at 6499 yuan.

iPad is expected to grow in the second quarter

The capital market reacted calmly to Apple's iPad product line update. As of press time, Apple's stock price edged up 0.5%.

A few days ago, in Apple's second-quarter earnings call with analysts, Apple's chief financial officer Luca Maestri said that the company expects double-digit year-on-year growth in iPad sales in the current quarter (ending June).

Since the product line has not been updated for two years, Apple's iPad is indeed feeling the pressure of declining sales. According to Canalys statistics, in the first quarter of 2024, Apple ranked first with about 12 million shipments, accounting for 35.6% of the market share, but down 13.9% from the previous year's 41.8% share.

Cook also warmed up at the press conference for next month's developer conference, where he said he would discuss the future of Apple's platforms.

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