Jin Lei's West Wind comes from the Au Fei Temple
Quantum Position | 公众号 QbitAI
Just now, Apple offered the strongest tablet on the surface -
采用M4芯片的iPad Pro！
Not only does it skip the M3 directly, but it also breaks the tradition of the new M-series chips being debuted by MacBook:
How strong?
Let's start with the performance, compared to the previous generation iPad Pro:
- The speed is 4 times faster overall
- With the same performance as M2, M4 consumes only half the power
What's even more explosive is that Apple has also directly had a battle between the iPad Pro and the latest thin and light notebooks this time - under the same performance situation, the power consumption of the M4 is only a quarter of it.
And Apple has emphasized the ultimate AI performance brought by the M4 chip this time, in official terms:
Stronger than any neural engine of any AI PC today!
For example, to clear the background of a 4K video, it is a one-click thing on the iPad Pro:
In addition to the M4 chip, the previously rumored iPad Pro is going to introduce OLED for the first time, and this time it is half the bet.
Because Apple has developed a new display technology, Tandem OLED: using two OLEDs and combining the light from the panel to make the brightness of the full screen to the next level.
Based on this, Apple also debuted the Ultra Retina XDR display, which supports up to 1000 nits of full-screen brightness and up to 1600 nits of HDR peak brightness.
In terms of appearance, the iPad Pro has two sizes this time, which are 11 inches and 13 inches.
And one of the major features of this time is that it is thin! It is the thinnest product in Apple's history, and the two sizes correspond to 5.3mm and 5.1mm (yes, the larger ones are thinner).
Finally, it is the price that the family is most concerned about, and the domestic official website has been released:
- 11-inch iPad Pro: 8999 yuan, the top configuration is only 19999 yuan.
- 13-inch iPad Pro: 11499 yuan, the top configuration is only 22499 yuan.
To sum up, in Cook's words:
Today is the most important day since the launch of the iPad.
Of course, there are also netizens who have begun to yin and yang......
△ Source: Guoke comment area
But that's just the corner of the conference, let's take a closer look at the killer features behind the strongest tablet on the surface.
Apple's strongest chip, M4
As the blockbuster of the conference, the M4 chip equipped with the iPad Pro is built on the second-generation 3nm process, containing 28 billion transistors, and the unified memory bandwidth reaches 120GB/s.
The latest CPUs are based on the next-generation GPU architecture that debuted on the M3, with up to 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, all equipped with next-generation machine learning accelerators.
In terms of speed, compared with the M2 of the previous generation iPad Pro, it is up to 50% faster.
In terms of GPU, it adopts a new generation of 10-core GPU architecture, which has the power of dynamic caching, and moves the support for hardware-accelerated mesh coloring and ray tracing to the iPad for the first time.
Playing games like Diablo Immortal feels up up:
In terms of speed, it is up to 4 times faster than the M2.
The key is that while the architecture and performance are greatly improved, the M4 consumes only half the energy of the M2 with the same performance.
Compared to the new generation of PC chips for thin and light notebooks, the M4 only needs a quarter of its power consumption to provide the same performance.
In addition, the M4 chip also has a bright spot - AI attributes are full.
First of all, it is equipped with Apple's most powerful neural engine to date, also known as NPU in the industry. The new Neural Engine is designed with 16 cores as an IP module on the M4 and is designed to accelerate a wide range of AI tasks.
The speed of operations can reach 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60 times faster than the first neural network engine on Apple's A11 Bionic chip.
Coupled with the aforementioned CPUs' next-generation machine learning accelerators, high-performance GPUs, and more memory bandwidth, the Neural Engine fills the M4 buff with a stack.
In the official words, "the M4's neural engine is powerful enough to outperform today's AI PCs."
The following is a summary review of the M4 chip functions:
In addition to the chip, Apple also has new moves in the accessories of the iPad.
Apple Pencil和妙控键盘也升级
On the pen that goes with the iPad, Apple has released the latest Apple Pencil Pro.
Built into the pen, the new sensor senses the user's pinch gesture and instantly calls up the tool dial, allowing users to quickly switch between tools, adjust line thickness and color, and continue their creative activities seamlessly.
The built-in custom haptic engine provides a very natural feel with subtle feedback that confirms the user's pinch, tap, or docking with a smart shape.
The addition of a gyroscope allows users to precisely control the tool they are currently using by rotating the Apple Pencil Pro, while turning the pen body changes the direction of the brush as if they were using real paper and pen.
In addition, Apple Pencil's hover feature allows users to preview the direction of the brush before the pen lands on the paper, making it more intuitive to use.
In fact, the upgrade of Apple Pencil, Apple spoiled before the press conference, and the logo in the home page can be erased with a finger or Apple Pencil, which is detailed enough.
In terms of price, it is only 999 yuan.
In addition to this, the Magic Keyboard has also been upgraded.
The new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro continues the popular floating design and adds a full row of shortcut function keys to make it easier for users to adjust settings such as screen brightness and volume.
The keyboard also includes a beautiful aluminium palm rest and a larger trackpad with haptic feedback that makes it more responsive and feels like you're using a MacBook.
With magnetic attachment technology, Magic Keyboard connects directly to iPad Pro, providing instant connection to power and data without the need for Bluetooth. The aluminium hinged part of the keyboard is also equipped with a USB-C port for charging.
The new Magic Keyboard is available in two colors: black with space black aluminum palm rest and white with silver aluminum palm rest.
The new Smart Folio Clip for iPad Pro uses magnetic attachment to support a variety of viewing angles for greater flexibility. In terms of colors, it is available in black, white and denim.
In terms of price, judging from the current official website, the magic keyboard is sold at 2399 yuan, and the double-sided clamp of the magic keyboard is sold at 1999 yuan.
There is also the iPad Air
One of the highlights of the iPad Air is the first ever release of two sizes: the original 11-inch and the larger 13-inch, which are benchmarked against the iPad Pro.
In addition, the iPad Air front camera is also landscape-oriented, and it features landscape stereo speakers that support spatial audio. The 13-inch model also has twice the bass effect for better sound quality.
There are four colors, new blue, purple, as well as starlight and space gray; The housing material is 100% recycled aluminium.
In terms of chips, M4 is not used, but M2 is continued.
Overall, it is nearly 50% faster than M1. Specifically, the CPU speed is 15% faster, the GPU is 25% faster, and the Neural Engine is 40% faster.
Compared to the iPad Air with the A4 Bionic chip, the performance is up to 3 times higher.
Judging from the current price, the 11-inch iPad Air is sold at 4799 yuan; The 11-inch iPad Air starts at 6499 yuan.
The overall configuration of the iPad Air is as follows:
One More Thing
Just before the press conference, some netizens wanted to use Musk's xAI's Grok to summarize the hot topics on X (formerly Twitter), but they didn't expect the AI to directly hallucinate and make up the content of the entire press conference.
AI Imagined Launch:
Apple will unveil its new iPads, including the OLED iPad Pro and iPad Air, at the May 7 event, sparking excitement among tech enthusiasts around the world.
In hindsight, the content of the release is basically correct.
Reference Links:
[1]https://www.apple.com.cn/
[2]https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1787553324243259718
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