Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has long pegged the next big iPad Pro update for 2024, and in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter, he elaborates on a few details that will make it the “first major update to the product since 2018."
While Gurman describes recent iPad upgrades as “especially minor as of late," next year’s iPad Pro will apparently bring four big changes to the table.
OLED iPad Pro finally coming
The first has actually been highlighted before, with Gurman suggesting that 2024 would be the year of the OLED iPad Pro back in January.
Nonetheless, the introduction of OLED screen technology would be a significant improvement on the current mini-LED tech in the 12.9-inch model, with Gurman saying the panels should be “crisper and brighter” and “reproduce colors more accurately.”
This change in screen tech will apparently be accompanied by a small increase in size to the top-end model. Expect the tablets to be available in 11 and 13-inch sizes: no change on the former, but a 0.1-inch increase for the latter.
Both of these changes were previously predicted by display analyst Ross Young. But confirmation from two sources with solid track records makes the changes feel that bit more likely to be fully nailed on.
M3 chip power
The next improvement is the shift to the next-generation M3 chip. This hasn’t actually appeared in any Apple hardware yet, but the expectation is that it’ll arrive in new Macs debuting in October (a date Gurman mentions again in this latest newsletter).
In any case, the M3 chip is set to be manufactured to TSMC’s 3nm process, which should mean big improvements to efficiency as well as speed. The current 2022 iPad Pro is no slouch with its M2 processor, but this could be a significant advance. We’ll know how big once the M3 MacBooks emerge for benchmarking.
New Magic keyboard
The final change could be the biggest for those who want their iPad to be a surrogate laptop. Gurman says that Apple is set to revamp the Magic Keyboard, making “the iPad Pro look even more like a laptop than the current setup” while adding a “larger trackpad."
Gurman predicts that these changes will combine to give iPad sales a much-needed shot in the arm (“the iPad category — really the whole tablet market — is in a deep funk right now,” he writes).
He predicts the new-look iPad Pro will be announced in spring or summer, 2024 — and he doesn’t believe we’ll see “anything other than minor updates to the company’s other tablets before then.” So even if the iPad mini 7 does make a surprise appearance alongside the iPhone 15 next month at the Apple event, you shouldn’t expect anything revolutionary.
