The MacRumors Show: M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air Are Finally Here!

Silly me, based on the headline I thought this would be a video comparing the Pro and the Air side by side and discussing the actual differences.
Skip.

The rumor of Vision Pro support for the Pencil was alongside a rumor that it would optionally charge by USB-C. Otherwise how is a Vision Pro owner supposed to charge it?

Place it on the top like eyebrows, and it will charge via previously unnoticed coils in the AVP. ;)

@Dan Barbera @Hartley: According to Federico Veticci from MacStories, the iPad nano-texture uses a new chemical process and is smooth like the regular glossy display (no paper-like friction effect):

“According to Apple, they’re using a new chemical process to alter the glass with nano textures, which ensures the display keeps the same properties as the glossy one – same brightness, same contrast. […] What I wasn’t expecting when I grabbed the iPad Pro with the nano-texture display was that the display felt as smooth as the regular glossy one. […] If you were expecting this matte option to feel rough like paper, this is not it”.

(https://www.macstories.net/stories/thoughts-and-first-impressions-on-the-new-ipad-pros-from-apples-event-in-london/)

Firstly, love your show and really enjoy your discussions! So, I’m a longtime Apple devotee and my first Mac was the Mac Plus. I’m old enough to have a .mac email address! lol. I’ve also had nearly every iPad model since it’s reLease. Funny story about that, when the first gen iPad was actually delivered it was the day my second son was born. I saw that it had been delivered to my house and I had to run home to “take care of our dog”. I came back to the hospital with the iPad and the family was there to see the baby. Looking back I feel a little guilty that the iPad took attention away from my son but it sure did! One thing that I always find interesting is that people always want it to be a Mac. I’ve seen the Mac go through all of its evolutions and like iPadOS, it was far from perfect for a very long time. And it isn’t now either. But it is more mature because it’s had decades to get there. To your point, I believe iPadOs will get there too. I haven’t fought what the iPad is. It’s not a Mac and should never be one. It truly may not serve everyone’s workflow ever and that’s ok. No computing device does. And software takes time to grow up. Look at Apple Maps. A mess when it came out and everyone expected it to be Google Maps right away. Well flash forward several years and it’s pretty much the go to for the vast majority of Apple users. iPadOS is going to get there, but differently than MacOS, and that’s perfectly ok. Frankly, when I use my Macbook Pro now it feels dated. Sure, it does some things better. So does the iPad, and again to your point, look at how much more the iPad now does. Oh, and one of those things that is vastly important is that it has a cellular radio! I work in finance and use a PC a lot for it, but also my iPad for most of it as well. In fact, I’m trading in my M1 14” MacBook Pro for the new iPad Pro. I don’t want or expect it to be a Mac and honestly, Apple has never claimed it was or that it would be.

Finally here? We didn't really know they were coming in the first place (other than rumours). Maybe it should have read "The MacRumors Show: M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air Are Here!"

Putting a M-series into an iPad is like putting a Porsche engine into a Lada.

Apple is still trying to convince us that the device supplants a laptop, yet it's OS and the limitations that affords to any apps (and the connectivity issues with peripherals) tells us quite another story.
You would have thought the crash and burn of their "What's a computer?" ad campaign from a few years back would have informed them of this.
Regardless of M-series guts, the iPad remains an oversexed iPhone.

Meanwhile, they seem determined to dumb down their MacOS to match this. Definitely not taking advantage of the capabilities or of user's needs.

I think with the hardware they have now.. they really need to pull off something special with the next version of iPad OS. Certainly for the iPad Pro.

Unlikely they will have full Mac OS anytime soon on iPad (there could always be a surprise), but given the power of iPads hardware (even back to A12, even say A9 despite RAM limitations, where iPads essentially became as powerful as regular laptops), a lite version of Mac OS or a Samsung DeX is certainly technically possible, and something that they are likely to have worked on. I think Stage Manager is part of that journey.