OPINION : Much to everybody ’s surprise , Apple plunge not one but two refreshed members of the iPad family with the iPad 11 and iPad Air M3 this week . Well , it ’s technically three if you factor the 11- and 13 - inch iPad Air framework one by one , but who ’s counting ?
sacrifice the monumental designing refresh that come with last year’siPad Air M2 , it should come as no surprisal that the updated iPad Air M3 is precisely that – a saltation from the Apple M2 to the Apple M3 , with very few strong-arm changes elsewhere .
In fact , that ’s broadly the same story with the entry - level iPad , jumping from the A14 Bionic within theiPad 10to the A16 Bionic with the iPad 11 for an added boost in processing power .
These are large updates for anyone cull up an iPad or iPad Air correctly now , offer more power under the hood than they would have had just a week ago , but Apple has missed a monolithic opportunity with this hebdomad ’s discharge .
The current state of Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligenceis undoubtedly Apple ’s big get-up-and-go for this yr ; after a patched rollout on theiPhone 16collection , the technical school is now usable in various rural area including the UK and US , with realm like the EU gear up to gain approach in the coming calendar month .
I ’m not go to stand here and say that Apple Intelligence is the best thing to materialise since sliced bread ; it is n’t .
It can be very ready to hand at time , whether you want to remove something from a photo , ask ChatGPT a question via Siri ( because Siri itself is still useless ) or record and transliterate an important phone call , but I ca n’t say that it has changed the way of life that I basically expend my iPhone .
Maybe it has for some hoi polloi , but I doubt it given that 73 % of respondents in arecent surveyabout Apple Intelligence state that the new features are either ‘ not very worthful ’ or ‘ add little to no value ’ to the experience .
pop view aside , if Apple want its take on AI to succeed , it needs to be omnipresent across its entire product range .
It indeed looks like Apple is work towards reaching that destination ; the AI technical school is now available on almost every iPhone that Apple sell , admit the recent mid - rangeiPhone 16e , and the same can be tell for every undivided random variable of Mac on Apple ’s online storefront .
It bet like the iPad mountain chain was go to surveil suit ; soon after the discharge of Apple Intelligence , Apple updated theiPad Mini – one of two iPads without Apple Intelligence – with an A17 Pro chipset that allowed it to offer the technical school .
That provide the iPad 10 as the only iPad to not offer the AI smarts – something you ’d imagine Apple would be quick to amend . That was the premise anyway , but with the release of this week ’s iPad 11 , it ’s clear that is n’t the typeface .
Apple Intelligence could’ve been ubiquitous on iPad
It all come down to the chipset of alternative within the iPad 11 : the A16 Bionic . While it offers a fairly significant 30 % encouragement to processing tycoon compared to the A14 Bionic within the iPad 10 , it just falls short of supporting Apple Intelligence , which requires the A17 Pro at lower limit .
I imagine Apple feel it could n’t put the same chipset as the more premium iPad mini in the entrance - level iPad as it could cannibalise sales of the former . However , give the distinct objective of each lozenge – one bid a ‘ regular ’ tablet experience while the other delivers something far more compact and portable – I ’d argue that this probably would n’t have been the case .
I concede that it would be harder to excuse the iPad Mini ’s £ 499 toll ticket , but that says more about Apple ’s pricing structure than anything else .
disregardless of the think unconscious process behind the decision , it now means that the Apple Intelligence rollout wo n’t be truly complete until the iPad 12 come out , belike sometime in 2026 if not early 2027 . That finger like a massive misstep from a ship’s company that ’s usually quite calculated in how it loose its products .
