Apple held a press conference a few days ago and finally updated its iPad series product line after a year.
At this conference, the tablet product lines including the iPad Air and iPad Pro series have been updated. Apple has lowered the prices of the iPad digital series products, while the iPad mini series has not been updated for nearly 4 years.
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The new iPad Air series has been upgraded to the M2 series chip, adding two new colors and a 13-inch model. more importantly,The standard storage space of the new iPad Air series has finally reached 128GB, which has been 64GB before.
The highlight of this conference is the iPad Pro series product line.
The 2024 iPad Pro uses the latest M4 chip, which is based on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process technology.
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Apple demonstrated a number of AI-assisted creative functions brought by the M4 chip, such as simulating studio mixing effects in Logic Pro 2 and one-click video cutout processing.
Taking advantage of the M4 chip, iPad Pro turns to OLED large screen
Judging from the information released at the press conference, the biggest changes in the appearance design of the new iPad Pro are two points: first, the weight of both models is reduced by 1/4, the thickness is reduced to be thinner than Apple’s classic music player iPod, and the The original camera position has been moved to the other side to better suit the iPad Pro's horizontal position. Apple has also updated the Magic Keyboard, a keyboard accessory with a new layout, adding a row of function control keys to the numeric keys. The overall shape of the iPad Pro is closer to that of a MacBook laptop.
It is worth noting that the core chip of iPad Pro directly skips the M3 chip, and instead is equipped with a new generation of M4 chip.
This chip is based on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process technology and integrates a total of 28 billion transistors. It has 4 performance cores and 6 energy-efficiency cores. The CPU running speed is 50% higher than the M2 chip on the previous generation iPad Pro. %, rendering efficiency increased by 4 times.
It is understood that the iPad Pro equipped with the M4 chip has hardware-accelerated ray tracing capabilities, and can also realize functions such as real-time generation of subtitles based on audio content, recognition of objects in videos and photos, and image query. In the StaffPad application, iPad Pro can automatically generate musical scores in real time during piano playing.
Apple said,Compared with the latest chips installed in thin and light AIPC laptops, the M4 chip only consumes 1/4 of the power to achieve the same performance.
In addition, Apple also gave up mini LED display technology on the new iPad Pro and fully embraced OLED screens.
It is understood that mini LED relies on backlight modules to complete the display, but the mini LED lamp beads are very small in size and can control light in zones and increase screen brightness.
However, when displaying a black background, the mini LED screen cannot display black by turning off independent pixels like the iPhone does.When users read an article on iPad Pro, they will see a halo effect around the text in dark mode.
However, although the OLED screen has good display effects, it will face the problem of screen burn-in. The new iPad Pro uses a new series-stacked OLED technology, which has two emission layers. Compared with a single-layer OLED panel, the screen brightness of the double-layer structure panel can be expanded by 2 times and the service life can be extended by 4 times.
In addition, the double-layer series OLED display can reduce power consumption by about 30%, which means that the device can be equipped with a battery with a smaller capacity, which is also the key to the iPad Pro's ability to slim down the body.
It is reported that currently the only manufacturers that have mastered dual-stack series OLED production technology are Samsung, LG and BOE. Among them, BOE’s dual-stack series OLED screen has been used in the Honor Magic6 series products, which is also the first manufacturer of this screen in the industry.
Targeting professional creators, Apple demonstrates iPad Pro’s AI potential
In order to demonstrate the application scenarios and performance improvements of iPad Pro, Apple repeatedly mentioned and demonstrated the performance of M4 in handling AI tasks at the press conference.
It is worth noting that Apple still defines iPad Pro as a portable tool for creative workers, and intends to make iPad Pro capable of taking on more complex and heavy tasks.
The two iterations of video and audio creation software, Final Cut Pro 2 and Logic Pro2, have more features that are different from the Mac desktop version.
Taking Final Cut Pro as an example, reporters from Cailian News learned that in the past, more film and television industry practitioners used iPad Pro to filter materials and rough cut videos. This time Final Cut Pro2 introduces real-time multi-camera preview function.
Users can operate personal devices or collaborate with others to capture the same scene from up to four different angles. The real-time multi-camera function is wirelessly connected through the new Final Cut Camera video shooting app.Users can view the shooting footage of up to four iPhone or iPad devices and monitor each camera position in real time from the director’s perspective.
In order to support the real-time multi-camera function of Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad, Apple has developed Final Cut Camera, a standalone application for iPad and iPhone.
In Logic Pro 2, iPad Pro can not only split the mixed audio into four tracks of drums, bass, vocals and other instruments, but also simulate a series of world-renowned recording studio hardware through AI algorithms and M4 chips. Mixing the produced sounds helps users create different styles of music works.
Apple is not the only one targeting professional users. Huawei has also officially announced that it will hold a new product launch conference in Dubai on the same day as Apple releases its new iPad series (May 7). It is reported that Huawei will officially release the new MatePad tablet at this conference, targeting creative content workers.
Previously, on April 29, Huawei’s official account started the warm-up of the self-developed painting software “Tian Shen Hua”. It is reported that the software is created by Huawei's professional team and will bring a rich set of brushes and a variety of smart and convenient functions to achieve real and vivid painting effects, allowing users to complete their creations efficiently and simply.
According to Canalys data, in the global tablet market in the first quarter of 2024, Apple ranked first with 12 million units shipped, accounting for 36% of the market share; Samsung ranked second, shipping 6.8 million units. Thanks to demand from China's domestic market and the Asia-Pacific region, Huawei ranked third for two consecutive quarters, with shipments reaching 2.7 million units, a year-on-year increase of 70%.