by Joe Lonergan

Overview

On Tuesday the 7th of May Apple held an event to release their new range of iPads and accessories. It was one of their shorter launch events coming in at just under 40 minutes long. The event included an audio description, so it was an inclusive and enjoyable watch for anyone with a vision impairment. They packed quite a lot in that 40 minutes. Read on below for the relevant highlights.

Introducing the new iPad Pro

Apple unveiled new versions of the iPad Pro and iPad Air along with a new Magic keyboard and an Apple Pencil Pro.

Apple has unveiled its next-generation iPad Pro lineup featuring the powerful new M4 chip, improved ultra retina displays, and a bigger 13-inch version. Some big changes in the display as it now uses tandem OLED technology stacking two OLED panels together to enable a bright viewing experience of up to 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. There is an option for users to upgrade to the new nano-texture glass version to further enhance visibility by reducing glare. The iPad Pro is now powered by Apple’s M4 chip which Apple claims is 60 times faster than the A11 bionic chip for neural engine operations and is up to 1.5 times faster CPU speeds than the M2 chip. This is more powerful than most laptops out there at the moment. Apple mentioned AI numerous times which is a first for them, so we imagine the M4 chip will be taking advantage of all the great uses AI has to offer.

Enhancements in Camera Technology

Both cameras on the iPad Pro have received some enhanced features which we found interesting. The rear camera system now offers improved Smart HDR, better textures and low light performance, and a new adaptive True Tone flash for document scanning. We can imagine OCR app developers will be all over this to improve document scanning such as reading post, receipts even reading a book or magazine. Using AI, the rear camera can detect if there is a shadow on the document you are scanning and will take multiple pictures and mash them into one great picture to give you a better result.

The front-facing camera has been located in landscape mode for those times you are using a magic keyboard and joining video calls. This is a great feature alongside the already useful Centre Stage especially good for us who have no vision or low vision and want to appear in the centre of the view of the camera.

The new iPad Pro range will come in 11 and 13-inch options and will have a base option of 256GB storage all the way up to 2TB. Both options will be available in either silver or space black. The new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models are Apple’s thinnest products ever at just 5.3mm and 5.1mm, respectively. Apple said it is as slim as the famous iPod Nanno. Does anyone remember those, one of the first accessible MP3 players? The 11-inch iPad Pro weighs less than a pound and the 13-inch model doesn’t weigh much more.

The iPad Pro starts from €1,229

The new iPad Air announced

Moving on from the iPad Pro, fans of the iPad Air also got some good news. The iPad Air has now two new options an 11-inch and a 13-inch screen, the first time the Air has become available with a different size screen. The new iPad Air has now been given a significant performance boost with the addition of the Apple M2 chip. Apple says that this will provide up to 50% faster CPU performance than the previous model. For artificial intelligence capabilities, Apple touts the M2’s 16-core Neural Engine as delivering up to 40% faster machine learning performance versus the M1. The front-facing camera has also got an upgrade, it is now also in landscape mode for use with video calls and The new iPad Air can now connect to a magic keyboard.

However, the new iPad Air does not support the new Magic Keyboard. Instead, the existing Magic Keyboard and Smart Folio cases will be available for both iPad Air sizes. I was not fully sure if this was the case while watching the event.

Base storage of the iPad Air has been increased to 128GB and users can order one up to 1 TB in size.  There are four colour options – blue, purple, starlight, and space Gray.

The new iPad Air starts from €729

Some sad news for those of us who love the home button, Apple has announced the iPad 9th Gen is discontinued, the final iPad with a home button.

But in good news, they have reduced the price of the iPad 10th Generation for the regular iPad user a powerful product in its own right. The new price starts from €449.

Accessories and Updates

Apple also announced updates to its popular iPad accessories. There is a new Magic keyboard, it wasn’t covered in detail, but it is thinner and features an aluminum palm rest with haptic trackpad and function key row. and will suit the new iPad Pro models.

Apple also released the new Apple pencil Pro. The Apple Pencil Pro adds touch gestures like squeeze controls, haptic feedback, gyroscopic orientation sensing, and a magnetic charging/storage solution. Who knows what possibilities this will bring especially for low vision users or those with sensory issues?

Final Thoughts and Expectations

In summary, it was an interesting event with some notable announcements, In our opinion the increase in size for the iPad Air models to 13 inches will get a lot of interest from low-vision users and the new M4 chip and screen size of the iPad Pro models will gain a lot of traction for power users.

But we reckon it is good to wait until the WWDC conference next month when Apple is expected to announce their new AI features and possibly some new accessibility options which will gain extra power from the M2 and M4 chips. Some of the AI features may need special system requirements, and this could affect your decision to upgrade to one of the newer iPads.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the Apple Let Loose event, you can send a voice note to the Talking Technology podcast WhatsApp number, 0861990011.