The new iPad Pro was introduced at Apple’s “Spring Loaded” event, and it packs more power than ever before. While it maintained generally the same thin chassis as previous models, Apple was able to add new features like the Liquid Retina XDR display sporting some ridiculous specs like 1000nits of brightness or 5G connectivity. But interestingly, Apple added their powerful M1 chip to the iPad Pro. That’s the same chip that is inside the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. That leaves many consumers with a simple question: what’s the purpose of all that power?
Vertical Integration
Putting the M1 chip inside of the iPad Pro could be a supply-chain move for Apple. The A12Z was put inside the iPad Pro 2020 and was subsequently used in the Mac mini DTK (developer transition kit) for developers transitioning their apps to Apple Silicon. Meaning, the last A-series iPad Pro chip was the first chip shipped by Apple that ran macOS, before M1. The architecture of M1 is based on the A14 architecture, so the M1 may have been expected work well inside of an iPad. Many expected an A14X chip, which could have been a slightly smaller or more energy efficient chip with less RAM than the M1. Instead, Apple plopped the entire SoC inside.
If Apple added the M1 to iPad Pro for this reason alone, the 8GB and 16GB RAM offerings may be because the iPad can handle it, and it simplifies manufacturing. Apple is all about vertical integration, and the M1 chip is powerful enough to work in a variety of devices and settings. The M1 chip was deployed in several Macs in a variety of form factors because the power it offers is substantial considering the efficiency. Being able to manufacture large numbers of the same M1 chip and deploy at scale in many devices at once allows Apple to achieve better scale and, ideally, high profits. By this reasoning, it’s possible Apple isn’t planning to develop pro-level software like Logic Pro or Final Cut for iPad Pro. Instead, this could have been a move to offer ridiculous power in an iPad and hope that developers could make good use of it.
What’s a Computer?
Apple has long positioned the iPad as a device that isn’t a computer, while selling accessories like the Magic Keyboard to give it the inputs and functionality like a computer. It’s a device positioned to do many creative-oriented tasks like video production, music production, photo editing, and drawing. Many forms of input, like touch, Apple Pencil, mouse/trackpad, and keyboard are supported on the iPad. The additional power offered by the M1 chip provides faster processing for these tasks.
The problem is, because of iPad’s use of iOS and the App Store, there aren’t many apps built to take advantage of the power the iPad Pro has offered even with the A12X or A12Z chips. Additionally, only the highest end iPad offers Mac-level processing. The iPad Air offers A14 Bionic chip, which is the same chip inside of the iPhone 12. Meanwhile, the 8th-generation iPad has the A12 Bionic chip, which is the chip that originally shipped in the iPhone XS. A limitation on iPads previously was that apps could only use up to 5GB of RAM, although this is no longer the case with the new M1-powered iPad Pros. These computational limitations exist for the majority of the iPad lineup, with the exception of the 2021 iPad Pro.
Software is typically developed to include the widest market possible. If the iPad Pro is the only iPad that supports demanding processing tasks, or tasks that require a lot of memory, pro apps won’t be developed with only the iPad in mind. The market of people who own an iPad Pro is a substantially smaller market than the iPad market overall, and dwarfed by Apple’s Mac lineup. On the Mac side, they ship devices from laptops to desktops to the fastest, most powerful device Apple makes - the Mac Pro. When companies consider developing for Apple hardware, they will develop software for the Mac, with little incentive to develop for a market the size of the iPad Pro.
Apple’s goal, then, is to make the iPad Pro worth developing for.
Shared Platform Code
Because Apple now shares the same Apple Silicon architecture between all their devices, it makes it easier for code to be written once and deployed everywhere. They also introduced Catalyst, a framework for developers to easily make iPad apps into Mac apps. If a company takes the time to develop pro-level software for the iPad Pro, they can deploy the same software at scale on macOS to take advantage of the desktop-level processing. The hardware is finally there, and by Apple enabling write-once deploy-anywhere code between macOS and iPadOS, their goal to make the iPad a device that can carry most professional workloads becomes more of a reality. They can do this while iPad continues to excel at offering a range of inputs like touch or pencil in a lightweight form factor.
This all isn’t to say the M1 is useless inside of an iPad right now. Vector-based image editing suites software like Affinity Designer can reap huge benefits from being able to zoom in and out of large, multilayered images effortlessly. Movie creator LumaFusion benefits more streams of high-quality video simultaneously. The hope is that Apple creates more desktop-like libraries and cross-platform support to encourage wider adoption from established industry software, including Apple’s own pro suite.
With two weeks left to go towards WWDC, we’ll see if Apple has finally created the pro level software we’ve been hoping for. With iPadOS 15, it will also be interesting to see if Apple expands their Catalyst APIs and adds new desktop-level APIs. I’m hoping they are going to continue to make it easy to bring an iPad app to the Mac, and vice-versa. I’m excited to see what they announce on June 7th!