Why Apple is DITCHING the 11" iPad Pro: Leaks Explained! By Max Tech

Alright so you probably think that I’m completely nuts because of that title, but there’s a very real chance that Apple could be ditching the 11” iPad Pro for next year’s update, and instead just releasing a larger, more expensive 12.9” iPad Pro model with a bunch of massive upgrades. So what I’m gonna do is go through a bunch of leaks that point to this actually being a possibility, and then I’m gonna talk about why it actually makes sense for Apple to ditch the 11” iPad Pro model, and then I’ll finish off by discussing some of the features we should expect in the 12.9” iPad Pro and when we should expect it to be released next year. So let’s get started with some leaks that go all the way back to December of 2019 when Ming Chi Kuo said that a new 12.9” iPad Pro with a Mini-LED display would be coming in the second half of 2020. And then in March of 2020, Ming added more Apple devices to the list of products getting Mini-LED displays later in 2020. That obviously didn’t happen because COVID 19 caused massive delays, pushing back all of the Mini-LED device rumors into 2021. Now what’s interesting about all of those rumors is that the 11” iPad Pro is nowhere to be seen, which is really odd because Apple has recently been updating both sizes at the same time.

And then once again, in September, he released another note, yet again ignoring the 11” model. And most recently, just a couple of days ago, he mentioned that the 12.9” iPad Pro with a Mini-LED display will launch in the first quarter of 2021, pointing to a release this March.. But yet again.. No mention of the 11”. This instantly caused multiple macrumors users to suspect that Apple is in fact not releasing an 11” iPad Pro alongside the new 12.9” model next year. I also saw a couple of reddit posts with users wondering the same thing, will Apple discontinue the 11” iPad Pro and just keep the larger 12.9” model? Well, I did a bit more digging and found a couple of other interesting leaks. Fudge, a leaker with over 90% accuracy, said on June 2nd that iPad Pros with an A14X chip will be coming, basically pointing at two different sizes.

Right after that, LovetoDream, with an 89% accuracy rating, retweeted Fudge’s tweet and added that they’ll get a mini LED display and a 5G modem, and then he retweeted again stating that they’re coming either in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2021, but one thing to note is that he didn’t correct Fudge in terms of whether there will be two or just one iPad Pro model. So in reality, there’s a chance that the 11” iPad Pro could be sticking around. Maybe we’ll only see a 12.9” iPad Pro in March, and then maybe later in 2021, Apple will update the 11” model, but I personally find that a bit hard to believe that they’d split up the release dates unless they make some major changes. In my personal opinion, if Apple does end up only releasing a 12.9” iPad Pro in March, then the 11” model is dead for good, but in that case, they could be planning to update the iPad Pro at a later date with a larger display, maybe 11.5” instead of 11. This would allow them to raise the base price, especially if they add more features.

This would also allow them to create a larger magic keyboard case with a more comfortable keyboard instead of the current scrunched down version. They might actually release the 2nd generation of the Magic Keyboard alongside that new 11.5” iPad Pro model, which will further boost sales of that new iPad Pro. On top of that, IF Apple releases only one 12.9” iPad Pro in March, this would allow Apple to make a lot of money thanks to the higher base price of $999 and the massive wave of hype due to it being the first Apple product to come with a mini-LED display, and also thanks to the super powerful A14X chip. Essentially, a lot of people will be upgrading to this new iPad Pro, even if they would’ve preferred a smaller 11” display. And then at a later date, maybe even a year and a half later, Apple would release the 11.5” iPad Pro, allowing them to bump up the base price of that model. Now with all of that out of the way, I want to talk about the other reason why it would actually make sense for Apple to ditch the 11” iPad Pro model.

The #1 reason is because Apple’s new iPad Air 4 is extremely similar to the 11” iPad Pro. From the front, you can’t even tell them apart, and on the back, the only noticeable difference is the camera bump. Because of that, Apple desperately tried to make the Pro seem better than the Air. They even went as far as making the Air’s display 10.9” to make the 11” Pro seem just a bit better. They even invested hugely into putting Touch ID into the power button instead of simply giving it Face ID which would’ve been a less expensive option.

The Air has four speaker grilles but they only put in two speakers, just to make the Pro seem better with it’s quad-speakers. It’s completely obvious that Apple tried very hard to make the Pro seem more premium, and even still, many users are going for the new iPad Air 4 because it looks basically the same, and the performance is almost on par. Because of that, it totally makes sense for Apple to ditch the 11” iPad Pro and come back stronger with a new 11.5” or larger model with new features and upgrades so that they can bump up the base price. That would definitely help differentiate the Air and Pro and make the whole iPad lineup make a lot more sense. Now I want to finally get into the 12.9” model and what we should expect from it. FIrst off, it’s rumored to be the very first Apple product to come with the new Mini-LED display, and that alone will generate massive hype and extra sales.

If you’re not familiar with Mini-LED tech, it basically works like Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Instead of having one large LED backlight like all of Apple’s current iPad and Mac Displays use, Mini-LED uses Hundreds or thousands of LEDs that light up locally controlled dimming zones to offer excellent contrast and colors, similar to an OLED display, but without all of its drawbacks. Mini-LED displays actually still use LCD panels, so there will be no burn-in issues like OLEDs have, and there won’t be any flickering issues that give some people headaches. So basically, when you watch a movie or video on your iPad, the black bars at the top and bottom will actually be black and not gray, and that will actually cause it to save battery life as well. Now moving onto the other features we can expect, the main one is the A14X chip.

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that the new iPad Pro will come with the M1 chip, but that is dead WRONG. The M-series of chips are meant to be exclusive to the Mac, hence the M. Those SoCs come with extra chips like the I/O controller, the Thunderbolt controller chips, up to 16GB of soldered on RAM and other Mac-related things that the iPad simply doesn’t need because it only needs to run the more simple iPadOS software. It’ll instead come with the A14X chip, which will basically be a stripped down version of the M1, only containing what it needs, like the 8 CPU cores, the 8 GPU cores, the 16-core Neural Engine and other things like the RAM and video encoders. Because of that, it’s gonna have performance similar to the fanless M1 MacBook Air, except probably a bit worse because the iPad Pro is gonna be quite a lot thinner, so it’s not going to be able to dissipate heat as well as the larger MacBook Air.

But nevertheless, the performance is going to be absolutely insane for a tablet, and there’s actually a chance that we could be seeing Apple bring Pro apps like Final Cut over to the iPad starting with iPadOS 15. And this actually makes sense since Apple has already updated those Pro apps to support Apple Silicon, so it should technically be able to run on an iPad with some minor tweaks. Now as for some of the other features, there’s a chance that Apple could upgrade the Face ID sensor to work better and be smaller, potentially allowing Apple to slim down the bezels a bit more. And with that, Apple could introduce multi-user support, which was recently rumored to be coming soon, and it would work perfectly thanks to Face ID on the iPad Pro and Touch ID on all of the other iPad models. But other than all of that, I don’t think we should expect Apple to change much else about the 12.9” iPad Pro, the one feature I would absolutely love to see would be for Apple to move the webcam to the side, so that web conferencing looks normal when using the Magic Keyboard case. So there you guys have it, there are all of my thoughts on the 12.9” iPad Pro and the reasons why we could see Apple ditch the 11” iPad Pro model. If you enjoyed this video, Tap Like & Subscribe for more videos like this one.

Definitely check out one of those two videos, and we’ll see you in the next one!.

Source : Max Tech