Apple, yesterday, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, announced its latest iPad and MacBooks. At the event, the Big-A took to the stage to unveil 2018 models of its iPad Pro tablets.
The iPad Pro 2018 come as a total refresh to what the iPads have been known to be for years — in the aspects of aesthetics and performance; a total makeover. With compatible accessories, the new iPad Pro can be converted to laptops and Apple boast that the iPad Pro are —performance-wise— more powerful than 92% of laptops out there.
The 2018 iPad Pro is available in two variants — iPad Pro 11 with 11-inch display and iPad Pro 12.9 with a 12.9-inch display. But how does this differ from the iPad Pro 2017 of last year? What are the new things Apple is bringing on board with these new top-of-the-line iPads? Read on as we’d highlight the major (read: big) changes that ships with the iPad Pro 2018.
iPad Pro 2018: No Home Button
Just like Apple axed the home button and Touch ID sensor on iPhones with the iPhone X, the company is bringing the same architectural and aesthetical restructuring to its tablet line of products.
For the same reasons why Apple axed the home button and Touch ID on the iPhone X (to trim down the bezels), the OEM has eliminated the Touch ID button/sensor on the iPad Pro 2018. The tablet now features a full view display with 86% screen-to-body ratio covered in scratch-resistant glass.
With the home button gone, users will now have to rely on (old and new) gestures to navigate around the new iPad.
Flat edges
All models of the iPad Pro (2018) sport flat edges, unlike its predecessors with curved sides and edges.
Face ID
With the home button and fingerprint Touch ID gone, Apple, for the first time, bring Face ID to the iPad as its sole means of biometric authentication. So, like the iPhone X and the recently released 2018 iPhones, users will unlock the new iPad via Face ID. Interestingly, the iPad Pro 2018 will no longer rotate based on the accelerometer but rather, in accordance with the position of the users Face.
A12X Bionic Chip
The A12X is a new chipset from Apple and it succeeds the A10X Bionic chip. The A12X chip comes with a total of 8 cores with four focused on performance while the other four are efficiency cores. The A12 chipset came with a lot of features and improvements but Apple brags that graphics performance will be two times better on the A12X. To prove the efficiency of the chipset at the launch event, this happened…
New Stylus Attachment Mechanism
Unlike previous iPad models where the stylus had to be plugged into the lightning port, the new iPad Pro 2018 has been designed such that the Apple Pencil will now automatically (read: magnetically) get attached to it.
Lightning Port axed
To allow the new iPad Pro have a MacBook feel, Apple eliminated the Lightning port for a USB-C port. This will allow the iPad be connected to accessories like external monitor, a USB-C to Lighting port cable, and other gadgets like smartphones, DSLR cameras etc.
3.5mm Headphone jack stripped
To make the iPad slimmer, Apple also had to do away with the iPad Pro 2018. This makes it the first tablet from Apple to lack the headphone port.
Liquid Retina Display
When the 2018 iPhones were launched in September, Apple announced a new Liquid Retina display technology which it used on the iPhone XR. Interestingly, Apple is bringing the super sharp and incredible LCD display to the iPad. The Liquid Retina LCD display is just as good as (but not better than) the Super Retina OLED display of the iPhone XS and XS Max. You can see the difference between the two display technologies HERE.
iOS 12
The iPad Pro 2018 will be powered by the latest version of Apple’s operating system, the iOS 12. The iOS 12 will bring features like Group FaceTime, Animoji, Memoji, Screen Time, Downtime, App limit etc.
The Apple tablets also comes with five microphones for clearer and crystal sound during group FaceTime.
1 Terabyte of Storage
The new iPad Pro models will start at 64GB of storage as its predecessors. However, Apple is introducing a new variant with a stunning 1 Terabyte of built-in storage.
The major new features differentiating the iPad Pro 2018 from its predecessors have been listed above. Some retained features, however, include the 12MP rear camera, four loudspeakers etc.
The new iPads are presently available on pre-order but will begin to ship starting from November 7.
