13-inch iPad Pro review

After nearly five years at AppleInsider and most of that being an iPad-first user, I finally got to write a full-fledged iPad Pro review. When the 2021 iPad Pro models arrived with M1, I purchased one of course, but I still wasn't quite at the level where I'd get to write the review for such a product.

That one was covered by Andrew O'Hara, our resident video guy, HomeKit Insider podcast host, photographer, and review specialist. He actually just published the iPad Air with M2 review today.

Meanwhile I'm over here excited out of my mind at the chance to run an iPad Pro with an M1 processor. It was a sign that Apple had finally taken the "pro" name seriously, at least in hardware. A12Z was fine and cursor support was amazing, but we still hadn't seen much commitment beyond that. So, all eyes were on WWDC.

Surely Apple wouldn't put a Mac chipset in an iPad and not do something with it right? Well of course we were all disappointed. iPadOS 15 was a slight polish on multitasking, but nothing that said "wow, M1 really changed iPad, right?"

iPad Pro with M2 was such a yawn that I didn't bother upgrading. Me, the guy obsessed with iPad and naked robotic cores.

Here we are again in 2024 with another breakthrough iPad Pro model. It is running the M4 with the fastest single-core performance in a consumer product. Surely that means Apple will do something during WWDC to take advantage of that power.

Deja vu, right? Except this time, something is different. Apple is ready to go all in on AI. Well, that's the marketing term anyway. I've not been quiet about my distaste for this silly rebrand of transformer technology that's only a step above predictive text output. Yes, it is an important technology that will bring amazing tools to the table for us to use. No, it isn't capable of becoming sentient and isn't actually "intelligent" by any stretch.

That said, Apple's Neural Engine is powerful and the iPad Pro is equipped with the best one yet. Let's see if Apple fulfills the promise of making the iPad Pro its first AI-first computer. Now that would be something.

In the meantime, read my full 13-inch iPad Pro review on AppleInsider. Please let me know what you think by replying to this linked post on Mastodon.