Write in his To light up Today's newsletter, Gurman said the company could use its May event to explain “its distraction-free AI chip strategy,” allowing it to focus exactly on how The iPad Pro and its other M4 devices will use the company's AI offerings in iPadOS 18. These could include Apple-developed features on the device and deeply integrated chatbots from one or more other companies. like Google or OpenAI.
Of course, the next two Pro models are also expected to get a major OLED upgrade and new accessories. One of these accessories – the next Apple Pencil – will have haptic feedback, Gurman writes. What would be the point of haptic feedback? It doesn't say it, but just exploring the idea here I could see some fun applications like adding some sort of simulated texture feature when drawing with the pencil. (Imagine drawing in Photoshop and “feeling” the roughness of the paper!)
However, I can't imagine that driving a small motor all the time would be ideal for the Pencil's battery life. Maybe it's there rumors of Apple Pencil support for the Vision Pro Come in. Who knows exactly what Apple is planning there if this is true, but haptics would make sense to help you feel a little more connected to what you're doing in virtual space. All this adds to the rumors of a new pressure gesture And magnetic tips which allow users to quickly exchange them for different styles for different purposes.
Back to the iPad Pro, though, Gurman called this the most significant iPad Pro redesign since 2018, but most people may not see what's in his guts in that regard. In his report today, he only cited the OLED screen as the other notable feature of the new tablet.
But Apple making the tablet the focus of its AI could help answer the question of who the next iPad Pro is for, since, I'd wager, the Venn diagram of who is interested in AI and who is who want to buy a high-powered tablet probably has a decent overlap. But I don't expect most people to go for the iPad Pro for its AI features when a larger iPad Air is (probably) sitting right there, (most likely) being much cheaper , However. But hey, maybe that will change once Apple finally tells the story of its on-device AI features, or at least once the reality of those features becomes clear when iPadOS 18 appears at autumn.