Apple Silicon comes to iPad Pro. The newly announced iPad Pro has just got supercharged by the M1 chip, making it “1,500X faster than the first-gen iPad”. However, where are the Pro Apps?

Initial thoughts

The truth is that we are a bit disappointed with Apple’s iPad Pro announcement. I mean, it’s a really cool and powerful product. But we hoped that the announcement will be combined with a demonstration of some of the top Pro Apps running on this mobile beast. Nevertheless, here’re the key features of the iPad Pro that are relevant to filmmakers, editors, and colorists.

M1 iPad Pro

The new iPad Pro is armed with an 8-core CPU design delivering up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than A12Z Bionic. The 8-core GPU delivers up to 40 percent faster GPU performance. According to Apple, this combination of CPU and graphics performance on iPad Pro makes it the “fastest device of its kind”. Custom technologies, including a next-generation 16-core Apple Neural Engine, an advanced image signal processor (ISP), a unified, high-bandwidth memory architecture with up to 16GB of memory, 2x faster storage, and up to 2TB capacity, make iPad Pro more capable than previous models. The M1 enables all of that along with all-day battery life in the thin and light design of iPad Pro.1 Because M1 shares the same fundamental architecture of A-series chips, iPadOS is already optimized to take full advantage of the powerful technologies in M1 to easily handle everything from simple navigation to the most demanding workflows, as claimed by Apple.

Here’s Apple’s statement below: 

“The revolutionary M1 chip has been a breakthrough for the Mac, and we’re incredibly excited to bring it to iPad Pro,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With M1’s huge jump in performance, a groundbreaking extreme dynamic range experience on the 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, up to 2TB of high-speed storage, Thunderbolt expansion, a four-speaker audio system, pro cameras with LiDAR Scanner, blazing-fast 5G connectivity, an amazing video-calling experience with Center Stage — combined with the advanced features of iPadOS and a powerful pro app ecosystem all in a device users can hold in one hand — there’s nothing else like iPad Pro.”

With M1’s huge jump in performance, a groundbreaking extreme dynamic range experience on the 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, up to 2TB of high-speed storage, Thunderbolt expansion…and a powerful pro app ecosystem all in a device users can hold in one hand.

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing

Display

The 12.9-inch liquid retina XDR display elevates DR (Dynamic Range) on the new iPad Pro. Engineered with a new mini-LED design that uses over 10,000 LEDs across the entire back of the display, the Liquid Retina XDR display features up to 1000 nits of full-screen brightness, 1600 nits of peak brightness, and a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio to enhance creative workflows. As stated by Apple: “Now creative professionals, including photographers, videographers, and filmmakers, can view and edit true-to-life HDR content on a large display they can take anywhere”. The new Liquid Retina XDR display includes other advanced technologies that can also be found in the 11-inch iPad Pro, including ProMotion, True Tone, and P3 wide color support, delivering an unmatched mobile cinematic viewing experience for HDR and Dolby Vision content.

Now creative professionals, including photographers, videographers, and filmmakers, can view and edit true-to-life HDR content on a large display they can take anywhere.

Apple

Thunderbolt connectivity

Support for Thunderbolt and USB 4 makes the USB-C port on iPad Pro the fastest, most versatile port ever on an iPad, with 4x more bandwidth for wired connections than the previous iPad Pro — up to 40Gbps. Thunderbolt supports 10Gbps Ethernet and opens up a massive ecosystem of high-performance accessories, like faster external storage and even higher resolution external displays, including the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution, all connected using high-performance cables and docks. With support for more peripherals, iPad Pro unleashes the potential of the creative workflow.

Watch here the whole announcement (including the other goodies like the M1 iMac):

Pricing and Availability

1. The new iPad Pro is available to order beginning Friday, April 30, on apple.com and in the Apple Store app in 31 countries and regions, including the US. iPad Pro will be available in Apple Store locations in the second half of May.
2. The new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro will be available in silver and space gray finishes. iPad Pro is available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations3 — providing pro customers more room for their apps and content.
3. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $999 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,099 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $1,299 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model from apple.com.

Wrapping up

There’s no doubt that the M1 iPad Pro is a very capable machine that was designed for heavy users. However, in the whole demonstration, Apple didn’t show even one Pro App running on it. The demo would be a lot more convincing when utilizing complicated Apps like Final Cut Pro and/or Logic Pro, for instance. Imagine Apple demonstrates editing 4K timeline in the iPad Pro. That would be a real game-changer. Nevertheless, we truly believe that this iPad Pro has its own very respected place in a professional workflow (editing and color grading). Let’s wait for it.

Products List

iPad: Apple iPad Pro 11″ M1 Chip. Price: $999 [maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://adorama.rfvk.net/15rj7x” ]