86 MACWORLD APRIL 2020
FEATURE THE NEXT iPAD PROfeatures in the recent iPadOS 13.4 beta,
which not only added the ability to remap
modifier keys on hardware keyboards, but
also beefed up support for keyboard short-
cuts in Photos. Given that support for the
keyboard is one of the ways that Apple first
set the iPad Pro apart, an even better key-
board would certainly help reinforce that.
CHIP OFF LAST YEAR’S
BLOCK?
Perhaps the biggest question mark around
an updated iPad Pro is what processor it
would use. Apple’s tablets tend to use
the X variant of
the company’s
A-series chips,
which often
features not only
better perfor-
mance, but
improved graphics
capabilities as
well. The most
recent version of
the iPad Pro used
the A12X Bionic
chip, while the iPhone 11 Pro line, released
last fall, is built around the company’s
currently top-of-the-line A13 Bionic chip.
That would seem to suggest that a new
iPad Pro would feature an A13X Bionic
chip—however, Apple has previously
skipped generations of the chip; there
was, for example, never an A11X. Some
rumors have speculated that this means
revamped iPad Pros will not launch until
fall, when they would incorporate a new
A14X chip—presumably an improved
version of the A14 chip that will be used in
this year’s iPhones. That said, it seems
unlikely—though not impossible—for Apple
to launch them at the same time.
Also likely to be missing in a March
iPad Pro refresh are 5G cellular capabili-
ties. Again, it would be unusual for Apple
to add those in an iPad model before a
similarly-equipped iPhone—and more to
the point, the
company is
probably still not
quite ready to roll
out 5G-enabled
devices, based on
Tim Cook’s com-
ments during the
latest quarterly
financial call.
Is it possible
that the company
could release an
updated iPad Pro in March and in the fall?
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the
company has made a rapid turnaround
(remember the third-generation and
fourth-generation iPads?), but we’ll have to
wait a bit before even the first of those two
shoes drops. ■