M1ffed
What has an M1-chip, 16GB of RAM, and has a ton of baseless expectations piled onto it? The 2021 iPad Pro!
When Apple announced the next generation of iPad Pros would feature Apple's M1 chip and up to 16GB of RAM, I couldn't help beginning to fantasize what that would mean for the future of the iPad and iPadOS. Despite being familiar with the adage of not buying current hardware on the promise of future software, with WWDC right around the corner, how could you not begin to imagine what M1 could mean for the iPad Pro? Would that mean new Pro Apps? Proper external display support? Or maybe exclusive Pro features in iPadOS?
As it turned out, WWDC did little to showcase the heights of what an M1 on an iPad Pro was capable of. Not only had I tripped over my expectations, but because Apple had done such an incredible job over the past year highlighting the potential of M1 on the Mac, I had hoped a similar narrative would form around the iPad Pro and was disappointed when it didn't.
I have no idea why Apple decided to brand the processor inside the new 2021 iPad Pros as the M1. Historically when Apple has added an X-suffix to the A-series chips (A12 versus A12X), it coincided with an increase of high-performance cores (from 2-to-4) and a doubling of the GPU cores (from 4-to-8). If Apple had done the same thing and put an A14X into the new iPad Pro, the convention would suggest it would have 2-more high-performance cores and a doubling of the GPU cores. It turns out that's exactly the configuration the M1 offers! It might have been a manufacturing decision, or it may have been a marketing decision leaning on the good name the M1 had created for itself. Had Apple just called the chip inside the iPad Pro the A14X and bumped up the RAM from 6 to 8GB like in years past, I doubt I would have paid it any mind. But I got myself knotted thinking that an iPad having the 'Mac chip' inside of it meant that I should be able to do more 'Mac stuff.'
I'll take ownership over that. It was my expectations on the M1 that resulted in my disappointment. I had decided that Apple should've made a push into the Pro app territory, seeing how many high-grade design apps are now available for the iPad. I had also hoped to see proper external display support get announced. With 16GB of RAM and a new thunderbolt port, running Pro apps and hooking up to an external display felt within the realm of possibility. But the more I thought about it, the more problems emerged from my idea.
First, Apple doesn't yet have a compelling first-party external display solution. I imagine that would need to be a part of the narrative before introducing a feature like this. Currently, there's the $6,000 Pro Display XDR or the new 23.5" iMac, and I can't imagine Apple intends people to spend that sort of cash on a Pro Display to power an iPad or wants them to override macOS with an iPad when features like SideCar are available. Until Apple has an actual first-party product ready to go, I don't see this feature coming to the iPad. To take one recent example, true cursor support only went to the iPad once Apple had the Magic Keyboard ready to launch. Proper display support would also make a more compelling case to bring Pro Apps for the iPad. Logic and Final Cut benefit from a large canvas to be enjoyed fluidly and effectively, and shrinking that down and expecting an optimal workflow experience on an 11" iPad screen could make the experience less desirable.
The second problem with my expectations about display support and native Pro apps is that both would likely be contingent on the release of iPadOS 15, which won't come out until the fall. The optics about Apple releasing iPad Pros in May but waiting until half a year to finally get the features they were designed around didn't make sense. The other piece that puzzles me is what Apple intends us to do now that the 1-and-2TB iPad Pros come with 16GB of RAM, a 270% increase over the highest spec'd iPad Pro from a year ago?
The introduction of 16GB of RAM in the 1-and-2TB iPad Pros created ripples of speculation about what Apple might have in store for the iPads. It nearly tripled the amount of RAM available compared to any previous iPad. Before the announcement, the highest specced iPad came with 6GB of RAM, which Apple never actually advertised, so when the iPad with 16GB of RAM was both unveiled and documented as such, you can't blame the tech community for getting into a tizzy about what it might suggest.
But early impressions left little to be enthusiastic about. Apple has implemented a RAM cap of 5GB for any running app, so even if you were running two apps side-by-side, each requiring 5GB of RAM, there would still be an enormous reservoir of unused RAM lying around. Maybe it helps the iPad with higher storage perform better, with some of the RAM used for storage management, like on the 1TB 2018 iPad (which had 6GB of memory vs. 4GB across the lower tiers). Or maybe 16GB of RAM offers edge case quality-of-life enhancements by keeping more apps in memory as users switch between them. I can see how having more memory may benefit something like the multitasking system introduced in iPadOS 15, but whether that benefit alone justifies the $400 leap to 16GB of RAM remains to be seen.
None of this should be read as me ripping into or being disappointed with the 2021 iPad Pros. They're fantastic machines. Nor am I or have I ever advocated that iPads should be more like Macs, run macOS, or anything of the sort. By putting an M1 and 16GB of RAM into the iPad Pro, it almost appeared that Apple might have been broadening the story of what the iPad Pro could be capable of. And that gave way to me and others wildly speculating all sorts of fantasmagorical scenarios about what a chip renaming and exponential RAM increase may entail. The reality was a lot more tepid: the M1 fits the criteria of what we'd expect an A14X to be, and the 16GB of RAM might serve quality of life enhancements in iPadOS 15 and add years to the longevity of this iPad Pro down the road. If/when/whether Apple ever plans to do more display or Pro app support, this iPad Pro seems over-engineered to take advantage of it, but that shouldn't be the reason to make a purchasing decision about one today.
