Apple Unveils Bigger, More Powerful, More Expensive iPad Pro
By Nick Tylwalk
September isn’t usually the time when Apple makes iPad announcements, but it made an exception today. As expected by many in the industry, the iPad Pro was unveiled during the company’s press event, and it’s a bigger, more powerful version of the iPad that looks meant to be used in more business settings than any previous model.
Let’s run down the stats.
- 12.9-inch Retina display
By comparison, a normal iPad screen is less than 10 inches. This is a big tablet, so be prepared to be clowned by onlookers if you try using it to take pictures (though it can do that, of course).
- 3rd-generation 64-bit A9X chip
Put simply, it’s powerful — supposedly more powerful than 80 percent of the laptops or tablets that people purchased over the last year. Together with the larger display, it will allow split-screen use of two apps at once and be able to process both of them more or less normally.
- 2 new accessories
The event showed off two new accessories that people will no doubt be interested in seeing up close. The first is the Apple Pencil, a fancy name for a stylus. No previous iPad could use one, so it’s sure to attract some curiosity.
The other new gadget was a smart keyboard similar to the one sold for Microsoft’s Surface tablets. One nice thing is that it’s not Bluetooth, but rather connects directly to the iPad Pro via a port on its side.
Naturally, all these goodies come with a pretty serious price tag. The three iPad Pro models look like this:
- iPad Pro 32GB, Wi-Fi only – $799
- iPad Pro 128GB, Wi-Fi only – $949
- iPad Pro 128GB, Wi-Fi + Cellular – $1079
Those cool accessories are going to make an impact on your wallet too. The Apple Pencil is $99 (yes, for a stylus), while the Smart Keyboard will be $169.
The iPad Pro goes on sale in October, so start saving your pennies for it now. We’re anxious to see what mobile games and apps will do to take advantage of the extra screen real estate and power.