The iPad Pro equipped with M4 chip has arrived, and AI PCs in the market have new competitors

On the evening of May 7th, Apple officially unveiled the M4 chip at the spring product launch event, which will be included in the 2024 iPad Pro.
Since the announcement of the M1 chip in November 2020, the M-series chip has become an important successor to Apple’s Mac product shift from Intel processors to self-developed chips. At the same time, the iPad Pro has also shifted from the A-series biomimetic chips to the M-series chips, starting from the fifth generation, losing a powerful card. The optimization in GPU functionality and neural engine is particularly evident.

The latest work of the Action M series chip, the Apple M4 chip adopts the second-generation 3nm manufacturing process, as well as a CPU with “4 functional focal points+6 energy efficiency focal points” (for 1TB and above storage capacity models), with a CPU performance reportedly increased by 50% compared to the M2 chip; The M4 chip also participates in a new performance engine, with a 10 core GPU architecture, which is four times faster than the M2 chip and supports the first ray of light escape.
In addition, the M4 chip also features a 16 core neural engine with a processing speed of 38 trillion times per second, which is 60 times faster than the first neural engine on the A11 chip. Apple pointed out that the cost of M4 chips is a quarter of the cost of AI PC processors (x86 architecture).
The innovation of iPad Pro was expected in the mall, but the hardware specifications were higher than expected.
In August last year, renowned tech guru Mark Gurman reported that Apple’s upcoming next-generation iPad Pro would undergo a major downgrade, making it the most heavily downgraded iPad product line since 2018, claiming to be a “fundamental change.”. At that time, the fundamental change that swept through the 3nm process resulted in functional degradation, using the M3 chip with an 8-core CPU.
The mall didn’t wait for the M3 chip version of the iPad Pro, and Apple skipped the rumors and directly pushed out the iPad Pro with a stronger M4 chip.
The 2024 iPad Pro will no longer have two screen sizes, 11 inches and 13 inches, and the screen will be downgraded from the previous generation mini LED technology to OLED. It will provide higher brightness (SDR brightness up to 1000 nits), stronger contrast, and lower power consumption. Thanks to the adoption of OLED screens, both sizes of the body have become thinner, measuring 5.3mm and 5.1mm respectively, with weights of 444g and 579g, respectively. Compared in terms of movement, the sixth generation iPad Pro has a thickness of 6.4 millimeters and weighs 682 grams.
It should be noted that the new iPad Pro has a minimum storage capacity of 256GB, with a starting price of 8999 yuan and 11499 yuan for 11 inches and 13 inches, respectively.
Image: Apple
Along with the new iPad Pro, there is also a clever keyboard with an enlarged touchpad and new sin function buttons, as well as an Apple Pencil Pro with features such as gentle pinching, side rotation, and tactile response. Both can make the iPad Pro a more effective delivery object, with a starting price of 2399 yuan and 999 yuan, respectively.
In fact, Apple’s iPad business has experienced double-digit declines for multiple consecutive fiscal quarters. In the second quarter of its fiscal year 2024, its reported performance showed that iPad sales decreased by 16.7% to $5.56 billion. In the first quarter, the business declined by 25% year-on-year.
When the iPad business continued to decline, there was a concept in the industry that Apple’s failure to promote the iPad Pro without a 3nm process M3 chip in October last year led to a decrease in market expectations, which to some extent contributed to the weakness of the business. Is it unlikely that the iPad Pro equipped with the latest M4 chip will boost declining sales now?
The mall took the lead in not responding to Apple’s latest announcement and stopped publishing. Apple’s US stock market closed at $182.34 per share, up 0.35%.