Gossip About The ‘iPad Pro’
This humungous iPad is a big gamble for Apple, but it’s also a sign that Apple’s playing Industry Catalyst, again.
Apple’s next-gen iPad, which supposedly goes by the name iPad Pro, is rumoured to be released sometime during the September-December timeframe this year, along with the release of iOS 9.
iPad Pro is said to feature a massive 12.9 inch display with an outrageous resolution of 2732x2048 pixels with a pixel density of 264 ppi; 264 is nothing to scoff at, at that big a screen.
According to an unsubstantiated report from Taiwan, Apple has already begun work on the device’s production. As per the report, Apple is supposedly sourcing this pathbreaking display through Sharp and Samsung; with Sharp having being tagged as the primary manufacturer by Apple for this display, while Samsung is intended to serve as a backup, just incase things don’t go according to plan.
Apart from Sharp and Samsung, LG is also rumoured to have contested in the bid to supply the display for the next-gen iPad.
The report detailed that Sharp had reportedly sent a small test batch of these massive displays in June, which met Apple’s strict quality demands; the first batch of the display panels will apparently be produced and handed over to Apple’s assembly line by September.
Apart from the aforementioned details on screen size and resolution, several leaks have purported that the device will come with both, iOS as well as OS X El Capitan operating systems, which makes this iPad a truly hybrid device. This could of course all be overly optimistic tea-leaf reading by a wishful heart, as Apple isn’t known to complicate things unnecessarily.
At Chip-Monks, we believe that iOS 9 is actually being purpose-built for the iPad Pro (and not so much the iPhone or the little-iPad (ooh! that was fun to write) lines) — its multi-tasking (split screen) capability, humungous amounts of APIs opened to developers, even the integration of Force Touch (it definitely fits in better here functionally, than the iPhone or the little-iPad lines) and several more tantalisingly glossed over capabilities will finally be threaded together (per their secret plan) and revealed in their trademark heady ‘voila’ moment, to be the bedrock of the iPad Pro and not so much the other devices.
Under the hood, this tablet is said be powered by the Apple A9 chipset and will include the USB Type C port, just like the new MacBook (again, we think its more of the same fervent hope that surrounded the hundreds of ‘reliable’ leaks claiming the the iPad 2 would definitely come with a USB port).
In addition to this, the iPad Pro is said to feature a Stylus with Force Touch technology.
All in all, most of us here at Chip-Monks believe that this humungous iPad is a big gamble for Apple; it hasn’t been done earlier, for good reasons — most obvious of which is well, the size. How does one hold horizontal, a 12 inch by 10 inch metal object and use it effectively, comfortably, safely?
What’s certain is though, Apple will be working doubly hard to make sure that the iPad Pro does succeed. This version of the iPad isn’t really a reaction from Apple to answer to demand from a crowded market… it actually seems like one of those leaps that Apple makes, striking the puck into the next generation!
A 12 inch screen-only device — remember James Cameron’s Avatar set in the mid 22nd century? Doctors and scientists carrying around interconnected pieces of glass — thats where this ‘iPad Pro’ could take us. Now, only if they’d find a way to lose all that aluminium while they were at it!!
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
