Should you buy the new M1 iPad Pro? And other recent Apple announcements on iMac, AirTags, and the color purple

Should you buy the new M1 iPad Pro? And other recent Apple announcements on iMac, AirTags, and the color purple

Brett Burney

On April 20, 2021, Apple started off with a flurry of announcements and updates, and then spent half an hour introducing an brand new iPad Pro!

Apple Card

First updates to the Apple Credit Card program. I never really like credit cards, but I love the Apple Card! Being able to check from an app what I spent, what I owe, etc. Now you can have multiple people on a card which allows spouses and families to share credit lines.

Podcasts & Subscriptions

Apple also announced that podcasters can offer listeners a subscription option for things like ad-free listening, early access, etc.

AirTags

Next was something we’ve been anticipating for a long time called AirTags that allow you to track keys and backpacks through the “Find My” service that you can currently use to track your Mac and iOS devices.

AirTags are small little discs that can be clipped to almost anything. Fortunately, Apple has also implemented some privacy protections with the AirTags to avoid non-consensual tracking.

New Apple TV!

Then an updated Apple TV along with a complete re-design of the Remote! From a professional angle, especially for lawyers using iPads, I’m interested to see how the “enhanced AirPlay” supports higher frame rates to support modern video formats.

New iMacs!

I was fortunate to upgrade to the new M1 processor back in December with a new MacBook Pro and it is just simply amazing in terms of speed, responsiveness, and capability.

Now just a few months later, Apple brought the M1 processor to the iMac with a multitude of colors. Yes the new iMac is impressively thin and compact, but two things stand out for me:

1) They improved the camera to a 1080p resolution … FINALLY!!!! We’re STILL using a 720p camera on the MacBook Pro, but I believe this upgrade simply represents the way we work today. And Apple improved the built-in microphones and speakers too.

2) One of the more amazing things they showed, only for a split second, was the new power brick which has an ethernet port built in!!! That means less wires stringing out of the back of your lovely new iMac!!

Brand New iPad Pro!

And showing the importance of the iPad, Apple spent almost HALF of the 1 hour presentation on a brand new iPad Pro!!!

This will be the 5th generation iPad Pro which Apple is outfitting with an M1 processor! That means the new iPad Pro is 50% faster than the previous iPad Pro. Plus you can get 16GB of RAM and 2TB of storage space! This is truly bringing desktop class power into a tablet, begging the question: “What is a computer?”

This is all fantastic … for people that use their iPad for professional photography editing, audio editing, high-end video editing … none of which most lawyers are going to be doing! You may notice that an app opens more quickly.

As Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD says: “a faster iPad Pro is a more responsive iPad Pro”

Apple has also improved the display on the iPad Pro with something they call “Liquid Retina XDR Display” which uses 10,000 mini LEDs. This is a BETTER display than on my new MacBook Pro!

The USB-C port on the new iPad Pro is updated to support Thunderbolt, and the main thing I see here is faster file transfer. So if you connect a modern USB external hard drive to the iPad, it will be blazingly fast in copying files back and forth.

Then Apple talked about the improvements they made to the front-facing camera on the iPad Pro. They now include an Ultra-Wide camera with 120 degree field of view – Apple calls this “Center Stage” because it recognizes you, and automatically pans around to keep you in the shot.

Any video conferencing app can use Center Stage. This is great because due to the response I’ve had on my video for using Zoom on the iPad, a LOT of people are doing this!!

I’ve often said that even 512GB is PLENTY of space on an iPad for most of the documents lawyers need … but everyone is concerned they’ll run out of space. The new iPad Pro can be configured with 2TB of local storage!

All of these improvements come with a price … both literally and figuratively. The iPad Pro has been getting slightly heavier and heavier with each new model. The 3rd gen 12.9” iPad Pro from 2018 weighs 1.39 pounds. The 4th gen 12.9” iPad Pro from last year, 2020, weighs 1.41 pounds. And this new 5th gen 12.9” iPad Pro will weight 1.5 pounds, or 1.51 if you get cellular model.

The 11” iPad Pro starts at $799, and the 12.9” model starts at $1099. Configured to the maximum specs, though, the 12.9” iPad Pro will cost you $2399. Not to mention the Apple Pencil $129 and the Magic Keyboard costs $350!

Conclusion

All of this to say, it is all truly exciting. Even if you don’t need a new iPad right now (and many of you probably do NOT) … it’s exciting to see how much power that Apple is packing into the iPad. This bodes well for the iPad’s future … and in a few months, Apple is hosting their developer’s conference and we anticipate we’ll start to see apps take full advantage of this new-found power!