Apple, Make the iPad Better, Not Thinner!

Apple has revealed its next-generation iPad Pros, packing an M4 chip, tandem OLED screen, and a thinner body than even the iPod Nano. This all sounds good, until you think about what they could have done with that extra real estate instead of putting the iPad on a diet.

Was the iPad Too Thick?

I own the M2 iPad Pro 12.9-inch model, which is the chonkiest modern iPad you can buy, and the model that directly precedes the latest M4 which have been slimmed down so much. I have never thought to myself "this iPad is too thick."

Even my previous 2018 12.9-inch iPad Pro was thin enough to fit inside my MacBook sleeve at the same time as the MacBook, while it had a hard plastic case on.

I'm sure that many people will be absolutely enthralled at this new iPad that approaches the actual thickness of paper, though Jerry Rig Everything already measures a 1-degree bend in their test unit out of the box so we'll see how it works out in the long term.

MacBooks Have Better Battery Life–and That’s Wrong

My love for my M1 MacBook Air is well-known, and one of the biggest parts of that is its long battery life. I can get two full work days out of a single charge for mixed usage, and that's been a game-changer for how I use my computer. However, Apple has decided to keep every generation of iPad's battery power pegged ar around 10 hours. Sometimes a little more, sometimes slightly less. This has been true for the first iPad I owned, the iPad 2, and it's still true for my M2 iPad Pro.

It's not a bad design philosophy, but since we're almost literally starting to split hairs here, I would really rather have seen the chassis stay the same thickness and the battery volume go up. I think that would be genuinely useful. Not least of which is the fact that modern iPads can run some pretty heavy apps and games. Console-level titles will run your battery down much faster. If Apple wants us to do laptop or desktop grade work on an iPad, more battery life will never go to waste.

To be fair to Apple, battery tests for the M4 iPad Pros look good and over on Tom's Guide, for example, they've clocked the M4 Pro in just short of 15 hours. That's a significant improvement and brings it in line with the M3 MacBook Air. However, I'm of the opinion that the iPad should outpace the MacBook when it comes to battery life given the difference in how people use them on a daily basis.

Those M-Chips Could Use Better Cooling

Speaking of those heavy-duty apps, what's the use of having all that power if you can only use it all in short bursts? While thermal throttling hasn't been an issue on my current M2 or previous iPad Pros, there's certainly more sustained performance to be squeezed from these systems. There are now a few clever passive cooling systems, such as vapor chambers, that are employed in mobile devices, and that space Apple just sliced off could have been diverted to better cooling performance. The M4 is already a beast,but I can only wonder about what could have been.

Already Great Audio Could Be Better

The iPad Pro's audio is best in class. It's practically engineering black magic, and no sane person could claim it was bad. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't be better. More speakers, bigger speakers, deeper chambers—I don't know how they'd do it, but something tells me the audio engineers could have used that space for something special.

More Ports Please

Even my current M2 iPad Pro is certainly too thin for a full-sized USB-A port, so I'm not totally out of touch with reality, but I really think the iPad Pro can't justify either the "Pro" name or associated price if it sticks to having a single USB-C/Thunderbolt port. I get that it's elegant and all that, and that the iPads do have a dedicated custom connector for the Magic Keyboard, but right now I have to use a very inelegant dongle to do anything serious with my iPad.

At the very least I'd like to see two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, one SD card reader, and a dedicated mini-HDMI out. After all, iPads with an M-series chip now support proper dual monitor mode. These features should have been a bigger priority than making the tablet thinner and I hope we can get at least a little more function over form in future iterations.

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