[Capella]

iPad 8th gen

• A12 Bionic chip
• works with Pencil and the keyboard/trackpad
• pricing: $329
• Available Friday, Sep 18

iPad Air

• 5 colors: rose gold, green, sky blue join grey and silver
• 10.9" retina, 2360x1650
• TouchID in the Top Button
• A14 Bionic chip and specific machine learning
• 12MP back camera (4K), 7MP front camera (1080p)
• USB-C
• pricing: $599
• Available next month

iPad OS 14

• Handwriting recognition with Pencil becomes text
• Enter text and numbers even into fields

[kscherer]

The iPad Air is a 3rd-gen iPad Pro with a better processor and Touch ID at the sleep/wake switch. I hope they're updating the iPad Pro, or there will be no need for one of those.

[turtle]

Yeah, I'm still not annoyed that I got this 3rd Gen Pro recently. The newer processor would have been nice, but I really would rather Face ID over Touch. Given the price, I think I got mine at around what my version would be with cellular and I got the 12.9" too.

[709]

Give me a mini in the Air dressing and I will be a very happy man.

[chucker]

I’m so happy we’re seeing some new colors again in Apple hardware! Hard to pick, really.

[turtle]

It is kinda funny no one mentioned those sooner. They stood out to me too... but I like my black coloring. I can be really boring some times.

[drewprops]

Can't remember... did the previous version of this model have the iPhone 4 form factor? If not, is this confirmation that the new phones will follow this route? (I mean, we know it WILL....)


...

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by drewprops Can't remember... did the previous version of this model have the iPhone 4 form factor? If not, is this confirmation that the new phones will follow this route? (I mean, we know it WILL....) ...

No. And maybe.

[drewprops]

I actually went and priced an iPad Air, and compared it to an iPad Pro, which has an older processor. I would want to use a tablet for drawing, so now I wonder if the Air's size would be usable?

Also need to find out if Photoshop for iPad is golden master now....


...

[kscherer]

The iPad Pro's A12X is now outclassed by the iPad Air's A14 (not by a terribly large margin, though), but the Pro still has the better camera system front and back. So it's a tradeoff: Cameras or processor power.

[chucker]

We don’t really have a lot of data on the A14 yet, which I guess is by design; maybe they want to keep some surprises for the iPhone reveal (maybe they’ll show the first ARM Mac?).

All we have is the 40% figure. I think they’re saying the 2019 and 2020 iPads Air both have six cores (two of them high-performance). If so, that’s very much in line with recent generations. Going by single-core numbers, the A11 was 25% faster than the A10; the A12 another 20%; the A13 another 19.6%. A11 to A13 is 43.8%.

So, judging from that, we’re looking at about 17% from A13 to A14. I hope there’s no continuous downward trend in year-over-year improvements here? (There probably is. Also why they’re focusing on coprocessors like the Neural Engine so much.)