It looks as if the countdown to the subsequent iPad reveal has been stretched out a bit extra, although not by an earth-shattering period of time. Thus far, we’ve heard rumors of a late March or early April reveal, however that seemingly gained’t occur, in keeping with a brand new report from Apple insider Mark Gurman.

In his newest Bloomberg report, Gurman says the subsequent Apple tablets ought to arrive in early Could, and he cited the rushing up of manufacturing at Apple’s suppliers. Curiously, production-related challenges apparently pushed again the launch of the brand new slates throughout the Professional and Air lineups.

“Apple had deliberate to launch the brand new iPads by the top of March or early April, however the firm has been working to complete software program for the gadgets,” says the report. “The screens within the newest fashions additionally require complicated new manufacturing strategies, which have contributed to the delay.”

All 4 iPad trims will depend on the brand new M3 silicon, which already powers a handful of Mac machines. The most important change, nevertheless, is reserved for the iPad Air, which has solely been offered in a single dimension. This yr, Apple is reportedly planning a 12.9-inch model of the pill.

On the premium aspect of issues, the iPad Professional fashions will probably be getting an OLED show improve, however it’s unclear if the therapy will solely be reserved for the large-screen variant or if it can make option to the 11-inch mannequin, as effectively.

Apple has armed the 12.9-inch iPad Professional with a mini-LED display screen, whereas the smaller sibling remains to be locked to an LCD panel. We aren’t certain if a design revision can be within the pipeline, however new keyboard equipment that make the keyboard + iPad combo look extra like a Mac are stated to be on the desk.

However what I’m most enthusiastic about is the software program and the way the brand new M3 silicon handles AI, which Apple is exploring fairly severely. It’s even stated to be pondering a Gemini Nano licensing cope with Google. Apple has already confirmed that the M3 silicon is able to operating a couple of language fashions and duties like Secure Diffusion-driven picture creation regionally.

The M3 silicon comes with additional AI-related bells and whistles. I not too long ago bought my palms on the M3 MacBook Air and noticed a notable leap in AI efficiency. I ran a Python script making use of a machine studying technique generally known as Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) regression to estimate pink wine high quality from particular traits offered as coaching information.

This concerned coaching and testing the mannequin, with configuration managed via the “tanh” activation perform and the “sgd” (Stochastic Gradient Descent) solver. The purpose was to forecast wine high quality, with efficiency measured by execution pace. Right here, the M3 chip was 20% sooner than the M2.

I additionally explored native picture segmentation and technology, using the Ok-means clustering algorithm inside an unsupervised studying framework. This part entailed inputting a picture to section it into clusters based mostly on pixel colour variations, then reworking it right into a 2D RGB pixel array for clustering.

The method hinges on colour similarity to generate a brand new, segmented picture. On this job, the M3-equipped MacBook Air outperformed its M2 counterpart by over 22% by way of processing pace. I’m hoping native text-to-image technology or generative AI-assisted modifying in apps like Photoshop can be a lot sooner on the M3 iPads.

For the reason that RAM and storage scenario throughout the iPad Professional and MacBook Air is comparable, not less than on the entry-level configurations, we are able to realistically anticipate to see comparable features — or not less than new on-device AI-driven experiences on the upcoming iPad Professional fashions. Nonetheless, I’m additionally a bit spooked at the potential for a worth hike this yr with all of the rumored upgrades coming into the image.

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