Apple (Hacker News): iPad Air with M3 empowers users to be productive and creative wherever they are, from aspiring creatives using demanding apps and working with large files, to travelers editing content on the go. The powerful M3 chip offers a number of improvements over M1 and previous-generation models. Featuring a more powerful 8-core CPU, […]

Apple: Apple today also updated iPad with double the starting storage and the A16 chip, bringing even more value to customers. The A16 chip provides a jump in performance for everyday tasks and experiences in iPadOS, while still providing all-day battery life. Compared to the previous generation, the updated iPad with A16 is nearly 30 […]

Eliseo Martelli (via Hacker News, Reddit): As a long-time Apple user, I’ve always appreciated the integration of hardware and software, signature of the Apple ecosystem. However, recent experiences with my iPad Air 11" M2 has left me questioning whether Apple has lost sight of what once made their products great.[…]The performance issues don’t stop at […]

Linus Tech Tips: Linus takes a long-overdue trip back into the iOS ecosystem. Will daily-driving a shiny new iPhone 16 Plus for an entire month convert him into Apple’s newest fan?[…]“I started to look a little differently at the Apple users in my life. They describe Apple products with market slogans like, ‘It just works,’ […]

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

The most consequential part of the Air’s update — perhaps the only real update — is the M3 processor, which brings with it GPU-based capabilities like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and video encoding and decoding for ProRes and ProRes RAW.

Otherwise, the Air is basically unchanged: it comes in 11-inch and 13-inch versions, features the same cameras, battery life, the exact same dimensions, and the same accessory compatibility as its M2-based predecessor. It even comes in the same colors — Space Gray, Blue, Purple, and Starlight — at the same prices starting at $599.

A true speed-bump update — no big whoop, but it’s good for the platform for devices to get regular speed-bump updates in between major new revisions. The previous M2 iPad Air models only came out in May of last year, alongside the M4 iPad Pro models. Just like those M2 iPad Air models, these new M3 iPad Airs have 9-core GPUs. The current (not for long?) M3 MacBook Airs are offered with 8- and 10-core GPUs. I presume these 9-core M3 chips used for the iPad Air are binned chips that didn’t have 10 good GPU cores?

The new Magic Keyboard for Air is interesting in that it seems to meld parts of the older Magic Keyboard with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro last May. While the new Magic Keyboard includes a function row and a larger trackpad like its Pro compatriot, it lacks haptics in the trackpad and backlit keys, and it seems to be built on the same design of the original silicone exterior instead of the new aluminum-based model. But you get some cost savings for that: it’s just $269 instead of $299. Also, it only comes in white — black keyboards are for pros, I guess.

$269 feels like a crummy deal. The new-from-last-year $299 Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, with an aluminum top, feels way more than $30 better than the old-style silicone-covered ones like this new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air. It kind of feels like a design failure of some sort that these new iPad Airs can’t use the same Magic Keyboards as the iPad Pros of the same size.

The base iPad’s update is perhaps somewhat more disappointing, as that model was introduced in 2022 and its A16 processor will make it one of the few current main-line Apple devices — perhaps only — not to support Apple Intelligence.

The recently updated iPad Mini (October) has an A17 Pro chip, and thus supports Apple Intelligence. But the iPad Mini starts at $500, and the regular iPad still starts at just $350. The just-plain iPad is really the only “budget” device that Apple makes. There are no iPhone or Mac models in that price range.