The number of larger iPad, or so-called ‘iPad Pro’ reports have been aplenty over the past six or so months, and a new piece over at DigiTimes, which claims that Apple is aiming to drop the 12.9-inch slab by the third quarter of this year, only serves to fuel this burning fire. Once upon a time, the blogosphere would have laughed at any notion of Apple delivering a slate so much larger than the full-sized iPad Air, but the iPad mini has shown that under Tim Cook, anything is apparently possible, and the iPad Pro will serve as the higher-end option for consumers seeking the ultimate performance.
The fact that the iPad mini is out there and already into its second generation makes it easier to believe these reports of an iPad Pro, of course, but with rival Samsung creating tablets of a similar display size, the Cupertino knows it can ill afford to be complacent and miss out on yet another sub-market in the tablet industry.
Apple is credited with starting the tablet boom back in 2010 with the introduction of the first iPad, and although the idea of creating an iPad mini seemed, under Steve Jobs, ludicrous, the emergence of the Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 et al proved that Apple’s rather arrogant decision was allowing others to capitalize on the niche.
Although DigiTimes‘ recent report mentions that the 12.9-inch tablet could be available to consumers as early as Q3, it doesn’t, unfortunately, go into too much specific detail regarding specs and such. A recent report suggests that the device will pack a 2732 x 2048 Retina of 265 pixels per inch, although aside from that, it’s difficult to tell just how “Pro” Apple plans to make it.
It’s hard not to immediately make comparisons with the MacBook Pro, but with the top-spec notebook being considerably better than the Air, would a corresponding gulf be necessary for the iPad? Eventually, iOS and OS X will become mutually intelligible, by which point, we’d expect to see iPads of MacBook Pro levels, but with app developers only just tweaking apps to take advantage of the beefy A7 processor and M7 motion coprocessor, would a significant bump in internal hardware be required or even necessary?
We’ll keep you updated on all of the Apple news you need to know, so stay tuned!
(Source: DigiTimes)
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