Whatever you do, don’t buy the 2024 iPad Pro right now
With WWDC 2024 just around the corner, it pays to wait for a little bit longer – here’s why
KOSTAS FARKONAS
PublishED: May 15, 2024
So the announcements have been made, the tech specs have been confirmed, the first reviews are in – they all agree it’s pretty great, despite being rather expensive – and you are now sure that you want, nay, you need Apple’s latest and greatest, the iPad Pro 2024 that’s being released today. Yours truly understands! He had already pre-ordered his very own 13-incher mere hours after the online presentation revealed it, after all, so he totally gets it. It seems like an incredible device. Who wouldn’t be tempted to get one?
Here’s a piece of advice yours truly can offer, though: don’t buy the new iPad Pro… yet.
The reason is simple and it all comes down to timing: Apple’s WWDC 2024 press event, where the company will unveil the next versions of its software platforms – is just around the corner. In less than four weeks we’ll know what it is that Apple is planning for the future of iPadOS, now that the M4-based iPad Pro has demonstrated in a most convincing manner that the operating system it’s currently based on just won’t do anymore. The iPad Pro’s hardware is now so far ahead of its software, that something else, something completely different, is needed.
Maybe that’s why – while making the rounds on the Web – one gets the feeling that the level of anticipation for the next version of iPadOS is higher than usual right now. Sure, everyone expects Apple to focus on AI and machine learning functionality in general during WWDC 2024, that’s pretty much a given at this point. But with practically every review of the iPad Pro highlighting its current hardware-software imbalance, there’s a different past topic making a comeback of sorts: the possibility of Apple finally allowing the use of macOS and its apps on the iPad Pro.
The problem is that – if Apple does indeed plan to offer the option of running macOS applications on the iPad Pro – we have no way of knowing how it will choose to do so. There are several different ways the company could implement such an option, for starters. Some of those ways would work on any new iPad Pro model, some would not. Some may need more than the basic amount of storage, others may require more than 8GB of memory. At least one such way may actually require the use of a Magic Keyboard. There’s even the remote possibility of Apple allowing macOS to run on M2-based or even M1-based iPad Pro models for all we know!
So, until official information regarding all of this is shared during WWDC 2024, people interested in running macOS apps on an iPad Pro should probably hold off getting one right now. There’s just no way of knowing what kind of an iPad Pro they’d need for that. Yours truly – a true OLED fanboy who just can’t help himself – already pulled the trigger on the basic configuration of the iPad Pro 13 and is now having buyer’s remorse, as Apple might easily claim that e.g. 8GB/256GB is not enough for running macOS programs on an iPad.
So, whatever you do, don’t make the same mistake. It’s only three weeks and change until the 10th of June anyway. You can surely wait that long, right? Right?