Today Apple announced the new iPad Air with the M1 chip, available on March 18. Looks pretty spiffy!
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This is now hands down the device to buy in Apple’s tablet lineup IMHO.
The major omissions are lack of Thunderbolt (USBC only) and the higher refresh rate screens (which I’d argue most don’t care about)
So the main takeaway I had is what’s next for the Pro’s? Besides mini LED for the 11 ?
PS: I’m a fan of the starlight color. My daughter bought her mini 6 in that hue and it’s very attractive generally more muted than Apple’s previous gold tones and thus more subtle
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APPLE, LET MY iPAD GO!
Enough is enough - with the M1 (and 8gb ram) even in the iPad Air 5, it is WAY past time for an iPadOS Pro to match the performance and capability of these tablets. I know I am spitting into a gale force wind, but time for put up or shut up at Apple about the power of their M1 tablets.
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That’s exactly what I’m waiting for before I upgrade.
But yeah, always a good question. Allowing pro models to run full macOS when docked would be a differentiator, but not sure if they’ll ever allow that. Foldable models could be another upsell path.
I’d be down for a tablet w/ Apple Pencil support running Mac OS X.
Where do I send my money?
Bonus points if it had a Wacom EMR option — really wish that Wacom would just make a Cintiq which had a bay for a Mac Mini to be fitted into.
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I still think the iPad Pro 11 is worth the extra $200 for an additional 64GB storage, brighter ProMotion display, better audio, and Face ID. The storage and Face ID are the big ones for me. Being able to just swipe to unlock or tap space bar when using with keyboard adds up over thousands of interactions over the life of the device.
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I haven’t tried the newer touchID yet, integrated in the power button. Might work pretty well as well.
It’s the reaching up part that’s the drag, not the accuracy or speed.
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Ooooohhhh you touched a nerve there - Apple needs to let you toggle off swipe to open - if I want it to open when it sees my ugly mug that is my decision - I hate the swipe even as much as you hate reaching for the power button…
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Amen! I much prefer how Windows Hello works on my SLS. Hardly a pause as it sees it’s me and continues on to present the desktop, no interaction necessary.
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I’m not endorsing it or condemning it, but Apple has told us that it is both deliberate and likely won’t change. Their justification is that it’s an extra necessary level of security and privacy and thus requires the active participation of the user.
They explained to us and a customer at the time that when they were designing face ID, they looked at others like Samsung and Micrsoft had done and found far too many false positives where the device was unlocked/opened when it wasn’t intended.
BTW: The additional step is not purely a gesture as there is a secondary verification that occurs as you swipe up. And… this is also something that our own military requires in the more secure spaces where they use any type of biometric authentication. eg. they require positive user instigated confirmation that it is the intended action
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Then they should treat us as adults and allow us to have a toggle in the settings for “extra security” or “casual security” or something. Mine is at home, I live alone and nobody ever enters the place unless it’s a burglar, which has never happened. It’s not like I go on vacation; I live in a motorhome. 
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I agree with you. But I can also already hear the yes, but…
One thing that comes to mind right away is that introducing a toggle also introduces a vector to thwart it. Again, I’d be for it, but it’s more proof of the old axiom, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.
And to again reference the military example, you can turn it off on those devices too, but it also then disables certain network resource access
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It was more of a complaint than a real suggestion. I know it’s not gonna happen. Apple is nanny to the core. They know what’s best for us.
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FWIW I’m 100% on the toggle side, but have to agree with Ted that the Apple nanny state will never relent, just like touch screen laptops. And for a fact (putting on my The Verge cape) I KNOW there are 17 employees at Apple who permanently lengthened their arms by being forced to reach up and touch a MacBook screen for a whole year testing out Schiller’s arm fatigue theory…
In all seriousness, Apple originally trumpeted “slide to unlock” as a means of preventing inadvertently starting your device - aka but* dials - not any kind of security feature…
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Having used both the 12.9 iPad Pro with the Face ID and the Mini 6 with the touch-id, I greatly prefer the Mini 6.
But I also tend to use both while I’m already holding the device. To chris_kez’s comments about having to reach up, I suppose if you use the device in laptop/mode attached to the magic keyboard for 99% of the time, then the Face ID might be more convenient, but for more Hands on usage, the touch ID is way better. Especially if you use it in Bed or while lying down on the couch, etc. That Face ID doesn’t work so well if your heads at an angle.
Yeah, but Samsung, Microsoft, et al. get that most of us don’t want or need that level of security. We just don’t want someone to just be able to pick up our device and look at our messages.
When needed, there are options to make things more secure even ince unlocked.
Things like financial transactions aren’t allowed to be done with such insecure authentication methods (although the pattern unlock isn’t the most secure, it s only for small amounts).
Snd then there’s always the option to turn off things like face unlocking.
Most of us aren’t in the military.
So the embargo on reviews is over today and the reviews all pretty much say the same which is that this is by far the best value in the IPad line with the best mix of features and performance for the price.
But of course, this guy also then does much of what I was railing about earlier in the thread. eg. “is one of the most future-proof iPads you can buy”
First of all with tech generally buying something with the idea that it has any level of “future proof” is a fools errand as there are so many variables that can affect the long term viability of the device.
And for that matter he’s ignoring Apple’s record over tha last decade of having a predictable cadence for all of their products and support for them is multi-year (and exceptionally long IMHO) for even the base iPad.
But’s he right that it’s an outstanding iPad.
Apple iPad Air (2022) review: Almost future-proof | Engadget
PS: We just started testing our lab unit, but the display is a newer panel and does show measurable improvements in accuracy, linearity and uniformity, though not quite to the levels of the Pro 11
EDIT: ARRRGGGGGH… and the stupidity continues “the slightly faster than LTE speeds”. He provides NOTHING to support that statement while completely ignoring that 5G mid band while in sterile lab conditions doesn’t provide a huge speed boost over LTE, real world is often very different with more reliable connections generally, signal acquisition, resistance to interference , etc.
Maybe the solution for me is to stop reading reviews 
Apple iPad Air (2022) review: it’s the nice one - The Verge
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One of my two worst tech habits (the other, of course, is the unicorn hunt for one device to rule them all). For the record, I think Apple does a much better job than most in extending the lives of their devices with years of OS compatibility.
Don’t stop reading the reviews, keep calling them out on this garbage. With both my Fold 3 and iPhone 13 Pro, I can definitely see the performance delta even out here in the backwoods of West Texas, much less the metro areas I’ve visited. I realize AT&T withits BS 5e last year and even the others have mucked this up, but the results are clear.
Is this really true, or just typical BGR hyperbole:
iPad Air 5 absolutely crushes Galaxy Tab S8’s throttled performance