Op-ed: The iPad needs more than a simple hardware refresh to fix what ails it.
Enlarge / Apple's $329 9th-gen iPad is over 2 years old and the last model to use Lightning or the old Apple Pencil. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
After leaving the iPad lineup untouched for the entirety of 2023, Apple is reportedly preparing to overhaul all of its tablets within the next few weeks, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. We should see major iPad Pro and iPad Air refreshes "around the end of March or in April," says Gurman, along with a special build of iOS 17.4 that adds support for the new hardware.
We'll talk about the specifics of these iPad rumors momentarily, but reading about them got me thinking about what it would take to make me consider an upgrade for either of the iPads currently rolling around my house—a 3rd-generation iPad Air that is currently used mostly for watching Octonauts and assembling Super Mario Lego sets, and a 5th-generation M1 Air that I use mostly for reading and browsing.
At least for me, the answer isn't "new hardware." After a brief stint a few years ago using the iPad as a focused writing device, I've mostly relegated it to tablet-y content consumption, leaving behind the cottage industry of enthusiasts who keep trying to come up with workarounds to make the iPad into a Mac. To replace an iPad at this point, I would either need one of them to break or for Apple to dramatically change what the high-end iPads are capable of.
