iPad Pro: What Apple is planning for the next professional tablets
The iPad Pro M5 has barely hit the market, and there are already rumors about its successors. A foldable still needs time.
iPad Air M5: Work on the successor is underway.
(Image: heise medien)
Apple is working on various hardware innovations for the upcoming generations of the iPad Pro. Functions from the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max are to be adopted, writes the Bloomberg financial news agency. According to the information, this primarily concerns the so-called vapor chamber, a cooling system that Apple has installed in its more expensive current iPhones. This “vapor chamber” ensures that heat is transferred from the processor area (System-on-Chip, SoC) to the device chassis. Deionized water is used, which, like in a heat pipe, generates cold by evaporating on the chip side and condenses again on the frame. With the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, Apple claims that runtimes at maximum performance can be up to 40 percent longer. The company apparently wants to achieve this for the iPad Pro as well.
It will still take a while
According to the report, this could happen in 2027. If Apple sticks to its current upgrade cycle of approximately 17 months for its professional tablets, this would then be the iPad Pro M6. Apple's completely redesigned iPad Pro M4 was released in May 2024, and the iPad Pro M5 with an accelerated chip was launched last week. For the iPad Pro M6, Apple could therefore choose spring again—this time the year after next—as the release date.
Videos by heise
With the M6, Apple is expected to switch to TSMC's 2-nanometer process. This promises even more efficiency and performance but could exacerbate the heat dissipation problem. Apple had upgraded iPadOS 26 with window management, making the systems more like work machines. For example, Final Cut Pro exports can now finally run in the background, and windows can be freely arranged.
iPad Pro can demand more performance
So it happens more often that the iPad reaches its performance limits and the fanless design cannot dissipate heat quickly enough. The iPad Pro is now Apple's thinnest device; there is no room for mechanical heat dissipation here.
The vapor chamber is not fundamentally new; it is also used by competitors in the Android environment, and the technology is partly used in PCs. Whether Apple will also bring it to the Mac remains unclear; it is conceivable. The M5 is said to approach Apple's M1 Ultra chip in some benchmarks, which was once the fastest model among Apple's silicon chips. However, the processor is only a small step up from the M4.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
(bsc)
