“Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo with TF International Securities recently published a report (via MacRumors) in which he talked about one of the key new features he expects to see in Apple’s next iPad Pro,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “Kuo wrote that he gives better-than-even odds that the iPad that Apple introduces in either the fourth quarter of 2019 or the first quarter of 2020 ‘may adopt [time-of-flight].’ As MacRumors explains, ‘[a] time-of-flight camera system is designed to determine the distance between objects by measuring the time-of-flight of a light or laser signal between the camera and the subject at each point in the image.'”
“Put simply, the rear-facing camera of the next iPad Pro should get 3D sensing capability,” Eassa writes. “‘We believe that 3D modeling captured by ToF and then edited by an Apple Pencil on an iPad will create an all-new productivity experience for design applications in a totally different manner from [traditional] computers,’ said Kuo.”
“Although that potential iPad Pro camera upgrade sounds quite compelling, Apple’s mighty research and development organization is unlikely to be content with just a single upgrade,” Eassa writes. “In the next iPad Pro, expect Apple to deliver a new A13X applications processor that meaningfully boosts GPU, CPU, and Neural Engine (used for machine learning tasks) performance over the current-generation A12X Bionic.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We expect lucky iOS 13, to be unveiled in June, along with lucky A13 and A13X, due next fall, will deliver more power user features to iPad Pro and iPhone models that have the hardware to handle them.
Why the @$%#$% does it still have only one port? Even Apples own ad shows a tangle of dongles and adaptors. They should have kept the lightning, and put the USB an inch to the side, or on the other side, or anywhere.
Surely will be unthinkable to watch next year an even more powerful chip being presented with all the Intel humiliating demonstrations and benchmarks but with software that effectively does little to take advantage of it. Apple and Cook will have to get off the fence and decide just what they want the future of Apple products to be (at least beyond the iPhone) otherwise it just gets all rather pointless with all this power higher prices yet little attempt to exploit it because they don’t want overlap between iOS and Macs. They either need to add a big hike in capabilities to the iPad or bite the bullet and produce some overlap device. Seems rather stupid to have the best silicon to do that but no products to exploit it. Sadly as the Air (the obvious branding for such a device) is clearly staying a Mac and the pushing of the iPad Pro branding its difficult to see any near term future that isn’t based around iPad development. In that case they need to be brave and less dogmatic I feel. Not sure that will happen in 12 months mind if ever while Cook is there.
Well, I don’t work for Apple, but as the new owner of an iPad Pro, a genuinely thrilling machine that I saved months to buy, I think the new one should include mouse or trackpad support, and let me have dual boot, both iOS and MacOS.
My first iMac, years ago, had both Macosx and os9, so we could use legacy software.
I would love to be able to use both iOS and MacOS software.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene
I never really understand the calls for mouse or trackpad support for the iPad Pro when it has touch screen and pencil, which provides very precise navigation where required.
I feel the iPad Pro hardware is now really excellent, and where Apple needs to concentrate their effort is in software enhancements to enable all the capabilities of MacOS on the iPad. Let’s hope this comes true with iOS 13!
It’s eally pretty obvious by now, or at least it should be.
No real cursor support via track pad or mouse makes it difficult for any long term writing. While the current method of text selection can work well, it’s a bit clumsy. When trying to select text in a browser, it can be be neigh on impossible. Just try it. Professional writers find it to be frustrating.
In addition, Apple is refusing to add a touch screen to notebooks or iMacs because of “gorilla arm”. So why, when offering a keyboard for the iPad, is “gorilla arm” ok? And the very first pad, which I have, had a plug in keyboard that had the iPad sit vertically, making it even worse! The iPad Pro 12.9”, which I also have, is pretty big, and gorilla arm is very much in action there.
While the two finger keyboard trick sometimes helps, most times it doesn’t really solve the problem, and can be tricky to use.
So for those reasons, and more, not supporting a trackpad is silly. Google’s new Chromebook tablet does it best. When there’s no keyboard, there’s no trackpad or mouse support. When there is one, it appears. That makes sense.
These are pretty easy bets. New SoC called the A13x? Yup.
New software for the camera enabling more features? Yup.
Pencil used for more purposes than now? Yup.
Anything else?
Maybe allowing mass storage drives.
Opening the file system more.
New UI for iPads. At least for pro models. This was expected this year, but redoing the internals for iOS supposedly held it back until next year.
Maybe better multitasking. Make it easier to share files among apps. I will say, multitasking works better on the new 12.9” iPP. The faster CPU and GPU makes it much more smooth.
Sounds very exciting!!!
But no where near as important as bringing ios to pro level by implementing a comprehensive roubust CORE IOS file/assett managent system with a consitant UI accessable from all apps to all files and drives. (Local , external, cloud.) and unrestricted usb-c io.
(Core/native is the key word here. )
I’ll take mine with a headphone jack and Touch ID please.