There will only be one iPad refresh in 2023, and it’s not the iPad Mini 7 we were all expecting or the iPad Pro most of us wanted.
According to a rumor on Weibo, “Only the iPad Air series should be updated this year,” and states October for the product launch window. The post adds, “No mini and Pro this year.”
Top insider Mark Gurman’s comments on the latest episode of The MacRumors Show seem to confirm these rumors, which were posted before his appearance on the show. He said the iPad Air was “coming soonish.”
Gurman also clarified that he doesn’t think we’ll see an iPad Apple event in October, “I’m not sure they have enough to drag people down to Cupertino to watch the video like they do for this launch” referring to the upcoming iPhone 15 “Wonderlust” event.
If these rumors are true, we could expect to see a press release reveal of the iPad Air 6 in a similar vein to the way Apple announced the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro earlier this year.
The iPad Air was last updated in March 2022 with Apple’s M1 chip, a USB-C port, and a 12-megapixel front camera.
Not the iPad we hoped for — iMore’s take
In the world of tablets, nothing comes close to the iPad. The product line is so far ahead of the competition that it’s not about which tablet you should buy but rather which iPad you should buy. The iPad’s hardware is excellent; the iPad Pros are powered by M2 chips similar to those found in the M2 MacBook Air, and the iPad Air 5 has an M1, which is still sold in the M1 MacBook Air.
For a while, the problem with the iPad has been the lack of software advancements to match up with the powerful hardware on offer, and that’s why a full calendar year with presumably a minor update to the iPad Air feels a little deflating. iPadOS 17 will be released in the coming weeks, bringing the updated Lock Screen from iOS 16 and the Health app to the iPad, but it’s not the revolutionary software release we were hoping for.
I’m sure the iPad Air 6 will be a nice upgrade for those looking for the jack-of-all-trades iPad. Still, for the iPad product line as a whole, we’ll need to wait until next year to see some actual advancements and potentially a major operating system upgrade when iPadOS 18 comes around.