Apple iPad Pro 3rd Gen 12.9" Tablet (S&D)

Apple iPad Pro 3rd Gen 12.9" Tablet (S&D)

In case you’re curious, the main differences between this 3rd gen and the 4th gen 12.9” IPad Pro: the 4th gen adds an ultra wide camera and LIDAR (if you don’t know what that is, you don’t likely need it). Both gens have A12 cpus, but the 4th gen has a newer “A12Z” vs “A12X” cpu.

It is difficult to know how the future of iPadOS upgrades will proceed for the iPad Pro 12.9” since all iPad Pros and the IPad Air have now moved away from the current latest mobile A15 cpu to the far more powerful laptop and desktop M1 cpus. But since even the very first iPad Pro 12.9” with A9 cpu will get iPadOS 16, that hints this 3rd gen will get at least another 2-3 iPadOS upgrades.

1 Like

Agreed. By benchmarks, the iPad Pro 3rd Gen is actually about as powerful as the 4th Gen, with nearly identical physical specs. Making it a solid buy for anyone that doesn’t actually “need” an M1. Which on an iPad for the foreseeable future, is nearly everyone.

One thing of note, the deal is only for the 512GB model and below, which although not advertised, only gets 4GB of RAM. The 1TB model not listed, gets 6GB, making it much more future proofed with the direction iPadOS is going. The top spec M1 iPad Pro gets 16GB of RAM for comparison.

Unfortunately, Apple is using the M1 as a transparent excuse to feature lock certain aspects of iPadOS to M1 only models. Starting with their most flashy new feature, Stage Manager, proper external display support (not just bad display cloning with bars), reference mode, magnifier, and memory swap.

Users have already been able to successfully port over some of these features to other models with zero functionality loss. Also pointing out that the M1 iPad Air doesn’t even have some of the hardware they’re using as an excuse not to provide these features across the product line. Making them flat out liars. But hey, Apple will Apple.