2023 wasn’t exactly a banner year for the iPad platform, as it was the first (and hopefully only) year where no iPad hardware was released (unless you count the Apple Pencil USB-C). It wasn’t a total wash since we ended up getting iPadOS versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro that are actually pretty good, but 2023 was definitely a low point in terms of excitement in the iPad ecosystem.

With strong hardware releases across most of the iPad lineup, a feature-packed OS update with iPadOS 18, and more apps and tools filling out the ecosystem, 2024 was a pretty good year for iPad users.

Hardware

iPad Pro

The iPad Pro had its first major redesign since the introduction of 2018 models. It looks new, but is clearly an evolution of that design. That goes to show how well Apple nailed it with the 2018 iPad Pro.

What do you do when you’ve come up with a perfect tablet form factor? Make it thinner!

As reminder, what we got in this refresh was:

• A substantially thinner design
• OLED displays on both sizes (Hallelujah!)
• Slight display size increases to 11.1 and an even 13 inches on the diagonal, respectively
• An option for a nano texture display
• Improved thermals
• A relocated front camera to the landscape edge
• M4 chip which is up to 50% faster on the higher end configuration

The downside to all of these improvements is that, per usual, they came with a price increase. Not as astronomical as what was rumored, but still painful. The 13 inch iPad Pro now starts at $1299, which is kind of crazy pants. I don’t like how much iPad Pro pricing is getting away from its target users, which I view as prospective MacBook Air buyers.

Apple treats OLED as a premium technology, and don’t get me wrong, the tandem OLED display is by far the best display Apple ships today, but their competition has been using OLED displays in tablets for years. You can get last year’s 11-inch Galaxy Tab S9 with an OLED display for $800, and at the time of this writing, you can actually get it for a little under $600 on Amazon.

Even after seven months, the novelty of the 13-inch model’s lightness hasn’t faded. The primary reason for seeking a thinner and lighter iPad is because you actually hold it. While the previous models weren’t heavy, the lighter the device can be, the better it becomes for users.

I don’t take a ton of video calls, but the landscape oriented front camera has been a nice upgrade for those rare occasions. Although with Microsoft Teams finally adding support for external cameras on iPadOS, this becomes even less of a need.

The only issues I have with the iPad Pro hardware are that the displays don’t (can’t?) support Standby/Always On Display, and that there’s still only a single USB port. Even though I prefer to have everything be wireless, I think an additional USB port overdue for iPad Pro. It would be a great differentiator over the other models.

iPad Air

In 2024, I learned the iPad Air is a confusing product for a lot of people. Mostly because they are reasonably led to believe that since it’s an “Air” product, it logically should be the thinnest iPad. That really hasn’t been true since the iPad Air 2. The 11 inch iPad Pro has always been a hair thinner than the Air. There was never a huge size delta here.

The highlight of this year’s update was the addition of a 13-inch (12.9-inch) model to the Air line. Mimicking what they did with the MacBook Air and iPhone lines, Apple has decided to give iPad users a larger screen option without having to shell out $1,299. The Air also received the same landscape-oriented front camera as the Pro and base iPad, as well as a welcome chip bump to the M2.

Apple has stated that the purpose of the iPad Air is to make Pro features available at a lower price point. And that sounds like a good goal on paper, but it feels like that trickling of features has stopped. It’s really strange to me that the iPad Air still doesn’t have Face ID. It’s going to be pretty awkward if the rumored iPhone SE 4 gets Face ID at a lower price point than the iPad Air, while the iPad Air is stuck with Touch ID. After six years, I’m also ready to see ProMotion trickle down to the iPad Air.

iPad Mini

After three years, the iPad Mini received a pretty substantial spec bump. Thanks to the requirements around Apple Intelligence, the new Mini went from an anemic 4 GB of RAM to a “reasonable for an iPad” 8 GB. That in and of itself made this something of a worthwhile upgrade for me. The chip upgrade to the A17 Pro brings up to 30% faster CPU performance, and greatly enhanced the Mini’s gaming prowess with support for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 are also onboard this SoC.

Jelly scrolling may be fixed, or it may have just been improved; the jury is still out on that. I never saw it on the previous model, and still don’t on this one, so hooray for bad eyes, I guess 🤷‍♂️.

I don’t blame anyone for wanting this update to be more exciting after three years. The iPad Mini has no real competition, so Apple never has to try very hard. It would have been great to see a substantial display improvement, like an upgrade to either Mini-LED or OLED, though it’s likely that both would have resulted in a substantial price increase. This year, Apple was able to keep the price the same as the previous generation.

iPad 10 🙁

For the second year in a row, the base iPad received no hardware updates. Which is interesting because it used to be the one iPad model that reliably got yearly updates. The only change this model saw was a price reduction from $449 to $349. Thus, it remains the best iPad for most people, even without Apple Intelligence support.

Speaking of Apple Intelligence, next year we’re expecting the 11th generation iPad to finally arrive with an update that should look pretty similar to what the iPad Mini got this year. This model should receive a chip (A17 Pro?) with enough performance and RAM (8 GB) to run Apple’s AI models on-device. I don’t expect to see Apple Pencil Pro support since that would require Apple to add the necessary magnetic charging coils, which would in theory drive the price up (but who really knows).

Software

iPadOS 18

iPadOS 18 is a big update with a lot of new features like a looooooong requested Calculator app + Math Notes, Smart Script, enhanced Home Screen customization, the beginnings of Apple Intelligence, and more. But if you were expecting a bunch of new iPad specific features, you were likely very disappointed.

That’s fair. I was disappointed in that regard.

But on the bright side, at least iPadOS users didn’t get left out of any of the new customization features, as we have been in the past.

Apple has addressed a lot of the low hanging fruit in iPadOS over the past three or four years, but there are still a couple of big items that have yet to be addressed, particularly around audio. First and foremost, the option (defaulted to off) to play multiple audio streams at once. That sounds silly, I know….why would you want audio from two different apps playing at the same time? The answer is, I don’t but I would love it if switching to the Reddit app didn’t stop whatever music I had playing.

Podcasters have long requested the option for multiple apps to have access to the microphone so they can record a VOIP call with their cohosts, while also recording a local copy of their own voice.

Stage Manager received some tweaks in iPadOS 17, but seemingly no changes in iPadOS 18. I’m still advocating for Apple to remove the four app limit in Stage Manager on external displays. Or at least raise it. Some of us would also like the ability to turn off the iPad display when connected to an external display, similar to how we use our laptops.

Pro Apps

Final Cut Pro 2 , Logic Pro 2 – One of the hopes when Final Cut and Logic were announced as subscription apps in 2023 was that this pricing model would mean more frequent feature updates. Adobe does this with its Creative Cloud apps, and while there are plenty of other issues with Adobe business practices, its users seem to like this. That’s not exactly what we got, but I’m hopeful that the release of a substantial version 2 and 2.1 for both of these apps means that we’ll at least get at least one major new version of these apps every year. The most impactful new feature for me personally was external drive support in Final Cut.

Poor Swift Playgrounds

Now, I understand that Apple doesn’t see iPadOS as a platform for software development, and that’s fine. There is a small segment of users that will never buy one because of that viewpoint, but that’s Apple’s prerogative. However, I can’t help feeling like there was a plan at some point for Swift Playgrounds on iPad to be more than it is now. It hasn’t really gotten any major feature updates since they added support for building full apps, but the app would at least get a yearly SDK update to the latest major sdk at some point.

As of Jan 1, 2025, Swift Playgrounds has no support for the iPadOS/iOS 18 SDK. I like to think it’s because they were planning a big app update, but Apple Intelligence and Vision Pro caused a reallocation of resources internally. But who knows? The app may just be abandoned. No one knows, but Apple’s lack of attention to this app has been sad, and I’m hoping 2025 is the year they rectify that.

More Pro Apps

I try to keep up with new Pro apps that become available for iPadOS, but there’s no way I catch everything. This year, we saw the release of ZBrush for iPadOS. ZBrush is an industry-standard digital sculpting application that has been reimagined with a touch interface. My sculpting days began and ended with making clay pots in the fourth grade, so I don’t have a ton to add here. It’s just nice to see more pro apps coming to the platform!

Apple’s Policies Remain Stifling

If anything continues to hold iPad back, the number one culprit remains App Store policy. Case in point, UTM SE. This app is a PC emulator that came to iPad in 2024 that should allow users to emulate other operating systems like Windows or Linux? Seems cool, right?

The problem is, apps on the App Store are not allowed to execute dynamically generate code, for security reasons. Without this capability, more advanced emulators like UTM are greatly hampered from a performance perspective. To the point where there’s almost no point using the app.

This restriction is also what prevents third party developers from creating the software development tools for iPad that Apple themselves has little to no interest in creating.

Changing this one rule could revolutionize the iPad software ecosystem overnight, but its unlikely we’ll ever see this change without some kind of government intervention.

Ecosystem

iPadOS applications now have the option to integrate with the popular Stream Deck control pad via the newly released Stream Deck Kit for iPadOS. This library allows developers to interface directly with the Stream Deck hardware and support things like customizing the appearance of buttons and dials. Hardware manufacturers investing in tools like these help to bring the platform closer to parity with macOS and Windows.

Conclusion

2024 was a much better year for iPad than 2023. It’s also not a stretch to say the platform still has a ways to go, but is making progress, albeit slowly. Pro apps continue to trickle in from 3rd parties, and Apple is continuing to invest in its own Pro iPad apps (except for Swift Playgrounds for some reason). iPad hardware is in a pretty good place.

It’s not fair to say iPadOS is stagnant. It’s getting most of the new shared OS features every single year (and yes, they do count as iPad features). Apple could earn so much goodwill with the iPadOS community by actually prioritizing the Stage Manager improvements and audio management fixes that have been requested by enthusiasts for years. Beyond that, it’s up to developers to take advantage of the capabilities already in iPadOS to continue to build us high-quality apps.