The recently released 11th-generation iPad has been discovered to support Final Cut Pro for iPad. This means that, for the first time, every current iPad in the lineup can run Apple’s pro video editing app.

Initially noticed by MacRumors, the App Store page for Final Cut Pro for iPad has been updated to note that either an M-Series chip or an A16 chip or newer is required to run the software.

Final Cut Pro for iPad was initially limited to running on M-Series iPads, but Apple has been gradually expanding support over the past year. The iPad Mini (A17 Pro), launched in 2024 with Final Cut support, and it’s a welcome surprise that the most affordable iPad gains access to Apple’s most prominent iPadOS pro app. The requirements for Apple’s other Pro apps, Logic Pro (A12 Bionic or newer) and Swift Playgrounds (iPadOS 17 or later), have never been as stringent.

Other iPadOS video editing applications, like LumaFusion and DaVinci Resolve, have long provided support for lower-end iPads, but generally scale down features to work within the lowered hardware limits. For example, maybe an M-Series iPad could export a video at 4K resolution, but a base iPad or iPad Mini could maybe only export at 1080p.

It’s unknown if Final Cut on the standard iPad will have any such limitations, or if the A16 chip with its 6 GB of RAM is enough to support the core feature set. There are, of course, some features that won’t be supported based on hardware/software limitations (the base iPad has no Apple Pencil Hover support, for example).

Why This Matters

I’ve long argued that one area where the iPad lineup needs work is with the lower end of the lineup. There’s been way too much of a gap between the iPad Pro and the standard iPad for some pro app developers to effectively target the platform. A heavy-duty app that may work well on devices with 8-16 GB of RAM may provide a pretty poor experience on an iPad with 3 or 4 GB of RAM.

This is one of the few areas where I have wanted the iPad to mimic the Mac. Even before the Apple Silicon transition, every Mac could run all of Apple’s pro apps. They almost certainly wouldn’t work as well on slower machines, but at least users weren’t blocked from using them. Apple trying to “justify” using M-Series chips in an iPad needlessly fractures the platform in ways they don’t apply to Mac or iPhone.

Hopefully, this loosening of requirements means good things for the future of iPadOS. Removing the M-Series restriction for Stage Manager would be great for the health of the platform. I just hope someone at Apple agrees.

Link: MacRumors