If you’ve been on Apple’s website long enough, you’ll see that Apple has officially named its latest iPads by their M-series chips, instead of by their generations. To further understand this change in the naming scheme, let’s go back to when the original iPad Pro was introduced.
Back in September 2015, Apple debuted the iPad Pro, which initially featured a larger 12.9-inch display. About six months later, Apple introduced an additional smaller model in the iPad Pro lineup, which had both a 9.7-inch display and the A9X chip that was initially found in the larger model. When Apple updated both iPad Pro models in June 2017 with the A10X chip, the smaller model also got a larger display, going from 9.7 to 10.5 inches. History would repeat itself when Apple redesigned both Pro models in October 2018. The smaller model went from 10.5 to 11 inches on the diagonal.
Since then Apple has kept those display sizes for four generations. In other words, there were four generations of the 11-inch Pro and six generations of the 12-inch Pro; however, this naming scheme by generation has caused a bit of confusion for potential buyers. For example, Apple officially branded the iPad Pro models introduced in 2022 as the iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation) and iPad Pro (12.9-inch 6th generation). You can see where the confusion would begin; since the former model was two generations behind the latter, people might think that the former had previous-generation hardware even though both models featured the same specs and hardware.
Furthermore, Apple introduced an additional larger model in the iPad Air lineup. So from the very beginning, the Pro went smaller and the Air just went bigger. Now that there are two sizes for both the Air and Pro lines, what would Apple brand the new iPad Airs? Certainly not iPad Air (6th generation) since there’s technically just one generation of the larger iPad Air and six generations of the smaller model. (It’d get even more confusing with three generations of the 10.9-inch model.) Therefore, the optimal branding scheme that makes the most sense is naming those latest iPads by the M-series chip. This would help customers to easily identify those iPads by hardware. Additionally, this new naming scheme follows suit on how Apple identifies its Mac models, particularly the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models now that there are also two sizes in both lines.
So now we have these official names that Apple brands for its latest flagship tablets:
- iPad Air 11-inch (M2)
- iPad Air 13-inch (M2)
- iPad Pro 11-inch (M4)
- iPad Pro 13-inch (M4)
With this new naming convention in place, what about the standard iPad and iPad mini? Will Apple stick with the current convention for both lines since Apple won’t likely add new additional screen sizes for both lines? Only time will tell, but we’ll likely see a similar “chip” naming convention also apply to both lines when new models will be announced as soon as this fall, e.g. iPad (A16) and iPad mini (A17) perhaps?
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