M5 iPad Pro: Baby Steps
Lots of silence here for the M5 Apple Silicon debut on iPad Pros a couple days ago. Understandable. It’s just a small spec bump, though the neural engine got improved more substantially, for those who care.**
Still, it’s baby steps toward something of the MacPad a lot of users dream of (and others seem to be revolted by). Had they come out with iPadOS 26 at the time of the M1 release people would be jumping up and down and screaming “take my money!”. It’s like the frog slowly getting boiled in water without noticing it’s getting cooked.
No, I don’t think it’s going to be a “true” MacPad any time soon, if ever. Software vendors need to get fully on board, for one thing. Many seem to want to continue with a “lite” version on iPads and relegate the “Pro”, fully functional and higher priced versions on Macs even though it’s not technically necessary anymore. Sell it twice.
Poster boy for that strategy is Microsoft, of couse, with the Office suite. If they ever create parity between MacOS & iPadOS versions we might start seeing others follow suit.
Regardless, it’s baby steps forward, not backward, so a good release IMO.
** I actually do care about better neural engines in this case, since Apple uses the power to keep the AI stuff increasingly more on-device and thus more private.
I like your conclusion - keep it on device!