Mark Gurman, Ace Reporter, on the New Regular iPads

Mark Gurman, in his Power On column for Bloomberg, on January 12:

The new entry-level iPads — J481 and J482 — will get faster processors and Apple Intelligence. The current models have the A14 chip and 4 gigabytes of memory. Look for the new versions to have the A17 Pro chip, matching the iPad mini, and a bump to 8 gigabytes of memory. That’s the minimum needed to support the new AI platform.

The new iPads sport the A16 chip and thus do not support Apple Intelligence. But who cares about little details like that when you know the codenames, which is what really matters.

I’ll bet what happened is that Gurman was right, and the new iPads were set to use the A17 Pro chip and support Apple Intelligence. But after Gurman spoiled it seven weeks ago, Apple scrapped those plans and changed the chips to the A16 just to spite him.

★ Wednesday, 5 March 2025