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Apple

Apple Unveils iPad Air With M3 Chip (apple.com) 42

Posted by msmash from the speeds-and-feeds dept.
Apple today announced a significant update to its iPad Air lineup, integrating the M3 chip previously reserved for higher-end devices. The new tablets, available in both 11-inch ($599) and 13-inch ($799) configurations, deliver substantial performance gains: nearly 2x faster than M1-equipped models and 3.5x faster than A14 Bionic versions.

The M3 brings Apple's advanced graphics architecture to the Air for the first time, featuring dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing. The chip includes an 8-core CPU delivering 35% faster multithreaded performance over M1, paired with a 9-core GPU offering 40% faster graphics. The Neural Engine processes AI workloads 60% faster than M1, the company said. Apple also introduced a redesigned Magic Keyboard ($269/$319) with function row and larger trackpad.
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Apple Unveils iPad Air With M3 Chip More

Apple Unveils iPad Air With M3 Chip

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  • I wonder how many people feel that a tablet need to be a high-performance machine?

    • Re:Market Research (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pibroch(CiH) ( 7414754 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @12:33PM (#65210123)

      There are people out there who use an iPad (or a Galaxy S Ultra Tab) as a daily driver. As few as you might think, but they do exist.

      I like having an iPad Pro for those times when I use it, but I use my laptop for 95% of my computing. It's a nice-to-have, and I really only have one because my work allows me the opportunity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        It seems like it could be a decent choice. So long as there would be a decent tabbed SSH client that would run on it and allow me to switch between a Web browser and the SSH client and a remote desktop client without losing any active connections.

        • Blink Shell isn't traditionally tabbed, but you can have multiple ssh shells in it. Works well with some UI niceties to make being on a (normally) keyboardless device less bad.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spudnic ( 32107 )

          SecureCRT for iPAD is great when I'm on call and don't want to have to carry around a laptop. It's saved me many times. VPN in and boom.

    • I wonder how many people feel that a tablet need to be a high-performance machine?

      Imagine how amazing Candy Crush looks on it!

      • Everyone knows the real app to test is Angry Birds. Now in 3D with AI of course.

        • Everyone knows the real app to test is Angry Birds. Now in 3D with AI of course.

          I miss Angry Birds in its original form. The last one I could get ahold of was just trash in comparison.

          I did manage to track down Crush the Castle for PC, the original fling-and-kill game. So simple, so fun.

    • Blame browser bloat.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 )
      Depends on the usage. Watching YouTube videos, no. Graphical design (sketching, illustrations, some animations), yes. Apple is getting close to a true tablet/laptop hybrid. Previous attempts like Windows RT were woefully trading off power or efficiency or ease of use.
    • I wonder how many people get their boss to buy them a shiny bauble whose power they will never come close to using?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If the company won't spend money on my salary then I'll spend their money on gadgets.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stripes ( 3681 )

        I wonder how many people get their boss to buy them a shiny bauble whose power they will never come close to using?

        I own the company I work for, and I won’t authorize myself to buy this thing for me. (to be fair I did buy myself the prior iPad Air, and two different sizes of iPad Pro -- mostly because I sell the service of writing iPadOS apps...and next on my hit list is the iPad mini because it is different enough in size to demand UI differences -- if a client had a problem that could only be reproduced on the M3 Air I would same day purchase one, I’m not dumb, I just prefer to limit my blueness expenses

    • I wonder how many people feel that a tablet need to be a high-performance machine?

      Good question, and the associated question is whether a typical user will notice the difference.

      Of course, Apple products are aspirational and have cachet, so in that sense the move to M3 has value for some people.

    • Lot of uses for that in the music and video production industry. A tablet being able to handle a lot of tracks (24+ tracks for a basic drum set) is a nice thing to have, especially being fast enough to handle the audio in, as well as give a responsive UI. Tablets are great work surfaces. As an every daily driver, they are definitely not for everyone, but as something to take on a business trip instead of a personal laptop, they are a good alternative, and perhaps more secure, as they have less data on th

    • Well,

      I now only need to find a cheap rack of solar panels to run my bit coin mining Beowulf cluster of iPads.

      Seriously, an iPad with "normal speed", and 30h ++ battery life, that would be _useful_

      For what would I need an AI processor or *9* GPU cores in a tablet???

  • Still no Linux on iPad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @12:36PM (#65210129)

    I'd buy this in a second if it had access to a real os.

    • It runs on BSD which is confirmed to be already dead. So it is a zombie OS, the strongest OS.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I'd buy this in a second if it had access to a real os.

      +1. iOS is the biggest flaw in the iPad. I'd settle for macOS, but iOS is a non-starter. Similarly, VisionOS is the biggest flaw in the Vision Pro. Both of these devices could be so much better if Apple weren't lobotomizing them to keep strict control over what software you can run.

    • And what would you do with this "real os"?

      • Productivity work that requires multiple screens, multiple apps at once, and complete access to my files. By all reports, ios sucks for this. Yesterday I had five spreadsheets open, tiled across my 4k screen, as I sorted through account transactions for my taxes. I regularly have content across three screens and run Firefox and Chrome at the same time, with plug-ins that I cannot have on ios. None of this is difficult for Apple to fix. They just gimp ios.

        • Sounds like a terrible use case for a tablet.

          • A tablet is a computer with a touchscreen but no keyboard or trackpad built in. More than half the time, I don't use my laptop's keyboard or trackpad. I hook it up to thunderbolt with an external monitor or monitors, mechanical keyboard, and mouse. But tablets are lighter. A Macbook Air is 2.7 lbs. An iPad air m3 11" will weigh 1.01 lbs. A rather significant difference. A Surface Pro weights 2 lbs. I'd love to use an iPad air m3 11" as my daily, if it had a real OS.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              A tablet is a computer with a touchscreen but no keyboard or trackpad built in. More than half the time, I don't use my laptop's keyboard or trackpad. I hook it up to thunderbolt with an external monitor or monitors, mechanical keyboard, and mouse. But tablets are lighter. A Macbook Air is 2.7 lbs. An iPad air m3 11" will weigh 1.01 lbs. A rather significant difference. A Surface Pro weights 2 lbs. I'd love to use an iPad air m3 11" as my daily, if it had a real OS.

              Supposedly Apple is about to release a Mac

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ratbag ( 65209 )

          "by all reports"? Okay, thanks for your informed opinion. When I get a 4K iPad I'm sure I'll bear it in mind and be desperate to use that whole screen with 0.1mm tall letters (that's something small over something big inches for our former allies).

          • I have no clue what you're talking about. You seem confused as to what I said.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ratbag ( 65209 )

              "By all reports, ios sucks for this"

              "across my 4k screen"

              So, "by all reports", suggest you don't use iOS or an iPad, rendering your opinions less than totally useful.

              "tiled across my 4K monitor", suggest you were using a big screen to show multiple windows. Probably More than 20 inches across diagonally, compared to the more normal 11 inches that iPads and other tablets use. In other words it's meaningless to compare work patterns between the two platforms. A multiple window OS is not desirable on smaller d

        • Productivity work that requires multiple screens, multiple apps at once, and complete access to my files. By all reports, ios sucks for this.

          Shit, forget iOS even, macos sucks for this. If you want to do that, you're stuck with shitty displaylink.

    • Ironically who has a high powered tablet that can run just about any OS you want? Everybody's favorite tech company Microsoft [github.com]

      • Ehhh, that only applies to the x86 Surface Pro, which would be like an M3 iPad if you took away half of its cores, and installed a small nuclear reactor inside of it instead of a DC-DC converter for its power supply.

        It's not high performance, and it has the thermal characteristics of a volcano. It's a terrible fucking device.
        The Arm ones are a bit cooler and have pretty good performance, but sadly, they do not run linux, currently.

    • They always had a real OS.
      Perhaps you mean file system access.

      They have that since a decade ... so?

  • I'd rather have an iPad with brushable hair.
  • Oh, nevermind. I reed a real computer, ... to be productive.
  • I've had really good experience with iPads, but I'm gonna hold off on buying any more until they offer native Xcode on it. You have an M3, and a useable screen size; not great, but not awful. Why can't I run Xcode on it?

  • Why are they comparing the M3 to the M1? The last iPad Air came with the M2 chip.
    The current M-version is now M4, which the iPad Pro already got almost a year ago.

    Oh, I know why, the comparison numbers are much bigger. Bigger numbers sell more units.
    "It's 35% faster than the old one that we discontinued a year ago. It's only slightly faster than the current one"

  • There was a time when iPads significantly outperformed low priced Android Tablets. But I'm not sure that's true anymore.

  • My almost one year old iPad Pro has an M4 chip in it, yet they are going to launch an iPad Air with the older and less capable M3 chip? Strange. I was reading on all these forums and YouTube videos that M3 was finished because the TMSC process node for M3 was too complex and thus costly, whereas M4 uses a more streamlined and efficient node with less layers and better thermal performance, and is overall much better. I don't know what's going on now.

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