The rumour mill churned up a new bit of information — Apple is about to introduce a successor to the iPad Air 2 at its next press conference on March 21, 2016. The invitation for the conference had a cryptic message “let’s loop you in”. According to sources on the internet, the newest iPad Air would come with a price hike of $599 as compared to the older entry-level price of $499. But the 9.7 inch iPad would have 32 GB of storage, which is more than the 16 GB that iPad Air 2 offered.
The need for a more expensive iPad may have stemmed from the fact that there will be no iPad Air 3. The new iPad Air would be something like a smaller version of the iPad Pro that supports the accessories and is faster than its predecessor.
This also means that the Apple Pencil, which currently is compatible only with iPad pro, will work well on this latest gadget. Apple’s Smart Keyboard is also most likely to be compatible with it.
When iPad Pro was launched, there was no side update for the iPad Air. This latest iPad shall come with some upgrades like multitasking and split-view, which are otherwise not available on the iPad Air 2.
The new iPad shall start with 32 GB space along with the more expensive options that come with LTE and 128GB of storage. The company will most likely keep the old iPad Air 2 in the market, though it is not known if it’ll enjoy a price cut or not as of now.
It is a small wonder that Apple is choosing to raise the price on the mainstream iPad, despite the fact that iPad sales went down by 25 percent, year over year. In retrospect, Apple did not update the iPad Air, which might be one of the reasons behind the shifty sales numbers. But then Apple does not believe in sharing sales prices from a given line of products too often.
It looks like Apple is trying to shift the iPad away from the ‘it’s just a bigger iPhone with a similar version of iOS’ notion that has been developed over the years. The iPad, iPhone with iOS 9 and the iPad Pro along with the latest accessories are supposed to be very different products, each with its own ecosphere. The iPad has generally been doing well as a more capable device and Apple is going to want to capitalize on these differences that the devices offer. The latest iPad Pro is like a statement in itself, a statement that predicts iPads as the future of computers.
Multitasking is now simple
