Apple’s new iPad and iPad mini just hit shelves Friday and the iPad Pro is barely six months old, so we’re a long way from the next update. But a rumor surfaced this week that I desperately want to be true.
According to @dylandkt on Twitter, who has a decent track record and accurately predicted several details about the M1 iPad Pro, has dropped some information about Apple’s next flagship tablet. And it could dramatically change the way people use the iPad Pro while also fixing one of the most confounding and frustrating parts of it.
Dylan says future iPad Pro models “will feature a horizontal camera placement and a horizontally placed Apple logo on the back.” That would make the iPad Pro Apple’s first landscape tablet and could dramatically change the way Apple positions the iPad Pro in the lineup, especially if the other models stay in portrait mode.
A landscape iPad Pro would give Apple an opportunity to separate its professional tablets from its consumer ones. The iPad Pro may be faster, larger, and somewhat more capable than the iPad Air and iPad mini, but all three tablets are essentially the same, minus a few features. But by turning the tablet horizontally, it allows Apple to take iPadOS in a new direction—one that’s a little more, shall we say, Mac-like.
Even though Apple split iPadOS off from iOS, it’s still just an extension of the iPhone. But with this turn of events, that could change. We’ve all known that the iPad is more of a natural landscape device, but Apple has never recognized it. It’s not just the position of the camera or direction of the Apple logo, it’s the way the home screen is designed, how video calls are made, even how it charges.
Dylan cautions that he has “not confirmed whether the next-generation model will have this feature but it is in the works.” But here’s hoping it comes sooner than later.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor
Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He's still waiting for that to come back in style tbh.