Apple’s new iPads could make a surprise appearance this week

Apple last month released updates to its iPhone, Apple Watch and even AirPods Pro collections, but the iPad was strangely absent – surprising considering Apple’s entry-level iPad tends to get an update every September alongside the smartphone collection.

However, a new report from Supercharged that was later verified by 9to5Mac sources claims that Apple is about to unveil a whole host of new iPads with new chipsets powering the experience on offer.

More specifically, both Supercharged and 9to5Mac sources claim that Apple is set to announce new iPads sometime this week, likely sometime tomorrow, 17 October 2023. 

But rather than being a huge upgrade, like the jump from the iPad 9 to iPad 10, it’s rumoured that the upgrades will be much smaller in scope, essentially just updating the chipsets within select models of iPad to help them better compete in 2023. 

According to the sources of the rumour, Apple is planning to reveal not only a new base iPad but refreshed models of iPad Air and iPad Mini with new chipsets. 

The current iPad Air ships with an M1 chipset, with rumours suggesting that’ll be upped to the same M2 chipset as you’ll find in the latest iPad Pro – a model that, oddly, isn’t getting an update this week despite the fact that it’s now a year old.

The iPad mini is said to not only get the upgrade from the A15 Bionic to A16 Bionic, but it’s said to include a new display controller to help negate some of the effects of the ‘jelly scrolling’ issues on the current model. 

Finally, the base-level iPad is said to get an upgrade, though unlike other models, the anonymous sources are yet to confirm the chipset that Apple will use. The 10th-gen model uses the A14 Bionic chipset, so it’s possible that the iPad could skip the A15 Bionic to get the same A16 Bionic as the iPad mini, but we’ll have to wait to find out for sure. 

Aside from the new display controller in the iPad mini, the changes across the new iPads are said to be minimal – and that’s likely why Apple isn’t doing an all-bells-and-whistles event to announce the hardware as it did with the iPhone launch in September. 

That said, a separate last-minute rumour suggests that the Apple Pencil could be in for an update this week. According to Japanese blog Mac Otakara (translated by Google Translate) the “Apple Pencil 3 will be launched, which will come with a replaceable magnetic tip”.

That follows on from rumours circulating in September that the updated Apple Pencil would sport interchangeable magnetic tips for drawing, technical drawing and digital painting, suggesting there could be something to it – but we’ll have to wait and see for sure.

We expect the announcement to happen via press release, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on our inboxes this week. Are you excited about the launch of new iPads and a new Apple Pencil, or is it much of a muchness at this point? Let us know your thoughts.