Whoever said “out with the old, in with the new” clearly wasn’t talking about Apple’s playbook.
The company may have its fair share of new and updated devices, but it’s also made a habit of building off of its existing devices—and not just in terms of spec bumps and speed boosts, but in actively finding ways to use old products as launching points for brand new devices. It’s a move that most companies probably couldn’t pull off, but one with which Apple has had great success—and which it will probably continue to use in the future.
Something in the Air
When Apple launched the redesigned 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros late last year, it discontinued the 10.5-inch iPad Pro after only a little over a year of service. Apple’s certainly no stranger to quick turnarounds on products—remember the seven-month reign of the third-generation iPad?—but it seemed extra strange to build out an entire new screen size of device only to summarily replace it.
With this week’s announcement of the 10.5-inch iPad Air, things become a little clearer. The new Air isn’t quite the same as the Pro—it’s got a better chip inside, yes, but it lacks certain features like the four-speaker stereo sound and ProMotion display. That balance of features helps position it between the 9.7-inch iPad below it and the 11-inch iPad Pro above. More importantly, though, it’s built on the same chassis as the Pro, so the same accessories, such as the existing Smart Keyboard, work just fine on the new Air.
Read more at MacWorld.com