Yesterday a rumor started circulating Apple could announce the iPad Air 2024 and iPad Pro 2024 on March 26 — which is less than half a week away. But before you get too excited at that prospect, it’s already been shot down by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman over on X.
The original rumor came from leaker Instant Digital on Chinese social network Weibo, but didn’t quite call it an official launch date. Likewise Chinese news site IT Home reported some kind of announcement on the same date, but as MacRumors points out may have gotten confused based on when new third party iPad cases are set to hit Amazon.
Gurman is usually a pretty good source of insider Apple information. While he doesn’t have a flawless track record, his reporting generally turns out to be pretty accurate. Especially this close to a potential launch day. So when he says we won’t see new iPads on March 26, we’re inclined to believe him.
The question is, when will these new iPads be announced? We had originally expected them to arrive alongside the new MacBook Air M3 — but that obviously didn’t happen. We’ve also heard news that the new iPad Airs have already started shipping to the U.S. ahead of release, which suggests launch is imminent.
Gurman has divulged a few more details on what to expect in his latest Power On newsletter. Apparently the holdup is due to a “variant of iPadOS 17.4” that the new iPads will ship on. Not only will it not be ready until later this month, Gurman claims it could take “a couple weeks” to install the software on the first wave of shipments.
With that in mind, Gurman believes that the iPads won’t actually be ready until “deeper into next month”. So we’re looking at potentially seeing the new models towards the end of April. An official announcement could come earlier, but considering the MacBook Air M3 was released just days after it was announced, Apple may end up doing the same again.
We’re looking at potentially seeing the new models towards the end of April.
The iPad Pro 2024 models are expected to launch with an OLED display, the first for an iPad, Apple’s M3 chip plus new versions of the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil. The iPad Air 2024 isn’t expected to change all that much, but there have been conflicting rumors on whether the tablet will be available in a larger 12.9-inch size.
While we wait for Apple to make everything official be sure to check out our iPad Pro 2024 and iPad Air 2024 hubs for all the latest news and updates
