By now, rumours of a folding iPhone are reaching fever pitch, with the premium device set to arrive in September this year. It could be the first significant new product announced by new CEO John Ternus, but new reports suggest Ternus himself has been working on another, even weirder, design – one that I can't see hitting our best iPad for drawing roundup.
According to Macworld, one of Ternus' "pet projects' over the last few years has been a giant folding iPad – one with a whopping 18-inch display. Which, for my money, sounds like something we just don't need.
In Apple leaker Mark Gurman's Power On newsletter, he describes how “a gigantic, foldable iPad” with a “a Mac-sized giant screen" is in development, but there's no guarantee it'll ever actually see the light of day.
This isn't first time we've heard rumours of a folding iPad. Last year, analyst Jeff Pu claimed in a research note that Apple that will release both a a 7.8-inch foldable iPhone and an 18.8-inch foldable iPad in 2026.
While a folding iPhone makes sense (and even has us wondering whether the iPad has a future) thanks to the combination of portability and a larger display, it's hard to see who a giant iPad would actually be for. A nearly-19-inch display would make it bigger than any Mac on the market, almost taking it into iMac territory. Aside from digital artists who need a really (really) big canvas, who wants to carry around a slab that big? And speaking of size, surely the price would be astronomical too.
“It may end up being a wacky experiment that doesn’t see the light of day,” says Gurman of the giant iPad. Let's hope he's right.
