The tablet market is so bereft of serious alternatives to the iPad that Apple often ends up acting as its own competition . Rather than a pick between an iPad and an Android lozenge , the ordinary emptor is more likely to count the benefits of the canonical iPad versus its mini , Air , and Pro sibling . It ’s no wonder some people use the word iPad to intend tablets in general .
Of naturally , Apple would very much prefer our theoretical client to go for the iPad Pro , since it cost the most and presumably delivers the greatest profit margin . It just ca n’t seem to block up cannibalise sales of that mannequin , and indeed of all its Pro - branded products , with more appealing lower - price option .
To be clear , we ’re not talking about the incoming - level alternative . The 10.2 - inch iPad is obviously and signally better value than the iPad Pro , but it ’s marketed to and caters to an entirely different user base : no one who had earnestly entertained the thought of an iPad Pro could ever be glad with a vanilla extract iPad . The same is dependable of the iPhone SE and the Mac miniskirt , neither of which have ever been logical compare points for the equivalent Pro devices . Rather , the story of the past few old age has been the ascending of the inbetweener , the mid - market offering that combines the central features of the Pro model with a far lower price tatter .
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We got two glaring examples of this atApple ’s springiness eventlast week . The iPad Air swaggered back into the public eye after 18 month and instantly consign its 11 - inch professional sibling to niche appeal . The Air was brought neatly up to date with an M1 processor and 5 G support , and since it already check the Pro for USB - C and accouterment support there remained few convincing reasons ( the ProMotion screen , possibly ; the extra camera crystalline lens , implausibly ) for anyone but a small cadre of originative professionals to trounce out the extra $ 200 and go Pro .
More subtly , Apple recognized the Pro class ’s niche future with the Mac Studio , a swashbuckling mid - range – perhaps we want to sayuppermid - range – reimagining of the Mac mini data formatting with hardcore ironware . Nobody could mayhap mistake the Studio for a budget machine , with price protrude at $ 1,999 without a keyboard or varan , but it ’s a drastically more affordable option than the $ 5,999 Mac Pro and right now a substantially more appealing one .
There ’s no telling with Apple ’s assignment systems , but the Modern Studio brand may hail a wider new category in the company ’s course - up . It will be interesting to see whether other Studio products appear , and how they are pitched . It ’s long been obvious that Apple ’s Pro branding , which cover devices as diverse as the Mac Pro , the iPhone Pro , and the AirPods Pro , is an awkward conflation of pro and premium categories that should rightly be hold back disjoined . The Studio appointment may help make this clearer .
spill of theAirPods Pro , Apple finish a paltry keynote presentation for the Pro segment of its line by die to update its exchange premium earbuds and leaving them hanging in limbo . Who ’d buy a lot of AirPods Pro now , when the AirPods 3 are model there so invitingly , so up - to - dately , so $ 70 - cheaperly ?
I suppose as job go this is a pretty overnice one to have : missing out on sale of one mathematical product because hoi polloi are buy one of your others . well to lose a Pro sale than to lose a cut-rate sale totally . But Apple can ferment this around by festoon its Pro devices with so many exclusive features that client just ca n’t carry to lack out . Like we learn with the MacBook Pro , the iPhone 14 Pro will reportedly get a notchless figure , a 48MP photographic camera , better assault and battery life , faster RAM , and even anexclusive processor . If all of that turns out to be truthful , we ’ll experience once and for all that Apple occupy Pro sales seriously .
