Key Takeaways
- Apple’s May 2024 Let Loose event featured new iPad Pro with M4 chip, iPad Air, and exciting software, creating impactful upgrades.
- The event showed Apple can make succinct yet powerful announcements without excessive run times or repetitive content.
- The longer break in iPad release cycle allowed the significant upgrades of M4 iPad Pro and new iPad Air to generate excitement.
Apple’s Let Loose event has come and gone, and with it came a myriad of exciting announcements about Apple’s exciting tablet lineup. Between the new M4 chip, the 13-inch iPad Air, the insanely thin iPad Pro, and the abundance of exciting new software announcements, there was quite a bit to get excited about from the latest Apple event.
But, it is also worth noting that it was a vast improvement over Apple’s recent events. Events such as Scary Fast,Wonderlust, and Far Out all featured expected product announcements from Apple, but none of them packed quite the pizzazz as Let Loose. As strange as that may seem, there is some legitimate reasoning behind this line of thinking.
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Importance
An event is only as good as the products it announces
Apple
The most obvious factor in what makes for a good announcement is a good product to announce. Steve Jobs’ announcement of the original iPhone was iconic, but it would not be anywhere near as well remembered if the iPhone hadn’t been any good. In much the same vain, Let Loose’s biggest perk was that the announcements carried some actual weight.
Let Loose’s biggest perk was that the announcements carried some actual weight.
2023 was the first year since the launch of the original iPad that didn’t see the release of a new iPad. We now know that the slight break in formula was the right move, as the new iPad Pro looks to be a fantastic tablet. Not to mention the newly announced Apple Pencil Pro bringing fantastic new features to the table.
Other recent Apple events served as announcements for products like the M3 MacBook Pro and the iPhone 15. While those products are outstanding, they didn’t majorly differ from the previous generation. Anyone with an M2 MacBook Pro could probably stick with their M1, in much the same way that an iPhone 14 user probably doesn’t need an iPhone 15.
The new iPad Pro, however, presents a reasonable bump in capability. It is also, alongside the new iPad Air, the only device that will work alongside the new Apple Pencil Pro. While this wasn’t an earth-shattering announcement by any means, it did represent a much more exciting upgrade than going from one iPhone to the next. It also featured the announcement of the M4 chip, while the M3 chip has only barely reached six months on the market.
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Length
Apple can get their superlative-laden announcements out quickly
Apple
The Evil Dead, Chronicle, and Toy Story all had comparable run times to Apple’s September Wonderlust event which announced the iPhone 15, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. While it isn’t necessarily an issue for an event to be over an hour long, it is an issue when not that much is really being said. Although bringing on Octavia Spencer to star as “Mother Nature” during the sustainability skit was both random and iconic.
It’s even more egregious when you consider that Apple makes iconic summary images for every product they announce. If the new details of a product can be condensed into one image, the video presentation probably doesn’t have to be feature-length. Especially when a lot of the presentation is spent seeing how many times they can call something “stunning” or attach an arbitrary
“best ever” label.
In just 38 minutes, Apple announced two new iPads, an accessory, and the next generation of Apple Silicon. And, there was more to talk about with the upgrades to the new iPad Pro…
The Let Loose event clocked in at 38 minutes. In just 38 minutes, Apple announced two new iPads, an accessory, and the next generation of Apple Silicon. And, there was more to talk about with the upgrades to the new iPad Pro than the usual iterative iPhone upgrades. Apple didn’t even have to cut back on any superlatives to get the length trimmed down. The presentation was fast-paced, and very to the point on most fronts. For presenting truly exciting and new information about upcoming products, there’s no reason Apple has to go back to event lengths that rival some shorter movies.
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Spacing
An off year made it easier to get excited
Apple
The last time Apple had an event that announced a new iPad was in March 2022, just a bit over two years ago. Although an extra year might not seem like a long time in terms of products, those two years made it easier to appreciate seeing a new iteration in one of Apple’s major product lineups.
Compare this to how long you have to wait to hear about a new Mac, a new iPhone, or a new Apple Watch. All of those product lineups receive a new entry every year. The Apple Watch and iPhone, in particular, receive an update around the same exact time every year. It is vastly predictable, and it’s usually well known ahead of time that any new iPhone won’t be that big of an upgrade over its immediate predecessor.
However, most people are willing to concede that if you’ve waited two or three generations, the upgrades become more significant. For example, an iPhone 12 Pro user jumping to the iPhone 14 Pro would’ve gained a higher refresh rate, as well as the Dynamic Island. That’s in addition to the iterative upgrades to battery life, processing power, and camera that usually come with every yearly upgrade.
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So, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the M4 iPad Pro seems to be one of Apple’s biggest upgrades ever. Rather than incrementally building with an M3 iPad Pro that has some of the great new software features that the M4 iPad Pro looks to have, we just jumped straight here from the M2 model. Of course, that doesn’t quite hold the same for the M2 iPad Air, as the previous model from two years ago is rocking the M1 chip. But, even without the significant spec boost, the announcement still felt a little more significant given that it has been two years and the lineup is getting a new size.
In both cases, it is clear that the extra year of space with no news about any new iPads served to generate some excitement for new models. While it is unlikely that Apple will take this lesson to the iPhone lineup, it is still an interesting lesson nonetheless. More interesting still is to imagine how much more exciting the iPad Air announcement could have been if given another few months, and a better performance boost.
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