Is an M5 iPad Pro Coming Tomorrow?
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While several reliable sources believe that Apple will release a new iPad Pro before the end of 2025, a highly reputable leaker recently suggested that it may be coming much sooner than we thought.
Until last night, the consensus among the usual pundits was that Apple would likely hold an October event to unveil the successor to the current 2024 M4 iPad Pro. However, a highly reputable leaker who posts under an anonymous X account recently shared detailed specs for an M5 iPad Pro, suggesting that Apple might be preparing to unveil it as early as tomorrow.
The report was seen and shared by 9to5Mac’s Ryan Christoffel, who notes that the same account also posted details on the Apple Watch SE 3 — a device that’s all but certain to arrive alongside the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 during tomorrow’s “Awe Dropping” event.
While some folks were becoming skeptical about a new SE model in Apple’s wearable lineup, as I said on Friday, it’s not only on schedule for a new release (the first two generations came in 2020 and 2022), but it’s also about time that Apple gave the the SE access to the latest watchOS features that rely on the S9 and later chips. The lack of reports around the Apple Watch SE 3 was likely just because it’s not all that exciting compared to the Series 11 or Ultra 3. If it’s expected to feature the same design as an older model, it could also easily fly below the radar.
However, the news of an M5 iPad Pro is more interesting. The concurrence of the two leaks doesn’t necessarily mean both products will be announced at the same event. In fact, we’d generally be skeptical of a September iPad Pro announcement. Apple has frequently unveiled base iPad models and even the occasional iPad Air during its iPhone events, but it’s rarely announced an iPad Pro in the fall, and it’s almost never done so in September.
Of course, the keyword here is “almost.” As Christoffel points out, there’s one occasion when it did, and while it’s so long ago that it’s easily forgotten, it’s also arguably the most significant:
This September marks the 10-year anniversary of the first iPad Pro being introduced. But I didn’t realize exactly what day the anniversary fell on. After a quick search, I learned that September 9, 2015 was the exact date of that first iPad Pro announcement. That’s right: exactly 10 years to the day from this week’s September event.
Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac
While Apple doesn’t traditionally celebrate anniversaries in any big way, it would still be fun to see the M5 iPad Pro come out exactly ten years after Apple first ushered in the higher-tier models with the original 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Along similar lines, as I noted last week, Apple is expected to unveil the third-generation AirPods Pro during tomorrow’s event, which would have them arriving precisely 210 days after the Powerbeats Pro 2. Why is that significant, you may ask? Well, that’s because it’s the same number of days that elapsed between the announcement of the original Powerbeats Pro (April 3, 2019) and the day that the original AirPods Pro went on sale (Oct 30, 2019). The first Powerbeats Pro previewed features we’d later see in the AirPods Pro, and we expect this year’s AirPod Pro 3 to follow the Powerbeats Pro 2 in a similar vein, adopting the in-ear heart rate sensors that Apple debuted earlier this year.
On the other hand, last year’s “Glowtime” event was held on September 9, 2024, which marked the tenth anniversary of the Apple Watch. Many expected that Apple would celebrate the occasion by introducing a revolutionary new “Apple Watch X.” However, expectations may have simply been running too high; even if the Apple Watch Series 10 that we got didn’t feel all that different, it took some serious engineering skills to get it slimmed down; Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has said on several occasions that Apple considered the revamp to be on the same level as the 2017 iPhone X.
Still, there may be another reason for Apple to unveil the M5 iPad Pro tomorrow that’s more practical than merely marking a red letter date on the calendar.
For all but one of the past four years, Apple has released its new M-series MacBook Pro models in October. The original M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro models arrived on October 18, 2021. While Apple delayed the M2 versions until January 2023, the M3 and M4 models debuted exactly one year apart from each other, on October 30, 2023, and October 30, 2024.
Although Gurman reported in July that Apple might delay its M5 Mac releases into early 2026, that’s by no means guaranteed, and it seems to be something that Apple was considering, not a final decision. Sources also say it has nothing to do with the products not being ready; instead, there are some discussions within Apple about spacing out its product release schedule to level out its revenue stream so it’s not packing everything into a single quarter.
The most significant clue to an earlier M5 iPad Pro release is that Apple may plan to continue the trend of putting its best silicon forward in the iPad Pro that it began with last year’s M4 chip. In that case, Apple will want to get the M5 iPad Pro out the door before it unveils its M5-powered Macs. If the company has decided to stick with an October release schedule for its new Macs, then it has little choice but to debut the M5 iPad Pro in September. Unless it plans to push it out more quietly via press release, there’s no better time to show it off than tomorrow’s event.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
