With new $3,000 iPad, Apple proves its evil genius

My 2019 iPad Pro had a pretty good run, all things considered.

Outwardly, the nearly 5-year-old Apple tablet is in good shape. The Magic Keyboard still makes for a useful mini-laptop, especially with the magnetic Pencil. Yet on the inside, its heart seems heavier (literally heavier with that Magic Keyboard, compared to the 2019 iPad Pro keyboard). The battery is still functional, but drains out overnight if I don't plug it in, even with the power hog "background refresh" feature turned off.

This doesn't feel like planned obsolecence, not exactly. More like a tired workhorse whispering in my ear: "I've had a good life. It's OK if you put me out to pasture now. You'd probably get a good trade-in price, you know."

And right on time, here comes Apple with its slimmest, lightest, most powerful iPad Pros yet (unveiled, mercifully, in the company's shortest event yet). Now here I am, lusting after the iPad Pro 13-inch, which just got significantly lighter than its 12.9 inch predecessor, and way faster. I'm wondering just how many digital comics I could store in a 2 TB version. I'm intensely curious about the new squeezable Pencil Pro. Who doesn't want to squeeze their Pencil?

Here I am, in other words, seriously contemplating an iPad Pro package that will top out at more than $3,000 (including Pencil Pro and the newer, lighter Magic Keyboard). For comparison, that's $2,000 more than you'd pay for a 13-inch Macbook Air, and $700 more than the last time we called Apple brilliant jerks for their high-end iPad package plan. Oh, and it's less than $500 away from Vision Pro territory.

Some owners might balk at such an upgrade, no matter what the trade-in credit. (For the record, Apple's trade-in estimator says I can have $285 for my old workhorse). But let us just say that creating and feeding such owners is not how Apple became the wealthiest tech company on the planet.

The iPad's best ally is and always has been aspirational creativity — what I described in that previous iPad Pro analysis as "living your best life." You may not actually use this tablet to make movies at a climbing gym, as we saw in that 40-minute Apple event, but you could. If you're using an audio editor like Logic Pro it probably makes more sense to do so on a Mac, but you'd look cooler walking around the home studio, editing your future hit track on a tablet.

You may not always use the top-notch art app that got star billing at the event, Procreate, but surely when you do, the Pencil Pro will squeeze the Picasso-like genius out of you. And you may not actually need that super-powerful M4 chip for a device most often used to read digital comics or magazines, or a new Magic Keyboard if you're already toting a Macbook Air in your bag, for Pete's sake. (No, I'm not calling myself out here, why do you ask?)

But you might! Maybe the extra screen real estate and faster load times will be all it takes to tip you over into finally finishing that novel, and wouldn't you feel bad if inspiration struck and all you had was your iPad and you had to type on an actual screen? The horror!

And there's the rub: Apple knows our income is always a little more disposable if it can appeal to our wannabe genius. Life is short; who doesn't want to unleash their inner artist/musician/climbing gym videographer? Credit card debt is nothing next to living your best creative life.

Whisper it low, but the old workhorse doesn't stand a chance.