ICYMI: the week's 8 biggest news stories from Amazon's awful ad plans to Apple's magnificent M4 iPad Pro reveal

Here's your firmware update for May 11, 2024

· TechRadar

News By Hamish HectorContributions from Matt Bolton, Mark Wilson, Allisa James, Tom Power, Lance Ulanoff published 11 May 2024

(Image credit: Future / Apple / Warner Bros. Discovery)

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We're getting into the busy tech season, folks. Apple had its massive 2024 iPad event this week, Google I/O 2024 is coming next week, and there are so many more announcements on the way.

But before we get into next week, we need to catch up on the week we've just had. So, to lend a hand, we've gathered the 8 biggest tech news stories of the week and bundled them here for you to read through them. This list includes Apple's iPad news, Amazon's terrible ad plans, a new Superman suit, and another major Windows 11 bug that could slow down your PC.

If you're looking for more tech news, why not check out episode two of our podcast (it just dropped), and be sure to return next Saturday for another ICYMI news round-up.

8. A new iPad Pro and iPad Air were revealed

(Image credit: Future)

This week, Apple’s iPad category went from a sleepy utility product to the center of its tech universe, debuting not one but two brand-new technologies. First was the surprising inclusion of a brand-new chip: the M4. This is the first time a new bit of Apple Silicon has debuted inside an iPad. It’s powerful and appears to prime the pump for a big AI reveal across all Apple products when the tech giant hosts its developer conference (WWDC) in June.

The second big innovation is the Ultra Retina XDR Display, which is Apple’s fancy way of describing a tandem OLED screen, which is also another way of describing two OLED panels sandwiched together. The result is an iPad (and maybe tablet) display unlike any other.

OLED display technology enables another first: Apple’s thinnest tablet ever, even thinner than the iPad Air. That tablet lineup also got a big boost and is now available in a 13-inch model alongside an 11-inch model, both powered by an M2 chip. And, thank goodness, Apple finally moved the Facetime camera to the wider, landscape side of the device. Did we mention the Air is now thicker than the iPad Pro?

7. The M4 chip made its debut... in an iPad?

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple debuted its latest piece of Apple Silicon at its iPad event with the M4 chip. This upgraded module houses a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, up from the 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU of the base M3 chip, and supports up to 38 trillion operations per second in its neural engine (Apple's version of an NPU). It contains 28 billion transistors, up from 25 billion in the M3, and can support up to 128GB of unified memory.

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