after last week’s iPad Pro announcement, Apple appears to have tipped its hand.

Origin: Jean-Louis Gassée ARM-ed Mac: We Have An Answer

Last Wednesday Apple introduced the new iPad Pro that features a Magic Keyboard with trackpad, an ingenious polymorphic cursor, dual cameras, a LiDAR projector-camera (more on that in the postscript), and more, all resting on an iPadOS 13.4 update to support the new hardware.

An answer to the now age-old ARM-ed Mac question now emerges: With the emphasis on the iPad Pro as a real computer, there’s no reason for Apple to move the Mac off of trusty if perhaps less glamorous Intel processors. Does this mean that iPad Pro sales will cannibalize the Mac? We’ve long known the answer that one. It doesn’t really matter to the company as long as customers enjoy their Apple devices.

As always with Apple, not all questions have been answered. Xcode, the software development environment Apple developers use to write iOS and macOS apps, only runs on Macs today. When will it appear on an iPad Pro? And Apple still hasn’t opened up about the mysterious Ultra Wideband U1 chip in the latest iPhones and now the new iPad Pro. It’s used for AirDrop, sure, but is that all?