[234120987654]

A17 Pro huh, that's a first for putting a pro chip in a non pro iPad, isn't it? I guess it's, as they advertise, to handle Apple Intelligence although I don't understand why they are doubling down on this _now_ while nothing from the newly announced AI stuff is available as of today...

[jsheard]

It makes sense, the iPad Pros graduated to using full blown M series chips so the A Pro chips they used to use can filter down the stack.

edit: oops I mixed up A Pro and A X

[JonathonW]

The A17 Pro (originally in the iPhone 15 Pro; now also in the iPad Mini) and A18 Pro (currently only in the iPhone 16 Pro) are the only chips Apple has produced with a "Pro" suffix.

Apple used to use the X suffix for bigger versions of their phone processors that went into iPads (starting with the A5X); that went away when the M-series was introduced.

And the "Pro" suffix itself doesn't seem to denote anything in particular-- there was never a non-Pro A17, and the "A17 Pro" going into the iPad Mini is itself a cut-down version of the chip that went into the iPhone 15 Pro (it has one GPU core disabled).

[mcintyre1994]

I'm guessing the delays to Apple Intelligence came late in the process and it was supposed to release with the new iPhones? And then they just left hardware plans as-is when the software got delayed.

[bobbylarrybobby]

I'm guessing they were aiming for iOS 18 but caved to what they perceived was the popular demand at the time