Apple predictions are doing the rounds again
THE MYSTIC MEG of Apple crystal ball gazing, one Ming-Chi Kuo, reckons the next iPad Pro will have a rear-facing 3D time-of-flight camera to make pratting around with augmented reality (AR) an easier proposition.
That’s according to a research note spied by the folks at MacRumors, with Kuo suggesting a new iPad Pro could come in the first quarter of 2020.
For those of you who don’t know, a 3D time-of-flight camera measures how long it takes for a laser or LED to bounce off objects in an environment and get back to the camera, essentially providing a more accurate 3D map of the camera’s surroundings. In the case of this rumoured next-gen iPad Pro, it would make AR software and tools more accurate in superimposing virtual things over real-world environments.
Kuo reckons this camera tech will also pop up in 2020 iPhones, which given the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G has such a camera, isn’t surprising.
However, folks who snap pics on iPads, especially a larger Pro variant, are weapon-grade cretins, so we don’t really get the need for such a camera setup on a future iPad Pro unless it’s explicitly aimed at AR app developers. We just hope it doesn’t lead more idiots to wield iPads like f*****g cameras in front of landmarks.
Still, that what Kuo predicts, and the Apple oracle is sometimes on the money. But his crystal ball is clearly working overtime and spat out more rumours around refurbished Apple MacBooks.
Kuo reckons they’ll pop up early 2020 and will come with refreshed innards, likely Ice Lake Intel CPUs – that’s our prediction – and new scissor mechanism keyboards. These Mac machines will not likely pop up at the same time as the rumoured 16in MacBook Pro that could be revealed this month.
Finally, Kuo reiterated that he predicts an iPhone SE 2 will pop up in early 2020, which we’d imagine will offer a cheaper variant of the iPhone 11’s guts but packages in an iPhone 8-like design.
Unless you’re big into Cupertino’s stuff, then there’s arguably not much exciting here; really if you want innovation at the moment then Microsoft has been the unlikely source of some pretty slick albeit odd kit. µ