I was able to accept the eye-watering price (£349 for the 12.9 inch) but was a little more upset by the fact it wasn’t shipping for two months. It’s due for release in May 2020 and I will purchase it the nanosecond it is up for sale.

I have practically been dreaming about the damn thing.

The floating design reminds me of the 2002 iMac and is almost impossibly attractive. I absolutely love the fact the iPad magnetically snaps onto it, but can easily be pulled off to be used in tablet mode. I often use the iPad naked, either with the Apple Pencil or relaxing with articles or books in portrait orientation, so this is going to be awesome.

I’m super excited to see how the cantilever hinge works for smooth angle adjustment — of up to 130 degrees according to Apple— as this is one of the main drawbacks of the Keyboard Folio with its mere two options for angles. It has often not been right for me in various use cases, but this looks perfect.

Backlit, hard-press keys are also welcomed, and were big surprises. All of these thoughtful changes will result in a more laptop-like experience which makes the iPad Pro more appropriate and appealing to use than ever in more use cases.

And to top all of that off, there’s a damn trackpad. It’s not known yet if this will be a haptic-based trackpad as seen in the notebook line or the company’s Magic Trackpad accessory, but whatever the implementation, this changes things forever for iPad.

And all of this was underlined with the release of iPadOS 13.4 alongside the new iPad Pros. This was a software update that, despite being a minor release — and unlike many of the major releases before it — truly changed the game.

Software changes

Before we get to iPadOS 13.4, let’s rewind a little bit and cover everything that has changed with the iPad software in the three years since I wrote the series about iPad Pro.

2017’s iOS 11 was a huge update for iPad. Indeed, it was one of the main drivers which convinced me to invest in the 10.5 inch iPad Pro and all its accessories.

The iPad got an overhauled Dock which was more macOS-like and accessible from any app, drag-and-drop support, a new multitasking interface which allowed for up to 3 visible apps at a time (or 4 if you included picture-in-picture video), amongst other improvements.

It was a little disappointing that iOS 12 in 2018 had so few new features, but Apple had quite wisely opted for a Snow Leopard approach this time, squashing bugs and improving performance updates across the OS.

iOS 12 did come with a few welcome surprises though, most notably the new Shortcuts app, which took Apple’s acquired Workflow app and extended it further. Geeks and power users rejoiced across the land (arguably none louder or with more gusto than Federico Viticci of MacStories, whose Apple-related writing is some of the best you can find and whose increasingly ironically-named website is one of my very favourites).

iPad did get Stocks and Voice Memos though. Oh, and Animoji came screaming into existence. So it wasn’t all bad, I guess? Okay, let’s stop messing around: it was a fairly dull year, but the break was needed to smooth out and optimise the operating systems and that is a great thing.

It was in 2019 though that shit got real. Around six months after the release of the sexy new edge-to-edge iPad Pros, Apple welcomed thousands of attendees — and many more from the world via livestream — to its annual WWDC conference and unveiled the new version of iOS which, for the first time, had a dedicated version for iPad: iPadOS.

And boy was it an upgrade.