Apple iPad Pro Release Date Update 2015: Online Orders Start Wednesday, Hits Stores This Week
Apple has finally announced the release date for the new and very much anticipated 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which it debuted during the iPhone 6s event this past September. The iPad Pro will be available for online orders starting Wednesday, Nov. 11, with the huge new iPad arriving in stores later in the week.
The iPad Pro will only be available on Apple.com on Wednesday, Nov. 11, but will be arriving at Apple retail stores, along with some carriers and authorized Apple resellers throughout the U.S. "starting later this week."
While the time frame for in-store sales and availability was a little nonspecific, this type of release date window usually means you can bet you'll get a chance to try it out in person at an Apple store by Friday morning, at the latest.
But it could also mean that Apple has a lower supply of its new iPad Pro tablets than it anticipated. As MacRumors reported a couple of weeks ago, supply chain sources said Apple had placed "limited orders" for the iPad Pro for this holiday shopping season leading into the early part of 2016. The sources had less than 2.5 million iPad Pro units ordered for the end of 2015, reflecting what may be a conservative attitude by Apple towards possible sales of the mammoth new iPad.
In the company's release date announcement, Apple chief of marketing Philip Schiller nevertheless hyped the anticipation for the new upsized iPad.
"The early response to iPad Pro from app developers and our customers has been incredible," said Schiller, "and we're excited to get iPad Pro into the hands of customers around the world this week." Beyond the U.S., the iPad Pro will be arriving in over 40 countries this week, including Canada, the U.K., Japan, China, Mexico, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.
The device, which sports a 12.9-inch Retina display packing 5.6 million pixels on the screen (a record for any iOS device), is not a cheap purchase to make, especially compared with smaller and older iPad tablets.
Apple is selling the iPad Pro in the U.S. starting at $799. That's for the base model, which comes with 32GB of storage and is WiFi only. For the 128GB WiFi-only iPad Pro variant, you'll have to shell out $949. The only cellular data version of the iPad Pro comes with 128GB of storage, and costs $1079. All iPad Pro models are available in silver, gold, and space gray.
To unlock all of the features of the iPad Pro, like pressure-sensitive sketching or the specially made version of Microsoft Office, you'll want to get some of the new iPad Pro accessories like the Apple Pencil or the Smart Keyboard. That, of course, will cost more. The Apple Pencil is launching alongside the new iPad in the U.S. for $99, and the Smart Keyboard will cost $169.
The iPad Pro features the new 64-bit A9X chip with the M9 motion coprocessor, an 8-megapixel iSight camera, a front-facing 1.2-megapixel FaceTime HD camera, the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and runs iOS 9 out of the box. Its battery is rated (by Apple) for 10-hours of life, but that depends usage, settings, and other factors.