Apple announces its M4 chip

At its “Let Loose” event on Tuesday, Apple announced its M4 chip will be coming to its next generation of devices, starting with the iPad Pro. After rumors of a “true AI-powered device,” the new OLED iPad Pro will include an upgraded M4 chip that’s focused on improving performance for AI-related tasks in iPadOS.

Apple focused heavily on the M4’s AI capabilities, thanks to a new neural engine that’s “an outrageously powerful chip for AI.” It’s supposedly 60 times faster than the A11’s NPU and could allegedly rival AI chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.

Apple’s M4 announcement comes less than two weeks before Microsoft is holding a special Windows and Surface AI event in Seattle on May 20th where it’s expected to launch new Arm-powered hardware. Microsoft is confident Windows on Arm could finally beat Apple’s MacBook Air M3 laptops both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks. This is largely thanks to Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors, but with an M4 chip already inside the new iPad Pro, we might not have to wait too long to see how Apple’s new processor compares to the Arm-powered Windows laptops that are arriving this summer.