Apple unveiled the new M4 processor yesterday, and if you read the tiny print, you'll notice that there are two binned versions of the chip. Not that unique, except that both bins are now available on the same device.

First, the chip. The Apple M4 CPU contains 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, with the exception of one performance core that is disabled on the identical iPad Pro (2024) variants. For those unfamiliar with binning, it is the oldest trick in the book: you can enhance yields by selecting chips with a non-fatal fault and selling them as a lower tier.

Consider the vanilia iPhone 13 as an example: it had an A15 processor with 4 GPU cores, and the iPhone 13 pro had 5 GPU cores. Then, a year later, the vanilia iPhone 14 arrived with an A15 CPU, this time with all five cores enabled. But that was a mid-generation update; with the new iPad Pros, it's an upgrade within the same generation.

The Apple iPad Pro 11 (2024) and iPad Pro 13 (2024) are available with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage. The two lower capacities get 8GB of RAM, while the two greater ones get 16GB. This was also true for the 2022 Pros, however this time around, the two lesser tiers lost one of its performance CPU Cores.

The costs for the 2024 Pro iPads are listed below, and the rise from 512GB to 1TB is significant - and it should be obvious why.