Apple’s M5 chip will first appear in the iPad Pro, not the Mac
By ForGeeks
Apple will introduce a new M5 chip as part of the refreshed iPad Pro in fall 2025. For the second year in a row, the company is starting its M-series rollout with a tablet rather than a Mac for the first time ever. This time, however, the strategy will be different on two fronts at once.
The iPad’s time gap from the Mac with the M5 chip will shrink
In 2024, Apple broke tradition by first introducing the new M4 chip in the iPad Pro rather than the Mac. Before that, everything from the M1 to the M3 debuted exclusively in laptops and desktops before coming to the iPad.
All models from the M1 to the M3 debuted exclusively in laptops and desktops before coming to the iPad.
Now history is repeating itself. According to insider Mark Gurman, the M5 will first appear in the iPad Pro in the fall of 2025, and won’t arrive in Macs until early 2026. Unlike last year’s scenario, however, the time gap between device releases on the M5 will be much smaller.
In comparison, the iPad Pro with the M4 chip came out in May 2024, and the first Macs with the M4 didn’t arrive until November – six months later. In the case of the M5, the gap is expected to be no more than four months. If the tablet is released in November, the MacBook Pro with the same chip could go on sale as early as January. That’s a much shorter time frame than last year’s, and suggests a new logic for bringing chips to market.
New iPadOS 26 will unlock the potential of the M5
One other important difference between the current situation and the past is software. Last year, the iPad Pro with the M4 chip ran on iPadOS 18, which offered no noticeable improvements that could unlock the potential of the new hardware platform. That drew criticism from users and experts alike: powerful chip, but the same old iPadOS limitations.
Apple is now betting on iPadOS 26, a system that sources say will, for the first time, deliver functionality that matches the hardware’s capabilities. Key new features include full support for windowed mode and running multiple apps simultaneously. This should allow the iPad Pro with M5 to truly replace a laptop in everyday use.
According to experts, even if the hardware upgrades to the iPad Pro are modest, the software component will provide a serious boost to the user experience. Users who have long used tablets as their primary work device will be able to truly appreciate Apple’s new generation of chips for the first time in a long time.
