Enlarge / iCorrect's attempts to draw a straight line on an iPad Pro with a third-party replacement screen led them to look at the screen's embedded chips for parts-pairing problems. (credit: iCorrect UK )

The latest part of an Apple device to demand a repair by its maker appears to be the screens on newer iPads. Reports from repair shops and customers suggest that Apple Pencils no longer work properly on non-genuine Apple screens, as they draw squiggly lines on a diagonal instead of straight.

Ricky Panesar, CEO of UK repair firm iCorrect, told Forbes that screens replaced on newer iPad Pros (fifth and sixth-generation 12.9-inch and third and fourth-generation 11-inch models) do not deliver straight lines when an Apple Pencil is used to draw at an angle. "They have a memory chip that sits on the screen that's programmed to only allow the Pencil functionality to work if the screen is connected to the original logic board," Panesar told Forbes.

A Reddit post from May 23 from a user reporting "jittery" diagonal lines from an Apple Pencil on a newly replaced iPad mini screen suggests the issue may affect more than just the Pro line of iPads.

Enlarge / The Brydge Max+, one of the company's last iPad products. Brydge focused on aluminum builds, laptop-like hinges, and—before Apple decided it would offer them—integrated trackpads.

Brydge, a company that once aimed to make high-quality iPad keyboards that all but transformed them into MacBooks, has gone out of business. The company's website is just a logo , employees and preordering customers haven't heard anything in months, and 9to5Mac has a detailed telling of Brydge's downfall , supported by conversations with nearly a dozen former employees.

You should read the whole investigation if you want to know how badly managed growth, a hostile workplace, the pandemic, and the nerve-wracking nature of trying to work with and alongside Apple led to Brydge's shuttering. You'll read about business, leadership, and marketing decisions that, with hindsight, point toward an inevitable conclusion. But there's also an inside story about what it's like trying to hitch your wagon to the whims and preferences of the world's largest technology corporation.

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  A Brydge 9.7-inch iPad keyboard from 2018. [credit: Ars Technica ]

Brydge is best known for making Apple accessories, and particularly keyboard cases for iPads, with a focus on materials, design, and functionality that aimed to go further than Apple's own accessories. They were made from aluminum, had a more laptop-like hinge, and their keyboards were backlit. In October 2019, Brydge tried to get a six-month jump on Apple by releasing the trackpad-included Pro+ for iPad Pro. Because iPadOS 13 didn't have native trackpad support—that would arrive with iPadOS 13.4 in March 2020 —Brydge's keyboard used an Assistive Touch accessibility workaround. The trackpad and its implementation disappointed critics like Six Colors' Jason Snell .

Enlarge / The 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Citing a person familiar with the matter, The Information reports Apple plans to release a 16-inch model of the iPad Pro. Apple hopes to launch the product in the fourth quarter of next year—likely around the same time in 2023 that the M2 iPad Pro launched in 2022.

In our estimation, a 16-inch iPad Pro would probably be targeted specifically to creative professionals, and would probably not be a mass-market product in the same way as other iPad models are. Think of it like the Mac Pro or Pro Display XDR—a specialized product for a narrow but important audience.

The target buyers might use the new 16-inch tablet with the Apple Pencil for a larger working canvas in apps like Procreate, Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator, and so on.

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  [credit: Kevin Purdy ]

If you’re an Apple Pencil devotee, someone who shoots or encodes a lot of photos and video on an iPad, or someone upgrading from a much-older, slower iPad, the new 2022 iPad Pro has a lot going for you. It presents a solid CPU/GPU upgrade to what is already the fastest, most capable tablet around. But if there was ever a year to hold out for the next Pro model, this would be it.

The iPad Pro sports the same Apple-designed system-on-a-chip as the latest Macs, the M2. Compared to M1-based iPads or even older A12X and A12Z models, the M2 isn't a revolutionary upgrade. There’s more speed here, especially for those working in editing, rendering, and compiling, but most people won't feel it—it was already a fluid, fast slab.

There are some big new ideas for managing windows and workflows in iPadOS 16, including Stage Manager, which is exclusive to mid-to-higher-end iPads that are mostly on Apple chips. It's a nice feature, but it's not honed enough yet to be completely useful. And there are some frustrations carried over from previous models, including the fact that the front-facing camera is on the wrong side for landscape-mode video calls.

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  The new base iPad in silver. [credit: Apple ]

Today, Apple surprise-announced several new products without much fanfare beyond a store page update and a press release, and three of them are iPads: two new iPad Pro models and a redesigned entry-level iPad.

Since the iPad Pro is mainly getting a spec bump, the big story today is the redesigned base iPad. Apple's entry-level iPad has maintained the same basic, home-button-equipped design for years, but that changes today.

The redesigned iPad has a 10.9-inch, 2360×1640-pixel LCD display that maxes out at 500 nits of brightness. Like the iPad Air and iPad Pro, it lacks a home button, as the screen extends somewhat close to the edges of the device on all sides. Touch ID is now housed in the top button on the edge of the tablet.