Apple introduced at the beginning of last month the new generation of iPad Air, a very interesting evolution of the lightest tablet from Cupertino, now available in two sizes, 11 and 13 inches, and also made the leap from the integrated Apple M1 to its successor, the Apple M2. This choice is somewhat surprising, given that at the same event Apple also introduced its new generation Apple M4, which debuted in the new iPad Pro, of course I understand that they wanted to reserve the M4 for the Pro, but not so much that they leave the Air for two generations behind.

I won’t elaborate on this point because I want to understand that Apple had good reasons for this, so let’s go back to what they introduced, which is the iPad Air 2024 with M2 SoC, more specifically the version of the chip with an 8-core CPU (4 power and 4 efficiency), 10-core GPU and a Neural Engine (NPU) with 16 cores, complemented by 8 gigabytes of RAM. That said, when it comes to the SoC, we’re talking about the version that made its debut in June 2022 with the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air of that year.

then We saw the arrival of a variant of the same SoC, but with an octa-core GPU, which is currently found in the 13-inch MacBook Air section. So, and to focus the shot, so far we’ve seen Apple M2 chips with 10- and 8-core GPUs, and as we were told at the launch of the iPad Air with the M2, these integrated the highest-capacity version of the two, the 10-core one.

Above, iPad Air 2024 SoC information on Apple’s US website; Below is the information displayed on the Apple website for Spain. Images taken on date and time of publication of this report, Sunday, June 2, 20:05, 2024.

However, if we now look at Apple’s website for the US market, we see this It means that the iPad Air’s M2 GPU has nine cores. Not eight or ten, nine. More interestingly, if we do this check on the Apple website for Spain, In our case, it continues to indicate that the GPU has ten cores. Of course, this difference doesn’t appear in the press releases issued in either country, as both indicate that the iPad Air’s GPU has ten cores.

It is likely that the difference of one core, from 10 to 9, since it seems to be a real number, does not make a significant difference in terms of its performance, but it does. It’s surprising that Apple made this mistake when they announced their new tablet. And the fact that in Cupertino they decided to make this change (which happened sometime between May 22nd and today) quietly, without announcing it, instead of publishing a statement about it in order to act transparently, encourages us not to think. We can all make mistakes, the difference is how we act when we realize it.