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Apple’s new iPad Pro comes in two sizes, and starts at $999. It also has a new add-on case called Smart Keyboard that makes it feel like a laptop.

Apple‘s new iPad Pro and iPad Air models launch Wednesday. I’ve been testing the new iPad Pro for several days and what I found is that it’s a very nice iPad.

This is an important launch for Apple. Earlier this month, the company reported a 16% year-over-year drop in iPad revenue for its fiscal second quarter. Apple hasn’t rolled out a new iPad since October 2022.

The new iPad Pro is fast, with the latest M4 chip, and it has a new OLED display that’s more colorful than prior screens. It’s the thinnest product Apple has ever launched.

But, it still runs the same iPad software, and that’s starting to feel dated. The fully loaded out model I tested costs about $2,499. That’s before you add the $350 keyboard and $129 Apple Pencil Pro, which will help you get more out of the device.

It’s time Apple makes this more than just an iPad. The software, called iPadOS, needs to catch up to the hardware.

Here’s what you need to know about it.

What’s good

The new iPad Pro models can be seen at an Apple event. The new iPad Pro is the first Apple device with the M4 chip. The larger version with a 13-inch display is the thinnest Apple device to date with a thickness of 5.1 millimetres. 

Christoph Dernbach | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

The new iPad Pros cost $200 more than the models they replaced. I tested the larger 13-inch iPad Pro, which starts at $1,299 before storage and 5G upgrades. The 11-inch model starts at $999.

The first thing I noticed when I picked it up was its thinness. It’s noticeable compared to the M1 iPad Pro I’ve used for the past several years. And it’s lighter. That’s especially nice on the 13-inch model, which replaces the 12.9-inch version. I always thought it felt too heavy and clunky to use as a tablet. It still feels big, but it’s more manageable.

The new OLED screen is another highlight. It’s clear and super colorful. It’s similar to the OLED screen Apple has used on its iPhones Pro for years but not on iPads. The screen adapts, getting brighter in dark movies or showing scenes with explosions. And professional video and photo editors will appreciate its color accuracy. I loved using it for movies and while playing Diablo Immortal. The game will look better once Activision Blizzard releases an update enabling improved graphics for the M4 iPad Pro. The four stereo speakers sound nice and loud but not tinny.

The camera is finally in the right place. It’s along the landscape edge of the iPad so that, when it’s propped up, it’s dead center for FaceTime calls. It used to be on the top of the iPad, forcing that awkward glance to the side during video calls. The quality was nice and clear during my tests and I like that the camera, using the Center Stage features, followed me as I moved around the room.

2024 13-inch Apple iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

The iPad has the latest and greatest M4 chip, which hasn’t launched on Macs yet. I ran a GeekBench multicore benchmark test that shows it scoring 48% higher than the prior M2 iPad Pro. Apple promises up to 4x faster rendering over the M2 and 1.5x faster processor performance, which means video editing in Final Cut Pro for iPad and rendering things like 3D models is quicker for professionals who need it. The M4 also has a special engine that helps power the “Tandem OLED” displays. Apple took a unique approach to the iPad by stacking two OLED screens on top of one another, which requires this special part of the M4 chip to work.

The iPad Pro felt quick when I ran two apps side-by-side, switching between Slack and the web browser, or loading into games. Apps switch in an instant. It wasn’t much different than my M1 iPad for everyday stuff, like browsing the web and opening apps, which seems to be how iPads are mostly used. More on that in the next section.

2024 13-inch Apple iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

The new iPads Pro support Apple’s updated $350 Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro (the 11-inch version is $300). It’s awesome and is just like typing on a Mac with a full function row above the number keys to switch apps, adjust the volume or brightness and more. Apple added a much larger trackpad and an aluminum palm rest but kept the same soft outside and “floating” screen mechanism, which allows you to snap the iPad onto the case using its magnetic pins and tilt it back and forth.

2024 13-inch Apple iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

The updated Apple Pencil Pro is also a lot of fun. I mostly use the Apple Pencil to sign documents. But folks who draw or paint on their iPads, or need more control in 3D or video apps, will like the new features. I liked squeezing it to change between the tool — pencil or brush or eraser and the color — and the haptic pulse to confirm you’ve squeezed it. Developers can add the squeeze function to their apps so you can access different tools in different apps. The added gyroscope also allows you to tilt and twirl the pencil to change your pencil or pen stroke. Double tap is convenient, too, allowing you to switch between a pencil and eraser tool, for example. The hover function previews where you’re going to touch the display.

Apple promises the same battery life as the last iPads Pro. So you get about 10 hours of web browsing or watching video, or nine hours if you’re browsing the web on a cellular connection. That lined up with what I received during my tests. Expect to get a full workday of use. Still, it’s impressive given this iPad is 1.3mm thinner and 103 grams lighter than the last 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

What’s bad

2024 13-inch Apple iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

Here’s my biggest gripe about the Pro models: The software, iPadOS, is what you’ll get on any other iPad. And while I think it works great, it’s time for the Pro models to have a better operating system.

My guess is Apple has something big planned for next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference and I hope it addresses this. I probably won’t get my wish, but I’d love to see the iPad Pro act just like a Mac. Plop it into the keyboard and it turns into a touchscreen MacBook. Lift it off and use it like a regular iPad. It has a newer processor than Apple’s MacBooks, so this should be possible if it’s something Apple wants. Regardless, we need better multitasking.

Stage Manager on the iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

Should you buy the 2024 iPad Pro?

2024 13-inch Apple iPad Pro

Todd Haselton | CNBC

It depends on what you need. It’s my favorite iPad to date, even though I don’t need the faster chip. I love how thin it is and that it’s lighter than the earlier iPads. The updated keyboard is great. The new Apple Pencil Pro works well, but creatives will use it more than I do.

I still think the 13-inch is a little too big and would steer most folks to the 11-inch model. If you don’t care about needing all the speed, you should consider the new iPad Air, which costs less and also comes with a bigger 13-inch screen. If you just need a tablet to browse the web, play games and check email, get the $350 iPad.

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Elon Musk’s X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

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Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.

About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.

Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.

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X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.

The site experienced another outage in March, which Musk attributed at the time to a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post at the time.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.

Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.

Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.

“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”

Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.

Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.

“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.

‘AI’s moment to shine’

Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.

Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.

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“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.

Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”

Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.

‘Not a silver bullet’

While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.

“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”

AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.

“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty.  But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.

The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.

“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.

“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”

WATCH: Former OpenAI exec says tariffs ‘present AI’s moment to shine’

Former OpenAI exec says tariffs 'present AI's moment to shine'

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Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

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Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

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