Apple May Include USB 3.0 Ports on Upcoming 12.9-Inch 'iPad Pro'

"The company has also been considering adding ports to connect to a keyboard and mouse, the people said.”

That is literally the dumbest statement anyone in a world where wireless mice and keyboards have been the norm for more than a decade have made.

Somehow, I really doubt this.

In other news, sources claim next iMac will ship with a floppy disk drive.

"Adding ports to connect to a keyboard and mouse?" What is this, 1995? :eek:

I agree with JoEw. More believable would be a pair of reversible Type-C USB 3.1 ports. If somebody wants to hook a keyboard or mouse to one or both of those ports, fine, but they'd be at least somewhat more generalized than that.

The past year i've had a dream of the apple watch, iphone and 12" ipad.

Felt that those 3 things would fit me perfectly. But that was last year.

Honestly now the idea of 12" ipad is not a "wow" idea anymore but more like "well why not" and i would propably go for a 12" if i decide to replace my ipad 4.
But im no longer knocked of my feet by the thought of 12" ipad. Larger internet surfing screen and movie watching but the rest .... An extra set of icons on screen, the appstore destroyed by freemium crap and no real news in apps.

All the talk about mac air still going with 1400x900 resolution and no Macpad is so disappointing.

"Apple you are loosing me" first with the mac mini and now you are stalling progress with possible devices comming out 2015 that should have been on the streets in 2014.
Look at how the competition are spraying out gorgeous full OS tablets... Us applefans are getting an extra row of icons!?
I allready went with the intel NUC and my last ipad upgrade was a windows tablet instead.
I really really want to stay in apple land but apple you are making it very difficult

Basically like most rumors, nobody has any idea what they're talking about. Only difference is that these guys can hide behind being an 'analyst.'

Sounds like a Surface Pro (minus stylus).. :rolleyes:

That would be great to shoot tethered with the iPad.
It would also be great if it had an SD card slot too.

Totally agree with a lot of what's been said above. "Adding ports for a mouse and keyboard". That is the most un-Apple move possible and it will never happen. That alone makes me seriously doubt this source and its credibility.

I also think it makes no sense for an iPad Pro to include USB 3.0 ports. If the rMBA really will have solely type c usb, then the usb c would be an obvious choice for the iPad Pro given Apple's obsession with smaller and smaller ports and consistency among product lines.

Apple knows it will get tons of bad PR initially (as a lot of their products have in the past at first) since the rMBA will, supposedly, be type c usb only. However if they brought this same standard to the iPad Pro, it would make the standard more familiar and acceptable as an option users would want (since the new accessory they bought will work with both their iPad and MacBook).

This intrigues me. I wonder how IOS will deal with USB connectivity. Perhaps they just mean a type-c port?

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Good one.

iOS supports USB-already? And a move to USB 3.0 does not have to mean a move to a actually USB-port on the device. Lightning does fully support USB2.0 and that's precisely what you use when you connect your Lightning to USB port into your Mac or power-brick.

There are more than enough connectors on the Lightning cable already, all Apple really needs to do is adding USB3.0 in the USB-end of the Lightning cable and nothing else. Thus far it's been rather pointless due to the nature of the NAND flash in the devices with random read / write being lower than the transfer cap of USB2.0 so the benefit of going USB3.0 has yet to be present.


But as the next generation of iPhone's and iPad's will most likely make the move to UFS and this new SSD + eMMC combination we will properly start to see random read / write speeds shattering the maximum capabilities of USB2.0 so then it might be time to make the move towards USB3.0.


There is no real benefit for Apple to make the move from Lightning to USB Type-C on the devices itself. It does not offer anything the Lightning does not already support other than it being the new "universal standard" in the market in the next few years.

Lightning has only been available for a few years, making the move to yet another connector on Apple devices already seems like a stupid move. The Lightning connector was built to be future proof and we had the 30-pin connector for over 10 years. I highly doubt the Lightning connector is going anywhere any time soon.