Apple introduced caller iPads and a clump of caller accessories today, but alternatively of utilizing the motorboat arsenic a clip to simplify, knowing what works with what is much confusing than ever.

Let’s absorption archetypal connected the 10th-generation iPad, which got the biggest changes. Its caller plan much intimately matches the company’s different caller iPads, with a USB-C port, slimmer bezels, and Touch ID connected the slumber / aftermath button, conscionable similar the iPad Air and iPad Mini. From pictures, you’d beryllium hard-pressed to archer which is the basal exemplary iPad and which is the Air.

The similarity to those different 2 iPads mightiness marque you deliberation this caller 1 supports the second-generation Apple Pencil, which tin magnetically instrumentality to the broadside of tablets for charging and pairing. But it doesn’t: instead, the 10th-gen iPad lone works with the aged Apple Pencil, and since that stylus has to beryllium charged from a Lightning port, which the caller iPad lacks, you’ll request a peculiar dongle to hook it up.

Maybe you don’t attraction astir the Apple Pencil but alternatively privation the latest and top successful Apple’s keyboard cases. For the caller iPad, you tin adhd connected a new Magic Keyboard Folio, which offers a 14-key relation enactment for casual entree to things similar measurement controls.

A relation enactment seems similar a large happening to person with an iPad Air oregon iPad Pro, right? Alas, the $249 Folio is lone compatible with the 10th-gen iPad. And Apple hasn’t updated its keyboard covers for different tablets to adhd successful the relation keys contempt the information that the institution besides announced upgraded iPad Pros. 

Apple’s full iPad accessories ecosystem present feels fragmented and confusing, particularly erstwhile galore of the existing accessories already enactment crossed devices. The second-generation Apple Pencil works with some sizes of the iPad Pro, the iPad Air, and the iPad Mini, for example. The smaller Magic Keyboard lawsuit works with some the 11-inch iPad Pro and the iPad Air, but it isn’t compatible with the caller iPad adjacent though that tablet is astir the nonstop aforesaid size.

No, really, it’s a substance of millimeters. Here are their idiosyncratic measurements:

Said different way, if Apple had shrunk the caller iPad conscionable a bit, it could person been compatible with the smaller Magic Keyboard. Presumably, that would person besides meant the Magic Keyboard Folio with its 14 glorious relation keys could person worked with the 11-inch iPad Pro and iPad Air, too.

Apple knows however to marque things compatible crossed gadgets; the institution built its sanction connected making things that conscionable work. But for this iPad launch, Apple alternatively chose to marque its tablet ecosystem much fractured.