Apple Introduces the M1 iMac and New iPad Pro

Apple introduced a redesigned iMac and an iPad Pro using the M1 processor in April 2021. Putting the same chip into a desktop and a tablet made Apple’s silicon strategy unusually visible.

M1 combined high-performance and efficiency CPU cores, an integrated GPU, Neural Engine, media engines, and unified memory in one system-on-chip. The iPad Pro now had laptop-class CPU hardware, but iPadOS still imposed a very different application and multitasking model from macOS.

That mismatch became part of the product discussion. The hardware demonstrated that Apple could reuse one architecture across form factors; the software showed that identical processing capability does not imply identical platform behavior.