This week, Apple is celebrating its “Special Apple Experience” in New York, London and Shanghai — a closer, more experiential event with the press to present its new wave of products, including the iPhone 17e, new MacBooks and the new iPad Air with M4 chip.
At Setek Consultants we read this move as more than just a keynote: it is a statement of intent about how Apple wants companies to live the Apple experience, with devices, services and software increasingly aligned around productivity, AI and mobility.
In this context, the new iPad Air with M4 arrives not just as “the new generation” of a very popular range, but as a key piece of that Apple Experience applied to business. Apple has been sending a clear signal for some time: iPad is no longer just “the creative team’s tablet”, but a central device in many organisations’ digital strategy.
M4: flagship-event performance for the workhorse iPad
The M4 chip offers a new-generation CPU and more powerful GPU, with up to 30% more performance than the previous generation and up to 2.3x more than iPads Air with M1, supported by more unified memory. For the business, this means the “workhorse iPad” in the fleet can take on tasks previously almost exclusively reserved for the iPad Pro.
In daily use, that extra power translates to fluid multitasking, content editing, design apps, advanced reporting tools or even video and 3D model workflows, without the device falling behind after two years. If we add that Apple maintains the starting price, the TCO equation is particularly interesting for any CIO evaluating large-scale fleet renewals.
AI and Apple Intelligence: iPad Air as the entry point
The new iPad Air with M4 is ready to leverage Apple Intelligence, the generative AI layer arriving in iPadOS that relies on chips like M4 and its enhanced Neural Engine. For an organisation, this means opening the door to contextual assistants, smart summaries, workflow automation and content generation directly on the iPad, minimising sensitive data exposure to the cloud.
Wi-Fi 7 connectivity to match the event
With the new N1 and C1X chips, the device incorporates Wi-Fi 7 and substantial improvements in wireless and cellular networks, bringing faster speeds, lower latency and greater stability in demanding corporate environments — hybrid meetings, VDI access, real-time critical applications, and scenarios with hundreds of devices sharing the same network.
What this all means
For CIOs and IT managers, this simplifies and complicates at the same time: it simplifies because it is easier to standardise policies, app catalogues and support processes around a very balanced device; it complicates because it forces a rethink of mobility strategies, AI deployment and integration with legacy systems. This is where a partner specialised in Apple for business makes the difference.
If your company is considering incorporating the new iPad Air with M4 into its Apple strategy, we can accompany you from definition to deployment. Book a consultation session with our team and we will analyse together what role iPad Air M4 should play in your architecture, which user profiles benefit most and how to deploy it securely and scalably.
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