iStore, the retail chain owned by South African Apple distributor Core Group, has published local pricing for the iPad Pro M4 models unveiled earlier this week.

Prepare to dig deep if you want the top-end 13-inch model with cellular, 2TB of storage and nano-texture glass: that model will set you back R60 000, according to iStore. The highest-spec version without the special glass coating costs R58 000. The models are available for pre-order only at this stage. A pre-order deposit of up to R12 000 is required.

The cheapest of the new iPad Pros – an 11-inch model with M4 chip and 256GB of storage – costs R23 000. See all the prices on the iStore website here.

In the middle of the Pro range, a 13-inch 512GB iPad Pro with Wi-Fi (no cellular) will set South African Apple fans back R35 600.

Apple unveiled the new iPad Pro and iPad Air models in a corporate video earlier this week that drew controversy over an ad that depicted a range of creative tools – musical instruments, speakers, cameras and paint cans – being destroyed by a large industrial press. Apple on Friday apologised for the ad, saying it “missed the mark”.

The debut of the next-generation M4 processor in the new Pro models comes a month before Apple is set to unveil its strategy for generative artificial intelligence at its developer conference in San Francisco. Apple, which has fallen behind its rivals in the AI race, is expected to tout private, on-device AI processing as a differentiator against its competitors, including Microsoft and Google, which have built vast public cloud computing resources to handle consumer and business AI workloads.

New iPad Air pricing

Reuters reported that the move by Apple was unusual as the company typically puts its latest chips into its Mac line-up.

Apple said the M4 chip has a larger “neural engine” – referred to as a neural processing unit by the rest of the industry. Apple chips have featured a neural engine since 2017, but rivals such as Intel and AMD have begun to tout their competitive technologies for PCs, Reuters reported.

iStore, meanwhile, has also published pre-order pricing for the new iPad Air models, which feature Apple’s older M2 chip. Those iPads come in 11-inch and 13-inch variants, too. They start at R14 000 for the base 11-inch model with 128GB of storage and R18 500 for the base 13-inch version, also with 128GB of storage.