Clearly, Apple’s goal with the iPad Air M4 is to deliver professional power in a lighter, more affordable tablet.

Apple made sure to position this tab as a balance between an everyday tablet and a professional creative tool rather than just a casual device.

In this review, we will take a close look at the specifications of the iPad Air M4 and what users should realistically expect from it.

Specifications and Performance

Apple integrated the M4 chip in the iPad Air M4 to provide faster GPU and CPU performance compared to its previous iPad Air models.

This makes the device capable of handling tasks like video editing, graphic design, and pro-level gaming without lag.

The M4 chip also supports the Liquid Retina display, which delivers sharp graphics and perfect colours for watching clear content, drawing illustrations, editing photos, and reading documents for long periods.

The design of this tab reflects Apple’s continued focus on minimalism and portability. At 464g, the iPad Air M4 feels light for a tablet, and its thin design makes it easier to carry around.

Although tablets are rarely used primarily for photography, Apple still added a 12MP Front camera, capable enough for selfies and video call sessions.

The back camera is also 12MP, just like the front. All these features combined with strong connectivity make this tablet a useful remote working device.

Key Features

• M4 chip with advanced CPU and GPU performance
• Liquid Retina display
• Support for Apple Pencil
• Thin and lightweight aluminium design
• Long-lasting battery life
• High-quality front and back cameras
• USB-C connectivity
• iPadOS with advanced multitasking features
• Support for Magic Keyboard and productivity accessories
• Several storage configurations

What Users Should Expect and What They Shouldn’t

For users who are interested in this device, expect excellent performance. The M4 chip allows the device to run heavy apps, making it ideal for:

• Graphic design
• Video editing
• Digital illustration
• Multitasking between apps
• Productivity tasks like document editing and presentations

The tablet also comes with a strong battery efficiency, meaning that it can comfortably last for a full day without needing a boost.

However, users should not expect the iPad Air M4 to replace the need for a laptop in every situation. While it’s a powerful device, it still runs on iPadOS, which is not compatible with many desktop-class software.

The iPad Air M4 represents Apple’s effort to bring powerful computing to a lighter and more affordable tablet category.

By combining the M4 chipset with other premium features such as the display and strong battery life, Apple has created a device that could fit between a casual and a professional tablet.

For students, creators, and professionals who want the flagship aesthetics and performance from Apple without the price tag of the Pro lineup, the iPad Air M4 stands out as the most balanced tablet currently available on the market.

The company is officially merging both platforms into a single unified system that will span phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and foldables. Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android ecosystem, said: “We’re going to be combining Chrome OS and Android into a single platform.”

The merger, formally announced on July 14, 2025, means ChromeOS will no longer stand as an independent operating system. Instead, Android will become the foundation across all Google-powered devices, designed to challenge Apple’s place in the tablet and productivity space.

Why now? Android 16, Google’s latest iteration, introduces several desktop-focused features: resizable windows, multi-window support, external display compatibility, and even Linux terminal integration. ChromeOS already shared Android’s Linux base, but now Google is rebuilding the entire system on the Android stack.

Google wants users to experience the same operating system whether they’re on a Pixel phone or a Pixel laptop, a prototype of which is reportedly undergoing internal testing. “I’m interested in how people are using their laptops these days,” Samat said, pointing at how much wider Android’s reach could become.

For users, this promises fewer compatibility issues and a consistent app experience across devices. Developers, on the other hand, are set to benefit from a unified toolchain and a larger Android user base, now expanded to include Chromebook users.

The strategic change also aligns with Google’s vision to embed AI into everyday productivity. Android’s merger with ChromeOS paves the way for Gemini-powered AI tools to run natively across phones, tablets, and laptops without fragmented software support.

Yet, the announcement leaves serious questions unanswered. Will the new Android-based platform retain ChromeOS’s automatic updates and robust security model? Will Android’s desktop mode feel genuinely native or simply like a stretched-out mobile experience? 

The fate of millions of existing Chromebooks, especially older Intel-based models, is also not clear. Will they receive updates or become obsolete overnight?

Though rumours of a merger date back to 2015, and even industry analysts at The Verge once called the move “perfect sense,” this is the first time Google has admitted publicly that it’s happening. 

However, history says Google doesn’t move fast when overhauling platforms, despite ChromeOS’s global market share collapsing to 1.25%, triggering urgent calls for change.

In short, Google’s two-headed OS experiment is over. Android is now the future, not just for mobile, but for everything.

• The company also unveiled significant enhancements to its offerings for professional developers and app development teams.

These include early access to new services within Catalyst, the company’s pro-code full-stack development platform, and the general availability of Zoho Apptics, an application analytics solution that enables developers to track the in-app usage and performance of applications built on iOS, macOS, Android, and other platforms.

“Businesses are looking for unified solutions that help them optimise for value, maximise their competitive advantages, and tap into new market opportunities amid tough economic conditions,” said Kehinde Ogundare, country head, Zoho Nigeria. “At Zoho, we’re focused on continuously deepening our current offerings and expanding others to serve business needs. Zoho CRM for Everyone, for instance, is the first true democratisation of the CRM paradigm and helps unify all customer operations teams onto the CRM to deliver better customer experiences. Likewise, the upgraded Catalyst and the privacy-focused Apptics solution work hand-in-hand to deliver an unmatched developer experience from concept to code, and deployment to analytics.”

Zoho CRM for Everyone – What You Should Know:

Zoho CRM is one of the top selling products in Nigeria. The product recorded a  60% YoY growth in 2023 in the country.

Zoho CRM for Everyone allows sales teams, the primary custodian of customer relationships, to communicate and coordinate with other customer-facing teams from a single place—the CRM application—instead of holding fragmented discussions.

It enables account managers, for example, to pull in a solutions engineer to coordinate a product demonstration for a customer.

• A marketer can perform win-loss analysis for specific deals. A community specialist can manage advocacy engagements like case studies.

They may all use different core applications for deep work but can now converge on the CRM for managing shared responsibilities towards the customer.

Besides opening up CRM access cross-functionally, Zoho CRM for Everyone also empowers every team to manage their own workflows autonomously within the corporate IT framework.

The new capabilities stand to improve visibility for every stakeholder in the customer journey, mitigate gaps in coordination, reduce turnaround time, and improve the quality of the customer experience.

To make CRM for Everyone possible, the following capabilities have come together in Zoho CRM:

• Team Modules and Requesters: Under team modules, business teams can create their own team-level data modules (in addition to organisation-level modules) by themselves while being governed by IT teams. Requesters is a new user profile in Zoho CRM that allows a team member to raise a request for colleagues in different teams and track the request status.
  ● Refreshed User Experience: To enable this fundamental shift in usage, the interface of Zoho CRM has been redesigned for better usability across roles and functions. With this release, Zoho CRM is also making a major stride in accessibility with capabilities covering areas like vision, motor activity, and interactions.

New Custom App Development Capabilities in Catalyst

Building custom solutions out of a disparate mix of tools has consistently been a source of frustration for developers. Catalyst unifies pro-code development efforts and streamlines the entire lifecycle by abstracting away complexities, providing pre-built components, and offering a comprehensive suite of developer tools.

Catalyst’s newest offerings, available under early access, expand on developer logic, design, and delivery:

• Signals: Routes events from sources like Zoho services, third-party sources, or custom applications to handlers (like Catalyst Functions, Circuits, etc.) using topics and subscriptions.
  ●NoSQL Database: Allows users to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data while supporting diverse data types and scaling dynamically with high performance.
  ● Slate: A fully managed frontend platform that lets developers easily build highly customised interfaces that leverage frameworks such as React.js, Next.js, Sveltekit, etc.
  ● CI/CD Pipeline: Automates tests and builds for continuous delivery pipelines, streamlining development workflows for faster time-to-market.

Catalyst seamlessly integrates with the Zoho ecosystem and third-party applications, enabling developers to leverage existing infrastructure and data sources. The platform stands out with its transparent and cost-effective pricing model, empowering organisations of all sizes by eliminating hidden fees and offering predictable, scalable pricing.

Privacy-Friendly Application Analytics:

Zoho Apptics delivers an extensive digital analytics platform designed for every stakeholder involved in application development and management.

The solution consolidates analytics across app usage, performance, user engagement, and growth metrics into a centralised console, then synthesises these multifaceted data streams into actionable insights presented visually in dashboards and reports.

This unified view empowers organisations to make informed decisions, optimise app experiences, drive user engagement, and fuel sustainable growth throughout the application lifecycle.

Apptics provides multi-platform analytics support, covering Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, iPadOS, Windows, React Native, Flutter, and Unity, with web analytics capabilities coming soon.

Apptics stands out by offering a unique capability to prompt Android and iOS users for app ratings and updates directly from the Apptics console. Integrated app store reviews management helps in streamlining the process of analysing user sentiment.

Additionally, Zoho Apptics prioritises data privacy and security, exceeding industry best practices and regulatory compliance standards.

User information is safeguarded behind encryption and access controls, ensuring analytics insights are leveraged responsibly without compromising individual privacy.

Pricing and Availability  

• Starting today, early access to Zoho CRM for Everyone is available upon request for Zoho customers worldwide.
• Zoho will be releasing additional capabilities to CRM for Everyone over several weeks during the early access phase.
• Catalyst offers a generous Free Tier that renews monthly, alongside options for a pay-as-you-go model and subscription-based pricing.
• The new features are now available for early access, and interested users can sign up by visiting Zoho’s Catalyst page. 
• Apptics is globally available now and offers a free plan and a pro plan starting at NGN18600 per month, when billed annually.