So the iPad line mostly mimics the iPhone line again except the regular iPad and mini are left, unupdated, to become the SE line. the mini was literally all i was interested in seeing updated. I haven’t read much, was the price cut at least? *no it was not

I think I finally isolated my issue with the alarms. It’s CarPlay. It resets my alarm audio to 0% after I disconnect. I just set up an “audio level reset” shortcut that sets alarm volume to 80% and set it to run when CarPlay disconnects.