iPad Pro Apple Silicon on the Mac unintentionally killed the iPad Pro

[WilliApple]

I don't agree with the iPad having better software before Big Sur.

It just didn't look good in my opinion before Big Sur.
It does now.

 

[Krypton Deer]

The usual suspects are pro level apps like Final Cut Pro and Premiere, putting MacOS on the iPad and making a product that combines both Mac/iPad....I think it's going to be difficult for Apple to bring the iPad Pro to a state where it's ahead of the Mac again.

That would make an iPad that works like a MacBook. And if Apple adds touch screen to MacBook, it would then work like an iPad. What's wrong with running FCPX, Logic and Xcode on Mac with proper cooling?

The killer feature of iPad is a spacious touch screen that rotates freely. It has camera that scans documents and Apple Pencil allows us to annotate and draw. iPad is designed to be held in portrait first - it's fantastic for web-browsing like that. When we attach keyboard/trackpad and fix iPad to a horizontal stand, iPad become an inferior laptop. iPad is not created to be ahead of Mac - we sometimes forget they ought to complement each other.

Edit: People are not wrong to expect more from iPad Pro given the price, but iPad Pro 12.9 has better display, touch screen, same M2 chip, more cameras and Face ID at the same price of M2 MacBook Air.

 

[iBug2]

The iPad had better software? Are you kidding? The iPad still doesn't have decent software to this day. Not when you compare it to the Mac anyway but that's been done to death here already.

My 2018 iPad Pro was working faster on Affinity Photo than my iMac 2017 with 4-core i7.

Many effects/filters were applied faster on the iPad than on the iMac. This was hilarious since the iMac on paper or benchmarks was 3 times faster than the iPad on CPU and 5 times faster on GPU.

 

[iStorm]

But how do we know the Mac killed the iPad? That is just making assumptions and comparing apples to oranges. By the same logic, one could also say the iPhone is killing the iPad because iPhone sales are up. There could be other contributing factors to cause iPad sales to be down as well, such as not having any new iPad Pros in FY22. (In FY21, when the previous gen Pros were released, iPad sales were up by $8B compared to FY20...but again, was that because of the Pro, or other factors?) Also, there were quite a few new Macs released in FY22 that would have driven sales up (14" & 16" MacBook Pro, Mac Studio, 13" MacBook Pro, MacBook Air).

 

[Tech Copywriter]

Extremely overpriced? That’s very subjective and specific to individual use cases.

Ever since I got the 12.9 IPP my laptop has been collecting dust for 99% of the time. And no, I don’t just draw on it or take notes. I run a business off of it.

Not saying it’s for everyone but I just would be careful making generalizations.

Ironically I ran a business from an iPad for several years. However, since acquiring an M1 MBP, there's no way I would go back. The addition of external display support is too little, too late.

 

[aloysiusfreeman]

I think the foundation of the iPad Pro is great, there's just a lot of potential to be tapped into.

I am working on shedding my ignorance on a lot of hardware knowledge, but it seems that everything is there on the iPad Pro to do good things - it just needs the will to do it.

 

[Gengar]

Before Apple Silicon on Mac, around the 2015-2019 time, iPad Pro had better software and hardware than the Mac and the Mac was seen as a legacy product, both by Apple themselves internally and the userbase.

A reach if I've ever seen one.
They have always been two separate, distinct products that had no overlap whatsoever.
Plus, the Mac still doesn't have touch input.
I can't play The Sims 4 natively on an iPad.

 

[outlawarth]

Ironically I ran a business from an iPad for several years. However, since acquiring an M1 MBP, there's no way I would go back. The addition of external display support is too little, too late.

Nice. And this is the thing, I don’t know why people (not saying you) insist on the one device to do everything. For some it’s the iPad for others it’s Mac, or both, or entirely something else altogether.

 

[GuruZac]

The hardware was awesome and still is on iPad Pros, however, iPadOS has never been better than macOS. What Apple Silicon did was allow the Mac hardware to catch up, and I would argue surpass in many ways the iPad hardware. Have a look at how incredible the new MacBook Pros are, the new iMac is. I still think, frustrated as I get at times with iPadOS, is how amazing the iPad Pro hardware still is, and I still really enjoy using my M1 iPad Pro next to my M1 MBA, redundant as they may be to some. They serve very useful roles for me.

 

[GuruZac]

Put MacOS on an iPad is an answer to Surface.

Yes but the iPad needs more ports at that point.

 

[GuruZac]

I don't want a Mac, I want a tablet, so I have the M1 12.9.

Yeah, I love my M1 12.9. Fantastic piece of hardware.

 

[hagjohn]

Yes but the iPad needs more ports at that point.

A docking station would solve most of that but a few USB-C ports wouldn't hurt.

 

[fwmireault]

the iPad and iPhone fundamentally do a lot of the same things

I can’t disagree more. You can’t sketch or handwrite on iPhone with an Apple Pencil, and doing it with your finger on such a small screen is terrible. You can’t annotate or read PDFs and textbooks (you technically can, but the experience is far from great on a 6 inches screen. Multitasking on iPad is far from being as great as on Mac, but is definitely a step up from iPhone, which still cannot display more than one app at the time minus Slide Over. Media consumption also technically possible on iPhone, but much better on iPad. Using keyboard and mouse, same thing, and connecting to an external display too.

I agree that there is a growing overlap between the iPad and the Mac, especially with the 2021 MBP that gave a lot of features exclusive to the iPad lineup (120hz displays, 1080p webcam, mini-LED display, iOS apps on the Mac, etc.) and with the Studio Display that brings Center Stage to the Mac for the first time. I’d say that the Mac hardware stayed mostly the same for over 5 years, and it was time to bring some innovations from mobile devices to the Mac lineup. I still think that, unless we get a touchscreen Mac or macOS on iPad, there is still a place for both devices, because of some of the use cases I’ve just described. Yes you can annotate PDFs on Mac, but it’s not great.

Unfortunately, Apple’s strategy is to keep each category of product not good enough to be a one-device solution so we need to own multiple type of Apple products to get the best experience. I still think that unless Apple changes its hardware strategy, the use cases for iPads, Macs and iPhones will stay quite distinct

 

[RedTheReader]

Most people have an iPhone. Purchasing the expensive iPad Pro's don't make sense for most people because the iPad and iPhone fundamentally do a lot of the same things.

This exactly. I haven't needed an iPad since I was a preteen and didn't have my own laptop.

MacOS on Intel was not as fast, responsive and fluid as iPad Pro's around 2015-2019. The software was better optimised on iPad around that time.

I agree on this too. I think it still isn't, but it's gotten a lot closer, to the point where I don't find myself wishing I could make the iPad my main machine.

You can’t sketch or handwrite on iPhone with an Apple Pencil, and doing it with your finger on such a small screen is terrible. You can’t annotate or read PDFs and textbooks (you technically can, but the experience is far from great on a 6 inches screen. Multitasking on iPad is far from being as great as on Mac, but is definitely a step up from iPhone, which still cannot display more than one app at the time minus Slide Over.

I've got to admit that handwriting does frequently attract me to the iPad, but I haven't yet been able to find a reason I'd want to give up the organic pleasure of writing on paper with a nice pen for a screen that poorly emulates it.

 

[Duncan-UK]

Before Apple Silicon on Mac, around the 2015-2019 time, iPad Pro had better software and hardware than the Mac and the Mac was seen as a legacy product, both by Apple themselves internally and the userbase.

Any evidence for this??? Seems a bit silly really.

Suspect Apple pushed the "replacement for your laptop" (but hey not one of our laptops!!) vibe in order to push a product whose sales (iPads) were lagging behind expectations, and especially in its new "Pro" incarnation.

For what its worth I own (and use) the following iPad Pros

Original 12.9 release from 2015
9.7 inch from 2016 (the dog of the product line as it doesn't have fast charging)
2x 10.5 inch Pros
12.9 and 11 inch M1s

I've never viewed them as superior to the Mac, mainly because the OS and interface just aren't appropriate for serious work. Sure you can do some nice things on them, but never in preference to using a real OS and computer.

For presentations, PDF annotating and media consumption though they are superb!

 

[Rafterman]

Macs and iPads are NOT the same thing, different devices for different jobs. I'm not sure why people keep comparing the two.

 

[temende]

I don't think it "killed" the iPad Pro, but it's hard to muster spending upwards of $1000+ on an iPad Pro when you're already spending $1500+ on a quality MacBook if you need macOS to do your work. I have a 2018 11" iPad Pro that I still use, but if/when it dies on me I'll probably downgrade to one of the lower-cost iPads since I mostly just use it for web browsing / watching TV.

 

[outlawarth]

I find these conversations a little redundant. I run 99% of my business and work off my 12.9 IPP. Yet I understand that this may not work for everyone - but I don’t come to the forums to try to convince anyone that what works for them is wrong. I don’t pontificate about how one device is superior to the other or how some obscure workflow is applicable to everyone else. Why is this so hard?

 

[temende]

I find these conversations a little redundant. I run 99% of my business and work off my 12.9 IPP. Yet I understand that this may not work for everyone - but I don’t come to the forums to try to convince anyone that what works for them is wrong. I don’t pontificate about how one device is superior to the other or how some obscure workflow is applicable to everyone else. Why is this so hard?

It's an anonymous internet forum, the whole point is to pontificate on random pointless stuff to avoid doing actual work 🤣

 

[exoticSpice]

I stopped yearning for ipad pro when the 14" MBP came out. I always wanted Apple to put their chips in Macs

 

[Username-already-in-use]

Apple silicon is one of the main reasons why iPad came to dominate the tablet space with the combination of CPU power with power efficiency. It has not in any sense killed the iPad Pro.

Apple silicon almost certainly revived the fortunes of the Mac. The gains over the previous Intel tech led to many users upgrading mid-cycle to get in on M1-derived Macs, which alongside with the pandemic effect pushed up Mac revenues. I

 

[brilliantthings]

With the introduction of Apple Silicon I really enjoy using my MacBook Air, but on the couch at the end of a day at work I prefer the simplicity of iPad Pro. I view the lack of proper multitasking as a benefit. It helps me keep me focussed.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Apple Silicon has given Macs a chance to be sold in 2020, while competitors have been in deep crisis for years.
If anything, MacOS, from Big Sur onwards, are killing Macs to turn them into grown but poorly useful iPads.
Apple is not interested in selling generalist Macs, it prefers to sell iPads that cost much less and sell more.
Apple if anything is interested in maintaining, for the moment, the really Pro line (so I would exclude any product under $5000), because it covers market niches, and to others it is interested in selling larger versions of an iPhone / iPad, which are cheap, with iOS or rather a version of MacOS castrate like iOS, see from Big Sur onwards.
Apple is interested in selling, possibly products that are cheap in production and can re-evaluate with large margins, such as the iPad Pro, useless products used as a MacBook if not worse at tripled prices compared to a MacBook.

 

[glhiii]

One of the issues with the iPad is the filing system. This may go back to the Newton, which used a "soup" to store files, whatever that meant. On the Mac, files can be in folders within folders. On the iPad (and iPhone) God only knows how the files are stored. I've never managed to download a file on the iPad and get it back, though I suppose that's possible. At least they put the Files app on the iPad so one can get files from Dropbox and iCloud, but if you want to open one of those files on an app, you have to go through all sorts of gymnastics. I don't like Android, but at least it has a much more rational filing system.

 

[Frankfurt]

One of the issues with the iPad is the filing system. This may go back to the Newton, which used a "soup" to store files, whatever that meant. On the Mac, files can be in folders within folders. On the iPad (and iPhone) God only knows how the files are stored. I've never managed to download a file on the iPad and get it back, though I suppose that's possible. At least they put the Files app on the iPad so one can get files from Dropbox and iCloud, but if you want to open one of those files on an app, you have to go through all sorts of gymnastics. I don't like Android, but at least it has a much more rational filing system.

Files works well if iCloud Drive is enabled (Basically using your Mac filing structure). By itself it is a pretty uncomfortable to use.