Apple's 'iPad Air 3' to Be Branded as an iPad Pro With Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil Support

[jlc1978]

Ok, we disagree, and is speculation.

No worries, speculating is fun and we often have differing desires in what we'd like to see in the next MBP, except perhaps a significant price drop along with better specs...

But about the 16 inch display not fitting?

Remember the 15 inch MacBook Pro is actually 15,4 inch.

Look at these pictures of the dell infinity 13 inch with small bezel ips and 3200x1800 res. and the comparison between a 13 inch dell infinity and 13 inch 2015 MacBook Air.

The reason I say I think it would be difficult is from what I've seen replacing broken glass on a MBP. I'm not sure why Apple chose the mounting scheme they did but I suspect it has to do with the thickness of the cover; in addition there is the camera at the top center and hinge at the bottom. Another factor may be rigidity to prevent damage from flexing.

Adding an inch diagonal would add about .5 inches on the horizontal and .4 inches on the vertical axis. That leaves a tiny amount of space for the bezel. I have no doubt, given Apple's money, they could engineer a solution but it probably would involve increasing the display's thickness and that seems counter to what Apple's path forward has been in terms of size and thickness.

At any rate, it's all speculation at the point and Apple always seems to go its own way; which makes speculation fun.

 

[ValO]

No worries, speculating is fun and we often have differing desires in what we'd like to see in the next MBP, except perhaps a significant price drop along with better specs...



The reason I say I think it would be difficult is from what I've seen replacing broken glass on a MBP. I'm not sure why Apple chose the mounting scheme they did but I suspect it has to do with the thickness of the cover; in addition there is the camera at the top center and hinge at the bottom. Another factor may be rigidity to prevent damage from flexing.

Adding an inch diagonal would add about .5 inches on the horizontal and .4 inches on the vertical axis. That leaves a tiny amount of space for the bezel. I have no doubt, given Apple's money, they could engineer a solution but it probably would involve increasing the display's thickness and that seems counter to what Apple's path forward has been in terms of size and thickness.

At any rate, it's all speculation at the point and Apple always seems to go its own way; which makes speculation fun.

Sigh, just look at dells spec. Dell doesn' t make its own screen, neither does Apple.
They wouldn't have to engineer everything. They buy screen assemblies from suppliers, the same way dell does it.

Btw dell screen is just as thin and in the dell there also is a camera in the upper display bezel.
Apple had the edge in screens for their macbook pro' s but now they are lagging behind the latest display gen. Time to play catchup!

 

[jlc1978]

Sigh, just look at dells spec. Dell doesn' t make its own screen, neither does Apple.
They wouldn't have to engineer everything. They buy screen assemblies from suppliers, the same way dell does it.

True, but the screen assemblies are built to Apple's spec rather than being an off the shelf product so Apple would have to work with the supplier to engineer a screen that meet s their requirements. Most of Apple's manufacturing is done by third parties but the engineering work is done by Apple and the supplier.

Btw dell screen is just as thin and in the dell there also is a camera in the upper display bezel.
Apple had the edge in screens for their macbook pro' s but now they are lagging behind the latest display gen. Time to play catchup!

How so? The retina displays are very nice even if they have a larger bezel than the Dell's. As for the Dell, it still has about an inch below the screen and a webcam that is rather strangely situated on the lower left in order to make the top bezel tiny. dell shrank the sides while sliding the display up to give a small bezel look on 3 out of 4 sides. My guess is they changed the aspect ratio to accomplish this.

Small bezels are nice, I just don't see Apple putting a 16: display out any time soon on the MBP. I may be wrong, only time will tell.

 

[lordofthereef]

Really? What happened to freedom of speech?
What, somebody's not supposed to say something because you find it unpleasant?
What a laugh ....
If you don't wanna hear something THEN DON'T LISTEN,
but to tell someone they "can't" say it just because you don't like it ....
That's insane.
The world's not a very nice place. Expect a bloody nose now & again.

I am unsure if this was intentional, but you quoted my signature. It's just a tagline that I like to try and live by. This is no more commanding you to do (or not do) anything than a quote such as "Be the change you want to see in the world" is a literal statement of a person telling you how to live your life. If you felt that this was me trying to go against another person's freedom of speach, my meaning was misinterpreted.

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are you complaining about the industry model for releases or about apple? apple may have started it with the iPhone, but seems like it's pretty standard based on everyone else's efforts too. specialty products (like Wacom's) don't seem to do this, but that's cause they're in a different market.

yearly advances in things like BT, battery, display, etc just means they're available each year to be incorporated into existing products. hence, competition. i feel like your comment is cynical for cynicism's sake.

It wasn't really meant to be a complaint or even to be cynical (well OK, that last sentence absolutely was, and it was actually a paraphrased quote stolen from Jimmy Kimmel who did a pretty funny segment where he handed people on the street the current iPhone, claimed it was the new one, and watched hilarity ensue.). There aren't very many markets, outside of tablets and smartphones, where people are compelled to buy the new product every year, and much of that has to do with marketing. It's not just about iPhone. It's about the market segment as a whole. Sure there are advancements yearly around the board. We don't generally see a keynoe about how those advancements are so much better than the previous version, though. Smartphones and tablets just seem to try and push that, though.

But since we are talking about Apple, I think they've made decisions with naming that started out a means to differentiate each successor from the last and has been since very muddled over the years.

 

[brinary001]

Really? An iPad's been my main machine for more than half a decade now.

Well there'll always be some who can make it work. Hell, I've met folks who use just their phone as a daily driver. But for the vast, vast majority of users (I'm just spitballing but probably above 80 or 90%) they're going to need a desktop-class machine.

 

[robeddie]

Yeah, right. 'Cause iPad's just a $500 video & game player.
Oh that's right, it isn't.
Sooner rather than later, you'll be using "Final Cut PRO-8K" on iPad.

No I won't. Because no matter how you slice it, finger touch input is way clunkier and inprecise and slower than a mouse. I can't tell you how many times every time I want to simply copy and paste on the ipad that I have to try to get the touch input in just the right spot and drag just the right way to actually select the text I want to copy. If copy and paste is that much of a chore, estensive video editing would be an absolute nightmare.

 

[iPadCary]

If copy and paste is that much of a chore, estensive video editing would be an absolute nightmare.

Not with Apple Pencil it wouldn't be.

 

[mrklaw]

No I won't. Because no matter how you slice it, finger touch input is way clunkier and inprecise and slower than a mouse. I can't tell you how many times every time I want to simply copy and paste on the ipad that I have to try to get the touch input in just the right spot and drag just the right way to actually select the text I want to copy. If copy and paste is that much of a chore, estensive video editing would be an absolute nightmare.

absolutely. I don't understand the desire to defend touch input as the bees knees. It is great for some things - for web browsing it has honestly transformed the experience. But for others there are tools that already exist that are simply better. I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that those are supported in the future.

ipad has an on-screen keyboard, so why bother supporting bluetooth keyboards like they have for years?

I hate text selection on ios - either holding and slowly dragging, hoping the cursor doesn't move when you lift your finger. 3D touch is a little better but still annoying - if you miss the insertion point you have to pause before you press again otherwise it'll ignore your input.

 

[jlc1978]

No I won't. Because no matter how you slice it, finger touch input is way clunkier and inprecise and slower than a mouse. I can't tell you how many times every time I want to simply copy and paste on the ipad that I have to try to get the touch input in just the right spot and drag just the right way to actually select the text I want to copy. If copy and paste is that much of a chore, estensive video editing would be an absolute nightmare.

As much as I like my iPad Pro I agree with your assessment of the touch interface for fine detail work. Copy and Paste can be a nightmare at times. It's great for things that don't require pinpoint accuracy, such as scrolling documents or web pages, or even typing on a virtual keyboard. When it works, it's very good, but when it doesn't, it's very bad.

The Pencil goes a long way to addressing the shortcomings of the touch interface. It takes a while to get use to versus a mouse; mainly because we have practiced with a mouse so long its use requires little thought; as does the lack of a pointer to provide visual feedback to the user.

There are a number of factors that make an iPad difficult to use for tasks such as video editing, the lack of a mechanism to for precise work and visual feedback while doing it is one of them. Another is how the touch interface forces one to cover part of the screen while using it which adds to the complexity of detailed tasks.

It's not that you can't edit on an iPad, it's just that it will be a lot more challenging. Not having to carry a laptop may be an advantage in some settings, however, that makes the difficulties vs portability tradeoff worthwhile.
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absolutely. I don't understand the desire to defend touch input as the bees knees. It is great for some things - for web browsing it has honestly transformed the experience. But for others there are tools that already exist that are simply better. I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that those are supported in the future.

ipad has an on-screen keyboard, so why bother supporting bluetooth keyboards like they have for years?[/QUOTE]

It would be nice to see more support for bluetooth devices, but that would require Apple to rethink the direction of the iPad as a replacement for the laptop rather than an addition to it. It would also mean redoing iOS in ways that stray from it's current philosophy to allow it to be more OS X like.

I hate text selection on ios - either holding and slowly dragging, hoping the cursor doesn't move when you lift your finger. 3D touch is a little better but still annoying - if you miss the insertion point you have to pause before you press again otherwise it'll ignore your input.

Preach on, brother...

 

[mrklaw]

It would be nice to see more support for bluetooth devices, but that would require Apple to rethink the direction of the iPad as a replacement for the laptop rather than an addition to it. It would also mean redoing iOS in ways that stray from it's current philosophy to allow it to be more OS X like.



Preach on, brother...

I don't think it'd be that hard. I think some other posters mentioned that you can emulate a mouse pointer in the dev environment now, so I think for certain apps like text entry etc you could support a mouse without requiring any significant overhaul of the OS generally

 

[jlc1978]

I don't think it'd be that hard. I think some other posters mentioned that you can emulate a mouse pointer in the dev environment now, so I think for certain apps like text entry etc you could support a mouse without requiring any significant overhaul of the OS generally

I think the main challenge is from a design and use philosophy, rather than a technical one. If Apple adds more complexity to iOS by adding mouse capability, file structures, they will wind up with an iOS that is either great on an iPAD Pro but to confusing or complex for an iPhone; or have the iPhone iOS be a subset of the iPad iOS and causing confusion. That is why I say it is a philosophical issue of "Do we spilt iOS into an iPad OS and an iPhone OS so we can make the iPad more like a laptop, or do we stay with the design philosophy of having a mobile OS that works across all mobile devices?"

We see some of the split already with some of the iPad only features as well as the iPhone only hardware feature of 3D touch.

 

[Robnsn2015]

1. I advocate an iPad OS similar to tvOS and watchOS.

2. The big problem with touch interface vs. mouse is that people are accustomed to the mouse. I'm old enough to remember when companies first started forcing the GUI/mouse interface on their employees and how hard it was for people. They had complaints then similar to what I hear now about touch.

3. Most users can benefit from some enhancements to iOS, but let's not make it too complicated. I'm tired of people who suffer because of Windows' complexity and then blame themselves for not being "technical" enough.

 

[miniyou64]

If this is true, they're getting really confusing with their naming conventions...

 

[AppleScruff1]

As soon as AirPrint came out, the iPad became good enough for the average person.

I don't use it often but it is a handy feature.

 

[Michael Goff]

I don't use it often but it is a handy feature.

I was simply arguing that the average person isn't exactly using their computers for large things. They read email, watch videos, and play some games as a majority of things. I don't see the average person losing things with going straight tablet.

I think it's mentality that is getting in the way. People think they need a laptop or desktop to do things either iOS or Android could do.

 

[AppleScruff1]

I was simply arguing that the average person isn't exactly using their computers for large things. They read email, watch videos, and play some games as a majority of things. I don't see the average person losing things with going straight tablet.

I think it's mentality that is getting in the way. People think they need a laptop or desktop to do things either iOS or Android could do.

I think a tablet is fine as an only device for a lot of people. But their are also times when I like to sit in front of a nice large monitor, even though I'm still doing something I could do on an iPad.

 

[Michael Goff]

I think a tablet is fine as an only device for a lot of people. But their are also times when I like to sit in front of a nice large monitor, even though I'm still doing something I could do on an iPad.

I've never had a large monitor for normal computing, so I guess that's why I think the way I do.

 

[StoneJack]

I think that iPad Pro has a reasonable size, after all, we all have or had even 15 or 17 inch notebooks. Right now, I am using Macbook air 11 inch, so its quite close.

Battery life on iPad pro is obviously better than Macbooks, I guess, judging from the usual iPads.

iOS is not as mature as OS X, so of course, iPad Pro has its limitations.
It also has it advantages of being touch based and supporting Pencil.
I would agree that price reduction across iPad Pro lines is needed. Its a first iPad I had no interest buying as it was very expensive.

However, 7 inch iPad mini, 9.7 inch iPad, 11 inch iPad pro lines do make sense.

If pencil support will be across the full iPad line, it will be a good solution and create less confusion. I am fine with also partial support such as iPad mini Pro etc.