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so yes, those are better for consumers, media consumption.....where an ipad should be enough ...the ipad pro+magic keyboard is waste of money for that, or just a nice to have
Only programmers use keyboards? I’m a programmer and I find that argument patently absurd. Besides, you can use an iPad to ssh or remote desktop into development machines and for the reasons listed above, for many people it’s a far better mobile device for any use (email to web browsing to writing to coding) than a MacBook.
 
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that's only important is you are a developer

which is about 1 out of 10 customers

for the majority which is more than 80% the iPad Pro offers better value than the Macbook Air again with the following:

better performance
better battery
better screen
better speakers
better front facing camera
face id
also apple pencil support


than the macbook air
Take out the Starbucks crowd and the grandma's you'll be changing that 1 out of 10 customer ratio soon enough. As long as Adobe and Microsoft apps continue to be neutered on their iOS versions, the iPad continues to be a media consumption device for me. Nevertheless I did order the keyboard for couch potato/Starbucks(if quarantine is ever lifted!) use so there.

You're forgetting a huge metric PRICE!
Any 12.9 iPad Pro (I'm not counting the cellular model which makes it worse)
is much more expensive when paired with the overpriced keyboard...
 
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And the combined weight of an SUV and a trailer is more than that of a pick up truck... But just like I can drive the SUV without the trailer, I can use the iPad without the keyboard...

How does the weight compare to a Surface with a keyboard?

Surface Pro 7 i7: 790 g
Type Cover: 310g
Total: 1100 g (vs 1360g)

So the Surface Pro is 26% lighter and can remove the keyboard without losing its ability to stand at an angle.
 
Honestly I’m gutted they got rid of the 12” Macbook it was the ultimate portable work device for 90% of people. I bought the last fully upgraded model with mobile i7 processor, 16gb ram etc, honestly it is still hands down the best portable device for work when partnered with a larger screen iPhone. I also have a 2018 iPad Pro and a 2019 iPad Mini and I can tell you I reach for the 12” Macbook every single time if I have to get any work done on the move. The iPad pro performance just isn’t made good use of when combined with all the workflow shortcomings of iOS. An example; I’ve been doing some work editing huge 100mp+ image files in Affinity with multiple layers. On the 12” Macbook everything works great, no lag. On a iPad Pro it crashes often and it just can’t deal with the image files which are like 1gb or larger.

In iOS something as simple as wanting to crop an image file stored in Files is a headache. Markdown and Shortcuts no longer includes a crop interface so I have to either copy in to the Photos app, edit, save back to files, delete from Photos App, or I have to use a third party app which will first usually duplicate the file to it’s own file type for editing etc. On the 12” Macbook Preview does everything I need quickly and easily. There are countless examples of simple tasks that are still too cumbersome in iOS.
 
The giant phone is the better device guys, of course, you can surf the web in the couch with 120hz refresh rate, your kids can play angry birds on a titan like performance, please buy them all so we can move past the "laptop clone on a mobile os" era, thanks.
 
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It's unacceptable for the weight on the iPad keyboard and a deal-breaker. The product development of magic keyboard for iPad is not thoroughly build to be robust and hard to recommend for the people.
 
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Smaller screen, costs more, it's heavier and it does less - yeah I can see this being an advantage :p
One thing of note - despite the diagonal, with the squarer aspect ratio the screen isn't smaller, it's actually fractionally larger in area. Does less is also very subjective, does different things better or worse would probably be closer to the truth here ;)
 
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Logically... shouldn't it, since it's a base, weigh more?

If it didn't, it would tip over easily.
The exact issue with the Smart Keyboard Folio of the moment. Again, a welcome change.

Also, call me superficial, but I saw the cutest ad for this thing in between my last post and now. Just a lil birdie flying around the iPad, making it rotate back and forth with the “floating” mechanism. It’s got a real sense of motion and beauty to it, h/t to whoever conceptualized/produced it. Wish it were on YT so I could link.
(I was in the production arts major at my high school; this kinda stuff fascinates me. Yes, my high school had majors.)
 
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when you do work on your mobile device....you need a macbook that can run macOS apps...windows apps.linux and soon ipad apps.....ipad remain 70% a consumer/media device...
That is just your opinion. I know countless of people who can get real work done on an iPad without any issues at all. Personally, I greatly prefer it and if you read any posts on here, so do many others.
 
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One thing of note - despite the diagonal, with the squarer aspect ratio the screen isn't smaller, it's actually fractionally larger in area. Does less is also very subjective, does different things better or worse would probably be closer to the truth here ;)
I'm not so sure its as subjective as you say, iOS apps and iOS itself is more limited. I mean its only now that we got mouse support for iOS, and its multitasking is nowhere as useful or powerful as MacOS. I'd be hard-pressed to find anything that iPad can do, that you cannot do with a laptop and a laptop class operating system - other than maybe take it to Disneyworld and take pictures ;)

Yet on the flip side there are many things you can do on a laptop that you cannot do on an iPad
 
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Unless you do a lot of graphic art with the Apple Pencil, why would you get the 12.9" iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard over a base MacBook Air? That iPad combo for the 256gb iPad Pro and Keyboard is $1400 and the MBA which also has 256gb is $1000. You could get the MBA and an iPad Mini 5 if you really need a tablet for the same combo price.
 
well the iPad Pro

offers

better performance
better battery
better screen
better speakers



than the macbook air

if anything it is the macbook air that is overweight compared to the performance it offers and just lighter by a few grams compared to the macbook pro and ipad pro.

But you can run proper applications on a MacBook Air so regardless of how theoretically powerful the iPad is it still cannot hold a candle to a system with a full OS. Don't get me wrong, you can still do a lot with the iPad but you really still need a laptop or desktop for many tasks. I use both an iPad Pro 12.9 and a MacBook Pro through the working day.
 
The exact issue with the Smart Keyboard Folio of the moment. Again, a welcome change.

Also, call me superficial, but I saw the cutest ad for this thing in between my last post and now. Just a lil birdie flying around the iPad, making it rotate back and forth with the “floating” mechanism. It’s got a real sense of motion and beauty to it, h/t to whoever conceptualized/produced it. Wish it were on YT so I could link.
(I was in the production arts major at my high school; this kinda stuff fascinates me. Yes, my high school had majors.)

Sounds lovely, almost makes us want to drop macOS entirely and switch over to ipads only to draw pretty birds on the magical holy pencil.

We'd have to shut down the companies though so better suit if you go buy as many as you can since you are definitely the target consumer.
 
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I'm a manager at a firm and do 90% of my work on an iPad and the biggest limitation is that many productivity apps are behind the curve - they haven't fully embraced the power and capability of iPadOS. This may be due to budget limitations to fork development tracks or priorities. Weight will always be an issue compared to a laptop if you want something that is lap-usable because the brains and battery are in the display.
 
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Why is this a surprise ?

On comparably sized items, a component system almost always weighs more than an all in one system.

Is anyone planning on carrying the iPad keyboard with them when they are mobile ?
 
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well the iPad Pro

offers

better performance
better battery
better screen
better speakers



than the macbook air

And much, much, much worse software.

For starters, only being able to use applications marketed through Apple's App store is a serious limitation.

Then, getting "Apps" to work together is still often a challenge (yes, the iPad has progressed some with a sketch of a file system, but we are far from the level of interaction possible on a Desktop).

Plus all sorts of limitations that Apple pledge they will never raise on the Apps for iOS/iPadOS (no on-board compilation, no embedded interpreter ---which means no programming--- no emulation, ...).

Do not get me wrong, I am amazed by the iPad hardware, and I have owned (or still own) many, but, to me, this platform has not even come close to proving it can substitute to a real computer, even though Apple has been selling each generation of iPad in the last few years as "the one that will show that your next computer is a tablet"... And we have to look at the price too...
 
Genuinely very happy about this. Anyone who uses a Smart Keyboard Folio knows that they are WAY too susceptible to falling backward because virtually all of the weight is in the iPad. Seems like the added heft on the bottom will balance that out and make this (typing on my 11” Pro, waiting on a Smart pre-order) feel much more genuinely like a laptop replacement.

Also, cannot WAIT for backlit keys

(one more thing: if people are worried about this weighing too much…just remember, Apple laptops weighed 7+ lbs once upon a time ;-)
My old PowerBook Pro weighed 6.5 pounds, yes. But it had a 17” screen too.
 
Why is this a surprise ?

On comparably sized items, a component system almost always weighs more than an all in one system.

Is anyone planning on carrying the iPad keyboard with them when they are mobile ?

Frankly, most of the people find it unacceptable that it is heavier than the iPad Pro.
 
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But you can run proper applications on a MacBook Air so regardless of how theoretically powerful the iPad is it still cannot hold a candle to a system with a full OS. Don't get me wrong, you can still do a lot with the iPad but you really still need a laptop or desktop for many tasks. I use both an iPad Pro 12.9 and a MacBook Pro through the working day.

Lol it's hilarious, they try so hard to convince themselves.

The problem is exactly this, if Apple wants to sell this tablet and market it as the next gen of smoke dispensers then props to them, but don't gimp the god damn Macs to pretend toys like these replace them.
The Air used to be an amazing machine until Cook era, turned it into a cheap ass entry level device instead of pushing it forward.
 
I'm not so sure its as subjective as you say, iOS apps and iOS itself is more limited. I mean its only now that we got mouse support for iOS, and its multitasking is nowhere as useful or powerful as MacOS. I'd be hard-pressed to find anything that iPad can do, that you cannot do with a laptop and a laptop class operating system - other than maybe take it to Disneyworld and take pictures ;)

Yet on the flip side there are many things you can do on a laptop that you cannot do on an iPad

How do you take the screen off your Mac and use it as a tablet on the couch? The iPad is a 2-in-1 that enables you to fill the void of multiple units so just from that there are a lot of use cases where the laptop is limited for hardware reasons.

I also really think there are a lot of good apps available on iPadOS now that I wish was available on Mac OS. For many things the way you do them are just easier and faster on the iPad. You just need to change the workflow for a lot of things to make it feel better.

Sure there’s limitations but those are not a problem for everyone, for some people (like me) Mac OS itself has limtations for a lot of things as well so just because it is a laptop doesn’t make it free of limitations.
 
Someone on another thread mentioned that this keyboard is very "un-Apple-like". He's spot on. Who the hell approved this thing? You can't really use it as a case if you plan to use your iPad as a tablet. You would need to remove it, which negates the protection of the case and makes it vulnerable to dropping it. If you have a separate case on your iPad for protection while using it as a tablet, you would need to take it out of the case to mount it on the keyboard. The positioning mechanism only allows for limited view angles. The weight is ridiculous. The USB port is practically worthless. The price is astronomical.

Jobs was all about Form and Function combined. This misses both individually...

...and definitely together.
 
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