Cons of possible new features in iPad PRO 2018

[hajime]

Based on experience with the iPhone X, what are the pros and cons of having a home button? Also, what are the pros and cons of having slimmer bezels? I am concerned that having slimmer bezels may lead to more accidentally touching the screen while holding the device. Also, won't the fingers block my view of the screen?

I am in the market of buying iPad PRO 12.9" (used Galaxy Note PRO 12.2 before and can't go smaller). In 2015, I made a big mistake of not buying the rMBP 15". I ended up in a bad situation (waiting for Apple to fix the problems of poor butterfly keyboard, need of dongles to connect devices, no Nvidia GPU, no magsafe). I don't know if waiting til June will be nothing but disappointments from Apple again.

Not sure if I should just buy it now and forget about the iPad PRO 2018, buy from Costco and hope that they would refund me in June or wait for June. Just like the MBP, this may be the last time to get a good iPad PRO before Apple making the series backward.

 

[maceric]

As a regular iPad Pro 12.9 niche user, I often press the home button when I'm simply trying to maneuver the device, propping it in bed to watch a movie, or just picking it up to put in bag or next to my iMac. I welcome the death of the Home Button for this device. That being said… There is much need for a thicker bezel on at least one of the 4 sides/edges of this device, for similar reasons mentioned. ALSO - the other CON - Apple's ONLY silicon iPad Pro 12.9 case if for the first-ten and covers up the microphone, making some of it's use more difficult. They have not provided or created a decent case which works with the Smart Keyboard Cover – Another con - 50% of the time, it does not know it's connected and the on-screen keyboard comes on. - Other than these gripes I really enjoy this device as a laptop. It does EVERYTHING a laptop does, except work with Adobe layered files like PSD and AI, etc

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I don't know why anyone would refund you in June if you bought now.

That said, I, too, wouldn't miss the Home button. I've played with (but don't yet own) the iPhone X enough to know that a new gesture won't be difficult to adjust to. Certainly, FaceID will be easier than constantly unlocking with Home button/TouchID.

As to the bezels... I haven't heard too many complaints about the 10.5" iPad Pro's bezels (which are slimmer than they were on the 9.7" iPads), and I'd expect a slimmer 12.9" iPad Pro would have something similar. Bezels of some sort are essential for iPad, and I'm certain Apple understands that.

Actually, though I'm hardly ready to move from my current 12.9" iPad Pro (first gen), I certainly wouldn't mind if it was a bit smaller around the outsides - it's a bit bigger than I'd like. Currently, the left and right-hand bezels (when held in portrait orientation) are 7/16" wide, while the top (front camera) and bottom (Home button) are twice that width. If the bezels were something like 7/16" on all sides, I'm sure folks would survive. I have fairly large hands, and my fingers do not block the screen when holding in portrait orientation.

Overall, despite a change from Home button/TouchID to FaceID, I don't see this as dramatic a change as we saw with the MacBook Pros. There's no reason to expect a change of ports, and the Smart Keyboard mechanism isn't likely to change either. If you'd rather not have a Touch Bar... no problem there, either.

I know, every time Apple changes something, there's a segment of the population that believes Apple is going downhill. Since I've been seeing similar opinions for decades... Decades worth of downhill momentum?? Apple would have fallen so low by now that nothing would work at all.

This is a no-win proposition for Apple. If they change things, some people wish nothing had been changed. If the change is merely a spec bump, loud criticism for not doing more. If Apple changes nothing (iPad Mini, Mac Mini, for example) half the chorus loudly berates Apple for not refreshing the product, the other half prays that this "classic" maintains its current state of perfection. Basically, you can't satisfy all of the people all of the time.

Change happens, especially at Apple, and people who dislike change will always dislike change. While there's legitimate room for disagreement about the nature of changes, people who dislike change in general have a tendency to take all the "good" changes for granted (e.g. improved displays and processors) and obsess over the changes they don't like. Don't miss the forest for the trees. IMHO, iPad has gotten better with every generation (and I started with the original iPad), so why should anyone assume that somehow, Apple is going to muck this one up?

 

[danmart]

There is one limitation of FaceID that would need to be solved- FaceID on th X only works in portrait orientation. You can’t use it when surfing in landscape orientation, for example. Not insurmountable for a phone, but that would be a major annoyance on the iPad.

 

[Mak47]

After using the iPhone X, I welcome Face ID for iPad. I was skeptical at first, and waited to upgrade. After having it for a week, I’m much happier with that than Touch ID. The new swipe up gestures took a day to get acclimated to, but now I find that on all of my home button devices, I’m swiping up before remembering that I have to click a button.

They’ll have to find a way for Face ID to work in both portrait and landscape modes, but I would imagine that’s not an insurmountable task.

 

[kp98077]

Having the iPhone X. I hate not having a home button. The constant flipping up to open and Face ID on a 12.9 seems awful to me. I just bought the 12.9 pro v2 this week no regrets. There will always be something sexier. Good luck...

 

[hajime]

Having the iPhone X. I hate not having a home button. The constant flipping up to open and Face ID on a 12.9 seems awful to me. I just bought the 12.9 pro v2 this week no regrets. There will always be something sexier. Good luck...

The home button is kind of sexy. I can purchase apps by putting my thumb on it.

 

[Ghost31]

Con that always ends up happening: It’ll make my current ipad look old and outdated.

I already look at my iPad Pro 2nd gen’s home button and want to gag every time i use it. After using my iPhone X since launch, it just seems old school to have to put my finger in a certain spot to open up my pad. I remember when i had my air 1 and the air 2 came out and a fingerprint sensor seemed to futuristic. Now its like “well thats what we used to do. Now we’re moving onto facial recognition”. Funny how perspective changes over time.

 

[icymountain]

Cons of small bezels:
You need space to put your fingers when holding the device. This is trivial in some situations (just put it on your laps) but sometimes you have to hold it so that it does not fall off, and small bezels get in the way, as your fingers may activate some functions you do not want.
Like many .pdf readers (including Acrobat) or apps that let your scroll down a list (including Music) and that will interpret a touch on the very top of the screen as "go back to the very beginning". Always handy if you are in the middle of a 500 pages document, or of a list that is 50 screens long. My take is that it would be very easy to solve that setting by letting the user deactivate this behaviour, but Apple and App developers think otherwise apparently.

 

[maflynn]

Odd thread to be sure.

I'm thinking if you're looking at the potential negatives of a new iPad, then maybe the iPad isn't a good fit?

I'll play along though

For me, the idea of reducing or removing the bezels is a mistake and that would be slotted as a con. No amount of palm rejection logic is going to undo the fact that while holding the iPad upright your palm needs space and the loss of a bexal only means that you'll be covering up a portion of the screen with your hand.

For some this doesn't seem like a negative, and that's fine, but for me, its definitely a turn off. I'm really happy with my 10.5 iPad Pro, its not that old, so I have zero desire, or need to upgrade that bad boy for some time, so this potential issue is a non-issue, at least for me.

 

[hajime]

Odd thread to be sure.

I'm thinking if you're looking at the potential negatives of a new iPad, then maybe the iPad isn't a good fit?

I'll play along though

For me, the idea of reducing or removing the bezels is a mistake and that would be slotted as a con. No amount of palm rejection logic is going to undo the fact that while holding the iPad upright your palm needs space and the loss of a bexal only means that you'll be covering up a portion of the screen with your hand.

For some this doesn't seem like a negative, and that's fine, but for me, its definitely a turn off. I'm really happy with my 10.5 iPad Pro, its not that old, so I have zero desire, or need to upgrade that bad boy for some time, so this potential issue is a non-issue, at least for me.

We know that the next iPad PRO will most likely have very thin bezel. I want to know the cons of such thin bezel to determine if it is worth the wait.

 

[Greenmeenie]

I welcome the rumors about bezel-less ipad pros. Bigger screens in the same physical size sounds great. I wouldn’t worry about accidently touching the screen. I am sure Apple has come up with side finger rejection technology much like their already great palm rejection technology. About the no home button? I have been using an ipad mini 2 that has a broken home button, so i had to set up a “virtual”home button. Works okay. Again, if Apple loses the home button, i am sure it will work beautifully. There will just be a slight learning curve like with the iphone x because people are so used to a home button.

But at this point, these are all still rumors. Who knows what Apple plans to do. Guess we’ll find out in a few months at WWDC.

 

[The Game 161]

I’m so used to swiping with my x I couldn’t go to another phone without it now...will enjoy it on new iPad too

 

[hajime]

When purchasing apps or opening a secured passwords management app that stores all the passwords, we just put the finger on the button. How does this work if the home button is replaced by Face ID? Won't the iPad easily make mistakes by supposing "agree" when seeing the user's face?
[doublepost=1521995905][/doublepost]Yes, the case of the iPad dictates the color of the bezel. I don't know why Apple did not make rose gold for the 12.9" version. Hope they will do it this time.