Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Did Apple forget it has a 12.9" iPad Pro?

J

Jukens

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 13, 2013
270
227
Not only are their built in apps still not optimized for the screen spaces (empty white sides in messages and mail), their App Store decides to end before the edge of the screen in landscape mode....I mean that's why I got a larger screen to have empty white spaces.
 

Attachments

  • image.png
    image.png
    4.1 MB · Views: 605
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: tonyunreal and cpt2hearts
Jukens said:
I could understand this from an 3rd party app developer but at least the built in apps should be updated by now...
Click to expand...

I am saying, even from Apple's perspective, they aren't going to dedicate a ton of time and resources into optimizing iOS for the larger screen (and even 9.7 in some areas) until iOS 10. I am hoping that the push to 12.9 makes them realize that they need more differentiation in the OS with iPad. We shall see in June, but for now, people with a 12.9 need to deal with the wasted space. This was a huge reason I returned it, no apps, no support, even from developers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3 and baypharm
Jukens said:
I could understand this from an 3rd party app developer but at least the built in apps should be updated by now...
Click to expand...
Why? Assuming the device was designed with iOS 10 in mind, why waste resources on a short stopgap for 9.3?
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3
NT1440 said:
Assuming the device was designed with iOS 10 in mind, why waste resources on a short stopgap for 9.3?
Click to expand...

Where have you read about all this iOS 10 optimization for iPads? Apple have done zilch on the iPad UI since it's inception.
 
They did this exact same thing when they announced the original iPad on iOS 3.2, and then gave a massive tablet-orientated update with iOS 4.

Apple has a trend of releasing products on iOS versions slightly pieced together to support them - enough to get you by, then dedicating the next major update to cast improvements that take full advantage
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3, friedmud and jgelin
RedOrchestra said:
Where have you read about all this iOS 10 optimization for iPads? Apple have done zilch on the iPad UI since it's inception.
Click to expand...

I haven't read anything, but I would think it would have to be assumed at this point. You don't add "Pro" to your iPad line and then leave the OS as is. I don't think Apple is that dumb.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3
Jukens said:
Not only are their built in apps still not optimized for the screen spaces (empty white sides in messages and mail), their App Store decides to end before the edge of the screen in landscape mode....I mean that's why I got a larger screen to have empty white spaces.
Click to expand...

Did you actually tap the "See All" links or scroll down?

It's just the Earth day special that doesn't have enough apps to fill the remaining horizontal space. The rest all use the rest of the space.

image.png


As an analogy, if a news website publishes an article that has only 2-3 short paragraphs, there's going to a lot of whitespace regardless...it's a content issue, not a layout issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arran, friedmud, Night Spring and 4 others
RedOrchestra said:
NOPE ... the iOS is optimized for the iPhone - iPads get what the iPhone gets.

Apple has spent ZERO time on the iPad UI.
Click to expand...
Split screen etc?

I think the white space in the mail app is intentional - others have praised it for its clean and 'airy' feel. A lot of the writing apps on Mac etc mirror it - Ulysses etc - it's quite possibly a design choice.

That said, there's room for significant improvements, and third party developers are not updating for the 13in iPP at the speed I would have hoped - still too many are relying on the upscaling (Facebook, google - looking at you).
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3, dolphin2421 and jgelin
Hmmm... You're right about messages and Mail however. It is very strange that they didn't adapt the layout to fill the whitespace.

My best guess is that it is suboptimal to have content that is allowed to be too "long" - typographically you don't want to have your eyes track a line of text that's too long then have to wrap all around to find the next line - you'll notice sites like Medium have large fonts and limit the number of characters per line. This is probably why you can "zoom in" on content in Mail (although not messages) to fill the whitespace.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arran
The main focus is clearly the 9.7 form factor, but I think Apple will also push for devs to adapt and create apps for the 12.9 form factor as well. It is just a matter of time.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3
I was trying to decide between the 12.9 and 9.7 and LOVED the 12.9. Loved the screen size, the usefulness of split screen, reading textbooks on it for school, and the increased space for note taking. However, there were a couple of very frustrating aspects as well that made me go 9.7.

First, why oh why is there no split keyboard? I use this on the 9.7 to type with the on-screen keyboard. The whole point of it is to be able to still type on the large screen! Then you introduce an almost comically large screen for a tablet, and don't allow split keyboard? But even more confusing is, you CAN split the keyboard but only in zoom view! Huh? I actually don't mind the size of the IPP 12.9 too much, but no split keyboard makes it tough to type when holding the tablet.

Second big one is lack of support for the IPP 12.9 screen resolution and multitasking features even after several months. Gmail was zoomed, Wall St Journal was zoomed, along with several other key apps I use. Kindle app does not yet support split view (along with a number of other apps). Was really looking forward to splitting the screen and taking notes from my digital textbooks. Wish there was a way for Apple to enable split view for all apps without devs needing to implement.

Lastly, and this applies to all iPads, I don't seem to be able to open certain documents linked online through iPad. It always opens them in the browser window. With my laptop, I can open in the browser window or save as a file then open in Office.
 
Last edited:
supervelous said:
First, why oh why is there no split keyboard? I use this on the 9.7 to type with the on-screen keyboard. The whole point of it is to be able to still type on the large screen! Then you introduce an almost comically large screen for a tablet, and don't allow split keyboard? But even more confusing is, you CAN split the keyboard but only in zoom view! Huh? I actually don't mind the size of the IPP 12.9 too much, but no split keyboard makes it tough to type when holding the tablet.
Click to expand...

This is an interesting POV that has been brought up multiple times. I would speculate that Apple decided (as it always does) that at the 12.9" size, you are less likely to type while holding the iPad, and figured you would be more productive in buying their Smart Keyboard and using that instead. I don't really agree (money grab; not that hard to implement?) or disagree (it is hard to hold at that size), but I admit I'm so comfortable with using the ASK that I rarely type using the on-screen keyboard anymore.

Lastly, and this applies to all iPads, I don't seem to be able to open certain documents linked online through iPad. It always opens them in the browser window. With my laptop, I can open in the browser window or save as a file then open in Office.
Click to expand...

What kinds of files are these?
 
masotime said:
This is an interesting POV that has been brought up multiple times. I would speculate that Apple decided (as it always does) that at the 12.9" size, you are less likely to type while holding the iPad, and figured you would be more productive in buying their Smart Keyboard and using that instead. I don't really agree (money grab; not that hard to implement?) or disagree (it is hard to hold at that size), but I admit I'm so comfortable with using the ASK that I rarely type using the on-screen keyboard anymore.



What kinds of files are these?
Click to expand...

Powerpoint, Word, and Excel mostly. My school posts them on their web portal, and when I click on them in Safari it just opens them in the browser. I'd like to open my powerpoints in Powerpoint so I can annotate. In Surface if I click it opens in browser too, but I also have option from there to download then open in Office.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3
supervelous said:
Lastly, and this applies to all iPads, I don't seem to be able to open certain documents linked online through iPad. It always opens them in the browser window.
Click to expand...

When the files open in the browser, you don't get an option to open in other apps? Try tapping near the top center of the document.
 
Jukens said:
Not only are their built in apps still not optimized for the screen spaces (empty white sides in messages and mail), their App Store decides to end before the edge of the screen in landscape mode....I mean that's why I got a larger screen to have empty white spaces.
Click to expand...
This is why I went for a 9.7 iPad Pro everything is optimized for 9.7 inches.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ShaunAFC3
RedOrchestra said:
True, the Split screen was a UI jump for iPad - as for the etc? for me, it's just that ? upscaling doesn't count.
Click to expand...
Well - quite apart from the pencil and the improved on-screen keyboard for the iPad Pros, the notification centre is in two columns; there's slideover, picture-in-picture etc. These aren't big, ever-present optimisations and there's room for more - but iOS9 made working on an iPad a MUCH better experience for a bunch of reasons, and I'm hopeful that this will continue in iOS10.

I think Apple will take the tack that 'we need to make the iPad experience better' rather than 'let's give up on the iPad' - sales are declining and the launch of the iPad Pro models suggests to me that the platform is maturing and will now benefit from the incremental UX polishing that the iPhone has had for the last 3-4 years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: capathy21, ShaunAFC3 and sracer
Yes we need the interface to be less 'chubby' on the iPad Pro XL. But Apple is not the only one to blame. Adobe could give us a very decent version of their apps that closely resemble the desktop versions. Procreate could look less like a children's tool. Pixelmator looks like a joke. We have all these pixels available and the horsepower to back it up but they aren't being used like a pro machine should use them.

What's remarkable is that to make my iPad Pro look like it is for Pros I sometimes use Microsoft RDP to work on my PC workstation. It's crazy good. There isn't a comparable solution for doing the same with my Mac. The solutions that do exist are slow, laggy and have fat compression artefacts if any Windows or images move.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back