iPad PRO - Is it time ?

[dmaul1114]

Why? What's wrong with the laptop? What does making it a tablet get you?

Laptops are bulky and heavy to get one with enough power and storage space to also use as a main computer for working at home given the large datasets I work on etc.. And I don't travel enough to have a separate laptop for traveling that I'd never use at home, so I have no interest in owning two laptops.

It's much smaller and lighter to have a tablet and a keyboard case like the Zagg one, and a tablet is something I'll actually use at home when not traveling as I use my iPad a ton around the house. Unlike a Macbook air or netbook that I'd never touch at home since I'd use my more powerful and larger (thus more comfortable to type on etc) laptop at home like I do now.

So a Tablet with a more full OS would get me:

1 )A more portable device than my current laptop that I could still do most of my work on when on business trips, so I can leave the laptop at home.

2) A device I'd actually use at home like I do my iPad currently, rather than something like a netbook that would gather dust when not traveling as I'd never use a small laptop over my big desktop replacement one at home.

So that's were my interest in something more like a tablet PC comes from. A laptop is more like a desktop to me. I'd rather leave it at home as my work station, and have the tablet form factor for my mobile commuting on the road.

If there isn't something like that within a couple years then I'll probably just write a laptop purchase into one of my research grants and get a lighter laptop so I don't have to lug my heavy ass Thinkpad around.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

An iPad "Pro" would need to run OS X, not iOS. As long as Apple keeps iOS cutesy and simplistic for the masses, no iOS product can ever be considered "pro". I don't think simply adding a retina display and some memory would be enough. You would have to improve the feature list and give users far more control in a "pro" platform.

At least in my opinion.

 

[Cutwolf]

An iPad "Pro" would need to run OS X, not iOS. As long as Apple keeps iOS cutesy and simplistic for the masses, no iOS product can ever be considered "pro". I don't think simply adding a retina display and some memory would be enough. You would have to improve the feature list and give users far more control in a "pro" platform.

At least in my opinion.

I'm telling you, the best way to go about it is iPad meets Atrix.

iPad Pro - comes with both OSX and iOS. When connected to the laptop dock (think a macbook air but the screen is detachable), you have the option to seamlessly switch over to OSX.

When you disconnect it from the dock, it automatically switches from OSX to iOS.

128 GB storage
Retina display
2 GB ram
Wifi + 3g/4g

Price the iPad Pro at $1099 and the dock at $199.

It has already been hinted at. "What if the iPad and MBA had a baby?" "Post-pc." The slow blending of OSX and iOS features.

I'd be surprised if Apple didn't do something like this in the next 3 years. It'd be a true post-PC device.

 

[Piggie]

I'm telling you, the best way to go about it is iPad meets Atrix.

iPad Pro - comes with both OSX and iOS. When connected to the laptop dock (think a macbook air but the screen is detachable), you have the option to seamlessly switch over to OSX.

When you disconnect it from the dock, it automatically switches from OSX to iOS.

128 GB storage
Retina display
2 GB ram
Wifi + 3g/4g

Price the iPad Pro at $1099 and the dock at $199.

It has already been hinted at. "What if the iPad and MBA had a baby?" "Post-pc." The slow blending of OSX and iOS features.

I'd be surprised if Apple didn't do something like this in the next 3 years. It'd be a true post-PC device.

Fully agree with you.

It's such a "No Brainer" of a device.

When docked it runs of the batteries in the base, and the CPU or the base, If the base if connected to the mains it can charge the base and the iPad screen both up together, and it runs full OS X

When you have done your serious work you pull the screen away, leaving you just carrying the recharged tablet which then switches over to it's own CPU to run iOS

I'm sure Apple must be considering this, as it's such an obvious answer to many people's needs.

 

[dmaul1114]

I love that docking idea!

only caveat is that the doc be small--basically a keyboard dock so it's like a laptop when paired together.

That way an iPad plus doc is a true laptop replacement and the combined cost is less than having both a decant laptop and an iPad or other tablet. And hopefully the combined size and weight is around the same or less as say a 15" laptop.

Best of bother worlds. Pair it up to do real work we do on our laptops now. Take the iPad off the dock to do the things we all use our iPads for now.

 

[Piggie]

I love that docking idea!

only caveat is that the doc be small--basically a keyboard dock so it's like a laptop when paired together.

That way an iPad plus doc is a true laptop replacement and the combined cost is less than having both a decant laptop and an iPad or other tablet. And hopefully the combined size and weight is around the same or less as say a 15" laptop.

Best of bother worlds. Pair it up to do real work we do on our laptops now. Take the iPad off the dock to do the things we all use our iPads for now.

I've no doubt we may see such devices on the android side of things, or even in the future something from msoft like this, a windows 8 laptop which turns into some tablet when the screen is pulled off.

Asus already have an android one nearly out I believe, but I think it's only a battery for double life and extra connectors in the base part, no extra power.

If apple does not do this, I'm sure others will

It's so obvious not to do really.

Perhaps the year after next for apple?

 

[Carouser]

[snip]

I get that you have a laptop at home powerful enough to handle large data sets etc. but this is too big to haul around, and that you have an iPad around the house for leisure. You need something to split the difference, but don't want a third device (i.e. an MBA).

However, what I really meant by my question was what are the tasks/outcomes you need to achieve on the road that a laptop will do but the iPad currently won't? Nobody is paying you to @#$% around with a filesystem (unless they are idiots or your job is 'filesystem interface evaluator').

 

[blackNBUK]

I'm telling you, the best way to go about it is iPad meets Atrix.

iPad Pro - comes with both OSX and iOS. When connected to the laptop dock (think a macbook air but the screen is detachable), you have the option to seamlessly switch over to OSX.

When you disconnect it from the dock, it automatically switches from OSX to iOS.

128 GB storage
Retina display
2 GB ram
Wifi + 3g/4g

Price the iPad Pro at $1099 and the dock at $199.

It has already been hinted at. "What if the iPad and MBA had a baby?" "Post-pc." The slow blending of OSX and iOS features.

I'd be surprised if Apple didn't do something like this in the next 3 years. It'd be a true post-PC device.

One major problem with this is that OSX and iOS run on different CPU architectures and to make the idea workable you would have to pick one. If you pick ARM then the hardware would stay much the same with the same lightweight and good battery life but you would have to convince a lot of big companies (Adobe, MS etc.) to port their software to ARM. Once you'd done that you would still be left with a substandard OSX experience because even the latest ARM processors are much slower than the Intel processors than Apple use. If you pick Intel then the inverse is the case, OSX compatiblity would work fine and I think that iOS Apps would port to Intel more easily but the tablet you end up with would be some combination of too heavy, too noisy and too short battery life.

There is also the problem of how you would integrate the two OSs. If I'm reading a document in Pages in tablet mode then when I plug my iPad into it's base I would expect to be able to edit it straight away with the keyboard. For the base to be really useful I think that this would have to be as transparent as possible. To achieve this you would be looking at some pretty involved changes to a lot of Mac software.

Finally as has been mentioned before the end result of all this effort would be a product that is substantially cheaper then the iPad and laptop that Apple would otherwise sell. Personally I think that it would be much easier for Apple to gradually add capability to the iPad and fix the document workflow problems that people have.

Edit: As far as I can tell the Asus Transformer is just a more refined version of the Keyboard Dock that Apple launched with the first iPad. It's a neat enough design but you'd still be using the same software in pretty much the same way whether it is docked or undocked.

 

[Cutwolf]

One major problem with this is that OSX and iOS run on different CPU architectures and to make the idea workable you would have to pick one. If you pick ARM then the hardware would stay much the same with the same lightweight and good battery life but you would have to convince a lot of big companies (Adobe, MS etc.) to port their software to ARM. Once you'd done that you would still be left with a substandard OSX experience because even the latest ARM processors are much slower than the Intel processors than Apple use. If you pick Intel then the inverse is the case, OSX compatiblity would work fine and I think that iOS Apps would port to Intel more easily but the tablet you end up with would be some combination of too heavy, too noisy and too short battery life.

I'm sure Apple could rewrite the binaries or whatever would need to be done, or hell, rewrite the whole OSX, to run on the ARM architecture. It doesn't seem like that big of a hurdle. I'm no techie, so I don't know if that's all there is to it.

There is also the problem of how you would integrate the two OSs. If I'm reading a document in Pages in tablet mode then when I plug my iPad into it's base I would expect to be able to edit it straight away with the keyboard. For the base to be really useful I think that this would have to be as transparent as possible. To achieve this you would be looking at some pretty involved changes to a lot of Mac software.

Would it? Again, I'm no techie, but if you allow both operating systems to read and write to the same file system, all you'd need to do is save the pages file, plug it into your doc, and reopen it. It's not as seamless as plugging it in and having the screen instantly flash to OSX, but it's definitely workable.

I might be making stuff up. My background in Psychology and Law. Just speculating.

An alternative would be to simply make a macbook air with a detachable screen that turns into an iPad. So all necessary OSX hardware is in the bottom part, but the screen detaches and turns into an iOS tablet when detached.

Could probably make that happen for about the same cost as the current air lineup.

 

[dmaul1114]

However, what I really meant by my question was what are the tasks/outcomes you need to achieve on the road that a laptop will do but the iPad currently won't?

The two big things that keep me from being able to do my most common work on my iPad on the road are:

1. I need MS office. Not the crappy iWorks or Docs-to-go apps that screw up formatting in complex documents and presentations (lots of tables, figures, equations, different fonts etc.) when going back and forth between the iPad app and the Office programs on the PC.

2. A way to get my files--say my Powerpoint slides--off the iPad and onto a thumb drive to plug into the PC in the conference room. There's not time in a multi presenter panel to be unhooking the pc hooked up to the computer to plug in my iPad via the vga adapter etc. I HAVE to get my slides on to a jump drive.

I can do that with my laptop after finishing the slides in the hotel room or on the flight out etc. I can't do that with my iPad current.

I don't need a file system for that. Just the ability to hook up a flash drive to the iPad and have the software give an import/export file from/to drive option built into the apps like Dropbox is currently. So that's just a software update to expand the use of an accessory like the camera kit basically.

A third, but slightly less common usage, is needing access to my statistical analysis programs if I'm traveling to meet colleagues and work on a research paper together etc.

 

[Cutwolf]

Alternatively, if Apple wants to keep the iPad a separate and complementary device (rather than the all in one device), perhaps it could create a much smoother and user friendly remote access program than what's currently out there.

 

[dmaul1114]

Alternatively, if Apple wants to keep the iPad a separate and complementary device (rather than the all in one device), perhaps it could create a much smoother and user friendly remote access program than what's currently out there.

Less than ideal, but I could live with that.

As long as they also add in some way I can use a flash drive to get stuff on and off the iPad for the reason noted above.

The main problem is requiring internet access (I don't always want to pay for it in the conference hotel and don't always have money in my travel budget for it) and it's always going to be a bit clunky due to the lack of a mouse since the computer your accessing is still mouse driven.

 

[Carouser]

The two big things that keep me from being able to do my most common work on my iPad on the road are:

1. I need MS office. Not the crappy iWorks or Docs-to-go apps that screw up formatting in complex documents and presentations (lots of tables, figures, equations, different fonts etc.) when going back and forth between the iPad app and the Office programs on the PC.

2. A way to get my files--say my Powerpoint slides--off the iPad and onto a thumb drive to plug into the PC in the conference room. There's not time in a multi presenter panel to be unhooking the pc hooked up to the computer to plug in my iPad via the vga adapter etc. I HAVE to get my slides on to a jump drive.

I can do that with my laptop after finishing the slides in the hotel room or on the flight out etc. I can't do that with my iPad current.

Okay, I gotcha - I think you will be able to do these things sooner rather than later on an iPad, and I don't think shoehorning a desktop OS onto a tablet is the solution - which isn't what you were proposing, but it seems to be the only thing other people can come up with.

EDIT: And the idea excites them, for some reason.

 

[reputationZed]

One major problem with this is that OSX and iOS run on different CPU architectures and to make the idea workable you would have to pick one. If you pick ARM then the hardware would stay much the same with the same lightweight and good battery life but you would have to convince a lot of big companies (Adobe, MS etc.) to port their software to ARM. Once you'd done that you would still be left with a substandard OSX experience because even the latest ARM processors are much slower than the Intel processors than Apple use. If you pick Intel then the inverse is the case, OSX compatiblity would work fine and I think that iOS Apps would port to Intel more easily but the tablet you end up with would be some combination of too heavy, too noisy and too short battery life.

Just to add a bit to your post, one of the architectural differences between the two OS's is that ARM processors are RISC based while X86 processors are CISC based. While this could present some technical chalenges they are not insurmountable. Remember the PowerPC was RISC based so OSX can run on the RISC architecture ( this doesn't necessarily mean that it would run on ARM processsors without quite a bit of work). Mister Softy has already anounced that some form of Win8 will run on ARM, but they havent given us any details on how the ARM version might differ from the X86 version. We still do not know if Win8 for ARM will be a PC level OS comperable to Win8 X86 and OSX or if it will be pared down to be a mobile varient much as iOS is based on OSX.

I agree with you that the real challenge may not be getting both OS's to run on one platform, but in integrating the OS's to create a seemless experience. This could be the hurdle that puts the kind of system we have been discussing 5 or 6 years out. For this type of platform to be successful the transition between OS's will need to be more or less invisible to the end user. I just do not see Apple implementing a Bootcamp type system where the user would need to boot out of one OS and into the other.

Another possibility would be to have the system run OSX all the time and then run iOS in a virtualized environment. While this approach may prove to be easier to implement optimizing it to get 10 hrs or so on batteries would be a challenge.

 

[dmaul1114]

I agree with you that the real challenge may not be getting both OS's to run on one platform, but in integrating the OS's to create a seemless experience.

I'm not even sure that needs to happen.

Using the docking idea above couldn't it would along the lines of the doc basically being a laptop bottom and that has the hard drives, motherboard etc. just like a laptop and runs the full version of OSX (or windows if we're talking PC platform).

The iPad is the same as currently, but when hooked to the dock simply turns into a screen.

All that's need (at least for me) is a way to get files between the two, and I could easily put the files on my iPad in Dropbox or some other cloud service, then hook the iPad to the dock to be it's screen and then download the files into the dock HD by accessing the cloud server and then work on them in the full OSX/Windows software programs etc.

Or you could even more simply just have the iPad's file system show up as an external drive accessible by the dock when connected and you could just drag and drop the files just like you'd hooked up a thumb drive or external HDD.

The only compatibility issue I still see is making sure the iPad apps are fully compatible with their OSX/Windows counter parts so you don't have formatting problems etc. when going back and forth.

But doing it that way you get around the OS's needing be be compatible and work together etc.

 

[iPadPublisher]

Any market for a iPad PRO model ?

Say it adds:
+ Retina Display
+ 128/256 GB Storage options
+ 2 GB Ram
+ Faster WAN and wireless speeds

Given the demand and inflated prices people
are willing to pay for a standard model
could a $1200 Pro model succeed ?

I'd actually thought about starting a similar thread and didn't so great minds think alike?

Seriously though, a limited run beefed-up iPad at a higher price point would interest some people. I don't know if it would sell like hot cakes or not, but I know there is some that would want it. I don't know about a better display, though. Just beefed-up specs like larger storage, more RAM, and perhaps a slightly faster CPU for the bazillion apps that would be open might be nice.

 

[Blacklabel34]

Honestly, I can see an iPad 2 Retina this year. $1000-$1200 for identical iPad 2 features, BUT with a Retina Display.

^ I would stand in line for that

 

[Piggie]

There are however two fundamental flaws/problem with the iPad for "Pro" use.

1: The screen is too small, even if it had a higher res.
2: There is no keyboard/mouse.

Without those two it's always going to have problems becoming more than what it currently is.

 

[dmaul1114]

Well, the docking ideas discussed above would take care of #2.

Screen size is another matter, but I'd be fine with the 9.7" screen paired with the dock to basically make it a netbook as I'd just use it here and there for doing some work on the road if the dock provided a full OS experience as suggested above.