Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Pro Review Roundup: Powerful Creative Canvas, but Not Quite a PC Replacement
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
What I found to be really stupid is the claims from the CNET guy. The way he talks he wants Mac OS on the device but is confused by the idea that it will replace Mac OS. You can't have it both ways. As for iOS, I've always hated file handling and iCloud on iOS, they still don't have a clue as to how to do this right. This issue with Apple is what keeps the product out of the hands of many document producers.
1.For large complex projects you should use your desktops with appropriate software.
2. iPad is not suitable for large video file editing (might be OK for smaller iMovie type editing).
Similarly, you can't draw on your Retina iMacs.
Different devices for different work and different OSes.
it's cheaper to buy a regular iPad and simply purchase prescription glasses... and probably safer too since if you have difficulty with a regular iPad, you'll probably have difficulty with things like... driving. :0
and that just brings us to the fundamental question.
To Converge or not to converge.
I don't think it a binary zero sum solution. There are some people where convergence will work amazingly. Some that it'll faily epicly. YOu have to know your own needs and requirements. Marketing lingo alone should not dictate to anyone what can or cannot be the solution, but actually trying out and figuring out the workflow that works best for you.
For example: I like taking my DSLR, plugging it directly into my Surface Pro, copying the RAW images directly off it, importing them into lightroom and editing raw directly, then when i'm done, saving that to Memorycard/USB drive for long term storage.
To do similar with an iPad. I would still need a computer. I would need to transfer those multi-gb worth of photos from my computer to the cloud. Then download them on my ipad, then i could work. Then I would have to reverse the process again, jsut to put them on USB.
and thats IF i had a decent application that could replicate the power of Lightroom being able to edit RAW images. If I don't, id hvae to convert to jpeg (urggg nasty).
However, This is me. YMMV
But the cloud solution is NOT an ideal solution for a very large majority of people. Especially in Canuckistan where the internet providers have serious datacaps on most people.
Purchased. Also went with the Logitech backlit keyboard over the Apple version. I'll be the tester for our office staff, really hoping Microsoft tweaks Office to work with additional features on this device. We have the new Apple TV in the conference room so Excel reports and Powerpoint should be pretty good.
Keyboards sucked on the Air. They felt cramped. I'm hoping I can finally have a full size with this one and feel like I've got a full laptop when doing presentations.
Looking forward to the future. Much like the Apple TV, I feel this is a hardware push first. Three, six and twelve months in this thing, I feel like there will be some killer apps that make items like the Pro/AppleTV. I don't mind being in on the hardware real early on. Looking back to entering Apple's world the day the iPhone 4 was released, I remember a few games being it beyond fart apps. (Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, and junk.) On the business side, there may have been FedEx and UPS, but that was it. Years later, the list is unlimited in quality. So we've all been early testers at some point if we were with Apple products back 4-5 years ago.
Keyboards sucked on the Air. They felt cramped. I'm hoping I can finally have a full size with this one and feel like I've got a full laptop when doing presentations.
Looking forward to the future. Much like the Apple TV, I feel this is a hardware push first. Three, six and twelve months in this thing, I feel like there will be some killer apps that make items like the Pro/AppleTV. I don't mind being in on the hardware real early on. Looking back to entering Apple's world the day the iPhone 4 was released, I remember a few games being it beyond fart apps. (Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, and junk.) On the business side, there may have been FedEx and UPS, but that was it. Years later, the list is unlimited in quality. So we've all been early testers at some point if we were with Apple products back 4-5 years ago.
I have a math degree. A computer was essential for things like Matlab, Maple, and specialized course software. Having all that software in front of me in the lecture hall was fantastic.
For lecture notes. Paper and a 4-color pen still beats a tablet in every way.
I don't see how it could be with that still crippled OS. Still hanging out for them to make a touch device with OS X, mainly so there might be something even better than Surface, which unfortunately is a product that is getting worse, with Windows 10 being nowhere near as good as 8, which was possibly the best OS ever, and certainly the best for a touch PC. Then again, both iOS and OS X have been going downhill since their "6" releases, so I don't think anyone has quite got it right now 
. At least on Surface one can downgrade.
But yeah, software and a file system are still the keys, and while this thing will sell just cos Apple, I don't think it was ever intended to replace any PC, and I don't think they have any plan to do so either.
. At least on Surface one can downgrade.But yeah, software and a file system are still the keys, and while this thing will sell just cos Apple, I don't think it was ever intended to replace any PC, and I don't think they have any plan to do so either.
ICloud maybe? You see the problem here is that people here on this forum have a different idea as to what a users is than Apple does. I really doubt that Apple believes this is the tablet to replace the PC for programmers or other power users.
Actually that is a good question, iOS fails in this regard even for a casual user.
Exactly but for the target audience this is a nice machine if a bit over priced.
In the end I really doubt a lot of early adopters will ditch their Macs, Mac Books maybe but if they need a Mac this machine won't do. Instead I see people doing the same thing they do now, that is use the machine as an adjunct to their Mac.
A PC is also not an iPad Pro replacement.
They're just not the same thing, and people who try to make them be one thing are stuck in the past.
But they do compete for the same buyers, and for a significant subset of people, an iPad is ALREADY the better choice vs. a laptop. Less than half of people, by far, but growing. And we techies mired in the past don't see that easily.
(In fact, I'd say the Air 2 is the best for many people--the Pro is a big deluxe model, obviously the right choice for artists, but I think most people will want portability and lower cost, and the Air 2 is pretty darned fast already.)
They're just not the same thing, and people who try to make them be one thing are stuck in the past.
But they do compete for the same buyers, and for a significant subset of people, an iPad is ALREADY the better choice vs. a laptop. Less than half of people, by far, but growing. And we techies mired in the past don't see that easily.
(In fact, I'd say the Air 2 is the best for many people--the Pro is a big deluxe model, obviously the right choice for artists, but I think most people will want portability and lower cost, and the Air 2 is pretty darned fast already.)
me too in the same position, except that I don't have a Surface (for the moment, let's see)
But the large RAW files groups transfer remains
I thought you could do that with Lightroom mobile? You'd import to your desktop PC and then you could edit smart previews on the iPad with changes syncing back to the desktop. I think that would be a decent workflow as even a surface pro won't have the storage to keep your photos on it, so you'd be backing up to Nas/USB drive anyway I think?
At the moment if you remove the pencil from the equation, iPad pro doesn't do anything the air 2 can't. You can use a Bluetooth keyboard and there are many keyboard cases available. You can use side by side mode. The same limitations of the iPad Air are still present - no mouse support, no drag and drop between side by side apps, keyboard support is limited (see the great daring fireball review for lots of detail there)
If you are an artist then it could be worth the price of admission purely for the pencil. Otherwise I don't think the size makes it massively more productive than an iPad Air 2, it just comes down to a balancing act between portability and screen size
The trouble with that is that might give apple an excuse to not make macs anymore. And that would be a disaster.
So I wouldn't want OSX on an iPad.
well this is a dream come true for me. i'm a wacom tablet user but my next tablet will be this and not another wacom. i've wanted a wacom integrated macbook pro forever and i came close to buying that aftermarket hybrid but without a keyboard os x is too difficult to use.
when the ipad came out i was sorely disappointed at how much drawing on it sucked. then wacom came out with the companions and i got all excited but they are so freaken expensive plus it's made by wacom which i've used for many years so i know not to fully trust. plus it was only windows or android.
so now comes the ipad and it is a way better value than the wacom companion and made by apple so i can be sure it is more reliable than wacom and in 2 years i'll be able to resell it at a high price and upgrade to a new ipad pro.
so for my profession, this is just right.
when the ipad came out i was sorely disappointed at how much drawing on it sucked. then wacom came out with the companions and i got all excited but they are so freaken expensive plus it's made by wacom which i've used for many years so i know not to fully trust. plus it was only windows or android.
so now comes the ipad and it is a way better value than the wacom companion and made by apple so i can be sure it is more reliable than wacom and in 2 years i'll be able to resell it at a high price and upgrade to a new ipad pro.
so for my profession, this is just right.
Requires using cloud based storage and the like from Adobe, Something Im not particularly keen on.
I would never trade in my custom rig that has a overclocked i7 6700k, 16GB of ram, Nvidia 970 gpu and 500GB ssd for a ARM processor with 4GB of ram and limited storage.
Apple Watch is hardly a half baked product. I don't have one because I don't wear watches. You seem to believe that Apple needs to manufacture devices that every single person on the planet wants or needs. This is a mistake, you don't see Ford for example, trying to sell the F150 to every person on the planet, so why should Apple try to sell the Watch to every person on the planet?
In the end if the product isn't for you why would you criticize it? Right now I'm looking for technical write ups on the device, due to my interest in the technology, I really doubt that I will buy the unit though. Why, because it isn't for me and wouldn't fit into my current usage patterns. That could change of course as nothing in this world is static.
There may be a day in the future where an Arm based CPU is just as capable. Today it isn't.
But who knows what next year will bring
I don't know. I've been looking at the Geekbench scores, and it's pretty dangerously close in the Ultrabook space. Yeah, I know, GB skews SHA1 encryption heavily in ARMs favor, but even if you were to take that out, Apple's A9 is nipping right at the heels of the low voltage i5's.
The battery life would have been much better if they didn't pursue performance. For this machine and the likely user base I suspect performance was a primary design point. Put this same processor in an iPad Air running a bit slower and we should have a significant increase in battery life. Beyond that is there really a need for more than 10 hours of run time?
I ask seriously here because recharge is simply a nightly thing.
Apple is clueless here. You look at how many revisions they have gone through with iCloud and you realize they are just throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks.
IPad is a computer, it is just a different type of computer. Sort of like the differences between an Apple 2 and a VIC 20. Many people seem to have this problem of denying that iPad is a computer which is a very Luddite approach to technological advancement. It certainly is a different type of computer than a Mac but then again so is a Cray.
They don't need to go that far but they do need to correct the file system issue which would go a very long ways to making the devices suitable for """pro""" usage.
Obviously there is a vision at Apple that is driving how iPads are presented to the users. Is it sustainable long term? Probably, mostly due to so many users not being "us". That is advanced users of operating systems.