'iPad Pro' Said to Feature 12.2-Inch Display, 7-mm Thickness, Stereo Speakers at Top and Bottom

[sracer]

That is a very bad idea. It is very un-Apple like. That is what AppleTV is for. You don't want a touch screen device tied by a wire to a TV.

For those of us who use the iPad as a presentation device, AppleTV support is 99.98% of the time irrelevant.

That's the thing about the Plus/Pro concept. There are some who need functionality that the majority don't.

The thing that continues to puzzle me is why additional features/functionality is considered a bad thing. It's not like the inclusion of HDMI suddenly renders AppleTV AirPlay inoperable.

 

[mozumder]

Onboard pen. Apple won't touch it, despite a lot of people wanting it.

People do want marking implements that are not part of their skeletal structure (fingers and toes). How many people do you see finger painting out there, versus using pens and pencils.

But you're right... styluses are not optimal. I have a NotePro 12.2. I use the onboard pen often, but I have lost the larger pen that I bought with an eraser. It's somewhere around here...

Styluses are absolutely essential for things like Illustrator and Photoshop.

If Apple wants professional apps on the iPad (still not convinced that's what they're going for..), they'll have to have pixel-level positional accuracy. Touch isn't going to cut it.

 

[cocacolakid]

I was able to play around with a friend's Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 tablet, and while I still hate Android, the size of the screen is fantastic. It's not too large but is big enough to do work on it I wouldn't really like to do on a 9.7" screen.

Apple HAS to stop this 16gb nonsense on their entry level iOS devices. They simply cannot offer an iPad Pro with 16gb - especially when there isn't an SD card slot.

I can imagine a 32gb iPad Pro starting at something like $799, which matches the Surface Pro 3, yet the retail price of the Samsung 12.2 is $650 although the street price is $550. I know Apple doesn't try to compete on price with anyone, but being $250 higher than the actual price of the Samsung competitor seems a bit high.

 

[rGiskard]

I bet this will be tied in to the IBM partnership aimed at business. Those new IBM apps will take advantage of the iPad Pro in very cool ways.

Also expect 3X resolution: 2304 x 3072, 314 ppi. If they stick with the current iPad Air resolution of 1536 x 2048 then it would only be 210 ppi, not even "retina". I'd guess the display is the holdup, since such large high density displays have only just started to hit the market.

 

[iPadCary]

... and while I still hate Android ....

Apple HAS to stop this 16gb nonsense on their entry level iOS devices.
They simply cannot offer an iPad Pro with 16gb ....

Right & right.

 

[chleuasme]

Yeah, I agree and I +believe+ it’s the release of this device where we’ll see a notable divergence in the flavors of iOS on tablets (that we’ve already seen start with unique iOS features between the 6 and 6+). Splitscreen/panels/“windows” at the very least.

I also think this will be the @3x Retina device that was suggested by the code in the 8.1 beta. 12.2” @ 3072 x 2304 (which would be ~314PPI).

I think it rather would be a ~12.2" at 2560x1920 screen, so with the same pixel density as retina 9.7" iPads. Apps would have to adapt to the larger screen estate just as they have to do on the iPhone, I can't believe the idea would be to run same apps UIs from the bottom mini to this hypothetical iPad Plus.

The 3072 x 2304 resolution could come from a compatibility/scaled mode with this 3x 1024x768 resolution scaled down on the actual pixel grid of the screen (same as you can run an iPhone 6 as a 5s, or a 6+ as a 6, here you could run it at other iPads' resolution).

 

[hleewell]

With all the bench marks of the A8X coming in close to MBAs and MBPs of a few years ago, I am convinced Apple is working towards building an ARM-based Mac portable.

Will it just be an iPad or will it run OSX and emulate intel processors fast enough to make old Mac software run on it? I know they could do this, but the real what ion is would Apple do this?

Apple has been trying to be free of Intel hegemony for years now.
Is this it?

 

[Menneisyys2]

How high market share has the Panasonic 20" in the worldwide market? 0.01%?
Apple is hardly targeting that kind of market.

It's not being sold THAT much because of the very high price point. For, say, one-third the price, I would also get it - and a lot other people needing a decent tablet.

That is, there's demand, just it's too expensive.

----------

I can imagine a 32gb iPad Pro starting at something like $799, which matches the Surface Pro 3, yet the retail price of the Samsung 12.2 is $650 although the street price is $550. I know Apple doesn't try to compete on price with anyone, but being $250 higher than the actual price of the Samsung competitor seems a bit high.

Particularly the fact that the iPad Pro's main competitor, assuming price parity, will be the Surface Pro 3, not the cheaper and unable-to-run-serious-apps Android tablets.

And it's quite evident Apple need to add a lot of features to make their tablet competitive with the SP3. Which is quite unlikely they'll do. (And even if they do add a decent-res screen, multitasking and pen support, there still won't be decent(!), desktop-level for example Adobe apps for iOS.)

 

[rGiskard]

That is a very bad idea. It is very un-Apple like. That is what AppleTV is for. You don't want a touch screen device tied by a wire to a TV.

What if the TV set isn't connected to an ATV? Do you need to carry around an ATV instead of an HDMI cable?

 

[willcapellaro]

Styluses are absolutely essential for things like Illustrator and Photoshop.

If Apple wants professional apps on the iPad (still not convinced that's what they're going for..), they'll have to have pixel-level positional accuracy. Touch isn't going to cut it.

Not arguing with you. Take it up with Tim and Jony.

Tell them they'd do best to start with enabling magic mouse and trackpad as a trial balloon. It would cost them nothing in terms of new hardware development.

Maybe surface pressure is a sign of things to come.

 

[rGiskard]

I think it rather would be a ~12.2" at 2560x1920 screen, so with the same pixel density as retina 9.7" iPads. Apps would have to adapt to the larger screen estate just as they have to do on the iPhone, I can't believe the idea would be to run same apps UIs from the bottom mini to this hypothetical iPad Plus.

The 3072 x 2304 resolution could come from a compatibility/scaled mode with this 3x 1024x768 resolution scaled down on the actual pixel grid of the screen (same as you can run an iPhone 6 as a 5s, or a 6+ as a 6, here you could run it at other iPads' resolution).

Hard to say if downscaling would work at a lower ppi like 326. At the 6+'s 401 ppi the sharpness hit isn't very noticable, but it would be at 326. Then you have a situation where the iPad Mini has a sharper image that the Pro level maxiPad.

I don't see Apple moving to an HD aspect ratio. The portrait display is just more useful for general use.

 

[iPadCary]

To be free from under the yoke of Intel®'s tyranny, I'd love to see Apple eventually
move to ALL An-based devices and do whatever voodoo that's needs doing
to get iOS/X running on it. That'd be funtastical! ###

 

[commander.data]

The Apple Watch has a pressure sensitive screen. Does anyone know what type of technology is used there? I'm thinking it's might be something similar to the DirectStylus tech nVidia uses in their tablets which allows pressure sensitivity with passive screens and styluses. Reviews seem to indicate it works very well although a good active stylus is still better. It avoids the cost, complexity, and thickness issues that adding a digitizer and active stylus would involve though which may make it compelling for Apple.

EDIT: It seems the Apple Watch's screen may actually not be pressure sensitive since they describe using electrodes around the display to implement Force Touch rather than the display itself. Apple using something similar to nVidia DirectStylus in the iPad Pro would still be an interesting choice though.

 

[Piggie]

Apple HAS to stop this 16gb nonsense on their entry level iOS devices. They simply cannot offer an iPad Pro with 16gb - especially when there isn't an SD card slot.

You do realize exactly why Apple keep the 16GB model don't you?
It's about making more money from people.

It's a marketing trick that's been used for years, in many areas esp the food industry and you much of seen this yourself many times

You, as a maker want the most money from the customer.
You need to work out how you are going to do this.

The key point here, and how it works is that the cost to you of the product is far far less than the price you sell it for.

So, let's say you want 100 dollars from the customer, but you know they don't really want to part with 100 dollars.

What you do is to create a version of your product that is a poorer version and price it at say $80 which is the price you know the customers want to pay.

You then offer a much enhanced version at $100, but the difference to you is minimal.

The customers come to the store thinking yes, $80 is my price point, it's what I wish to pay.

Then they come to the sales stand and see the 2 options.

$80 and $100

They note the $100 is a lot better. They think oh dam, did not really want to pay $100, but I'm here now, and look how much better the $100 is.
I know if I buy the $80 version, it's going to be on my mind now as soon as I get home, I should of just spent that extra $20.
I know I'm going to regret it....

Oh dammit, I better get the $100 version, after all, what's $20.

Win Win for the maker.... They sold you the model they had planned on selling you all the time.

That's why Apple are keeping the 16GB model, THEN offering you a 64GB model for a bit more, as they want more people to pay more to get the better version.

It's all clever and as customers we all do it.

The old buy 2 get one free offers in food shops.
Buy a packet that's got 5x the amount inside for only twice the price.

Humans are generally quite logical things, and will go for the best deal and will think ahead a bit.

They know this and use this to get the most money from us.

As I said, this ONLY works when it costs them a minimal amount for the product.

 

[Renzatic]

Particularly the fact that the iPad Pro's main competitor, assuming price parity, will be the Surface Pro 3...

Not just price parity, but feature parity as well. It can still use iOS, though it'll need better multitasking capabilities, access to more powerful applications, more ram to allow these more powerful applications to do their thing, and it must, IT MUST, have a stylus digitizer.

An iPad Pro that's merely an upscaled version of the Air 2 that has a starting price of $999 won't sell that much. But if it has everything I listed above, it'll find its niche pretty quickly.

 

[FieldingMellish]

What makes this qualify as having the word Pro? Like we can do professional work on it as we can on a Mac laptop? Maybe the better word is iPad Enhanced.

 

[MacLC]

I wonder if when Apple releases the iPad Pro, they’ll rename the Air to the iPad Amateur?

Good humor for Saturday morning.
Actually it brings back good memories of orange and blue clamshells.
Back in the day Steve Jobs made his "quadrant" speech when he said "we have PowerBook and PowerMac and our consumer market with iMac. Let's fill in the fourth product. Introducing iBook." Later of course the PowerMacs were replaced by Mac Pros.

If "i" represents "consumer" and "Pro/Power" then "iPad Pro" seems like an oxymoron.

My thoughts on this are this:
Such a device would either require a reduction in Apple's current pricing or its own pricing of close to $700-800 US which would be putting it right up to the MacBook Air. Perhaps it is more of a hybrid device with a suped-up A8 or Broadwell Core M if it exists at all.

 

[Max(IT)]

It's not being sold THAT much because of the very high price point. For, say, one-third the price, I would also get it - and a lot other people needing a decent tablet.

That is, there's demand, just it's too expensive.

----------

And you did this market analysis based on what? Your need for a larger tablet?

 

[rGiskard]

To be free from under the yoke of Intel®'s tyranny, I'd love to see Apple eventually
move to ALL An-based devices and do whatever voodoo that's needs doing
to get iOS/X running on it. That'd be funtastical! ###

Oh there's definitely a version of OS X running on an A8X in some deep, dark place within Apple HQ. SoC computers are Apple's wet dream: NOTHING upgradable at all, just chuck it in the landfill and buy a new one every two years.

 

[Renzatic]

And you did this market analysis based on what? Your need for a larger tablet?

And what are you basing your opinion on? Your complete dismissal for anything larger than the current Air?

 

[iPadCary]

You do realize exactly why Apple keep the 16GB model don't you?
It's about making more money from people.

It's a marketing trick that's been used for years, in many areas esp the food industry and you much of seen this yourself many times

You, as a maker want the most money from the customer.
You need to work out how you are going to do this.

The key point here, and how it works is that the cost to you of the product is far far less than the price you sell it for.

So, let's say you want 100 dollars from the customer, but you know they don't really want to part with 100 dollars.

What you do is to create a version of your product that is a poorer version and price it at say $80 which is the price you know the customers want to pay.

You then offer a much enhanced version at $100, but the difference to you is minimal.

The customers come to the store thinking yes, $80 is my price point, it's what I wish to pay.

Then they come to the sales stand and see the 2 options.

$80 and $100

They note the $100 is a lot better. They think oh dam, did not really want to pay $100, but I'm here now, and look how much better the $100 is.
I know if I buy the $80 version, it's going to be on my mind now as soon as I get home, I should of just spent that extra $20.
I know I'm going to regret it....

Oh dammit, I better get the $100 version, after all, what's $20.

Win Win for the maker.... They sold you the model they had planned on selling you all the time.

That's why Apple are keeping the 16GB model, THEN offering you a 64GB model for a bit more, as they want more people to pay more to get the better version.

It's all clever and as customers we all do it.

The old buy 2 get one free offers in food shops.
Buy a packet that's got 5x the amount inside for only twice the price.

Humans are generally quite logical things, and will go for the best deal and will think ahead a bit.

They know this and use this to get the most money from us.

As I said, this ONLY works when it costs them a minimal amount for the product.

You have an Amiga 500?

 

[chleuasme]

Hard to say if downscaling would work at a lower ppi like 326. At the 6+'s 401 ppi the sharpness hit isn't very noticable, but it would be at 326. Then you have a situation where the iPad Mini has a sharper image that the Pro level maxiPad.

The iPad mini sharing its resolution with the 9.7" iPad, it already has a higher pixel density.

We'd be here at 264 ppi with both the Air and the "Plus", that's still a higher pixel density than the different retina Mac models, where you also have access to scaled resolutions (but sub-pixel rendering not present on iOS compared to on OS X probably makes a difference).
The point of scaling is only compatibility with software incapable to adapt to the larger resolution (of for accessibility reasons, when the user wants a blown-up interface).

The 2560x1920 larger resolution would be used at 2x and with AutoLayout for the adaptive UI. And this larger resolution could also allow split screens options to display and interact with more than one app at a time, as now the screen is large enough to justify such functionalities.

 

[gnipgnop]

12.9" makes more sense. That's approximately the same diagonal as an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

 

[the8thark]

This must be back in the same development lab of the rumored Apple TV set...

Exactly. People want this so they make up rumours about it. And patent / other concepts are just that. Apple have a ton of patent ideas that never see the retail store shelf.

And Apple is already getting fat on SKUs. We don't need an even larger iPad. It's wrong for so so many reasons.

 

[filmantopia]

Makes perfect sense. If they announce this device with tweaked iOS software and some pro software for photo/audio/video editors, and some ways of interfacing with external storage, they've got a real winner.

This device could be a major turning point for content creators and I'm sure Apple is taking it very seriously.