iPad Pro Tidbits: A9X Outperforms MacBook, Apple Pencil is Weighted, T-Mobile Financing and More

[wizard]

I think it speaks more to the death of the MacBook than it does the surge of the iPad.

The Mac Book has never been impressive. The only positive is that it is fanless.

Also, how is it that a MacBook Air, which from my impressions is intended to be a lighter-use notebook, outperforms the same generation MacBook (not Air)?

Mac Book Airs are very good machines with balanced designs. The Mac Book was designed to be fanless. That pretty much says it aLl.

Next we'll be hearing how a #2 pencil has outperformed the new MacMini.

The long fogotten Mini. The Mini would be a great place to introduce an ARM based Mac.

 

[ctg7w6]

Sounds like you want a laptop, not a tablet.

No, he doesn't want a laptop, he wants a tablet that is more productive and functional. I'm in the same boat... I have a MBA and an iPad Air 2. I really wish I could switch to just having one device. See, I use the iPad mostly for PDFs and my laptop to write long documents with multiple windows open for research. Furthermore, I want to have two or more PDFs open at once. iPad Pro can't do this.

Now, I like it... And I would probably buy one if I had the money just so I can read (one) PDF at a time, but since I can basically do that on my iPad now, there is no reason to do it.

But I would LOVE it if the iPad Pro could become my laptop and my iPad all at once. It would be almost revolutionary to my productivity and efficiency.

Maybe the iPad Pro will be really great for drawing or whatever... But I do office type stuff, I'm not an artist.

I only have a laptop because I need one. I'd love to dispense with it and have an all-in-one. I hate carrying so many devices around.

 

[dannyyankou]

These charts seem more useful:

Also, the Onscreen GFXBench tests also seem more useful than the Offscreen ones shown in the article above. I care more about rendering in it's native resolution than rendering in 1080.

It's always a back and forth game between Apple and the competition. iPad Pro 2 will probably outperform Surface Pro 4, then Surface Pro 5 will probably outperform iPad Pro 2.

 

[min_t]

Fortunately, Apple Store los gatos, ca had them available for pickup today. Ordered at 8 am, picked it up at 10am. First time lucky

 

[ctg7w6]

God, the more Tim Cook speaks, the more stupid he sounds. The Surface Book builds upon the Surface, the very product his company is trying to piggy-back off of with the iPad Pro.

And the Surface is overall a great device; it obviously must be selling well, otherwise I doubt Apple would have tried making in-roads on that turf.

I agree with this... The iPad Pro is basically a less functional Surface Pro. I don't really think the SurfaceBook will be very popular or sell very well... But it is innovative. Microsoft is already moving on from the basic all in one tablet/laptop idea. Apple has not even reached that point yet.

I want OS X, so I will stick to Apple laptops, but if the iPad Pro was the Apple version of the Surface Pro.... I'd be at the Apple store right now (and then promptly back home online selling my iPad Air 2 and MBA!). But I'm not going to pay $800+ for a device that I will basically only read PDFs on, which my Air 2 can do now. There are those that will find the Pro amazingly useful... It just has no place for me as long as I already have a tablet.

 

[ctg7w6]

Fortunately, Apple Store los gatos, ca had them available for pickup today. Ordered at 8 am, picked it up at 10am. First time lucky

To be honest, you're not "lucky"... Everyone basically has them in stock because few will buy them. I am not knocking the iPad Pro, I'm just saying not many will buy it for whatever reason (they already have a regular iPad, the price, etc.).

 

[Moonlight]

My question is why is Adobe not making a REAL photoshop or Premiere for iOS?
Is it a business (financial) decision? Or is it a limitation of the API's of iOS?

 

[Soccertess]

Then you seem to have missed a lot of reviews.

Speak about its good points of course but for Tim to refer to a competitor product like that shows a lack of class.

It's because he is scared and trying to convince shareholders. Just a matter of time till he gets the boot

 

[MacMan988]

It would have been great if it came with OS X instead of iOS!

 

[Reds622]

So I guess Apple is doubling down on continuing to be a tax avoider by growing their presence in Ireland to satisfy EU regulators.

Tim Cook is developing quite a legacy for his tenure. Less powerful products with stronger attempts to avoid having to pay US income tax. All companies do it, mind you, but I always thought Apple would take a different approach. Cook seems to really feel the pinch imposed on him by the Financial Markets and Carl Icahn.. I always liked the Jobs approach of telling them to **** off knowing he would always have the financial backing of his customers.

 

[torana355]

There's no doubt this is the most impressive tablet anyone has ever built. Performance is staggering and all the reviews I've read are hugely positive.

If you want the best possible tablet experience, there is no doubt iPad Pro is the device you quite simply must own.

But it runs IOS which makes all that power, well useless. I do agree that the A9X is an impressive chip though. Apple need to make a hybrid!

 

[DigMe]

Sounds like you want a laptop, not a tablet.

This seems like backwards thinking when you have the capability to do both as MS is currently demonstrating.

 

[Matthew.H]

It would have been great if it came with OS X instead of iOS!

Well it would have made the comparison charts more accurate.

 

[TMRJIJ]

This seems like backwards thinking when you have the capability to do both as MS is currently demonstrating.

It seems not because having used the surface pro, it kinda sucks at doing both.

 

[verpeiler]

It tells me that even the rMBP GPU sucks.

 

[KPOM]

Agreed, that's not something I'd expect a company like Apple to come out and say. That's a low blow.

Tim Cook compared the early Surfaces to toaster fridges.

 

[blackcrayon]

Hey Tim....The Surface Book may be deluded but it runs full desktop OS.

I bet Tim doesn't even realize that. When he does, he'll run through the halls screaming "I thought this thing had a full desktop OS!" I bet he doesn't even realize you don't need a malware scanner running on an iPad Pro!

 

[k1121j]

That's just sad the MBP is so far behind and costs so much mote

 

[TMRJIJ]

Agreed, that's not something I'd expect a company like Apple to come out and say. That's a low blow.

Forgotten about the Mac vs PC ads. . . . Or everything that came out of Steve Jobs's mouth about other products.

 

[TheLondonFella]

That's great, but how does it compare to my 2015 15" MacBook Pro with AMD R9 M370X??? It's funny they left that off the charts.

Oranges & apples ...

 

[FrozenDarkness]

i'll give it a generation or two before apple starts copying the surface's keyboard dock. this cloth keyboard is truly just a joke.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Unbelievable that the ATV4 didn't got the A9X

They would have had to have gone 4K for certain with those specs, then and iTunes is not ready to stream/sell 4K movies yet. Apple wants to be in a position to sell all the 4K content before enabling Apple users to use 4K. I think they have slit their own throats with that position on the new Apple TV, but that's just me. I'd rather be told 4K is coming NEXT YEAR or something than have to replace the AppleTV a year or so later and have largely wasted my money in the mean time when I could have had a superior device right NOW.

Here, I think Tim's comments are kind of absurd too since perhaps the Microsoft Surface Book "attempts too much" but at least it's capable of doing so in terms of hardware. Here, the hardware isn't the biggest limitation. It's the software that's the problem. iOS simply isn't up to the task in its current state to make the iPad Pro what it SHOULD be. They should have at the very least beefed up its version of iOS to handle simple file tasks, connect to USB 3.x devices, etc. It's far too limited for the power it has under the hood and it didn't have to be that way, IMO.

 

[DUCKofD3ATH]

The way that Pencil stops rolling on "Pencil" really shows Apples attention to detail

But why reinvent the cylinder? They should have used a hexagonal cross-section, then the Pencil wouldn't roll at all.

 

[NikeSG]

So much power, and yet no USB ports to allow users to take advantage of what the iPad Pro COULD have to offer. I can think of countless apps that would be incredible for this device had this "Pro" device not skimped standard inputs/outputs.

This is a conceptual device, a science experiment, and is so close to actually being great. But it's not.

 

[blackcrayon]

The reason the iPad is fairing better than Macbook's is because there is less power required to run iOS than there is to run OSX. So you get a faster experience, but you sacrifice the amount you can do on the device, as editing videos, and Adobe programs are a lot more advanced on Mac's/PC's. There are many reasons why Desktops & Notebooks still exist.

"Fairing better" how? We're just looking at benchmarks- but it's still clear the iPad Pro is simply more powerful than some recent computers that run Mac OS X or Windows. We know there's a difference in what the OS does. But that doesn't mean Garageband on iOS couldn't handle the same amount of real time processing that Garageband on Mac OS X does. This means that Adobe could port some of those more advanced programs and they would run at the same speed (RAM is still going to be a limiting factor, though!).

It's always a back and forth game between Apple and the competition. iPad Pro 2 will probably outperform Surface Pro 4, then Surface Pro 5 will probably outperform iPad Pro 2.

This would be the first time Apple has a chip that's realistically in the same class as an intel chip for a similarly sized/powered computer, that's big news - forget the Surface itself. I don't think they're in the exact same device class anyway.