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Is iPad Pro a Laptop replacement?

Is iPad Pro a Laptop killer?

  • Total voters
    136
I think it needs more iPad/iOS features to call it a laptop killer. In no particular order:

-Support for a trackpad/mouse (could be used as a substitute for 3D touch if there are technical limitations for not including it in the first generation.) They could have a "right click" on an icon make the contextual menu appear that gets shown when you hard press on icons on the iPhone
-Offer 64GB, 128GB and 256GB configs and maybe lower the price, alternatively keep the same pricing but include the pencil for free with it
-Allow the Pencil to be used more like an integral part of the iOS experience by giving it a button that can act as a macro key where the user can map pretty much any function they want to (e.g. a single press may launch an app of your choosing or to activate Siri and long pressing can do something else, double pressing it does something else
-Microsoft jabbed Apple during their Surface event, but they're right, the Apple Pencil is missing a freaking eraser.
-Allow people to change the tip of the Pencil so it has the right level of friction they want.
-Actually optimise the iOS homescreen for the damn size...allow more apps per page.
-Support external hard drives via the Type C port they should add to the Pro instead of Lightning(change all their products to Type C too) I'm sure Apple is smart enough to ensure it won't affect security or people' security
-Let apps "overlay" one another like how PiP does but allow it for any app of your choosing. Again, Apple is smart, they could find a way to make it work elegantly.
-Allow cellular for the base model as well unlike how it is now
-Allow more keyboard shortcuts within iOS and then update their keyboard accordingly. E.g. Volume and brightness controls are the most basic ones I can think of.
-Allow folders in folders for better organisation of apps
-Allow even deeper app linking than what was introduced in iOS 9
-Speed up animations
-Allow app hiding from home screen
-Introduce a completely dark mode like this
-Spruce up their iOS iWork suite with more features (I don't know, maybe more shortcuts?)
-I don't know if opening up APIs allow this, but maybe allow the developer to incorporate their own custom shortcuts for the keyboard.
-To go along with the theme of optimising for the iPad, find more gestures to implement beyond the basic multitasking ones to make it more productive or allow *some* gesture mapping functionality
-Find a way to bring XCode to iOS and allow it to sync to the Mac via iCloud
-Allow the setting of default apps
-Allow a customisable Control Centre with downloadable toggles from the app store maybe(the icons left over by the install won't be a problem if we're allowed to hide icons)
-FIX THE KEYBOARD APIS SO THEY'RE NOT SO BUGGY!!!!
-Other crap I can't think of ;)

This post was way longer than I thought it was gonna be. Lol.
 
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first, it completely depends on what you do with your laptop, and whether it has a 'similar' app on ipad.


sometimes the problem is not that it's not good enough or powerful enough to replace a laptop, it's the 10, sometimes 20 years of computer experience / education that let us to think, something has to be done in some certain ways.


like 20 years ago, without all those moderm communication techonology, who can imagine one could be on a beach, and closing a million dollar deal. it was not because that those old telephone can't handel the job (really, are those phones really that different, in terms of making calls, from iphones?), it's their mind was set in a way that all those deals had to be closed in a conference room, with all your suits and handshakes.


now we *may* have come to a point that, maybe its not that those tablets are not powerful to replace laptops, even desktops for someone, it's simply because our mind is set in this way -- something has to be done on a full-blown x86 computer.
 
The iPP will replace my 2013 MacBook Air. But I own a desktop Mac and a Surface Pro 3. If I didn't have a Surface Pro 3. I would keep my MacBook Air.
 
I don't think the iPad Pro will necessarily kill laptops, I think it will be more like they'll just converge. I mean, when you attach a keyboard cover to the Pro, what you have is basically a laptop.

Looking at things from the laptop side, the MacBook is already almost as small and light as an iPad. It only needs to have a touch screen and be able to flip over or detach the keyboard in order to basically turn into a tablet.

So when Apple finally comes out with a fully converged device, which I think they will somewhere down the line, who'll care if the tablet killed the laptop, or the other way around?
 
When are people going to get it... It depends on the person and their workflow. It doesn't have to be the same for everyone.

Personally I took and iPad Air and MacBook Air to work everyday and I am ditching them both for the iPad Pro. It does 95% of what I need and those occasional times I needed photoshop or indesign (personal use) I will now just use my iMac for it at home.

To me it is about converging the devices together to carry less and using the freaking pencil (someday) to teach math with. That is what I care the most about.
 
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Agree with mkitchen.

Its quite a naive poll. I can't answer any of them.
To be pedantic, as the Pro stands now for the masses, the power is good enough, but the software isnt anywhere near compatible enough to kill the laptop.
Will it be in the future? Maybe, but then it wont be a Pro.

For me, ipad replaced my laptop years ago. Completely. For you or him? Maybe not.
 
For me, it will never be a laptop replacement as long as it runs the same iOS as iPhones and other iPads
 
sjleworthy said:
Agree with mkitchen.

Its quite a naive poll. I can't answer any of them.
To be pedantic, as the Pro stands now for the masses, the power is good enough, but the software isnt anywhere near compatible enough to kill the laptop.
Will it be in the future? Maybe, but then it wont be a Pro.

For me, ipad replaced my laptop years ago. Completely. For you or him? Maybe not.
Click to expand...
It will be a pro that should have been, but isn't currently.

If you listen to all the reviews, they all same the screen is amazing, the sound is amazing, the battery life is amazing, the pen is amazing. However the software isn't.
 
It has replaced my macbook air and am very very happy with it. Fully meets my social and professional needs. If there are any huge gaps will just use parrallels with a home server - for osx and storage. However, that is probably not going to be the case. For business we log into citrix and a remote server. The other applications are all web based. There are some drawbacks (such as batch processing/modifying) for some but these are high end professionals possibly who need better software than that is on offer. I though, have discovered some amazing apps which meet my needs. Am thoroughly satisfied. I hope developers will finally make use of developing theor ios apps. OSx is not touch friendly and would be horrible on a touch device. I do think consumers/business users will need to change their buying habbits/expectations when using ios. At the moment returns on apps are not great and we all are horrified to pay for apps especially if they are over £5/$10. Is it then any wonder OSX and Windows apps get more attention from developers. There is some way to go on this for both app buyers and developers - best example of this is microsoft office and adobe where consumers have to pay a subscription, which causes people to complain.
 
If you are talking about home users, the majority of whom seem to use a computer for the web and email, then yes the iPad is a laptop killer. My father in law (75 years old) was having real trouble with his laptop and was totally paranoid about viruses and the like. We gave him a second hand iPad mini and he has never looked back.

My iPad Air 1 was already my home computing device of choice and I use it for surfing, email, reading PDFs and some gaming. The Pro is better at all these things, especially PDF reading as a lot of them are formatted for A4 / US Legal originally. The only potential downside is portability and I will work out over the next month or so if I still want my Air for very mobile stuff.

I only use my MBP for encoding video, and to act as an offline mail store. I have a Mac Mini which is my iTunes / media server. I could probably do without the MBP and just have the Pro and Mac Mini but I'm lucky in that I don't have to make that trade off for financial reasons. I probably won't upgrade my MBP in the foreseeable future, however.

So I would agree with @fitschaced that if you have a deskto for heavy jobs you probably don't need both a laptop and an iPad Pro.
 
mkitchen said:
When are people going to get it... It depends on the person and their workflow. It doesn't have to be the same for everyone.

Personally I took and iPad Air and MacBook Air to work everyday and I am ditching them both for the iPad Pro. It does 95% of what I need and those occasional times I needed photoshop or indesign (personal use) I will now just use my iMac for it at home.

To me it is about converging the devices together to carry less and using the freaking pencil (someday) to teach math with. That is what I care the most about.
Click to expand...

Well said. The iPad Pro is not meant to replace a laptop, but it can perform most tasks that most people use their laptops for.

I do also plan to teach math with it, when the pencil becomes available AND when Microsoft finally releases their PowerPoint and Word with inking. It don't want other apps, as I prefer a well known file format such that students could open the annotated files in any computers.
 
It needs more power?
No, I don't think that's the issue with it not being a laptop replacement.

Have I started to require a laptop way way less - and has the ipad replaced my use of a laptop? yes!
Is it a replacement for laptops? No, certainly not.

How can I convert a MySQL database from one type to the other and let it run overnight doing a few million post community index update blah blah blah, .. on an ipad or phone, that I could use a laptop for?

There are simply going to be more cases for a laptop to do things that an iPad simply can't do. Just how there are going to be cases for an iPad to do things more conveniently than a laptop can.

They are two different things, but yes, I don't need my laptop anymore. My mobile devices are ipad and iphone and the 6sPlus is almost replacing my iPad (and ipad is becoming more and more a media consumption device and demo-box).

Any time consuming stuff like the database converts and stuff is done on the imac, because it's way better at it.
 
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Robstevo said:
It will be a pro that should have been, but isn't currently.

If you listen to all the reviews, they all same the screen is amazing, the sound is amazing, the battery life is amazing, the pen is amazing. However the software isn't.
Click to expand...

The software isn't amazing... yet. But it will.

App development follows new hardware availability. The more people buying the Pro with pencils, the quicker developers will push out apps for the pencil. Meanwhile, I just enjoy using the Pro for everything I was already using my iPad Air for, only with a more gorgeous screen and a processor on steroid.
 
My wife and I have very different use cases. She has a MBP and an iPad Air. She refuses to undock the MBP and use it in the evenings when relaxing in front of the TV. The iPad Air suits all her needs during that period. She does graphic design, so the MBP is used for all of those tasks.
I'm more of a business user and have a 5K iMac in the home office, a 2015 Macbook which I take to the office and now the MBP, which now having an Apple Pencil, I plan on taking with me to all my meetings.
I don't think of any one of them as a "killer" of another device. That's not how people think or act. It's yet another tool.
I learned a long time ago that popping open a laptop in the middle of a meeting (at least here on the East Coast) is not that usual an occurrence. Most people still carry around paper in one form or another, so taking notes on a laptop is sets one apart from the rest of the participants. When someone first told me this I thought they were dead wrong. Then, with that thought rattling around in my head, I realized I was usually the only one with a laptop open during meetings (unless someone was using one to make a presentation). Hmmmm. So I started asking folks about their opinions of my behavior and was surprised that most considered it "standoffish" and being "aloof". One person even commented that flipping up the screen creates a barrier and folks can't see what you're doing. Of course folks can't see what a person is writing on a pad either, but they don't seem to have that impression like with a laptop.

Fast forward to the IPP. I'm going to see if, with the Apple Pencil, I can use it to take notes during meetings, check emails, look up relevant information (like football stats :)), while remaining under the radar. I suspect that after about a week of "what is that thing?" it will fade into the background and be just an electronic version of everyone's paper notebook.

So in that respect, it is a "killer" for my 2015 Macbook. But I'm not selling that either.
 
judahde said:
I learned a long time ago that popping open a laptop in the middle of a meeting (at least here on the East Coast) is not that usual an occurrence.
Click to expand...

I agree. This is even more so with seminars. It's perfectly fine to scribble on something during a talk, everyone knows you are taking notes. But the minute you start typing (on phones, tablets, laptops), people assume you are working on something else (texting, replying emails). I think the iPP with pencil is the middle ground, although the iPP is still a bit too big and screaming for attention.
 
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silverblack said:
I think the iPP with pencil is the middle ground, although the iPP is still a bit too big and screaming for attention.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree. Eventually the current iPad Air format will have/support the Pencil. That will be a more optimum size for carrying around. I'm 6'3" so the IPP doesn't seem all that big when I'm carrying it. My wife is 5'2", it looks somewhat comical (like Moses with the stone tablets) when she carries it.
 
These black and white polls are useless. I abbé the pro and a Smart Cover and I love it so far. I would love for it to be my only mobile device, and just have my iMac at home.'

The problem is in its current state it just can't do that, but with some small changes to iOS it could.

1. External file system support (For getting data on/off)
2. Improved keyboard support (I should be able to launch an app via spotlight without touching the screen)
3. Trackpad support - it just needs it, having to move your hands off the keyboard and onto the screen is too slow compared to a trackpad located below the keyboard.
4. Multiple windows per app (Side by side word instances.)
5. Mission control (the current app switcher sucks for such a large screen)
 
judahde said:
I don't disagree. Eventually the current iPad Air format will have/support the Pencil. That will be a more optimum size for carrying around. I'm 6'3" so the IPP doesn't seem all that big when I'm carrying it. My wife is 5'2", it looks somewhat comical (like Moses with the stone tablets) when she carries it.
Click to expand...

Regardless of the size of the person carrying it, my concern is the people sitting within 5 rows behind me having a clear view of the content on my iPP. It would be pretty difficult to keep track of the football scores without others noticing.
 
Not a laptop killer, but more than capable of being a laptop replacement for many. It can't replace my laptop, but I like where the iPP is headed, and I think it's going to move the whole product line forward.
 
If it supported a bluetooth mouse then it might because I'd be able to remote to my desktop when needed.

Without a mouse (as it currently is) it won't replace my laptop.
 
I don't think it can replace a laptop. There are too many things I can't do on the IPP including simple copying and pasting from say a webpage to a document. I guess there are work arounds but I'm so much faster on my laptop that I can't justify using the IPP as a replacement vehicle.

Too many apps aren't optimized for the multifunction. Copy and paste is broken much of the time. There are a lack of production apps. I can't type on my lap with getting an additional case. (I tried the Logitech Create keyboard and really disliked it. It was hard to insert my IPP and it added a bunch of weight. Using the IPP with the Create keyboard kind of defeats the purpose of having the touch screen!). No mouse is a real drawback (as compared to the trackpad on the Surface Pro).

I know that Screens/VNC is an option but these programs are, again, workarounds. Yes, better apps could resolve some of my problems but until that time, I'll have to continue to use the Macbook.
 
Absolutely. My friends got rid of their macs and now they are using iPad Pros. For their needs it's more than enough.
 
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