Sure, there are many things that the iPad can't do, but I copy and paste from a webpage to Word or Notes app all the time.
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.
Is iPad Pro a Laptop replacement?
- Thread starter AstroDrew
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sure, there are many things that the iPad can't do, but I copy and paste from a webpage to Word or Notes app all the time.
I use iPads for lots of creation as well as consumption and most of the time I use them more than computers. However, there are crucial apps on my computers, such as Scrivener, that don't run on iPads, and there are other obvious tasks that iPads either don't do, or don't do as well.
Another huge consideration for me is, I don't trust cloud storage. I use it, and it is great for working with files between iPads and laptop, but I have time machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups as well as media backups on external drives.
I'm selling my iPad Air, to be replaced by the IPad Pro, which will mostly stay at home, I have an iPad Air2 cellular for on the go, but I won't be selling my MBPr any time soon.
This whole debate is a bit like saying, can a motorbike replace a car. Well, for a person who loves motorbikes and doesn't mind the compromises of that mode of transport, it can be a total replacement.
For me, the laptop and iPads are very different tools with different roles. And the way iPads and IOS are now, I could not be without a computer. but I would not ever want to be without an iPad, or in my case three iPads, that is how much I use them.
Another huge consideration for me is, I don't trust cloud storage. I use it, and it is great for working with files between iPads and laptop, but I have time machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups as well as media backups on external drives.
I'm selling my iPad Air, to be replaced by the IPad Pro, which will mostly stay at home, I have an iPad Air2 cellular for on the go, but I won't be selling my MBPr any time soon.
This whole debate is a bit like saying, can a motorbike replace a car. Well, for a person who loves motorbikes and doesn't mind the compromises of that mode of transport, it can be a total replacement.
For me, the laptop and iPads are very different tools with different roles. And the way iPads and IOS are now, I could not be without a computer. but I would not ever want to be without an iPad, or in my case three iPads, that is how much I use them.
If you use your laptop for Facebook, emails, maybe create a video once in a while and for browsing then it is definitely a laptop replacement. Otherwise nah
It's an easy NO for me and many others. Just one example: If I want an MP3 that is not sold on iTunes or some other iOS proprietary music app...guess what? I have to go download it onto my MacBook and import it into iTunes and then sync it to the iPad. How else are you gonna get your Garth Brooks tracks on your iPad? This simple barrier makes it a joke to say iPad Pro is a replacement.
You can easily shush Tim Cook with that...regarding his statement that iPad Pro will replace notebooks and desktops for many people.
You can easily shush Tim Cook with that...regarding his statement that iPad Pro will replace notebooks and desktops for many people.
This is only true if you insist on using the stock music app to listen to your music. If you are willing to use third party apps, there are plenty of ways to get MP3 or even other audio format files onto your iOS device and listen to them.
Is it the optimal way to manage your music collection? Probably not. But if you only have a modest collection, you can get by.
The IPP can certainly replace the laptop if you are willing to open up and doing thing differently. It will not replace a laptop if you are thinking of doing a task the same way with laptop. It will replace a laptop if wish to do the same task with the way you will need to do as tablet.
The fact that this is even a question that comes up so much shows how myopic and slow to change consumers are. For some people yes and some people no, but this crap idea that a tablet can't be as good as a laptop for normal everyday people needs to just die a horrible death. I hate to generalize here, but "people" are so good at overestimating their own personal needs. I've seen people buy a $2,000 retina MacBook Pro just to use Facebook and write emails while also commenting that tablets can't replace laptops only to see their opinion drastically change later on.
I'm guilty of this too. Had to finally just give in and sell my MacBook Pro because I always used my iPad. I tended to like iOS even more than OS X, as blasphemous as that sounds.
And with tablets only getting more and more powerful with new features added every single year, the gap in functionality for even professionals will start to narrow over time. Will be interesting to see how things are 10 years from now. Especially considering tablets have only been popular now for 5
I'm guilty of this too. Had to finally just give in and sell my MacBook Pro because I always used my iPad. I tended to like iOS even more than OS X, as blasphemous as that sounds.
And with tablets only getting more and more powerful with new features added every single year, the gap in functionality for even professionals will start to narrow over time. Will be interesting to see how things are 10 years from now. Especially considering tablets have only been popular now for 5
The iPad Pro (or any iPad) can replace what many people USE their laptops (or even desktops) for, especially if they prefer a touch-centric OS.
But the iPad Pro (or any iOS device) cannot replace EVERYTHING a laptop or desktop can do.
The iPad Pro adds three features - a faster processor, a larger screen and native support for an optional stylus.
So to answer whether or not the Pro can replace YOUR laptop anymore than any other iPad, ask yourself if any of those three things are what kept you going back to the laptop in the first place.
I'm a math instructor at a community college. Every quarter I create a new directory for each class I'm teaching. Each such directory will contain word documents, Lyx documents (a specialized word processor useful for creating documents with lots of mathematical notation), Filemaker pro files, excel spread sheets, pdf files, and possibly others, everything relevant to that class.
Please correct me I'm wrong, but as far as I know iOS doesn't support this currently. It is application-centric rather than documentic-centric; each application is responsible for arranging the documents it can edit. Ironically, Apple helped to pioneer the document-centric model, where one launched a document by double-clicking on it rather than finding the application that created it and finding it within it. I'm not sure how applications can share files on ios, for example Excel creating a spread sheet that Word uses to do a mail merge (something I use all the time creating exams), or a graphing program editing a pdf that's used by Word or lyx.
On top of that, it seems to me the iPad is lacking software I use on a regular basis, and I don't yet see viable alternatives for them. I don't believe Latex or Lyx has been migrated to the iPad. Filemaker Pro can deliver run time databases to the iPad, but you can't develop them there. You can't use Mathtype to edit mathematical equations in Pages or Word on the iPad (though you can view them there).
So no, the iPad is not a laptop replacement for me, nor does it look likely to be in the near future.
Please correct me I'm wrong, but as far as I know iOS doesn't support this currently. It is application-centric rather than documentic-centric; each application is responsible for arranging the documents it can edit. Ironically, Apple helped to pioneer the document-centric model, where one launched a document by double-clicking on it rather than finding the application that created it and finding it within it. I'm not sure how applications can share files on ios, for example Excel creating a spread sheet that Word uses to do a mail merge (something I use all the time creating exams), or a graphing program editing a pdf that's used by Word or lyx.
On top of that, it seems to me the iPad is lacking software I use on a regular basis, and I don't yet see viable alternatives for them. I don't believe Latex or Lyx has been migrated to the iPad. Filemaker Pro can deliver run time databases to the iPad, but you can't develop them there. You can't use Mathtype to edit mathematical equations in Pages or Word on the iPad (though you can view them there).
So no, the iPad is not a laptop replacement for me, nor does it look likely to be in the near future.
The matter is no different than it was back when people asked the same question about every prior iPad model. For some it can be. For others it cannot. Polling isn't going to provide a meaningful answer -- just popular opinion and popular opinion isn't going to change each person's situation, requirements, etc.
I just googled "latex for iOS," and found some apps that claim to be "latex editors." Not sure if they are adequate for your usage or not.
I use Dropbox to organize related files of different file types and access them from my iPad. When I'm done modifying them, I save them back to Dropbox. I don't need to have different apps editing the same file, however. iOS definitely does come up short for people who need to do that.
Thanks for the reference, but I need more than a latex editor. A latex implementation will have such an editor, together with an engine to compile the files you create and produce pdfs of the material you've written. Googling as you suggested, there seems to be an application called Tex Touch that will allow you to create a latex file on the iPad, and then submit it to your desktop machine via dropbox to actually produce your paper. But as far as I know, it is not currently possible to write papers in Latex from beginning to end using just an iPad.
This isn't to say that an iPad can't be a great portable adjunct to a laptop or desktop computer. I love my iPad mini. But the thread was asking if the iPad is a laptop replacement (to which I mentally added the words "for you" since otherwise the question doesn't make any sense).
Gotcha. It is always interesting to hear other people's use cases and requirements. As I said before, the iPad fulfills my requirements for mobile computing, but there are a few tasks I still need to do on a desktop. So for me, the iPad has replaced my laptop, but not my desktop. Then there are people like my aunt and uncle, who never used their computers for anything other than email and skype with their grandkids. For them, an iPad is more than enough.
I pretty much use my laptop as my desktop. As a teacher, I frequently want to be able to work on things at home, or even on trips. So for me, a laptop replacement would have to be a desktop replacement.
Haha, I like the schizophrenic way you highlighted different parts of my one post and then either agreed or disagreed with me.
My point is that my iPad Pro replaced the need to carry around my laptop for me. I only used my rMBP for basic computing on the road; I'm not a software developer or anything like that, so a "pro" device for me is one that I can do email, deal with office documents, and web browse on comfortably. I used to use a Chromebook the same way.
Nobody, from Tim Cook down to ZombiePete, is pretending that the iPad Pro is a replacement computer for everyone in every situation. It just so happens, and the relative success of Chrome OS demonstrates this, that for many, many people basic computing is all they do and something like an iPad Pro can be the device they do it with.
BTW, the reason I wouldn't "get rid of" of rMBP is because I use it docked now. I love that computer, and for my needs I still like having a full-fledged computer at home to do more advanced things that my iPP can't (e.g. running a Plex server). My iPP has replaced it as my portable computer (i.e. laptop). That's well within the bounds of what I would consider a replacement; my rMBP has been repurposed. Simple as that.
Haha, I like the schizophrenic way you highlighted different parts of my one post and then either agreed or disagreed with me.
My point is that my iPad Pro replaced the need to carry around my laptop for me. I only used my rMBP for basic computing on the road; I'm not a software developer or anything like that, so a "pro" device for me is one that I can do email, deal with office documents, and web browse on comfortably. I used to use a Chromebook the same way.
Nobody, from Tim Cook down to ZombiePete, is pretending that the iPad Pro is a replacement computer for everyone in every situation. It just so happens, and the relative success of Chrome OS demonstrates this, that for many, many people basic computing is all they do and something like an iPad Pro can be the device they do it with.
BTW, the reason I wouldn't "get rid of" of rMBP is because I use it docked now. I love that computer, and for my needs I still like having a full-fledged computer at home to do more advanced things that my iPP can't (e.g. running a Plex server). My iPP has replaced it as my portable computer (i.e. laptop). That's well within the bounds of what I would consider a replacement; my rMBP has been repurposed. Simple as that.
The point is replacement. My iPhone replaces my PC when I am in the bus, thats not the point. When threads of replacement appear, they mean replacement 100%. Otherwise every user uses the iPad or iPhone as a replacement.
TC says why get a PC? That implies, you don't need a PC as the iPad Pro will replace it. Yes, thats rubbish and marketing.
So the context is replace the laptop with an iPad Pro. Its not partially or temporarily as we all do that anyway.
As to your post, I agree
For me it is not a question of what I need to do on the device but the comfort in doing it. My 15in rMBP gets most of my use. It is on my dining room table where I can look out at the park and woods behind my house. I have it wirelessly connected to my Bose radio for sound. I do everything on my keyboard which is fully functional and easy to use.
In the evening I often take my ipad air 2 into the living room to use occasionally while reading or watching TV. It is light and easy to handle and I'm not doing anything that requires a bigger screen. I watch videos on my TV. As much as I like the idea of an iPad Pro I'm afraid it wouldn't replace anything for me.
In the evening I often take my ipad air 2 into the living room to use occasionally while reading or watching TV. It is light and easy to handle and I'm not doing anything that requires a bigger screen. I watch videos on my TV. As much as I like the idea of an iPad Pro I'm afraid it wouldn't replace anything for me.
Haha, I like the schizophrenic way you highlighted different parts of my one post and then either agreed or disagreed with me.
My point is that my iPad Pro replaced the need to carry around my laptop for me. I only used my rMBP for basic computing on the road; I'm not a software developer or anything like that, so a "pro" device for me is one that I can do email, deal with office documents, and web browse on comfortably. I used to use a Chromebook the same way.
Nobody, from Tim Cook down to ZombiePete, is pretending that the iPad Pro is a replacement computer for everyone in every situation. It just so happens, and the relative success of Chrome OS demonstrates this, that for many, many people basic computing is all they do and something like an iPad Pro can be the device they do it with.
BTW, the reason I wouldn't "get rid of" of rMBP is because I use it docked now. I love that computer, and for my needs I still like having a full-fledged computer at home to do more advanced things that my iPP can't (e.g. running a Plex server). My iPP has replaced it as my portable computer (i.e. laptop). That's well within the bounds of what I would consider a replacement; my rMBP has been repurposed. Simple as that.
Ill expand on my post, as I'm not disagreeing with you, nor nitpicking.
To you, and many others it can replace a laptop. But we often or sometimes need a laptop. In the context of threads like this, the threads are a waste of time. Why? If we choose to use the device that is most suitable at any one time, and class that as replacement, then everybody sees the IPP as a replacement, so its a redundant topic. Or, I could just say, yes it is a laptop replacement, mods please close this thread as we all agree
There are some, small number of users that only use an iPad. They just browse, email, FaceTime, etc. These are the only ones that have replaced the laptop
It's funny, one of the most basic things I find important is doing encrypted iTunes backup with my iPhone / iPad. That is one thing you can't do with an iPad and is at it's core one of the most basic things you need with an iOS device.
Sure you can iCloud backup, but if you've ever researched problems that can come up there, well, that's not for me. Between the different iPhones / iPads I've had, rolling back to prior versions when trying out preview builds etc. etc. having the encrypted iTunes backup has been a godsend.
The iPP is a really nice replacement for a lot of things I do on my laptop, and I enjoy using the iPP much more. It doesn't replace my laptop and never could for the apps I need / use, but it sure is nice to be less dependent on it and gain some really great iOS apps in the meantime.
I'm not sure why it has to be one or the other, why can't both exist together??
Sure you can iCloud backup, but if you've ever researched problems that can come up there, well, that's not for me. Between the different iPhones / iPads I've had, rolling back to prior versions when trying out preview builds etc. etc. having the encrypted iTunes backup has been a godsend.
The iPP is a really nice replacement for a lot of things I do on my laptop, and I enjoy using the iPP much more. It doesn't replace my laptop and never could for the apps I need / use, but it sure is nice to be less dependent on it and gain some really great iOS apps in the meantime.
I'm not sure why it has to be one or the other, why can't both exist together??
NO possible way it could replace my computer. It will not do AutoCad, Quickbook Pro, etc.
I love my iPad Pro but it is just a large iPad. Apple could have made it more but look to the Surface Pro 4 if you need a full computer in a tablet.
If we use only one, thats replacing. If it is used together with other devices, thats not replacing. Tim Cook says why buy a PC, so he says that as to replace the PC with an IPP, as you won't have a PC. Thats the topic for this type of thread
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.
To be a laptop replacement, it needs to be able to replace the laptop. Yeah, great phrase I know! What I mean is, it needs to be able to do everything a laptop can do. Not the exact same process or workflow, but also not after clunky workarounds, jailbreak, etc. Some tasks will be easier or more convenient, but its all about capability.
Then we have a laptop replacement, and based on use case, many could just use the iPad, or they would also use a laptop, but even then, the iPad is a laptop replacement, as it can.
Of course. For some people it can. For some people it can't. We don't need to ramble off all of the different use cases where there is no similar specific software for the iPad. We get it.