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Is there any good reason to choose iPad Pro over 12" rMB?

Getting an iPP means that I might still have to bring my MBP to finance classes for those excel works, leaving the iPad behind for entertainment and perhaps other works with drawings (still trying to figure out what). Still a quandary to work out, the rMB is ready but might wanna wait for iPP2 for more satisfactions. Not so easy of a choice (please don't tell me to buy both :p)
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SuperHamster said:
Care to elaborate? Among the things that I can imagine using on a bed, a 15" MacBook comes quite far down the list (even without the obvious jokes...), maybe a bit ahead of a 27" iMac, but not by much.
I have a 15" rMBP myself, and unless you love lugging outsized things around (lots of people seem to do) it's not really an every-day-portable device. At my local university, like 80% of the students use 13" rMBP's, and that's for very good reasons. The 15" and the 13" may look similar sitting next to each other in an Apple Store, but there's some kind of invisible border in size and weight that makes the 13" so much more portable. Unless you're built like a professional wrestled, I'd lose the 15" and get a 13" rMBP instead. Then get an iPad to use on your bed.
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Lol you might not have read carefully or might I have not explained it well? I use my current 15" rMBP on the table for all of my workshops and the one I'm using on the bed is my old 13" MBP, but it's too heavy for me and the fan is noisy whenever I'm running a few apps so I'm thinking to switch to iPP or rMB. I'm sure that they're the right fit for 'on the bed' entertainments, haha.

Spent more than $2500 on my 15" (didn't purchase in the US) so I wouldn't even thought about wasting it like that :p
 
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drewjonn said:
Getting an iPP means that I might still have to bring my MBP to finance classes for those excel works, leaving the iPad behind for entertainment and perhaps other works with drawings (still trying to figure out what). Still a quandary to work out, the rMB is ready but might wanna wait for iPP2 for more satisfactions. Not so easy of a choice (please don't tell me to buy both :p)
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Lol you might not have read carefully or might I have not explained it well? I use my current 15" rMBP on the table for all of my workshops and the one I'm using on the bed is my old 13" MBP, but it's too heavy for me and the fan is noisy whenever I'm running a few apps so I'm thinking to switch to iPP or rMB. I'm sure that they're the right fit for 'on the bed' entertainments, haha.

Spent more than $2500 on my 15" (didn't purchase in the US) so I wouldn't even thought about wasting it like that :p
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I hate to say this, but maybe the Surface or a similar hybrid is the right fit in this situation. You want a portable device to run full Excel, that will also be good for tablet-type uses in bed.
 
Night Spring said:
I hate to say this, but maybe the Surface or a similar hybrid is the right fit in this situation. You want a portable device to run full Excel, that will also be good for tablet-type uses in bed.
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Regardless, I'm willing to sacrifice Excel to avoid any Android tablets. No offense, really. I'm just not a fan at all.
 
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drewjonn said:
Regardless, I'm willing to sacrifice Excel to avoid any Android tablets. No offense, really. I'm just not a fan at all.
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Surface is a Windows device. But if you can do without full Excel, then the iPad is the best device for tablet type uses. And the iPad version of Office is supposed to be very good, just doesn't have ALL the features of the desktop version.
 
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Kiwikat88 said:
This kind of puts the nail in the iPP coffin as far as I'm concerned. The mobile version of Excel is not going to be enough for your studies. In all honesty I'd keep using the 15" mbp for your classes. Excel will like the memory and CPU.

If you want an iPP on the side for media consumption, go for it. It is a ton of fun and a really well put together device.
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I think this is excellent advice. I used the 15" MBP for a long time at work and travelled around half the world with it. For Excel on the go it is awesome.
 
As a secondary device, I'd definitely go with the 9.7 IPP. I had the 12.9 IPP for a few weeks and it works great around the house or desk, but it isn't very portable. I have a rMB and the 12.9 IPP took more room than my laptop in my bag. I like to travel light but also needed a full OS X device for my use cases. The 9.7 IPP does everything I need for a 'mostly' media consumption device. Email, Safari, Netflix, etc work great especially when watching movies with the 4 speaker setup. Also, the screen, in my opinion, is the best on any iPad including the 12.9 IPP. The true-tone and anti-glare makes it a joy to use inside and outside. But its not just for fun. The split screen is extremely functional on the 9.7 IPP. I can have Excel and Word or Outlook running side by side with a video playing as a detached window. Also, from what I understand you can edit 4K video streams using iMovie perfectly fine on the IPP, which is probably better than i can do on my rMB. Sorry for the long diatribe...final answer 9.7 IPP.
 
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drewjonn said:
Alright, to simplify, do you guys find the iPP capable of replacing the rMB as to travel to school and do works just like the notebook, aside having pretty similar portability? I'm a finance student and would need to do a lot of Microsoft Excel works and also occasionally Powerpoint/Word. I'm bothered to travel with the 15" rMBP since it's kinda big and not light enough.
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If you're a finance student and using the mac version of Excel you are going to be left in the dust when you start working by all the other students who use Excel on the OS the business world uses.
 
Since you seem willing to use your mbp for classes, I think the choice is pretty simple. Either of the iPad pros would compliment your laptop perfectly. If it were me, I'd grab the bigger one as it'd be more convenient for taking notes in class with the Pencil. The big screen is awesome for media consumption as well.

Despite owning a whole slew of other more powerful computers, the iPP has truly become my daily driver. The battery life is just phenomenal- I usually get over 11 hours. Between the processor and memory, it is super fast with no UI lag anywhere. The speakers are the best I've ever heard on a mobile device. I really cannot sing the praises of this thing loudly enough. Every time I use it I feel like I'm using some magical device from the future. It might not be their best seller, but I'll be damned if it isn't the best tablet on the market at the moment.
 
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I would go for a rMB only! I sold my iPad Pro 12.9 and got a rMB and I couldn't be happier. It is as comfortable to use on the bed as an iPad and fully functional at work as my main computer without all the iOS limitations.
 
mikecalderone said:
If you buy an iPad Pro (Any model) with data Plan, you can connect to mail and Internet anywhere.
You can't do that with a Laptop.
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If though you should already have an iPhone and a MBP it's super easy to use the phone for personal hotspot. The implementation is really good in my opinion, I use that feature all the time.
 
Badandy said:
If you're a finance student and using the mac version of Excel you are going to be left in the dust when you start working by all the other students who use Excel on the OS the business world uses.
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In my school, many of the students' laptops don't come with Office installed (to keep costs down), and the teachers tend to favour Google Docs for its ease of sharing and superior collaborative features.

How does one start over and break the monopoly Office apparently has? By giving it a fresh start and introduce the newer, younger generation to a wider array of apps and services which can do the job just as well, if not better.
 
I have the new iPP 9.7 as well as a rMBP and MBA. The iPP is very nice for drawing and playing games. That's it. Most of the time I use the rMBP. As far as the rMB goes, even with the recent upgrade, I think it's still under powered and over priced, and the 1 port is a deal breaker for me. Carrying dongles around defeats the entire purpose of making it portable.

If your looking for a great entertainment device, the iPP will get it done. I don't know why Tim ever called this a laptop replacement. iOS cannot replace MacOS.
 
I find as long as I don't need to multitask then the iPad is great (with a keyboard). If I need to do major multitasking (almost always) then the laptop is much snappier and easier to work on. If I'm all I'm doing is emails, typing, or simply browsing, then I don't mind doing it on the iPad.
 
Abazigal said:
In my school, many of the students' laptops don't come with Office installed (to keep costs down), and the teachers tend to favour Google Docs for its ease of sharing and superior collaborative features.

How does one start over and break the monopoly Office apparently has? By giving it a fresh start and introduce the newer, younger generation to a wider array of apps and services which can do the job just as well, if not better.
Click to expand...

Maybe you don't quite get it. Office is standard in finance and accounting and that is not changing. Period. A graduating student without experience or proficiency in Microsoft Office is often completely unemployable in the field.
 
Night Spring said:
For many people with lighter computing needs, iOS is enough.
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Agreed. I don't do any heavy video / photography editing or computer programming so having an iPad can truly fulfill all my computing needs:
  • Web browsing
  • YouTube / Twitch / Netflix
  • Basic Word document creation
  • Texting / FaceTime
  • Light gaming via MFi controller
In addition to being able to handle all my computing needs, the iPad Pro 9.7 has some really nice advantages over a lot of computers out there for me such as:
  1. Fantastic screen
  2. TouchID (no more entering passwords!)
  3. VERY secure OS
  4. Apple store support
  5. Tablet form factor
 
I have the 15" rMBP, 12" rMb, and 9.7" iPad Pro. I'm a software engineering student and taking the 15 inch with me to school every day was a pain in the ass. I bought the 12 inch MacBook for programming assignments, and I use the iPad Pro with the Apple pencil to take notes. It is a perfect combination. I no longer use the 15 inch MacBook Pro anymore. I'm actually going to sell it. The only issue I have with this combination is the 12 inch MacBook will not plug into the 27 inch cinema display. I will have to sell that also and get an HDMI display.
 
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