Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I'm late to this thread...

I bought the iPad Air ($559 on Amazon) recently and wondering now if it's worth me spending the $200 (using Education program) to buy the new iPad Pro at $749. I am going to use it very lightly, mainly to run the Dreamlab app from Vodafone to find cures for Cancer and Covid. I'm only going to be on wifi.

From what I gather at the Apple website that compares the 2 iPads, the $200 for improvements are:

128GB storage instead of 64GB
better front facing camera (interesting Apple no longer calls it "Facetime" on iPad Pro...any reason why?)
better rear facing camera
possibly better looking display
M1 vs A14 chip (Will the M1 actually have any real improvement for the Dreamlab app? anyone here running Dreamlab on the new iPad Pro?)


I really love my iPad Air but I do have time to swap it out if anyone here thinks the $200 is worth it. I wish there were some iPad benchmarks of the M1 vs. A14 but I haven't seen them on MR.

Major question: Am I forced to use Face ID with the Pro? Can I enable Touch ID or something that does not require facial recognition?

Thanks if you have any input!
Even in your use case, the extra $200 is worth paying for the RAM and display on the Pro vs the Air.

The Pro only has FaceID not TouchID, so if you prefer TouchID still with the Air.
 
but there aren't really any professionals that can actually use it besides maybe illustrators and YouTubers. Anyone else is going to run out of runway real quick with iPadOS as it sits today.
I believe most professionals in professional industries all over the world would be shocked and surprised that they are required to use VM’s for their work. If you’re in audio, you run against the limitations of the current hardware and you don’t have to try too hard to do so. Not even considering Logic Pro, the stuff a professional will be able to set up and use with Cubasis, AUM, Garageband from day 1 will be noticeable.

All without VM’s and VLC and without creating a single webpage. :)
 
I believe most professionals in professional industries all over the world would be shocked and surprised that they are required to use VM’s for their work. If you’re in audio, you run against the limitations of the current hardware and you don’t have to try too hard to do so. Not even considering Logic Pro, the stuff a professional will be able to set up and use with Cubasis, AUM, Garageband from day 1 will be noticeable.

All without VM’s and VLC and without creating a single webpage. :)

Nowhere did I say that the ability to create a VM is required. It's simply an example of something a lot of Pros do that the iPad can't. Perhaps you're not up to date with the current technology field, but containers and VMs are used a lot, not only in development but in many industries.

I appreciate that the Audio industry can use the iPad Pro to its full extent. It may well be the only such industry where that is true. I remain hopeful that Apple unlocks iPadOS further and extends its capabilities. Until then, even though it is an inferior machine - the Microsoft Surface is a better choice for a lot of professionals.
 
this matters to less than 10% of ipad pro users. might matter a few years down the road though...

or the moment apple allows virtualized linux environments for serious work.,,
 
Nowhere did I say that the ability to create a VM is required. It's simply an example of something a lot of Pros do that the iPad can't. Perhaps you're not up to date with the current technology field, but containers and VMs are used a lot, not only in development but in many industries.
I know, but when I think of examples of what a good chunk of Pros do that the iPad can’t, it almost always coalesces around things related to developers. Which, understandably is a BIG industry, but there are more folks outside than inside. And, when you look at who needs LOCAL VM’s, well that gets even smaller. I believe we’re at the point where there’s far more industries that can get their professional work done on the iPad than not. And, just like the systems they’re replacing, most of those professionals’ iPads won’t ever be pushed to their limit.
 
They mean background processes as a very specific type of multitasking (one that likely doesn’t factor into most people’s computer use). Like, if you ask if they need “background processes” in their primary computing device and their eyes gloss over, just give ‘em the iPad!

I think certain background processes would be useful.

For example, I setup to download a season of a TV show on a non-iTunes video app or maybe a bunch of comics from Comixology for upcoming travel. If I switch to another app, say Safari to do some web browsing for a couple hours, when I go back to the video or comics app, most of the stuff haven't finished or even begun downloading because iOS stopped the background apps after like 10 minutes or something.
 
I think certain background processes would be useful.

For example, I setup to download a season of a TV show on a non-iTunes video app or maybe a bunch of comics from Comixology for upcoming travel. If I switch to another app, say Safari to do some web browsing for a couple hours, when I go back to the video or comics app, most of the stuff haven't finished or even begun downloading because iOS stopped the background apps after like 10 minutes or something.
There ARE solutions for downloading in the background, though. It would appear these developers haven’t implemented it? For well behaved apps like HBOMAX, I can set to download an entire season's worth of shows and they’ll download successfully in the background. Maybe Amazon doesn’t want to put the work in? :)

You do have to structure your downloads differently than you would for a foreground app, though, definitely.
 
I'm sort of in the same boat. Those M1 Macs are quite tempting already, but the 16 GiB RAM max feels too limiting at this point.

(For screens, I suppose I could get by with DisplayLink. It's what I've been doing lately, although there are warts to it.)
Yeah I've been using DisplayLink as well - I had four 27"'s working on the MacMini, which I was ok with, until my Magic Mouse wouldn't work anymore and it became the family computer.

So I'm using the MBA in clamshell with 3 27's, but the one doesn't do full res so its pretty bad. Its just clunky and not what I was looking for out of the box.

I'm with you - my MBA is a filler until the new MBP's come out. Hopefully with a dedicated GPU and 32gb ram!
 
It's just a shame that all that power sits around doing nothing on an iPad.
Speak for yourself.
The difference of course is Apple markets the iPad Pro as a Pro device (and charges Pro prices for them), but there aren't really any professionals that can actually use it besides maybe illustrators and YouTubers. Anyone else is going to run out of runway real quick with iPadOS as it sits today.
I’m a pro photographer and I can actually use it. There are many many more professional occupations that can and do make use of an iPad. Just because you don’t know what they are, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
You have made a ridiculous generalisation with this comment.
Fast is good. But with current iPadOS, might not be of much use
I use apps not the OS. As most people do. Can you please tell me why does making it faster become pointless because of the OS?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Unregistered 4U
Speak for yourself.

I’m a pro photographer and I can actually use it. There are many many more professional occupations that can and do make use of an iPad. Just because you don’t know what they are, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
You have made a ridiculous generalisation with this comment.

I use apps not the OS. As most people do. Can you please tell me why does making it faster become pointless because of the OS?

I'm glad you mentioned photography - I am a pro Photographer as well and am interested in moving to an iPad as my main editing machine, at least to take a lot of work off my desktop. The Pencil is intriguing and it is certainly lighter weight and has a better quality display than any laptop I have found. But it seems that pretty much the only DAM that you can use on iPads that is useful for pro work is Lightroom (not that there are many other great choices on macOS or Windows to be fair). Lightroom is fine, but what if you want to open a Lightroom image on your iPad in Photoshop and make further edits, then have that edited image appear back in Lightroom - is that possible as it is on macOS? I also can't find a soft proofing mode to prepare images for print, export with (or without) watermark to a folder or ZIP archive for emailing at reduced JPEG dimensions and quality. Does Lightroom on iPad support tethering like the macOS version does? How do you calibrate the display to ensure accurate color? Granted a lot of these features may exist I just haven't found them in my cursory examination with an older iPad. And perhaps there is a better DAM for iPadOS with these features - please let me know if that is the case?
 
Last edited:
I'm glad you mentioned photography - I am a pro Photographer as well and am interested in moving to an iPad as my main editing machine, at least to take a lot of work off my desktop. The Pencil is intriguing and it is certainly lighter weight and has a better quality display than any laptop I have found. But it seems that pretty much the only DAM that you can use on iPads that is useful for pro work is Lightroom (not that there are many other great choices on macOS or Windows to be fair). Lightroom is fine, but what if you want to open a Lightroom image on your iPad in Photoshop and make further edits, then have that edited image appear back in Lightroom - is that possible as it is on macOS? I also can't find a soft proofing mode to prepare images for print, export with (or without) watermark to a folder or ZIP archive for emailing at reduced JPEG dimensions and quality. Does Lightroom on iPad support tethering like the macOS version does? Granted a lot of these features may exist I just haven't found them in my cursory examination with an older iPad. And perhaps there is a better DAM for iPadOS with these features - please let me know if that is the case?
You can’t proof for print with Lr on the iPad, but then you cant print from an iPad anyway. Anyone serious about printing has serious printers which won’t work on an iPad. That’s certainly a limitation but also fairly niche.

You can round trip between Lr and ps on the iPad.
If you want to work with lightroom classic then it just syncs. If (like me) you don’t want to push all your raws to the cloud and back again, I just use it with sync paused. I then export the edits as dng which includes the xml sidecar. There is a limitation with this though- it’s only readable by Adobe stuff. So Lr, ps etc across mobile and mac/pc. It’s annoying, If you want to use AP or another non Adobe app then you can export it as a tif. This won’t keep the file editable in LR though. That said if your wanting it so you can edit it in AP or something, then that would be the same in lightroom classic. Although classic is way better at handling this creating stacked versions etc.

Adobe is ruining lightroom with this push to the cloud for everything. They should just release a suitable version of classic for the iPad. But they won’t.

There are export options, including water making etc.

Also you can just use your iPad as an editing surface for lightroom classic, which make it infinitely better for editing anyway. It’s what I do some of the time with my desktop.

For calibration I have my benq monitor which is calibrated, I check my work on there if I have been away - I have never needed to re edit. If I’m at home then I mirror as I’m working. Lr mobile allows a full screen proper second display.
Lightroom mobile doesn’t support tethering. It’s a little annoying but then you can use Cascable to tether. It’s more ‘roundabout’ but works well.
 
Last edited:
And perhaps there is a better DAM for iPadOS with these features - please let me know if that is the case?
Man. I wish. Ipados and pro iPads in general are new compared to regular computers, so I suspect it just takes time- but lightroom is the only DAM available that I have found that’s professional quality. There are others but they lean on photos iCloud photo stream. Which is no good at all as it’s full of phone pics and all sorts. Not for pro use unless they somehow created the ability to have a second version to use only for certain sets.

there’s been talk for years that Affinity will create one. Considering how awesome the rest of their iPad stuff is it would be great. But I don’t hold any hopes for this long-standing rumour.
 
You can’t proof for print with Lr on the iPad, but then you cant print from an iPad anyway. Anyone serious about printing has serious printers which won’t work on an iPad. That’s certainly a limitation but also fairly niche.

You can round trip between Lr and ps on the iPad.
If you want to work with lightroom classic then it just syncs. If (like me) you don’t want to push all your raws to the cloud and back again, I just use it with sync paused. I then export the edits as dng which includes the xml sidecar. There is a limitation with this though- it’s only readable by Adobe stuff. So Lr, ps etc across mobile and mac/pc. It’s annoying, If you want to use AP or another non Adobe app then you can export it as a tif. This won’t keep the file editable in LR though. That said if your wanting it so you can edit it in AP or something, then that would be the same in lightroom classic. Although classic is way better at handling this creating stacked versions etc.

Adobe is ruining lightroom with this push to the cloud for everything. They should just release a suitable version of classic for the iPad. But they won’t.

There are export options, including water making etc.

Also you can just use your iPad as an editing surface for lightroom classic, which make it infinitely better for editing anyway. It’s what I do some of the time with my desktop.

It seems that the "new" version of Lightroom (that supersedes Classic) doesn't even have a Print dialog in macOS, let alone soft proofing. Am I an old fogey? How do people get accurate tones in print without soft proofing in a color managed environment nowadays?
 
Man. I wish. Ipados and pro iPads in general are new compared to regular computers, so I suspect it just takes time- but lightroom is the only DAM available that I have found that’s professional quality. There are others but they lean on photos iCloud photo stream. Which is no good at all as it’s full of phone pics and all sorts. Not for pro use unless they somehow created the ability to have a second version to use only for certain sets.

there’s been talk for years that Affinity will create one. Considering how awesome the rest of their iPad stuff is it would be great. But I don’t hold any hopes for this long-standing rumour.

Lightroom remains the only DAM I've found that is worth paying for. If I couldn't use Lightroom, I'd use the built-in Photos app on Windows or macOS (or iPadOS I suppose) or something like RawTherapee. Nothing that is paid is as good as Lightroom, and I've tried many.
 
  • Like
Reactions: citysnaps
The difference of course is Apple markets the iPad Pro as a Pro device (and charges Pro prices for them), but there aren't really any professionals that can actually use it besides maybe illustrators and YouTubers. Anyone else is going to run out of runway real quick with iPadOS as it sits today.
Surprised people still look at it this way. Pro just means higher end in Apple speak. It’s marketing. Plus, plenty of professionals use an iPad for work. I’ve used one full time for 3 years and I work in logistics. I have a Pro but could be done with a basic iPad just the same.
 
It seems that the "new" version of Lightroom (that supersedes Classic) doesn't even have a Print dialog in macOS, let alone soft proofing. Am I an old fogey? How do people get accurate tones in print without soft proofing in a color managed environment nowadays?
According to Adobe it’s not superseding it. They’re updating both in tandem and it seems like that’s going to remain like that for the foreseeable future. Classic is still relevent. The fundamental problem with the reimagined version of lightroom is that it relies on the cloud. There’s no way (even with fast fibre) I want to plug in a couple of cards after a shoot and have 2500 raws auto upload to the cloud. Don’t know what they’re thinking to be honest.
 
Surprised people still look at it this way. Pro just means higher end in Apple speak. It’s marketing. Plus, plenty of professionals use an iPad for work. I’ve used one full time for 3 years and I work in logistics. I have a Pro but could be done with a basic iPad just the same.
I keep hearing this weird argument. Sure you can do the same thing on a lesser machine. That’s been the same for a long time over all ecosystems. Why it’s a ‘thing’ with the iPad I have no idea. I have never heard anyone in the windows or mac world dismissing a more powerful machine because they can do the same thing on a entry level machine. They can but why would they? They may be marketed as pro for marketing purposes, but they’re also fully featured pro versions of the basic machines. Just like in the rest of the computer world.
 
I keep hearing this weird argument. Sure you can do the same thing on a lesser machine. That’s been the same for a long time over all ecosystems. Why it’s a ‘thing’ with the iPad I have no idea. I have never heard anyone in the windows or mac world dismissing a more powerful machine because they can do the same thing on a entry level machine. They can but why would they? They may be marketed as pro for marketing purposes, but they’re also fully featured pro versions of the basic machines. Just like in the rest of the computer world.
People constantly justify Apple’s detractors and amplify their wins. Pro was for professionals until maybe that past 7 years or so.

My 5th gen iPad is still plenty fast, but my Pro is just a better experience overall. In theory I can do everything on the 9.7 I had, but it’s more for basic stuff. If I want to consume media, I prefer Pro just because it has a better experience. Also, I feel like i have to use less workarounds on pros than the basic devices.

It’s like having a crossover/SUV on a hill with a lot of snow. Sure, a sedan can maybe make it but I’ll need to do so much to make it go up the hill rather than driving in the SUV.
 
That spec, in and of itself really doesn't mean much at all, especially when the iPad has to use a crippled OS that doesn't allow full use potential.
Exactly. With all the recent changes and additions I was hoping they would just put in a normal OS.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.