Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Even if the Air 2 is still supported, it's noticeably slower and laggier than even the A10-based iPad 6th gen.

At least for me, the RAM will help.

On iPadOS 13 and 14, I've been getting this on the 4GB RAM 2017 Pro when I have a few too many apps and tabs open. I've even had this happen on the MacRumors forums at one point although usually, it's the animation and media heavy websites that are affected.

View attachment 1773486

I am specifically talking about CPU speeds which are pretty plenty pre-M1 for an iPad. I believe the Pro was reported to be faster than some Macs pre-M1. Of course you will benefit from extra RAM and other GPU bumps.

I doubt apple will want Mac apps to run on iPad's because of the UI issues. So the extra memory won't aid that. I'm also sceptical of Xcode on the iPad since that might jeopardise apple's case with epic as to whether iOS is a multipurpose device. If you can build software on it what is the difference between iOS and Windows?

I wonder if a developer can make the same app for both platforms, just with 2 user interface, one for mouse and keyboard and the other with finger touch. I don't see why they separate iOS and MacOS now...

My only guess is that iOS maybe customised to run power efficient more than MacOS which makes sense.
 
I am specifically talking about CPU speeds which are pretty plenty pre-M1 for an iPad. I believe the Pro was reported to be faster than some Macs pre-M1. Of course you will benefit from extra RAM and other GPU bumps.

Sure, but it's a package deal. The only way you'd get A12Z with 16GB RAM is via the DTK Mac Mini. If you want more than 6GB RAM on an iPad, the 2021 iPad Pros are the only option at this time.

And really, just because apps are still compatible with the iPad Air 2 does not mean they will run well. I mean, I can use a lowly Intel Atom to convert my ebooks using Calibre. Ryzen will just finish it so much faster. For that matter, I believe so does M1 with Rosetta.

I've used apps where I can pretty much see thumbnails being generated one by one on the Air 2 versus seeing almost an entire page of them instantly on the latest iPads. Searching for a word or phrase in a 2 million word omnibus is faster on newer iPads as well. Changing the font size on that omnibus was also noticeably slower on the Air 2 with my preferred reader.
 
Whatever, Intel still makes the world’s best microprocessors. I’m better off owning a Microsoft Surface.
There’s a rumor that intel is secretly still making the chips or having something to do with them.
 
What average activity (non-developer, non-power user) needs to happen in the background that isn’t currently?
Thats the thing really. Some dev's say they want the power to decide whatever they want to be running in the background. Which is a traditional OS and what Android gives you. Apple is "opinionated" and decides that for the benefit of their customers they dont want anyone to abuse that power so they stop you doing it.

Apple in some ways is the referee in a fight between developers and customers. But it really favours the customer. In all its dealings, whether they make more money or not they can argue that the customer benefits from their decision.
You cant really say that for any of the other big tech businesses (maybe Amazon).
 
Why Spend $2400 to get an iPad Pro M1 12.9?
When you can buy a Mac mini M1 with 16GB for $899?
That's more than half the price!
And you get macOS.
Not Crippled IOS with no file system for saving and downloading files.
Even Android tablets have a regular file system.
Those are very different products.

It's also not quite $899.

The only way to hit $2,400 is to get a 2TB WiFi + Cellular model.

A Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM and 2TB of storage is $1,700. And, to compare it to an iPad 2TB WiFi+Cellular like you are here; you'll need to add cellular connectivity, and you'll need to add something comparable to the iPads display (which is going to be in the $1,000+ range).

An iPad is more than just a logic board. The 12.9 especially, the display is a very compelling option.

I'm not sure why everyone is only comparing the price of this thing with its most maxed out model plus accessories. Especially with thunderbolt, the need to max it out is less than ever.

Let's go the other way. Let's configure a 12.9" iPad Pro that is on par with an $899 Mac Mini. The equivalent iPad (512GB WiFi, 8GB of RAM) would be $1,399. That's a pretty good value given that it's an all-day battery life portable device with a touch screen that is exceptionally high quality (again, to make a comparable Mac Mini you need a display that's comparable in terms of brightness and color accuracy. You can do accurate HDR color correction on an iPad, that's nuts!)

And honestly; the best comparison would be a 13" MacBook Pro. Now you have a portable device with a built-in display and the same hardware. You have the same size display as an iPad Pro 12.9, and you have the best laptop Display apple sells (though, crazily enough, the iPads display is better). Now you're looking at $1,499. $100 more. Pretty close, and the MacBook Pro is definitely more capable! But it's also not an iPad. People who buy iPads want iPads.

Like ANY product, it's not always going to be a great value for anyone. But a Mac Mini is not in the same league, at all. It represents an entirely different subset. I'm typing this on a Mac Mini right now. It's job is to sit on my desk, drive an inexpensive display, and give me an inexpensive Mac experience to do basic productivity, light creative work, and stuff like that. It saves me from having to lug my laptop to the office. My MacBook Pro fulfills another purpose entirely and my iPad another purpose still. And; if the software adapts to the M1 (that's a BIG if right now), I may never end up replacing my MacBook Pro. For a variety of uses, I need an iPad. If it can effectively do a few things I need my laptop for now; then it's very possible with an iPad Pro; I won't need a MacBook Pro anymore.
 
It’s not ‘severely limited’ at all, it’s mildly limiting in some situations. Yours, needing pano support means it won’t work for you just yet, without the use of other apps to supplement. I don’t use that feature much and when I have needed it I tend to use affinity on the iPad, or PS on my Mac. They do it better anyway in my opinion.

As you know I already said in my original post that the file management is lacking. That’s Adobe’s issue though, and their insistence on using the cloud. In the field and away from my studio I use it with sync disabled and manage my own files.

Printing, I agree- but I use my studio stuff for that kind of thing. You can easily get anything print ready on LR however. iPads can only attach to AirPrint printers anyway, so not sure printer plugins are really relevant in this conversation. Those for which printing is a primary task wouldn’t be looking at iPad solutions anyway.
Well, okay. In a quantitative list of features, the two lists are almost the same size; yes.

But for my uses, that is absolutely 'severely limiting'. It's severely limiting because I can't use it. I want to, desperately. But it absolutely won't work for me. Those features I mentioned are features that are deal-breakers for me.

If I could run the macOS version of lightroom, I could do all of that. Yes, I would absolutely print with an iPad solution. My printer (Canon PROGRAF Pro-1000) is a network printer anyway.

I shoot with drones and Sony mirrorless cameras. I would LOVE, and I mean LOVE to be able to grab the SD cards and import drone footage and photos off of my cameras using a USB-C SD reader and edit them on the fly. Come home and connect the iPad to a thunderbolt dock and continue editing on a large display while mirroring the files over to a thunderbolt RAID array that I currently use with my Mac, so that they can then be deleted off of my iPad when I'm finished. That RAID array is backed up twice; once to a second RAID array in my house, and to the cloud. I've got no use for Adobe's cloud solution. And of course, I would absolutely print from my iPad; and I'd want to use my printer manufacturers plugin to access all of the features and have a reliable and accurate experience.

"Lightroom Classic" for iPad would be a dream for me. As would Premiere Pro for iPad. I've pre-ordered an M1 iPad Pro; and if those apps come to it, it might actually replace my MacBook Pro completely.
 
The OS is the core. Without a strong OS that allows the iPad to use more of its abilities, apps will be strapped as well.
Apple needs to get serious about fixing the issues with Safari. I still have to kill and restart it too often to deal with it simply eventually getting to the point of stalling when trying to load a page in another tab. Going to home screen and double-clicking the home button and swiping Safari up and running it again the page loads right away. Considering all browsers are required to use the same underpinning browser tech as Safari there‘s no excuse for allowing it to behave like that.
 
And they would use the free space for battery!! that would be amazing.
I also believe they should include a "back up" battery in the iMacs, in case of power failures you don't lose all your current work.
Yeah, but batteries are expensive. Apple is trying to hit price targets. One of the compelling things about the M1 is that you can get desktop class performance and all-day battery life.

One way you can accomplish that is with an expensive laptop with a huge battery and tons of copper to cool it. Another way is a very efficient chip with little cooling and a small battery; that still performs the same way as the big, heavy, expensive laptop.
 
Well it looks like my 2020 iPad Pro is gonna run like an iPad 3 in a year or two. Oh well, at least it can live on as travel display through sidecar.
Everybody knew the 2020 was a non-upgrade; at least it was a non-upgrade to an already-decent performer (unlike the iPad 3 which was a ripoff).
 
Don’t get me wrong, I agree on that, regardless of how good or bad an app runs on ipados, the os can be cumbersome to use.

Then again, they have to somehow differentiate both os if they want to keep selling laptops.
I’m tired of hearing how Apple can best serve itself by screwing over users by keeping easily-achieved functional parity from their tablets. Doing dumb things like this that costs your users more money and makes their experience less satisfying or poorer value is how you get your market share stolen by someone who will give customers more value or functionality.
 
I would like to see the ability to connect any drive, format and delete files just like you would on a Mac. I also think the Finder in iOS is very anemic and needs an overhaul. I think it is time for iOS to have a File system that the user can access like we can do on the Mac. I also wan to see multiple user ability. That is just quickly off the top of my head (so to speak).
It would be nice to be able to do like Mac/Windows can and choose/set an associated app for any given file type from Files.
 
c
I’m tired of hearing how Apple can best serve itself by screwing over users by keeping easily-achieved functional parity from their tablets. Doing dumb things like this that costs your users more money and makes their experience less satisfying or poorer value is how you get your market share stolen by someone who will give customers more value or functionality.
You may or may not like it, but we’re reaching a point where the only thing keeping apple from running macOS on ipad pros is apple itself. If it’s a matter of money or avoid self-cannibalization, only apple knows, but it’s a logical reason.

There have been touch capable windows laptops for some time now, and apple seems to be doing fine.
 
Indeed. That will be what determines whether or not I replace my 2018 Pro. Without apps (and OS upgrades) that transform the experience, it won’t be necessary for my needs.
Same. My 2018 12.9in i)ad Pro is absolutely fine for my casual use but i will happily upgrade if more power features are added and i can use an iPad more as a computer.
 
  • Like
Reactions: minivini
I’m tired of hearing how Apple can best serve itself by screwing over users by keeping easily-achieved functional parity from their tablets. Doing dumb things like this that costs your users more money and makes their experience less satisfying or poorer value is how you get your market share stolen by someone who will give customers more value or functionality.
100% agree. Eventually, enough “bad will” is built up that more nimble competitors will find the potential to exploit this irresistible - harming the original company more than if they’d cannibalized their products in the first place. Adobe looks to be in a similar position.
 
I shoot with drones and Sony mirrorless cameras. I would LOVE, and I mean LOVE to be able to grab the SD cards and import drone footage and photos off of my cameras using a USB-C SD reader and edit them on the fly. Come home and connect the iPad to a thunderbolt dock and continue editing on a large display while mirroring the files over to a thunderbolt RAID array that I currently use with my Mac, so that they can then be deleted off of my iPad when I'm finished. That RAID array is backed up twice; once to a second RAID array in my house, and to the cloud. I've got no use for Adobe's cloud solution.
Not as fluidly as one would wish for or could have with a true version of classic in the iPad - but it’s perfectly possible to do this on an iPad. I do regularly using my studio Mac, TB drives and NAS. The app Cascable helps to set it all up.
As for printing- I have an Epson 3880 and print from my studio set up. I don’t think I would use an iPad alone but I didn’t buy it for that. Perhaps there are dedicated apps available to use instead of the lightroom module.
 
harming the original company more than if they’d cannibalized their products in the first place. Adobe looks to be in a similar position.
I think Apple’s going after the folks that will be adults making purchasing decisions for themselves in the next 5-10 years. Those folks will be very well versed in touch enabled OS’s by way of iOS/iPadOS and already don’t find it’s usage cumbersome, they find it intuitive. For everyone that would still be waiting for “macOS on iPad” there would be 5 or six new customers that want the OS that Apple’s actually making. They’re going to focus on folks that want what they’re selling at the cost of those that don’t.
 
c

You may or may not like it, but we’re reaching a point where the only thing keeping apple from running macOS on ipad pros is apple itself. If it’s a matter of money or avoid self-cannibalization, only apple knows, but it’s a logical reason.

There have been touch capable windows laptops for some time now, and apple seems to be doing fine.
In the new era of $2,300 iPad tablets we’ll see how long that lasts...
 
The M1 is in some cases equal to an Intel i9 processor. And in some cases the i9 beats the M1
Plus you can add way more memory to an i9 processor. not limited to just 16GB
And by the way Intels new 10nm chips released like yesterday for laptops show a 20 percent gain over the i9

So NO the M1 no longer SMOKES Intel
Intel has caught up.
I love how we’re comparing Apple’s entry level SOC to Intel’s top-of-the-range i9 when arguing about performance.
 
100% agree. Eventually, enough “bad will” is built up that more nimble competitors will find the potential to exploit this irresistible - harming the original company more than if they’d cannibalized their products in the first place. Adobe looks to be in a similar position.

Here’s one of many examples…

A common complaint is that MacBooks don’t have a touch screen and Apple are doing this because it would eat in to iPad sales. There‘s been touch capable laptops from pretty much every other manufacturer for eon’s now and they’re hardly taking Apple’s lunch.

The reason being is that most users don’t use the touch screen on a laptop, despite it being there, but you do see a significant battery life hit by having them. So every user loses 1.5 - 2hrs battery life over the non-touch equivalent despite only a small number of users actually needing a touch screen.

67F6B036-3F76-40E0-9035-DB08419BD479.png


This is not cost effective and provides a poor user experience (everybody suffers for the sake of a handful of users).

Apple provide the BEST touch enabled experience with the iPad and the BEST laptop experience with the MacBook. Every other manufacturer provides a compromise. People continue to buy Apple products because they provide the BEST experience in their relevant categories. If they wanted a compromised experience, they could buy from any manufacturer…that choice is there now.
 
Last edited:
Here’s one of many examples…

A common complaint is that MacBooks don’t have a touch screen and Apple are doing this because it would eat in to iPad sales. There‘s been touch capable laptops from pretty much every other manufacturer for eon’s now and they’re hardly taking Apple’s lunch.

The reason being is that most users don’t use the touch screen on a laptop, despite it being there, but you do see a significant battery life hit by having them. So every user loses 1.5 - 2hrs battery life over the non-touch equivalent despite only a small number of users actually needing a touch screen.

This is not cost effective and provides a poor user experience (everybody suffers for the sake of a handful of users).

Apple provide the BEST touch enabled experience with the iPad and the BEST laptop experience with the MacBook. Every other manufacturer provides a compromise. People continue to buy Apple products because they provide the BEST experience in their relevant categories. If they wanted a compromised experience, they could buy from any manufacturer…that choice is there now.
I get that Apple wants its’ customers to have the best possible experience. However, which part of your examples address A). Allowing customers to run virtualized Big Sur on their new M1-powered iPads - thereby increasing the likleyhood of some user’s being able to unify their compute environment? B). Providing a multi-user capability on iPadOS so that families or spouses can share a device? I believe that these are but a couple examples of reluctance to cannibalize existing products in favor of customer experience.
 
I get that Apple wants its’ customers to have the best possible experience. However, which part of your examples address A). Allowing customers to run virtualized Big Sur on their new M1-powered iPads - thereby increasing the likleyhood of some user’s being able to unify their compute environment? B). Providing a multi-user capability on iPadOS so that families or spouses can share a device? I believe that these are but a couple examples of reluctance to cannibalize existing products in favor of customer experience.

And what’s that got to do with what I replied to, or what you replied to prior to that?

Shifting the goalposts methinks.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.