iPad Pro Minor design change on the 9.7

[ssong]

I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed the minor design change on the 9.7? I somehow missed the change they made for the LTE antenna on the back. What are your thoughts on this? I think I kind of prefer the older design, either get rid of it totally or just make it more prominent... Don't do the middle option of a line going through...

In a broader note, kind of annoyed that the 9.7 has a few more extra features (true tone especially) compared to the 12.9 despite both being Pro models.

 

[jamesrick80]

A lot of this has been discussed in previous threads, just use the search function.

 

[bufffilm]

In a broader note, kind of annoyed that the 9.7 has a few more extra features (true tone especially) compared to the 12.9 despite both being Pro models.

So you'd rather that TT was left out until the iPP v2?

That reasoning makes no sense at all.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Been discussed quite a bit, I much prefer the new LTE design.

 

[Channan]

4GB of RAM > TT display, so you shouldn't be too annoyed with that.

 

[scaredpoet]

I think I kind of prefer the older design, either get rid of it totally or just make it more prominent... Don't do the middle option of a line going through...

I'm almost always staring at the front of my iPad, and almost never staring at the back of it. So, it doesn't matter to me either way.

In a broader note, kind of annoyed that the 9.7 has a few more extra features (true tone especially) compared to the 12.9 despite both being Pro models.

They had to give the 9.7 Pro something to differentiate it. The 12.9 will eventually get those same features, and probably more.

4GB of RAM > TT display, so you shouldn't be too annoyed with that.

I disagree on this. If all things were equal, sure. But the 12.9 needs the extra RAM to push the extra pixels around efficiently. Over time, their performance will degrade at about the same rate.

That said, 4GB on 9.7 would've made it last a lot longer than the 12.9 will. But the way things are, it's ultimately gonna be a wash between the two in terms of useful life.

 

[ssong]

So you'd rather that TT was left out until the iPP v2?

That reasoning makes no sense at all.

Well not left out but I guess the iPP 12 launch could have been postponed a bit? I just kinda miss the days when an iPhone was an iPhone, an iPad an iPad and so on.. now the fineprint matters so much due to the differentiation based on size. and sorry about the late post, I kinda been on the mac forum for the past couple of weeks haha

 

[Channan]

I disagree on this. If all things were equal, sure. But the 12.9 needs the extra RAM to push the extra pixels around efficiently. Over time, their performance will degrade at about the same rate.

That said, 4GB on 9.7 would've made it last a lot longer than the 12.9 will. But the way things are, it's ultimately gonna be a wash between the two in terms of useful life.

Before the iPad Air 2, iPads with the current 2048x1536 resolution ran fine with only 1GB of RAM. The resolution of the larger iPad Pro is not even twice that - it's only 1.78x the pixels - yet it has 4x as much RAM.

You're sort of right. The higher resolution iPad Pro 12.9 does need more RAM to run as efficiently as the lower resolution iPad Pro 9.7, but it doesn't need a whole 2GB more. So still, 4GB in the 12.9" Pro is worth more than the True Tone Display.

 

[bufffilm]

Well not left out but I guess the iPP 12 launch could have been postponed a bit? I just kinda miss the days when an iPhone was an iPhone, an iPad an iPad and so on.. now the fineprint matters so much due to the differentiation based on size. and sorry about the late post, I kinda been on the mac forum for the past couple of weeks haha

It was peripherally covered in another thread...but the iPP's launch last year, many believe, was timed to the holiday/4th quarter earnings.

Would we, the consumer, have been better served had Apple delayed the iPP till March 2017 when they have could announced both models at once?

Absolutely!!!

 

[mcdj]

A change in the physical appearance of an Apple product gets noticed about .25 seconds into the keynote it's unveiled at. So yes, "anyone else" has noticed.

Also, Apple, and pretty much every other company, introduces new features with each new iteration of a product, despite sharing a common name. That's why a 2016 Corvette has electric windows and a 1957 Corvette does not.

 

[iOSUser7]

I immediately noticed that change in the LTE antenna design when I was watching the keynote.

I love how simple and clean it looks now compared to the old design, though I never really disliked that old plastic part in the first place.

However, this protuding camera is a whole different story. It look awful in my opinion, even more than the already ugly camera bump of the iPhone 6/6s. It really doesn't fit with the clean and refined look of the iPad.

 

[yegon]

Before the iPad Air 2, iPads with the current 2048x1536 resolution ran fine with only 1GB of RAM.

I completely disagree. The Air 1 was the worst iPad I've owned. It was a worse experience than my iPad 3 - the 3 was slower, but faaaar more stable thanks to 32bit/1gb ram.

Apple should never have released 64bit devices with only 1gb ram. It was enough for single app performance, but the moment you press that home button and do something else, bam, it was a crap shoot what happened to your last opened app. Fine example is podcasts - I'd bring up CC to pause podcast, answer an email or visit a website, bring up CC to unpause podcast....only to find podcast app flushed, and it defaults to music playing. Equally, I had to copy any text I'd inputted on a webpage or email, because it was nearly always gone when I returned. Terrible. This didn't happen to my much older iPad 3.

Same negative applies, to a lesser extent, to the 6 Plus.

The 64bit 5S was passable with 1gb ram, I have memories of it as a good experience.

 

[haruhiko]

The new antenna looks way way better than the old design IMO.

 

[iOSUser7]

I completely disagree. The Air 1 was the worst iPad I've owned. It was a worse experience than my iPad 3 - the 3 was slower, but faaaar more stable thanks to 32bit/1gb ram.

Apple should never have released 64bit devices with only 1gb ram. It was enough for single app performance, but the moment you press that home button and do something else, bam, it was a crap shoot what happened to your last opened app. Fine example is podcasts - I'd bring up CC to pause podcast, answer an email or visit a website, bring up CC to unpause podcast....only to find podcast app flushed, and it defaults to music playing. Equally, I had to copy any text I'd inputted on a webpage or email, because it was nearly always gone when I returned. Terrible. This didn't happen to my much older iPad 3.

Same negative applies, to a lesser extent, to the 6 Plus.

The 64bit 5S was passable with 1gb ram, I have memories of it as a good experience.

I've never owned an iPad 3 so I can't compare to that device (though I know from multiple reports that it performs badly) but the iPad Air ? Oh my god... this device performs like a piece of ****.

I've never upgraded it to iOS 9 (because I knew it would create more problems than it fix) but even on iOS 8 it was horrible.
Animations were laggy, the device was often unresponsive for a few seconds after doing an action (like a tap or a double press of the home button) : a huge laggy mess.

Let's talk Safari now, which I think was the worst part of my experience with the damn "There was a problem on this page so it was reloaded" error that happened ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Also tabs performance was ****, I could not open more than one tab without the other needs to reload. Safari was also very slow at loading pages, it was constantly moving the page up and down so I was always missing my tap.

Multitasking was very bad too, I can't belive this device have 1GB of RAM, I could not have more than 2-3 (light) apps open in the background (sometimes it was even wrost, only 1 app) without needing to reload. Even more unbelievable, sometimes my music playback (from Spotify or the stock Music app) just stopped working for no reason and when I re-opened the app, it needed to reload.

And did I talk about resprings ? This did not happen all the time but very often, when I jumped into the multitasking, the device would respring for absolutely no reason.

I can't believe how bad this device was compared to the iPhone 5s which have almost the same specs and performs like a champ, no issues at all.

Also, I should mention that when I bought the device it was already running iOS 8 so I never had the chance to have it running iOS 7 and I don't know if the iOS 8 update crippled it or not.

Anyway, I could not stand this iPad anymore so I recently pulled the trigger and bought an iPad mini 4 (I wanted a smaller form factor too) and I don't miss the iPad Air at all. This was one of my worst Apple experience I've ever had with the iPhone 4 on iOS 7. My 3GS experience was also bad but given it's age and specs, I think I was just expecting too much from this device so I can't really blame it.

By the way, sorry for the off-topic but I needed to quote this post because I believe it's the first time I hear someone with the iPad Air that had the same awful experience as I did.

 

[Skika]

It looks like a major improvement to
me.

 

[jclardy]

I completely disagree, the new thin lines are awesome compared to just sticking a hunk of plastic to the top. I can't wait till they add the thinner antenna lines to the iPhone, as it looks like that is the direction they will go with it.

 

[MrGimper]

Much more "Pro", which is what it's all about

 

[Channan]

I completely disagree. The Air 1 was the worst iPad I've owned. It was a worse experience than my iPad 3 - the 3 was slower, but faaaar more stable thanks to 32bit/1gb ram.

Apple should never have released 64bit devices with only 1gb ram. It was enough for single app performance, but the moment you press that home button and do something else, bam, it was a crap shoot what happened to your last opened app. Fine example is podcasts - I'd bring up CC to pause podcast, answer an email or visit a website, bring up CC to unpause podcast....only to find podcast app flushed, and it defaults to music playing. Equally, I had to copy any text I'd inputted on a webpage or email, because it was nearly always gone when I returned. Terrible. This didn't happen to my much older iPad 3.

Same negative applies, to a lesser extent, to the 6 Plus.

The 64bit 5S was passable with 1gb ram, I have memories of it as a good experience.

You've just helped my point, though. The iPad 3 ran great when it first came out, proving you could run a 2048x1536 display with only 1GB of RAM. iOS needed a little more as it progressed and got updated.

The Air 2 and 9.7" Pro run great on 2GB. The 1.78x pixel dense 12.9" Pro doesn't need an extra 2GB just for the screen, so it's still going to perform way better than the 9.7" Pro for longer.

 

[rui no onna]

I completely disagree. The Air 1 was the worst iPad I've owned. It was a worse experience than my iPad 3 - the 3 was slower, but faaaar more stable thanks to 32bit/1gb ram.

Apple should never have released 64bit devices with only 1gb ram. It was enough for single app performance, but the moment you press that home button and do something else, bam, it was a crap shoot what happened to your last opened app. Fine example is podcasts - I'd bring up CC to pause podcast, answer an email or visit a website, bring up CC to unpause podcast....only to find podcast app flushed, and it defaults to music playing. Equally, I had to copy any text I'd inputted on a webpage or email, because it was nearly always gone when I returned. Terrible. This didn't happen to my much older iPad 3.

I actually do have an iPad 3, 4 and Air at the moment. The stability you're remembering is likely due to running older firmware (iOS 6 and earlier). Even then, the iPad 3 was already quite laggy on iOS 6. Both iPad 4 and Air handled iOS 7 and 8 well enough (as long as one enables Reduce Motion) but the iPad 3 was nigh unbearable (even keyboard input lags). Performance on the iPad 3 improved to tolerable with iOS 9 but the Air is definitely significantly faster and there's a marked difference between the 4 and Air when browsing multimedia and JavaScript heavy websites (Air is much better). Also, on iOS 9, the Air supports ad blockers while older models do not.

While I do agree the Air would've been better and should've shipped with 2GB RAM, I've learned not to discount performance improvements due to SoC improvement. While someone who bought the Air 2 1.5 years ago would enjoy good longevity, someone buying the Air 2 now shouldn't expect to get 5 more years out of the device unless one never updates the firmware.

Let's talk Safari now, which I think was the worst part of my experience with the damn "There was a problem on this page so it was reloaded" error that happened ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Also tabs performance was ****, I could not open more than one tab without the other needs to reload. Safari was also very slow at loading pages, it was constantly moving the page up and down so I was always missing my tap.

And did I talk about resprings ? This did not happen all the time but very often, when I jumped into the multitasking, the device would respring for absolutely no reason.

I can't believe how bad this device was compared to the iPhone 5s which have almost the same specs and performs like a champ, no issues at all.

Also, I should mention that when I bought the device it was already running iOS 8 so I never had the chance to have it running iOS 7 and I don't know if the iOS 8 update crippled it or not.

The Air performed much better on iOS 7 than iOS 8. That said, the iPhone 5s had a 4" 1136*640 display while the Air had a 9.7" 2048*1536 display. The iPhone has a lot more "slack" available than the iPad. Indeed, even the A6-based 5/5c have done quite well on iOS 7 onwards. And before people complain about Apple being more "generous" with iPhone hardware, the iPad costs more to make than the iPhone and yet the iPhone is priced higher. There's much higher markup on the iPhone than the iPad. I believe profit margin is like ~40% on iPads and ~60+% on iPhones.

 

[yegon]

Wasn't really arguing for or against 4gb v 2gb, merely disagreeing specifically re: the Air 1 being a competent device. I thought it was terrible misstep.

iOSUser7 highlights all the many grievances I had with the Air 1. Yeah, my experience of the 3 is based on whatever the 3 was running upto the Air 1 launch, but the whole experience, although much slower, was defientely better due to its stability and performance when switching apps/tabs. A sorry state of affairs when a much newer device delivered a markedly inferior experience.

 

[iOSUser7]

The Air performed much better on iOS 7 than iOS 8. That said, the iPhone 5s had a 4" 1136*640 display while the Air had a 9.7" 2048*1536 display. The iPhone has a lot more "slack" available than the iPad. Indeed, even the A6-based 5/5c have done quite well on iOS 7 onwards. And before people complain about Apple being more "generous" with iPhone hardware, the iPad costs more to make than the iPhone and yet the iPhone is priced higher. There's much higher markup on the iPhone than the iPad. I believe profit margin is like ~40% on iPads and ~60+% on iPhones.

Alright thanks for the info. Too bad mine did not came with iOS 7 installed because on iOS 8 this device drove me crazy.

Also I know about the resolution difference in the iPhones versus iPads but did the A7 really wasn't powerful enough to drive that 2048x1536 resolution ? I highly doubt that. The only chip that was not powerful enough to drive the Retina display was the A5X. A6X and above were perfectly capable of pushing all those pixels so the first gen iPad Air should not perform like crap as it does now on iOS 8/9 (assuming it was indeed much better on iOS 7).

 

[haruhiko]

Alright thanks for the info. Too bad mine did not came with iOS 7 installed because on iOS 8 this device drove me crazy.

Also I know about the resolution difference in the iPhones versus iPads but did the A7 really wasn't powerful enough to drive that 2048x1536 resolution ? I highly doubt that, I think the only chip that was not powerful enough to drive the Retina display was the A5X. A6X and above were perfectly capable of pushing all those pixels so the first gen iPad Air should not perform like it does now on iOS 8/9.

The iPad Air is the first iPad to feature a 64-bit CPU which requires more RAM for same performance, coupled with much higher screen resolution (than the iPhone 5s) and the same 1GB of RAM, it is destined for poor performance.

 

[spiderman0616]

I feel like the old plastic chunk on the back of the LTE models got scuffed up way too easily. Good riddance.

 

[iOSUser7]

The iPad Air is the first iPad to feature a 64-bit CPU which requires more RAM for same performance, coupled with much higher screen resolution (than the iPhone 5s) and the same 1GB of RAM, it is destined for poor performance.

Does RAM even have something to do with pushing pixels ? Serious question, I always thought that RAM had nothing to do with that and it was all done by the GPU.

 

[Krevnik]

Does RAM even have something to do with pushing pixels ? Serious question, I always thought that RAM had nothing to do with that and it was all done by the GPU.

Graphics buffers are backed by RAM. On a desktop, the GPU will have its own RAM. The iPad shares RAM between the CPU and GPU. When I create a view (say an image) the pixels of that view gets stored into a buffer. The GPU takes the buffers and composites all the views on the screen. The idea here is that I can move the views on the screen and only do another composite (don't have to redraw the views which is more expensive). The catch is that for everything on the screen, and even some things not on the screen, I need to spend RAM on pixel buffers backing everything. It also means that some parts of the screen are "covered" by multiple buffers.