New iPad Pro Reviews: Mini-LED Display Looks Great, M1 Performance Held Back by iPadOS

[cardfan]

This whole thing is Apple saying, no AMOLED yet, but take this , hopefully you wont notice the difference.

No thanks, Im waiting for Amoled M1X iPad

Even if oled just goes to iPad Air, that’s good enough for me. I wouldn’t buy another pro in that case.

 

[cupcakes2000]

For sure; and as it matures it’ll get that much better.

There’s just a couple of things Lightroom won’t do on an iPad; and they’re absolute dealbreakers. Which is such a bummer, because that would be one stellar use case for me. Hopefully the software catches up!

If lightroom on the iPad allowed us to operate it in the same way as classic for file management and storage, rather than the cloud - then I would no longer need a mac. That’s the only deal breaker for my lightroom usage. But that’s also never likely to happen.

 

[el-John-o]

If lightroom on the iPad allowed us to operate it in the same way as classic for file management and storage, rather than the cloud - then I would no longer need a mac. That’s the only deal breaker for my lightroom usage. But that’s also never likely to happen.

Yeah. That’s an absolute cant-work dealbreaker for me; but Adobe wants to push us on to their expensive cloud solution so they may never genuinely support it.

For me, it’s also lacking Panorama and HDR support (things I use a lot), and lacking plugin support for printing.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Yeah. That’s an absolute cant-work dealbreaker for me; but Adobe wants to push us on to their expensive cloud solution so they may never genuinely support it.

For me, it’s also lacking Panorama and HDR support (things I use a lot), and lacking plugin support for printing.

I still need classic so use my macmini as a sort of headless sever for Lr. I control it with jump desktop from the ipad. I don’t miss anything editing wise Lrc verses Lr iPad. Anything more advanced than normal corrections I use Photoshop or affinity.
As for printing, it’s not a job for my iPad anyway, my printing equipment (3880 plus a couple of axillary units) is in my studio, it would be cool if Lr had the same print features though. I have never looked in to it but perhaps there are other apps on the iPad to deal with it.

 

[el-John-o]

I still need classic so use my macmini as a sort of headless sever for Lr. I control it with jump desktop from the ipad. I don’t miss anything editing wise Lrc verses Lr iPad. Anything more advanced than normal corrections I use Photoshop or affinity.
As for printing, it’s not a job for my iPad anyway, my printing equipment (3880 plus a couple of axillary units) is in my studio, it would be cool if Lr had the same print features though. I have never looked in to it but perhaps there are other apps on the iPad to deal with it.

Well, yeah. That’s my whole point.

”I don’t need any of that stuff because I use a Mac Mini and have my studio”

Precisely. Same here. But the performance of the iPad is there to be powerful enough to do all of that. It’s just software that limits it from doing it. I would love to use my iPad as my exclusive editing platform and get away from needing to use a Mac to print (because of software needed to print correctly to my Canon Prograf-1000), or needing a Mac to do things that my iPad could actually do BETTER (like merging HDR’s, which my iPads faster CPU and GPU would excel at).

I really like my M1 iPad; but I am frustrated that the fastest computer in my home is also, in many ways, the least capable.

iPad OS isn’t really even to blame here. Lumafusion has no problem working with external drives, importing into an external drive, or even working off of network drives (something Lightroom struggles with). It’s software developers like Adobe.

 

[odonnelly99]

Well apple did say it would need iPadOS 15 to take full advantage of the hardware.

It did? When? I‘m not being antagonistic, I’m being serious — I didn’t hear anything about that.

And doesn’t iPadOS (not the beta) come out in late September/early October? I really wish they would go back to releasing iPhones in the early summer, like they did with the OG through the 4, and iPads two months or so before it. That way, you didn’t have to wait forever for the newest ios (or now, iPadOS) for very long.

Also. there was something cool and exciting about about new iPhones coming out right as summer was starting, especially the improved cameras that you could utilize during the time of the year when you spend the most time outdoors and travel a bit.

June would be so much better than the dreary, getting darker earlier every day, soon to be winter October release dates of the 4S and on. Throw Macs in that spot instead, lol. That way apple could make its $$$ selling the previous gen Macs with the back to school specials, and then release the new stuff a month after it ends, so the students can’t return them for the new ones. (I know they kind of do this now).

Or just release iPadOS updates separately from iOS. I don‘t know. If anything, this is a perfect example of the advice, “buy tech for what it does now, not for what it might do in the future.”

 

[RavynArcadia]

It did? When? I‘m not being antagonistic, I’m being serious — I didn’t hear anything about that.

And doesn’t iPadOS (not the beta) come out in late September/early October? I really wish they would go back to releasing iPhones in the early summer, like they did with the OG through the 4, and iPads two months or so before it. That way, you didn’t have to wait forever for the newest ios (or now, iPadOS) for very long.

Also. there was something cool and exciting about about new iPhones coming out right as summer was starting, especially the improved cameras that you could utilize during the time of the year when you spend the most time outdoors and travel a bit.

June would be so much better than the dreary, getting darker earlier every day, soon to be winter October release dates of the 4S and on. Throw Macs in that spot instead, lol. That way apple could make its $$$ selling the previous gen Macs with the back to school specials, and then release the new stuff a month after it ends, so the students can’t return them for the new ones. (I know they kind of do this now).

Or just release iPadOS updates separately from iOS. I don‘t know. If anything, this is a perfect example of the advice, “buy tech for what it does now, not for what it might do in the future.”

I think they said it during or after the spring show.

 

[turbineseaplane]

this is a perfect example of the advice, “buy tech for what it does now, not for what it might do in the future.”

Absolutely spot on -- anyone not doing this is nuts..

 

[el-John-o]

I think they said it during or after the spring show.

No; that’s a common rumor spreading around (which I think is based more on wishes than any actual evidentiary reason), but Apple didn’t say you need iPad OS 15 to take advantage of iPad M1 hardware.

 

[Abazigal]

Well apple did say it would need iPadOS 15 to take full advantage of the hardware.

I personally wouldn't bet on it.

What I suspect Apple may do is reveal catalyst versions of their productivity apps like Final Cut Pro that have been optimised to run on all M1 devices, from the MBA to the iPad Pro. The benefit here is twofold. You make it easier to developers to create apps that run on all Apple devices (which in turn strengthens the ecosystem), while also making it less enticing for them to develop for other platforms (because then they have to start all over).

The ideal scenario would be an app like say Notability, which has iOS and macOS apps, because they share a common code base and common resources. But you don't see the app being ported over to windows or android because it would be far too much work for the developer.

iPadOS may see one or two features reserved for the M1 iPad Pro (perhaps say improved external monitor support), but otherwise, I don't see Apple creating a custom version of iPadOS just for it (too small an install base). It's going to sport features that work just as well on their entry level iPad. So expect a couple more productivity improvements, widgets for the iPad, but nothing that will make people want to run out and buy an M1 Mac right way.

It's really all about porting Mac apps over to the iPad.

 

[Razorpit]

Been making this point for a long time. It’s the OS and mobile apps that hold iPads back. The 2017 Pro and on handle anything thrown at it with ease.

Apple has given the iPad in its current iteration an identity crisis. Originally it was mostly content consumption with some productivity. Now, “your next computer will be an iPad” marketing push of last year. I tried to make it work, for productivity, but ultimately got frustrated with the OS and bought a mac again. Gifted the 2020 Pro to my wife.

View attachment 1777325

When iPadOS can make CIFS/NFS file-level shares and iSCSI block-level mounts ‘first class’ citizens for multi-terabyte storage access (Final Cut, ProRAW files takes up most of that,) instead of shares being relegated to an insignificant Files.app, then it will (was, gave it to grandparents) continue to be a shiny Wacom, email and video machine.

For many prosumers, iPadOS may be enough. Not denying that. But personally, for me, it’s not even close to being viable for work.

I agree completely to both posts. I would love feature parity with the Mac on even the most basic of apps. Sad I need to use the Mac for my workflow in Calendar and Contacts. Extremely frustrating.

Even though Apple said that’s NOT what it’s doing (as recently as the day after the iPad announcements)?

Yep. You act as if they never did that before.

Not to mention it would be an odd context switch. How would the two operating systems keep work synchronized?

I don‘t understand what you are asking but let me take a stab at what I think you are asking. Controls on a form, the content in a spreadsheet cell point to memory locations that store the data. You can have a completely different form appear once the OS senses something like a smart keyboard connection and the system could quickly load the “desktop” version of the form, pointing to the same contents in memory.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I don‘t understand what you are asking but let me take a stab at what I think you are asking. Controls on a form, the content in a spreadsheet cell point to memory locations that store the data. You can have a completely different form appear once the OS senses something like a smart keyboard connection and the system could quickly load the “desktop” version of the form, pointing to the same contents in memory.

Two different views within the SAME OS? Like, iPadOS just making interface objects pop on that “look” like macOS is very possible. But, two separate OS’s makes the problem a whole lot more complex. And then, there’s doing all that work only for third party vendors not to support it. And, even if they decided to do it, I’d imagine they’d wouldn’t want to do that development work for free, so they’d charge for the support.

Has anyone ever done this with two OS’s before? The Motorola and Samsung examples usually provided were nowhere near as slick as they’re described.

 

[cardfan]

I personally wouldn't bet on it.

What I suspect Apple may do is reveal catalyst versions of their productivity apps like Final Cut Pro that have been optimised to run on all M1 devices, from the MBA to the iPad Pro. The benefit here is twofold. You make it easier to developers to create apps that run on all Apple devices (which in turn strengthens the ecosystem), while also making it less enticing for them to develop for other platforms (because then they have to start all over).

The ideal scenario would be an app like say Notability, which has iOS and macOS apps, because they share a common code base and common resources. But you don't see the app being ported over to windows or android because it would be far too much work for the developer.

iPadOS may see one or two features reserved for the M1 iPad Pro (perhaps say improved external monitor support), but otherwise, I don't see Apple creating a custom version of iPadOS just for it (too small an install base). It's going to sport features that work just as well on their entry level iPad. So expect a couple more productivity improvements, widgets for the iPad, but nothing that will make people want to run out and buy an M1 Mac right way.

It's really all about porting Mac apps over to the iPad.

I don’t see that happening either. Perhaps it will but it’s safer to say what you see is what you get with iPads. I sure wouldn’t buy one based on what could happen at wwdc. Plus you’d have several months to purchase one even if it does surprise.

I don’t sit and wonder why my iPad can’t do everything my Mac does. Apple should concentrate on making it the best consumption experience. That’s why people buy iPads.

I’d want hdr gaming. Hdr anything I can make hdr. Dolby vision was the key new feature of iPhone 12 Pro for being able to create videos in hdr. Apple TV slightly raises the bar for viewing it. So does this iPad. So will new rumored MacBooks.

I could easily see apple devoting time to Apple Arcade at wwdc. There’s nothing hdr (or atmos) about it. Considering around 70+% of App Store revenue is gaming which makes apple the top gaming company in the world.

 

[Razorpit]

Two different views within the SAME OS? Like, iPadOS just making interface objects pop on that “look” like macOS is very possible. But, two separate OS’s makes the problem a whole lot more complex. And then, there’s doing all that work only for third party vendors not to support it. And, even if they decided to do it, I’d imagine they’d wouldn’t want to do that development work for free, so they’d charge for the support.

Has anyone ever done this with two OS’s before? The Motorola and Samsung examples usually provided were nowhere near as slick as they’re described.

Good, point I guess it all depends on how easy it would be to do in XCODE. No matter how they do it, it would require extra work on the developers part.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Good, point I guess it all depends on how easy it would be to do in XCODE. No matter how they do it, it would require extra work on the developers part.

Yeah, Apple’s made it much easier for, say, Microsoft to release Minecraft Bedrock for the Mac on the Mac AppStore now. But if Microsoft wants to charge separately for the Mac version, then we’d be stuck for paying for two separate rather than one that runs in both modes.

 

[theotherphil]

Two different views within the SAME OS? Like, iPadOS just making interface objects pop on that “look” like macOS is very possible. But, two separate OS’s makes the problem a whole lot more complex. And then, there’s doing all that work only for third party vendors not to support it. And, even if they decided to do it, I’d imagine they’d wouldn’t want to do that development work for free, so they’d charge for the support.

Has anyone ever done this with two OS’s before? The Motorola and Samsung examples usually provided were nowhere near as slick as they’re described.

To be fair, nobody thought Apple would not only make their own CPU’s, but a family of them, and be the most performant per watt in the first iteration.

If anybody can pull off desktop equivalent apps suitable for both touch and traditional input, it’s Apple. I just don’t see them using 2 OS’s to do so.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Catalyst will be able to work in the opposite direction in the future….taking Apple Silicon Mac apps and translate them backwards to iPadOS. This can then target the iPad Pro‘s specifically whilst keeping ipados and iPad apps compatible with prior hardware. This may even end up being a compile time option in XCode for AS Mac apps….compile for iPad Pro too.

That also gives product differentiation too….if you want that functionality, you need to buy a iPP.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

To be fair, nobody thought Apple would not only make their own CPU’s, but a family of them, and be the most performant per watt in the first iteration.

If anybody can pull off desktop equivalent apps suitable for both touch and traditional input, it’s Apple. I just don’t see them using 2 OS’s to do so.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Catalyst will be able to work in the opposite direction in the future….taking Apple Silicon Mac apps and translate them backwards to iPadOS. This can then target the iPad Pro‘s specifically whilst keeping ipados and iPad apps compatible with prior hardware. This may even end up being a compile time option in XCode for AS Mac apps….compile for iPad Pro too.

That also gives product differentiation too….if you want that functionality, you need to buy a iPP.

I thought they would, from the first time they said “desktop class”. I expected them to perform well, but not THIS well, though…

AND I agree, if they do it, it won’t be with two OS’s. They’re not going to have macOS running on an iPad.