Can anyone that has this and the new keyboard let us know your impressions on using it on your lap? I have the 2018 model and it’s far too wobbly when attached to the keyboard to use on my lap. It’s too top heavy.
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Review: Two Weeks With the M4 iPad Pro
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These are miscreants and trolls working for competitors. If you cave to one of their demands they will come up with two more demands. If you cave to one more demand then they will insist on being able to boot Windows natively on an iPad or MacBook Pro.
And that's the scam and now you see what's behind it. The internet is a place where corporations play dirty and use influencers and trolls to sabotage each other's products.
Plenty, but it’s going to vary from user to user ultimately.
I upgraded from the M1 11” pro to the M4 11” pro base 256gb, with cellular, mainly for the Tandem OLED display. It’s gorgeous and a dream in the hand as a tablet, which is after all what it is first and foremost.
I’ve used it in coffee shops for editing presentations and light office work, the footprint is perfect. Pleasantly surprised how much better the new Magic Keyboard is, which helps me get over the cost of having to buy again. My fingers no longer catch the screen entering numbers, having the function row is great, and the haptic trackpad a major improvement.
I’ve used it on my 38” ultrawide with stage manager and been pleasantly surprised at how good it is. The only downside is the tandem OLED makes my LED ultrawide look washed out now.
I know the M4 is overkill, but it creates massive headroom for future improvements. Anything less, and people would be complaining it didn’t have that.
I remember how I missed the thinness of my first iPad Air when I got the M1 11” pro, now I’ve got an M4 ‘air’ pro.
It used to be my first Rev A MacBook Air, but this is now my favourite Apple product to date, and go to device after the phone for most things.
Overall, I’m delighted, if financially poorer as a result!
I’ve used it in coffee shops for editing presentations and light office work, the footprint is perfect. Pleasantly surprised how much better the new Magic Keyboard is, which helps me get over the cost of having to buy again. My fingers no longer catch the screen entering numbers, having the function row is great, and the haptic trackpad a major improvement.
I’ve used it on my 38” ultrawide with stage manager and been pleasantly surprised at how good it is. The only downside is the tandem OLED makes my LED ultrawide look washed out now.
I know the M4 is overkill, but it creates massive headroom for future improvements. Anything less, and people would be complaining it didn’t have that.
I remember how I missed the thinness of my first iPad Air when I got the M1 11” pro, now I’ve got an M4 ‘air’ pro.
It used to be my first Rev A MacBook Air, but this is now my favourite Apple product to date, and go to device after the phone for most things.
Overall, I’m delighted, if financially poorer as a result!
"Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep."
For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966
What I see people use Windows "tablets" for is just as a laptop with a really crappy trackpad and keyboard. Windows never really did anything to become a tablet. They tried and failed miserably.
It's the last sentence that's interesting to me. Is it better to be a big phone? As Apple says, what is a computer? Still all comes down to software and hardware compatibility.
It's astounding to me that so many people seem to be able to get by in the world today with just a phone. And not just because of the size. I agree they do like the simplicity, but where's the line? I still get asked to do real computer tasks because I have a real computer by my friends and family who only have phones.
I don't think it's so much that they prefer it, it's that they don't care enough to spend the money on two devices and they must have a phone. They simply don't understand computers, think that Windows is computers, and just want to instagram their tiktoks and talk to their friends.
This. Their so called 'tablet' even has a fan in some models.
Making the iPad Pro even thinner is a good strategic move by Apple as Microsoft can't follow it. Windows, any desktop operating system, on a device that slim is asking for trouble. Desktop apps can make our Macs run hot and slow down. That's something a tablet can't afford.
I'm not sure that's how it works with AAPL. In fact, I doubt it is. Hardware returns might drive decisions about how hardware is designed but software is a whole 'nother matter.
In any event, I am not asking for full-blown MacOS on an iPad, I'm just wanting two things from Mac's Finder--window management and file management. Giving us those would not gut Mac sales; it might actually complement Mac sales. I for one would be more likely to upgrade my iPad more often if it weren't so painful/unintuitive to manage files and window on it--because then I would be able to use it for more real-world tasks and not just primarily for content consumption and the occasional note-taking.
I switched to working exclusively on the 12.9 M1 for a year as an experiment. I did management and tech consulting for IT businesses, utilizing (among other apps) the MS Office suite and Jump Deskop with the ProPoint mouse and sometimes external displays. It worked perfectly, and only having to bring iPad and super tiny mouse for everything was glorious.
Only when I at some point had to do some heavy BI stuff utilizing PowerBI Desktop and various other compute and memory intensive tools, I ended up getting a souped up MBP running Windows though Parallels.
In essence, for most serious work the iPad is terrific, but for power hungry software outside of the creative business, we do need that desktop class OS.
If WWDC24 introduces “macOS for iPad”, or Parallels/VMWare released for it, I’ll be the first to order the 13” M4. Until then, the M1 will do just fine (though that repositioned front cam is persuasive)…
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Power hungry software by nature should not be on a tablet which is power limited and can become too warm to handle by hand.
If you get an iPad with macOS on it you would probably also be the first to complain on the forums about how a desktop operating system running on an ultra thin tablet with limited memory, cooling and touchability doesn't live up to your expectations when you ran desktop software on it.
Thankfully Apple doesn't listen to people like you. They listen to the majority of users and the developers. There are no developers asking for macOS on the iPad because they know the problems better than you do.
You'll get a better iPadOS because that's all we need. It will continue to get incrementally better while remaining efficient for the tablet form factor.
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They haven’t dropped the folio case. I’m using one on my 13 inch iPad M4 in fact they’ve made it better. They’ve put more magnets somewhere so now instead of the phone case just being at one angle you can have it almost vertical and all the way back to 45°, so it’s still 99 quid which is a ridiculous price for a case but it is much better.
I suspect I'm not the person to answer this question because I have had no problems typing on my 2018 iPP 12.9 inch with the MKB in my lap on the couch. And I have no problems doing the same with the M4 iPP 13 inch.
This is true whether I am sitting on the couch with my feet on the floor and the iPP in my lap (conventional position) or I am sitting on the couch with the coffee table close to me, my feet on the edge of the coffee table, my thighs at a 45 degree angle to my hips, and the iPP on my thighs (my preferred position). In either position, I do not find the MKB to be wobbly or the iPP to be top heavy in the keyboard.
I really love the arguments why a device with the best AS chip, 1/2TB and 16GB (basically a MBA) couldn’t run MacOS. The usage cited would also fry the Air, LLM/3D is something you do on a MBP or better Studio/Pro. The MBA, maximally, is okay for some light photoshoppery.
But let me give you a real example- I just used a quick holidays to rebuild a large playlist after Apple Music deleted half of the tracks. I couldn’t have done that annoying little task on the iPad, simply because bulk editing of tracks does not exist. Going through 1500 tracks one by one is crazy. And this is the crux with iPadOS in every detail. No developer’s mode in Safari, not a single fine file manager (try changing the color of tagged files via SMB), AdobeCC - forget it, why should the software most professional designers use run on an “pro” device? Everything is just basically iOS of last year with a terrible multi-tasking stuck on top that few people use. As soon as you get from consumption to actually seriously doing something you end up with the impression that on Mac you either could do it in a fraction of the time or that on iPad it’s just impossible. Which is fine with the Mini, maybe even the Air. It is not fine to have a device at 2x the price of the MBA with these limitations. It’s a (brilliant) toy. But in the long run logic without AU-extensions, FinalCut without Motion-plugins is in no way good for real work. It’s just a teaser showing you how good touch could be with the grown-up versions of these lightweight apps. If you want to sell a pro device, it needs better software than my Mini6. Until then the iPP is a way overpriced surfing/reading/watching/notetaking/scribbling device with hardware yearning to do more.
But let me give you a real example- I just used a quick holidays to rebuild a large playlist after Apple Music deleted half of the tracks. I couldn’t have done that annoying little task on the iPad, simply because bulk editing of tracks does not exist. Going through 1500 tracks one by one is crazy. And this is the crux with iPadOS in every detail. No developer’s mode in Safari, not a single fine file manager (try changing the color of tagged files via SMB), AdobeCC - forget it, why should the software most professional designers use run on an “pro” device? Everything is just basically iOS of last year with a terrible multi-tasking stuck on top that few people use. As soon as you get from consumption to actually seriously doing something you end up with the impression that on Mac you either could do it in a fraction of the time or that on iPad it’s just impossible. Which is fine with the Mini, maybe even the Air. It is not fine to have a device at 2x the price of the MBA with these limitations. It’s a (brilliant) toy. But in the long run logic without AU-extensions, FinalCut without Motion-plugins is in no way good for real work. It’s just a teaser showing you how good touch could be with the grown-up versions of these lightweight apps. If you want to sell a pro device, it needs better software than my Mini6. Until then the iPP is a way overpriced surfing/reading/watching/notetaking/scribbling device with hardware yearning to do more.
MacBook screen is too thin to be a touch enabled. And, then there is that smudging effect on those screens, if by. chance you touch it. So, the idea that an iPad can act like a tablet. The iOS became iPadOS, maybe on the way to become macOS on a tablet. The thing is, macOS can work with a touch, there are quite a bit touch enabled external monitors that work with macOS. Maybe, in the near future, we might get a touch enabled MacBook and/or iPad with macOS. That would be the day!
Windows is a touch enabled even in the XP time. There are 100s of manufacturers, who make touch enabled Windows laptops, 2 in 1s, convertibles, and simply tablets. MS never failed that area.
Incorrect. It helps to be a little tech literate and understand the CPU is sandwiched behind the iPad's display. macOS and macOS apps that are not optimised for tablets and can consume a lot of power, which would overheat the iPad's CPU and damage the display.
The MacBook Air doesn't have a CPU behind the display, so the display is safe. It is still recommended that the software you run on a MacBook Air is suitable for that device. Big Blender renders and big AI models are not suitable.
There are two other Apple products that do have processors behind the display and because of that the display becomes warm and fans are required to keep the display cool. Those two products are the Studio Display and the Pro Display XDR.
Some Surface tablets also have fans and vents for the same reason. That's why they are ugly, warm and don't sell nearly as well as iPads.
If you're not a software or hardware engineer, and if you're not capable of using just a little common sense to understand their decisions then you wouldn't keep insisting that macOS and macOS apps are suitable for a tablet.
Ask for a better iPadOS instead of making the iPad worse by using it with an unsuitable OS.
People who make irrational demands do not stop if those demands are ever met. They move the goal posts and then start demanding other things like Windows and Linux running natively on iPads. Then they'll demand iPhone should run Android, then they'll demand the Watch should be opened up. You can't make irrational people happy, especially those corporate funded troll farms paid pogecoins and donkcoins to spread nonsense on the web.
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People who don't understand how a display can be damaged by a hot CPU behind it are never going accept anything you tell them or show them. They aren't trying to reason or be sensible.
An obvious improvement to the iPad, without compromises, would be to allow dual boot of iPadOS and MacOS.
MacOS would not need to accept touch input, and requirement is instead the magic keyboard or another bluetooh keyboard and mouse. And allow for external screen to be hooked up.
iPadOS for lighter use when on the go, or drawing, etc.
Then you get the best of two worlds. Surely everyone at Apple would agree this would make the iPad an even better device. The hardware is there. The only reason they are not doing it is because of greed... They want you to buy both an iPad and Macbook.