Tim Bajarin, writing for Tech.pinions:
Over the last two years, the technology to deliver a more robust 2-in-1 experience has gotten much better. There are two products on the market I think might be pointing us to the next major shift in portable computing. Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Apple’s new iPad Pro are, at the moment, the best of breed 2-in-1s. I will probably be dragged, kicking and screaming, toward these new designs. But after using both for some time now, I am starting to warm up to them.
And:
When Tim Cook announced the iPad Pro, he said it could do as much as 80-90% of what anyone could do on a traditional laptop. On a recent trip, I decided to try that theory out. I only took my iPad Pro with me and used it as if it was my MacBook or a Windows laptop. I found, in general, Cook was right.
I want to believe. I really want to. But as I’ve said before, the iPad works best as a content consumption device, with light duty creating content. For the heavy lifting, I still turn to my Mac.
I agree.
As impressive as iOS had evolved, it is still no match for OS X.
(“For heavy lifting”)
I don’t agree. The iPad Pro doesn’t NEED to match or replace OS X, just as I don’t expect my MacBook Retina to match or replace my 27″ Retina iMac.
Yesterday, during a call to Apple Care to help with doing some “housekeeping” on my iMac which had ground to a halt with corrupted caches and files, the support person mentioned that they had worked extensively with Adobe to test the iPad Pro and Adobe’s apps for it.
This makes good sense to me. Adobe gets it, and it’s only a matter of time until I get my own iPad Pro, try the apps designed for it, and benefit from that new synergy.
I fully expect millions of others to do likewise.
The iPad works best as a content consumption device FOR YOU. I’ve used my iPad mini to do real work for over year, and plenty of others have too. Your use case isn’t everyone else’s use case.
For so many people, their Internet usage is browse the web, use email, use Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram. They take photos and manipulate them to a basic level. They use eBay, they watch movies, Netflix etc.
They don’t need a PC or a Mac. And if they are older and might need their child’s technical support then even more reason to use a tablet than a traditional computer.
People who do hefty video, hefty image manipulation, coding, app development etc need a traditional computer.
Cook was right. I use my iPad Pro 80%, iPhone 15% and iMac 5%. If you can’t adjust or rethink your workflow with iOS vs OSX, then too bad so sad. But for the rest of us the iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard are AMAZING!
Adobe’s iOS apps with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil are glorious!
What makes it best as a content consumption device? From my experience, the answer is typically software.
“I can’t build a website on an iPad!” Why? “Photoshop isn’t available!” But Autodesk Graphic does many of the same things. I’ve designed websites in Graphic quite a bit recently.
“Well, I can’t code on there.” Why? Coda is fantastic, but there are other options as well. No SASS? Setup a simple Digital Ocean droplet and install SASS there. I have a droplet with Git, SASS, Ruby, Node, and more accessible anywhere in the world. The iPad becomes a terminal. Coda allows me to have GUI for editing and a Terminal to run my preprocessors and other scripts. Ready to deploy, commit to Git and deploy.
The only area that was lacking for me was testing of websites. Responsive, JavaScript debugging, and inspecting my CSS was next-to-impossible. So I built an app for iPad and iPad Pro for it called Ergo Web Tools. Web inspector and JavaScript console with a scalable web browser.
iOS can do many things, but apps complete the equation. Many needs have been filled, but many more are actively being filled still in pro software.
http://ergowebtools.com
Graphic is more like illustrator, rather than photoshop. But there are plenty of image editing programs available. For most cropping / repairing / adjusting work Snapseed is pretty good. Shame it was bought out by Google.
I wonder if this is an opinion shared by most or more coming from legacy laptop/desktop users who are more comfortable with those devices and have established workflows on those devices. Would someone who has grown up on mobile devices think they need a Mac for heavy lifting?
Right, but with modern web design (arguments aside), raster editing isn’t as required. Most layouts are flat, vector, gradient-covered simplicity these days. Graphic is perfect for this stuff. You are right, though, editing your images in the hundred good image editing apps before heading to Graphic is a great option as well.
iPad is crippled by the iOS app economy. When the majority of owners get over the 99 cent or $1.99 mentality of app purchases and are willing to pay in parity with Mac OS, then developers will bring working class tools to iOS. Adobe is linking their free tools to Creative Cloud, sort of like a loss leader.
While I largely agree, it takes developers to set those expectations. Yes, it hurts when Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft enter the space with a price tag of free, but Coda is $9.99, Graphic is $8.99, Pixelmator is $4.99, and even a Twitter client like Tweetbot is $9.99. These guys are not making as much as they do on Mac, but the market in iOS is growing and I feel that the “pro” market is growing too. The iPad Pro, when complimented with pro apps, will contribute to this even more.
My friend just switched from a 13-inch MacBook Air to a 13-inch iPad Pro and he has never been happier. He is an iMovie-class software user, and he’s an artist, so the iOS apps and Pencil suit him perfectly. I recommended the switch, so I was totally on board. We modernized him from 1992 form factor to 2010 form factor and he is golden.
But here is the thing: if I go into Apple right now and tell them I want to do the same kind of switch from mouse to touch, they have nothing for me. Microsoft does for some reason. But Apple does not.
So are there touch Macs coming? If so, when? I need one 3 years ago. It is almost 10 years since iPhone. What is the holdup?
They don’t compete. If you need the pro app platform, you get a Mac. If you need the consumer app platform, you get an iPad. If you want to run both, you run both.
That is great.
But you have to realize, Web development is from 1992 and it hasn’t really changed that much. It is no surprise you can do Web development on a 2016 iPad Pro that has something like 1000x the compute power of the system that WorldWideWeb was created on.
How can I mix and master a music album on iPad Pro? How can my friends edit a TV series or feature film on iPad Pro? How can my other friends create 3D animations all day on iPad Pro? The systems we are using for our work typically have 10x everything from iPad Pro. If you take the SSD from iPad Pro and give it 10x the speed and 10x the capacity, and the you give the iPad Pro almost 10x the RAM, and then you give the iPad Pro almost 10x the wired port bandwidth, and then you give the iPad Pro almost 10x the screen area, then you would be getting close to an iPad that I can switch to full-time.
I bought an iPad on the first day in 2010, and I have 2 of them now. And I love touch and hate the mouse. But Apple doesn’t have a touch product for me the way they have iPad Pro for you. I wish they did, but they don’t.
If somebody grows up with an iPad but wants to edit a feature film, they will need a Mac. Or if they want to mix and master a music album, they will need a Mac. Or if they want to work as a 3D animator. Or a special effects artist. And so on. Not because they need a mouse — if there were touch Macs they could use that also. But they would need a Mac because they need the pro app platform that only exists on the Mac and they need literally 10x the hardware of an iPad Pro.
The problem is this idea that “legacy laptop/desktop” users are dinosaurs who don’t get the modern stuff. I think that just comes from the fact that Apple has not modernized the Mac. So you think we are using Macs to get the antique mouse. But that is not at all the case. I don’t even use a mouse with my Mac, I use a tablet since the 1990’s. And I bought an iPhone and an iPad on the first day that each was available and I love using touch, but that doesn’t enable me to mix and master a music album on my iPad. I’ve written songs and made paintings on my iPad, but all of that work had to go over to the Mac to be finished and published.
The pricing is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that there are hardly any iPad users.
Instead of iPad growing to be 10x the size of the Mac like many, many people expected, the iPad and Mac sell about the same number of units. And many iPads are replacing paper binders in a delivery truck or are book readers, so the user doesn’t spend money on software like a Mac user. Macs are often a professional workstation with $1000 or more of pro software on there.
Hopefully, Apple has some new feature coming for developers where they can port a Mac app to iPad Pro really, really easily in very little time. Maybe they have to do a Classic type thing where iPad Pro gets a chunk of freeze-dried OS X as a library.
I’m not sure how much experience you have in web development, but to say that it hasn’t changed much since 1992 is completely wrong. A modern website is 1000x more complex than what existed in 1992, between images, animation, JavaScript, CSS, and much more. As the environment has gotten more complex, so too have our tools.
If I were building a website for 1992 web browsers, you’d be right that the iPad Pro is 1000x more powerful than I need, just like if you were mastering music with software from 1992. But I’m not and you’re not.
It is amazing that even the iPhone brings freedom to extend “computer-related” tasks – even past what traditionally used to be computer-only related stuff. Here’s a list of things I prefer to do from either my iPhone or iPad in general over using a laptop or desktop computer:
Checking weather, checking bank balances, tracking online orders to know when they will be delivered to my doorstep – even making online orders – Amazon or eBay! I exclusively use my phone during travel for holding my boarding pass and getting notifications about Airline gate changes. I pay attention to local news notifications – especially when related to interstate traffic for the trip to/from work – (it seems that barges have hit the Mississippi River bridge a lot lately, as well as 18 wheeler petroleum spills). I use my phone to pay bills, navigate to new locations, whether home or when traveling out of state. I use my iPad for reading of all types or materials – Bible reading, recreational reading, academic or work-related study. I use my phone/tablet for organizing documents in cloud accounts – EverNote and Drop Box – even blogging is a joy with the WordPress app running on iPad Pro – the keyboard is no longer an issue. I take pictures and share to social media with my phone – as I’m sure everyone with a FaceBook account does; but, just think about how that’s something that has changed with the coming of the smartphone – people used to do this only on a computer at home!
This list was being thrown together rather quickly – there are probably tons of more tasks that could be inserted here. But the overall point is that computing tasks are migrating over to smaller devices. With SSH terminal apps – I can even use the iPad to write programs on server systems, compile and execute code with no disadvantage as compared to using my MBPr to do the same (SSH into a system for the same work)!!
It really depends on how one uses their PC … Initially, I said there was no way an iPad Pro could replace a laptop … Until, I started to challenge myself to create a list of tasks that could only be done on the laptop and could not be done on the iPad … that list is rather small for me.
There are those that say this device is too large to be portable – but, its a simple fact that it’s so much more portable than my MBPr => it’s so easy to whip out and use, that I find it to be much much more portable than the MBP.
Just my thoughts