iPad Pro Apple Silicon on the Mac unintentionally killed the iPad Pro

[rui no onna]

Every once in a while at least. As in your tax return or something.

But even when the iPad can do a task (as, let's say, "finishing your term paper"), the question is:
Can it do these tasks as good as - or better than - a Mac?

Lol, I’m in this boat. I’d use my personal laptop for tax returns and the rare occasion I work from home. Otherwise, I’m on the iPad 90% of the time.

Work is primarily on an employer provided Windows desktop.

 

[James Godfrey]

Every once in a while at least. As in your tax return or something.

But even when the iPad can do a task (as, let's say, "finishing your term paper"), the question is:
Can it do these tasks as good as - or better than - a Mac?

I find that the iPad can do a lot of things that a Mac can however, they usually require workarounds which makes the whole experience more clunky and less intuitive.

At this point in time if your an artist/designer yes the iPad is an awesome device, if not, the iPad is merely an extension of your Mac and/or a content consumption device.

For example my use case at the moment for the iPad is content consumption/social media/few games now and again and using it to read through my uni work and take notes etc… but once I need to get some real tasks done like writing essays, editing music/video, editing websites etc that’s when I utilise the mac. I have a lot of apple devices including HomePods, apple TV’s, Watch, iPhone, mac and iPad and if I had to ditch one product out of them all it would probably be the iPad mainly because my use cases for it I can simply do with my phone albeit on a smaller display.

 

[subjonas]

I agree, but I feel the iPad is also more about providing a computer alternative, rather than a replacement.

And I would like to believe that the iPad style tablet has indeed replaced laptops for a large number of people. To use an analogy, these are the people who were trying to drive in screws using a hammer because the screwdriver hadn't been invented yet.

The beauty of the iPad is that it lets people perform tasks that were previously impractical or more inconvenient to carry out on a laptop. As such, it does not make sense to try and make the iPad more like a conventional computer because then you risk losing what made the iPad unique in the first place.

You don’t give people more choice by giving them more of the same.

I agree on all points. But I do make a distinction between “a large number of people” and “most people”. Ultimately, who of us actually knows how many people, but my guess is it’s still a minority.

 

[Traverse]

Maybe M3 Pro on a 3nm process allows a SoC cool enough to place in the iPad Pro...?

Maybe said SoC is just cool enough for the 12.9" (or larger...?) iPad Pro, but not the smaller chassis of the 11" iPad Pro...?

For me personally, the iPad became fast enough a while ago. Other than RAM, the 2018 A12X is sufficient and I don’t see the M1 becoming a bottleneck for a long time.

I want the iPad to go in the *other* direction. If the M3 comes with the process shrink to 4nm I wish they spend the entire budget on power efficiency. Once the MacBooks were updated with Apple Silicon it became apparent that the iPad was outclassed in battery life. For my usage the iPhone is well past comfortable and I don’t bring my Mac charger with me, but I know a few hours of cellular browsing at 50% brightness and my M1 iPad will need a top off.

Honesty, if I could get matching RAM I’d trade the M1 for the A15.