If Apple can further improve the functionality of Sidecar to allow iPad (Pro’s) to display a Mac screen from any distance over WiFi, then having that trackpad would be a game changer... Especially if Apple can use some sort of trickery to drastically reduce lag while keeping a sharp image.
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Apple's Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro: Everything You Need to Know
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I don't know the answer. Apple made fun of the competition (mainly MS) when they said "they are confused" but recently Apple seems to be confused itself on the direction of the iPad. Tablets and Laptops are meant to be used differently, not the same. Otherwise, why have 2 categories if they are the same?
I personally would never use a physical keyboard, mouse or stupid trackpad on my iPad. I have had iPad for years, iPad Pro 2018 since launch day. The only accessory I find useful is Apple pencil for fine precision when it comes to video/photo editing.
no, because I need the iPad too. I don’t want to carry a macbook AND an iPad because some people can’t stand the fact that a feature they don’t need is added to the os
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good for you. Why can’t you accept the fact that there are people who use the iPad differently than you do? Nobody will force you to use a trackpad
Just carry your mac, thats all
This is the thing,apple makes the efforts to make the ipad an macbook with the added trackpad and all other features
So why you would travel with ipad +keyboard when they are almost the same weight As the macbook but the OS one is still limited and the other is not..a mac can run macos,windowsos,linux and now ios apps...
Personally I hope they keep the switches the same, I think the current ones feel lovely. Wish they’d change the outside cover material though.
I’m more excited for what this means for the OS than actually having a trackpad built into the keyboard (I too would miss the multiple angles of that was how they did it). I’d rather connect a magic reckless anyway. But I wonder if this encroachment into Mac territory will coincide with Xcode for iPad!
I’m more excited for what this means for the OS than actually having a trackpad built into the keyboard (I too would miss the multiple angles of that was how they did it). I’d rather connect a magic reckless anyway. But I wonder if this encroachment into Mac territory will coincide with Xcode for iPad!
It just shouldnt have taken this long. It's like this basically. 2007 Apple says we made multi touch displays mainstream and are way ahead of competition and best yet you dont need a stylus because NOBODY would ever want one. 2012 - Microsoft releases Surface devices (A PC in a tablet form factor that has keyboard and trackpad and stylus and runs a desktop OS. Apple says no one will EVER want to use a tablet that way, we know what we are doing. Through 2012 to 2015 tablet PC's and 2-in-1s become popular and they Surface starts getting real traction. 2015 - Apple says we have this new product called the iPad Pro but still only runs iOS but it has a keyboard attachment and a stylus AND we named it pro so you can feel like everyone else who is going towards the form factor. October 2016 - Both Apple and Microsoft hold events teasing new touch products. Microsoft comes with the surface studio which should have been the natural progression of the i mac, but you know, no one likes touch screens says apple. Apple releases macbook pro with a touch....wait for it...bar! instead of a touch screen. come 2019 where every single PC OEM other than apple has tablets and 2-in-1s announces iPad OS with bare minimum multi tasking features and mouse support equivalent to what my Android phone has been able to do for the past 3 years or longer. flash forward to 2020 and Apple says we are still the only PC manufacture without a touch display on laptops, but we gave you the touch bar so you are good.
I have gone through two of their iPad Pro keyboards - the first only worked on occasions for some unknown reason, and the seams around the edge started to split - the second has just given up working at all - so I don’t have too much confidence in what was a great idea in theory, but in practise fails and is a costly fail.
I agree. I won’t buy on day one...it will depend on the price and my perceived gouge factor.
Here's the link to the product page:
MacBook Air 13-inch and MacBook Air 15-inch
MacBook Air laptop with the superfast M4 chip. Built for Apple Intelligence. Lightweight, with all-day battery life. Now in a new Sky Blue color.
www.apple.com
To me the biggest limitation on using a mouse on the iPad is iPadOS and its interface.
I'm hoping Apple innovates on the GUI design of iPadOS14... bringing true mouse support, rather than the limited accessibility 'feature' that exists today. Also, if Apple would implement better multitasking (i.e., easier to enter/exit multitasking mode, and forcing all apps to enter windowed mode if the user so wants, similar to macOS), the iPad would be an even more killer product.
I'm gonna wait and see what they do with iPadOS14... then I think I'll upgrade. The 2018 model is so powerful that I might even buy that at the reduced price that will inevitably happen after the new model hits the street.
I'm hoping Apple innovates on the GUI design of iPadOS14... bringing true mouse support, rather than the limited accessibility 'feature' that exists today. Also, if Apple would implement better multitasking (i.e., easier to enter/exit multitasking mode, and forcing all apps to enter windowed mode if the user so wants, similar to macOS), the iPad would be an even more killer product.
I'm gonna wait and see what they do with iPadOS14... then I think I'll upgrade. The 2018 model is so powerful that I might even buy that at the reduced price that will inevitably happen after the new model hits the street.
Agreed. I don’t begrudge other folks that use their iPad with a keyboard and mouse, but personally, I don’t care for the experience. IPadOS is a touch based UI, so it just seems more natural to navigate my iPad with touch rather than keyboard and trackpad. In other words, the iPad in laptop mode feels forced. The iPad in tablet mode feels natural.
The pencil is a different story. It allows the iPad to shine in tablet mode for marking up documents, taking notes and creating sketches/diagrams. The pencil feels like a very natural accessory for a tablet.
Of course, these are all personal preferences, so YMMV.
You bring up a good point. Apple (and Phil Schiller) repeatedly say a Touch Screen MacBook was a terrible experience and this was years ago. So they revisit it but in backwardsland, so now an iPad which is meant to be a touch experience uses a TrackPad seems just plain silly.
The same could be said about using a physical keyboard. But for some use cases a physical keyboard makes a lot of sense. But when you are using a physical keyboard, it sucks having to touch the screen to move the cursor in text, etc. Hence a trackpad.
It’s not rocket science. Adding keyboards didn’t change the essence of iPad, adding pencil didn’t change the essence of ipad, and adding support for trackpads won’t either. It’s still a touch-first device.
All this handwringing is silly. Every app must support touch and presumably always will have to. These additional accessories are optional, not required, and are tools for getting certain jobs done more easily.
Once you're there, it's actually better to get a Macbook Air for the same price - and with better flexibility. Even if I have an iPad, I still have to use my computer for lots of tasks that aren't possible or uncomfortable on the iPad. And some stuff is easier on the iPad.
In your opinion.
A MacBook Air is less flexible in many ways - no Apple Pencil support, you can’t use it like a tablet (it doesn’t have a form factor that is a good replacement for a pad of paper, for example), etc.
Different tools for different jobs. Each is inherently better for certain things, and not for all things.
Not sure why you'd wonder why one would want a trackpad. With a keyboard, the screen is vertical. Typing often implies the need to select text and interact with the screen in ways that would benefit from a trackpad.
Hard to see them *not* doing this. They've already added trackpad support to iPadOS (expecting it to be improved if they have a first party accessory for it). Pencil sales? I don't see the Pencil and a trackpad as being mutually exclusive. I think they correctly expect to sell both a Pencil *and* a Smart Keyboard (with trackpad) to a lot of the same people.
New trackpad technology allows Apple for the first time to have Coronavirus detection built in with an option to report this diagnostic back to Apple, opening up an entirely new realm in pandemic reporting and control.
Yes. We had multi user support since inception, but those were the times when multimedia/Games were in CDs. And personal photos, videos etc were nothing close to what we have on our phones today. If you observe today, many computers have really become single user devices, with occasional guest accounts with limited memory use. Even family computers (which are becoming rarer every passing day) usually have one shared accounts. And computers end up having much less user data these days. I've already used up 60% of my iPad's memory, just single user in 2 years. There is no way my 256 GB iPad could be a family device if it had individual accounts. I would need at least a 1TB memory for that.
A shared low cost family iPad with a single account keeps things way simpler. While I would like a multi user support, there is a lot of chances of that getting screwed up if Apple implements it. It would need a lot of work and I hope Apple does it.
1) Education has a very different controlled setting.
2) The apps and educational videos on every iPad is same(and shared) for all accounts.
3) Apps are supposed to support this feature, for eg, all user data is supposed to be stored in iCloud. And per user data is very minimal for educational apps.
4) Personal data is non existent on device.
6) The biggest data consumption is private photos and videos. And such usage is not possible on device.
5) The iPads can be wiped out or reset.
Like I said, it is possible. But the dynamics of the iPad will change too much. It will become a hassle to manage a family iPad (teachers do have to manage educational iPads.)
It is way simpler for families to buy a low cost, high storage iPad and use a shared account. Putting unsharable private data on shared iPads will complicate things.
Apple has not nailed multitasking on iPad yet. iPad OS has not yet nailed single user use cases yet. So I doubt multiuser support will roll out this year,.
It doesn't make them any more useless than they are now; it just means people who want a 'household iPad' will be more willing to pay the premium for the higher-storage variants.