So, remote desktop (or actually SplashTop) on iPad Pro makes it a laptop replacement for me. It's pretty much right up my alley. Recently, I've gone 100% "work from home." I prefer working on a high power desktop machine (I make high scale software, it's CPU/IO intensive) and am not especially fond of notebooks for non-work things like reading or browsing casually. That said, I've wanted to be able to bum around at a local café or similar place to get out of the house from time to time and still be able to work. I also like having a tablet for chilling on the couch or similar situations to do my own thing as well. I did not want more than one extra device for both purposes.
My candidate options boiled down to Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, or iPad Pro for various reasons. Right now I'm running reset on the Surface Book to return it, because, iPad Pro + SplashTop has won out for me in very practical, actual real world testing of the devices as they pertain to my desires and preferences. I would rather remote into my Windows 10 VM running on my 5K iMac than use the Surface Book (or Surface Pro) as a tablet in any manner. Surface Book makes a decent laptop and a terrible tablet, iPad Pro makes a wonderful tablet and a decent laptop replacement. Both statements pertain to my usage patterns specifically, and are not based on guesses. I have both devices and have tried both in all expected scenarios.
So yeah, a good remote desktop app can vastly expand the usefulness of iPad Pro. What's more, it benefits massively from the increased screen space. That extra 45% of space vs. the air means I can actually be relatively comfortable even using the onscreen keyboard, which I found myself doing essentially out of laziness on one of the days I was testing the iPad Pro for these purposes.
It's a huge problem around the forums where everyone is deciding for everyone else what devices will be best. I recognize that not everyone has the opportunity to actually try them and decide. But, if it's a possibility, it's the best thing you can do. Just ignore the decisions everyone else made and try for yourself. This is a great time of year for it as well as many retailers have expanded return windows, and Microsoft is especially open to returns as they are desperate to get people to try their devices at all.
I will also say that I am enjoying the size of iPad Pro much more than I thought I would. I spent several days out of town over Thanksgiving and spent the hours between family events doing my usual online leisure activities with iPad Pro. It was stuff I'd normally do on my iMac, and, frankly, it was surprisingly comfortable and enjoyable. The split view feature was a huge part of that, and the screen size makes split view all that much better.
After the last week and after testing out an alternative approach to the tablet+laptop replacement approach, I'm quite convinced that iPad Pro really can be a notebook replacement for some of us.
