iPad Pro M1 and M2 iPad Pro too slow?

[okkibs]

Making the iPad heavier to accommodate this use case is something I hope they never do.

Offering a second USB-C port doesn't increase the weight. The chip can drive a second port and the iPads aren't that limited with internal space. Right now I can either charge, or plug in headphones, or plug in my Yubikey, or drive a display. The connectivity is worse than that of a 12" Macbook where a headphone jack was present (which the iPad could also easily feature but Apple of course doesn't give us that) and the battery was good enough that the single port doesn't need to be free for the charger as much.

It's incredibly frustrating that Apple advertises them (starting with the M1) as Pro devices with full external display support where the user is forced to unplug the display to plug in literally anything else. I can get a magic keyboard but at that point iPad plus keyboard weigh nearly the same as a M1 Macbook Air.

However, this isn’t a iPad specific issue but is an Apple general issue.

I use iPad, iPhone (with AW) and Mac and have quite honestly zero issues with any of the other categories. All these are the Pro versions and they perform as I expect them to. Granted I am still on Ventura and never tried the supposedly buggy Sonoma, but really the only Pro device in the lineup that makes me want to scream is the iPad Pro. If it was just meant to be a simple device for consuming media where you can plug in an external display to use as a TV for watching Youtube I would be excited how well it performs. But for the price, the Pro expectation, the advertising... for example the iPad Pro doesn't have NFC so when authenticating with a Yubikey I need to free the port just for those 10 seconds interrupting whatever I had plugged in.

In the ads it says superfast wireless connectivity, and eventually Apple calls it the ultimate iPad experience. Oh and all day battery life doing all that of course. Except in the fine-print it then says that they are just streaming a movie on a loop for the entire day...

And I don't think I am being unreasonable, I was incredibly happy initially about Stage Manager, the 8GiB of M1 RAM, the multitasking that allows for and it's only now after more than a year of increasing frustration trying to make this work on a daily basis that I have to give up and say it's not a Pro experience and if Apple thinks this is what the ultimate iPad experience should be like then they might as well discontinue the Pro iPads.

That sounds like a VLC problem, I can use stage manager with PiP no problem.

It absolutely is a VLC problem, but that's merely an example to showcase that third party apps are just not handling the external display well. And I cannot play all my media with the onboard tools, I cannot even import media as syncing/importing requires a computer connection which I won't have when I am bringing just the iPad along to save weight. If even well loved third party apps are badly optimized (others like for example Nextcloud have major UI issues as well) and the Apple apps can't offer the same functionality then at the end of the day it reduces how Pro the iPad Pro can be. Whether that is up to Apple or to app developers, it's Apple's hardware, OS and walled garden and I expect it to work to Apple standards.

You claim it works poorly on the internal screen but I have to ask again, is this an iPadOS issue or an App issue?

No it works fairly well on the internal screen although broken UI issues still happen (classic is when you tap-hold to open a context menu and the menu either doesn't show at all, or partly, or you can tap an option in the menu but a different option is selected instead, depends on the app and only happens if the app isn't in full screen in Stage Manager). They might be limited to third party apps but to me as the iPad user I don't care who is to blame, in the end it's happening on an Apple device. In contrast, I have zero issues with the UI of third party apps on iOS.

It's very clearly the Stage Manager implementation. Without Stage Manager everything's great but I specifically bought an iPad with M1 because of how Apple advertised it with the external display support and better multitasking.

 

[bcortens]

Offering a second USB-C port doesn't increase the weight. The chip can drive a second port and the iPads aren't that limited with internal space. Right now I can either charge, or plug in headphones, or plug in my Yubikey, or drive a display. The connectivity is worse than that of a 12" Macbook where a headphone jack was present (which the iPad could also easily feature but Apple of course doesn't give us that) and the battery was good enough that the single port doesn't need to be free for the charger as much.

It's incredibly frustrating that Apple advertises them (starting with the M1) as Pro devices with full external display support where the user is forced to unplug the display to plug in literally anything else. I can get a magic keyboard but at that point iPad plus keyboard weigh nearly the same as a M1 Macbook Air.

The weight wouldn’t come from an additional USB port but from trying to increase battery capacity to match the battery of the MacBook Air. If you need to power your external display from an iPad then battery life is always going to be compromised.

I use iPad, iPhone (with AW) and Mac and have quite honestly zero issues with any of the other categories. All these are the Pro versions and they perform as I expect them to. Granted I am still on Ventura and never tried the supposedly buggy Sonoma, but really the only Pro device in the lineup that makes me want to scream is the iPad Pro. If it was just meant to be a simple device for consuming media where you can plug in an external display to use as a TV for watching Youtube I would be excited how well it performs. But for the price, the Pro expectation, the advertising... for example the iPad Pro doesn't have NFC so when authenticating with a Yubikey I need to free the port just for those 10 seconds interrupting whatever I had plugged in.

In the ads it says superfast wireless connectivity, and eventually Apple calls it the ultimate iPad experience. Oh and all day battery life doing all that of course. Except in the fine-print it then says that they are just streaming a movie on a loop for the entire day...

And I don't think I am being unreasonable, I was incredibly happy initially about Stage Manager, the 8GiB of M1 RAM, the multitasking that allows for and it's only now after more than a year of increasing frustration trying to make this work on a daily basis that I have to give up and say it's not a Pro experience and if Apple thinks this is what the ultimate iPad experience should be like then they might as well discontinue the Pro iPads.

Stage manager is not something I’ll defend too much because I think it is half baked and not really a great user interaction design given how convoluted it is. I’m not quite sure how Apple managed to screw up the window manager so badly when macOS has such as stable window manager and even more capable version in Mission Control/Expose.

It absolutely is a VLC problem, but that's merely an example to showcase that third party apps are just not handling the external display well. And I cannot play all my media with the onboard tools, I cannot even import media as syncing/importing requires a computer connection which I won't have when I am bringing just the iPad along to save weight. If even well loved third party apps are badly optimized (others like for example Nextcloud have major UI issues as well) and the Apple apps can't offer the same functionality then at the end of the day it reduces how Pro the iPad Pro can be. Whether that is up to Apple or to app developers, it's Apple's hardware, OS and walled garden and I expect it to work to Apple standards.

Very fair.

No it works fairly well on the internal screen although broken UI issues still happen (classic is when you tap-hold to open a context menu and the menu either doesn't show at all, or partly, or you can tap an option in the menu but a different option is selected instead, depends on the app and only happens if the app isn't in full screen in Stage Manager). They might be limited to third party apps but to me as the iPad user I don't care who is to blame, in the end it's happening on an Apple device. In contrast, I have zero issues with the UI of third party apps on iOS.

It's very clearly the Stage Manager implementation. Without Stage Manager everything's great but I specifically bought an iPad with M1 because of how Apple advertised it with the external display support and better multitasking.

Yeah, I’ve always wished they would just bring split-view and slideover to external displays as I find that the best way to use iPad.

 

[Digitalguy]

I agree with you. The point of my overly simplified example was that there isn't that much to do with additional computing power on the iPad.

It is certainly true that lots of other incremental improvement is happening constantly that affect the user experience, but the point here was specifically about computing performance.

Well nobody is shocked that cars can go much faster than they are allowed to. The fact that the M1 is particuarly fast does not make it "too" fast for the iPad, mainly because the alternatives have half the RAM at best, which is actually more important than CPU power for virtually everyone, even if many people don't realize it or even don't understand how RAM works.
I would take an hypotetical iPad with A12X (or even A12) and 8GB RAM over another hypotetical iPad with M1 or M2 and 4GB RAM. Any day.

Having said that, I don't think iPadOS is the only cause or even that main reason why the "additional computing power" is less used. I think the main reason is lack of "desktop-like" apps. There are some, like some video editors. But much less than on a desktop. For many reasons that have been discussed at length in these forum.

 

[shadowboi]

Wait a few iOS and iPadOS updates and they will make anyone want “latest and greatest”🤣

 

[sc00ba]

Sounds like these 2 people aren't hungry enough to appreciate the speeds of their iPad Pros, maybe they should be made homeless for a week to help better understand advancements in technology?

 

[Webcat86]

Heck, my 2018 11" Pro is trucking along as smooth and modern-feeling as the day I bought it brand new.

That said, I'm intrigued by a potential M2 12.9" iPad Air to replace it. Increasingly needing a bigger screen iPad but don't really need the Pro features.

Having just upgraded from an Air to a Pro, what are the Pro features I may not be aware of?

 

[scupking]

My M1 Pro is still as pro as the day I got it… No reason to switch.

 

[ericwn]

Wait a few iOS and iPadOS updates and they will make anyone want “latest and greatest”

Yes, an unheard of concept in mass market computing, things get faster all the time and software gets more bloated, and often times more powerful.

 

[ericwn]

Having just upgraded from an Air to a Pro, what are the Pro features I may not be aware of?

Promotion, quad speakers.

 

[imdropbear]

Promotion, quad speakers.

FaceID, Thunderbolt.

 

[TAJones99]

My M1 12.9 is still fast and the power it has is more enough, And I feel the same about my M1 Max 16.

 

[pdxrevolution]

While I generally agree that iPad Pros offer plenty of power, the one app I notice a big difference in as you go up the CPU scale is Safari. The iOS/iPadOS version of Safari is so much slower than the macOS version that, at least for me, a fast CPU is necessary. My M2 iPad Pro is perhaps the first iPad whose Safari speed is acceptable. It's just a bit slower than my old M1 MacBook Air. I really wish Apple would optimize Safari and the OS to be as performant as macOS.

 

[iPadified]

Also think about marketing. Would a new OLED iPad sell better or worse with an M1 inside instead of an M3? Likely worse because we want, or have learned that, the latest and greatest is must to stay on top.

Who has ever been hurt by too much performance, especially if the price and the battery life is negligibly affected?

Luckily, buyers do not need to think so much on performance anymore (remember the 90:th an 00:th) and I think the industry is getting into increasing problems to motivate upgrades based on performance.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Yeah, agreed. Devices are practically always fast at launch (and they can be forever, if you never update iOS), but Apple always manages to shatter that overhead fairly quickly.

It’s very sad to see amazing iPads now be reduced to garbage, but the saddest part is to see people defending this (“well, it’s old, what do you expect”?”. What?! I expect it to work properly, thank you very much.

Just to give one example (and perhaps the perfect one): the A9 family of devices. iOS 9 and 10? Perfect. The iPhone 6s’ battery life was always only half-decent, but provided you weren’t the heaviest of users, it was enough.

You can even go and read people’s discussions when the iPhone 6s was released, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, too, and they said “the biggest leap in quality and speed”, “an iPad that will last years”, “the best iOS device I’ve ever purchased”.

Go see how these devices run. Go see how the 6s runs on iOS 15. How the 1st-gen, 12.9-inch iPad Pro runs, and even worse, see how its little brother, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro runs, with 2GB of RAM, on iPadOS 16. They’re pathetic. My point is that they shouldn’t be.

My 9.7-inch iPad Pro was forced by the A9 activation bug on iOS 9 into iOS 12, and apart from significantly reduced battery life (from 14 hours to 10-11 hours of screen-on time), the device runs almost perfectly. One more update, and it would’ve been completely obliterated. Luckily, as it stands now, I just have to charge it a liiiiiittle more frequently. Apart from that, it’s a pleasure to use. Ask updated users whether they can get any decent battery life from these devices...


...and ask them whether they’re a pleasure to use or if they have to struggle with the devices lagging and bogging down, too.

Old? Makes NO difference! I have the M1 in the first year 12.9 inch iPP. It is wicked FAST! I believe it is for one single reason, I ordered a 2 TB SSD. This baby hasn’t slowed down a bit!!. I SEE ZERO REASON TO UPGRADE-NONE. When the time comes to order a 15” iPP, I will order a 4TB SSD, OLED, and what ever goodies are available then. Old,yep I am at 76, I am way into my twilight, But, I fish in the Gulf,(Florida), photograph Birds , butterflies, I am a retired Chef, LOVE to cook, so the end of day is my dinner with my wife (Of 54 years) I also have a 2013 MBA, which runs beautiful, since Apple no longer supports it,it runs UBUNTU. I guess I am trying to say, ”apple doesn’t make junk” my 12.9 will serve me for a long time, I just love it! Oh yeah, buy the keyboard, and use your Apple Mouse, Fabulous!

 

[FeliApple]

Old? Makes NO difference! I have the M1 in the first year 12.9 inch iPP. It is wicked FAST! I believe it is for one single reason, I ordered a 2 TB SSD. This baby hasn’t slowed down a bit!!. I SEE ZERO REASON TO UPGRADE-NONE. When the time comes to order a 15” iPP, I will order a 4TB SSD, OLED, and what ever goodies are available then. Old,yep I am at 76, I am way into my twilight, But, I fish in the Gulf,(Florida), photograph Birds , butterflies, I am a retired Chef, LOVE to cook, so the end of day is my dinner with my wife (Of 54 years) I also have a 2013 MBA, which runs beautiful, since Apple no longer supports it,it runs UBUNTU. I guess I am trying to say, ”apple doesn’t make junk” my 12.9 will serve me for a long time, I just love it! Oh yeah, buy the keyboard, and use your Apple Mouse, Fabulous!

The M1 is new. It has a lot of overhead, it hasn’t been updated enough yet. The A9X’s situation I mentioned is a little different.

 

[ericwn]

The M1 is new. It has a lot of overhead, it hasn’t been updated enough yet. The A9X’s situation I mentioned is a little different.

It’s tough when your last real world example is more than half a decade old in a quickly developing chip market. All of my iPad Pro devices run fine to this day. The days of really limited RAM are long over too.

 

[FeliApple]

It’s tough when your last real world example is more than half a decade old in a quickly developing chip market. All of my iPad Pro devices run fine to this day. The days of really limited RAM are long over too.

The 2nd-gen iPad Pro would apply too. The 3rd-gen iPad Pro's battery life is still unclear, but still, a quickly developing chip market isn't a valid excuse to severely degrade the experience over and over again, 2GB of RAM or otherwise.

I contend that iOS devices have already been degraded, are in the process of being degraded, or will be degraded. The iPhone XR has an A12 Bionic. Go ask users on iOS 17 about their battery life. It's probably still reasonably snappy, but the experience suffers.

 

[ericwn]

The 2nd-gen iPad Pro would apply too. The 3rd-gen iPad Pro's battery life is still unclear, but still, a quickly developing chip market isn't a valid excuse to severely degrade the experience over and over again, 2GB of RAM or otherwise.

I contend that iOS devices have already been degraded, are in the process of being degraded, or will be degraded. The iPhone XR has an A12 Bionic. Go ask users on iOS 17 about their battery life. It's probably still reasonably snappy, but the experience suffers.

Sure let’s move the goalpost to an entry level phone released almost six years ago when were discussing an M1 device with more than twice the RAM even in the cheapest configuration.. Batteries can be serviced, for those so inclined, for a reasonable fee compared to buying a new device. The M1 devices are fast to this day and when you think you have a point on this topic of this chip feel free to link to a reputable source when the time comes. So far as an owner and daily user, performance is top shelf for me, absolutely zero complaints.

 

[FeliApple]

Sure let’s move the goalpost to an entry level phone released almost six years ago when were discussing an M1 device with more than twice the RAM even in the cheapest configuration.. Batteries can be serviced, for those so inclined, for a reasonable fee compared to buying a new device. The M1 devices are fast to this day and when you think you have a point on this topic of this chip feel free to link to a reputable source when the time comes. So far as an owner and daily user, performance is top shelf for me, absolutely zero complaints.

As far as M1 goes, not old enough. Let's talk three or four major iOS versions in the future. That moment in which Apple starts pushing the limits of support.

But please don't say "The entry-level M chip released seven years ago". That doesn't fly. I think age is irrelevant.

 

[Digitalguy]

As far as M1 goes, not old enough. Let's talk three or four major iOS versions in the future. That moment in which Apple starts pushing the limits of support.

But please don't say "The entry-level M chip released seven years ago". That doesn't fly. I think age is irrelevant.

I think performance and battery life should not be confused. I bet the M1 iPads are going to be as fast as in 2021 at the end of their update cycle. Just as my A12X (with 6GB RAM) is now 5 updates later (with 1 or 2 more to go).
Battery life is a different story, with many factors affecting Li-on battery over time. And even then Screen on time and Stand-by time should not be confused.

 

[FeliApple]

I think performance and battery life should not be confused. I bet the M1 iPads are going to be as fast as in 2021 at the end of their update cycle. Just as my A12X (with 6GB RAM) is now 5 updates later (with 1 or 2 more to go).
Battery life is a different story, with many factors affecting Li-on battery over time. And even then Screen on time and Stand-by time should not be confused.

Agree, I'm no longer hopeful about battery life. As far as performance goes, we'll see. I hope you're right, as the A12 iPhone Xr is definitely not as good as on iOS 12. Hopefully the M1 is, but I will not believe that until I see it.

 

[rui no onna]

As far as M1 goes, not old enough. Let's talk three or four major iOS versions in the future. That moment in which Apple starts pushing the limits of support.

iOS 17 is the 3rd major firmware update that the M1 iPad Pro has received. iOS 18 will be the fourth.

 

[Digitalguy]

Agree, I'm no longer hopeful about battery life. As far as performance goes, we'll see. I hope you're right, as the A12 iPhone Xr is definitely not as good as on iOS 12. Hopefully the M1 is, but I will not believe that until I see it.

Lack of RAM can be responsible for poorer performance. With 8GB we are past the point were it can be a bottleneck over an update cycle. Just like 6GB is not going to be a bottleneck for the 2018 iPad pro during the supported life of the device (4 I am not 100% certain yet). Especially with Apple continuing to make 4GB iPads until now (and I bet the next base iPad will still be 4GB RAM).
And I am not even considering the fact that M1 has access to swap memory, since Apple has zero transparency about that and we don't have a clou about how much it can swap or if it does only when some specific RAM intensive apps call for it.
As for battery life, the impact of software is unpredictable. You may have lost hope, but nothing prevents Apple to improve battery life with software instead of degrading it. Likely? No. Possible, yes.

 

[FeliApple]

iOS 17 is the 3rd major firmware update that the M1 iPad Pro has received. iOS 18 will be the fourth.

Agreed, longevity will probably be better, but regardless of how many years Apple chooses to provide, I'm interested in end-of-life performance and battery life. If Apple supports the M1 until iOS 23, then how does that run on the M1 iPad Pro or Air?

 

[Digitalguy]

Agreed, longevity will probably be better, but regardless of how many years Apple chooses to provide, I'm interested in end-of-life performance and battery life. If Apple supports the M1 until iOS 23, then how does that run on the M1 iPad Pro or Air?

I'll let you know, as given the headroom I plan to upgrade till the end.