True, with every advancement in the iPad, there are probably more people who start to expect or hope for eventual iPad/Mac parity. It seems to outpace those who have given up haha.
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iPad Pro M1 iPad Pro...why?
- Thread starter jclardy
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Thank you for the review of the ”historical” and current pricing. It makes me feel less crazy when thinking about buying the 2021 version of my 2018 iPP. The only issue left, for me, is the disappointment about having to buy a new version of the MK. Passing down my 2018 to one of my kids might just take the sting out of it, as the trade-in isn’t that good.
I was really excited for the M1 iPad Pro, but I think my post-event sensible brain has started to kick in. I am not convinced iPad OS 15 will be anything to shout home about (main thing will be the new home screen I suspect). In which case, I will save a chunk of change and keep my 2018 12.9 Pro.
I’ve got a 2018 iPad Pro 12.9”, and the 2020 MK. I keep going back and forth on whether it is worth upgrading. The 2020 iPad Pro clearly wasn’t worth upgrading to. The new screen on the 2021 seems nice, but the fact is I’m pretty much a consumer, not someone that produces content. So the M1 chip would be me driving a V-8 Mustang on a bike path
The only way I could “justify” the 2021 is gifting the 2018 to one of my kids. One already has the 2020 iPad Air (thank you Dad
So the other one might deserve the 2018 iPad Pro OP, send me some of your common sense!
I’ve got a 2018 iPad Pro 12.9”, and the 2020 MK. I keep going back and forth on whether it is worth upgrading. The 2020 iPad Pro clearly wasn’t worth upgrading to. The new screen on the 2021 seems nice, but the fact is I’m pretty much a consumer, not someone that produces content. So the M1 chip would be me driving a V-8 Mustang on a bike path
The only way I could “justify” the 2021 is gifting the 2018 to one of my kids. One already has the 2020 iPad Air (thank you Dad
OP, send me some of your common sense!
It's funny how the M1 is considered such a big deal when we've got oodles of unnecessary performance with A14 on the iPhone 12.
True, but up until now, developers have been limiting themselves with what the hardware and especially the software would allow them to do. Everyone (including myself) is anticipating/hoping Apple, by putting in the M1, is signaling they will start empowering developers (via iPadOS 15 and beyond) to take the tablet experience to a level we have only imagined.
“If you build it, they will come” huh?
I would bet that this is, at least in part, the (marketing) strategy of explicitly putting the M1 (a “Mac“ chip) into the iPad Pro (in other words, not branding it as an A-series chip)— to help create that perception of capability— for consumers and for developers. Because, as has been pointed out numerous times, even with the limits of iPadOS, the potential of the iPad Pro hasnt really been tapped much. The “Pro“ line has been around for almost 6 years now and it just seems like we haven’t gotten very far fleshing out the computing paradigm for this form factor with the potential it has.
It actually is fascinating to watch this platform develop, even if it feels painfully slow at times.
I think iPad platform progress feels slow because people see Mac level functionality as the finish line, but I don’t think that has ever been Apple’s intention. They’ll continue expanding the iPad’s functions of course (and the Mac’s too but it’s already more mature), but the two platforms are on different not converging paths because they have different focuses. iPads are more focused on being fun/easy/light. Macs are more focused on being functional. There’s a lot of overlap but one device can’t be best at both things, as countless 2-in-1s have proven. There is some market for such a device but apparently Apple doesn’t have interest in it so far.
True enough, it’s a different paradigm that’s developing, a tool with some advantages / strengths that come with the interface and form factor. That is the iPad’s primary focus— playing to those strengths.
I read a post / article on Medium.com earlier today about how the iPad Pro *could* be an amazing device for Ui/UX design as it allows for quick low-fidelity prototype iteration but could theoretically combine that with digital tools to wire up those prototypes together— (this could / can be done, just with separate apps— but the potential was there for a single app that could pull the advantages of digital hand-sketching together with digital prototyping tools). I got to the end of the article and… found it was written 5 years ago. And there were at least a couple comments from within the last year asking if the author had found any such app yet. Maybe something like that exists now, I’ll have to dig. But yeah— the potential is there— and I don’t think there’s anything in iPadOS or even iOS of 5 years ago that would stop such an app from being built.
But to my earlier point… I think there is a challenge of perception when it’s so closely related to one of the most massively popular consumer devices of all time (the iPhone) which most people are primarily using as a consumption (and communication) device.
Interesting take. Tablet or slab like computing devices, along with digital assistants and touch input, has been with us in science fiction for many, many years. It would be ironic, if you are correct, if harsh reality, failed potential, and the popularity of a more limited slab device (the phone) has reduced or even soured our expectations of tablets.
Or, conversely, it could be that the iphone, having led to such touch input devices becoming widely adopted, really paved the way— or bridged the gap, perhaps— for more sophisticated touch devices and interfaces to succeed, and we’re just seeing growing pains and impatience due to how used to instant gratification people have become (and because the hardware is so far ahead of the software, seemingly.)
I do remember a lot of people responding to the introduction of the iPad with “it‘s a giant iPod Touch”. Initially people were not able to see past this (probably because the interface was largely the same— a screen filled with rows of app icons, etc.)
Just think about how slowly Apple’s AR vision seems to be progressing
I feel pretty confident that the iPad will continue to mature and succeed, in any case. I just have to give it time.
Haha. I am in the same camp as you, and very much a consumer. All I use my 2018 iPad Pro 12.9” is browsing the web and watching videos. It's already complete overkill, but the new one is nice...I’ve got a 2018 iPad Pro 12.9”, and the 2020 MK. I keep going back and forth on whether it is worth upgrading. The 2020 iPad Pro clearly wasn’t worth upgrading to. The new screen on the 2021 seems nice, but the fact is I’m pretty much a consumer, not someone that produces content. So the M1 chip would be me driving a V-8 Mustang on a bike path
The only way I could “justify” the 2021 is gifting the 2018 to one of my kids. One already has the 2020 iPad Air (thank you Dad
OP, send me some of your common sense!
Having said that, I'm definitely holding off until iPad OS improves. I'll buy the M1X/M2 Mac mini instead I think.
And this is all the reason to wait until what developers produce. Don’t want to throw away good money on something that I would not need. And if the developers do come out with apps that require top-of-the-line iPad Pro 2021, the 2022 iPad will probably be out. Just a thought
Re: Switzerland, it’s a mountainous country (which always makes communication harder) with some downright rural areas but with some really big cities, it’s not like it’s Singapore, Hong Kong, or Manhattan (all small islands with millions of people, heck, Hong Kong is positively roomy compared to Singapore or Manhattan).
As far as the US is concerned, big cities are usually well connected enough (lots of cell phone towers, lots of copper, cable, and fiber available for communication capacity), but as you move from more dense areas to less dense areas, the density of communication capacity drops, as well.
Incidentally, I get the feeling that even most Americans don’t really appreciate how large the country is or how remote some even somewhat populated parts of the country are, let alone the truly rural parts. I grew up in seemingly the middle of nowhere, but I was still a less than a half a day drive from Chicago, St Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville, and my hometown had 30,000 people and was less than an hour away from multiple cities with 50,000 to 100,000+ people. West of the Mississippi and east of the Sierra Nevadas, the US’s population density dramatically decreases, to the point where distances between notable cities increase from about 200 to 500+ miles. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem particularly fair to compare a country as large and varied as the US to countries about the size of an average US state, in terms of communication infrastructure.
Probably not technically possible. I’d imagine that iPadOS and macOS use different boot processes and Macs and iPads use entirely different firmware and that macOS likely won’t boot on an iPad, despite using the same processor.
I’ve recently been using OmniGraffle for designing document templates for use on an e-ink tablet, which is pretty similar to UI wireframing, actually. I’ve actually been using the iPhone version of it, while the iPad version (I don’t currently own one, it’s a long story) would have been brilliant and just that much easier to use because of the screen size. OmniGraffle has a freehand tool, and I’m sure it supports Apple Pencil, so I’d consider that to be pretty darn close to what the article wanted. I don’t think I’ve ever used OmniGraffle as merely a “diagramming” application.
As for the grandparent comment, I’d argue that the iPad is meant to be functional, too, but that Apple will try to develop a UI that doesn’t duplicate the same issues that the desktop metaphor has (especially when mapped to touch screens, as evidenced by the failure of the touchscreen version of every version of Windows since 3.1, not to mention the failure of Windows CE, which never held a dominant position against Symbian, Palm, or BlackBerry’s OSes, which were far more touch friendly). There might be feature parity, but I never expect to see the Finder and SystemUIServer (that’s the menu bar) running directly on an iPad.
I’m in a different situation in that my iPad Pro is 5 years old (2016) and I want to change the size (9.7”). I generally use my devices for at least 3 years, even if I have some regrets (looking at you, 2015 12” MacBook).
Only if they totally disappoint me during WWDC would I delay my purchase.
I don’t really know anything about that type of tool/app but it doesn’t sound like it can be too far off (if not here already). I just rewatched the 2010 D8 conference Steve Jobs interview and it really seems like it was always the plan to make the iPad a great tool, not just a consumption device (though that was important). Watching it, you can see a lot of consistency in what he said and what Apple has done in the years since, particularly with the iPad (even the stylus non-contradiction). I don’t think it’s yet at the ubiquity level Jobs envisioned with his cars and trucks analogy, although it’s come a long way. There is definitely that public perception hurdle you mention, and I wonder if a lot of that is actually Apple’s doing. In the interview, Steve mentioned why they started iAds, to keep apps free or low cost and get the developers paid. That helped users get access to lots of apps but I think that also helped perpetuate the idea that iPad apps are cheap. So that and some of the restrictions Apple imposes on pricing apps in the App Store have been hindering developers from bringing Mac level productivity apps to the iPad.
So there is a tension with the iPad. Apple wants it to be as great of a tool as possible, but Apple has such control over the iPad user experience, that developers have to navigate around a lot more restrictions than compared to Macs.
It’s funny, the interview was 10 years ago but a lot of it is still relevant today—App Store control, privacy, etc. In the Q&A, an audience member asked Steve about developer access to the iPad’s file system and I was intrigued to hear his answer, but unfortunately he only said they should talk one on one after the session. ?
I sometime wonder what would have happened if the iPad was released before the iPhone. Instead of people being unimpressed that the iPad is like a big phone, they might be amazed the iPhone is like a small iPad.
Yeah, it was the CEO of Sugarsync, a cloud service I am still subscribed to... The restrictions have certainly played against the perception of productivity on iPad... Making money on iPad is hard (unless you have huge volumes) because of the low price perception but also because it's hard to sell upgrades (you need to make a new app every time you want to charge for upgrades). That's why many developers are going with the subscription model, which most people hate... And I am afraid Apple will start encouraging this model with their own software...
Potentially of more interest than the performance (M1 it seems is identical to an A14X for all practical purposes) is that the M chips look like they will be being updated every year, which makes yearly iPad Pro updates easier, if not guaranteed. I suppose that's the benefit of using the chip in so many different devices - it makes it viable to update it yearly, and in turn that opens up regular refresh cycles for all of those products. It may be we still get slight variations in launches, but if the M chips debut around October/November each year with the new MacBook Airs, either then or Spring is an ideal time for the iPad Pros to launch.
Ugh I hope not. I still don’t understand why Apple won’t allow upgrade pricing and free trials. Granted I haven’t looked into this very deeply.