iPad Pro With my M4 IPad I’m going to

[rui no onna]

Interesting. Another pro for the 13” I guess.

Enabling More Space on M chipset 11" models mitigates that to a large extent though.

On a previous trip (2018), I was alternating between the 2017 10.5" and 12.9" for web browsing.

On our latest trip (2024), I brought the 11" and 13" with me and I never once used the 13". The 11" with More Space was more than good enough.

 

[TechnoMonk]

The fact a device costing so much can't render an Emirates page to book a flight, or book an appointment at my doctors (there are many more cases) when my M2 Pro Mac mini using Firefox can, that really says just how much a useful replacement for a desktop/laptop an iPad is for my own usage sadly. I come across to many websites where even with cards stored it cant render the site properly to pass the security checks for the card, yet the mac version of Safari can on any other browser that's on a mac laptop mac or desktop.

Dont get me wrong the iPad is a great media consumption and search tool, but so is my TV or iPhone. I cannot see its useful when I have to use my desktop or to get things done and a M4 wont change that. I would love for it to fit in my workflow, and I really hope that changes this year at WWDC but I'm not holding my breath. Now when a M4 comes out for other Macs yep I'll be interested, but right now my old iPad Pro will do just as badly as the new one will in certain computing tasks like browsing the web and that's not great, of course others will have better times with it than me, but right now its a over powered over sized iPhone still until they improve iPadOS with some features from macOS. One being a better browser.

You can use other browser on iPad Pro, I have Brave for anything safari doesnt support or for sites with ton of Ads.

 

[TechnoMonk]

My 13” iPad m4 1tb (with cellular!) will be used to mirror my 14” M3 mbp screen for best of both worlds touch control on macOS when needed for my music production.

Otherwise, I’m hoping to tinker a lot and build ideas with Logic Pro 2 for iPad. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Aside from that I’ll also be using it to practice freestyling and writing rhymes. And journaling with the sweet new pencil pro.

Oh, also to edit album art.

And to edit music videos.

And also, will use it to edit my streaming endeavors, and in general, it will become my main device, and even if I ever wanted to use my mbp… I’ll probably only do so in mirror mode, connected with a cable, using Apple Pencil and touch to navigate macOS in bed.

I will also use it as a whiteboard in Freeform.

I was a longtime holdout on iPads and also hadn’t discovered my calling yet, so getting it for productivity was fruitless before.

Gave away my first and favorite 13” iPad Pro, the last one they released before M1 became a thing. Gave away my favorite iPad mini 6.

Finally getting the iPad of my dreams (no nano glass though, I prefer glossy for the darkest possible blacks and crispest text on oled) and I can’t wait.

13” is a bit big for the way I want to use it, but 11” is also too big for my most preferred use cases (holding it above my face while lying down facing the ceiling) so might as well get the biggest.

Also, multitasking is kind of silly on the 11”. The 2” diagonal is an insane amount of added real estate, so for people who truly want to use their iPad Pro for productivity, I can’t in good conscience argue for the 11”.

Yes it’s amazing that it would perform just as well as the 13”, but as an especially finicky person, I’ve learned that my least favorite part of touchscreen interfaces is moving around the screen with scrolls and zooming with pinching and reverse-pinching and such. Can’t stand it in fact. The 11” inherently has a lot more of this. Especially when it’s in multitasking mode…

Oh and only the 13” is apple’s thinnest device ever. 11” doesn’t qualify. I’m looking forward to experiencing that!

I’ll also be able to connect it to my studio display, and to my mbp as an additional screen with Touch Bar if needed.

So cool!

Make sure you test mirroring on your critical apps, it can be hit and miss based on the Mac Apps you are accessing from touch screen on iPad. Most of them work well, but some of them don’t do well with touch. You could use the trackpad on magic keyboard for those apps.

 

[HouseLannister]

First thing I am going to use mine for is to scan and translate this old book I have titled Naturom Demonto. What could go wrong?

 

[TechnoMonk]

First thing I am going to use mine for is to scan and translate this old book I have titled Naturom Demonto. What could go wrong?

Watch out for taker of iPad souls.

 

[Shirasaki]

iPadOS is far superior to MacOS for this class of device.

Yeah, as long as Apple positions iPad as a mobile device in its core, and bear the consequences of installing an OS that’s going to hamper its hardware potential. To me Apple loves the consequences so I don’t see them adding macOS app support anytime soon if at all. So iPad will continue to be glorified iPhone, never change. Maybe that’s what iPad is for, as a glorified iPhone.

 

[Shirasaki]

I think you’re lost. You’re looking for the Mac forum.

I’m certainly not lost. Even MKBHD tentatively calls this new iPad Pro more of a spec bump than anything else, especially its hardware. Do I like my iPad Pro M1? Yes. I like to use it. Can it replace my Mac and PC? No. M4 won’t change that. Apple Pencil pro won’t change that. Nano glass won’t change that.

 

[sparksd]

Yeah, as long as Apple positions iPad as a mobile device in its core, and bear the consequences of installing an OS that’s going to hamper its hardware potential. To me Apple loves the consequences so I don’t see them adding macOS app support anytime soon if at all. So iPad will continue to be glorified iPhone, never change. Maybe that’s what iPad is for, as a glorified iPhone.

I can travel with my iPad and use it for video and RAW image processing while on the road, something I wouldn't consider doing on my 14 Pro Max.

 

[Shirasaki]

If you classify this year's iPad as a spec bump then you are never going to be happy with anything Apple releases. This was far from the spec bump that the iPad has received in the last several years.

Far from in terms of what? Hardware improvements? Absolutely. Software? Still running iPadOS with more AI?

 

[Shirasaki]

I can travel with my iPad and use it for video and RAW image processing while on the road, something I wouldn't consider doing on my 14 Pro Max.

Overwhelmingly I see people using iPad most on professional work is video/image editing (at least on this forum). Aside from that though, I see iPad being used essentially as a glorified iPhone, doing tasks iPhone can’t do well.

 

[Shirasaki]

Exactly how is it ‘gimped’? Exactly what can’t you do?

Can iPadOS launch terminals? Can iPad install homebrew to then install various software? Can iPadOS load website using a browser engine other than WebKit, outside of EU? Can iPadOS install macOS apps (not all, but some)? Can iPadOS install Xcode? Can iPad be used to create electrical/civil engineering drawings from scratch? Can iPad run full desktop matlab locally (matlab+simulink minimum)?

For all the above, I believe some can be done with creative workarounds or alternative solutions, while others simply can’t be done. But if I have to use 3 different file explorer apps to share file types I encounter frequently instead of just Files app alone, something is not quite right.

Yes, my use case is not endorsed by Apple and will never be. That’s fine. But I maintain my opinion on this M4 iPad Pro being a substantial spec bump.

 

[klasma]

The 13” is actually about 15% lighter

Depends on what you compare it to. It’s only 8% lighter than the 2018 12.9” (only about 50 g lighter).

 

[nappes]

Truly expected this to end with a

/s

A little bit. But there is a fair bit of research that latency matters, at least in work context.

Also, it’s time for my family to get a hand me down. We have the 10.5 pro and the air 2 in our family and its time for us to retire the air, it’s only 16gb and barely loads the apps we use

 

[nappes]

If only Apple had kept the previous thickness for the 11“ model to further increase battery life… the 12“ was heavy and reducing thickness was probably the right call but the smaller model already had a tiny battery to begin with and now there is even less of it.

I’m not sure they did reduce the battery capacity. I think I even saw something suggesting the 11” has an increase in size. That along with your note on brightness, means at the same brightness maybe we are going to have an increase in life

 

[Boing123]

Can iPadOS launch terminals? Can iPad install homebrew to then install various software? Can iPadOS load website using a browser engine other than WebKit, outside of EU? Can iPadOS install macOS apps (not all, but some)? Can iPadOS install Xcode? Can iPad be used to create electrical/civil engineering drawings from scratch? Can iPad run full desktop matlab locally (matlab+simulink minimum)?

I would argue it can: I run many of those workloads by remoting into a box that has the tools. Upside being that I don’t consume local resources and thus get maximum battery life.

Yes, my use case is not endorsed by Apple and will never be. That’s fine. But I maintain my opinion on this M4 iPad Pro being a substantial spec bump.

I would genuinely argue there is no point in converging iPad and MacBook products in terms of capabilities. An iPad is primarily a mobile touch enabled device that focuses on a subset of tasks which benefit from the tablet form factor.

For the activities you list, a laptop form factor is still more practical: larger battery, active cooling in most cases, larger screens, …

If the above would be ‘the wrong view’ or ‘not what customers want’ why hasn’t Microsoft’s Surface line taken off more than it did?

If you want to code on a Surface, you still need to run VScode, Visual Studio or something else in the age old keyboard and mouse desktop style and if that’s the case, I’ll take a capable laptop with a 15 inch screen thank you very much

Why are there still conventional laptops?

And don’t get me started about silly touch screen laptops : given a decent trackpad, there is zero added value…

 

[klasma]

I’m not sure they did reduce the battery capacity. I think I even saw something suggesting the 11” has an increase in size. That along with your note on brightness, means at the same brightness maybe we are going to have an increase in life

These speculations have no basis because the display technology changed and the SoC changed. Power draw can be devided into size-depended usage (screen, and related GPU processing) and everything else that is identical between the 11” and the 13”. The only thing the new battery capacities tell us is how Apple expects the typical ratio between size-dependent and size-independent battery usage to be with the new hardware. It gives zero information about either relative battery life of the 11” vs. the 13”, nor the new generation vs. the previous generation.

 

[nappes]

These speculations have no basis because the display technology changed and the SoC changed. Power draw can be devided into size-depended usage (screen, and related GPU processing) and everything else that is identical between the 11” and the 13”. The only thing the new battery capacities tell us is how Apple expects the typical ratio between size-dependent and size-independent battery usage to be with the new hardware. It gives zero information about either relative battery life of the 11” vs. the 13”, nor the new generation vs. the previous generation.

In general agree that we don’t know for sure. But given we don’t know the inputs, if forced to assume something assuming relative consistency is probably fair

Also we know quite a lot
- We know that Apple is quoting same life at a higher brightness. If that’s true then we should Get more battery life at same brightness as before
- we know the battery is a bit bigger
- we know that Apple said that m4 is more efficient
- we know that oleds can be quite efficient depending on the content since they don’t have a backlight and only illuminate individual pixels. I use dark mode and expect to get a small boost

 

[transpo1]

Load safari tabs slightly faster than my m1 iPad

Switch apps slightly faster than my m1 ipad

Scroll my photos slightly faster than my m1 iPad

Actually see detail in the dark parts of movies on the new OLED screen

Do I need any of it? Nope but the experience will be slightly better for many hours each day I use it and Im going to be damn happy. That is all

You forgot to tell us if you’re coming from a mini-LED 12.9” or other. Going from the other display techs to OLED of the M4 iPP is a bigger jump…

 

[transpo1]

I can see Apple making a compatibility layer to allow MacOS apps on the iPad. Much like you can use iPad apps on MacOS, just in reverse.

All we really need is a virtual macOS on the iPad, so that we can jump in and edit a doc in Mac-only apps, then jump back to iPadOS. But now I believe Apple will definitely keep them separate until the new folding MacBook line is introduced. Why give this capability to people “for free” when you can introduce a new and exciting high end product and charge them more for it? (And as a minor Apple shareholder, I am okay with this).

 

[Analog Kid]

an OS that’s going to hamper its hardware potential

Nothing is hampering hardware potential with iPadOS. MacOS would be far less efficient on iPad. iPad is a device that does what it is supposed to do and does it very well.


None of these are hampering hardware either. You're saying you can't do with it what you can do with your Mac, forgetting that it isn't a Mac:

Can iPadOS launch terminals? Can iPad install homebrew to then install various software? Can iPadOS load website using a browser engine other than WebKit, outside of EU? Can iPadOS install macOS apps (not all, but some)? Can iPadOS install Xcode? Can iPad be used to create electrical/civil engineering drawings from scratch? Can iPad run full desktop matlab locally (matlab+simulink minimum)?

With the exception of not running MacOS apps natively (which itself is more about the available hardware and form factor than the OS), none of these are issues of distinction between iPadOS and MacOS. They're distinctions between how Apple envisions the two devices.

 

[nappes]

You forgot to tell us if you’re coming from a mini-LED 12.9” or other. Going from the other display techs to OLED of the M4 iPP is a bigger jump…

11” so LCD to OLED

 

[Allen_Wentz]

The fact a device costing so much can't render an Emirates page to book a flight, or book an appointment at my doctors (there are many more cases) when my M2 Pro Mac mini using Firefox can, that really says just how much a useful replacement for a desktop/laptop an iPad is for my own usage sadly. I come across to many websites where even with cards stored it cant render the site properly to pass the security checks for the card, yet the mac version of Safari can on any other browser that's on a mac laptop mac or desktop.

Dont get me wrong the iPad is a great media consumption and search tool, but so is my TV or iPhone. I cannot see its useful when I have to use my desktop or to get things done and a M4 wont change that. I would love for it to fit in my workflow, and I really hope that changes this year at WWDC but I'm not holding my breath. Now when a M4 comes out for other Macs yep I'll be interested, but right now my old iPad Pro will do just as badly as the new one will in certain computing tasks like browsing the web and that's not great, of course others will have better times with it than me, but right now its a over powered over sized iPhone still until they improve iPadOS with some features from macOS. One being a better browser.

Different devices. The point is that a tablet is a tablet, not "a useful replacement for a desktop/laptop..."

That said, many folks do want tablets to be useful replacements for desktops/laptops and use tablets that way. And given the increasing numbers of today's adult users that learned tablet usage literally right along with learning to walk/talk, it behooves the likes of Apple to keep moving iPads in the direction of "useful replacement for a desktop/laptop..."

 

[DMG35]

Far from in terms of what? Hardware improvements? Absolutely. Software? Still running iPadOS with more AI?

So then it’s not a spec bump. A spec bump is when they come out with the exact same design with no differences expect slight internal improvements. It has nothing to do with the OS.

 

[shadowboi]

If it makes you happy do it I guess. But tbh the word “slightly” really sums it up. If you are not moving from one place to another frequently I would suggest buying LG OLED TV instead (if you don’t have it yet). Mine 55’ is perfect for movies. At night the experience is probably more immersive than all those VR ski googles that I have never tried yet, albeit it still gives me eye strain after 3 hours of watching.

And why LG? It got Airplay so if you don’t have Apple TV you can still stream content from any of your Apple devices

 

[stocklen]

to... create a clickbait thread?