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This is why I don't understand how there's even a market for the iPad Pro (outside the Apple superfans). I like iOS, but it seems like if you want to any real w

by vlunkr 7y ago

This is why I don't understand how there's even a market for the iPad Pro (outside the Apple superfans). I like iOS, but it seems like if you want to any real work it's an uphill battle, and for the money there are plenty of alternatives.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> if you want to any real work Here we go again with this 'real work' nonsense. What counts as 'real work' to you? A friend of a mine is a barrister and uses an iPad pro to take and use notes. He's definitely doing 'real work' just fine on his iPad.
- blihp 7y ago
  It's not nonsense, it's just different use cases. For office productivity applications, of course the majority of users will be just fine. For many technical people, 'real' work tends to mean heavy compute and/or I/O workloads which most laptops don't do well with let alone mobile devices.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Yes everyone has different use cases - so why do we denigrate some people's use cases as not 'real work'?
    - blihp 7y ago
      I think this is mainly a historical thing with Apple's product naming. Their 'pro' designation doesn't mean what it used to mean and so a lot of the denigration is probably more targeting Apple than their users.
  - rapind 7y ago
    A proper shell I can ssh with is really all I would need to do my real programming tasks. So even technical work could be broken down further. I wouldn't use an iPad for this though. The shell's are all a compromise and I'm waiting for a great e-ink display so I can remote from a park / beach / patio.
    - mark_l_watson 7y ago
      I have relied on my small iPad Pro with the older Prompt SSH app for occasional light programming while traveling. For more regular SSHing, a laptop or Chromebook is better. That said, I love my iPad Pro and I admit a positive bias that may not face honest analysis.
  - qubex 7y ago
    I am an inveterate and incorrigible Mathematica user, as most of my “real work” deals with what might be best described in layperson’s terms as “symbolic math”. Even though Wolfram has not (yet? hope always dies last!) released a version of Mathematica for the iPad (meaning, a frontend notebook coupled to an actual onboard computing kernel) they have released a client for “Wolfram Online” (often referred to as “Cloud Mathematica”) offering. This isn’t quite what I would like, as there’s a significant range of circumstances where I cannot rely on network access (such as when flying) but for most other situations it suits the purpose. Other mathematics-inclined apps allow even greater range of onboard functionality (Pythonista, MathSudio spring to mind). Upshot: one can most definitely do significant amounts of data analysis on an iPad.
    - vtail 7y ago
      I’m in the same boat: Wolfram Language has enlightened me (or you may say, corrupted me completely), so a prerequisite for any new computing device is that it can ran Mathematica. Which is way I had to switch back from OpenBSD (which doesn’t run it) and Linux (which until today’s update, didn’t have HiDPI support) back to Mac OS.
- ukabwlsbeux 7y ago
  He didn’t claim you couldn’t do real work, he claimed there were better alternatives for your money. And if real work is just taking notes, then I think you really need to question whether an iPad Pro is the right choice among the iPad lineup.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- p1necone 7y ago
  He's not being a barrister on his iPad though, he's just taking notes. And I question whether an iPad pro gives you anything over the cheaper options for that.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > he's just taking notes That's how a barrister does part of their work. When I develop software I'm 'just writing a program'. But I'm not - I'm forming a mental model of what I want to do and working out how to express it. You can make any job sound silly by reducing it to its constitutive actions.
    - p1necone 7y ago
      My point is the barrister does most of their work outside of the software - taking notes is not unique to being a barrister. A software engineer, or artist, or architect, or CAD modeller, or audio engineer, or accountant (just some examples of the kind of work I'm thinking of) do the majority of their work in software. Some of these workflows are doable on an iPad, some of them are not. All of them are doable to a professional level on a regular PC or Mac though.
      - goerz 7y ago
        Actually, handwritten note taking in particular is a professional task that you can not do on a regular PC or Mac. As a theoretical physicist, doing math "on paper" is not something I can do on a PC or Mac, and doing it on an iPad is orders of magnitude better than using actual paper, as it allows for moving things around and revising.
- p1necone 7y ago
  Stop shutting your brain off because you don't like peoples terminology. This argument pops up regularly on HN and it's always the same - it's all people talking past each other. One half is saying "iPads don't cover as many use cases as laptops" and the other half is saying "but look, my specific anecdotal use case is covered". You're not even disagreeing with each other, just missing the point.
qubex 7y ago
I’d wager that much of your incredulity regarding the suitability of iPads to doing “real work” hinges very sensitively upon what your conception of “real work” is, and that your judgement of utility follows suit. I’ve been using a succession of iPads as my main computing platforms since the first iteration was released ten years ago. Initial releases were a bit of a compromise, but the arrival of multitasking, multi-view, and filesystem access (latterly with iPadOS) have come a long way towards ensuring that I have nothing to miss. The addition of native support for an in-built trackpad further accentuates this trend. Sure, I cannot develop or compile natively on the iPad, but that is something I do very rarely. [EDIT: Spelling error corrected in ‘arrival’.]
- cptskippy 7y ago
  It seems like they're slowly implementing paradigm safe versions of features from Desktop OSes into iPadOS in order to gradually bleed off the MacOS userbase since locking MacOS down to the App Store paradigm didn't pan out.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Which is why I hope this doesn't pan out either. I like desktop OSes and I like having major OSes that are not locked down by ridiculous app stores. Stop doing app stores. They work in Linux because they're open package repos, we can add our own tress/signatures in and can have a lot of control over them. App stores are bastardizations of this concept. They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) but it also makes your devices not your own.
    - xvector 7y ago
      > They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) It’s not questionable at all, the App Store has been a cornerstone of the iOS security model for years. You can look at how many millions of Android users are constantly infected because it turns out that most people have zero concept of when to trust a third party or not. Either way Apple does let you run your own apps if you jump through some hoops with MDM and Xcode and whatnot. So it’s not completely locked down either. It’s locked down enough that I feel comfortable that the average user would be secure and taken care of when using iOS.
nextos 7y ago
Me neither. The hardware they offer is absolutely fantastic. And some of the software (from e.g. Panic or OmniGroup). But even running a decent terminal requires purchasing an app and setting up mosh on the other side. There's no Esc in their keyboards. There are too many roadblocks and glitches. I wish I could buy an iPad and simply open a terminal and ssh to my machine of choice. Right now, it's much easier to buy a Surface Go / Pro. And these run Linux natively really well.
- qubex 7y ago
  Probably because developers and system operators, while a large majority here on Hacker News, actually represent a tiny minority of actual users. Developers’ workflows are essentially outliers.
  - nextos 7y ago
    Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mobile software. So I'd argue it's in Apple's best interest to keep developers happy. Also, is it that hard for a giant of Apple's size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS?
    - qubex 7y ago
      > is it that hard for a giant of Apple’s size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS? Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users. Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.
      - nextos 7y ago
        OS X, now macOS, includes lots of applications that are "miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users". A huge userbase will always have tons of different clusters, and it's good to serve them all. Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.
danShumway 7y ago
It makes a ton of sense if the iPad is cheaper than the Surface. It stops making sense because of Apple's pricing model. The original argument for tablet computers in the first place was that sometimes you don't need a full-fledged computer, so you pocket $400-500 and get something cheap instead that's a limited but still quality device. And I think that would still be true with the iPad Pro. You want something that's closer to a full computer, with a real keyboard, but you still want to pocket some money. Except... the pricing is awful. It's like they designed a product for a real niche, and then stopped thinking about that niche as soon as they got out of the design phase and started working on implementation. As a point of comparison, even if you hate Windows with a passion, you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS. Is a Macbook Air as portable? Maybe not, but it's still pretty darn portable. You're giving up the pencil, but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs. But I guess if you're a digital artist, and you prefer the iPad pencil over the Surface pen or Wacom tablets, and having a full OS doesn't matter for you -- this might be exciting. That seems like it would be a narrow demographic, but what do I know? I'm sure it'll sell well.
- ralmidani 7y ago
  That may have been the original argument for tablets, and if you want to save money by skipping the keyboard, pointing device, and overpowered processor, you can buy a new iPad for about $300. The iPad Pro is expensive, but “Pro” implies you want a device that can do things which are useful to professionals. As a developer, I am better served by an actual MBP for work and a cheap iPad for less-productive tasks, but not everyone is a developer.
  - jdmg94 7y ago
    I'm a developer and now that there's UTM for iOS I am going to be exploring the new ipad as a development machine, AWS Cloud9 already makes a great case for portability
- comex 7y ago
  Except the MacBook Air doesn’t have better specs than the iPad Pro. iPad processors have benchmarked comparably to laptop x86 processors for a while now. The iPad has a display which is around the same size but higher-resolution, 120Hz, and with support for touch and the pencil. Storage options are comparable. And the iPad has other random hardware like LTE, better cameras, and now LIDAR. On the other side, the MacBook does have more RAM, more ports, and a larger trackpad. But that’s not enough to call it a clear winner in specs. It really comes down to form factor and OS.
Aunche 7y ago
Like all Apple products, Ipads "just work," which is the most important thing for regular users. My Surfacebook has a lot of network connectivity issues, and I recall that being an issue for all Surface products at the time.
kilburn 7y ago
I bought one last Christmas. It broke my heart (and my wallet), but its only purpose is to serve as the CPU and screen for my wife's new ultrasound probe [1] that only has good support of iOS. Even when you bundle the cost of both the probe and the iPad pro, it ended up being cheaper than the (much less portable) alternatives in the market. [1] https://store.butterflynetwork.com/us/en/iq/bundle/ https://store.butterflynetwork.com/us/en/iq/bundle/
shamino 7y ago
We need to stop seeing the iPad Pro and Surface Pro as equals. iPad Pro is a luxury item, and it gives me so much more pleasure to use it. Aesthetics, design, the way I feel - these things matter. And they matter to most humans. We're not robots who only need to get a certain task accomplished. We need to feel happy.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  They aren't equal products, but iPad Pro isn't "luxury" either. They are just different products with different value for different users and use cases. Both products make their own users very happy. Proof is in all the comments in this thread.
  - shamino 7y ago
    I would argue that Apple is a luxury brand, and iPad Pro is an Apple product. If you're saying the Surface Pro can make people happy too, I'll give you that. It doesn't make me happy though.
kevindong 7y ago
Personally I see all iPads as an entertainment device that happens to be not too-terrible at doing productive work.
lastres0rt 7y ago
I'm an illustrator, and "Procreate" is the killer app for me. If you're not calling that "real work" I'm not sure what else to tell you.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Eventually you need to save and share your files. It would be nice to not have to do that in the cloud, with corporate gate-keepers in the way.
wdr1 7y ago
> This is why I don't understand how there's even a market for the iPad Pro (outside the Apple superfans). Quite simply, a lot of the software I want/need is only on iOS. And while, yes, it's more expensive, the cost difference is a drop in the bucket. If I was still a starving college student, I'd care. But as a professional, I care more about time than saving literally penny I can.
unethical_ban 7y ago
And here I am, a Lenovo and Linux fan, thinking this is amazing and they've finally got the tablet to be a computer. iPads don't run iOS. ipadOS has changed quite a bit from iOS - they are not the same thing.
simonh 7y ago
Office and OneDrive work really well. The new files system is pretty functional and getting better. There’s a decent ecosystem of utility apps now. Pushbullet is pretty handy for example. For scripting Pythonista is awesome, and together with Working Copy has a decent Git work flow. It really depends what your work is. My iPad is my main mobile computer. I do have a desktop, but use the iPad heavily. At work at various meetings there are regularly 2 to 5 of use taking notes or referring to material on iPads. Some with pencils, others with keyboard cases. Of course it’s not right for everyone, it just needs to be really good at the things it’s good for. That’s all. If a laptop or Surface works better for you that’s cool.
bakakid 7y ago
As an illustrator, the workflow on the iPad Pro using a tool like Procreate is amazingly simple, quick and portable. Compared to something like my old com tablet, I am much more likely to grab the iPad and pencil and draw, then go to my studio where my computer is setup and draw. Even the difference between wacom/graphics tablet and iPad with the pencil is almost night and day, no lag or parallax on the iPads is a huge draw card. For an illustrator, the iPad is a perfect (digital) tool.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Interesting. Using a Cintiq can be better than a tablet with some applications ("feels more natural") too. https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays Have you used a Cintiq much? Would be interested in a comparison of that vs the iPad Pro's. :)
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    The wacoms with bonded glass (everything except the cheap cintiq 16) are better than the ipad but its very close. The ipad is more than good enough, its good. Meanwhile the portability of the ipad and apps like procreate have made the ipad a very compelling tool for artists. Most professional digital artists I know of use both a large cintiq in studio and an ipad. There are a trillion comparisons on youtube. Also a contender (but a smaller size) is the ipad air 3 which also has a bonded glass display.
skrowl 7y ago
You're correct. The target demo for iPad Pro is (and has really always been) only for Apple superfans. You can get something like an Asus Zenbook 13 for hundreds less, which has a real i7 CPU, supports much more software, has a dedicated GPU, etc. while weighing about the same and having about the same battery life.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > The target demo for iPad Pro is (and has really always been) only for Apple superfans. There’s a lot of Apple superfans in the world, then…
sulam 7y ago
Speaking for myself, it does one thing incredibly well: email. It probably seems absurd to imagine it would do that thing better than other places where I can do that thing, but it's probably 20 or 30% better at email than my other options. And I do a LOT of email. I keep an iPad Pro (with keyboard) to the left, and when I want to do email, I look left and do it there. That keeps me focused on my main windows. I do think that it would be possible for someone to write an email client that is as efficient as the iOS Outlook app is, and maybe it already exists for non-Outlook, but in my current corporate environment the iPad pro is a lifesaver.
IAmEveryone 7y ago
I know a journalist who works almost exclusively on iPad and iPhone. Their salary is somewhere in the mid 6-figures thanks to employees owning half of the publisher. About 2 million people read a text she wrote on her balcony last week. But, somehow, that's not "real work", apparently. From what I was able to gleam from similar comments over the last few months, I guess "real work" mostly involves regularly swapping hardware components, overclocking the CPU, daisy-chaining a dozen USB devices, micromanaging kernel compile flags, automating the micromanagement of kernel compile flags, aggregating optimisation metrics in a dashboard, running benchmarks, upgrading npm/homebrew/gem/go packages on a daily basis, and reorganising keyboard layout.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Strawman. Saving and copying files are a standard end-user task that have little or nothing to do with your list.
Fauntleroy 7y ago
It's best in class for digital illustration work. My partner uses her iPad Pro (along with Procreate) exclusively for her art, and the simplification of the workflow combined with the form factor are impossible to beat. Similar Wacom products require a computer, are more expensive, not as responsive, and not mobile. The Microsoft Surface does not perform as well, and does not have the same killer apps which make illustration so easy on the iPad Pro.
hazz99 7y ago
I really want an iPad Pro purely for the on-screen writing experience, which hasn't been as good on a Surface (in my experience)
fiblye 7y ago
As an artist, there's nothing even remotely close to the iPad's hardware quality and software environment anywhere near its price range. Even well beyond its price range, it's hard to beat the software quality and comfort with regards to usage. As a programmer, I use my desktop.

by vlunkr 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago

> if you want to any real work Here we go again with this 'real work' nonsense. What counts as 'real work' to you? A friend of a mine is a barrister and uses an iPad pro to take and use notes. He's definitely doing 'real work' just fine on his iPad.

blihp 7y ago
It's not nonsense, it's just different use cases. For office productivity applications, of course the majority of users will be just fine. For many technical people, 'real' work tends to mean heavy compute and/or I/O workloads which most laptops don't do well with let alone mobile devices.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Yes everyone has different use cases - so why do we denigrate some people's use cases as not 'real work'?
  - blihp 7y ago
    I think this is mainly a historical thing with Apple's product naming. Their 'pro' designation doesn't mean what it used to mean and so a lot of the denigration is probably more targeting Apple than their users.
- rapind 7y ago
  A proper shell I can ssh with is really all I would need to do my real programming tasks. So even technical work could be broken down further. I wouldn't use an iPad for this though. The shell's are all a compromise and I'm waiting for a great e-ink display so I can remote from a park / beach / patio.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    I have relied on my small iPad Pro with the older Prompt SSH app for occasional light programming while traveling. For more regular SSHing, a laptop or Chromebook is better. That said, I love my iPad Pro and I admit a positive bias that may not face honest analysis.
- qubex 7y ago
  I am an inveterate and incorrigible Mathematica user, as most of my “real work” deals with what might be best described in layperson’s terms as “symbolic math”. Even though Wolfram has not (yet? hope always dies last!) released a version of Mathematica for the iPad (meaning, a frontend notebook coupled to an actual onboard computing kernel) they have released a client for “Wolfram Online” (often referred to as “Cloud Mathematica”) offering. This isn’t quite what I would like, as there’s a significant range of circumstances where I cannot rely on network access (such as when flying) but for most other situations it suits the purpose. Other mathematics-inclined apps allow even greater range of onboard functionality (Pythonista, MathSudio spring to mind). Upshot: one can most definitely do significant amounts of data analysis on an iPad.
  - vtail 7y ago
    I’m in the same boat: Wolfram Language has enlightened me (or you may say, corrupted me completely), so a prerequisite for any new computing device is that it can ran Mathematica. Which is way I had to switch back from OpenBSD (which doesn’t run it) and Linux (which until today’s update, didn’t have HiDPI support) back to Mac OS.
ukabwlsbeux 7y ago
He didn’t claim you couldn’t do real work, he claimed there were better alternatives for your money. And if real work is just taking notes, then I think you really need to question whether an iPad Pro is the right choice among the iPad lineup.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
p1necone 7y ago
He's not being a barrister on his iPad though, he's just taking notes. And I question whether an iPad pro gives you anything over the cheaper options for that.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > he's just taking notes That's how a barrister does part of their work. When I develop software I'm 'just writing a program'. But I'm not - I'm forming a mental model of what I want to do and working out how to express it. You can make any job sound silly by reducing it to its constitutive actions.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    My point is the barrister does most of their work outside of the software - taking notes is not unique to being a barrister. A software engineer, or artist, or architect, or CAD modeller, or audio engineer, or accountant (just some examples of the kind of work I'm thinking of) do the majority of their work in software. Some of these workflows are doable on an iPad, some of them are not. All of them are doable to a professional level on a regular PC or Mac though.
    - goerz 7y ago
      Actually, handwritten note taking in particular is a professional task that you can not do on a regular PC or Mac. As a theoretical physicist, doing math "on paper" is not something I can do on a PC or Mac, and doing it on an iPad is orders of magnitude better than using actual paper, as it allows for moving things around and revising.
p1necone 7y ago
Stop shutting your brain off because you don't like peoples terminology. This argument pops up regularly on HN and it's always the same - it's all people talking past each other. One half is saying "iPads don't cover as many use cases as laptops" and the other half is saying "but look, my specific anecdotal use case is covered". You're not even disagreeing with each other, just missing the point.

qubex 7y ago

I’d wager that much of your incredulity regarding the suitability of iPads to doing “real work” hinges very sensitively upon what your conception of “real work” is, and that your judgement of utility follows suit. I’ve been using a succession of iPads as my main computing platforms since the first iteration was released ten years ago. Initial releases were a bit of a compromise, but the arrival of multitasking, multi-view, and filesystem access (latterly with iPadOS) have come a long way towards ensuring that I have nothing to miss. The addition of native support for an in-built trackpad further accentuates this trend. Sure, I cannot develop or compile natively on the iPad, but that is something I do very rarely. [EDIT: Spelling error corrected in ‘arrival’.]

cptskippy 7y ago
It seems like they're slowly implementing paradigm safe versions of features from Desktop OSes into iPadOS in order to gradually bleed off the MacOS userbase since locking MacOS down to the App Store paradigm didn't pan out.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Which is why I hope this doesn't pan out either. I like desktop OSes and I like having major OSes that are not locked down by ridiculous app stores. Stop doing app stores. They work in Linux because they're open package repos, we can add our own tress/signatures in and can have a lot of control over them. App stores are bastardizations of this concept. They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) but it also makes your devices not your own.
  - xvector 7y ago
    > They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) It’s not questionable at all, the App Store has been a cornerstone of the iOS security model for years. You can look at how many millions of Android users are constantly infected because it turns out that most people have zero concept of when to trust a third party or not. Either way Apple does let you run your own apps if you jump through some hoops with MDM and Xcode and whatnot. So it’s not completely locked down either. It’s locked down enough that I feel comfortable that the average user would be secure and taken care of when using iOS.

nextos 7y ago

Me neither. The hardware they offer is absolutely fantastic. And some of the software (from e.g. Panic or OmniGroup). But even running a decent terminal requires purchasing an app and setting up mosh on the other side. There's no Esc in their keyboards. There are too many roadblocks and glitches. I wish I could buy an iPad and simply open a terminal and ssh to my machine of choice. Right now, it's much easier to buy a Surface Go / Pro. And these run Linux natively really well.

qubex 7y ago
Probably because developers and system operators, while a large majority here on Hacker News, actually represent a tiny minority of actual users. Developers’ workflows are essentially outliers.
- nextos 7y ago
  Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mobile software. So I'd argue it's in Apple's best interest to keep developers happy. Also, is it that hard for a giant of Apple's size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS?
  - qubex 7y ago
    > is it that hard for a giant of Apple’s size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS? Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users. Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.
    - nextos 7y ago
      OS X, now macOS, includes lots of applications that are "miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users". A huge userbase will always have tons of different clusters, and it's good to serve them all. Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.

danShumway 7y ago

It makes a ton of sense if the iPad is cheaper than the Surface. It stops making sense because of Apple's pricing model. The original argument for tablet computers in the first place was that sometimes you don't need a full-fledged computer, so you pocket $400-500 and get something cheap instead that's a limited but still quality device. And I think that would still be true with the iPad Pro. You want something that's closer to a full computer, with a real keyboard, but you still want to pocket some money. Except... the pricing is awful. It's like they designed a product for a real niche, and then stopped thinking about that niche as soon as they got out of the design phase and started working on implementation. As a point of comparison, even if you hate Windows with a passion, you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS. Is a Macbook Air as portable? Maybe not, but it's still pretty darn portable. You're giving up the pencil, but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs. But I guess if you're a digital artist, and you prefer the iPad pencil over the Surface pen or Wacom tablets, and having a full OS doesn't matter for you -- this might be exciting. That seems like it would be a narrow demographic, but what do I know? I'm sure it'll sell well.

ralmidani 7y ago
That may have been the original argument for tablets, and if you want to save money by skipping the keyboard, pointing device, and overpowered processor, you can buy a new iPad for about $300. The iPad Pro is expensive, but “Pro” implies you want a device that can do things which are useful to professionals. As a developer, I am better served by an actual MBP for work and a cheap iPad for less-productive tasks, but not everyone is a developer.
- jdmg94 7y ago
  I'm a developer and now that there's UTM for iOS I am going to be exploring the new ipad as a development machine, AWS Cloud9 already makes a great case for portability
comex 7y ago
Except the MacBook Air doesn’t have better specs than the iPad Pro. iPad processors have benchmarked comparably to laptop x86 processors for a while now. The iPad has a display which is around the same size but higher-resolution, 120Hz, and with support for touch and the pencil. Storage options are comparable. And the iPad has other random hardware like LTE, better cameras, and now LIDAR. On the other side, the MacBook does have more RAM, more ports, and a larger trackpad. But that’s not enough to call it a clear winner in specs. It really comes down to form factor and OS.

Aunche 7y ago

Like all Apple products, Ipads "just work," which is the most important thing for regular users. My Surfacebook has a lot of network connectivity issues, and I recall that being an issue for all Surface products at the time.

kilburn 7y ago

I bought one last Christmas. It broke my heart (and my wallet), but its only purpose is to serve as the CPU and screen for my wife's new ultrasound probe [1] that only has good support of iOS. Even when you bundle the cost of both the probe and the iPad pro, it ended up being cheaper than the (much less portable) alternatives in the market. [1] https://store.butterflynetwork.com/us/en/iq/bundle/ https://store.butterflynetwork.com/us/en/iq/bundle/

shamino 7y ago

We need to stop seeing the iPad Pro and Surface Pro as equals. iPad Pro is a luxury item, and it gives me so much more pleasure to use it. Aesthetics, design, the way I feel - these things matter. And they matter to most humans. We're not robots who only need to get a certain task accomplished. We need to feel happy.

enos_feedler 7y ago
They aren't equal products, but iPad Pro isn't "luxury" either. They are just different products with different value for different users and use cases. Both products make their own users very happy. Proof is in all the comments in this thread.
- shamino 7y ago
  I would argue that Apple is a luxury brand, and iPad Pro is an Apple product. If you're saying the Surface Pro can make people happy too, I'll give you that. It doesn't make me happy though.

kevindong 7y ago

Personally I see all iPads as an entertainment device that happens to be not too-terrible at doing productive work.

lastres0rt 7y ago

I'm an illustrator, and "Procreate" is the killer app for me. If you're not calling that "real work" I'm not sure what else to tell you.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Eventually you need to save and share your files. It would be nice to not have to do that in the cloud, with corporate gate-keepers in the way.

wdr1 7y ago

> This is why I don't understand how there's even a market for the iPad Pro (outside the Apple superfans). Quite simply, a lot of the software I want/need is only on iOS. And while, yes, it's more expensive, the cost difference is a drop in the bucket. If I was still a starving college student, I'd care. But as a professional, I care more about time than saving literally penny I can.

unethical_ban 7y ago

And here I am, a Lenovo and Linux fan, thinking this is amazing and they've finally got the tablet to be a computer. iPads don't run iOS. ipadOS has changed quite a bit from iOS - they are not the same thing.

simonh 7y ago

Office and OneDrive work really well. The new files system is pretty functional and getting better. There’s a decent ecosystem of utility apps now. Pushbullet is pretty handy for example. For scripting Pythonista is awesome, and together with Working Copy has a decent Git work flow. It really depends what your work is. My iPad is my main mobile computer. I do have a desktop, but use the iPad heavily. At work at various meetings there are regularly 2 to 5 of use taking notes or referring to material on iPads. Some with pencils, others with keyboard cases. Of course it’s not right for everyone, it just needs to be really good at the things it’s good for. That’s all. If a laptop or Surface works better for you that’s cool.

bakakid 7y ago

As an illustrator, the workflow on the iPad Pro using a tool like Procreate is amazingly simple, quick and portable. Compared to something like my old com tablet, I am much more likely to grab the iPad and pencil and draw, then go to my studio where my computer is setup and draw. Even the difference between wacom/graphics tablet and iPad with the pencil is almost night and day, no lag or parallax on the iPads is a huge draw card. For an illustrator, the iPad is a perfect (digital) tool.

justinclift 7y ago
Interesting. Using a Cintiq can be better than a tablet with some applications ("feels more natural") too. https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays Have you used a Cintiq much? Would be interested in a comparison of that vs the iPad Pro's. :)
- LegitShady 7y ago
  The wacoms with bonded glass (everything except the cheap cintiq 16) are better than the ipad but its very close. The ipad is more than good enough, its good. Meanwhile the portability of the ipad and apps like procreate have made the ipad a very compelling tool for artists. Most professional digital artists I know of use both a large cintiq in studio and an ipad. There are a trillion comparisons on youtube. Also a contender (but a smaller size) is the ipad air 3 which also has a bonded glass display.

skrowl 7y ago

You're correct. The target demo for iPad Pro is (and has really always been) only for Apple superfans. You can get something like an Asus Zenbook 13 for hundreds less, which has a real i7 CPU, supports much more software, has a dedicated GPU, etc. while weighing about the same and having about the same battery life.

saagarjha 7y ago
> The target demo for iPad Pro is (and has really always been) only for Apple superfans. There’s a lot of Apple superfans in the world, then…

sulam 7y ago

Speaking for myself, it does one thing incredibly well: email. It probably seems absurd to imagine it would do that thing better than other places where I can do that thing, but it's probably 20 or 30% better at email than my other options. And I do a LOT of email. I keep an iPad Pro (with keyboard) to the left, and when I want to do email, I look left and do it there. That keeps me focused on my main windows. I do think that it would be possible for someone to write an email client that is as efficient as the iOS Outlook app is, and maybe it already exists for non-Outlook, but in my current corporate environment the iPad pro is a lifesaver.

IAmEveryone 7y ago

I know a journalist who works almost exclusively on iPad and iPhone. Their salary is somewhere in the mid 6-figures thanks to employees owning half of the publisher. About 2 million people read a text she wrote on her balcony last week. But, somehow, that's not "real work", apparently. From what I was able to gleam from similar comments over the last few months, I guess "real work" mostly involves regularly swapping hardware components, overclocking the CPU, daisy-chaining a dozen USB devices, micromanaging kernel compile flags, automating the micromanagement of kernel compile flags, aggregating optimisation metrics in a dashboard, running benchmarks, upgrading npm/homebrew/gem/go packages on a daily basis, and reorganising keyboard layout.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Strawman. Saving and copying files are a standard end-user task that have little or nothing to do with your list.

Fauntleroy 7y ago

It's best in class for digital illustration work. My partner uses her iPad Pro (along with Procreate) exclusively for her art, and the simplification of the workflow combined with the form factor are impossible to beat. Similar Wacom products require a computer, are more expensive, not as responsive, and not mobile. The Microsoft Surface does not perform as well, and does not have the same killer apps which make illustration so easy on the iPad Pro.

hazz99 7y ago

I really want an iPad Pro purely for the on-screen writing experience, which hasn't been as good on a Surface (in my experience)

fiblye 7y ago

As an artist, there's nothing even remotely close to the iPad's hardware quality and software environment anywhere near its price range. Even well beyond its price range, it's hard to beat the software quality and comfort with regards to usage. As a programmer, I use my desktop.