6 ms·

I genuinely don't grok who is buying iPad Pros; outside of maybe artists & graphic designers? Maybe? But even there, wacomb-like tablets on Mac is still super p

by 015a 2y ago

I genuinely don't grok who is buying iPad Pros; outside of maybe artists & graphic designers? Maybe? But even there, wacomb-like tablets on Mac is still super popular, and the iPad Air in a bigger size is going to be crazy popular. A 13" iPad Pro with keyboard is $1650. And you can't even get the nanotexture glass below 1TB; so that + keyboard is approaching $2300. Who is buying this?

baby 2y ago
Me. Use it to read pdfs, draw, watch youtube and netflix, or as my laptop when I’m traveling. Best purchase I made.
fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
Currently an iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is my main personal computer. I’ve found that it’s the most enjoyable device to use for internet browsing. It replaced my Chromebook, which had that role before. Like the Chromebook, it’s got a physical keyboard, so it’s good for typing. The cantilever also places the screen closer to my hands, helping me to fluidly switch between keyboard and touch navigation, which both work well. The browser is noticeably snappier than my Chromebook was, although that might come down to a better processor generation. A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that. The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer. The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.
- janlukacs 2y ago
  Why not use a Macbook Air for a full experience?
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
    I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen, screen is lower and further from my eyes. It’s physically less pleasant to use. There are also some use-cases I can’t even do with the MacBook form factor - eg. on planes, I mount the iPad on the seat in front of me so I watch movies at eye level. Sometimes I hold the iPad in my hands when in pure reading consumption mode.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen And that matters for coding work because? >screen is lower and further from my eyes. The iPad screen doesn't have any fixed position, so what are you comparing it to? iPad propped on an Apple iPad keyboard (which would be even lower)? iPad handheld which would be unusable? iPad set flat on a table? iPad on a stand (if so, what prevents you putting the MacBook on a stand?)
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
        MacBook works great at work! Based on my experience with my work device, it’s as pleasant for casual media consumption. The Magic Keyboard actually lifts the iPad above the keyboard, which puts it in a better viewing position in laptop-mode than an actual laptop. Every little bit helps when you have creaky tendons and joints.
  - ldargin 2y ago
    I've never ever wanted a Macbook, but I'm ok with an iPad Pro.
  - jms703 2y ago
    For me personally, I feel that iPadOS > MacOS, especially for a personal device. Also, the touch screen.
  - drbawb 2y ago
    I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?" The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.) The MBA also has no touch screen, and no stylus. The iPad can also ship with a built-in cellular radio. Now I'm carrying an extra tablet, plus an extra hotspot. That sure sounds like a lot of compromises to me. If I needed more performance I'd be stepping up to a MBP for the active cooling, which pushes us into a different price bracket anyways. If I needed more disk/memory bandwidth I wouldn't even be considering a portable in the first place. (More realistically: I would be using my portable to shell into a more powerful box, and an iPad Pro or even an iPad Air would do that just as well as any MacBook.) If you need more external I/O, well, I'm not sure I buy that the iPad Pro is a serious compromise over the MBA. It has 40Gb/s of bandwidth and that's _a lot_ for the vast majority of use-cases. My main MBP already sits docked all day via a single thunderbolt cable. The only reason I would actually choose an MBA over an iPad is that I'm a developer. I place strangely disproportionate value on things like an untrusted boot-chain, kernel extensions, and freedom.[1] I like having the flexibility to be able to bless and enroll my own bootable volumes. I want to be able to tinker with the system partition. I want to introspect the system when things go wrong. The iPad challenges these things by design. I cannot emphasize this enough: _all of my friends would be lost trying to follow along with the preceding paragraph._ They would look at me like I had two heads. _The above desiderata are not at all representative of the average computer user today._ For most of what I do (media consumption and some content creation) the iPad Pro would do an excellent job, I'd argue better than the MBA. For everything else I do: "iPad Pro vs. MBA" is a false dichotomy, I would not be choosing either of those machines. I would buy a workstation-class device at a minimum. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
- binary132 2y ago
  Every time I think about buying an iPad, I just find myself wishing there was a legit / better approach to, you know, computing on it.... I don’t do much for fun besides work on things that need compilers, debuggers, dynamic analysis, linking, JIT execution, tracing, and suchlike. All such endeavors are firmly impossible on iOS and iPadOS. I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective. This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
    Yeah, you could have a device with the same form factor and UI that also has a normal terminal and can compile its own code. It’s ok for my personal use case but it’s a big limitation and rules out the device for many people.
    - cyberpunk 2y ago
      With the allowing of emulators, there is now an app called 'a-shell' which you can write/compile (at least) c on.. (the built in clang compiles to wasm, vim/emacs only etc). I expect this to improve, and I've not tried to build any complex software on it (yet).
  - nijuashi 2y ago
    I think this is essentially a portable terminal, just like the phone. Most of my work on laptop for development is to get on high-powered workstation or servers anyway. For occasionally SSH-ing with tmux session, it’s pretty great (although I can’t swap ctrl with caps, which sucks). I do wish iPad had something to push me over to replace my laptop for that use case, but I’m too used to windowed environment.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  Meh a Chromebook let's you run Linux apps thought. I can run full blown IDEs locally without problems. And yes, that is with 8Gb ram, ChromeOS has superb memory management.
cko 2y ago
Not an artist but the Wacom-like graphic tablets are tethered to the laptop or workstation, with at least two cables (one for power, another for the HDMI) so some artists do prefer the more portable solution of iPad plus that nice Procreate app.
millzlane 2y ago
People with government grant or unrestricted access to company money. Already spoke to people wanting to know when they can use their Cost center for one.
gaze 2y ago
mathematicians and physicists who use them for "pen and paper" calculations
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  Because the pro used to be the largest iPad with a pencil. Now you can get the air instead and "pen and paper" certainly does not need "pro" performance.
  - gandalfgreybeer 2y ago
    As a physicist, the main reason why I chose the Pro version is the refresh rate. It doesn’t distract me when I’m using the pencil. Also the keyboard when I need to quickly ssh into something and I didn’t bring my laptop. (Not sure if there are non-pro iPads that support them now)
DamnInteresting 2y ago
I use my M1 iPad Pro for graphics work (from simple sketches to full illustrations), and for making music with multi-track recording apps. I don't bother with the keyboard since little of my input is text-oriented.
drcongo 2y ago
I'm going to. Every digital thing I do outside of my job happens on an iPad Pro and I absolutely love it. I make music in Logic Pro on an M1 iPad Pro - it's hard to overstate how amazing it is to be able to carry around an entire recording studio in such a tactile form factor. I can't get on with desktop DAWs at all.
joshlemer 2y ago
Musicians, for the purpose of reading sheet music. Wrote about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286085#40288121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286085#40288121
- dnissley 2y ago
  If you click the date/timestamp on a comment you can get a direct link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40288121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40288121
  - joshlemer 2y ago
    Thank you
- 015a 2y ago
  I did not ask "who is buying iPads"; I asked who is buying the iPad Pro, especially now that the Air is available at the 13" size.
  - nijuashi 2y ago
    One notable difference: Face ID. I know it sounds silly, but it makes it really convenient especially using keyboard.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  For which a $50 android tablet will suffice just fine.
  - joshlemer 2y ago
    Which $50 android tablet?
    - NikkiA 2y ago
      Any, amazon have several 6GB ram/64GB storage for $50-60 many of them even have a microSD slot for more storage, they'll all do fine for reading PDFs, my first iPad had 32GB storage and it did that task just fine. Heck they have 4GB/32GB tablets for $30 that would no doubt just about manage running ReadEra or some other PDF viewer with no trouble.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
I had a 13” iPad Pro for work and I loved it. It’s basically the size of a standard piece of paper, so reading and writing is very natural. That being said, I’m getting an iPad Air now that they offer 13”.
0x457 2y ago
I don't have a personal laptop and use iPad Pro instead. I have a work laptop that I only use for work and I never take on vacations with me. iPad Pro gives me: - amazing SSH terminal - ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights - a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere) - a good steam/xcloud client - when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad. - a few games to play on the iPad itself when away - I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac. - nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there) - nice screen to look at recipes while I cook You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place. If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.
- nijuashi 2y ago
  Good call on SSH terminal. I use Prompt all the time to get on my workstation.
  - transpute 2y ago
    iPad Pro 4:3 264ppi screen = unmatched vertical real estate for SSH CLI and text editing, especially with vertical split screen window management. Years ago there were 4:3 Thinkpads. Then OEMs moved to 16:9 aspect ratios for video content, some claiming that the economics were no longer viable for 4:3 displays. Yet Apple continues to ship millions of 4:3 screens for iPads.
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  The screen quality is surely good, but why wouldn't an iPad air or Samsung whatever work just as well for all these use cases? Also, it seems that you connect a keyboard, a mouse, a game pad and a display... Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.
nijuashi 2y ago
One segment - old people. It’s a great device - reliable, fast, convenient, and portable. Large screen is a godsend for old guy like me. If you own one, I think you may find it really pleasant to use as side device on your desk. I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(
nunez 2y ago
I bought one last year to code with and give demos/workshops of our products. This worked mostly well given that I could remote into my work computer through a Tailscale subnet router. I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment. However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale. Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home. I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.

by 015a 2y ago

baby 2y ago

Me. Use it to read pdfs, draw, watch youtube and netflix, or as my laptop when I’m traveling. Best purchase I made.

fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago

Currently an iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is my main personal computer. I’ve found that it’s the most enjoyable device to use for internet browsing. It replaced my Chromebook, which had that role before. Like the Chromebook, it’s got a physical keyboard, so it’s good for typing. The cantilever also places the screen closer to my hands, helping me to fluidly switch between keyboard and touch navigation, which both work well. The browser is noticeably snappier than my Chromebook was, although that might come down to a better processor generation. A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that. The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer. The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.

janlukacs 2y ago
Why not use a Macbook Air for a full experience?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
  I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen, screen is lower and further from my eyes. It’s physically less pleasant to use. There are also some use-cases I can’t even do with the MacBook form factor - eg. on planes, I mount the iPad on the seat in front of me so I watch movies at eye level. Sometimes I hold the iPad in my hands when in pure reading consumption mode.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen And that matters for coding work because? >screen is lower and further from my eyes. The iPad screen doesn't have any fixed position, so what are you comparing it to? iPad propped on an Apple iPad keyboard (which would be even lower)? iPad handheld which would be unusable? iPad set flat on a table? iPad on a stand (if so, what prevents you putting the MacBook on a stand?)
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
      MacBook works great at work! Based on my experience with my work device, it’s as pleasant for casual media consumption. The Magic Keyboard actually lifts the iPad above the keyboard, which puts it in a better viewing position in laptop-mode than an actual laptop. Every little bit helps when you have creaky tendons and joints.
- ldargin 2y ago
  I've never ever wanted a Macbook, but I'm ok with an iPad Pro.
- jms703 2y ago
  For me personally, I feel that iPadOS > MacOS, especially for a personal device. Also, the touch screen.
- drbawb 2y ago
  I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?" The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.) The MBA also has no touch screen, and no stylus. The iPad can also ship with a built-in cellular radio. Now I'm carrying an extra tablet, plus an extra hotspot. That sure sounds like a lot of compromises to me. If I needed more performance I'd be stepping up to a MBP for the active cooling, which pushes us into a different price bracket anyways. If I needed more disk/memory bandwidth I wouldn't even be considering a portable in the first place. (More realistically: I would be using my portable to shell into a more powerful box, and an iPad Pro or even an iPad Air would do that just as well as any MacBook.) If you need more external I/O, well, I'm not sure I buy that the iPad Pro is a serious compromise over the MBA. It has 40Gb/s of bandwidth and that's _a lot_ for the vast majority of use-cases. My main MBP already sits docked all day via a single thunderbolt cable. The only reason I would actually choose an MBA over an iPad is that I'm a developer. I place strangely disproportionate value on things like an untrusted boot-chain, kernel extensions, and freedom.[1] I like having the flexibility to be able to bless and enroll my own bootable volumes. I want to be able to tinker with the system partition. I want to introspect the system when things go wrong. The iPad challenges these things by design. I cannot emphasize this enough: _all of my friends would be lost trying to follow along with the preceding paragraph._ They would look at me like I had two heads. _The above desiderata are not at all representative of the average computer user today._ For most of what I do (media consumption and some content creation) the iPad Pro would do an excellent job, I'd argue better than the MBA. For everything else I do: "iPad Pro vs. MBA" is a false dichotomy, I would not be choosing either of those machines. I would buy a workstation-class device at a minimum. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
binary132 2y ago
Every time I think about buying an iPad, I just find myself wishing there was a legit / better approach to, you know, computing on it.... I don’t do much for fun besides work on things that need compilers, debuggers, dynamic analysis, linking, JIT execution, tracing, and suchlike. All such endeavors are firmly impossible on iOS and iPadOS. I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective. This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
  Yeah, you could have a device with the same form factor and UI that also has a normal terminal and can compile its own code. It’s ok for my personal use case but it’s a big limitation and rules out the device for many people.
  - cyberpunk 2y ago
    With the allowing of emulators, there is now an app called 'a-shell' which you can write/compile (at least) c on.. (the built in clang compiles to wasm, vim/emacs only etc). I expect this to improve, and I've not tried to build any complex software on it (yet).
- nijuashi 2y ago
  I think this is essentially a portable terminal, just like the phone. Most of my work on laptop for development is to get on high-powered workstation or servers anyway. For occasionally SSH-ing with tmux session, it’s pretty great (although I can’t swap ctrl with caps, which sucks). I do wish iPad had something to push me over to replace my laptop for that use case, but I’m too used to windowed environment.
nolist_policy 2y ago
Meh a Chromebook let's you run Linux apps thought. I can run full blown IDEs locally without problems. And yes, that is with 8Gb ram, ChromeOS has superb memory management.

cko 2y ago

Not an artist but the Wacom-like graphic tablets are tethered to the laptop or workstation, with at least two cables (one for power, another for the HDMI) so some artists do prefer the more portable solution of iPad plus that nice Procreate app.

millzlane 2y ago

People with government grant or unrestricted access to company money. Already spoke to people wanting to know when they can use their Cost center for one.

gaze 2y ago

mathematicians and physicists who use them for "pen and paper" calculations

diffeomorphism 2y ago
Because the pro used to be the largest iPad with a pencil. Now you can get the air instead and "pen and paper" certainly does not need "pro" performance.
- gandalfgreybeer 2y ago
  As a physicist, the main reason why I chose the Pro version is the refresh rate. It doesn’t distract me when I’m using the pencil. Also the keyboard when I need to quickly ssh into something and I didn’t bring my laptop. (Not sure if there are non-pro iPads that support them now)

DamnInteresting 2y ago

I use my M1 iPad Pro for graphics work (from simple sketches to full illustrations), and for making music with multi-track recording apps. I don't bother with the keyboard since little of my input is text-oriented.

drcongo 2y ago

I'm going to. Every digital thing I do outside of my job happens on an iPad Pro and I absolutely love it. I make music in Logic Pro on an M1 iPad Pro - it's hard to overstate how amazing it is to be able to carry around an entire recording studio in such a tactile form factor. I can't get on with desktop DAWs at all.

joshlemer 2y ago

Musicians, for the purpose of reading sheet music. Wrote about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286085#40288121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286085#40288121

dnissley 2y ago
If you click the date/timestamp on a comment you can get a direct link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40288121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40288121
- joshlemer 2y ago
  Thank you
015a 2y ago
I did not ask "who is buying iPads"; I asked who is buying the iPad Pro, especially now that the Air is available at the 13" size.
- nijuashi 2y ago
  One notable difference: Face ID. I know it sounds silly, but it makes it really convenient especially using keyboard.
NikkiA 2y ago
For which a $50 android tablet will suffice just fine.
- joshlemer 2y ago
  Which $50 android tablet?
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    Any, amazon have several 6GB ram/64GB storage for $50-60 many of them even have a microSD slot for more storage, they'll all do fine for reading PDFs, my first iPad had 32GB storage and it did that task just fine. Heck they have 4GB/32GB tablets for $30 that would no doubt just about manage running ReadEra or some other PDF viewer with no trouble.

SkyPuncher 2y ago

I had a 13” iPad Pro for work and I loved it. It’s basically the size of a standard piece of paper, so reading and writing is very natural. That being said, I’m getting an iPad Air now that they offer 13”.

0x457 2y ago

I don't have a personal laptop and use iPad Pro instead. I have a work laptop that I only use for work and I never take on vacations with me. iPad Pro gives me: - amazing SSH terminal - ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights - a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere) - a good steam/xcloud client - when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad. - a few games to play on the iPad itself when away - I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac. - nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there) - nice screen to look at recipes while I cook You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place. If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.

nijuashi 2y ago
Good call on SSH terminal. I use Prompt all the time to get on my workstation.
- transpute 2y ago
  iPad Pro 4:3 264ppi screen = unmatched vertical real estate for SSH CLI and text editing, especially with vertical split screen window management. Years ago there were 4:3 Thinkpads. Then OEMs moved to 16:9 aspect ratios for video content, some claiming that the economics were no longer viable for 4:3 displays. Yet Apple continues to ship millions of 4:3 screens for iPads.
diffeomorphism 2y ago
The screen quality is surely good, but why wouldn't an iPad air or Samsung whatever work just as well for all these use cases? Also, it seems that you connect a keyboard, a mouse, a game pad and a display... Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.

nijuashi 2y ago

One segment - old people. It’s a great device - reliable, fast, convenient, and portable. Large screen is a godsend for old guy like me. If you own one, I think you may find it really pleasant to use as side device on your desk. I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(

nunez 2y ago

I bought one last year to code with and give demos/workshops of our products. This worked mostly well given that I could remote into my work computer through a Tailscale subnet router. I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment. However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale. Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home. I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.