“Well, I tried. I tried the whole ‘use the iPad Pro instead of my computer for a week’ thing and barely lasted a day,” Susie Ochs writes for Macworld. “It doesn’t fit my workflow like my MacBook Air does, so I stopped trying to force it — and that’s OK. Apple’s newest largest tablet doesn’t need to be a laptop replacement to be good, but for a $300 premium over the cheapest iPad Air 2, it does need to deliver more than just a larger screen.”
“As a work tool, the iPad Pro is a little like the Mac Pro, or the MacBook Pro, or even something specialized like a miter saw: If you really need it to do your job, you likely know you need it, and you don’t need me to tell you,” Ochs writes. “If you find yourself wondering if you really need it… you probably don’t.”
“Apps on the Pro launch faster, which makes Split View feel more fluid, since you’re switching apps and flipping back and forth in a blink,” Ochs writes. “But aside from Pencil support and overall speed, I’m hard-pressed to name a task I can do better on the iPad Pro than on the smaller (and more reasonably priced) iPads in the lineup.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yet another “Can this replace my MacBook?” review written by someone for whom the iPad Pro is not designed (brushing aside Apple Pencil support is ridiculous; the Apple Pencil is integral for many of those for whom the iPad Pro is actually intended) prompts us to repost what we wrote this morning:
People often ask us why we choose the 11-inch MacBook Air, of all things, for our mobile Macs and why we’ll likely choose 12-inch MacBooks next, if we don’t choose iPad Pros instead.
Portability. Period.
That’s it. That’s our specific use case. Can it run a browser, Mail, Messages, Pixelmator, and TextEdit (yup) while we’re on the road? Check! Okay, then, which weighs the least? We’ll take it!
“Bu, bu, but, it’s re-gawd-damn-dicuolous that there’s only one port on the MacBook!” some scream. Ad nauseam, no less. Guess what? We don’t care! For us that’s one port too many. We’ll never use it. Imagine that. If Apple made a MacBook with no ports and it weighed even less, we’d buy those instead.
If you’re going to be doing other things on-the-go, you might choose a MacBook Pro. That doesn’t make the MacBook or the iPad Pro a “mistake” by Apple. Those devices are just not for you vs. what the MacBook Pro offers for your specific needs. That’s why Apple offers a full range of portable computing options, from the iPod touch to the MacBook Pro.