“Yesterday in Brooklyn, at a music venue more than a century old, Apple released its newest and most innovative computer. It’s thinner and lighter than its predecessor, and it’s powered by a crazy-powerful new processor,” Lauren Goode writes for Wired. “Also, there was an update to the MacBook Air.”
“It’s true: While the new MacBook Air was the product that people hopped on a plane, train, or subway yesterday to see, the clamshell laptop was just the opening act,” Goode writes. “The new iPad Pro announced yesterday was the headliner. It’s a more technically impressive device, one that demonstrates what the future of computing looks like to Apple.”
“Of course, many people were just happy to hear that that the MacBook Air is not being totally neglected. The MacBook Air was first released in 2008 and has received only incremental updates since then,” Goode writes. “Now, it has a high-resolution display; an improved keyboard and trackpad; a fingerprint sensor for authentication; and internals that are, at the very least, up to date.”
“The iPad Pro, on the other hand, is a showcase of truly impressive technologies. I say this as someone who has never felt the need to actually buy an iPad… But this iPad Pro! It’s enough to make anyone want an iPad,” Goode writes. “While iPad Pro prices aren’t easy to swallow, it makes sense when you consider what the iPad has become. Which is to say, it really is a computer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, iPad Pro certainly is a computer and a powerful one at that!
Problem is, iOS needs some sort of scalability for screen size. Hate the giant icons and then there’s the file management. Gawd awful to use, at least in a business setting. Trying to figure out is a nightmare. Love the iPad Pro but iOS limits it’s usefulness.
I need to start researching how I can convert my workflow from DSLR -> MacBook ->Lightroom -> Photomatix for bulk image edits. I’d LOVE to be able to do this all from the iPad pro!
Without mouse support it’s never going to be a productivity machine
Some of us are old enough to remember the mouse being ridiculed as a pointless and quirky addition that would never catch on. I for one thus refuse to take a one dimensional, or purely habit induced negative attitude to the future of computing. Fine, as things stand it’s still very relevant at least to the dying desktop, but seriously ‘never’ for alternative solutions is a word that just doesn’t make sense to me looking forward. I would be surprised if the mouse is little more than a relic or the tool of old farts inside of 25 years and probably a minor interface well before then even with the determination of many to stagnate and stick to legacy solutions. Imagination is required by both us and developers and indeed Apple and others to determine just when the big change will happen.
“Dying desktop” and obsolete mouse. Since when?
Obviously you are not a high end pro user of computers. You play games, watch videos and post to Fakebook on your pad or phone, fine.
Back to reality. Absolutely nothing is available today, if ever, to replace high end pro workstations. Get a grip dreamer…
@Zombie, agreed. I was hoping the new folio keyboard might find a way to incorporate a trackpad. That would make this an ultralight that could actually replace my MBP 13. The iPP itself is beautiful, but moving back and forth between keyboard and screen [sometimes very quirkily] is just not fun.
On the point of a trackpad I can agree here at least for the foreseeable future, even if I can appreciate the inate conflict too. Apple says it doesn’t like the idea of combining touch and traditional inputs and there is a logic to that but if you sell the folio keyboard which looks good and flexible enough to make the product a laptop replacement for many then without the touchpad they are actually contradicting their own philosophy even more than they would by creating a true crossover product that does both equally which despite being the first to visualise many years back, still claim they do not wish to produce. If you accept a keyboard into the equation then a trackpad seems a logical inclusion too at least for as long as needing to move fingers back and forth in the very manner they claim to despise.
I am curious…has anyone tried to connect a wired or wireless (RF/BT) mouse to an iPad Pro? How difficult would it be to implement a device i/o interface in parallel to the multitouch interface?
Given a multi-button mouse, I could see mapping key multitouch gestures to a mouse. Single click of the main button would function like a single finger, for instance.
A trackpad interface would appear to be almost a no-brainer, since Apple trackpads were the functional precursor to iPhone/iPad multitouch.
These devices are fantastic! I can’t wait to get one! But iOS’s file management and lack thereof is a problem. Also, there’s not really any good integrated cloud option. iCloud is a joke. It’s too slow, too limited, clunky and kludgy. S. Jobs always said Apple wasn’t a hardware company, but rather a software company. When will Apple concentrate on iCloud and productivity for iOS? The fact that Google can figure out cloud productivity apps, sync, and usage better than Apple can, irks the heck out of me. GSuite works great. Performs exactly as I’d expect Apple to have produced it, but looks and feels like something MS created. Please, Apple focus on your cloud integration so I don’t have to use someone else’s software!
If Apple can get parity on this important software side of things, there’d be no need for anything else from anyone else. Apple wonders why they’re losing the education market. It has little to do with price point on devices (iPads compete very strongly with Chromebooks), but everything to do with cloud software, syncing and parity.
Brilliant post and a lot of it is that under Cook the company too often acts as if it is still a one product company it was back in the 80s that fears commitment for fear of getting it wrong and losing money (or the company). Too often now it follows and then with baby steps instead of committing to a vision ahead of the game. ICloud is actually fine for me generally but less flexible, extensive and generous than it should be for a product upon which iOS so heavily relies, especially when one considers the cost of the products it inhabits. Free disk space alone is an insult and I want Dropbox like flexibility at least before I could take iPads seriously for work as wonderful and powerful as they now are. Indeed the power presently seems wasted within such an unnecessarily restricted environment.
Well said Mtnmnn
Getting things done under iOS is still clumsy and maze like. From one app to the next there is a great deal of inconsistency. People who have spent years “mastering” Mac skills don’t see a return on lowering their efficiency for a computer that is not as powerful for all intents and purposes. I use my iPad often and I spend way too much time tapping, tapping again, tapping and holding, until it finally reacts.
As mentioned, iPad apps can be funky to use. Every image player works differently. Every image editor. Every word processor. It’s as if there were no set of User Interface Guidelines like there are for the Mac. The Mac provides you with enough consistence from app to app so that knowledge you’ve acquired operating one app easily transfers to another. Consequently the iPad, which should be easier to use, is often much more difficult to use than the iPad.
iPads require training when you introduce them to a businesses. Macs generally don’t.
There’s also the issue with the lack of Mac Pro apps, and no, I’m not talking about image, video, music, or content creation at all.
There are countless people who see things like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and so on as professional apps. The iPad does support the Microsoft Suite which is great. In my experience, in the world of small to medium businesses, that suite of apps being available has been more interesting to more people things like the pencil.
There are many other apps though. I have one client who immediately ordered a new MacBook Air. I’d been forcing her to hold off for just two more weeks. I also tried to convince her that she’s a perfect candidate for the iPad. She listened then asked, “Can I run QuickBooks.” Obviously she can’t. She’s a freelance accountant and everyone freaking uses QuickBooks.
Also once you start getting people to sit down with an iPad and learn to use it, the whole issue of typing comes up. You connect up a keyboard and within seconds people want to know why not just buy a laptop or notebook especially with iPad prices as expensive as they are.
On top of this, now you have Apple advising developers to make their apps subscription based. I use lots of apps, and I’m not going to pay a subscription for every damn one of them.
The iPad feels like a technological cul de sac. You head into it trying to get somewhere and you always wind up turning around and heading out to find open roads.
So true! I feel like I’m looking at the “Apple work bench” whereby all the pieces are there, but nobody has the vision to put them together to make something extremely great. I suppose that the reality of what was lost without S. Jobs around.
When S. Jobs died, T. Cook said Steve gave him the vision for the next five years. Who knew it would be only a Spaceship Campus. So sad.
Superlative hands on take of the abilities and limitations of the iPad. Let’s go Mac Pro!…
I’m a Finder / File Explorer nerd. I live in my file browser no matter what platform I happen to be working on. Files app makes iOS a little better, but that’s for my ever-once-in a while photo editing for work, when I need a quick mask for a PNG image (I use Affinity for iPad 2018 and export to Google Drive). But that’s not a workflow for serious output, IMHO.
Yes for pros it’s frustrating isn’t it. And unnecessarily so I feel, pro requirements could and should have been visualised and developed from years back. I certainly as did others outlined the simple file system solution they introduced a year ago, at least 5 years back but it’s only a start it needs development. And it needs seamless Mac integration to truly flourish and this can only truly be realised through iCloud expansion. Whatever it’s future holds today iOS needs to work closely with the Mac environment to see it and the iPad’s full pro potential realised while not tying itself to that desktop metaphor too closely so that it can grow in ways best suited to touch or voice control as these and other interfaces mature and expand their capabilities without the anchor of the desktop metaphor.
Officially more interesting??????
According to what official????
I skipped over the iPad part of the key note. Mac mini was by far the more important announcement. Pissed at the huge price jump but at least finally Apple put someone to work on new Mac hardware. IPad is of zero interest to me, especially with that silly $200 keyboard.