Unlike this idiot I have actually put the iPad Pro to the test. I have the keyboard and pencil. I run a successful distribution business. The only thing that is missing is true multi monitor support. For that I use my MBP. Otherwise I only need my iPad Pro. It works great in every way. I use Microsoft BI for data reporting to keep tabs on my business. Other than that I really do not need Pro Apps for what I do. My sales staff uses iPad as well. Most of our data is generated by the applications we use so data entry is a thing of the past for us.
Lack File management and organization tools in iOS are one of its biggest handicaps for true pro work.... then comes full fleged apps !
I need Safari to let me download a link to a file on the iCloud drive. You can upload files to there in safari, but can't download a file to there. If they would fix that, I could get away without a MacBook when I travel. It's such a trivial reason to still need a MacBook over just using iPad Pro.
I tried the iPad pro (and the pencil) for the first time today at an Apple store. I was seriously impressed with it. It's gargantuan for everyday use, but for what its intended market is for, It's a no-brainer. I will most likely get one to compliment my photography work. Photoshop and Lightroom would be sweet on this!
Surface-Pro just feels archaic regardless of what iPad I'm using. If people are set-against using an iPad, a SurfacePro would be the 2nd choice I'd recommend. Anything is better than the Android trash (i.e. "future landfill products") that the iHaters defend.
This is the same mistake all these mfgs. keep making. The actual number of people that need professional applications are very small compare to the people that "just want to play around". I don't know anyone willing to pay Adobe for their suite of applications except paid designers however there is probably 1000 times more people that want to do some cheap photo effects or basic design. Microsoft is right you can't run Photoshop on the iPad Pro but for the casual user you probably going to save a lot more money buying apps from the Apps Store than full fledged software packages.
And I thought Apple fans were the ones criticizing the PC industry for catering to lowest common denominator thinking, convincing people to settle for limitations because "it's what everyone else is using", etc.
And BTW, Apple was right. A multitouch tablet without a pen was the iPad, a highly successful product. A pen tablet without multitouch was the Microsoft Windows Tablet PC, a niche product that failed in the market for decades. So Apple was right about the pen, period. And Microsoft knows it, disingenuous bullshit aside.
In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet. But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.
This feeds into the notion that iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did. Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.
In this light recent comments by Tim Cook make more sense. It's not that the PC won't be better at doing certain tasks, it's that work is evolving away from those particular strengths the PC retains.
I need Safari to let me download a link to a file on the iCloud drive. You can upload files to there in safari, but can't download a file to there. If they would fix that, I could get away without a MacBook when I travel. It's such a trivial reason to still need a MacBook over just using iPad Pro.
Yes, yes, yes! I'm hoping they have plans to displace Dropbox at some point with features like this very one, that would go a long way toward making iOS a more full-featured OS (in that file management is an issue for lots of people).
Damn, why can't they understand what Steve Jobs was talking about regarding stylus?!?! He was correct saying that we shouldn't use stylus as the primary input but rather use touch gestures when executing commands or tasks. Prior to iPhone, many phones require stylus for input. To this day, we use touch gestures as the primary input. Pencil is NOT a substitute for gestures. It's designed for drawing, writing, and painting. It's not meant to be used as a primary source of input for commands and will never be.
How are people able to objectively divine all this from the words "if there's a stylus, that's failure"? Instead of always going out on a limb to cover for company executives, politicians and so on, how about asking those people to express themselves more clearly in the first place? So it doesn't matter what these people say in public or how they say it because they always have their janitorial (PR) staff to clean up after them? Previous posters have a point in saying that Tim Cook appears to be more careful than Steve about his public comments, and rarely says things in such absolute terms that can come back to bite him.
Damn, why can't they understand what Steve Jobs was talking about regarding stylus?!?! He was correct saying that we shouldn't use stylus as the primary input but rather use touch gestures when executing commands or tasks. Prior to iPhone, many phones require stylus for input. To this day, we use touch gestures as the primary input. Pencil is NOT a substitute for gestures. It's designed for drawing, writing, and painting. It's not meant to be used as a primary source of input for commands and will never be.
How are people able to objectively divine all this from the words "if there's a stylus, that's failure"? Instead of always going out on a limb to cover for company executives, politicians and so on, how about asking those people to express themselves more clearly in the first place? So it doesn't matter what these people say in public or how they say it because they always have their janitorial (PR) staff to clean up after them? Previous posters have a point in saying that Tim Cook appears to be more careful than Steve about his public comments, and rarely says things in such absolute terms that can come back to bite him.
Context.
When the iPhone was announced, there were still phones being sold that required a stylus for at least some operations.
I have the iPad pro with the Keyboard and Pencil. I could not be more pleased with the product. It's absolutely fantastic for my needs, and the build quality is stunning.
That said, the reliance on iTunes, email, or (the horrendously clunky and limited) iCloud to be able to transfer files is both frustrating and backward. Apple HAS to figure out an iPad app for MacOS and a MacOS app for the iPad that allows file transfers via wifi (say, a more user-friendly version of AirDrop) or Bluetooth. Until this can be fixed, the iPad pro will underachieve. I am, for example, using Office365, and sad to say, Microsoft Cloud is so much better implemented than iCloud.
I can't say that I disagree with the point of the iPad (Pro) being a companion device. If iOS supported things like docking and extended displays, versus just mirroring, I think they'd get a lot closer. In terms of pure compute power, I'd bet a few dollars that the iPad Pro is right there with the Surface Pro. I think it's the OS though that holds it back. And FWIW I'm typing this on an iPad Pro.
Actually, iOS supports second displays just fine, but the apps have to be written to exploit that capability. I have several apps that have the presenter screen on the iPad/iPhone and the audience view on the projector/second screen. But I think this isn't exactly taking off, because many app authors apparently aren't considering the obvious added value of supporting dual screen capability to their apps. Many authors seem unable to imagine that their apps could be used to show things to other people, which is just weird......
And did we really expect Microsoft to say anything differently? For a company that's known for thinking inside the box, we got from them exactly what we expected.
Hey what is wrong with a companion device? His comments seem to be suggesting a companion device is a bad thing.
It seems to me the future is the PC morphing in to the "Personal Cluster" of devices instead of isolated devices. In that case a companion device is targeting part of your use and not to worried if it gets put aside for other uses isn't the bad thing. It really could be a good thing.
To my mind I'd prefer Apple treat all their products as companion devices that have a niche (features/limits) and put effort in to making sure my devices works together. That lets me build a system that works for me out of components on offer. Different combinations suit different people.
They aren't there yet but it does seem to be one last big idea contained in Steve Jobs return to Apple WWDC chat that hasn't been nailed as yet. They seem to be working towards it still though at various scales and hoping the next OS round will be the first time we see the idea work-ably complete.
I have the iPad pro with the Keyboard and Pencil. I could not be more pleased with the product. It's absolutely fantastic for my needs, and the build quality is stunning.
That said, the reliance on iTunes, email, or (the horrendously clunky and limited) iCloud to be able to transfer files is both frustrating and backward. Apple HAS to figure out an iPad app for MacOS and a MacOS app for the iPad that allows file transfers via wifi (say, a more user-friendly version of AirDrop) or Bluetooth. Until this can be fixed, the iPad pro will underachieve. I am, for example, using Office365, and sad to say, Microsoft Cloud is so much better implemented than iCloud.
There is a lot of apps that do that, like Documents 5, by Readdle is probably the best, the core app is free (I believe). In one spot, you can map all cloud services (dropbox,Google drive, Opendrive, Box, etc), windows SMB, , sftp servers, webdav servers and open any relevant app right from there. Using local NAS is the way to go, even better than having a file system on the tablet (unless you're really working on it everywhere). Can even access Videos, open them in whatever. I just tried it, Opened a 350Mb episode of Jessica Jones I had on a USB drive connected to a network hub in IMovie, no sweat. Even tried the same thing on my old Ipad 2, incredibly, it works and not that slow.
Microsoft is in desperation mode. When compared to other machines on the x86 platform, the Surface pro and Surface Book are quite nice, perhaps the nicest laptop/tablets available. However, when iOS on the A9X is used for comparison, the Surface machines lost a lot of their luster.
While I agree that file management on iOS could be better handled, it is a software fix that can be remedied by an update to the OS and the developers themselves could do a better job also. However, there is no reasonable way for Microsoft to increase the battery life on any of their machines. With the iPad pro, I don't need to plug in at all. And I could easily just bring an external battery that will juice it up with a lightning cable. No way to do that as easily or elegantly with a surface.
The Apple pencil "writes" on a screen in far superior fashion to the Surface stylus.
Many of my friends have purchased surface machines. And they all have gone back to the conventional laptop form. I have no plans to go back to a laptop. I have had to resort to doing some creative things to recreate the functionality I missed on my MacBook Air. But I won't go back to the air. The iPad pro is vastly superior noting some of the software limitations of iOS. However, the third party developers continue to extend the capability of iOS. It's only a matter of time now before the iPad pro seriously exceeds all laptops. That day is drawing close.
In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet. But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.
This feeds into the notion that iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did. Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.
In this light recent comments by Tim Cook make more sense. It's not that the PC won't be better at doing certain tasks, it's that work is evolving away from those particular strengths the PC retains.
I call it collaborative and iterative document creation, instead of endpoint document creation . In iterative/collaborative, the document goes around a lot, is showed, annotated, it's how I see it going. The Ipad is perfect for this. This goes with "Agile" devellopment instead in the business world. The whole lean movement in business is basically applying Agile principles to business, and in particular to entrepreneurship (or new projects inside larger enterprises).
Comments
then comes full fleged apps !
Solve these two and i will be one happy camper !
Surface-Pro just feels archaic regardless of what iPad I'm using. If people are set-against using an iPad, a SurfacePro would be the 2nd choice I'd recommend. Anything is better than the Android trash (i.e. "future landfill products") that the iHaters defend.
And I thought Apple fans were the ones criticizing the PC industry for catering to lowest common denominator thinking, convincing people to settle for limitations because "it's what everyone else is using", etc.
When the iPhone was announced, there were still phones being sold that required a stylus for at least some operations.
That said, the reliance on iTunes, email, or (the horrendously clunky and limited) iCloud to be able to transfer files is both frustrating and backward. Apple HAS to figure out an iPad app for MacOS and a MacOS app for the iPad that allows file transfers via wifi (say, a more user-friendly version of AirDrop) or Bluetooth. Until this can be fixed, the iPad pro will underachieve. I am, for example, using Office365, and sad to say, Microsoft Cloud is so much better implemented than iCloud.
His comments seem to be suggesting a companion device is a bad thing.
It seems to me the future is the PC morphing in to the "Personal Cluster" of devices instead of isolated devices. In that case a companion device is targeting part of your use and not to worried if it gets put aside for other uses isn't the bad thing. It really could be a good thing.
To my mind I'd prefer Apple treat all their products as companion devices that have a niche (features/limits) and put effort in to making sure my devices works together. That lets me build a system that works for me out of components on offer. Different combinations suit different people.
They aren't there yet but it does seem to be one last big idea contained in Steve Jobs return to Apple WWDC chat that hasn't been nailed as yet. They seem to be working towards it still though at various scales and hoping the next OS round will be the first time we see the idea work-ably complete.
In one spot, you can map all cloud services (dropbox,Google drive, Opendrive, Box, etc), windows SMB, , sftp servers, webdav servers and open any relevant app right from there.
Using local NAS is the way to go, even better than having a file system on the tablet (unless you're really working on it everywhere).
Can even access Videos, open them in whatever. I just tried it, Opened a 350Mb episode of Jessica Jones I had on a USB drive connected to a network hub in IMovie, no sweat. Even tried the same thing on my old Ipad 2, incredibly, it works and not that slow.
While I agree that file management on iOS could be better handled, it is a software fix that can be remedied by an update to the OS and the developers themselves could do a better job also. However, there is no reasonable way for Microsoft to increase the battery life on any of their machines. With the iPad pro, I don't need to plug in at all. And I could easily just bring an external battery that will juice it up with a lightning cable. No way to do that as easily or elegantly with a surface.
The Apple pencil "writes" on a screen in far superior fashion to the Surface stylus.
Many of my friends have purchased surface machines. And they all have gone back to the conventional laptop form. I have no plans to go back to a laptop. I have had to resort to doing some creative things to recreate the functionality I missed on my MacBook Air. But I won't go back to the air. The iPad pro is vastly superior noting some of the software limitations of iOS. However, the third party developers continue to extend the capability of iOS. It's only a matter of time now before the iPad pro seriously exceeds all laptops. That day is drawing close.
. In iterative/collaborative, the document goes around a lot, is showed, annotated, it's how I see it going. The Ipad is perfect for this.
This goes with "Agile" devellopment instead in the business world. The whole lean movement in business is basically applying Agile principles to business, and in particular to entrepreneurship (or new projects inside larger enterprises).