Apple highlights glowing iPad Pro reviews ahead of Wednesday release
Sample iPad Pro review text
As usual, Apple seeded early iPad Pro hardware to a number of influential tech and mainstream publications, who took their respective reviews live this morning. It seems the company is restricting focus to the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro, as in-depth evaluations of the smaller 11-inch model are not yet available.
Similar to recent hardware debuts, Apple aggregated a few notable quotes from the likes of Wired, Laptop, Mashable, Daring Fireball, The Independent and PocketLint in a press release designed to spark interest in the just-announced tablet lineup. Apple CEO Tim Cook and SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller threw a spotlight on their favorite lines -- with a link back to Apple's webpage -- in respective tweets.
Wired said "By every measure I can think of, these are the best, most powerful, most capable iPads I've ever used. They put other tablets to shame."
John Gruber from Daring Fireball was quite keen on the new Apple Pencil, noting "the new Apple Pencil is one of the best 2.0 products I've ever seen. The original Apple Pencil is a terrific product, but the new one nears perfection for the concept."
"The mobile workflow was seamless and both the hardware and software were incredibly powerful," said Resource.
Additional images were shared from Instagram featuring images created on the new iPad Pros and and redesigned Apple Pencil.
Apple cherry-picked snippets of longer reviews which, while mostly positive, included criticisms of the new iPad Pros as well. A common refrain from journalists is the less-than-stellar experience iOS offers when pitted against traditional computers. Apple often compares iPad with laptops from other manufacturers, opting to refer to the slate as a computer rather than a mobile device. When the latest Pros were unveiled last month, for example, CEO Tim Cook contrasted lifetime and yearly iPad sales figures against the wider PC market.View this post on InstagramNEW iPad Pro. Excited and proud to say that I'm one of the first artists in the World to create with @apple s new #ipadpro & #applepencil ! This is a crazy tool for experimental projects to merge digital drawings, traditional art and mobile photography together. I've used some of my calligraphy paper sketches, @procreate app as the main tool, #shotoniphone photos and @adobe @lightroom apps for color editing. This is the next level of my creativity. Some of these artworks will be used for my upcoming new clothing collection! Stay tuned. _______________________ , , Apple! -- , , Lightroom, Procreate. , -- , , . ! . -! .
A post shared by Pokras Lampas | (@pokraslampas) on Nov 1, 2018 at 6:52am PDT
"We've sold more iPads in the last year than the entire notebook lineup of all of the biggest notebook manufacturers," Cook said. "This makes iPad not only the most popular tablet, but the most popular computer in the world."
Despite Apple's marketing hype, however, the iPad Pro user experience compares unfavorably to full-fledged computers in key areas. Multitasking, while greatly improved since iOS 11, is not as intuitive or robust as a desktop, while reviewers have knocked Apple's iOS user interface -- and the Smart Keyboard -- for coming up short as a laptop replacement.
Still, there is much to tout in Apple's latest hardware, including impressive new features like an external redesign, TrueDepth and Face ID integration, and the powerful A12X Bionic Processor. The third-generation iPad Pro went up for preorder last week and is set for release on Nov. 7.
Apple provided similar review roundups for other recent product launches including the new iPhone XS/XS Max and the iPhone XR.
Comments
I personally would like the iPad to be used more as a laptop and not just a tablet, which means using the keyboard and the iPad in portrait mode, while I use some sort of a mouse or trackpad and not touching the display. In that mode Touch does not make sense at all. However when carrying around touch obviously does make sense.
File access, sharing and more power / batch tools will be needed to convince me to see the iPad as a production tool. I look forward to seeing what Apple has in store!
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/05/review-ipad-pro-pencil-12-9-inch/
"If Apple is able to let go a bit and execute better on making sure the software feels as flexible and “advanced” as the hardware, the iPad Pro has legs. If it isn’t able to do that, then the iPad will remain a dead-end. But I have hope. In the shape of an expensive-ass pencil".
Also, let’s not confuse Cook’s statement. It’s not marketing hype for Cook to say the iPad sold more than all the other laptops if thats what the data say. Nor does stating that mean the ipad is a replacement for a desktop or laptop. Stating more popular does not claim outright replacing. Cars sell more than planes or trains and thus are more popular, but they did not replace planes or trains. Use cases for each mode of travel exist and will continue to exist. The post in Post-PC means “after”, as in the era that comes after the era where there were only PCs. Now we have lots of tools to choose from.
It may have More power than 92% of the laptops sold in the last year but it lacks the versatility. File management is still pitiful. The weakest link on an iPad is iOS but it’s getting there. Maybe in another 2-3 years.
That’s progress.
You can get onboard, get out the way, or get run over.
Whichever you choose doesn’t really matter; it isn’t going to stop.
The CEO of ford doesn’t crow that he’s sold more Rangers than Airbuses because there is no basis for comparing the two.
The very basic form of file sharing (from now I use that term to match the UI) is the iOS Photo Library. When you plug your iPad or iPhone to the USB port of your computer iOS Photo Library appears as “camera storage” to your computer. You can drag & drop photos and videos onto the desktop or import into the Photos application. Then there is iTunes File Sharing. iOS apps that can exchange files with your computer are listed in the File Sharing panel in iTunes. If your app doesn’t appear there that means it doesn’t support file sharing at all. Then there is the Files app on iOS. Together with iCloud Desktop and iCloud Documents folder it provides complete access to your Mac files, and on Windows (and early macOS versions), to your iCloud files. Locations in the Files app are not limited to “iCloud” and “On My iPad”, thirdy party apps can add other locations such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, networked office and home computers, NAS drives, flash drives... to Files app. The native support of such locations by the Files app is a trivial issue, third party apps do the job for now within Files app. Then there is the Share sheet, which provides file sharing capabilities from within any app that supports file sharing. If the destination does not appear in the Share sheet then the destination app is to blame, not iOS.
iOS has a very extensible file management architecture composed of several levels, as summarized above. Without that, hundreds of productivity and utility apps wouldn’t exist. That developer support proves that iOS provides a mature and complete file management solution, from the very basic to the most sophisticated levels.
You tell them that after a program is installed it has full access to your hard drive. That program can copy, move, rename or even delete files on your computer. Not just files that belong to it or in its own directory, but files that other programs use. Even operating system files. It can snoop around your entire drive looking for useful information and then “steal” that information and send it off to a remote server.
What do you think their reaction would be to an App having those abilities? Would they praise it for having so much power? Or be worried about what it could do to your system?