Hands on: iPad Pro with Apple Pencil

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  • Reply 201 of 247
    alfiejr wrote: »
    Apple just killed Surface. RIP.

    and MS finally had the sense to join the winning side instead of go on in denial. good leadership actually. they just saved MS Office.

    even better leadership when they mercifully pull the plug on Windows phone next year.

    While that's probably not true, I like the sound of it anyway!
  • Reply 202 of 247
    I'd say, ever since Samsung figured out how to make tests lie, and since they also know how to make numbers useless for real world performance.

    Apple's stance has been to show the buyer that the experience is more important than the numbers.

    Those aren't tech specs, but doped performance metrics. Those are also important for understanding what is going on, assuming their accurate, but, yes, the user experience is the ultimate measure which is why Apple is trouncing the competition and why I tell everyone to get the device that best suits their needs.
  • Reply 203 of 247
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,340member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DownShift View Post



    @Tmay Thanks for the link, much appreciated. Her dialogue sounds sort of silly, simplistic, biased and short sighted on how this tech is even used in the real world (even though she says she is an apple designer). I Have been fortunate to still use a cintiq 21ux from 2006 that works great to this day, I've used a Cintiq companion 2, cintiq 27QHD touch, a surface pro one and surface pro 3 as well as most top iPad stylus from the major manufactures since its introduction (I was gifted the Intuos creative stylus 1 & 2 from Wacom and the jot with pixelpoint from Andonit). I even sacraficed my fantastic iPhone 5 to purchase a Note 4 to do digital sketching on the go (That's how passionate and devoted to digital sketching I am) I'm going to have to just wait and see to try one out for myself before I form a firm opinion on Apples offering. From my experience with this tech she is right on a couple things but way off on the majority. That's just my opinion though (has she ever used Wacom's classic stylus for the cintiq? It's just like using a sharpie Fineline - you don't get much more unobtrusive than that while drawing. And her comments about the lag are really nit picky, when you are really moving I never notice these problems on any of the hardware I use except for the iPad). Check out @DownShift_Studio on Instagram or downshiftstudio.com on the web to see how I use this tech just so you can see that I'm not talking out of my ass here lol. I use this stuff everyday. I'm not a master by any stretch but I do know what I'm talking about. With all of that said, I still am looking forward to trying this new offering out and forming my own opinion. Have a good night!

    It was interesting to me after reading the comments, how defensive Cintique owners were about their devices; possibly for good reason. As you state, Cintiques today are much superior to the iPad Pro, whose utility and performance is mostly unknown at this point, but it's hard not to notice that one at 1.6 lb is, for all practical purposes, a mobile product, and the other at 3.75 pounds is better considered a portable.

     

    Given the typical Apple release of a product, I would expect a number of "Pro" apps to be released in the coming months, though again likely not of the caliber of the current desktop applications that Cintique has. Many may find that iPad Pro's capabilities are "good enough"and we will likely see fairly strong sales, considerably higher than the Cintique, already a niche product.

     

    I"m not surprised that Gamers are up in arms about the AppleTV stepping on console turf, nor that Graphic Artists and others are up in arms about the presumption of the iPad Pro as a graphics tool.

     

    This is always how a disruption looks the first couple of days. Lots of noise, lots of outrage.

  • Reply 204 of 247
    haggar wrote: »

    You don't need to know that.  Specs are for Fandroids who like to fill out checklists so they can feel they've accomplished something by showing off how much RAM they have.  You just need to take Apple's word that Pencil is better than anything else out there.  Don't ask how or why, it just is.

    Actually, I think some spec chasers (aka "hardware enthusiasts") just think they know better than Apple's engineers at how to build an iPhone. I've notice that don't simply ask Apple for what they need, instead they tell Apple how they should engineer their products. I guess reading Anandtech makes everyone an expert engineer, LOL

    So for example, instead of saying "I want to open 10 porn pages in Safari and switch between them without reloading any page," they say "but but but iPhone needs 2GB of RAM" (or whatever the goalpost has been moved to). Or instead of saying, "I want longer runtime from my iPhone battery" they declare "Apple needs to make a thicker, heavier iPhone to fit a huge battery."

    Apple hires real engineers, not fake ones who post complaints from the internet. Real engineers think creatively, and work together with software, creative types, and designers to find optimal solutions. Fake engineers think one dimensionally, and presume that only one solution to an engineering problem must exist. They failed to notice how, for example, OS X and iOS have features to squeeze more memory and power savings from the same hardware. Features like memory compression, and power sleep. Or off loading functions from the A9 to the low power M9 coprocessor. Or dynamically lowering refresh rates to save energy.

    Complaining about hardware specs from the comfortable anonymity of the Internet might motivate companies who market their specs, but not Apple. So it's ultimately a waste of effort.
  • Reply 205 of 247
    I think a lot of the people writing off the opinions of Surface Pro users are grossly misunderstanding the reasons why many people migrated to them for professional use. Very few of them want to use Windows, or any other Microsoft product. Most would much rather use an Apple solution for their daily work.

    The issue is that the Surface Pro and the Cintiq Companion are the only cost-effective devices on the market that do what they need. iPad Pro and Pencil are really cool proof-of-concept devices, but they do not really address the majority of the needs for most creative professionals. Maybe a few iterations down the road those concerns will be fixed, but for Apple fans to write off those concerns is not productive.
  • Reply 206 of 247
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,340member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bsenka View Post



    I think a lot of the people writing off the opinions of Surface Pro users are grossly misunderstanding the reasons why many people migrated to them for professional use. Very few of them want to use Windows, or any other Microsoft product. Most would much rather use an Apple solution for their daily work.



    The issue is that the Surface Pro and the Cintiq Companion are the only cost-effective devices on the market that do what they need. iPad Pro and Pencil are really cool proof-of-concept devices, but they do not really address the majority of the needs for most creative professionals. Maybe a few iterations down the road those concerns will be fixed, but for Apple fans to write off those concerns is not productive.

    Yes quite a timely assessment you have made today, and given the five days that have passed since the announcement of the IPad Pro, do you really believe that "a few more iterations are needed" or is it really that you are waiting for many of your favorite and required applications to arrive?

     

    Again, this is what disruption looks like.

  • Reply 207 of 247

    A point missing from this discussion so far is transporting the iPad Pro.

     

    Many times, I just carry my iPadAir alone. But, most often, I use a man-purse that holds my iPadAir along with assorted chargers, cables for AppleWatch, VGA/HDMI cables to hook up the iPadAir to projectors, pens/pencils, screen cleaners, Beats earphones, camera stands for the iPhone, a "stylus" for the iPad, and some miscellaneous other stuff. 

     

    So, how am I now going to carry and protect the iPad Pro? I'm going to need a much larger man-purse? I'm not particularly happy about it now. 

  • Reply 208 of 247
    pmcdpmcd Posts: 396member
    alfiejr wrote: »
    Apple just killed Surface. RIP.

    and MS finally had the sense to join the winning side instead of go on in denial. good leadership actually. they just saved MS Office.

    even better leadership when they mercifully pull the plug on Windows phone next year.

    I don't think the Surface is in any danger. Very nice device which is quite different from the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro is more tablet, especially given the 4:3 aspect ratio, while the Surface 3 is more laptop and oriented to landscape use. The Surface runs a desktop OS while the iPad Pro is less file oriented. They are very different and both exceptional in my opinion. The iPad Pro costs more. For educational users Apple does not offer educational pricing on iPad products while Microsoft does.

    Wish I could have both!
  • Reply 209 of 247
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by waldobushman View Post

     

    A point missing from this discussion so far is transporting the iPad Pro.

     

    Many times, I just carry my iPadAir alone. But, most often, I use a man-purse that holds my iPadAir along with assorted chargers, cables for AppleWatch, VGA/HDMI cables to hook up the iPadAir to projectors, pens/pencils, screen cleaners, Beats earphones, camera stands for the iPhone, a "stylus" for the iPad, and some miscellaneous other stuff. 

     

    So, how am I now going to carry and protect the iPad Pro? I'm going to need a much larger man-purse? I'm not particularly happy about it now. 




    Apple are not able to magically make third party accessories bigger.

  • Reply 210 of 247
    Here are my two main concerns: How durable is the tip of the pencil? And is it going to scratch the surface of the iPad, especially if you happen to accidentally drag it across some speck of dirt on the screen? The surface of my Wacom Bamboo looks like it's been dragged on a gravel road behind a truck, and the tips of the Wacom sytlii get worn down to little nubbins fairly quickly.
  • Reply 211 of 247
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member

    A good number of folks think the MS Surface will still maintain its market niche thanks to running Legacy Windows applications.

     

    basically, no, not for long.

     

    many if not most of those legacy apps have not been optimized for a tablet UI. yes they work on Surface, but that era is fading fast. for real world uses where a tablet is really the best practical choice, developers will be writing new apps optimized for tablets. and if they go through all that trouble they are going to look to iOS as the leading pro-sumer market that business users will want for both on and off the job. the apps themselves will be more and more platform neutral in that the data, the content they are minipulating is in some cloud. only the UI will be platform specific. so it won't matter if you're running a Windows desktop at work, your companion iPad app will let you work on the same files outside the office as needed. this evntual interchangability of platforms vs. a vs. work has been foreseen for years, and now in the post-PC era it's actually happening.

     

    MS itself sees this coming and is smartly positioning Office to be platform neutral starting now.

  • Reply 212 of 247
    pmcdpmcd Posts: 396member
    alfiejr wrote: »
    A good number of folks think the MS Surface will still maintain its market niche thanks to running Legacy Windows applications.

    basically, no, not for long.

    many if not most of those legacy apps have not been optimized for a tablet UI. yes they work on Surface, but that era is fading fast. for real world uses where a tablet is really the best practical choice, developers will be writing new apps optimized for tablets. and if they go through all that trouble they are going to look to iOS as the leading pro-sumer market that business users will want for both on and off the job. the apps themselves will be more and more platform neutral in that the data, the content they are minipulating is in some cloud. only the UI will be platform specific. so it won't matter if you're running a Windows desktop at work, your companion iPad app will let you work on the same files outside the office as needed. this evntual interchangability of platforms vs. a vs. work has been foreseen for years, and now in the post-PC era it's actually happening.

    MS itself sees this coming and is smartly positioning Office to be platform neutral starting now.

    The Surface is more suitable as a laptop with a very good stylus capability. It has more of a file management approach and is less expensive. It is not just an issue of running legacy apps. Where is the equivalent of PDF Annotator on the iPad Pro?

    As I said before, the products are different. As for Office, we will see how platform neutral it actually is. It never has been. If it serves Microsoft's interests they will make it totally platform neutral. We shall see.

    The current iPad Pro is very nice but it is very expensive and is the only iPad to support the Apple Pencil. Seems to me this is a test run aimed at very specific markets, education not being one of them. If all goes well then it might expand to a more general setting. For now, a student in the sciences may very well be better off with a Surface 3 ( not pro).
  • Reply 213 of 247

    Any reviews for how the Pencil and iPad Pro work for writing and taking notes? Most reviews deal with graphics and arts, but there are those who could benefit from solid note taking applications and handwriting recognition (e.g., students, physicians). I wonder if Apple with ever release a 9" iPad with the Pro capabilities. 

  • Reply 214 of 247
    brucemcbrucemc Posts: 1,541member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by cm477 View Post

    Any reviews for how the Pencil and iPad Pro work for writing and taking notes? Most reviews deal with graphics and arts, but there are those who could benefit from solid note taking applications and handwriting recognition (e.g., students, physicians). I wonder if Apple with ever release a 9" iPad with the Pro capabilities. 

    I don't think you will see any "reviews" of the iPad Pro & its features until just before it is available - and all we know right now is November.  What we are seeing online now are some first impressions with the time that people had with the device at the Apple event.  You can't glean much from that.

  • Reply 215 of 247
    dysamoria wrote: »
    Obviously you're not an artist that uses styli. It's FAR more efficient to flip the stylus than to change the tool settings. Regardless of the GUI, an eraser on the opposite end of the stylus is always the superior solution. There's far less latency in getting done what you want when all you have to do is flip your stylus.

    We are talking about a multitouch screen here. Wouldn't a simpler solution be to use a multitouch gesture with the non-writing hand to erase? Or use your left hand on a button and erase with the tip? If the iPad Pro can discriminate between the Pen and fingers it would seem more practical to use combinations than flip the pen over.
  • Reply 216 of 247
    Originally Posted by elehcdn View Post

    We are talking about a multitouch screen here. Wouldn't a simpler solution be to use a multitouch gesture with the non-writing hand to erase? Or use your left hand on a button and erase with the tip? If the iPad Pro can discriminate between the Pen and fingers it would seem more practical to use combinations than flip the pen over.



    You want precision from your erasure as much as you do your drawing.

     

    I love that my Wacom lets me flip my stylus to erase. Wish the Pencil would, too.

  • Reply 217 of 247
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     



    You want precision from your erasure as much as you do your drawing.

     

    I love that my Wacom lets me flip my stylus to erase. Wish the Pencil would, too.




    So the end of the pen is as precise as your finger? Seems to me they would be pretty much the same size.

     

    Then again, if you want real precision, wouldn't you prefer to use the pen tip and enable it with multitouch from the other hand?

  • Reply 218 of 247
    Originally Posted by elehcdn View Post

    So the end of the pen is as precise as your finger? Seems to me they would be pretty much the same size.

     

    Hmm. Interesting point.

     
    Then again, if you want real precision, wouldn't you prefer to use the pen tip and enable it with multitouch from the other hand?



    Fair enough; my Wacom is only a drawing tablet, not a screen-backed tablet. I’m not used to drawing directly on what I’m seeing (digitally), so that may be better. I use my free hand to manage the function wheel on the tablet in the first place. 

     

    I’m still confident that most of Wacom hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since the Pro was announced.

  • Reply 219 of 247
    polymniapolymnia Posts: 1,080member
    Hmm. Interesting point.


    Fair enough; my Wacom is only a drawing tablet, not a screen-backed tablet. I’m not used to drawing directly on what I’m seeing (digitally), so that may be better. I use my free hand to manage the function wheel on the tablet in the first place. 

    I’m still confident that most of Wacom hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since the Pro was announced.

    Wacom is right to be worried. Though, I still hold out hope that Apple may open up the pen to 3rd party manufacturers. Since it appears they have developed a lot of their own tech to make the apple pencil work, that may be a remote possibility.

    The beauty of Wacom is the nearly infinite configuration of hardware and software their system provides.

    This configuration is what allows all of us to erase JUST the way we desire. It might seem silly to people who don't use pens regularly, but it is important to those of us who do.
  • Reply 220 of 247
    tmay wrote: »
    Yes quite a timely assessment you have made today, and given the five days that have passed since the announcement of the IPad Pro, do you really believe that "a few more iterations are needed" or is it really that you are waiting for many of your favorite and required applications to arrive?


    Although software is a very real problem on the iPad, that's the least of the issues. Devices like the Surface Pro and the Cintiq Companion bring the full professional desktop experience (hardware, applications and file structure) to the portable drawing device. THAT is what it's defenders are paying for, and the iPad Pro doesn't even come close to addressing the issue. It's still just an iPad that now can do a few more cool things it couldn't before.

    Without question a few more iterations are needed. The pencil is missing programmable side switches, and an eraser. It doesn't come in width and grip shape variants. The iPad itself doesn't have any hotkeys. iOS doesn't allow the install of full desktop apps. It doesn't give me access to the file structure to organize my files and folders for large professional projects. All of these things CAN be done in the future if Apple really wants to, they just aren't there right now.

    Again, this is what disruption looks like.

    I guess that depends on what you mean by disruption. This is more of a "me too" product, that brings considerably less to the table than the products it's competing against. It's certainly poised with the potential to become disruptive, but this version is not quite there yet.

    Now, will they sell a lot of them? I bet they will. I'll be buying one for sure. Will professional artists suddenly abandon their professional tools in favour of it? No. Is it the product that Mac lovers who have reluctantly been using Windows based portable drawing tablets have been wishing for? Not even close. What they wanted was for the iPad Pro and the 12" Macbook to be the same device. That would have caused some serious immediate disruption.
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