Steele

I score music. Notion is my app of choice for iOS. It's as powerful or more so than its OS X counterpart. I'll sketch and score full orchestral arrangements on my iPad Pro sometimes using the Apple Pencil, upload it to iCloud and open it either Finale, Sibelius or Digital Performer in OS X. This workflow is marvelous. I can now score from any location I like on a device that's the same size and shape as a piece of notation paper. Then mix it at my studio on the MacPros. Perfect! Almost. 

However, the Surface Pro has an app called Staff Pad that is in some very important ways much more powerful than anything iOS can run. Staff Pad starts as a blank sheet of music paper and allows the composer to use a stylus to begin writing parts like one would on a piece of paper. This is a big part of an ideal workflow for a composer. Notion on the other hand has handwriting recognition but it's located in a small strip at the bottom of the screen. While I'm glad to have it, it's slow, inaccurate and visually non intuitive. Part of this is the apps fault, part is iOS and the iPads fault and part is that the Surface Pro has slightly more powerful hardware and a more flexible OS. 

My usage may not be typical but I think it's crucial that Apple, while keeping the things that are great about the iPad Pro, (thin device, great battery life, stable and secure OS), also need to move in the direction of a "Mac Pad Pro". Apple has been slow to merge OS X and iOS while usually compromising OS X first to do this. Let's hope Apple doesn't ruin OS X in the process. 

While there are good reasons for this approach (large enterprises clients like IBM, and Steve Jobs wish to keep iOS dead simple and nearly impossible to wreck), Apple needs to make a serious push to turn iOS into a scientist's, IT admin's and creative pro's dream of an OS. The needs of these types of users usually signals a well liked and usable OS.