iPad Pro iPad Pro: Very Disappointing

[bondr006]

I just don’t see the need for Mac OS on an iPad, I buy iPad to be an iPad, if i needed as Mac I’d buy a MacBook Air, better value for a computer.

I like the iPad to be an iPad, I think people are buying the wrong tool for their need and pretend Apple “fixes” their wrong choice With a half backed solution.

P.S. I use iPad an my main and only device.

Well then by all means, use the iPad as an iPad. I don't want iPad OS removed from the iPad in favor of Mac OS only. I like iPad OS also, and neither of my Mac OS wishes/solutions on the iPad would stop anyone from using iPad OS on the iPad, while at the same time, giving those who would like Mac OS on the iPad, the option of using it. Win, win best of both worlds in my opinion.....Just like you can run multiple OS's on Macs and Win PC's, why not on a tablet computer?

 

[yabeweb]

That's great! I am really glad you can do that!




However, there are a lot of us who cannot. And if we can get MacOS on the best hardware (iPad Pro) that would be great! And it wouldn't impact you in the slightest! Oh, you mentioned app development stopping for iPadOS in this scenario. Two issues. The first is that most of the apps anyone needs are already created, so they just need to be updated--not much overhead. Secondly, in the event of needing a total rewrite, or a brand new app, they will still make an iPad version because it is both similar in nature to an iPhone app, and like 90% of the install base would still be iPadOS on their iPads. So...not really an issue.

As I said, getting Mac os would push developers not to develop for iPad os so …
Seems wot me like you’d better off with a MacBook Air if you need Mac os

 

[heretiq]

I guess many developers would stop making an iPad app version if you could run Mac OS on the iPad.
I mean why invest resources in making an iPad Affinity (just an example) if you could just make the Mac OS version and save money and make people use it on iPad trough “bootcamp”?

I’m curious — are you a developer or just speculating about what a developer might do?

I *am* a developer and lead operations for a 200+ person development team. My experience and perspective is the opposite of what you suggest a developer might do. We’ve done *way* more iPad apps than Mac apps. Our priority is to build for iPadOS first for the following reasons:

1. the iPad audience is much larger than the Mac audience
2. despite the platform commonalities development for iPadOS is simpler than development for macOS
3. apps built for iPadOS already run largely unchanged on macOS out the box but may require just a little polishing
4. building for iPadOS is essentially building for iOS and gives you an expanded 3 device audience for your app — which is way more efficient than targeting macOS (and wishing for a future “Bootcamp” like capability to run macOS on iPad)

Net-net:

• The iPad and iPadOS platform is very productive from both a utility perspective and development bang for your buck perspective;
• The elegance and productivity of the platform is lost on those who are stuck in the mindset that the iPad is or should be a laptop replacement — which is not the design intent;
• The iPad is a tablet .. attach an external keyboard and the iPad becomes a tablet with an external keyboard .. nothing more .. nothing less;
• Seeing and accepting the iPad for what it is vs expecting it to behave like what we wish it could be is not a bad thing.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

As I said, getting Mac os would push developers not to develop for iPad os so …
Seems wot me like you’d better off with a MacBook Air if you need Mac os

I see you just ignored my post on the subject. They will still develop for iPadOS. Not an issue at all. Zero issue.

 

[macfacts]

PC's, why not on a tablet computer?

To make you buy both. If apple made a car, they would cripple it some how like giving a small trunk to make you buy their car and truck.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I’m curious — are you a developer or just speculating about what a developer might do?

I *am* a developer and lead operations for a 200+ person development team. My experience and perspective is the opposite of what you suggest a developer might do. We’ve done *way* more iPad apps than Mac apps. Our priority is to build for iPadOS first for the following reasons:

1. the iPad audience is much larger than the Mac audience
2. despite the platform commonalities development for iPadOS is simpler than development for macOS
3. apps built for iPadOS already run largely unchanged on macOS out the box but may require just a little polishing
4. building for iPadOS is essentially building for iOS and gives you an expanded 3 device audience for your app — which is way more efficient than targeting macOS (and wishing for a future “Bootcamp” like capability to run macOS on iPad)

Net-net:

• The iPad and iPadOS platform is very productive from both a utility perspective and development bang for your buck perspective;
• The elegance and productivity of the platform is lost on those who are stuck in the mindset that the iPad is or should be a laptop replacement — which is not the design intent;
• The iPad is a tablet .. attach an external keyboard and the iPad becomes a tablet with an external keyboard .. nothing more .. nothing less;
• Seeing and accepting the iPad for what it is vs expecting it to behave like what we wish it could be is not a bad thing.

You said this so much better than I did. Wow! Great post.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

To make you buy both.

And there it is. The reality of the situation. Those of us that want MacOS aren't getting it on the iPad anyway. 😭
😭😭😭

 

[heretiq]

You said this so much better than I did. Wow! Great post.

You’re welcome @eltoslightfoot . Despite the endless round-about nature of this topic, I still think it’s important because I think the iPad is an essential device that deserves to exist as Apple conceived it — even as it evolves. The essence of the iPad as a mental and physical context-optimized appliance is a very important, but somewhat nuanced innovation that I’m afraid can be lost in black and white debates. We’ve seen it happen with the TouchBar which those of us who “got it“ still lament its loss. I don’t want to lose the soul of the iPad while we debate the merits of iPadOS vs macOS so I’m happy to try and contribute. I’m glad you found the comment helpful and thank you for acknowledging it. 🙏🏽

 

[yabeweb]

I’m curious — are you a developer or just speculating about what a developer might do?

I *am* a developer and lead operations for a 200+ person development team. My experience and perspective is the opposite of what you suggest a developer might do. We’ve done *way* more iPad apps than Mac apps. Our priority is to build for iPadOS first for the following reasons:

1. the iPad audience is much larger than the Mac audience
2. despite the platform commonalities development for iPadOS is simpler than development for macOS
3. apps built for iPadOS already run largely unchanged on macOS out the box but may require just a little polishing
4. building for iPadOS is essentially building for iOS and gives you an expanded 3 device audience for your app — which is way more efficient than targeting macOS (and wishing for a future “Bootcamp” like capability to run macOS on iPad)

Net-net:

• The iPad and iPadOS platform is very productive from both a utility perspective and development bang for your buck perspective;
• The elegance and productivity of the platform is lost on those who are stuck in the mindset that the iPad is or should be a laptop replacement — which is not the design intent;
• The iPad is a tablet .. attach an external keyboard and the iPad becomes a tablet with an external keyboard .. nothing more .. nothing less;
• Seeing and accepting the iPad for what it is vs expecting it to behave like what we wish it could be is not a bad thing.

That is because iPad use iPad os, if it did ran Mac OS… and that is the exact reason why no Mac OS was developer for iPad.
As I am said if Affinity ( as an example ) could they would never develop for iPad as they’d already have a Mac OS version, and would t waste reaources to make another version.

A different thing is if you develop for IPhone and port for iPad.

 

[GCat]

You’re welcome @eltoslightfoot . Despite the endless round-about nature of this topic, I still think it’s important because I think the iPad is an essential device that deserves to exist as Apple conceived it — even as it evolves. The essence of the iPad as a mental and physical context-optimized appliance is a very important, but somewhat nuanced innovation that I’m afraid can be lost in black and white debates. We’ve seen it happen with the TouchBar which those of us who “got it“ still lament its loss. I don’t want to lose the soul of the iPad while we debate the merits of iPadOS vs macOS so I’m happy to try and contribute. I’m glad you found the comment helpful and thank you for acknowledging it. 🙏🏽

Thanks for your insights! It’s rare in this forum to see a contribution from someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about and who’s able to make a cohesive argument. 😉

 

[heretiq]

Thanks for your insights! It’s rare in this forum to see a contribution from someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about and who’s able to make a cohesive argument. 😉

Thanks GCat. There are many on MR and in this very thread who fit that bill because of experience and investing the effort to learn things deeply, check their facts and communicate opinions as opinions with cogent arguments to support them. I learn from them every day on a variety of topics from vintage Macs to cutting-edge Apple Silicon, GPUs, under the hood OS details, productivity tips, problem solving, photography, speculation and a whole lot more. They make MR a great community for all of us!

 

[iPadified]

I’m curious — are you a developer or just speculating about what a developer might do?

I *am* a developer and lead operations for a 200+ person development team. My experience and perspective is the opposite of what you suggest a developer might do. We’ve done *way* more iPad apps than Mac apps. Our priority is to build for iPadOS first for the following reasons:

1. the iPad audience is much larger than the Mac audience
2. despite the platform commonalities development for iPadOS is simpler than development for macOS
3. apps built for iPadOS already run largely unchanged on macOS out the box but may require just a little polishing
4. building for iPadOS is essentially building for iOS and gives you an expanded 3 device audience for your app — which is way more efficient than targeting macOS (and wishing for a future “Bootcamp” like capability to run macOS on iPad)

A very interesting business perspective suggesting a iPad first development makes economic sense. Are you developing apps from scratch or do you working with rewriting older apps? The advanced softwares are developed for WinPC/Mac, often three decades ago, are the reference for advanced users and I can imagine there is difficult to let go when rewriting older apps.

Sometimes I think some apps are feature bloated. I mean how much of Word capabilities are people using? I would not be surprised if 90% of the users uses 10% of the features. It is perhaps OK that Microsoft demand that the 10% advanced users must use a Mac app. I wonder if the iPad FCP features were chosen for the 90% of users and not the 10% advanced users.

 

[chmania]

I *am* a developer and lead operations for a 200+ person development team. My experience and perspective is the opposite of what you suggest a developer might do. We’ve done *way* more iPad apps than Mac apps. Our priority is to build for iPadOS first for the following reasons:

1. the iPad audience is much larger than the Mac audience
2. despite the platform commonalities development for iPadOS is simpler than development for macOS
3. apps built for iPadOS already run largely unchanged on macOS out the box but may require just a little polishing
4. building for iPadOS is essentially building for iOS and gives you an expanded 3 device audience for your app — which is way more efficient than targeting macOS (and wishing for a future “Bootcamp” like capability to run macOS on iPad)

So, you know that iPadOS is not macOS, and that it can't be seriously considered as laptop/desktop replacement. But as iPad has a larger audience, it is just a money maker for Apple. Its hard imagine someone going around taking photos with a 12.5" device, or even a 10.5" device, when there are phones, which anyone can carry in a pocket.

 

[sparksd]

So, you know that iPadOS is not macOS, and that it can't be seriously considered as laptop/desktop replacement. But as iPad has a larger audience, it is just a money maker for Apple. Its hard imagine someone going around taking photos with a 12.5" device, or even a 10.5" device, when there are phones, which anyone can carry in a pocket.

Depending on what your needs are for a portable device, it can seriously be considered as a laptop replacement. Maybe not for you but you don't speak for everybody.

 

[heretiq]

A very interesting business perspective suggesting a iPad first development makes economic sense. Are you developing apps from scratch or do you working with rewriting older apps? The advanced softwares are developed for WinPC/Mac, often three decades ago, are the reference for advanced users and I can imagine there is difficult to let go when rewriting older apps.

Sometimes I think some apps are feature bloated. I mean how much of Word capabilities are people using? I would not be surprised if 90% of the users uses 10% of the features. It is perhaps OK that Microsoft demand that the 10% advanced users must use a Mac app. I wonder if the iPad FCP features were chosen for the 90% of users and not the 10% advanced users.

Good questions. And you’ve touched on a number of factors we address when building apps for our Clients.

Approximately 3/4s of the apps we do are new apps. However, both new apps and rebuilds often have three things in common: Clients want simplicity, they want the app delivered fast and mobility is a key requirement.

The mobile aspect steers us towards smartphones and tablets and Clients often prefer the iPhone and iPad version either exclusively or first then Android smartphone / tablet as a second focus (depending on whether Client users are their b-to-b customers and the Client can’t dictate vs b-to-c customers or if the Client employees are primarily Android-centric).

Some clients want multi-platform but many are ok with separate native iOS / Android projects. In virtually all cases we take an agile approach and focus on applying the 80/20 rule for functionality in the first app version (the 20% of functionality that satisfies 80% of the users).

The majority of our Clients are Microsoft shops (backend) and interestingly in the cases of rebuilds of legacy apps, the desktop component will be .Net-based web apps but Clients almost exclusively want the mobile component built as iPad (and some cases Android) tablet vs deploying Surface tablets/hybrids.

Requests for MacOS (and Windows) native desktop apps are almost nonexistent, but when we build for iPad we will build in accommodations for Mac and iPhone as that often requires marginal effort.

 

[heretiq]

So, you know that iPadOS is not macOS, and that it can't be seriously considered as laptop/desktop replacement. But as iPad has a larger audience, it is just a money maker for Apple. Its hard imagine someone going around taking photos with a 12.5" device, or even a 10.5" device, when there are phones, which anyone can carry in a pocket.

I don’t know a single person who would buy an iPad just to take pictures. The use cases for the iPad are much broader than that comical example and many of them overlap with use cases performed on Macs. For many people the overlapping iPad use cases are sufficient to make it a laptop/desktop replacement for them. If you care to look there are several people in this thread who have said that the iPad has replaced a desktop/laptop for them. So maybe it’s not a desktop/laptop replacement for you and me, but believing our experience is representative of everyone’s experience seems narrow.

 

[alecgold]

My issues are two-fold:
First, file management isn’t very good. If I want to store five PowerPoint decks on the thing and deliver a presentation to a customer, it’s fine. Editing those slide decks, is difficult for me, compared to using a MacBook.

Secondly, I’m a photographer. First thing I want to do after a shoot is copy the photos to my 4 TB SSD drive. I plugged my card reader into the iPad and the SSD drive into the USB-C port of the Magic Keyboard… but it wouldn’t recognize both. Then I tried a USB hub; still couldn’t see both. Mabye I just need to buy the correct hub? It’s been cumbersome, that’s for sure. A vintage 1987 Mac Finder would be better.

Lastly, of course, I want to rapidly edit RAW photos (45 mp in my case) on the iPad. My editor of choice, DxO, isn’t available, so I tried Adobe Lightroom, but found its control sliders are very difficult to manipulate and sluggish with my finger on the touch screen. The touchpad didn’t work well either. Next I’ll try a mouse. I did try my Apple Magic Mouse (Bluetooth) and it connects, it works, but the scrolling feature doesn’t work. Somebody in this thread says there’s a hack to make it work. Sigh…

Safari seems to have some big limitations, so I downloaded Firefox and Chrome. I’ve been trying Firefox, but it won’t work with the 1Password tool, which unfortunately I rely upon.

There are a lot of things it gets right. I’m hoping that I can travel with just the iPad and not bring the laptop. I keep all of my files on my Synology at home, and I am able to connect remotely to the Synology and download files to my iPad. And all of the videoconferencing products work very well with iPad. But photo editing, so far, has been a failure for me, which is very disappointing.

That are a lot of things to change. And those are big changes. It will take serious time and effort to change from OSX/Windows to a new operating system like iPadOS. And it might involve giving up features as well.
I remember switching from windows to (the classic) Mac In 1998 or so. And the changing to MacOS in 2002. Those are big changes that don’t come easy.

At the moment I use windows 11 from work, MacBook Pro for some specific work that I need to do and can’t change. And about 80-90% of my time I use the iPad Pro M2 with pencil and folio keyboard. Not because it’s an iPad and cool and all that, but just because for 80-90% of my work it’s the best tool I have in the shed.

First, the USB-port on the keyboard is charge only, no data! so no wonder that this doesn’t work.
If you’re able you might try a satechi dongle that has USB-C and SD-card reader build in? But I would want to try it before you buy it for $80-120… But I suspect that iPadOS doesn’t recognise 2 drives at the same time. No matter what you do. And storing 45mp raw files on an iPad you’ll run out of storage rather quickly as well. So the conclusion might be: if you need that specific set of features, the iPP might not be the right tool for you.

 

[bondr006]

Depending on what your needs are for a portable device, it can seriously be considered as a laptop replacement. Maybe not for you but you don't speak for everybody.

A common courtesy concept that seems to elude some folk around here.

 

[rukind2]

This is an image from Apple’s iPad Pro page: “With apps like Final Cut Pro for iPad, you can speed through time‑consuming tasks with Fast Cut features like Scene Removal Mask.”

There’s a lot to like about the iPad Pro, but high performance computing isn’t one of them.

View attachment 2364987

Exactly.

 

[Alameda]

That are a lot of things to change. And those are big changes. It will take serious time and effort to change from OSX/Windows to a new operating system like iPadOS. And it might involve giving up features as well.
I remember switching from windows to (the classic) Mac In 1998 or so. And the changing to MacOS in 2002. Those are big changes that don’t come easy.

At the moment I use windows 11 from work, MacBook Pro for some specific work that I need to do and can’t change. And about 80-90% of my time I use the iPad Pro M2 with pencil and folio keyboard. Not because it’s an iPad and cool and all that, but just because for 80-90% of my work it’s the best tool I have in the shed.

First, the USB-port on the keyboard is charge only, no data! so no wonder that this doesn’t work.
If you’re able you might try a satechi dongle that has USB-C and SD-card reader build in? But I would want to try it before you buy it for $80-120… But I suspect that iPadOS doesn’t recognise 2 drives at the same time. No matter what you do. And storing 45mp raw files on an iPad you’ll run out of storage rather quickly as well. So the conclusion might be: if you need that specific set of features, the iPP might not be the right tool for you.

Thank you very much!
I have a Thunderbolt 3 hub which I use with my MacBook, and it works perfectly with the iPad. I can access my 4TB drive and my CF Express card, and I can copy files from the CF Express card to the flash drive.

I can also use my 4K monitor, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, and web cam… although that’s not my goal.

I’m still working at trying to make the solution workable for me. I’ll have to try Lightroom more. Now I have the pencil, so I can manipulate sliders, which I couldn’t do well with my finger.

On my Mac, I cull through 1,000 45 megapixel RAW photos at a time using DxO PhotoLab, then I edit them and output a few as JPEG, but iPad only has Lightroom.

 

[sparksd]

Thank you very much!
I have a Thunderbolt 3 hub which I use with my MacBook, and it works perfectly with the iPad. I can access my 4TB drive and my CF Express card, and I can copy files from the CF Express card to the flash drive.

I can also use my 4K monitor, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, and web cam… although that’s not my goal.

I’m still working at trying to make the solution workable for me. I’ll have to try Lightroom more. Now I have the pencil, so I can manipulate sliders, which I couldn’t do well with my finger.

On my Mac, I cull through 1,000 45 megapixel RAW photos at a time using DxO PhotoLab, then I edit them and output a few as JPEG, but iPad only has Lightroom.

Sliders are a pain for me in iPad Lightroom. One trick is to use the pencil and tap the slider bar in the direction you want it to move. It moves in increments that differ among the bars; e.g., tap on the right side of the Exposure bar and it increases by 0.1, tap on the right side of the Contrast, Shadows, and Highlight bars and they change in increments of 5. The same method works to decrease setting values. I wish you could do it as in the desktop version - select the numeric value and change it by typing in an explicit value or increase/decrease with keyboard arrow keys.