iPad Pro iPad Pro: Very Disappointing

[BellSystem]

You are wrong until Apple makes a tablet Mac. That’s how it works around here. The iPad shall not be questioned!!!!!

 

[MacProFCP]

I’ve had my 11” iPad Pro since December — about four months now. Now that I’ve put it through its paces, I think I can say confidently that this is a very disappointing product.

I bought it with 512 GB of storage, the M2 processor, 8 GB of RAM, the cellular radio and the Magic Keyboard. For a product at this price point, it is a terrible laptop. I can definitely see the value of a $300 or $400 iPad as an entertainment toy. It’s great at downloading movies for playback while on long flights. But at the price of the iPad Pro, it’s well into laptop territory, as is the hardware capabilities… but it badly disappoints.

I’m not sure where to begin, but the Safari browser is very weak, and so is text selection and editing. Select/copy/paste works so-so on the iPhone, but on a platform like iPad Pro, I should have no difficulty selecting text for copy/paste. But it doesn’t work well on this platform. I downloaded Microsoft Office, and found its performance is fairly slow. I tried brining in RAW photos from my camera for editing with Adobe Lightroom, and it was close to unusable, especially compared to using my MacBook Pro. I tried using it as a slideshow player for my digital photos, and that hasn’t worked out too well. I tried using it with my Magic Mouse, but the scrolling feature of the mouse doesn’t work; I can’t slide my finger on top of the mouse to scroll a window.

I think this system needs to be MacOS with touchscreen support, instead of iPhone OS with keyboard support. As I said, i can see the attraction at the $300-$400 level, but in a $1,000-ish product, I should be able to get at least the same productivity as a laptop. MS Windows has plenty of touchscreen laptops; it’s basically Windows with a touchscreen mouse. Personally, I don’t see much future for the iPad Pro if they’re only going to be large screen iPhones.

The purpose of the iPad is not to be a laptop replacement. It isn’t and will likely never be. For one, why would Apple cannibalize its own sales not to mention that the keyboard and mouse can never be truly integrated like a laptop.

The purpose of the iPad is casual computing where the technology is so seamless that it disappears. The point is that for certain tasks, it’s not that they be done better or faster than on a laptop but that they can be done while sitting in an armchair or in the cockpit.

Also, the iPad is great at single task uses such as controlling hardware through an app, content consumption and ForeFlight.

For your use case, it’s never going to work. This is common. Stop trying to make it a laptop, it’s not one. Instead, see this for what it is, a large iPhone with a faster processor. You may not see the value at the crazy price points and in that case, you should sell it.

 

[RichHI]

The purpose of the iPad is not to be a laptop replacement. It isn’t and will likely never be. For one, why would Apple cannibalize its own sales not to mention that the keyboard and mouse can never be truly integrated like a laptop.

The purpose of the iPad is casual computing where the technology is so seamless that it disappears. The point is that for certain tasks, it’s not that they be done better or faster than on a laptop but that they can be done while sitting in an armchair or in the cockpit.

Also, the iPad is great at single task uses such as controlling hardware through an app, content consumption and ForeFlight.

For your use case, it’s never going to work. This is common. Stop trying to make it a laptop, it’s not one. Instead, see this for what it is, a large iPhone with a faster processor. You may not see the value at the crazy price points and in that case, you should sell it.

Agree with most of this. Only point of contention is an iPad and an iPhone are two separate things for me. I use an iPhone to make phone calls, send quick emails and when traveling doing some browsing. The iPad is for browsing and viewing movies when I do not want to carry any of my macs. I feel many apple fans today see using the iPhone to make phone calls as unimportant or a "toy" as the OP would say. Without wishing to appear too pedantic, I suggest the OP should set their spellcheck on, no matter which hardware they use.

 

[neuropsychguy]

I got an iPad Pro some years ago to try and see if it could replace a laptop for me. It was good, but not quite what I needed. I ended up selling the iPad and getting a laptop.

That's what you need to do OP. The issue isn't the iPad Pro, the issue is what you need. It was an experiment that didn't work. Move on. The iPad Pro is a phenomenal device. I know some people who use it and are very happy with it instead of a laptop -- it all depends on what you need.

 

[Macalicious2011]

I think this system needs to be MacOS with touchscreen support, instead of iPhone OS with keyboard support. As I said, i can see the attraction at the $300-$400 level, but in a $1,000-ish product, I should be able to get at least the same productivity as a laptop.

This highlights what Apple fails to communicate, which is that the iPad Pro has Pro hardware but not pro-software.

Except for Apple Pencil 2, external display support and FaceID, there almost nothing that you can do on a Pro that you can't on a 4-5 year old iPad. Furthermore, there is almost nothing that an iPad Pro does better.

Unfortunately the hardware limitations are often only discovered several months after purchase after trying to use the iPad Pro as "work station".

However I still love mine and use it more than my phone and laptop. It's my hybrid Swiss army knife of a product:
-Email
-Work
-Entertainment
-Browsing

 

[Clockerjohn]

Alameda, I completely understand your point of view. There are a lot of things that people do that are simply better on a laptop. In your situation you should have a laptop and then an inexpensive iPad, that combination sounds like it would work perfect for you.

I’m in a completely different boat than most people, right now I do 99% of my computing through my iPhone 13 Pro Max. So I’m going to buy an iPad just to make it a little bit easier by having more screen real estate. For that one percent of work that I need a computer, I’ll use my older laptop.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Definitely not the device for you. I have no problems with RAW images and Lightroom on my M1 12.9 and my Logitech MX Master 3 mouse works well with it. I also have an MS Surface pro 7 but much prefer the iPad as a touch device.

Completely off topic, but what's the Surface like for serious lightroom classic editing using touch and stylus? What about Photoshop?

 

[Macalicious2011]

Alameda, I completely understand your point of view. There are a lot of things that people do that are simply better on a laptop. In your situation you should have a laptop and then an inexpensive iPad, that combination sounds like it would work perfect for you.

This is the best value for money: M1, M2 or M3 MacBook + 2-4 year iPad.

I’m in a completely different boat than most people, right now I do 99% of my computing through my iPhone 13 Pro Max. So I’m going to buy an iPad just to make it a little bit easier by having more screen real estate. For that one percent of work that I need a computer, I’ll use my older laptop.

Interesting that you should mention that. I'm a father of two kids do a lot of computing on the phone too.

 

[sparksd]

Completely off topic, but what's the Surface like for serious lightroom classic editing using touch and stylus? What about Photoshop?

I think it would be fine but as I have essential tremors, I stick with a mouse. I have/use both apps and don't see any reasons why touch & stylus wouldn't work for a user. LR is my primary photo processing tool.

 

[Clockerjohn]

This is the best value for money: M1, M2 or M3 MacBook + 2-4 year iPad.


Interesting that you should mention that. I'm a father of two kids do a lot of computing on the phone too.

I am an electrical contractor and I run my entire business off of my iPhone. Estimates, invoices, bookkeeping, everything.

When I started doing bookkeeping on my phone I realized it would be a little bit easier with a larger display, so I’m waiting and hoping that a new iPad Mini is released.

 

[Coolpher]

I’ve had my 11” iPad Pro since December — about four months now. Now that I’ve put it through its paces, I think I can say confidently that this is a very disappointing product.

I bought it with 512 GB of storage, the M2 processor, 8 GB of RAM, the cellular radio and the Magic Keyboard. For a product at this price point, it is a terrible laptop. I can definitely see the value of a $300 or $400 iPad as an entertainment toy. It’s great at downloading movies for playback while on long flights. But at the price of the iPad Pro, it’s well into laptop territory, as is the hardware capabilities… but it badly disappoints.

I’m not sure where to begin, but the Safari browser is very weak, and so is text selection and editing. Select/copy/paste works so-so on the iPhone, but on a platform like iPad Pro, I should have no difficulty selecting text for copy/paste. But it doesn’t work well on this platform. I downloaded Microsoft Office, and found its performance is fairly slow. I tried brining in RAW photos from my camera for editing with Adobe Lightroom, and it was close to unusable, especially compared to using my MacBook Pro. I tried using it as a slideshow player for my digital photos, and that hasn’t worked out too well. I tried using it with my Magic Mouse, but the scrolling feature of the mouse doesn’t work; I can’t slide my finger on top of the mouse to scroll a window.

I think this system needs to be MacOS with touchscreen support, instead of iPhone OS with keyboard support. As I said, i can see the attraction at the $300-$400 level, but in a $1,000-ish product, I should be able to get at least the same productivity as a laptop. MS Windows has plenty of touchscreen laptops; it’s basically Windows with a touchscreen mouse. Personally, I don’t see much future for the iPad Pro if they’re only going to be large screen iPhones.

I’m really sorry that the iPad Pro series doesn’t feel like it’s for you. There are so many people that find it to be the perfect laptop replacement and there’s people that don’t everybody’s needs are different so I’m really sorry to hear that but I hope you enjoy your Macbookpro

 

[Coolpher]

I don’t think Windows is a better system, I was just pointing out that adding touch screen support to a desktop OS isn’t a big deal. I find that a lot of operations are far slower on the iPad than they are on my MacBook Pro, even though they use the same CPU.

I completely understand that I believe that some people like macOS and I think there’s some people that like Using an iPad you definitely have to find other ways to do things that you’re used to on macOS sometimes it’s easier and sometimes it takes a few more steps. I feel like some of those things are getting easier and easier to do, but I know that there will never come a day where they put macOS on an iPad because then Apple would have to retire the iPad and they may as well just call it the MacBook tablet and I don’t think that will ever happen

 

[Supermallet]

IMO for work purposes the iPad really shines as a complement to the MacBook, especially now that universal control negates the need for a separate trackpad/keyboard for the iPad. Doing research and mind mapping/diagramming on the iPad is so nice, and then I can hop over to the MacBook to implement what I’ve planned out and have the iPad for reference and to run secondary apps.

There’s this YouTuber I follow, Christopher Lawley, whose channel is dedicated to using the iPad as his sole computer. He got a 2TB 12.9” M2 IPP and Magic Keyboard, which at MSRP is only $50 cheaper than the higher end M3 Pro MBP with an upgrade to 2 TB of storage, but he doesn’t want a MacBook. He was using an M1 Max MBP and didn’t love it, and he does love using the iPad, so he puts up with the limitations and annoyances of iPadOS because while it can’t do things that the MacBook can, it also can do many things the MacBook can’t. My takeaway from watching his videos is that Apple is slowly positioning iPadOS as a viable computing platform in its own right, distinct from macOS, and if they continue on that path in a few years the iPad will be the just right computer for many people.

I think what holds the iPad back right now is that Apple and iPad developers have to consider how the system and apps will work not just on a 12.9” IPP but how it will work on a Mini 6 or a 9th generation. With the Mac, the smaller screen you need to worry about is 13.6” and the only inputs you have to consider are keyboard and mouse. With the iPad, you have to consider keyboard, mouse, finger, pencil, across a wider range of hardware and screen size. That makes the iPad tougher to develop for because you can’t optimize for any one size or input.

 

[Sami13496]

Why did you buy iPad if you need laptop/desktop class environment? Out or boredom?

 

[Alameda]

You’re correct the iPad Pro is a joke. It has all this power but does nothing that a $349 iPad can’t do extremely well.

Yes, this is exactly my point: “It has all this power but does nothing that a $349 iPad can’t do extremely well.”

 

[Alameda]

Why did you buy iPad if you need laptop/desktop class environment? Out or boredom?

I thought that a “Pro” machine with the same specs as my laptop would be able to perform as well as my laptop. And I don’t think it’s even close.

 

[sparksd]

Yes, this is exactly my point: “It has all this power but does nothing that a $349 iPad can’t do extremely well.”

I find processing 4K videos with LumaFusion to be better on my M1 than on lower-end iPads.

 

[Rafterman]

The purpose of the iPad is not to be a laptop replacement. It isn’t and will likely never be. For one, why would Apple cannibalize its own sales not to mention that the keyboard and mouse can never be truly integrated like a laptop.

The purpose of the iPad is casual computing where the technology is so seamless that it disappears. The point is that for certain tasks, it’s not that they be done better or faster than on a laptop but that they can be done while sitting in an armchair or in the cockpit.

Also, the iPad is great at single task uses such as controlling hardware through an app, content consumption and ForeFlight.

For your use case, it’s never going to work. This is common. Stop trying to make it a laptop, it’s not one. Instead, see this for what it is, a large iPhone with a faster processor. You may not see the value at the crazy price points and in that case, you should sell it.

For me, its supplemental device, next to my laptop. Like running my Teams meeting or chats, while my MacBook is doing other work things. Sort of like an extra screen.

 

[macfacts]

Really?
So Microsoft is so much smarter than Apple that they can do it but Apple’s engineers are just too doggone dumb to pull it off?
Apple makes over one billion dollars a day. Surely it’s “no big deal” for a company of that size.

Tim wants you to buy both a mac and an iPad. Not one device that can do both

 

[Rafterman]

Really?
So Microsoft is so much smarter than Apple that they can do it but Apple’s engineers are just too doggone dumb to pull it off?
Apple makes over one billion dollars a day. Surely it’s “no big deal” for a company of that size.

The Surface Pros do not have the graphics power that more traditional laptops can deliver (integrated graphics vs discreet GPUs), due to the casing not being large enough to handle the heat and the battery not large enough to handle the extra power. (otherwise, the tablet will be huge). Surface Pros are nice tablets, but they can't compete with a traditional laptop. Look at the Surface Studio laptop. It does have the juice to compete with a traditional laptop, but when it folds into "tablet" mode - its HUGE.

The same goes for iPads. iPads will never replace MacBooks because an iPad just can't have the graphics power of a 40 core GPU with a large battery.

iPads are not MacBooks and never will be, even if they open up the software, like Microsoft did with Surface.

 

[sparksd]

The Surface Pros do not have the graphics power that more traditional laptops can deliver (integrated graphics vs discreet GPUs), due to the casing not being large enough to handle the heat and the battery not large enough to handle the extra power. (otherwise, the tablet will be huge). Surface Pros are nice tablets, but they can't compete with a traditional laptop. Look at the Surface Studio laptop. It does have the juice to compete with a traditional laptop, but when it folds into "tablet" mode - its HUGE.

The same goes for iPads. iPads will never replace MacBooks because an iPad just can't have the graphics power of a 40 core GPU with a large battery.

iPads are not MacBooks and never will be, even if they open up the software, like Microsoft did with Surface.

Agree. I like my Surface Pro 7 with an i7 and 16Gb but the lack of a true GPU hurts for video processing (it could also use more memory). I won't buy another 2-in-1, I'll go with a larger, more capable standard laptop and leave tablet mode to my 12.9 & Mini 6.

 

[dgdosen]

Pretty much agree with the OP. I don't doubt there are some who can "do it all" with an iPad, but for too many, the iPad (iPad Pro) and iPad OS falls so short that it just sits there. And those users won't repeat the same mistake again. And to think there are rumors of a price increase ?!

Here's what Apple could do to justify a price increase:

- build a keyboard/trackpad with some kind of 'hinge' that works as well as a laptop (clamshell lap-able)
- build a keyboard/trackpad and ipad combo to weigh < 2 pounds (you can say 1 kilo to make it metric)
- let it run iPad OS - and macOS in clamshell mode.
- OLED

Better yet - just make a dual-mode device. An M series ultraportable, with a detachable screen that becomes an iPad Pro (the system boards are small enough) in 'detached' mode. Use the 12" Macbook as your upper bound for size and weight. You can stick two Ms in there and sell for 2K easy.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Apple’s marketing team has deceived many a man!

But iPad is still just an iPhone Pro Max XL and not that much more.

And then you can’t even make cellular phone calls from the cellular versions unless you also pair it with an iPhone that has its own cellular plan.

It’s not a phone, not yet a MacBook. It’s something frustrating in-between the two and really not great at anything but being the best iPhone for watching movies on.

I can’t even say it’s good as a backup if your iPhone or Mac suddenly dies because you can neither sync all your Mac apps and content to your iPad, nor could you use your iPad as a backup smartphone as it won’t make cellular calls whether you use it with e-SIM or a regular SIM card.

Like you said, it would maybe be easier to defend if they started at $500 or so for the base model.

But Apple asking $1099 for the base 13” model is just a terrible deal for such a limited device.

I hate to admit that I’ve actually owned one and told myself it was great.

So embarrassing!

 

[rjruiz2]

Is it raining outside?

 

[transpo1]

I feel for you. This is an old conversation which polarises opinion and usually runs for dozens of pages. One one side we have the "I can do more with a ten year old laptop than an iPad Pro because the OS sucks and is holding the hardware back" camp, and on the other side we have the "I don't want a touchscreen macOS on my tablet, I like it just the way it is" camp. The two camps never ever agree.

I'm in the former camp, which is why I've only ever bought the cheapest iPads. iPad pros would for me be a complete waste of money that I could still only really use for content-consumption like the cheapest iPad, because the OS does not lend itself to tasks I would normally use a computer for.

And there are those of us who are in between the two poles— as in “I like my iPad Pro and what it does but gosh, it would sure be nice if it ran my macOS apps when docked with the Magic Keyboard.” 😊