
iPad Pro – 9.7-inch - davidbarker
http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/
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stevecalifornia
I am shocked by Apple's lack of commitment to making an actual productivity
oriented computer in the form factor of a tablet.

The iPad Pro is likely a reaction to the success of the Microsoft Surface--
but the reaction is not much more than a name change and split screen. The
Surface on the other hand actually is a productivity machine. Why isn't Apple
diving fully into this area?

~~~
mythz
What success? iPad destroyed Surface sales by an order of magnitude last
quarter 16.1M to 1.6M.

Even the iPad Pro alone outsold all MS Surface products despite only being
introduced midway through the holiday quarter.

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randyrand
Bad comparison IMO. The tablet market is distinct from the productivity tablet
market. What percentage of those ipad are replacing laptops?

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Elessar
It's not a bad comparison.

The question is why is Apple not diving into a "productivity machine" like the
Surface. The answer is that the iPad Pro is selling better than the Surface.
That is: Apple isn't building the Surface because they built something that
sells better.

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celerity
Is anybody else deeply disappointed by the camera bulge? If you use the tablet
on a tabletop, that basically forces you to buy a ~$100 case that adds
unnecessary thickness and weight to the tablet. Cheap move, IMO.

~~~
randyrand
Seriously. Wtf. I place my tablet down flat on my counter tops 24/7.

I dont even use my tablet camera!! How could they justify making the device
uneven for a camera few people use, and for a camera where the old one worked
perfectly fine for its purpose.

Seriously wtf move by apple. The camera bump a game-ruiner. I'm irrationally
pretty upset by this.

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kozukumi
I fail to see why a normal person would want the extra things in an iPad Pro.
Sure for some professionals it has some good features but a normal content
consumer/light content creator (edit pictures, write some documents) it is
just overkill with TrueTone display, etc.

Yes the CPU power is on the same level as an Atom/i3 from what I have read
which is interesting but what does it really offer that the Air doesn't offer
to an average user? I guess it is similar to how some of those average
consumers also buy a MacBook Pro when they don't need any of the extra power
over an Air (although lack of retina display on the Air is a valid reason
thinking about it).

The biggest complaint I have with the iPad Pro is that it runs iOS. If it ran
a touch-friendly ARM-version of OS X _that_ would be awesome.

~~~
potatolicious
I got my father an iPad Pro over the holidays - he loves it.

He uses it for listening to music, writing emails, and surfing - the same
things you'd do with any laptop, but he likes the iPad form factor quite a
bit.

Most importantly, the iPad Pro (and I guess, now the smaller iPad Pro) is the
only platform in the entire world that offers competent Chinese stylus input.

Typing Chinese is a pain in the ass - there are several ways to do it and all
of them largely suck and require a steep learning curve (and even then, still
a pain in the ass). There has been a lot of demand for writing-based input
methods, but most of the solutions so far have sucked a lot. The hardware
surrounding it has been bad, and so has the software, which often required you
to enter a single character at a time tediously, with poor recognition rates
to boot.

The iPad Pro is the first device that let him write entire sentences at a
time, which made input _much_ faster and more natural (you used to have to
write a character, pause, select from a list of guesses, repeat). Not to
mention the low lag between pen movement and on screen display makes the whole
process way more pleasant. Being able to write entire sentences also improves
the recognition accuracy of the software, which tilts it from being useful-
but-crappy to godsend.

~~~
wodenokoto
Learning pinyin is a lot easier than to learn how to write all the characters.

Typing pinyin is also a lot faster.

If you don't know pinyin or mofopo, then yes, suddenly handwriting is the
fastes, but then it is pretty much by default.

~~~
Grue3
These methods won't work if you don't know how to pronounce the character in
the first place.

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wodenokoto
That use case is only for dictionaries/looking up words, where you never need
to type anything of any length at a time, thus high speed typing is not
needed, which is exactly what is being discussed.

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ant6n
A "Super. Computer." with an "OS" which I can not use to write a program to
run on that same "OS".

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dwb
Sure you can: [http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz-
software.com/pythonista/)

But I know, you meant full-on apps. If we lived in a world where there were
only locked-down, iOS-type computers, I'd agree with your indignation. But I
think there's room enough for the iPad and all the other things out there.
(Besides, can you imagine creating an app on the iPad? That'd take some
incredible UI to not be awful. I do hope it comes along someday though.)

~~~
ant6n
You can hook up a keyboard. Presumably a mouse? Just needs something like
MacOs-arm.

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mlex
The page is comically broken in Firefox, which is weird since usually Apple's
product pages are fine. iPad images don't have transparent backgrounds so they
show up with white boxes around them.

[http://i.imgur.com/MKN2yS9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/MKN2yS9.jpg)

~~~
midnightmonster
They're high-quality JPEGs with SVG path-based masking. It's a technique that
can work well in Firefox, but it can also be buggy. I have a site that uses
this technique on the front page and fails the same way in Firefox--but only
on the staging server. I never could figure out why and didn't want to put a
lot of time into it since it doesn't affect production.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Not criticizing at all since I admit it's irrational but that would drive me
nuts until I could figure out why.

~~~
midnightmonster
I keep it like an unopened fifth on the mantle of a recovering alcoholic: a
symbol of the triumph of rational resource allocation over obsession. But
maybe someday I'll relapse, and you'll find me red-eyed and half-delirious at
3 AM--tweaking CSS, typing `cap staging deploy`, and hitting Cmd+R.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting to watch. Apple always has a sort of "A/B" test going on with
overlapping generations of their products.

My take away was that people really liked the keyboard/pen additions, so now
they are testing size versions. The camera is interesting too since it always
looks uncomfortable when people are trying to take pictures with their tablet.
More processor power is a given and it reduces the number of "tricks" that you
have to do to get smooth action on the tablet. The lack of LTE support is odd.
One thing I would really like to see the Surface line pick up is built in LTE
support, they had a great radio team from Nokia that could help there.

The true tone thing is also interesting. I wonder if it will be distracting
like the auto intensity balancing some early TVs do.

Naming system remains confusing for consumers. The only reliable metric is 'by
release date and size'.

I like my surface book that I bought, but it doesn't replace my iPad because
of lack of LTE, the new iPad Pencil is a win (I struggled for years for a
decent writing experience on the iPad).

One of those markets where I wish I could bring my vision of what I'd like to
market and see how well it was received.

~~~
lathiat
There is LTE support in the 9.7", they just didn't talk about it for some
reason.

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ChuckMcM
Cool, found it after a bit of digging : [http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/#ipad-
pro-9-7](http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/#ipad-pro-9-7)

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tonyle
Ipad pro vs tablets is basically pen vs pencil.

I'm a developer who can't draw. I've used palm, wacom tablets, samsung pen and
a window "tablet" from 2008. I've used it to draw stick figures, notes and
maybe a math equation or two.

I've played around with an Ipad pro and watched a ux designer use one.

Assuming you can actually draw, Ipad pro seems to be much better. It has a
different feel than a regular stylus, it seems easier to shade and sketch than
a regular stylus.

While it seems nice, it seems to be a niche devices.

~~~
goerz
The iPad Pro together with the Pencil has been an absolute game changer for
note taking. I tried capacitive styluses on older iPad models before, but I've
never had something before that is 100% my normal handwriting
(indistinguishable from a scanned page). With the iPad Pro + Pencil for the
first time, I can really "think on paper". In fact, it's better than paper,
since I can move things around. This is using GoodNotes.

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valine
I'm disappointed that it still uses the first generation Touch ID. The finger
print sensor on the iPhone 6s is wickedly fast. It would have made a nice
addition to this 'Pro' branded iPad. I imagine it has more to do with their
ability to manufacture them at a larger scale, and less about differentiating
their product lines.

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TickleSteve
Finding it hard to get excited about anything tablet-related these days...

I had the iPad 1 on day one, but the whole tablet movement never really lived
up to the hope/hype.

~~~
dangoor
"has not yet" lived up to the hope/hype "for me", perhaps? I think they're
slowly, but surely, broadening the number of people that can use the iPad and
iOS for their computing.

~~~
TickleSteve
absolutely... I really did want to get into it, but my usage fits nicely into
the following scenarios:

1) laptop at desk with monitor 2) laptop on lap. 3) large phone everywhere
else.

I really would like to like it more, but my phone has taken over all its use-
cases.

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danso
Anyone have experience with the artistic capabilities of the Pro, e.g the
Pencil? Maybe I've been paying less attention to Apple news/chatter over the
years (and perhaps excitement over the iPad, overall, is much less than when
it first came out)...but I haven't come across many articles/blog posts in the
wild about the real impact/benefit of Pencil to digital artists. It sounds
very promising but I'm not willing to pay that much for an accessory if it's
just a novelty.

~~~
vessenes
It's so, so, so, very awesome. I no longer carry a paper notebook for taking
notes.

But, you could figure out yourself if you like it in approximately 30 seconds
at an apple store; try it out in the notes app and a few other drawing apps.
You'll know immediately if it's right for you.

~~~
gumby
That's why I was waiting for the smaller iPad Pro: note taking! I'm glad you
say it works well -- I did try the pencil in the apple store and it seemed
pretty good.

But do you have an app that takes notes and converts your handwriting to text?
I haven't found reviews of apps that seem to do that well. That's the real
point of taking them digitally instead of on paper.

~~~
goerz
I found GoodNotes to be absolutely perfect for my needs of a note-taking app.
With the Pencil, it has completely replaced paper for me. It also does
conversion from handwriting to text, although I can't say I use that feature
much. It does seem to work quite well for normal writing, but for lots of
greek letters and math it fails (expectedly).

~~~
vessenes
Okay, I gave GoodNotes a shot yesterday. Lots to like is my first reaction;
thanks for the tip!

It has that tiny bit of latency that all ios pencil apps seem to have; only
Apple Notes feels 'perfect' to me right now. And, the paper texture /
materials in Notes are better; the Notes pencil tool is just about perfect in
my opinion.

On the plus side, I liked having all the different graph papers, the notebook
features seem to work well, and marking up a pdf was fine.

I'll see if I reach for it next time I'm taking notes, but right now it's neck
and neck with Apple Notes for me.

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pearle
The page doesn't even render correctly in Firefox. Big boxes around the images
and I assume they should should be transparent.

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sccxy
Camera bump is nice upgrade

~~~
Godel_unicode
Honestly, I always liked the somewhat mediocre camera. I feel like it kept the
number of iPad photographers at weddings to a minimum.

Go look at pictures from a recent wedding on e.g. Facebook, and mentally
replace all those phones with iPads. Awful.

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kozukumi
The camera hump is annoying as it means the iPad Pro can't lie flat on a table
any more.

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london888
I'm hanging in there for an updated MacBook in June at wwdc...

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icpmacdo
I hope we see new iPhones with 256GB of storage this year as well.

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rubbingalcohol
So, it's an iPad Air with stylus support for an extra $100? I'm surprised that
Apple's response to declining tablet sales was to raise the price.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
$100 more for pencil support, next-gen processor, huge camera bump, hardware
keyboard connector, and that cool true tone thing all sound about right to me.

I just don’t get the naming. Does this mean the iPad Air is end-of-the-line?
Or will there be an iPad Air 3 someday that is simply an iPad Pro without the
connector and Pencil? weird

~~~
rubbingalcohol
So every time a faster processor comes out, the MSRP should increase? I
thought the whole point of technology was faster for cheaper. Apple's iPad Air
design was stale and everything you listed was iterative improvements that
could be expected from any manufacturer trying to compete. But maybe that's
the problem: Apple has no competition in this segment, unless you count
$2,000+ Microsoft Surface tablets.

Honestly, Apple's pricing is a joke, but I'm sure plenty of people will swoop
in to defend them.

~~~
achompas
_So every time a faster processor comes out, the MSRP should increase?_

First time this happens in a while, as far as I can recall. FWIW I agree with
you, Apple is basically forcing you to pay for the iPad Air + memory upgrade
(but worse!) if you want this device. It's an obvious margin-increasing move
on a product with declining popularity.

Best to wait until it's inevitably discounted everywhere.

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Shivetya
I really do not understand their pricing anymore. Both the Air2 and Mini4 are
the same price. While the Pro starts at 32g versus 16g it carries a two
hundred dollar premium for the 9.7 size. To be honest their tablet line up is
a mess and their memory price upgrades are the older portions of the line are
not good either. How did Apple ever get to this point? It is like they lost
focus

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vegashacker
Does anyone think XCode (or some version on it) could be available on iPad Pro
someday soon? That would make me very interested in this thing.

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london888
No real mention of Adobe today or on the product pages. I did see Photoshop
Elements referenced in the product use-case page.

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Cybernetic
I'm looking forward to this, along with the Pencil, to carry with me for
sketching/painting. I have no intended use for it, at the moment, other than
as a drawing tablet. The smaller for factor is more appealing to me for this
purpose.

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dieg0
anybody seeing all the floating PNGs failing in the transparent background
attempt, supreme fail on firefox 47.0a2

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nickpp
Exact same depth and weight with the old Air 2?! Not bad at all...

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EugeneOZ
Semi-pro.

