We’ve already seen the Disney and Pixar teams go hands-on with Apple’s upcoming iPad Pro and now Apple is showing the device off to people in other fields. Fraser Speirs, the head of Computing and IT at Cedars School of Excellence, says he attended a preview event in London to try out the iPad Pro and spent about an hour with it. Speirs took to Twitter to voice some of his thoughts about the usefulness of iPad Pro in education and in general…
Regarding the Apple Pencil, Speirs said that it was “extremely impressive” and the “best iPad stylus” he has ever used with near-perfect palm rejection. He noted that there was no perceptible lag and that it offered a direct drawing a writing experience – huge for animation and note taking. Speirs said the Pencil was “weighty but not heavy” and very balanced, much like a quality pen.
When it comes to the size of the device, Speirs used an interesting analogy: “iPad Pro is more like carrying a binder where the Air is a document folder.” He noted that the overall size was bigger than he expected, making for a very wide and expansive work space. Due to the increased weight of the device, Speirs said that the most comfortable carrying position will most likely be forearm cradling.
Regarding the keyboard setup, Speirs said the Smart Keyboard is a “bit fiddly” and that while it’s a decent enough option, there’s a lot of material to “flip n’ fold,” likening it to a newspaper. The on-screen keyboard has been much enhanced, Speirs noted though, saying it’s definitely a step-up in power.
In terms of software, Speirs was very fond of the multitasking capabilities, saying “it’s like two iPads stuck together.” He also said it’s very enjoyable toward entirely on one half of the display, meaning there won’t be much switching in and out of the multitasking interface, which is huge for research and note taking in education. Speirs also noted that the general performance of the device was excellent and that even in some apps that weren’t yet optimized for the larger display there were no visual issues.
In terms of the device’s usefulness in education, a market that Apple definitely hopes to penetrate with iPad Pro, Speirs said the device has huge potential, especially for teachers. He said that while the device is too expensive in its current state for mass deployment to students, but it’s a “potentially awesome” device for teachers. Speirs explained that for kids growing up with iOS, the iPad Pro could be useful in a college environment, as well.
In the end, Speirs said that “If you’re the kind of person who uses Editorial, Keynote, Pythonista, Office, Adobe, Omni and Panic apps, you should look at iPad Pro.” He said that while content consumption on the device is great, the true selling point is its creativity and productivity features.
[tweet https://twitter.com/fraserspeirs/status/657669266456584193 align=’center’]
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I have a macbook pro mid 2015 and its the best laptop I can have. Tried surface book yesterday and just after 5 minutes it was obvious to me that its nothing when compare it to macbook. And this is despite the touch and pencil feature in the surface. When I sold my iPad air 2, I never felt missing something. But it was quite the opposite the when I sold my surface pro 3. I am gonna fix my mistake on Monday and get surface pro 4. I would consider and iPad pro only instead of the surface only if it came with mac os and not iOS. I have no idea what was apple thinking when they made the iPad pro.
My main reasons for not getting iPad pro are
1- a pro $800 that has only 32 gb!
2- a male and not female lighting apple pencil is ridiculous and it is not even included with a pro device. (does a larger screen justify calling a device a pro!!!)
3- IOS ans not Mac OS.
I hope at least with the next macbook release apple would either makes it with touch screen or at least make the track pad larger and support the apple pencil on it. I hate having 2 devices and prefer one device.
If you hate have two devices then Apple is not for you. iOS is made for touch input ONLY and OS X is made with mouse input. ONLY.
If you want a UI for both touch and mouse, get a Surface.
IMO I think the whole tablet/PC hybrid stuff is dumb.
What legitimate reasons makes it dump?
I can’t get a surface only because I prefer mac os much more than windows for professional use. But I still need a touch input and a pencil for other uses such as with photoshop, illustrator, one note, and sketch. And this is why I am getting a pro 4 instead of iPad pro.
But if macbook starts coming with touch screens then I will just use my adobe subscription on my mac and be done.
Look at a Surface Pro: vents, heavy, thick, poor battery life, needs a kickstand, etc.
@iali87 What are you doing with the pencil? Are you an actual digital artist? If you were, you’d be swooning over the quality Apple has put in to iPad Pro and Apple Pencil…and would be well aware, as other artists are, that the Surface is garbage, and can’t be seriously used for that. The Surface serves one purpose: to market the idea to people that you can buy one product that be a MacBook and an iPad at the same time. It’s a parlor trick, and nothing more.
“if macbook starts coming with touch screens then I will just use my adobe subscription on my mac and be done”
That’s not going to happen.
@rnc
It looks like you never touched a surface pro 3 before. Its very think and not heavy at all. Its a great device.
“Need a kickstand,” are you serious?! the same thing could be exactly said about the all kind of iPads. The kickstand is awesome and having it is better than having nothing.
@PMZanetti
Millions disagree with you that the surface is garbage. ITs an amazing device and I am more productive with it than with the iPad. IPad is good for renting movies and do some browsing and thats it. Same is with iPad pro but now you can use a pencil to draw using some basic sketching apps.
@PMZanetti — “The surface is garbage” — the Surface is the most successful Microsoft hardware product ever, minus the Xbox line. It’s far from garbage…millions of people use them, including artists, most of them because they need a full fledged Windows version of their creative apps — not a limited iOS version that doesn’t even support removable storage…
@srgmac The main users of Surface is people who need to run Windows program on a portable device. Like IAR Workbench, old CRM system (I actually see some hospital have it because there intranet is still using ActiveX), or DirectX
That doesn’t mean it’s good.
It’s kinda like Smartphone with Flash Player: it’s kinda better in current framework, but no one use when the new projects are not based on it.
Windows program might take longer to flush out the society, but with Cloud (which actually is the business Microsoft migrating to), these app is a goner. (except IDE. You should never debug the a mobile device app on itself. )
Apple tends to keep the “pro” moniker despite devices not having “pro” features — case in point, all the macbook “pros” out there with no discreet GPU. An Intel GPU is by far from a “pro” device. I have 3-4 year old Nvidia / AMD GPUs that are faster than the 2015 Intels. Also, if they are going to call it an iPad “pro” it needs some kind of removable storage — a microSD slot would have solved the storage problem, but they refuse to do this.
i think the macbook pros are pro compared to most mainstream laptops out there that also consider themselves to be ultra, pro, etc…maybe they are not as powerful as the super PCs, but these super power gaming laptops have a huge price tag to go with them…the current macbook pros are slightly under powered compared to the new surface book (partly because of the older CPUS… ), granted they lack the GPUs but they also have a lower price tag…
However… i totally agree with you on the ipad pro – this is just a big ipad… just like you have the standard iphone 6 and then the bigger iphone 6plus that gets some additional features, i think the ipad pro should be called ‘ipad plus’… it’s very limited in what it can do and only has a few extra features compared to the ipad… it is a glorified writing tablet rather than a fully useable PC…
As a tablet it works great… but put it on a desk top to type up documents or use for the internet, then it begins to have problems
Apple is focused on making the best tablet experience, not a device that takes everything from the desktop world (with microscopic screen elements that you can’t target properly with fingers) and then make a thousand compromises just to shoehorn touch into the desktop environment. Last time I used Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10 I felt it wasn’t a great **tablet** experience at all. It was just a great, well-built laptop.
Stop thinking if they ever put OS X onto iPad everything magically becomes better. It won’t. Is iOS as powerful as OS X today? To some, it isn’t. But I see that Apple is making progress with iPad Pro, and no doubt they’ll bake even more productivity features in the next version of iOS, and one day it might just be good enough for the majority not to need a desktop/laptop anymore.
“Best tablet experience”
Thats your opinion but I wasn’t having the best tablet experience with my iPad air 2.
Ipads are for watching movies and browsing the web and playing some games. Nothing more. Now look at the pro iPad, what is added? Hmmm, all I can see is a pencil that will be used for some note taking and used with some basic sketching apps. That’s far from being a pro device.
With my surface pro 3, I used to be able to open photoshop, illustrator, android studio, sketchbook, etc. And I still can do what I used to do with my ipad of watching movies and playing some games and browsing.
To all the people that have mod book pros, they consider them to be the best tablet experience ever. Not sure if they came out with the Modbook Pro X (which uses a 15″ retina”) yet, but that device DESTROYS the iPad pro in terms of actual “pro” features like removable / upgradeable storage and the ability to attach peripheral I/O devices. I don’t see how you can have a “pro” device without any ability to attach removable storage…it just does not make sense. How are you going to edit uncompressed video on a device that is limited to 128GB?
@iali87 You seem to be very intent that a professional device must include the apps you talked about, but iPad also has pro-grade apps that embrace the touch environment, like Pixelmator and Procreate, none of which are “basic.”
When you use the apps you mention you’re using your Surface as a laptop anyway. Most Surface owners also use the device as a laptop rather than a tablet. Heck, even every marketing material from Microsoft shows the Surface attached to a keyboard.
Shoving a desktop OS and calling it a tablet is like using one programming language to write for all operating systems. It will work, but it won’t work great. It’s, I dare say, lazy—instead of thinking how to embrace the new touch environment, hybrids just take everything from both worlds and compromise is bound to happen. How many desktop apps recognize the gestures that are only available on a multi-touch display? Would you want to tap buttons that are so small because they were made for keyboards and mice?
As I said, iOS might not be powerful enough yet for a level of productivity on par with traditional laptops, but the iPad Pro is a statement that Apple will continue down this path and make it more powerful in the future. I have to admit that will take time, as developers are still figuring out how to embrace the large canvas. But shoving a desktop operating system will not solve the inherent problem that desktop applications don’t interact well with fingers.
Then get the $950 model with 128GB of Storage. They do have customers that don’t need as much storage, but still want the screen size, increased RAM, and processing power. The PRO designation is because it’s the largest screen, RAM, and processing power and because they tailored the stylus for the graphic artists. Some people will only use the thing as a graphic’s tablet connected to a workstation and they may not need a lot of storage.
Now, I think they should have made the Pencil magnetic so it attaches to the unit and figured out how to have it charge through a magnetic connection but since it doesn’t take long to charge the Pencil, I don’t think it’s THAT big of a deal. If it had a female connector, then you would have to have an adapter to connect to the Thunderbolt port, which is female.
Yeah, IOS is not OS X, OS X isn’t really designed for a touchscreen. I don’t think Apple would sell one iPad with OS X and the others with iOS, that would be a little dumb for them to do that. Some people have learned to work with iOS and they just figured out that it’s really better when used in a Cloud environment when files automatically update through the Cloud wirelessly, rather than having a device with all of your files on it like a traditional computer. If they put OS X on an iPad, it would require more hardware resources to get it to perform well, and they would have to have a bigger battery (costs more, weights more), and they would probably have to put in up to at least 8 and even 16GB models if being marketed towards the Pro market as an OS X tablet.
Having one device makes you have to compromise, that’s the problem with using one device to replace two. I personally think if I was in the market for a laptop, I wouldn’t even consider a SP4, they aren’t really laptops, they are more notebook class computers since they use the absolute slowest i5 and i7, and they lack connectivity like a full blown laptop.
Now, with graphic artists, I would definitely spend time using the different Stylus because that’s an important part of what you are buying and from the various articles and comparisons, the Pencil performs as good or better than the direct competitors like the Wacom stylus they use on the Cintiq system, the S-Pen and the Microsoft pen from a standpoint of recognizing angle, precision, latency and feel. So, I would definitely first evaluate actually using the Stylus to determine if it will work for long term use as a graphic’s artist tool. I believe the processor in the SP4 that’s priced like the IPad Pro are i5 based and they aren’t going to perform as well as the A9X.
I am on the fence if I am going to buy the first gen iPad Pro or wait for next year’s release since they have the A10X for next year and I’m sure there will be other things they’ll do that will make it a really cool large screen tablet.
I highly doubt Apple’s going to have their MacBook trackpad also work as a high res graphics tablet. If you want a graphics tablet to use with a laptop, then get the iPad Pro and use the software that allows it to be used as a graphic tablet. That’s essentially what the Cintiq 13HD Touch is and it’s about the same price, but it’s thicker, heavier and not really a very good tablet as a handheld tablet.
i think someone has got confused between the ipad pro and the surface book…lol
Really interesting perspective. As a university student the iPad Pro plus pencil offer a solution to the problem of having to spend a fortune on printing out page after page of lecture slides to then annotate. I’d love to have the lectures preloaded ready to annotate during the lecture. As this article points out though, unless a substantial student discount is offered, I’m unlikely to be able to afford a Pro. That said, for the first time in 4-5 years I’m interested in iPads again!
I am a nursing student, and the Surface Pro 3 is awesome for class. The iPad is too limited, I can still use a iPad but the Surface is unlimited and unconditional
I have to say the same thing as Iali87, the IPad Pro is a great idea but it can never replace a macbook pro. To be honest, I would probably get a Microsoft surface first before a Ipad Pro just because the Surface is open. It has a USB port so that you can transfer data much easier than the Ipad, plus it gives many more options that the Ipad can’t give.
Apple has blown the Ipad experience by making it a close machine and not putting a USB port on it.
I think it’s personal preference. Everything I transfer is wirelessly, so it’s been years since I’ve used a USB port for that stuff. That said, I can see the need why others might want the port.
Same personal preference on open versus closed. I like a closed environment. All I need to do is open up an App. The iPad suits my needs for that, but again, I can see why others might disagree.
And you can’t be so productive with a closed evroinment. I like my iOS devices and i use them everyday for consuming content. But when you want to be productive, Android wins, because it has a decent file system, USB OTG support and the browser can download files. It supports backround processes. When you compare it to iOS, iOS doesn’t even have file management system and that’s a big negative point. Let’s say you edit your documents on your iOS device and when you finish, you save it but when you need, you have to remember which app you used for editing the document. If you use iCloud then the problem solved but not all apps support iCloud. There can be lots of example.
“But when you want to be productive, Android wins, because it has a decent file system”
Completely wrong.
Android has much of a “file system” as iOS has.
“But when you want to be productive, Android wins, because it has a decent file system, USB OTG support and the browser can download files. It supports background processes”, clearly you don’t know what a file system is or what background processes are. iOS has background processes, you can schedule GCD tasks to run in the background at time intervals and use background notifications to wake apps up for background processes. And iOS has a file system like any other OS… just like Android.. just like OS X. The sandboxed environment exists because there’s security measures on the file system that restrict access… for security. It’s a much safer and overall well thought out security design.
LOL @ these people flipping out — “iOS has a file system!” — he meant a USER ACCESSIBLE FILE SYSTEM! The iPhone / iPad do have USB OTG but you need to use that stupid dongle — at least this is how it used to be; My mom is still rocking the iPad 3 (original retina), and uses the USB / Camera accessory all the time — I bought it for her, you can also use a USB hard drive with it; but only with certain apps. There is no standard filesystem “explorer” — she uses iMazing (AKA DiskAid), which requires a host mac to alter the FS and transfer files.
@srgmac
Just tell them that Apple is perfect and don’t and will never makes mistakes. IOS the the best os in this universe(or maybe in the multiverse) and they will be happy.
I tell you this, the one thing that Apple sometimes forgets is that we live in a free society and that we like choices. They could add a USB port tomorrow to the Ipad and it honestly would not bother anyone, folks could either use the port or still transfer files wirelessly. But let’s speak truth here, the main reason Apple doesn’t add a port and made the Ipad a closed system is because they want to rule the content. Without a USB it makes putting movies that you record harder to put onto your Ipad to watch. Now there are more options to work around this problem in the last year like wirelessly hard drives and such, but the bottom line is that Apple wants to control video, audio, book and magazine content so that you have to use the Apple system to purchase and rent this content. That is the bottom line on why the Ipad couldn’t be one of the greatest machines of all time. One other thing I feel, Apple wants you to purchase both a Macintosh system, weather it’s a Imac, Powerbook pro or any kind of OS system and at the same time they want you to also buy a Ipad, Iphone and Iwatch. If they make an Ipad so good with easy ports to transfer things, then at the end of the day you won’t buy that OS system and use an Ipad for all your computer needs. The Ipad is that close to a regular Mac, matter of fact that is what Microsoft is betting on the Surface, that it would be your one machine to do everything with.
This headline is a bit misleading. He never used the word disappointing when talking about the keyboard.
I like the idea, and I want one, but why oh why doesn’t it have USBc to have the ability to connect to your Mac? It could be a great peripheral to the Mac.
I have no idea who the ipad pro is really targeted towards given the limited OS it has. If one wants a fully productive tablet then get a surface pro and if one wants a mobile OS based tablet then just get an ipad air.
Seems this is really only targeted towards the Apple zealots who have to buy everything Apple.
artists.
Wouldn’t an artist want a full fledged Windows or Mac version of all their creative apps though? iOS is getting there, and the new iPad “pro” is certainly capable on the hardware side of things (minus the shitty lack of removable / upgradeable storage!), but a lot of these apps don’t exist yet for iOS…Adobe is leading the way, but it’s still a far cry from a Windows / Mac running Photoshop / Premiere…How is one going to edit uncompressed video on a device that at most can only have 128GB of storage space, and no USB port for transferring files?
The Cloud – iCloud, DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SoundCloud, Amazon Cloud Drive and countless local Wi-Fi storage solutions that create your own personal, private cloud wherever you are.
@airmanchairman
Clearly you have no idea how large an uncompressed 4K video is…it would take months if not years to upload one to any cloud service — and how can you integrate local WiFi / NAS storage with the iPad versions of Photoshop and iMovie, or any other creative app for that matter? I don’t see any possible way due to iOS being so locked down. But even that is not a solution — WiFi is not very fast to be transferring 100+GB files…the edit would drop frames because the WiFI storage is so slow.
Before the iPad can rightfully use the “Pro” monicker, they have to fix 3 things:
– give iOS proper file management. Allow us to create folders of arbitrary depth with mixed content. Create a registry of “file-space providers” so that certain apps (like iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc) can register themselves as parts of the (virtual) filesystem.
– allow apps to access the said virtual filesystem, upon approval with whatever granularity, rather than copy files to their own filespace before opening. Like when you have a Pages document in Google Drive. Pages creates a copy of the file in its private space, you THEN get to view/edit whatever you want and if you want any changes saved to your GD, you have to export it back. Very Pro.
– allow for removable storage. This is 2015 and usb drives are still in (very widespread) use.
Here’s a nice one: assuming I’ve managed to edit that 45GB video file on the iPad Pro, HOW EXACTLY am I gonna transfer it to my client? Via AirDrop (*)??? Dropbox? Email? Or buy one of their data plans just for that? Oh, ok, I will need to have my MacBook (Air or Pro) handy, so that I can usb-transfer it to the Mac (any wireless will be too slow / unreliable) and copy it to a USB drive from there. Riiiiight… Very “pro”, Apple, very pro.
(* which in earlier attempts wouldn’t work between my iOS 8 and 9 devices)
Just because they are in fashion, that doesn’t mean Apple can charge oodles of money for devices that don’t really serve the purpose they’re promoted for.
Get your product lineup straight, Apple. Sack the damn Brit if you have to, and his obsession with everything thin and light. How about FUNCTIONAL?
Nobody would have complained if Apple had given the MBA a retina display and a USB-C port this year, instead of releasing the MB12. It’s thin, light, has enough performance and the right ports (for 2015). Why the MB12? The damn thing is as expensive as a MacBook Pro (PRO!!!), has 2011-era performance and no practical expansion. And my Apple TB Display becomes instantly obsolete, with no real alternative solution (display + hub in one) out yet.
The combination of the MacBook 2015 and the iPad Pro is a very CUMBERSOME, unproductive and very EXPENSIVE alternative to the Surface Pro. This is one product Microsoft NAILED squarely and I hope Apple realise it in their next steps and they undo the wrong ones.
People clearly don’t understand that tablets should not be treated like a notebook or anything in that direction. I don’t believe putting a full-blown OS on a tablet makes it a true tablet. The idea behind the tablet, or at least the iPad, is to have the full iOS experience on a big screen. This allows you to be more productive with apps that wouldn’t be useful on the iPhone, neither on the Macbook.
IF Apple once decides to put OS X on a tablet, it would mean they forget about what Steve Jobs’ idea behind the iPad was. True, iOS on the iPad lacks some features that could be very useful. But I see comments here stating that iOS needs a file system. There’s iCloud Drive for that. It may be limited, but that’s due to the developers of third-party apps. Apple can’t do anything about that unfortunately. It works for saving files and getting them. I use it all the time!
Removable storage? I mean, come on… I almost never use USB drives anymore. Let out for transferring files. We have clouds. A lot of clouds. As of iOS 8 you are not specifically tied to iCloud anymore. Heck, I regularly transfer files between my Synology NAS, since their DS File app has support for Document Providers. So if I want a file to be directly on my Windows notebook, I just save it to that app. Right from Pages, Numbers, Keynote, or one of the Office apps.
I hope Apple sticks with their current vision of the iPad. If they really want to make a Surface Pro/Book competitor, they might want to make a completely new product. But I don’t see them doing that. Wouldn’t buy it anyway. I’ve used the Surface Pro 3 once. It’s a great notebook, but without the keyboard it’s just a tablet running Windows. I hate that. And don’t mention Tablet Mode in Windows 8/10, because it just makes buttons slightly bigger. It’s still useless as a tablet. iPad does the job way better, because it runs iOS. And iOS was designed to work with touch, OS X was designed to work with pointing devices. Nothing is gonna change that.
It comes down to the market. Apple might not have wanted to make a big iPhone, but people were buying big smartphones, so Apple responded. Similarly, if the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book (and their successors) become big sellers, or inspire other Windows 10 products that become big sellers that hurt iPad or Mac sales, Apple will respond. Conceivably they could take a page from the Surface Book and design a convertible Mac/iPad Pro which runs on ARM when in iPad mode and Intel using a chip in the keyboard base when in OS X mode. It doesn’t sound like they have done much work in that direction, so the earliest we’d see one, IMO is 2018, but it could happen.
“People clearly don’t understand that tablets should not be treated like a notebook or anything in that direction.”
If only everyone could just think alike, we’d all be better off.
I wonder if they will bring Pencil compatibility to the iPad Air 3 next year. That device would be a lot more affordable for students.
It’s a niche product at a high cost. On top of that the accessories are overpriced and nothing special. Apple will have some artists do some amazing stuff with the pen but that pen will not make the average Joe an artist over night.
Add in the fact that tablet sales are hurting I won’t be surprised if this does bad. Better than any tablet but that’s not saying much. Average people just don’t have this type of money to spend when they already have an iPad. Apple should have concentrated on adding these features to the 10″ iPad at the $500 mark.
You guys deleted my joke comment? What about all the people that said exactly what I said but are 100% serious? Lol gimme a break.
I think the ipad pro is hugely misleading – it has very few ‘pro’ features and as it mentions in the article “it’s like sticking 2 ipads together”… and essentially that is all it is… it should be called the ipad plus… its bigger, with a few additions, but isnt a pro experience…
the keyboard cover has made the same mistake surface did – just sticking a cover on doesnt give stability – hence why surface 3 added the extra magnets so you could flip it up to create more stability and give the writing angle…
Essentially apple are new to styluses, and a pencil should be light and feel like a pencil – not an expensive pen – otherwise they should call it the apple pen.
they are also new to palm rejection – so this is why it doesnt work all the time..
the price, size, weight is out of range for most students — it’s an extra slab that is not as efficient as a macbook — for a student i would recommend the macbook air.
Just like the original ipad, this needs to find a market — they seriously need to add OS X to it – have it so you can boot up on either OS X or iOS and then it will be a truly pro device that can be the power of 2 ipads, or the power of a basic laptop…but you get the best of both worlds…
apple have basically released a prototype…
wait for ipad pro 2 or even 3
And how about the iPad ‘Air’ then? Consider Apple’s product naming. There’s the Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. The Macbook Air is just a small and underpowered Macbook in general. But the iPar Air (2) is currently one of the fastest tablets. And yet, it has that ‘Air’ in it.
iPad ‘Pro’ is just called this way, because of the bigger screen and much better hardware (if we can assume it has a quad-core processor and 4 GB RAM). Features are completely apart from this, since the Macbook Pro basically is just a more powerful and bigger sized Macbook Air. The features are the same.
Millions of people falling for the “best of both worlds” marketing gimmick. I don’t care what anyone says, the Surface Pro’s are NOT great tablets, NOR a great laptop. Everyone I know that have Surface Pro’s use them in addition to a laptop they already own of basically the same size and somehow think it’s justified. It’s all just trying to justify having a new gizmo that promises to do everything. Want a tablet buy a tablet, want a laptop, buy a laptop. If you want both then buy both. Most full laptops are about the size of tablets anyway.. I know I know…. It’s “only your opinion.”