Apple Unveils the iPad Pro
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Apples move with the pencil is more targeted at businesses, hospitals and such. Win the users at home first, convert them easily at work later, at a higher price with a better margin.
What really is happening is the usual trolling that happens after every Apple event.
Apple has different priorities. They'll make tablets more functional as CPU and battery improve. There will be a conversion with the desktop, or at least low-end laptops, at some point. When they put a fan in the iPad then you can question if they've lost their way.
(And Wang beat that by several years with a 3" thick monstrosity that, IIRC, went nowhere.)
Yes, the trolling reoccurs. Key is how excited the marketplace is for which product, naysayers aside. As others note: the iPod wasn't new, but it was subjectively better than anything else out there.
What was this and where can I read more about it?
I've tried to find a picture of it several times since, but nothing yet.
The keyboard cover thing? Sure I could agree with you on that. I actually think Surface did a better job with it especially with the adjustable kickstand but we'll see when I can actually touch and play with the iPad Pro one.
Every mac illustrator worth his salt is going to throw money at the screen to get this and I'm sure many many apps for the pen aren't far behind. Smart move by Apple
The enterprise market is more tricky... I can see some fancy plastic surgery office having iPad Pro's but when it comes to "less sexy" enterprise uses I still think Surface and Windows might be ahead
I'm an illustrator and this is definitely on my list. I am not a big fan of drawing where I'm looking any more, but Astropad + an ipad Pro will let me work in Illustrator in a cramped environment.
And maybe in a couple of years we'll finally get an Air/iPad Pro hybrid. Like the Surface, except running OSX.
haha that makes me laugh. Either a big wad of cash notes, or bags of metal change, or flicking a credit card at it like ninja stars. Even funnier would be the attempt to pay contactless by waving their NFC phone repeatedly over the screen like we used to do with magnets on CRTs before we realised the damage it did...
I have a MacBook and every time I use a Windows laptop I find the touchpad to be a complete joke and clicky clicky clicky. Even booting to Windows on my MacBook is painful as the touchpad suddenly becomes very dumb.
Maybe this is it, maybe not. What I want to do: read things, highlight, scribble notes, diagrams, outlines, sync, search, etc. Basically I want something that completely replaces paper coming out of a printer. It seems like the younger people maybe are more adapted to digital documents, but I have very strong spatial memory for paper and can find things I've written or read in paper very quickly.
Surface Pro has this, but is overkill frankly. iPad, kindle, other tablets have not been sufficiently usable to actually replace a printed or blank sheet of paper. This device may fit that use case, but it inhabits a priced point that's worse than Surface Pro. For some reason I'm waiting for something in the $200-300 price range to show up--things that are more expensive I feel like I have to protect and coddle. So, yes something like iOS definitely could work there. There are even some interesting eink devices that go after the paper replacement route. But they are also too expensive compared to Surface Pro.
Maybe this will be a big enough kick in the butt for Google to start supporting pen input in ChromeOS or Android (there are Android tablets that have pen input, but IIRC that support is plastered on top by manufacturers increasing support and integration costs significantly, so software updates don't happen).
This is what I'm hoping for as well. I'd love to use a phone with pen support, but as long as it's not built into the core OS, pen support is going to come at the cost of timely OS updates. And that's a trade-off I'm not willing to make since I generally buy unlocked and tend to skip quite a few generations before upgrading.
It's more than a year old now.
And you're deliberately misinterpreting that keynote. Unlike the devices that basically were on the market, you don't need a stylus to navigate the OS or use the device at all.
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/21/pencil-available-apple-s...
I guess I hadn't asked in a store since then. :)
Check out the sales figures [0]. Consumers didn't begin to adopt the iPod in detectable numbers until the third generation (when it got USB syncing), and it didn't really take off until the fourth (full USB connectivity, various other improvements.)
[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/ipod-sales_n_468000...
Not only are they playing catch up, but they failed to adequately catch up.
The iPod was nowhere near the first mp3 player, it was just the best one. The iPad wasn't close to the first tablet. Will it be the best tablet? I don't know, but whether or not the Surface had a keyboard first won't be the deciding factor.
Every company is incorporating an absurd number of innovations pioneered by other people. When it comes to hardware, I just want to love using the device.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-apple-samsung-l...
> Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each company's tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
> "Not at this distance your honor," said Sullivan, who stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.
I get what you're saying, but they were asked to tell the difference over an unspecified distance.
I don't see this argument holding water and it seems to me that my interlocutor is comfortable with Apple stealing/copying other people's work but when they do to Apple it's all hell breaks loose, double standards maybe?
Their execution/quality control is still top notch though, but other companies are catching up.
Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.
What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.
NFC was a complete basket case, and still remains that way except for Apple.
The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful.
June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up steam, but Apple elected to try to build their own walled-garden payments system using Passbook and bar codes.
Apple Pay didn't come out of the blue. The impending POS infrastructure change created the opportunity to launch a better payments user experience in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Apple knew this, and developed/acquired/refined a better security method (touchID + tokenization) and corresponding user experience to negotiate on favorable terms with banks and merchants, which sealed the deal for many and created momentum toward getting stragglers onboard and reaching broad market penetration.
Just adding an NFC chip and calling it a day changes nothing. Few markets are penetrated by hardware - or even hardware and software - alone.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/06/octob...
When it comes to market adoption of hardware, typically the market leader gets picked up for adoption. By forcing their own version of mobile payments (passbook) and not allowing NFC, the market was split and NFC adoption stymied.
Apple Pay does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals.
So merchants are not "locked in" to passbook.
The reason for Apple Pay success is that they worked with the companies in question so that the infrastructure was already in place when the phone was launched. I was in the UK the week of the Apple Pay launch there and the same terminals that 3 months prior were accepting my contactless card were now accepting my iPhone.
In other words it just worked.
The only reason Apple has support for those now in 2015 is because merchants weren't falling for the walled-garden ploy. Apple has finally caught up with other forms of payment, which is why Apple was a major staller for NFC technology adoption.
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944863/apple-reveals-full-line-up-of-pas...
From related link [1]:
> There's no NFC in the new iPhone, but you'll be able to use your screen as a scannable gift card/plane ticket/voucher/etc. with Passbook, which creates a virtual bundle of all those annoying cards you cram into your wallet. Here's an ideal little scenario for you: a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, because you've got a $25 credit built right into your phone. Hand it to the cashier, beep, coffee, slurp, bye.
If you think this somehow stymied NFC... thats an incredible stretch. Before Apple was it the gift card mafia stopping NFC? Were merchants going to just throw away their perfectly usable POS machines... because technology?
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944514/all-the-best-new-features-of-ios-...
The entire context of this discussion was how Apple killed NFC adoption in 2012 by not supporting NFC and splitting the market with their own walled-garden solution. Even your quote shows the surprise on Gizmodo's part that they released some gift card substitute...
Lets say Apple had stuck NFC in an iPhone 4S. What then? Mobile payments is not a faucet you just turn on. They'd have to convince the entire market - retailers, banks, and credit card companies alike - that they needed to incur tens of million dollars of infrastructure changes and possibly more with fraud in order to... well, what exactly do they get? They'd move from something that people were used to (credit/debit cards) that had clear risk profiles to something unknown with little evidence of consumers willingness to adopt and no added benefit to retailers or banks.
You might respond - its a better user experience! Banks don't give a shit about user experience, thats why they close at 4pm. Retailers don't either, thats why they'd buy POS machines with crap UIs and never replace them even when the digitizer could barely create a signature.
Banks and credit card companies care about risk, and retailers care about keeping costs down and seeing clear benefit in the form of evidence of consumer interest before adopting. Banks and credit card companies are also powerful, quite conservative, and are middle-men that do not necessarily have users interests at heart. Nobody in this industry turns on a dime (heh). Knowing this, Apple chose to wait for the steady trickle of POS machine replacements in the coming POS transition that would follow from Visa's EMV migration announced in 2011 [1], focus on risk-reduction and gaining leverage with credit card companies and banks through TouchID, and launch Passbook as a proof of concept both to train users and show retailers that people want to use their phones. Passbook wasn't an mobile payments competitor, it was a progenitor. It sidestepped major gaps in infrastructure, and it was placed in the second or third tier of iOS features due to its limited usefulness.
Passbook seems to be what you're hung up on. Here's a question - if Apple is so amazeballs that it could have moved the market in 2012, why then are there still retailers and banks that are slow on the Apple Pay uptake? Is it because Google and the coalition of second tier nobodys is missing? No, its because banks and retailers generally don't give a shit about user experience, manage their infrastructure at their own pace, and have all sorts of issues and internal politics that affect their decision making about _anything_.
You keep saying the same thing and haven't provided nearly enough evidence to support the leaps you're making that Apple somehow killed the beautiful 'open' fairyland that would have been NFC in 2012. There was no NFC market in 2012 to split, just bumbling attempts that misread how to make headway in the market, and a handful of Android phones with the hardware just so they could say 'first!' I'd love to see evidence to the contrary.
[1] http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-migration-driven-by-paymen...
I had said that Apple stalled NFC development by not releasing it in 2014. Are you saying that NFC market adoption would have been the same, if Apple had released NFC in 2012?
Well, they did Apple Pay. NFC is just an implementation detail, and NFC payments is far from dead
I'm assuming you haven't used a Surface Pro but you can mark my words now, Apple will release a direct copy of the Surface within 3 years. The iPad Pro is a glorified iPad and will be utterly unusable for doing anything professional, so it's not a copy at this stage.
Pretty much everything serious.
https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/health...
Oh yes there is. The car.
Very high margin. Plenty of opportunity to do something radically different.
As an aside, I find the obsession with touchscreen interfaces in cars to be irritating because obviously the testers test these things whilst sat perfectly still in a stationary vehicle or in a car with hydrogas suspension (just kidding), and not on a typical road that has bumps. They're impossible to use whilst in motion as your arm bounces around.
Disagree. This is a really commonly held viewpoint that I think is the product of our fast news cycles, and I don't think it approaches truth for another several years.
You are totally right that iPod and iPhone were not the first. While these were cool products when they came out, I think what's often lost is that it was only in the years of incremental improvements that defined how important these products were.
Tons of use cases are being unlocked in health, education, home automation, transportation, payments, enterprise, etc that these markets have been waiting for and wanting and are truly transformative. They're just not talked about as much, or hit that level of 'omg' for people who aren't dealing with those use cases, but they're real. The less sexy incremental stuff is amazing, and in fact, way more interesting because so few companies get the details right.
Just like you're saying about not being first, most blow-your-mind ideas that will come out in the next 10 years are probably already thought of, prototyped, or launched in some highly crippled form to an extremely limited audience. Two amazing things we can assume are in the pipeline are:
1. Driverless car, which will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure.
2. Eye tracking and face tracking, which unlock new interaction paradigms that are even more natural and seamless. See the recent Faceshift acquisition [1] for evidence.
These are going to be awesome! But they'll take time to perfect.
I'm not sure what qualifies as innovations for you. I'll admit I'm not blown away by today's stuff, it is S-cycle after all, but I am impressed by the way they've implemented 3D touch. Its the first force touch implementation (vs watch and macbook) that I really like because it looks incredibly intuitive and everyday useful - like something that I'll wonder how I lived without.
Well anyway, I think we'd probably agree about a lot things, but I'd be curious as to what big innovation you've got in mind that's missing. Cheers.
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture...
Just because they've been a computer company thus far doesn't mean it'll always be that way. They're the largest company on earth with over $100B in the bank and incredible consumer goodwill looking for any space with large profit margin potential where they can differentiate with good user experience.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self...
iPod had iTunes, true flat rate pricing for all music. Giant articles (if not books) have been written describing the huge challenge that was.
The iPhone was a completely new relationship between the phone manufacturer and the cellular carrier that allowed Apple to rake in unheard of profits. Their other main innovation with the iPhone was making a touch screen UI that was good. To be fair, that took a lot of engineering and UX work (early gen cap touch was terrible).
Apple was then able to pivot and make an app store built on existing infrastructure, another innovation that none of the other phone manufactures made. Yes "app stores" existed before the App Store, but they where not the one stop shop with guaranteed assurances that Apple offered. Executing on the App Store idea perfectly involved innovation for sure.
It's an admittedly nuanced statement, but not an outright falsehood.
I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro. Just like they were inspired by the original iPad, which was inspired by... which was inspired by... etc...
>I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro.
Perhaps that's true for a room of tech experts and media. As for the thousands of common consumers watching at home, they may not draw the same conclusions.
In my opinion, this should be made illegal. We have seen in Germany during the years 1935 to 1945, and more recently with ISIS, what manipulative talk could lead people to do.
Virtually any device you put out that's not exactly, spec-by-spec the same, you can say 'never been a product like this before'. It's true and empty.
They do a lot of those, they're true, hyperbolic, and totally devoid of any significance.
For example they'll say 'the iPhone 6 was the most popular iPhone ... EVER'. As if it's significant. But that's completely unexpected and it's not news, either. I'll happily take a 10 trillion dollar bet that the iPhone 7 will sell even better. And that the new Galaxy S 6 sells better than the 5, and the 7 will sell better than the 6, too.
Or they'll say the iPhone 6S is the most advanced iPhone ... EVER. As if, again, that's news. As if we think they built a 6S that's worse than the 6.
It's a truthful, hyperbolic, totally insignificant statement. It's different from a falsehood.
Calling a 3 second video, a photo, in the sense that it's a bunch of photo frames, that's more of a direct falsehood to me. We use the word photo to denote a still image, and video for multiple frames of photos. But that's a marketing gimmick that's more ridiculous than it is disingenuous.
As for innovation, I mostly agree. The ability to execute extremely well and polish your work isn't innovation. It can be driven by innovations of course but it's not the kind of innovation we talk about when we refer to Apple's history. Since the iPhone 4 I've mostly felt a ton of polish but no real breakthroughs on the phone department for example, tablet wise... mostly just solid iterations like everyone else, nothing fundamentally innovative about the iPad 4 or Air or mini, really. Pro feels like more of the same, split screen we've seen before, styluses we've seen before. Again, executed well and polished.
I mean of course there's innovation, but it's not what sets them apart. Look at Force Touch for example, now 3D touch. People probably missed the fact Huawei demo'd force touch last week on their android phone. And that's a feature we'd think of as their innovation. Others, like a large tablet, split screen, type covers, wireless charging, a stylus, 3-second videos (called live photos) etc are all seen before.
You understand that sales growth can't last forever right?
iPad for example has had that happening to it (later revision sold less well).
What's the best Microsoft desktop OS? Which is the best Dell screen? Which is the best keyboard? Motorola phone? The current year's Apple lineup has always been better than the last year's, and that's what the "best ever" statements mean to me, and I believe that's what they mean to the target audience: "This is new, and it works at least as well as the old stuff."
Which other company, which other product line of comparable complexity, introduces features without compromising usability?
I don't think it's remarkable at all. It would be remarkable if they weren't getting better year after year.
I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but cmon, this is some serious kool-aid drinking here.
Apple doesn't produce software that is any less issue prone than any other vendor. In fact the chorus complaining about software regressions has been getting louder and louder, even from Apple fans.
Yosemite was a particularly low point with regard to Apple software.
http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/the-worst-bugs-in-os-x-yosemit...
http://www.tekrevue.com/yosemite-bugs-time-for-another-snow-...
Software is hard. Apple aren't special, their software has just as many issues as any other vendor's, which is actually kind of disappointing given they have full control of the hardware, MS actually does a lot better with regard to software quality given the varied HW landscape Windows is deployed to.
Edit: Software quality isn't just a Yosemite issue with Apple, it's a long running joke that you should never install a X.0 OSX release due to bugs.
It's also depends on the level we're talking. If we just take "product like the iPad pro" to mean "a large tablet" then yes it's a "complete falsehood".
But it obviously means "a large tablet with this attention to detail, with the supporting OS and app ecosystem finely tuned to work along with it". Which is true -- as all Surface tablets I've seen are if not subpar, different in several ways.
Yes. It's marketing - the magic context in which we suspend our disbelief and let people lie to our faces, and we then applaud and pay them.
Marketing is the process of figuring out who a product is for and how to get them to want to buy it (through channels like engineering, design, and yes, advertising). Apple being an excellent marketing company isn't a slur — it's an incredible complement. They absolutely excel at understanding who their target audience is, building devices that appeal to that audience, and advertising to ensure that audience is aware of how those devices address needs they may not have even known they had.
They make okay products (in absolute terms, not implying that anything is better) and would not have their completely rabid following did they not manipulate people into buying into their status, lifestyle, and that they're more valuable than their worth.
If anything gets us is not us believing the ad, but just getting pumped with the nice visuals and subtle suggestions (so more subsconscius manipulation than convincing us).
Oh yes, it will. Getting teen-agers to start applying basic precepts of personal hygiene is like trying to drill an oil well with a toothbrush. Those commercials get it exactly right: (1) you stink (2) only men who don't stink get laid (3) use a bloody deodorant, you testosterone-laden pig!
I was just thinking how a terminal web browser gets you laid :)
Watching theses events is like this famous passage of the Odyssey. Once you are tightly attached, and don't risk to go overboard (and start buying stuff you don't really need), then enjoy the show. I've been told their exciting song is the most detailed and beautiful thing you've ever heard :)
Of course they're selling the hell out of it, that's what companies that take in billions of dollars do: make a decent product and then promote it. At least the stuff Apple makes usually works and the features they add into their products are actually useful - yeah, I'm looking at you, Samsung, and your list of Samsung XXX functions that were obviously designed and implemented over a weekend.
Surface 3 Pro:
12.0 inches (30 cm) 2160x1440 (216 ppi) = 3 M pixels and the noisy fan
iPad Pro:
12.9-inch 2732-by-2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi) = 5.5 M pixels (!) and no fan
On the other hand, as long as we don't know how good the Apple pencil is for writing (e.g. palm recognition), it's quite unclear how well suited the iPad Pro really is. A year from now the Pro tablet market will look very competitive I think, but for now it's still too much of a toy for my taste.
Just saying, I think Apple is still a pretty innovative company.
Androids huge sales are mostly low end of the market -- people who don't care about smartphones or computers, and just get whats cheaper with a 2 year contract.
Apple does reap the lion's share of profit from smartphone sales, but they don't dominate smartphone use.
Of course it is -- there are way more of those Android units.
But I wanted to point which users are more active, not mere volume. Even in the US Android could have more volume, but iOS users still generate far more traffic (not as total: as traffic per head).
If the 10% or 5% iOS users in a country generate the 20% or 30% of web traffic, then they are much more heavier tech/web users than the others.
Any proof?
Our US-only ecommerce site has 33% more visitors using Android than iOS. Our other US-only site has 2x more Android visitors than iOS.
I realize that sites vary by demographics, so I'm curious if you're just making this statement up, using your own site's stats, or found something that actually backs this up on the wider web.
http://fortune.com/2015/09/04/apple-tv-everywhere-share/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-outshines-android-in-us-mobil...
Or:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2014/08/03/ios-users-...
Or even this, which spins the issue:
http://www.businessinsider.com/android-is-beating-ios-in-web...
The latter is about Android "beating" iOs in web usage for the first time -- but in fact usage/users ratio is much higher in iOS, so you get more web usage from far fewer users.
>Our US-only ecommerce site has 33% more visitors using Android than iOS. Our other US-only site has 2x more Android visitors than iOS.
Depends if it attracts the demographic who would opt for cheaper Android phones.
My numbers are from several generic articles (by ad companies, sites etc) on the respective platforms web use.
Yes,92% of industry profits is domination in my book. Without sustainable profits, marketshare is meaningless. Only profitable players are Samsung and Apple.
For example, if you're developing a business website, iOS dominates the market, because optimizing for Android is nigh impossible, and iOS users have more money, and spend more money (on average, your market segment may differ, mine does).
Or, if you're considering making an app, iOS dominates the market, because Android users don't like using apps, much less paying for them.
Apple makes more profit than any phone company in the world, by a very large margin.
That == Dominating mobile.
what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph...
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and...
The "free with contract" or sub $400 market is a cut throat race to the bottom between Samsung and Xiaomi. Apple chooses not to enter that race (despite several journalists claiming they NEED a cheap phone to survive).
If the market leader has 90% market share and they grow to 95%, they have grown a lot less than you relatively (so the minor player can claim they have grown the most) but they now own a bigger piece of the pie than they used to.
This is why you should always be skeptical of anyone who uses relative numbers (growth) instead of absolute ones: the reality is probably that they have lost market share.
Which is what we have seen Apple do compared to Android these past three years.
You will notice that the early keynotes right after the iPhone and iPad came out were showing absolute numbers in shipments and dollars, and now, they just stick to percents and vague claims ("We're growing the fastest").
For example, below appears to be the report Cook used for his "+14% vs -0.4%" slide, which at best, is very misleading.
"In the worldwide mobile phone market (inclusive of smartphones), vendors shipped 464.6 million units, down -0.4% from the 466.3 million units shipped 2Q14.[1]"
Truth is, the smartphone market actually GREW by 11.6% (Q2 2014:302.1m => Q2 2015:337.2m).
1980: Apple has 10% of a 100,000,000-phone market. We could call this a gap of 90,000,000.
1981: Apple has 15% of a 200,000,000-phone market. We could call this a gap of 170,000,000. What happened was that while Apple's market share grew, it grew much slower than the market itself.
I guess you might want to look at the world that way; for example, if you wanted to know how difficult it would be to convince the entire market to switch to your product. But I tend to agree that market share would seem to be more useful for most purposes.
Apple never did the VERY first products of a category. There was Xerox before Lisa, PDAs before Newton, mp3 players before the iPod, smartphones before the iPhone, tablets before the iPad, smartwatches before the Apple Watch, etc.
The only did the first products of a category that were where at least half-thought out (instead of rushed crap), and people actually wanted to buy in droves.
Newton is a more clear cut failure -- but was too ahead of its time as most things one would want just werent there (internet would be a biggie).
Apple PowerCD? (odd vertical CD player)
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh? (oddly, the Cisco E20 appears to be identical in appearance)
But I didn't said they don't make flops.
Just that their "signature thing" is not coming up first with something, but coming with something that's somewhat thought out and people actually want to by. People remember them for these things: the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, iMac, etc (and IIRC Apple Watch too, did better than all competitor smartwatches combined).
Their story against Microsoft over the last decade has been nothing short but astonishing. No one could have predicted the dominance they have now in year 2000 or even 2005.
Plus, Apple has been playing catch up for a while now. I can't remember precisely which iOS release it was (I believe iOS 7) but the release was pretty much catching up with essential features already present in Android.
I have the 2014 one (brand new!) and it is disappointing. Less battery life than my old iPad 3. Worse performance too.
Doesn't compute.
But the selection of programs that are comfortable to use with the touchscreen is very small. In my case, pretty much web browsing, email, Netflix, and OneNote.
For typical programs, you'll either be fat-fingering buttons that are too small or you'll be pulling out the stylus frequently. The tablet experience does not compare well to an iPad.
I wouldn't like to think how MFC handles pinch to zoom, for example.
The iPad Pro is a big iPad. No x86, no fan, touch-based software stack, etc. It's not a computer, it doesn't have USB ports, it can't run desktop software. You can't plug it into a dock hook use it as a desktop machine.[1] On purpose. It's a very different point in the design space.
[1] Some people may consider the iPad Pro to be a Surface 3 with less features. And maybe it is depending on what you want from it. My take is that I've got a quad-core laptop with 16GB of RAM as my workhorse. I don't want a compromise device that's part tablet and part ULV laptop. I want a companion device with a big screen that I can mark up PDFs on. I want a bigger iPad, not a laptop with a detachable keyboard.
OSX has this to some extent with icons in the menu bar and changes in menu options when you press Alt, but on the iPad they were VERY wise to keep it in one place and to market the device as NOT a PC or workstation.
I think that's possibly because that's what a lot of people seemed to be wanting / hoping for, from this announcement. And it's not what Apple was looking to deliver - which is fine.
Outside of Microsoft (disclosure: MS employee), I don't see much competition for Apple in the innovative premium tablet space. They still execute well in the phone space, watch seems to be shaping up fine, they are still the only PC maker that is known for producing PCs that can last. The costs don't seem too off from the competition, unless we are talking about Xiaomi or Lenovo, but then the tradeoffs are obvious (no longer in the premium space).
I do see Apple slowing down a bit in innovation. I mean, if iPad Pro was released last year (stylus, yeh!), I might have bought it, but the Surface 3 came out instead, which is quite decent (I won't go SP3 because of the fan). But Apple is still executing well, they aren't making many mistakes. They have built up a loyal fanbase and haven't done anything to betray them yet.
People who depend on tech are usually about the shiny more than normal consumers, who just want to get what they need done. The rabid irrational Apple fanboy isn't grandma, no, it is the young kid working in tech.
This may perhaps reflect the different professional subcultures we're around, but IME "people who depend on tech" are _less_ prone to this (not necessarily the rabid fanboying but the equivalent effect). I think you're underestimating the effect that an unwillingness to do (relatively) in-depth research has on the purchasing decisions of "normal consumers". I.e., "wanting what they need to get done" is a wonderful wish, but it's somewhat meaningless when decoupled from knowing the differences/capabilities of each device. I don't think it's controversial to say that normal consumers put much much more faith in the wisdom of the crowds, and (if they can afford it), Apple products are the beginning and end of their search. The fact that "Android" or even "high-end Android" isn't a cohesive brand to the casual observer means that iPhones seem like a plurality of their cursory data set, even when it's not the majority (which, at least in the US, is pretty often).
Even in 2015, I have people asking me in slightly shocked tones why I don't use an iPhone, and their certainty is always based entirely on social proof (they generally have no knowledge about whatever is I happen to be using).
I cannot count the amount of times I have experienced this phenomena. A couple of years ago, when I first got an android phone, I remember someone say "Ha, you don't have an iPhone, your poor!"... the content of the comment didn't really disturb me, what did was the reasoning which lead the person to generate such a perspective.
Care to break down Apple vs. Microsoft's revenues in tablets? I can't imagine it's within two orders of magnitude, at which point I'd hardly say that Microsoft counts as competition. But maybe I'm wrong about the numbers.
(Granted, you said "pro tablets". I doubt we can get numbers on that, but I think the relevant distinction is "tablets used for work" rather than "tablets with XYZ specs", and in that space too I suspect without data that Apple is far and beyond the leader in terms of revenue.)
> iPad is far from worthless and Apple is far from
> Trivial in the space
> The point is that Apple is no longer the leader/innovator in
> the space
> People who depend on tech to make their living (often) require
> more than intangible benefits, and the competition has now
> caught/surpassed them as far as tech goes
[0] https://chitika.com/insights/2014/q4-tablet-update [1] https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/tablet-ownership-highest...
I'm not the parent commenter, but from the top...
> Far from trivial doesn't really capture a device that combines being the most expensive with a 75% market share in the US[0] and where US tablet ownership among internet users is 54%[1].
As hinted at by the first part of the sentence you're responding to, this thread is talking about the quality of iOS devices for professional work, not their popularity.
> Oooh, is there (yet another) new iPhone killer out again this month?
The snark here handily hides the lack of substance: once again, the reason there's no iPhone-killer (and I don't anticipate there being one for some time) is a different question from whether there's an alternative better-suited to professional work.
But Apple never created new product categories successfully in the past. People bought Macs in lieu of PC's; iPods in lieu of Discmans/minidisc/other MP3 players; iPhones in lieu of flip phones, candy bars, or blackberries.
They tried to create a new product category with the iPad and get people who don't own a computer to buy one (or buy one in addition to their normal computer purchases). It's been mildly successful so far, but sales have been falling. Apple should probably stick with replacing existing product categories with a well-designed, premium alternative.
Now that iIOS has multitasking it changes in an important way. I wonder if it can be a productivity device now. But its still not great when it comes to balancing more than 2 apps.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1163019/ios_5_new_gestures.h...
If you swipe with four fingers to the left or right, you can move between your two most recent apps. Hopefully iOS9 will make "multi-tasking" even easier.
I think I heard at WWDC that iOS 9 adds support for command-tab, which goes great with a hardware keyboard.
Before that he got a bulky Vista laptop that was on sale. He said that he felt silly walking around the airport with it when everyone else had some light tablet.
I would still be using my iPad for development, except for the fact that I found the 9.5" screen to be just too limiting. The other reason was that all the bluetooth keyboards require a separate cable for charging, which I hate.
The larger screen and the fact that they keyboard cover is powered by the tablet itself makes this super compelling.
Not for my "every day development" machine, but for use on road trips or so I can go spend some time in the middle of the woods without a full-sized laptop in tow.
Also, the updated screen tech for the pencil hopefully means I don't need to buy a separate Wacom tablet.
Coda[2] for iOS is also very compelling for a number of tasks, most importantly web development with a live preview. Editorial[3] is worth mentioning as well for it's deep customizability and scriptability.
So, the workflow is still pretty reliant on a desktop or VPS somewhere but the tools are becoming much cleaner and more integrated along the newer app communication features of iOS.
[1]: http://workingcopyapp.com [2]: https://panic.com/coda-ios/ [3]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/editorial/id673907758?mt=8
I basically used the tablet as a terminal to an EC2 instance. vim, tmux, git ...
When I was away from Wifi, it was a good excuse not to think about work.
So WinRT and SurfaceRT struggled. My sister bought one and liked it though.
In a lot of ways the Surface is a laptop with a detachable keyboard and the OS and eco system is still based on that. Apple wants their eco system to develop from a clean touch OS base into productivity areas. Having said that, they are really lagging in this area and the momentum has shifted well away from iPads in the business world.
The Surface might beat the iPad pro, but I do wonder if the either will be the future of productivity compared with a laptop and a tablet.
I picked one up on a curious whim, and often use this language to describe the Surface 3. It really does act like a laptop, all the way down to going to sleep while I'm playing music, and hibernating during periods of inactivity.
My brother-in-law will probably love this iPad Pro as he is a financial advisor and spends a lot of time getting quotes from websites, so he loves his iPad. He hates his MacBook Pro as he says "it keeps too many things open and doesn't shut them down properly" which is indicative of not understanding how apps close on OSX (or bothering to learn), and an interesting side-effect of the 'freeze-dried' app states on iOS for multitasking. I would have thought that OSX > iOS (I find using the iPad frustrating as it is like using a child's toy with no filesystem access) but for "real world" users it is obviously different. Enlightening to me anyway!
Editorial is perfect for writing and blogging.
Procreate is awesome for painting(of course it's not PS+Wacom, but it is surprisingly good).
I can use Recorder to record audio for my videos.
And Pinnacle Studio is a surprisingly awesome for editing videos.
Maybe they don't exactly compete with pro tools available for mac and pc, but they are amazing. And Pinnacle/Procreate totally crush everything available on Linux(for my purposes).
From notes, to scripts for clients servers, it just took over.
Being able to quickly sketch, or take a photo of something and add notes too it quickly is super handy.
People who are mobile (as in floating around an office or travel) whose job tasks are easily attributable to specific applications are very happy with iPads. Ideally, the number of applications they use every day on a traditional PC is less than 5. Examples: Sales, Executives, auditors, policemen, medical professionals, case workers.
We had one group of auditors who literally sent my team a $200 fruit basket in appreciation for their iPads. The card said something like "You changed our lives. Thank you!" Executives spend 95% of their day in mail or approving things... again, perfect use case as long as that workflow doesn't require IE6 :)
If you're a consultant, whose specific tasks may change day to day, a full-stack devops guy using any of 15 tools, or a professional writer churning out copy, than an iPad doesn't work. That's ok... a $500 nailgun doesn't make sense for hanging a picture. We have the luxury of choosing tools these days... in 1999, mobile == 12 lb laptop with cable!
I haven't seen anyone, including Microsoft badged people, using a Surface Pro as anything but a nice laptop.
Were they using a custom made app for their specific task or something like that?
- Pre-boot authentication. - Windows sign-in - VPN two-factor sign-in - Web Portal access - Find your thing.
Best case, that process took 7-9 minutes, at a customer site using guest wifi or air-card in an office building, with a potentially angry customer. Not fun. The typical user does that 5-10 times a day, and in many cases the workers were actually preparing paper reports on their own time to function.
Enter iPad. Access was a snap, and it performed better with marginal cellular connections. Accessing the web portal did still require a two-factor challenge, but that two factor was effective for ALL of their internal access. We used a web browser that gave them a native iPad browsing experience (vs. an SSL-VPN'd IE) and access to several different systems via app.
A better alternative in a laptop form factor would be a zero client laptop, but they are very niche devices.
I didn't really go into detail about the full use case, they get other benefits from the overall snappy iPad experience in terms of switching apps, etc.
If you run under any regulation (PCI-DSS, HIPAA etc.) your PC will have to be hardened, have anti-virus, full disk encryption, 2 factor auth for remote connection and tick every other possible "security" box to be compliant.
Mobile well it's easy just have an MDM and do what ever the fuck you want, so if you want to use your laptop from the train in a regulated industry you'll have to stand on one foot, hold the laptop over your head while giving a blood sample to authenticate you and on the other hand you can just hope on your tablet/mobile phone connect to your office using VPN on-demand or even a regular web app (as long as it's SSL because dur-dur security!) and you're golden.
HIPAA endpoints that are used to access, view or input patient data are in scope.
I am a QSA.
Obviously there is nothing preventing companies from creating new tablet version of apps for surface as well, but there might be a problem with the corporate "if it works, you won't get a budget to fix it" thinking.
Nobody wants to use the equivalent of a thick toothpick to point at things on the screen, like we did with old Windows Mobile and Palm devices. (Just dialing a phone number required pulling the stylus out of its sleeve.) Being able to just poke at things with your fingertip, drag, gesture, etc. are all far superior methods of interaction. However, for precise operations, such as drawing or handwriting, it's a very different tool.
Its funny, at the presentation they mentioned the cover and how the magnets transfer input from the keyboard to the computer as if it was a revolutionary idea. Then again, it is Apple. They can come out with a bottle water product and swoon the masses.
EDIT: And after the price is revealed the scales tip a little more in Microsoft's favor. The entry level iPad Pro is the same price as a Surface Pro 3, but has half the disk space and doesn't include the stylus.
I can't imagine shelling out near a $1,000+ for this thing (lets price in the keyboard and other accessories) when I can get a proper Macbook or Surface Pro, both which are much more capable. I imagine this will become the next hot executive toy (I need my twitter and my exchange mail up at the same time, nerds!). It'll sell in predictable low numbers and then one day mysteriously disappear from the Apple webpage with no fanfare.
I feel Apple has painted itself in a corner here. It never bonded OSX and iOS and carefully made them separate products. This probably made sense 5-6 years ago, but unified devices are now practical and affordable. I suspect Apple has a unified OS ready to go soon and is just buying time with this "Pro" to seem competitive. I can't imagine the status quo lasting. What exactly does a mobile OS get me, especially when it needs hardware and RAM on the level of a desktop OS not too long ago? Trying to "keep it simple" is what got Nokia and Blackberry killed. I fear that this industry is destined to just re-invent the desktop, but with sexier devices, in the end.
I'm not one to underestimate Apple, but the past couple years have been underwhelming. Even their much hyped watch is a fairly milquetoast design with a poor value proposition. Or the mobile game has simply matured and there are no more big ideas in this space. Are we at the "gimmicks and minor refinements" stage of this technology?
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-surface-hits-1bn-reve...
About $1350 for the cellular base model with a keyboard and stylus.
I really wanted to love it but lame battery life in comparison to a three-year old iPad3 and the inability of S Note to ignore my hand motions and not do zooming when I move my hand irritates me. Coupled with worse performance than the iPad3, and I have the LTE edition of the Note. I can only imagine how stuttery and slow the non-LTE edition is (which uses an 8 core chip and got rubbish performance reviews).
Using Google Maps in 3D mode gives me framerates like viewing a compressed VNC session over an SSH link on a Raspberry Pi over a 2G GSM connection. Slow.
Other non-software features (like battery life and weight) matter as well.
Price doesn't really matter though.
There's a ton of them and it's a very hot area right now. It's a great time to be an iOS developer.
iOS development is becoming 'just another' language in your stack.
The Surface Pro and iPad Pro is where you'll see the whole "app gap" story inverted. The Surface will have "all the apps" (apps in this case meaning all existing Win32 applications and Enterprise software) and iOS trying to play catch up through partnerships like their one with IBM.
>Very soon iOS apps will match and/or exceed most desktop apps.
I expected that to be true, but we're coming up on 10 years of the Apple App Store and I'm still waiting.
Also I'd actually argue that a ton of iOS apps are better than the desktop equivalents. Touch screen is a new paradigm that is taking us a while to truly master IMO. Also the app store has only been out 7 years so it hasn't been 10. It launched July 2008.
In what context?
[1] http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/it/management.html
[2] http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/us/en/mobilefirst-for-ios/
You need Macs to build iOS software. Meanwhile, you can find Visual Studio already being employed in most business IT shops to build custom desktop and web software. I can't remember the last time I saw a job ad for an iOS developer that wasn't for a one-off gig or a mobile apps shop (or a marketing agency).
The risk with Apple's approach is that companies will think "it's too much work to make a custom UI for such a small market".
I guess time will tell who wins this. Possibly, things will go like they went with Mac OS and Windows: some companies decided to build applications for the Mac, thus forcing others out of the market, and making it easier for them to develop Windows versions. Another possibility is that the way larger market in 2015 vs 1985 and the existence of many existing iOS apps makes more companies decide that developing a custom UI for iPad Pro is worth the effort.
For an example, see http://www.pcronline.com/eurointervention/textbook/pcr-textb...:
"Get the iPad application for only $149.99"
Maybe that is just a web site in an app with limited interactivity, but there definitely seems to be competition in that market. The disadvantage of free updates in such markets may be more than balanced by the advantage of very limited ability to resell apps (the easiest way I know to resell apps is to create separate iTunes accounts for each app, and let te buyer set a new password for that account. That becomes impractical soon, of you have tens of apps)
That 3D knee visualization, to me, seems a clear indication of that.
If those business apps [1] take off, IBM gains the solution and the customer, while Apple gains valuable beachhead front property in the war on Microsoft's soil.
The iPad Pro, Pencil, new connector, not to mention force-touch and split screen have a likelyhood of sealing the deal.
"Our Windows app runs fine on Surface" is a better story than "Our Windows app doesn't run on Surface at all".
I actually expected the iPad Pro to support OS X apps; maybe via being powered by a new Apple Ax frankenchip that runs iOS ARM as well as x86 code (another payoff from the investment to custom chip design) and/or by requiring to recompile with the latest XCode for the App Store (a payoff from the long investment in LLVM).
Maybe next year.
Its kinda heresy to say here, but good software is only possible when devs adapt to the platform users choose, not the other way around.
I wonder if Apple will update the iPad air with 3d touch and stylus capabilities?
Syncing and Backup are tedial tasks most people wouldn't do if they needed to do it manually or configure an external program / service to do it.
(Yes, I understand who the target audience is.)
The less Customers have to know about how technology works the happier they are, and the more successful Apple is.
For attaching whilst composing an email in Gmail (what I use) there's an "Attach" icon that lets you attach photos or files from Google Drive. Whilst Apple's Mail lets you click the cursor on where you want to add the Photo/Video.
If the feature was considered important enough to complicate the UI there'd be an option or optimized App for the task, otherwise no-one thought it was important or cared enough to support it.
Being on an e-mail thread where someone says "hey, can you e-mail over that spreadsheet?" is hardly rare. Things like this are the reason why the iPad has not been a huge success as a productivity tool.
I was referring to all Mail Apps, I don't even use Apple Mail, I use Gmail. Yes Apple decides what's important in their App, Google decides what's important in theirs, Everyone else decides...
> Being on an e-mail thread where someone says "hey, can you e-mail over that spreadsheet?" is hardly rare.
You can still send spreadsheet attachments, open said Spread sheet, hit share attachment, Done. Go back to playing games.
> iPad has not been a huge success as a productivity tool.
So catering for a smaller class of enterprise and power users should be the holy metric Apple should be catering for? Apple has OSX for power users, iOS for everyone else. That strategy seems to be working quite well for them.
On iPad it just DISAPPEARS. You can't upload a file.
That's why every job company has their own app harvesting your data, and it requires scores of bulky apps to get around the simple HTML form omission. Insane.
You're right that as a matter of routine, having recent documents worked with in an app come up on opening it (and an easy visual list of all the files the app has touched) is a great interaction pattern.
That says nothing about whether or not there should be some kind of file browser, or other means for users to become aware and able to interact with files outside an app.
Particularly because at some point, single-app workflows hit their limits, and getting stuff done either becomes a matter of using multiple apps or waiting for an app to grow the new feature you need (the latter of which is not just getting stuff done).
And I'm not just talking about Power Users -- I've seen this happen with my mom (proverbial disinterested computer user), who generally is quite happy to be completely unaware of the file system, but still periodically runs into corner cases where she needs to do something no single app will let her do (usually audio-file related).
This all reminds me of the discussion around hiding URLs in browsers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677898
For decades, we had a system where people who didn't care to pay any attention to URL bars could ignore them, and people who were incidentally curious could learn useful things by paying attention, people who needed to discover them could, and people found them regularly useful had them at the ready.
Then somebody who got caught up in a shallow idea of simplicity that neglects utility and discoverability decided they'd make a UX change that was hostile to all of latter two groups. After all... the first group doesn't care, they just want to navigate the web and get stuff done.
The right principle here is to make the simple case easy and obvious, and the more complex case discoverably possible.
Do they want to create an experience that's so simple to use that they're enjoyed by both kids and non-technical grand parents, that's optimized for the most common everyday tasks, e.g browsing the web, shopping, reading news, books, taking photos, finding driving directions, writing emails, etc.
Or do they want to offer a full Desktop OS that's suitable for everyone including devs and power users lets them run server software, multiple windows, anti virus software, network filesystems, development IDE's that enables them to build iOS Apps, etc. For those users they offer OSX on macbooks and iMac's and choose not to complicate their UX on their most popular computing platform - that's quickly becoming most of their Customers primary computing platform.
It's Apple's felicitous focus on simplicity and Customer use-cases that's what's made them the most successful company in the world.
You're confusing simplicity with ease of use. Adding a layer of indirection over the intrinsic file system is not simple, and even ease of use is debatable, since it creates an impedance mismatch by definition.
Nor is there any reason to consider this a zero-sum game. Having advanced features does not deprive the common user of their comfort, as they will simply not make use of them.
I'm of course not the target audience for iPads, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking they're anything but a toy. It takes something much more serious for a new computer generation to usurp its predecessor, and if mobile device manufacturers continue in this fashion, they might win only a technicality - market share. As opposed to the usual test of whether a platform is able to bootstrap its own system software, which iOS and Android emphatically cannot.
Apple starts from the user experience first and works their way back to the technology. Technology is just an obstacle in order for them to be able to accomplish their desired experiences, it's not something they put front-and-center or use it to limit or influence how and what features are implemented.
Kids can use an iPad without ever needing to know what a File System is, there is no impedance mismatch to them, they're not spending their time thinking about how their multi-layered video that just created is physically stored and synced. They just use an App for a while, switch to other apps, then re-open their app when they want to continue working on it.
Exposing internals like file-system layout means the OS is no longer managing the files, they need to cater for manipulations whilst still supporting transparent cloud backups and syncing, they need to design a completely different UI for power users with lots of features all working with multi-touch yet still have the features power users expect from a Desktop OS, e.g. downloads to be in a central "Downloads" folder instead of being grouped and isolated in the App that downloaded them.
You've at least acknowledged you're not the iPad's primary audience but labelling it as just a toy means you've still failed to realize its appeal. Smart Phones and tablets are becoming the primary computing platform because they empower users to be able to do more, Apps are optimized around use-cases and tasks making them much easier and more enjoyable to use than Desktop software.
I have a lot of anecdotal evidence on how the iPad is the only computing device my parents have ever enjoyed, how after so many years they still can't conceptualize how files and folders are structured, where their documents are saved, how full-screen windows and pop dialogs makes them think their PC is broken.
Even myself as a power user I find lots of apps that are much better on an iPad, inc. more advanced tasks like browsing and comparing real-estate is so much faster and effortless. There's also tasks that you just can't do on a PC or are frustrating enough that you wouldn't bother with, e.g. Making phone or video calls, taking and sending photos, Live Directions and Traffic, paying for coffee, even core tasks like browsing photos, Facebook or the Internet are generally more enjoyable on an iPad.
But ultimately anecdotal evidence is useless as everyone can provide their own to contradict them, the best indicator we have to go with is Sales and by this measure Apple's recent iOS strategy is a lot more fruitful then their decades old Desktop OS strategy - they have no reason to make iPad's more like OSX - they're reaching and empowering more people then they ever have, they're making the technology a transparent implementation detail so much so that iPads are often referred to as a magical pieces of glass.
If you go by sales wouldn't then Android figures indicate that their approach was better?
Are your saying most android devices act like USB cards? I decided to test one of mine and it didn't show up so I don't quite know what you mean by that.
> If you go by sales wouldn't then Android figures indicate that their approach was better?
And if you go by profits it looks like Apple is better. Funny how that works out.
Op had mentioned "Apple starts from the user experience" which users prefer hence they have great sales. I questioned since Android has far better sales. I don't know what profits have to do with user experience. If users preferred Apple approach should it not then have more sales?
As for UX I didn't think it could ever be argued that Android was even comparable to iOS, you can look at the sat ranking for how well iOS is received, or even browser market share where the majority of mobile web is still from iOS - which is a good indicator on how much devices are being used for non-phone features, despite having fewer devices in the wild.
In my opninion Material is way better then iOS. " majority of mobile web " - statcounter, netshare already put chrome/android ahead!
Anyway the point was Apple UI is not always intuitive. I even didn't know that toolbar icons can be long pressed on my mac-pro for a long time!
And drag and drop is the simplest/intuitive way to copy files from medium to another which iOS totally messed it up.
iPads have been getting a lot of productivity improvements lately, however many have decided they're just a toy and in doing so have been rather blind to their advance. To just name one, extensions allow inter-app handoff and are quite powerful at this point and well received by iOS devs and power users. Extensions solve the document transfer use case discussed in this subthread, and they don't invoke cognitive load around filesystems. I'm hoping we can use 3d Touch to trigger them from the share button to further improve their efficiency. But that's cool, lets all keep dragging files around with a mouse or typing in terminal and wait where did I save that file I was just working on again?
Another way to think about this is with iOS, Apple is going down the list from most common to least common use cases for end users, whereas over the last several decades with CLI and then WIMP interfaces, traditional PC devs have been going up the list of use cases from most dev-oriented to most end user. Nothing wrong with the results of the latter for development, but it turns out there's a lot more end users than there are devs, and an exposed filesystem is a sacred cow of that the latter approach that can be solved in more than one way for the end user.
> It takes something much more serious for a new computer generation to usurp its predecessor
Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers.
How are those things innate to having a hierarchical file system? A straw man if I ever saw one.
Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers.
And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.
Not innate to having an hfs, just innate to using one. Of course you could drag files around with your finger, or tap into subfolders, or use the keyboard, but those are not taking advantage of strengths of the platform. Meanwhile share sheet extensions are well suited to the modern paradigm of touch, social, and cloud, where the target of a file may or may not be a local filesystem or even an app in its strictest sense. This interface represents an alternative to finding files in folders when working between apps, which is where my comparison was directed.
Maybe I misunderstood and you're arguing that iOS doesn't have a hierarchical file system, but thats opposite of what you were complaining about (obfuscated file systems) earlier in this thread. lmk.
> And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.
Minicomputers were still considered 'less serious' than the mainframes long after they stopped being terminals, and they were capable of far less. Unless I misunderstood and you're arguing that iPads have not yet reached some modern equivalence to self-hosting... and that equivalence must involve an exposed file system... because it must be able to bootstrap its own operating system...? Genuinely confused by this rebuttal, but open to hearing your ideas.
What if, as in the URL example I gave, there are multiple overlapping target audiences?
Of course you optimize the common case. The question is whether in the process you're going to decide to ignore or eliminate discoverability in less common cases. Don't use "audience" as an excuse to be lazy about them.
And both mobile and desktop are general computing devices with a wide range of abilities. Deciding mobile is the PlaySkool version is itself an oversimplification.
> Apple's felicitous focus on simplicity and Customer use-cases that's what's made them the most successful company in the world
One can learn a lot from their success. It hasn't them perfect. They still make some poor or even user-hostile decisions.
Their success does, however, seem to render some people less inclined to think critically about their choices.
But you know, numbers don't lie. iOS is not the dominant design. And guess what I have on my Android? A file manager, going hand in hand with uTorrent and VLC. And guess how I'm copying music on my phone? It's not through iTunes, thank god for that.
That said the iPad Pro is a device that intrigues me, since with the stylus and the keyboard if might actually be more useful than a paperstand.
My question was wrt to source of your stat.
Anyway it seems useless continuing this. I suppose you would come back some other Apple this and that line. I just wanted to know where you got the stat. Since i am not getting any references i assume you made it up.
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2015/02/09/apple-ha...
Android is simply not dominant.
Does app A's copy get updated with app B's modifications?
If that were true, SP3 should have been a huge hit by now. It's not.
> If that were true, SP3 should have been a huge hit by now.
That doesn't follow.
"Is going to" does not imply "has" and "has" does not imply "has, and also the market in general has already realized and responded to this fact".
I look at this iPad Pro though and I see a totally useless device. For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air. If you want a tablet form factor then you would be better served buying a Surface, since at least it runs a real operating system designed for "pro" use not the closed eco system that is iOS. I "upgraded" from an iPad to a iPad mini, because I didn't want to carry around such a large device that is just a glorified eReader that I can waste time on with games. Then I "upgraded" again to a Kindle Paperwhite since it's lighter still, the battery lasts forever, I can read it in bright sunlight, and I don't get distracted and waste my time on pointless things like Doodle Jump. Everything else can run on my phone anyway which now comes in tablet sizes if that is what you want.
Then the Apple TV. My current generation Apple TV is unplugged and gathering dust while I use the Smart TV, PS4, Xbox 360 (In that order) for my on demand streaming. More and more Apple TV becomes unnecessary as what it does it build into televisions. Why Apple didn't put iTunes on Smart TVs, Roku, game systems, etc... so I could rent/purchase my videos there is beyond me; but now I (along with many others) have moved on to competitors. Almost forgot to mention; this thing doesn't even support UHD?
Tim Cook needs a wake up call.
And then at the next sales-record-breaking keynote, repeat.
This is just overpriced toy, inferior to it's counterparts, but sure, it will sell, thanks to it's swag factor. (Outside of US of A and UK you only see apple stuff on very particular kind of people, the ones that gleefully spend 10x the money on a LV bag, just to rub it in other's faces. Having apple stuff is hip, nothing to do with any sort of usability)
Eventually it will come crashing down
No, but they are symmetric.
You would do well to consider removing the word "haters" from your vocabulary. It's used solely by the unempathic, the childish, and the criticism-sensitive, and doesn't in any situation help.
Look back at every single Apple announcement and you'll realize Apple just takes tech that's already out in the marketplace and refines it. They never do what you expected them to do today, and never will.
No iTunes, but you can get the same content other places.
For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying a Macbook Air.
Apple has dozens of devices for dozens of use cases and types of buyers. I would never use the new MacBook (not good enough specs), and most of HN thinks it's a terrible idea. But my wife loves it. She doesn't need to run a virtual machine or plug in i/o devices or use 16GB of RAM, and it helps her do what she does better than ever.
If you look at Apple keynotes through the lens of, "Will this product change my life?" you'll likely be frequently disappointed - they're building products for a wide spectrum of users. But every now and then, they'll likely absolutely nail what you need.
If you buy a Macbook Pro when you need a laptop, it doesn't matter if the Macbook Air isn't for you. Apple still wins.
We have lives outside of work that also helps informs our opinions on these things.
You would, provided that MacBook Air had convertible screen (like Lenovo Yoga)
Obviously the same use cases for both products!
The tablet form factor (with a larger screen) does offer a compelling use case for drawing and other art, but in general the tools available are inferior to software available for Mac OSX and Windows. This is where the Surface makes a lot of sense since I can draw/design on the go while having access to best in class software.
I'm not a Windows user, but it is for this very reason that I keep thinking of buying a Surface; it's gotten some great reviews from other artists/designers.
I also find it discouraging that Apple has introduced their "revolutionary" new Pencil at a $100 price point, but I can't find specs anywhere, and I know I can buy the Wacom Creative Stylus 2 for less money and it has 2048 pressure level sensitivity. Without published specifications it leaves me wondering if the Apple Pencil is less product for more money.
I would agree with the sibling comment here - the PC market isn't that great at the moment
We've got Rokus on the small TVs and Xbox Ones on the big ones.
I currently use an ipad 4, with its 10" screen, as a second screen for my mpb retina 13. I like this setup because it's thin and relatively light so slots easily into my bag along with my macbook, and doesn't require a power socket to run, just USB. I also use the ipad for reading and a few other tasks so carrying it around has intrinsic value in addition to being a second screen.
The ipad 4 does a reasonable job, but it's a bit on the small side. This new pro form factor is, however, perfect - 12.9" and higher res than my mbp retina screen means it really can be a true second screen, with roughly identical capabilities to my main screen. I'm pretty happy about this.
Won't be upgrading just yet on account of the price, but when it drops enough, replacing my current ipad with this will be a no-brainer.
It's a little quirky - the most annoying bugs are unpredictable disconnections and occasionally screen freezes, this seems to happen mostly when my macbook locks and reopens. But these things don't happen regularly enough that it causes a major problem for me. It's a bit annoying but I can deal with it.
One thing to note for anyone considering it - it performs really well at displaying text. Things like tailing logs, or displaying docs. However, anything involving typing and using the mouse is a bit painful compared to your main screen because the lag can be tedious and uncomfortable for fast interactions. In addition, I keep the refresh rate at 30Hz when on battery to save power, which compounds this issue.
Fortunately, the Macbook Air still exists, so you can buy that. I wouldn't personally really have a use for this thing either, but I'm sure some people would.
So, if a big ipad like this is a "pro" device, where does a fully functional computing device, running UNIX, that you interact with on the command line fit in ?
I'm speaking of (for instance) my mac pro running OSX.
If what we see today is for "pros", then two questions come to mind:
1. What am I ? A wizard ? A demi-god ? A great elder ?
2. Can I reasonably expect Apple to make products for wizards ? Is there any money in that ?
And it does have some of that functionality, from a large screen, type cover keyboard, stylus to multi-tasking. That's not 'pro' in all industries (e.g. in software it's not), but if you're in marketing or say one-on-one tutoring or sales, I can imagine there are professional use cases reasonably enough to call it 'pro'.
Either way I'm not really convinced, still feels like a terribly niche item, not really useful to most professionals (who'd I'd think, prefer light laptops and/or small tablets in combination with a growing presence of now ~5 inch phones and smartwatches) either. Sure it's a nice device but is it going to turn around tablet sales for Apple? I'm not convinced. I just don't see a 13 inch screen beating say the MBAs or Surface 2s of the world.
Mostly I just feel like expensive tablets are a thing of the past. Tablets kind of filled this niche role in between phones and laptops, until phones became bigger (4 years ago the iPhone was 3.5 inches, then 4 inches, then 4.7 and now the biggest is 5.5), and laptops became not necessarily much smaller (although they did, 11 and 12 inch form factors are super popular, versus the more traditional 15 and 17, or the old 12' powerbooks with huge bezels that are bigger than 15 inch macbooks today), but much, much lighter and with solid battery life and SSD ubiquity. I just feel there's no real room anymore for expensive tablets, there's still room (1) very niche uses and (2) dirt cheap tablets, plenty of room for a random 'good enough' tablet for at home to read the news that don't cost $800. I mean hell the freaking keyboard is $170, the pencil $100 and the tablet $800, obviously you want cellular, too, as a pro user, that's $1080. So now we're at $1350 for an iPad pro with a keyboard and stylus that's still sub-par to other solutions. Anyway I don't have many doubts I'll be proven wrong, they don't just build random stuff without a ton of focus group data and conversations with business users, but I'm not really seeing it right now.
On the other hand, a Surface Pro is truly a replacement for a laptop as it features a full blown Windows 8 (or 10, now).
Theres also lots of artists who have reviewed the surface pro line favorably. Notably penny arcade's Mike K, and MTG's Noah Bradley.
When designers/visual artists are going to look at the market they are going to see surface pro, not iPad pro.
To top it off - The pro is also relatively closer to the cintiq ideal. Couple that with the iPad pro's price point?
How will you justify getting an iPad pro? The parallax, accuracy and hands on reviews aren't out yet.
I don't see who in the digital design world would buy this, or why.
Compressing multiple files - this has actually been possible since iOS 8: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/winzipr-for-ios-now...
They did a lot of background work getting the OS and UIKit and developers up to speed for supporting multiple device sizes - necessary for introducing bigger screens - and I would suggest that played a large part in making the 6 successful. People weren't getting a crappy scaled experience from the apps they already knew.
Preference or bias? No random person commenting on Hacker News is obligated to be unbiased. We're allowed to have preferences still right? My preferences might be different depending on different contexts. I rarely order cocktail sauce to put on my chocolate ice cream but I also rarely order whip cream to put on my shrimp. That doesn't make me bias against cocktail sauce or whip cream.
This is mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment, but the broader point is that of course Apple has "innovated" since the original iPhone, iPad, iWhatever. In some big ways, and in some small ways. But so have other players in the industry. Apple has borrowed some good ideas from them, just as they have borrowed good ideas from Apple.
However saying Apple hasn't innovated since those original announcements is so hilariously ludicrous.
http://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-mate-s-force-touch-ha...
It's okay to live inside a ecosystem, but don't pretend to know what happens outside it.
Basically, they saw the Apple Watch, and kinda cribbed together a rough copy of it, and jammed it into a phone.
Shocking, I know, as Android OEM hardware hacks are always done as cohesive, full-thought implementations.
Force touch on Android will never get anywhere until it's specifically supported by Google (who unless I'm mistaken, haven't included it in M), and the install rate is high enough to make it worthwhile. I'm sure more OEMs will include it, but individually they won't have the clout to make it go anywhere.
It's a bit like the argument around NFC. My Nexus 6 has it, but until M is released with Google Pay, it's pretty much useless. Apple waited until they had a compelling use-case, and only then included it. I would not be surprised if the use of NFC is far higher on iOS than Android.
I can use Google Pay in the future with my over 2 years old device. Apple users have to buy a new iPhone for that.
I didn't know IFA 2015 was few months ago.
Hasn't every iPhone been the most successful iPhone ever?
In fact, a 'sales guy' or a banker could have shared a similar opinion.
You don't need to be 'highly technical' to be pragmatic and critical.
". No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. "
response.
http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...
That Macbook Air won't serve as a graphics tablet. The Surface Pro 3 (I have one with the i7 and 256GB) is a clunky heavy difficult to hold thing with an less than great OS experience (with either 8.1 or 10). I'd be okay with the clunky part if the OS experience was great.
Unless of course you want a 12" screen with a digitizer, then that Air is useless to you without some very expensive 3rd party hardware.
> If you want a tablet form factor then you would be better served buying a Surface [...]
The iPad pro is a tablet.
> [...] since at least it runs a real operating system designed for "pro" use not the closed eco system that is iOS.
Yeah, there's the rub. The only thing is many people don't care. Do you know why businesses bought Macs in the early 90s? To run Photoshop or Quark Xpress or Pagemaker. The workers didn't need computers, they needed things that ran Photoshop.
What happened when Photoshop couldn't keep up on the Mac since Intel was racing ahead? Many companies bought PCs to run Photoshop.
Tons and tons of people don't care about the OS. In fact the simplicity of iOS may be a boon to them. They're probably using Adobe Creative Cloud anyway.
Tablet? Light? Runs software they care about? Works well? They'll buy it.
> My current generation Apple TV is unplugged and gathering dust while I use the Smart TV, PS4, Xbox 360 (In that order) for my on demand streaming.
That's because the current Apple TV sucks. It was fine once, but it's basically been unchanged for about 5 years. They're fixing that.
I don't know about you, but the "Smart TV" stuff built into my TV is terribly slow. And I don't want to boot a full console to stream a little video. Many people don't even own game consoles.
> Why Apple didn't put iTunes on Smart TVs
See previous paragraph about smart TVs sucking. Apple has learned it's lesson (see Motorola ROKR).
> Almost forgot to mention; this thing doesn't even support UHD?
And I'm sure the 1% of the population with 4k TVs and fast enough internet connections is really sad about that.
Of course iTunes doesn't even have 4k content, but surely their box should play it right? After all it will never be updated again.
They did the same thing with 1080p support. It will come when there is more demand.
> Tim Cook needs a wake up call.
That's pretty hyperbolic, don't you think?
I own surface 3 pro also for the same reason. But I don't like it and it can be bigger.
I don't think I'm going to upgrade anytime soon, but when I am looking for a newer tablet, the iPad Pro will tempt me.
I think Apple is primarily trying to attract artists and other creative types with the Pro. A good friend of mine is planning on giving up his Wacom and moving to an iPad Pro instead.
For some people's needs sure. I think that's why Apple sells the MacBook / MacBook Air?
-Steve Jobs
The apple distortion field is running at maximum.
See also (from this same thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192958
The stylus pressure and buttons was a sensor on the stylus that was sensed by the tablet.
The screen or surface didn't have any sensors.
For drawing on a screen of any size, especially a 12" one, the stylus makes plenty of sense.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-...
He specifically refers to the iPad in the actual quote. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply wrong or a revisionist, though such sorts seep out of the woodwork whenever Apple cedes prior claims, rephrasing and adding unspoken criteria to somehow make it prescient and relevant, seen throughout this discussion.
Marketing just pushed styli (?) and hardware keyboards out, the latter is something I really miss on my phone...
- The whole of Twitter right now
But, this is just an accessory. See also: beats headphones, smart case.
Unlike the comedy "smartphone" attempts of 2005 which Steve Jobs was alluding to, you may still freely use your fingers.
Ignoring the fact that it's all moot now, I was doing GPS navigation, multitasking, audio streaming, and rudimentary video calling on some of those "comedy attempts" from 2005-2007 and I did a lot of it with my fingers as well. The iPhone improved on the touch aspect quite a bit but it's not as if it wasn't missing 10 other things that were common to smartphones of the time.
And that only makes sense. It's good business to focus on the things your competition isn't doing as it allows you to target different parts of the market.
* Blatant copies of some Apple product
* Rough prototypes of some future Apple product
The original stylus comment was for a 3.5" pocket phone. Previously, things like Palm Treo or Windows Mobile devices required a stylus to touch the resistive sensing screen. That is the baseline.
Anybody taking the quotes out of historical context is just trying to incite an argument and pretend they are better than Tim Cook. Nobody is better than Tim Cook.
And then at the launch of the iPad - "if you see a stylus, you blew it".
But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.
Stylus noun, plural styli [stahy-lahy] (Show IPA), styluses.
2) any of various pointed, pen-shaped instruments used in drawing, artwork, etc.
3) Computers. a pen-shaped device used on a display screen to input commands or handwritten text or drawings. Compare joystick (def 2), mouse (def 4).
But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.
This is basically Apple saying "let's make a Surface with a bigger screen and do it the Apple way".
It's weird seeing Microsoft participate in it.
Other than size, there's not much that Android tablets need to respond to, there's already been large high-end Android tablets with great pen input (no angle detection, but they're all Watcom class).
What I think was most interesting here was the incessant pitch that this is a productivity device not a media consumption device.
For the full experience you're looking at:
$800 for the pad
$100 for the pencil
$170 for the keyboardcase
And we're in low-end laptop territory without necessarily cannibalizing their laptop business, but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.
Edit: for people confused, I meant a low-end Apple laptop not a Windows machine, which are much cheaper. This is priced to barely overlap with the bottom-end. The pricing ensures the two segments are partitioned.
That means a machine like my primary work computer is like 8 low-end laptops. This new iPad is the cost of 2–3 low-end laptops.
The price point is more like (a little under) the at-release Surface Pro than popular Chromebooks (its a little cheaper than the Chromebook Pixel, but that's not really the big seller -- the popular models are at the low end.)
Both by form factor and price, this seems more to be competing more with the big "pro" tablets that the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (slightly cheaper) and the Surface Pro (3 was slightly more expensive at release, 4 probably will be too, 3 is slightly less expensive right now) than Chromebooks.
And the Pro 3's pen/drawing experience has received pretty good reviews after some early software jitters.
Also the Surface stylus isn't in the same league. So you'd have to compare to something like the N-Trig stylus which is an extra $50.
Cheaper? Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
The Surface Pro 3's pen is an N-Trig... Yeah, so not $50 more, included right in the box. And it has reviewed excellently by artists.
> Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
You have absolutely no basis for claiming that the Apple pen and cover are superior. Literally nobody has reviewed them, you haven't used them, nobody you know has used them, and you didn't even know they existed two hours ago.
So yes, I have a basis for claiming that - one based on the hardware used and direct experience with the competition.
Nope, scissor-switch. It is mechanical.
They used to sell one called the Touch Cover which is likely what you're describing, they don't anymore (discontinued, years ago).
> the Apple one is already better.
Because, why? You haven't used the Surface Pro 3 (as evidence by your own posts), you haven't used this (as evidence by the fact that nobody outside of Apple has), and you keep making basic mistakes about how both work.
This is like the N-Trig remark all over again.
I know, I was saying that the Apple one was better based on my experience with their Dome Switches vs my experience with the Surface keyboard.
You fail at reading comprehension. Just because you can't read, don't blame me.
My Chromebook cost about 20 percent more than the keyboardcase alone, and I'm writing this comment on an i7 laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and a GeForce video card, which cost less than the pad and case. I get that there's some appeal in entering the Apple ecosystem, but for my needs, I don't think it's a "shot across the bow" of very many actual, full-featured laptops that I'm allowed to actually install stuff on.
(edit: Aaaand while I was looking up my laptop's specs, everyone else made the same comment as I. Leaving here in case it helps.)
(Really, you do have sysadmin access, if you care enough. My iPhone has a profile on it put there by my [big, enterprise-y] employer, which gives them the ability to do pretty much whatever they want—including side-loading applications. I'm surprised nobody has used the "corporate-owned device" method to build an App store yet.)
Do you mean this? http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it/management.html
I see no mention of being able to side-load apps.
- Steve Jobs, after the 2010 iPad introduction.
He felt that Modes obscure the immediate discoverability of functions and they keep you from pushing your design to ensure you can use something without left clicking or pulling out a pen. It should just work.
IMHO these non-discoverable items are a barrier to use. Screens are big enough that buttons can be drawn on them, and even with text.
You'll notice that they introduced this stylus for the iPad Pro, and not for the regular iPad. This stylus is for a specific pro user that actually needs a pen input.
> It’s right out of the Steve Jobs handbook: something you don’t offer is a
> terrible idea, until you offer it yourself, at which point you explain why your
> solution is the first to get it right.
There have been 3rd party pens and they were terrible and unnecessary. The multiple inputs, sensors, etc. will probably make this Apple stylus pretty useful. In this case, maybe Apple is the first to get it right.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-...
Surface 3, no.
http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-KP701E2-Intuos4-Art-Stand/dp/B00...
There are all sorts of reasons not to offer a particular feature or product at time X, and then subsequently offer what appears to be that exact thing at time Y.
Not to mention that the feature or product at time Y might be significantly different or better than the compromise you might have cobbled together at time X.
The comment simply refers to the black-and-white way in which Steve used to frame these things. IIRC, he said many of the same things about Intel chips, keyboard shortcuts, expandable RAM, and so forth.
Except the Jobs' quote you replied to succinctly explains why a stylus is a bad idea as the primary input method on a small pocket device.
A 12.9 inch iPad Pro is not a "small pocket device".
This stylus is an optional accessory with a very specific use case. A fundamentally different thing.
Oh, a stylus, right? We're going to use a stylus? No.
Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, put them away, you lose them, yuck. So let's not use a stylus.
We're going to use the best pointing device in the world; a pointing device that we're all born with - we're born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch it with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch..."
The important part of the quote in this context is that Jobs was obviously referring to the stylus being the primary input device for the iPhone being unacceptable.
"It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it." - Steve Jobs
edited to add -
"as soon as you have a stylus, you're dead." - Steve Jobs
It's pretty clear he meant "when you see a device can only operate with a stylus, it's a bad product."
Of course, he would... I bet all iPads in the future will have an optional stylus. Hopefully, the phones too.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-don-t-really-...
This is for a much larger screen, and it is an accessory and not the primary input device.
So it's an extra feature. This differs from earlier touchscreens that required a stylus and the strength of 10 mighty men to get that cheap touchscreen to register.
Although the stylus too seems to be inferior - it has batteries. Both the Surface and Note ones don't - probably because Wacom? If that's the case this is classic NIH case - putting out inferior product just because they couldn't call it Apple Pencil.
Hard to see from the videos, but I don't really expect anything better than 10ms. At least, we can hope to see incremental improvements in the coming years.
I'm sure their localized advertising for other countries lists the dimensions in metric units.
They are sticking to inches deliberately for screen measurement. They even use the German 9,7" instead of the US/UK 9.7" so it's not that they forgot to translate.
Can someone explain this absurd pricing strategy to me?
Simple price gouging, but most customers are happy to pay.
Also known as "economics".
Of course, no brand chargers made in China could reach that price point but one just have to do a Hacker News search to figure out what they are sacrificing.
You may not appreciate the "diminishing returns" of increased quality for increased price, but Apple's bottom line shows a great many do.
You pay for quality. Generally equivalent functionality can be had cheaper, and returns diminish as price rises, but as there are prolific options available "price gouging" hardly applies.
[sigh] This is a friendly chat board. I'm not inclined to provide encyclopedic peer-reviewed proofs to someone taking cheap shots.
(btw, there are a lot of complaints, including from me, about plenty of flaws with Apple chargers - I've had two sheathes come apart so they look like paper lanterns exposing bare wire beneath them)
Edit: I should be more specific - I wasn't referring to the chargers themselves, but rather their cables.
Mourner: "I'm sorry for your loss. He seemed so healthy, with such a bright future ahead of him. How could this have happened?"
Grieving Mother: "It was that damned... third-party stylus! sob I knew I should have bought the Apple one!"
There are thousands of examples of iPhone chargers & cables melting down.
Apple in a nutshell. Are you surprised?
What is going on with Apple's line-up? This is unnecessarily confusing.
So the iPad can run iOS apps while the Surface can run virtually anything except iOS apps.
They're not really comparable platforms.
AFAIK mobile OSes don't have "Pro" apps, just niche apps, and unless those niche apps use ARM assembly or something that an x86 wouldn't run at native speed, you should have no issues.
I was curious about why it's valuable to run Android apps on a Pro tablet, or whether it's just a curiosity for running phone apps. If there was an important pro app that ran on android tablets that was made available to Windows users via emulation, that would seem to be a meaningful advantage.
It seems this is not the case.
The fact that you are using a "pro" device doesn't mean you wouldn't want to use "non-pro" apps, and having a full-featured Android subsystem (which emulates ARM if needed) is a good advantage when you want to use apps that don't exist in the Windows market, or want to use your previous purchases in markets like Amazon or Google Play.
Remember that several companies just focus in releasing iOS and Android apps and fall back to the web version for desptop, which usually is not optimized with a touch-friendly workflow.
The only question is which device is better for running tablet apps aimed at Pros. I think that is currently open to debate, but Android isn't even a player, so running Android apps is no advantage.
What's wrong with using non-microsoft apps on windows?
But, if you are already invested in the Apple ecosystem and are interested in the form factor, the iPad Pro probably makes a lot of sense.
With Apple Fabric! And an Apple Dome Switch!
For most of you, I would suggest that the innovation in the web and mobile spaces were the development of the platforms, and your web/mobile app does not constitute innovation. In other words, you have no idea what innovation looks like.
Your smug is leaking.
Is this new? http://oreilly.com/go/mapbigdata It is the first data driven market report. What have you done first?
What are you building that is new or ambitious?
Odd attitudes I see sometimes.
Having just done something new, I lost my temper. Which is crap behavior, I admit.
Wait... yes, it is a competition. Maybe not in this forum.
Edit: To clarify, seems like they shouldn't (maybe couldn't, but I don't see a TM on the 53 site) call it Pencil since there is already a device made specifically for iPad called Pencil.
I said it then and I will repeat it now, if you want to avoid name collision you shouldn't give your product a simple one word name that relates directly to your product.
Similarly Apple's product is officially named "Apple Pencil".
So Apple is probably in the clear.
But I dont think it was meant as a joke at all. If he didnt want to praise Microsoft, he could have left out the line; there was no reason to resort to mockery disguised as praise. Microsoft could not have said, "we wont demo our products unless you say we are best at productivity". Apple holds all the cards.
I thought it was quite a complimentary thing to say.
Official support for an external keyboard for iPad is interesting - among the 'professional' kinds of applications that might now become possible to use on a device like this are development tools: code editors, command line interfaces... any chance that as they open up the scope of what's possible on the device, they'll liberalize the app store policies that currently prevent those kinds of things being created?
Of course it would be really interesting to see a "stripe" cover, which has a stripe reader rather than a keyboard in it :-).
No, a 13" Cintiq is perfect for artists, & photographers who need a 13" Cintiq.
This is perfect for anyone who has no idea what they're doing.
The Surface Pro 3, for example, clocks in at about 256 levels. Good enough for note taking, not good enough for any serious graphics workflow.
Even Wacom's $99.00 "Inkling" clocks in at 1,248 levels.
The only serious competitor against Wacom that I have seen is "Huion" out of Shenzhen.
Yeah, actually
A 12" class tablet with a keyboard case is, I find (I use a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2), a very good reading platform (better than a laptop, since you can use it like a tablet without the keyboard getting in the way) as well as a decent laptop substitute for lots of uses.
Its not as good as a laptop for all uses -- and I still do use a laptop -- but its pretty much the sweet spot for me for tablets.
Also, I think apple has a problem in that they've essentially exhausted mass market products, ie products everyone wants. Does this ipad fill a hole in their lineup? I think so. But people get disappointed if apple doesn't sell a million of each widget a quarter. Even look at the ipad business as a whole; I think most companies not apple would be very happy to have such a lucrative product. It's just when you compare it to iphones, the most successful consumer product of the last 20 years, that it is lacking.
1. Really, he said that for a phone. But considering the argument valid even on a tablet, well, to put it in scale, the iPad Pro is barely a tablet. It's nearly the average laptop screen(not considering those shitty huge ones that don't fit in bags).
2. Have you even looked at that thing. It's pretty slick. Imagine the utility to artists(the pencil from FiftyThree is an example of its utility).
3. They don't put a ass-like slot to shove it up. Period. That is, I suspect the biggest problem I've had with a stylus. They just do NOT make it compulsory for you to buy one, contrary to what Microsoft or Samsung would have(and are still) done.
Looking for the ad that says: "I'm an enterprise business drone, I go to meetings, I need to take notes. I use my iPad Pro and my iPencil and by the time I walk out of the room the meeting notes are to my team."
Otherwise it's not something I can use. While my doodles make my co-workers laugh, not sure that my PHB wants to buy me one of these....
(Leaving aside all the differences in software)
It used to be that after an Apple keynote you'd be talking about the products with friends, family and coworkers the following afternoon/day and waiting eagerly for them to hit the stores. No longer. The "I need to have this!" feeling has evolved into a "maybe one day I will consider that".
I see people's critiques of the iPad Pro being countered with, "But it's not for you!" ... Then who is it for, exactly? Apple didn't seem to imply or treat it like a niche product in their keynote. Tim Cook said something about it being the centrepiece of the iPad lineup.
I'm an avid Apple TV user but they aren't doing anything groundbreaking with it. Enough with the charade and actually give me something I can replace my cable package with. Despite the nightmare that is cable TV, Apple TV's available content doesn't compete, especially for new content. Fix that and charge me for it. People have been yearning for Apple to modernize TV like they've modernized music and aside from what appear to be basic agreements with distributors for pay-per-episode next-day TV shows and some movies that they've had in place for a while, they haven't brought much to the table.
This said there are plenty of use cases for a larger ipad with a stylus, I am sure it will be a very successful product.
It's networked. iCloud, Dropbox, email, etc.
> as well as no way to connect an external display for presentations.
All current iPads have a dongle for HDMI out. And they can output to Apple TV. Do you think they removed that for this one?
Despite the cute size and gorgeous screen I still haven't found a great use for the iPad.
edit:
Just looked at the dongles available. There's both USB and SD card input and VGA output as well the HDMI I mentioned.
Over time, though, the "inferior" solution gradually meets more and more of the needs that were previously served by the market leaders... and eventually it wins (if the stars align and all that... but the examples in the book show how companies can be blind to the disruptors).
Starting with the iPhone in 2007, on the surface Apple was disrupting phones/smartphones. But it was also music players. And then cameras. And, with the iPad, computers. When I first saw the iPad, I thought "someday, this will be the perfect computer for my mom". That time came when they added printing.
Really, what they started disrupting in 2007 was computing in general. With iOS, they're trying to make an interaction model that works better for today's use cases than what we had before. The iPad Pro is one more step along the line of replacing our computers.
Clearly, iOS devices are inferior to Macs for our (Hacker News readers) needs. Today.
All of that said, it's an interesting race to see which model "wins" between Microsoft's "blend the old and new worlds" and Apple's "clean break".
I want a jailbreak iOS that is capable of running a desktop Apps on that new desktop-performance iPad.
This should've been the big news about the new big-size iPad.
Yeah, about that... It's actually a [pretty huge piece of software](https://github.com/atom/electron). That's not saying that porting it is impossible, it's that if it was easy, an ARM Android version would already exist.
It's kind of like saying "man, they ought to sharpen these spoons up, I can't cut my food with them at all!" A little bit, anyway.
At any rate they're starting down this road so your use case won't be so rare or unaccommodated soon.
But the whole video about this pro was that it was great as a content creation device. Drawing, image editing, multitasking and document creation etc.
I feel like apple has really been resting on its laurels the last few years. During the Jobsian era they'd come up with a new, category-defining product every few years. Now all we get is yearly updates of existing product lines.
well, here's hoping for a "one more thing" moment.
I think you're projecting, and severely.
(Also, wow. Comex replied to me. Very cool.)
http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asm...
So I think the question of "most advanced" is basically subjective.
Don't get me wrong! I would strongly prefer if iOS allowed any JIT to be used. I just think calling the one that can be used "most advanced" is not wrong per se.
How about my doctor while he visits patients, or my dentist to show me my X-rays easily, or the automative tech that plugs in an OBDII module and instantly sees information on the large screen...
Those people are professionals, and that is what this is geared towards, not just developers.
No, don't ship the SDK by default. Make it so that it only runs locally-compiled binaries. That's okay. But I'd like the ability to use this for real work that I do. Everybody else gets to work on it, after all.
Install Parallels Access on your iPad Pro and your desktop compile engine (iMac? Mac Pro? Mac Mini? MacBook?).
There are plenty of programming apps in the app store too if you just want like a Python, Javascript, etc. shell to mess around in too.
Can it do that? Without jail-breaking it?
- Why do you have multitasking in quotes?
You're going to need to work a bit more on your comments here, you can't just expect a full Anti-Apple thread to do well with zero sources or information.
> Later edit.
You completely re-write your comment and downvote me? Fantastic.
I've found a keyboard really useful with my Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (Android). I don't see why it wouldn't be with iOS.
Heck, I find the keyboard on my Windows (originally 8, then 8.1, now 10), touch-enabled laptop quite useful too. The fact that an OS -- and the screen you use with it -- supports touch interaction doesn't suddenly mean that the device can't be used with a keyboard for the kind of things where keyboard interaction is useful.
The iPad Pro is a beautiful machine but it's hardly going to change the issues that apple generally have with selling the iPad.
One solution could be to give Sandbox control to enterprises instead, so they could keep security high while still being offered some freedom to innovate on the platform. It's really holding a lot of interesting applications back IMO.
Until then I fear that it's not going to do much for the sales at least not quantity wise.
Enterprise customers can already sign their own apps for internal use.
What do you get without the sandbox?
Sandboxing control could come with the enterprise license that way everyone is happy.
The stylus is not just some accessory. Real stylus support is a fundamental advance that revolutionizes the device. This is every bit as significant (for the iPad) as a keyboard-only computer finally supporting mouse input.
(To stretch that analogy a bit, the stylus products available for the iPad so far would be like wiring an Atari 2600 controller to the PC and being able to do rudimentary cursor movements with it.)
The stylus was a fundamental advance for humankind, too. The first stylus was invented about 30 seconds after the first caveperson discovered that flat surfaces are good for drawing on with your fingers. And humans have used them ever since.
Steve Jobs was right that "If you see a stylus [as a requirement for basic input and manipulation of the device], they blew it [if they meant their device to be a mainstream consumer product]."
There's a corollary, though: If a tablet meant to be directly manipulated doesn't support a stylus, it is going to be worse than a simple piece of paper and a pen for a wide variety of everyday tasks. (Meeting notes, class notes, sketches, etc.)
The iPad has sucked at all of those things, forever. (Despite the amazing (truly!) software enhancements that have made fingerpainting pretty expressive.)
I cannot think of a more fundamental advance Apple could have bestowed upon the iPad.
They are indeed playing catchup -- I have all the iPad generations at work and have never used them for much. I do use the Microsoft Surface Pro 3; it has a lot of shortcomings but is hugely, objectively superior to any iPad for taking notes (in just about any setting one would take free-form notes in). But it's heavy, fans, Windows, etc.
I am a refugee from the end of the Newton days. In college, I took all my notes on an MP2000 and it was amazing. It totally worked, for text and diagrams, on balance better than paper. And nothing since then has been both highly portable and as good at note taking. The iPad is better than the Newton at lots of things -- movies and media consumption come to mind (</troll>) -- but even almost two decades later, no iPad has never been even close to as good as the MP2100 is at taking notes.
So, $1050 for the new iPad Pro plus the stylus? Funny coincidence, that's exactly what I paid for my last Newton. Sign me the fuck up; I'll take a couple.
Calling this a stylus seems a bit like calling a paintbrush a chisel, and by that I don't mean that it's better than a chisel I mean that it's a completely different tool.
Then you'd have a Surface Pro hardware running iOS and OSX in a VM to access mobile and Mac Apps, and Windows 10 to run anything else.
I'm sure someone will buy it, but I don't predict it'll be very big.
I would just by a small form factor ultraportable laptop, but yeah -- it's about brand penetration.
I was kind of expecting them to sneakily pull a Microsoft surface out.
Pity there was no "it's road trip" fudged demo. Watching that makes me laugh every time.
Which for people already invested in the Apple ecosystem is probably a big deal, even though Android and Windows each already had something in this class (Windows option being a bit more expensive normal price, but with a full desktop OS.)
Samsung Note Pro : 12.2" , 2560 x 1600
Apple iPad Pro : 12.9" , 2732 x 2048
I have a Sammy Note Pro 12.2 - purchased with the vague intent of not needing to take a laptop with me on some work outings. Consequently I picked up an integrated keyboard / cover (the custom Logitech model). Combined they bring me very close to the weight of a laptop, but (just like the iPad will) it wins out on battery life and needing a USB charger rather than a power brick. And carrying a mouse is optional, though once you use a keyboard, a mouse also becomes a convenience.
Curiously enough I'd originally expected to not get much use from the stylus / digitiser, but it's become one of the more compelling features of the thing.
Nonetheless it's a heavy beast, and I usually end up carrying a laptop too. The Samsung (just like the innovation <sic> that Apple has only just announced) has been doing side-by-side and floating application windows for a while now - but even so, painful to do anything productive on it compared to working on a proper operating system.
But my guess is that as long as computers dont have proper touch interfaces tablets will be considered to have a different use senario.
It is hard to lift up my computer on the buss and look at a video or browse the web in a somewhat comfortable way.
Kind of disappointing.
The New Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro The only thing we didn't reinvent was the alphabet.
A little shot across Google's bow?
Edit: 99 dollars !!
In any case what Jobs meant was that the companies that were putting out devices that required a stylus to operate correctly were doing it wrong, and that's been proven pretty extensively by the kind of touch interaction that the iPhone popularized.
Specifically: the new iPad Pro works just fine with touch, but you also have an option of an Apple-sourced stylus for more intricate work.
Perhaps in the original iPhone announcement, but Jobs kept repeating anti-stylus lines long after that, when the only current major products with stylus that they could have been referencing were multitouch devices with styluses included but not required.
Just like anything other than the original iPhone (or iPad!) size, everyone in the market doing it was wrong -- until Apple decided they needed to do it, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surface-Pen-Pro/dp/B00KHQWAI...
>In multitasking, if you see a task manager... they blew it.
>Users shouldn't ever have to think about it.
Steve Jobs, 2010[0]
[0] http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-...
So why not allow Apple to eat their own words and create a well-designed easy to use, functional stylus? The only downside here is it's $50 too expensive.
On your second point, where do you see a task manager? You can only see apps when bringing up multitasking in iOS 9. There is no "task manager" where you have a list of running processes with CPU percentages and everything.
And since iOS 9 handles running apps by itself, users don't have to close out any apps so they really don't "ever have to think about it".
* Like Windows and Linux.
These Apple keynotes can be pretty funny.
That said, it'd be fun to hear from a Apple employee...do they frequently use iWork for intraoffice documents?
At least in my department, there was one piece of software you could never use: Powerpoint. You MUST use Keynote for any internal presentation. If you even say the word "Powerpoint" around the wrong person, you'll get some nasty looks.
Many software platforms still aren't as good as Hypercard or even a damn Amiga from the 80s, but we pretend to have continual "advancements" anyway.
I never use fullscreen mode - why would I with two screens or if I am writing code with documentation next to it? Videos perhaps.
Why is this so difficult.
In fact there are Android apps that do this. It's harder on iOS because you don't get fork(), but if someone wanted to try super hard, you could make all the apps run as threads within the same process.
If you want a root shell without jailbreaking, that's almost contradictory.
Hell, in Android you can even run Debian without rooting: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cuntubuntu...
I was disappointed that my MacBook didn't have a coffee machine built into it. In reality, it would have been a silly thing to ask for, or assert "I don't want a MacBook unless it has a coffee machine in it" as if they would bend their entire product range to suit me.
Also the press is absolutely going to hammer Apple for copying the Surface Pro (even down to the name.)
EDIT:
Ended up a bit high for the base price, $800. But add on any additional storage/LTE capability and you're at $1k. So I was damn close.
Microsoft wasn't even making computers when Apple started using the name.
The press only give the writers' equivalent of blowjobs to apple. It has been that way for a decade.