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.
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.
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.
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. :)