The Apple iPad Pro Review | Hacker News Reader

The Apple iPad Pro Review

anandtech.com

95 pointsdavidiach141 comments

The 6s and iPad Pro are a good demonstration of the importance of designing systems tastefully. In the rest of ARM-land, manufacturers are enthralled by octa-core designs that take up lots of die space but sit idle in most consumer workloads. Apple, in comparison, has stuck to two relatively low-clocked cores to deliver balanced performance.

When my iPhone got stolen, I briefly had a Droid Maxx 2 (Verizon's version of the Moto X Play), which was the laggiest phone I've ever owned (and that includes a $130 Lumia 620). Its Snapdragon 615 has a GPU so anemic it can't handle even basic Google Play Store animations without stuttering. But it's got eight cores, which apparently checks the boxes of Android ODMs because the 615 is used in nearly every upper mid-range Android phone. That's what happens when spec-heavy marketing drives your system architecture.

And the focus on specs (cores, clockspeed), ironically results in worse performance. Under sustained load, the Nexus 6p spends most of its time under a gigahertz because of thermal throttling: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9820/the-google-nexus-6p-revie.... The 6s and 6s plus, in comparison, can run a graphics-intensive benchmark until the battery dies while maintaining a consistent framerate: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-i....

As a rough rule of thumb a core's performance tends to up as the square root of the silicon it has once you start going superscaler. The four little cores on a typical octocore Android device are about as bit as one of the big cores. And the A57 you'd find a new octocore phone using are about half the size of one of the Twisters in an A9. Apple and an octocore Android phones are spending more or less the same amount of silicon on application cores.

On a 20 nm process, the A8 CPU block (2x Twister cores) measures 12.2 mm^2.[1] The Exynos 5433 big block (4x A57) measures 15.1 mm^2, while the little block (4x A53) measures 4.6 mm^2.[2]

The A8's quad-core PowerVR GPU measures 19.1 mm^2. So the extra space used in the Exynos configuration is almost enough to upgrade from a 4-core to a 6-core GPU.

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/8562/chipworks-a8 [2] http://techreport.com/review/27539/samsung-galaxy-note-4-wit...

That's a bit misleading since the A8 CPU block doesn't include the 3MB L3 cache which is counted as it's own module. On the Exynos the 2MB cache in the A57 module and the 256KB cache in the A53 module are counted as part of their blocks.

Fair point. But the A8 CPU block does include the 1MB of L2 shared between the two cores.

I don't know if Android ODMs would've selected the Snapdragon 615/815 given good alternatives in the open market - there just aren't any this year.

>That's what happens when spec-heavy marketing drives your system architecture..

But that's not an interesting comparison. My one year old SD615 phone (Yureka) cost the equivalent of $150 without contract, and was fantastic for that price. Is it comparable to a phone 4 times more expensive? Probably not, and that's not anyone's fault. My girlfriend's iPhone BTW has worse battery life than my cheapo phone with modded CM13 OS.

So IMO, in terms of value for money, the 615 beats the iPhone handily.

I was on the fence about buying one of the new Macbooks (retina/2015.) Everything I read online said it was underpowered and to wait. Usually I avoid first gen devices. At the time there were no videos showing it using apps I used heavily. The light weight and excellent screen really pushed me toward buying it, so I took a bet.

Everything I use runs well. While 3D games could certainly be a problem, Photoshop, Illustrator, Tableau, browsers with tons of tabs open, across multiple virtual desktops runs flawlessly. The low profile keyboard has some issues, but it has surpassed the expectations I had even from testing it out in an Apple Store a few times.

I did end up getting an iPad Pro as well. If 1-2 people are watching it makes a good television replacement with the larger screen & great speakers. For the artists, the Apple Pencil is wonderful. The big thing negative is the free-to-play now just suck so bad compared to what we would get on PC (Anyone complaining about the last version of SimCity should try the latest iOS SimCity, about as enjoyable as choking on rocks.)

I sound like I turned in to an Apple fanboy, but being able to stick these two devices in a light backpack, and have a fully functional office has been a game changer.

I see what you're saying and I agree with it to some extent. But I do want to say that being a 6s owner, it was extremely disappointing that Apple's newest phone is absolute shit when it comes to VR (using Zeiss vr one) compared to even older Samsung phones. So there's one argument for non-Apple spec-heavy phones being nice.

> has stuck to two relatively low-clocked cores to deliver balanced performance.

In the article it mentions how the clock speed in the ipad pro has increased substantially.

> The 6s and iPad Pro are a good demonstration of the importance of designing systems tastefully. In the rest of ARM-land, manufacturers are enthralled by octa-core designs that take up lots of die space but sit idle in most consumer workloads.

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking has created a real chicken-and-egg problem. I want phones to have more cores. I know how to use them. It's not just "design by specs"; I have actual numbers I've been spending years gathering that show that multicore results in real measurable user experience wins on apps, if those apps are engineered properly.

You're right that, by and large, apps of today do not benefit from multicore. But the ideal solution to that is not going to be to just stop adding cores to phones. It's to fix our apps.

Another way to look at it is: What else are you going to spend the die space on, after all? More space for the GPU? GPU compute is even harder to use than multicore! As a result, consumer apps have even lower GPU utilization than CPU utilization (my last benchmarks in this area pulling up numbers as low as 8%).

Multi-threading is hard, let's go shopping![1] It'd be great if Google Play Store wasn't janky on a modest 1.5 GHz A53, even with eight cores on tap, but if even Google can't do it with their first party apps, what hope do mere mortal app developers have?

[1] And it'll stay that way so long as mobile platforms are based on JS/Obj-C/Java.

I think it's not much of a problem if app high-level logic stays in a relatively slow, single-threaded language. It's the plumbing that can really benefit from parallelism. This is true no matter whether you take the approach of giving your die space to the CPU or the GPU (and if I read your argument right, it's that you prefer Apple's approach of giving the die space to the GPU).

My point is that it's not necessarily the case that you're giving the most benefit to applications by doing that. GPU compute is hard to use—so hard that, to a first approximation, no consumer app anywhere uses it—and there are lots of computationally-intensive tasks that apps want to do that aren't just displaying graphics. Take image decoding, for instance (very important on mobile for obvious reasons). You can run some parts of it on the GPU, but the gains, if any, are modest—and you can't run the entropy decoder on the GPU no matter what. Yet image decoding parallelizes on multicore CPUs very well.

In fact, giving the die space to the GPU hits walls of its own. Most consumer apps have a hard time maxing out the GPU. Mobile GPUs have gotten so powerful that pushing textures around with trivial shaders, which is what typical "flat design" apps do, is utterly trivial and comes nowhere near to full GPU utilization. So the GPU sits there idle most of the time.

The bottom line, to me, is that parallelism's just hard. It's not clear that the recent trend of giving all die space to the GPU instead of using it for CPU cores is actually going to do anything to increase our apps' parallelism, except maybe for games. In fact, I worry it actually may end up having the reverse effect.

For all the hate this device gets, it has its fans. Particularly (in my experience) middle-age "tech enthusiasts" (commonly, folks who don't work in the industry but consider themselves trendy because they know about the newest devices) who already have work devices and use laptops and tablets a lot already for mostly mundane personal tasks.

For them, a larger iPad with a keyboard is all they need for their personal work (email, Googling, etc), and the huge screen & 4 speakers are icing on the cake for watching Netflix or HBO Go with their spouse in bed.

It was hard for me to understand this appeal because it's often made out to be an office productivity device a la Surface Pro. I doubt it'll succeed that way. From what I've seen, people seem to see it as a quick, slick, light, no-frills laptop replacement for personal work & play for people in an older, more affluent demographic...and it fulfills that use case very well.

The first thing I thought when I saw this was that it'd be an excellent gift for my wife, who constantly has Netflix or Hulu on in the background on our ancient iPad (a 2 I think).

Streaming HD video in the background? ...not watching it? Oy vey. These kids today.

Anecdote: My parents use their iPads as you mention. The thing is, they have iPad 2's and are very happy. If they ask me about upgrading to a larger screen, I will tell them to buy a refurbished 13.3" Macbook Air for approx $1000 +- $100. That is a "no brainer" recommendation compared to the iPad pro.

Agreed. For a more affluent demographic that can afford it, however, the iPad Pro wins because it's an iPad and "not a laptop."

Same reason people spend more money to buy SUVs and crossovers...it's "not a minivan."

> Same reason people spend more money to buy SUVs and crossovers...it's "not a minivan."

You should say "three row" crossovers and SUVs. In the two row configuration they are cheaper than most Minivans (e.g. $2500+ cheaper in most cases for a similar trim). Plus the fuel savings (Minivans have universally bad MPG, until the hybrids appear, particularly in the sub-$35K price bracket).

I don't really think that's a no brainer. They're completely different products. I'd much rather watch a movie on netflix on an IPad Pro than deal with the very poor resolution of a Mac Book Air. Also an IPad is a touch interface, Mac Book Air is OS X. As the OP said, these can be great devices for people not in tech that just need to type a few notes or emails. There's very little to break in an IPad as everything is pretty much preconfigured.

Much better screen overall.

Another anecdote: Dad (in his 90s) uses an iPad2 every day, having rejected the HP laptop I got them a few years back. He will never switch to a traditional laptop, especially sans touch screen, but a larger iPad would be great for his and Mom's eyesight.

Having learned the iPad paradigm, this demographic is going to be much more open to a size upgrade than to a paradigm shift, in my opinion.

Another anecdote as well: I hate to use the Mom cliché, but after years of trying to get my dear mother to use a desktop-based UI for basic stuff like email, web-browsing, I just got her an iPad. (In this case, an iPad Mini 2). Because there's much less to customize, there's much less to mis-configure, and she's been happily using it for some time. I don't think she'll ever go back to a desktop/laptop. (She actually prefers the smaller mini size, and says it's easier to hold)

The screen is garbage and not retina, nowhere near as good as the iPad pro.

> For them, a larger iPad with a keyboard is all they need for their personal work (email, Googling, etc), and the huge screen & 4 speakers are icing on the cake for watching Netflix or HBO Go with their spouse in bed.

I was wondering what the purpose of a device like this could possibly be, that makes a lot of sense. My dad has one of the free Verizon tablets that they gave out for a promotion a little while back, and uses it for exactly this. I guess it's a generational thing, because it never really made sense to me.

It's not entirely generational though. I use an iPad for a lot of stuff even with a laptop available on my desk. The reason is that I'm a power user, and on my laptop I'm too likely to start fiddling with stuff and get distracted (might be a mild form of ADD).

And just to be clear, I'm a serious power user. I use hammersmith, BetterTouchTool, vim keybindings wherever I can, and Alfred to the extent that almost any key is involved in some kind of shortcuts. I avoid emacs precisely because I'm afraid I'll get even worse.

The fact that on the iPad I have to focus on the article I'm reading, the the email I'm writing, or in general the app I'm working on, well, all that helps me to stay focused.

I don't get the hate. It's an expansion of the tablet line to fit those whom a tablet would serve well but the Air isn't quite big enough. If a notebook serves you better, get a notebook. If a 13-inch tablet serves you better, get the iPad Pro. If that's too big, get an iPad. If that's still too big, get a Mini or an iPhone 6+ or 6. The Pro is clearly for a limited audience; if it's not for you, it's not for you.

In a vacuum, I'd agree with your thoughts. However, the competition makes similar devices at similar prices that, objectively, do a lot more.

That's where it becomes a debate.

It comes down to what software you want or need. That's probably going to dictate the platform, then it's just a matter of picking the form factor that fits.

I think what often makes the debate frustrating is that for many people, myself included, 'do a lot more at the same prices' is not the most important metric that prompted our choices. It seems to me that many of the debates are unproductive as a result, because there's disagreement on some of the basic assumptions.

> I don't get the hate.

I think price has a lot to do with the hate. $950 for 128GB is pretty step and 32 GB for a "Laptop" replacement is not practical.

I am a Apple hater and one of my biggest Apple Tax problems is the cost for memory. My daughter has a 16 GB iPhone 6 really 16 GB? She just doesn't want to pay for the extra memory.

In the age of Dropbox and Spotify, why would you need more than 16GB? I used a 16GB iPhone 6 for over a year and never went over 11GB.

Well I have 32 GB and I seriously have issues if I want to have a movie or two downloaded on my phone.

I can't even have but a few books installed and MAYBE on audio book with 16.

I get a down vote because you got down voted by someone else? I don't think you get how the system works.

I didn't downvote you, it was the same guy.

Photos and videos taken with the camera, music and audiobooks for offline listening (in the countryside, commuting), sat nav apps, 3D games, a few movies or TV shows to entertain the kids in a tight spot, ... (I am currently at 42GB).

I'm late to the party, but here's why I need (well, want) more than 16GB:

Apps - some are large enough and used frequently enough that I don't want to have to do the download/delete cycle on them.

Photos - I went to Italy a few weeks ago with a group. One of the guys had a 16GB phone. He was emailing the photos to his wife each night and deleting them after because he didn't have enough space. That's annoying, and what do you do when you don't have a data connection and run out of space?

Music - sort of agree, but again, limited data connections do happen. Even when they don't, streaming saps the battery compared to playing already downloaded songs.

Books - I play tabletop RPGs, less now than I used to. But when I played more, being able to pull from my collection of books quickly (some of these are just scans from old books, 100MB for a manual). Having to download them off Dropbox each time, or download/delete cycle through them to make sure I had enough space, would be annoying.

Updates - an ex-girlfriend had the 16GB one when iOS 8 (?) came out. I kept telling her that we could update it on her laptop via iTunes and get around the problem, instead she cleared out a bunch of photos (and later regretted it because she was a dope and didn't back them up first) and apps (fewer regrets, those were just downloaded again) so she could download and install the OS update. AS I recall, that one had an absurdly large free space requirement, but even requiring a more modest 500MB-1GB of free space could be difficult to meet sometimes if you only have 16GB and downloaded music, apps, photos, videos. Which items do you delete to make room?

EDIT: I'll note, this is more of an issue for me on tablets than my phone. I have fewer big apps on the phone that I couldn't delete, and I never watch video other than streaming some youtube content if someone sends me a link. My tablet, on the other hand, is my go to device when traveling and gaming (a fair number of good board games have apps for iOS and the iPad, much easier than carrying around several boxes of boards and pieces and rules to play with friends).

> Photos - I went to Italy a few weeks ago with a group. One of the guys had a 16GB phone. He was emailing the photos to his wife each night and deleting them after because he didn't have enough space. That's annoying, and what do you do when you don't have a data connection and run out of space?

Google Photos!!!! Seriously the greatest photo app in existence!

don't forget musicians, the ipad pro is so much better for things like

- reading scores while you play (bigger) - writing music (with the pencil) - having more controls for your VST instruments (via OSC controllers like lemur)

and the higher processing power might make it more likely that more DAWs will be ported to it for on-the-go idea jotting.

It also has surprisingly good speakers - might be occasionally tolerable to do some of this stuff without headphones.

One-page portrait is still cramped for score reading. It's workable, but it's not comfortable because most players read ahead by a bar or two.

It's great for Lemur though - better than the original Lemur hardware.

I'd guess a natural development a few years from now will be a Courier-style ultrathin two-screen clamshell.

for lead sheets it should be fine, for score reading you can always set things up so you have 2-3 lines of the score only and use a bite switch to flip forward (depending on your instrument you can also manage with a footswitch of course), but yeah, I agree that it looks a little bit cramped.

For larger there is also the samsung galaxy view (18") but it's been panned quite a bit in the reviews for its size so not sure how many other tablets would be available in that format.

An alternative would be getting a 21:9 1440p monitor and putting it on your music stand with attached some sort of mini-pc (intel nuc with displayport, say) but that would not be nearly as portable as an ipad, it would have very few compromises though and paradoxically not cost that much more than a fully loaded ipad pro (although you'd lose the pencil, but if money is no object you can always get a cintiq).

I remember many years ago (in the mid-late 80s maybe?) somebody coming out with an "electronic music stand" (monochromatic TFT LCD screen that was probably maybe 640x400 and 15"?) and it seemed so sci-fi at the time, amazing how many options we have now, will be even more fun once AR becomes good enough and you can have your AR music stand with you anywhere you go at the push of a button...

Another possibility is a multi-device multi-page score reading app. I don't know if that's available now, nor if anyone's working on it, nor how hard it would be.

Ouch! That's me you're talking about. Its replacing pen and paper notebooks for me, lightens my load for short business travel and is easier on my aging eyes as I try to stay current with inexperienced youngsters opining on topics they won't understand for another 30 years or so.

I guess you're paying for a good screen, working stylus, thought out product design, a smart touch UI/OS and being able to continue to use existing Apple purchases (media, Apps). None of these things are easy to "review"/compare and that's probably why it's hard for people to find an "objective" argument for its pros/cons.

I never understood the hype around the original iPad, it always bothered me that the OS was so restricted/black-box-y. Not really in-between a laptop and an iPhone but rather... a bigger iPhone. To understand, I first had to realize that the appeal has nothing to do with being able to install programs freely or have mouse-pointer precision. It's all about carrying a small-notebook sized screen around that's smart enough to surf the web, watch movies and view PDFs. It seems not worth 400€ when you already have a laptop, but from a usability POV, it kinda sorta is. These things aren't really there to replace office computers after all, they rather replace anything else you have lying around.

Counterpoint -- while I am middle-age, I can program a wide variety of languages and can function as CTO and architect in a very technical space. Unless I am coding (and even then 30% of the time), I prefer my ipad Pro to my desktop.

The screen is truly beautiful; you can sync up a real keyboard on bluetooth if you need cherry MX keys to feel productive... The stylus is amazing.

I'm on a trip right now, and I left the macbook air at home, (and also my moleskine and my books).

If i could get a linux VM on this somehow, I would have no hesitations dumping the rest of my computers.

That said, like the review mentioned, the app support is spotty, especially for 5k display support. I am sure that will continue to improve with time. My ipad pro is my favorite computer I've purchased since the original Macbook Air 11.

Of course, I was being stereotypical, but it's interesting to hear your experience!

Have you considered a web IDE? Like Cloud9, Nitrous.io, etc?

I own almost all the ssh clients for iOS, and occasionally use cloud9.

The browser isn't performant enough to really feel good coding in c9, and I prefer vi keybindings, so it's a no go for me.

I'm really pretty happy with ssh and vi, although there is no ssh client with mosh support extant. And getting something like solarized into your ios ssh terminal is pretty painful. I would expect at some point this year, an enterprising ssh on iOS developer will get all that sorted with high res fonts, though. The combo is pretty compelling.

My typical setup is tmux on ssh on the main pane of the ipad and the right hand window has slack or a browser or messaging, depending. It's great, very low distraction, really a nice setup.

I use nitrous.io. The web based IDE works great on a Chromebook but not so great on my iPad Pro. I expect improved support.

One option is to use the web based IDE for editing and have a separate SSH+terminal app open to a nitrous.io account. You can swipe between apps in a second for editing or command line stuff.

That said, it is more convenient working all in emacs with SSH.

It is important to use a SSH app that has a reasonable virtual keyboard.

Why not a Surface instead? It can even run Linux natively.

I thought the same thing! I even spent a good hour with a surface book on launch. I also own a chromebook pixel 2015.

On the surface, the stylus experience and typing experience wasn't there. And the weight / feel wasn't as appealing. Even if equal, it would have been a tough call because I penalize windows heavily for small annoyances, security updates, notifications, difficult-to-understand security hierarchy.

It may seem counterintuitive to prefer either total or nearly zero OS control, but iOS just gets out of my way. When I'm in linux, I can have things precisely how I like, which means much (not all) of the OS question can be reduced to "is there a quality ssh client?"

Finally, I'm typing this over an LTE network, something that the book didn't offer as far as I know.

I see. I was referring to the Surface Pro 4 or the Surface 3, which might be more comparable to the iPad Pro than the Surface Book.

I've tried several, and I think that with a decent Linux setup they can be very enjoyable. I agree Linux can get on your way, but I've found that a very minimal Arch setup, or a declarative Nix/Guix setup can be fantastic. I cannot say the same about heavyweight distros.

Yep, I've had developers who use them as a primary computer and love them. The ipad pro screen beats surface pro screen IMO.

> If i could get a linux VM on this somehow,

Hell, I'd even take sensible keyboard behavior so I could ssh and use emacs.

I don't know why apple has torpedoed the emacs+ipad combination so hard.

I'm a vi user, and the inability to remap something to esc is grindingly frustrating. On the road i use 'jj' and at the office I have a variety of nice keyboards. Seems like there's a niche app for keyboard remapping. I'm not sure if that would be possible unjailbroken or not.

I am also a middle-age who can program a wide variety of languages, and agree with all your points. I think an interesting alternative to running a Linux VM on iOS would be to access one hosted on an affordable cloud (like a Digital Ocean $5/month instance) via some VNC app. I haven't tried it yet, but I think it should work.

I haven't tried VNC, but I use a number of different ssh apps every day, they work well. Mosh support would be great, though.

I started with a free/cheap VNC app, but once I bought Screens I never looked back (and gladly bought the 3.0 update when it came out). My needs are basic, but I've been impressed with their updates and support for iOS features.

I should mention I haven't tried Screens to VNC into Linux, I use it with my Macs.

As someone else also commented, use a remote Linux server for casual development on the iPad Pro. Using Prompt for SSH+terminal, I find it convenient enough to code if I can do everything in emacs (e.g., small Haskell or Ruby projects). Fortunately, I have huge hands (I am 6'4" tall) so using the onscreen virtual keyboard while holding the iPad Pro works well for me.

I find doing development on remote servers to be peaceful in an odd way. For example, if I need to do a fresh Haskell stack build on a large project: if I do this build on my local laptop I get impatient but on a remote server, I fire off a build and swipe to another application on the iPad.

Yep. I think it's the lack of widgets and stuff. I'm partial to cmd-tab on the ipad myself. :)

After trying to make use of my iPad Pro as my daily carry tablet, I've kept finding myself coming back to an Air 2 for most tasks. Save for the pencil, I feel like neither Apple nor 3rd party devs are taking proper advantage of the extra size or power. At least not yet.

Yea, the multi-tasking UI is especially half baked. You should be able to have two instances of the same app side-by-side (at least Safari).

Not that it's a real solution, but you can run Safari and Chrome side by side.

There is an app Split Web Browser that does this. (Maybe others)

I think the real solution is for Safari, and apps like it, to allow side-by-side viewing of tabs on devices that have a "large enough" display.

There's no reason this needs to be an OS feature, and at least one good reason why it shouldn't be: data integrity. Threading is hard enough for most programmers to get right, and now you want to require IPC and/or coordinated access to every apps' data files?

I love that this is already being provided by an enterprising app developer, but I hope they get Sherlocked.

I really like my iPad Pro. If Apple had updated the Air this year I might have gotten a new Air instead because I was worried the Pro would be too large. However, after having used the Pro for a couple of months the iPad Air looks really tiny to me now. I don't think I'll go back to using an Air in the future. The Pro is definitely not being used to it's full capabilities by many apps yet, but I really like the size of the screen. It may be a bit large for some, but it feels right for what I use the device for.

Also, unlike some I didn't get a keyboard case. If I want to type on a real keyboard I'll get my laptop out. Otherwise the on-screen keyboard is perfectly serviceable.

I don't have a problem with its size, but with it weight, for me it is just a tad too heavy. ( Or may be i am too weak )

I wish it could get a 50% weight reduction.

Not that I carry it with me daily, but I find the Pro an excellent content consumption device. It's really great to browse full size web pages, read PDFs and comic books without zooming. I also read all my RSS feeds on it.

It's perfect for watching TV shows on and even movies aren't too bad. The speakers are much better than on previous iPads and unlike previous models it's actually enjoyable to watch without using headphones.

After using the Pro I find the older iPads comically small. I wouldn't switch back even if I was paid to.

It's not all roses and sunshine tho. Editing text sucks donkeykugeln and the Wifi is flaky. Both are iOS 9 issues, I suspect.

I've been thinking about getting one just for PDFs. A few years ago Amazon sold a jumbo Kindle (the DX) that worked ok for that but the Kindle UI is pretty bad compared to an iPad.

As someone who loves Apple products and a happy buyer of an iMac, Macbook Air, iPad mini and iPhone, I don't think the iPad Pro is a winner.

The problem is the OS.

A Surface Pro is not only a great machine for not only web browsing and using mobile apps, but also a usable machine for playing desktop games, programming, design work and more. The iPad Pro just can't do these things because the OS won't let you. If I could run all MacOS on it and use all of my software from my home computer, it would be very compelling. As it is, you don't even get access to the filesystem (and thus files are siloed into app-specific containers).

If I could only keep two devices, they would be the iMac and the iPhone.

If I could only keep one device, it would be my Macbook air. Given the choice, I just might swap it for a surface.

I've had two iPads now, both given to me, and both have mostly sat around collecting dust. Except for a few rare use-cases, I'd rather be on a laptop.

My parents, on the other hand, are the polar opposite. Since getting an iPad, my mom has completely abandoned her laptop and will use their shared iMac on rare occasions.

For me, having a phone + laptop is more than enough. For them, phone + tablet seems to be the right mix. But I don't see the additional features of the Pro shaking up the mix for me at all.

The biggest downside to me is games. I returned an iPad Pro for the 12" MacBook. Just as portable and Civ V and Steam/Xbox streaming is a much better use of my limited gaming time than anything on the app store.

That's the same reason I got a Surface Pro. (Well, one of them.)

I can play almost any modern game on the darn thing, which is quite impressive.

Even The Witcher 3 will run on it, I understand (haven't tried it myself). At low settings and low res, granted.

I could not get around the noise the fan made, though. It's not really a good gaming machine, IMHO. And yes, I know it doesn't intend to be one, it's just that even for casual gaming it becomes a really uncomfortable device. Gets hot, noisy and screen is rather small.

> Gets hot, noisy and screen is rather small.

Definitely true, and burns through battery like crazy.

But it is still impressive something that tiny can run modern games at all. And frankly it does a really good job.

There are better laptops for mobile gaming, but not in that weight and size class or even close.

Have you tried running virtual box on that? I'm looking into something a bit more portable than my Toshiba.

I haven't, I'm afraid.

Virtual Box runs great on the Surface Book (although, that was my justification for the pricey, 16GB RAM option).

Excellent. Thank you.

I use my Ipad Pro mostly at home as the "computer away from my computer". Article summed it up perfectly. I understand though that this is not for everyone, but for my uses, I love my Pro.

Also, the pencil is freaking awesome! I'm not an 'artist' per say, but I love just messing around with it and doodling. Even just sketching out some business ideas as a rough mind map or some ui designs, it basically replaced pen and paper for me. Only now, I can have all my 'papers' organized and in one place.

They should sell it as some kind of portable bathroom mirror with apps. Or bundle the thing with some Gillette razors or something.

When in front of a mate and a glare screen I know of no one that prefers the glare one.

Try spending 2.5k on two of their not-even-4k thunderbolt mirrors, suddenly you really start to admire those sunlight blocking ikea curtains in your office...

I'm not trying to start a flame way, but can anyone give me a good reason why you'd buy one of their cinema displays? They seem like they're too expensive at even half the price compared to what else is available.

They were a far better value proposition 4-5 years ago than they are today; back then, they were only marginally more expensive than e.g. a comparable Dell IPS display. The build quality, docking functionality, and built-in charging facilities -- no more lugging your power adapter to the office! -- more than made up for the price difference.

The only legitimate reason to buy one today is aesthetics: they're still far and away the best looking desktop monitor on the market, but that's not enough to warrant the price tag.

Glossy screens aren't really limited to Apple. They're sort of a thing these days and I do have mixed feelings about them--although I'm also sort of resigned to them at this point. They can be really crisp and bright under the right lighting conditions but, at the moment, I'm sitting in a room with a lot of windows on a bright day admiring every fingerprint and smudge on my screen.

matte screens are harder to clean, which is a big deal on a touchscreen.

Also, you cannot have a matte glass screen, so you'd have to use plastic which is nigh unusable as a touchscreen.

iPad Pro + Logitech Create Pro keyboard + iOS 9.1 was a dream convergence device and portable terminal (ssh, vnc, rdp) with 2732x2048 (274 dpi) resolution in 3:2 format. The vertical space was amazing for text editing, after years of 16:9 height-challenged laptop screens. It can also be an external monitor for Windows/Mac via http://www.duetdisplay.com.

Until Lenovo Retro or another vendor offers a 4:3 screen, the iPad Pro was a rare and positive outlier with portable editing and long battery life. Then Apple iOS 9.2 arrived, which dropped and delayed keystrokes from the Logitech keyboard, https://discussions.apple.com/message/29656057. The amazing, out-of-box experience lasted about 2 weeks, a new record for technology obsolescence. It has not been addressed in iOS 9.2.1 or iOS 9.3 public beta 1.

Text book example why regular people have learnt not to update software.

Apart from dropped keys, the other problems with iPad Pro as an SSH terminal are:

* iOS doesn't let SSH apps to keep the connection open if not on foreground, and there are no mosh apps

* None of the SSH apps are yet built to support the iPad Pro resolution, so you get a scaled-up "normal iPad" screen

Shame, I can't install one-quarter of the software I use on a daily basis on a "pro" ipad. I will stick with the $100 dollar Android tablet that allows me to read books and look at websites... When it kicks the bucket, I am sure I can find one even cheaper.

What's the software you're referring to, Android fanboy?

Homebrew, Spacemacs, Pycharm, Anaconda Python distribution, Java, MS Office, Adobe stuff... and more.

Edit: Not a Android fanboy... I like to think of myself as practical, maybe I'm not. However, tablets are great for consumption. Consuming websites, epub's and pdf's works well on everything from the Kindle to the iPad pro. The main difference is the price. I would rather keep the difference in my bank account.

Homebrew... The only Homebrew I know about is http://brew.sh/

1) There is almost definitely an emacs equivalent for iOS

2) Pycharm- Maybe Textastic (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textastic-code-editor-for/id...) or Codemate (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codemate-syntax-highlighter/...). I'm not an IDE guy (I use Sublime Text), so YMMV.

3) OK so I get it, you're a Python dev. Admittedly, iOS is lacking in doing native app dev (in fact, I just posted something of that nature to this very thread).

4) Java, etc... I wonder if https://c9.io/ would work...

5) MS Office- Haven't used in years, anyway. I use Google Docs for all that.

6) Adobe stuff- Well, iPad Pro has some version of photoshop, I believe... PDF's are rendered natively in iOS (and quite nicely, actually... just like on OS X)... Illustrator?

Fanboys are exclusive to Apple.

/sarcasm

difficult to detect on the internets

I have seen some really cool applications of iPads in businesses and other public places, such as fast and intuitive payment systems at walk-up lunch counters. These will always be better than laptops or phones for the task. (Even Apple Pay seems oddly clumsy to me; after taking out my phone and trying to interface with a device properly, it just seems less straightforward than tapping some buttons and scribbling my signature with my finger like I can on the iPad interfaces.)

I wish that web browsing were better on the iPad; that should have been the killer feature. On day one, before web sites knew about the iPad, it was incredible. Sadly (and ironically, for a "walled garden" device that is supposed to be so restrictive itself), the most out-of-control feature of an iPad seems to be the web sites you visit. They have way too much damned control over the browser, and they keep trying to deliver a special iPad experience when all I want is a web site. If Apple really wants a good feature in iOS 10, they should make Safari stubbornly refuse to do 90% of what web sites "request".

Chrome has a feature to request the desktop version of the web site and lots of other browsers will let you spoof the user agent to avoid being served "mobile" versions of the web sites.

It doesn't really address the whole problem, as sites try to be too "smart" (e.g. examining the apparent size of the screen, possibly because there are so many possible devices/browsers out there). My hope is that web sites simply stop trying to be special and just admit that maybe large mobile screens are quite good at handling normal web sites.

Press and hold the refresh button in Safari to get a popover with "Request Desktop Site" as an option. It's also in the action menu

My father-in-law is thrilled with the iPad Pro I got him over Christmas. He uses the Logitech keyboard when sitting at the kitchen table and then folds it over behind when reading the newspaper on the couch.

The keyboard case is a little clunkier than it should be, but the whole package is fantastic. Plus, the simpler iOS UI is perfect for him, plus no malware, iCloud backups, iCloud Photo sync from his iPhone, etc.

What I really dislike in Ipad Pro is that IOS doesn't adapt to it as e.g. showing more icons [1]. Then I could see it as being professional oriented. Right now is just an Ipad Large.

[1] http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9766/DSC_4098b_678x452.jpg

Is that really true? That seems like such an oversight.

Honestly this is an issue for other tablets and larger-display devices as well. I've used both Android and iOS on tablets and 5-6" phones and both default launchers make poor use of the display size and pixel density. The main difference is that I got tired of having to jailbreak my iPad to fix these simple issues while I can just run a different launcher on Android which behaves normally but lets me choose how many rows/columns of icons are shown.

It's doubly annoying on iOS (to me at least) since the launcher is also the "app drawer". You've got no choice but to have rows/columns of icons across the home screen so poor use of space is extra puzzling.

I have been considering the iPad Pro for reading journal articles and math/computer science textbooks.

I've owned the original iPad and now own an iPad Mini, but for the 2 above tasks I find it annoying to have to constantly pan/zoom on fixed size content.

Has anyone used the iPad Pro for these tasks? How did it work for you?

I tried it in the store for exactly this purpose, using a computer science paper in PDF form. It's just as great as you'd imagine.

This is exactly what I use my Pro for. It's perfect for reading full size articles without zooming.

I think the one concern might be weight/size. I barely used my older-model, larger iPad, and once I got the iPad mini I used it all the time, just because it was comfortable enough for me to use.

It's probably a good idea to go to an Apple Store and try out how it feels, or perhaps even buy one and return it if it's not working out (the return policy depends on your country, I guess).

People are very different in what they find comfortable, so anecdotal evidence on this issue probably doesn't cut it.

A few thing on the Intel x86 Vs Apple ARM.

1.Intel is on their 2nd generation FinFET, while TSMC is still on 1st Gen. Intel also provides higher node density and slightly lower power consumption.

2.LLVM is good, but not anywhere as good at optimising as Intel Compiler.

3.A9X is without L3 Cache which has always shown to add quite a bit of performance for CPU task.

Even if Apple somehow don't have the above three disadvantage, my guess is that Intel Core M will still wins. But it just show how close Apple is getting into Intel performance territory. Considering We don't get any update from Intel, ( Unless Intel surprise us with Kaby Bridge performance improvement ) This year Apple A10 will be interesting compared to Intel and see how close the gap is.

Is Intel really ahead in power consumption? I haven't been keeping up but when I was, it wasn't really close unless you ignored all the pieces you need to make a system with x86.

I've been holding off on buying an iPad Pro until I can walk into an Apple Store and buy one _with a stylus_ (last I checked the wait on the stylus was down to 2 weeks).

It seems to me that if you want the stylus, you're in the core market for this device. If you do not care about the stylus, you probably aren't. The iPad Pro with a stylus replaces a similarly expensive Wacom Cintiq, while also being usable on its own. Everything beyond that is pure gravy.

The keyboard seems like a miss (frankly, I prefer the Surface Book's design, and I want a freaking trackpad — note that the glass keyboard acts like a trackpad for text selection on the latest iPhones, so it's hardly unreasonable).

Anyone who would seriously consider a Wacom Cintiq isn't in the same market as the iPad Pro. The Pro's lack of software and features within the software it does have makes it a children's toy by comparison.

I see people often bringing up the Wacom Cintiq in comparison to the Pro to point out how good of a value a Pro is by comparison... The truth is that a Wacom Cintiq is a professional tool to be used with other professional tools (software); the iPad Pro can be compared to the Cintiq but then what? What are you going to do with it? Draw a pretty picture?

Interesting review even if it is not very relevant to me. I bought an iPad Pro a few weeks ago and my workload is: I write a lot (I publish a new book every 8 or 9 months), I program a lot (mostly Haskell, Ruby, and Java), I read a lot, I listen to audio books and watch video on demand.

All of this work flow (and fun flow :-) is better done on my iPad Pro rather than one of my laptops (Macbook Air, Linux, Windows), EXCEPT:

Programming on the iPad Pro is not good. I use the Prompt SSH/terminal application to SSH to one of my servers that I have set up for remote development.

Anyway, I now spend abut 1/2 of my time on the iPad Pro and the other 1/2 of my time on one of my laptops.

as much as it seemed the review was positive it was a bit depressing to read how hard it was for the reviewer to get the notes they worked on off the tablet (having to save each individual page separately to the gallery, upload to dropbox and then use an actual laptop to generate a pdf)

I can see how the ethos of Apple is to keep you in their ecosystem, but for things like notes and so on they really should focus more on easy export to standard formats.

(unless of course the reviewer missed how to do that more directly)

I edit notes on my iPad with a $2 third-party app (PlainText) and the edits sync with Dropbox automatically (and reliably).

What's most interesting to me about the iPad Pro is that it (likely) will be the most popular consumer device pushing beyond 1440p (2048p = ~5.6 megapixels vs ~3.7 megapixels). Considering the dearth of 4K content out there, I wonder if this will start to push devs into making considerations for 4K, considering that this is over halfway to that resolution.

It's the pencil .. stupid.

The iPad Pro with Apple Pencil is almost $1000 LESS than a comparable Wacom Cintiq 2. And the Apple Pencil is a game changer compared to the older Wacom tech.

It's the most natural "feeling" stylus out there. Apps that support the tilt feature of the pencil make drawing and painting incredibly fun. And the increased scan rate of the iPad Pro screen (240 times per second) make the pencil super accurate (compared to using third-party pencils on older iPads).

And while the iPad Pro doesn't run full OSX, the Adobe Apps designed for iOS and Apple Pencil feel refreshing, like new again. They're simplistic by design, and hopefully Adobe will keep improving them (Creative Suite on the desktop has stagnated for 10 years).

Microsoft OneNote is free as well. I'm getting the full Surface Pro experience as well, and feel kind of guilty for doing it for some reason :-)

Point being, there's no shortage of apps these days.

Finally, AstroPad (another third-party app) lets you use the "full versions" of any app you've got on your OS X desktop, on the iPad. You can screen share and control OS X with touchscreen and Apple Pencil support. So painting in Photoshop on the iPad Pro is possible too.

I purchased the iPad Air a couple years ago and promptly returned it. Maybe the app support wasn't there, or the cheap feeling third-party keyboard case turned me off.

The iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil is a keeper.

There's a shortage of all kinds of apps. You can't even get Chrome with actual extensions on iOS.

That's why I like my Windows tablets...I get to decide what runs on my device, not Apple.

The iPad Pro is in no way comparable to a Wacom Cintiq 2. That would be like comparing a butter knife to a laser scalpel.

It's more comparable to a Surface.

I am ONLY interested in this if it will be possible to code on it. I am fairly certain most of the HN community would agree that a device that "completes the circle" (allows you to create native apps on the device, for the device) is better than a device (almost) purely designed for consumption and communication over creation.

The best device is one that works for you. For most people, that just means it runs the software that they want. It's silly to say that a device that completes the circle is objectively better than one that doesn't.

Conflating "create native apps" with "creation" is a bit daft - I have an Air 2 which is used for creation (graphics, audio) and very little consumption or communication.

Check out: Dringend - The development environment for your iPhone & iPad by SquaredTiki https://appsto.re/us/E77aX.i

I haven't bought it (yet?) because this isn't something I need. But I've had my eye on it ever since it seeing it on HN a couple years ago. I think it's an awesome idea, and I've come close to buying it several times simply to support the creator.

This will be an awesome tablet for artists, designers and sales/marketing presenters. I'm not sure how well it will do in the home market -- there might be a ceiling to how much tablet someone can fit in their lap or on the tray table in coach class. It's bigger than the average purse, too.

My 2012 iPad still works pretty well. You really dont need to upgrade every two years like with a smartphone. I am thinking a new model finally becasue they are about 20 times faster, sharper, and lighter.

Do you see apple merging iPad Pro and macbook pro into one device like Surface book?

They have got large screen iPhone 6 after getting stiff competition from Samsung.

Apple continues to insist, and most long-time observers agree, that a merge is not forthcoming.

The future is always in flux, so never say never, but it's not going to happen soon. Apple prefers to make devices with more focus, more hard decisions about what to support and what not to support.

I think Apple will do what they usually do: wait until they come up with a solution, or until the industry proves that a particular solution works. Microsoft is making interesting progress, but 'unified' devices that are good enough still seem to be far enough in the future that Apple won't bother.

The third time the reviewer mentioned Apple's method for reducing the torque needed for a user to manipulate such a large device I started to question what I was doing with my life.

That's interesting, endless waffle about CPU engineering changes here and there, then they basically gloss over the fact that this Pro is forever limited to running a neutered iOS system (but you know, 2 apps simultaneously now!).

I think the Pro in particular is interesting if you stop trying to see it as a complete replacement for a desktop PC (which it never ever will be), and instead look at it as a specialized tool that's better than a laptop at certain things.

Personally, I'm probably going to buy a second gen iPad Pro just for reading textbook-sized books. But there are many other potential uses.

What am I missing? The review explicitly mentions that they think this is a contender to the Surface Pro.

And frankly, that's a joke.

Surface Pro is a joke. It's just plain unstable, and high maintenance. iPad is zero maintenance, which is about the right amount a regular user should be required to do in year 2016.

"I think the Pro in particular is interesting if you stop trying to see it as a complete replacement for a desktop PC (which it never ever will be)" But isn't that what every pundit, tech writer and commenter has said over the past several years? That for non power users, locked down ARM tablets will easily suffice instead of a bulky, shitty Windows machine?

I bought an iPad about two years ago, after hearing years of hype about the quality of Apple products. I use it mostly for web browsing, and the thing that shocks me the most about it is how many mainstream sites simply don't work right in the browser. (By "browser" I mean Safari or Chrome - they seem to have the same issues.) Sites like EBay, Google News, Google Books, and SlashDot all have glitches that either make them unusable or seriously frustrating to use. News sites take forever to load and tend to crash the browser after a few minutes of use. If you're a first-time buyer and you're considering getting an iPad, slap yourself, take a minute to breathe, and go look at some Android tablets instead.

EDIT: I was wrong. I assumed Chrome iOS and Chrome Android used the same rendering engine. I'm rather shocked that they don't, actually.

Are you grepping for Android and casting "fanboy"?

He said the same thing you're saying.

>>(By "browser" I mean Safari or Chrome - they seem to have the same issues.)

Calm down

Unless Apple has backtracked recently, it's not "the same damn rendering engine" in iOS. Apple requires all browsers to use their version of WebKit. Chrome moved to Blink years ago.

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