ASK HN: How do you justify an iPad Pro? | Hacker News Reader

ASK HN: How do you justify an iPad Pro?

6 pointsbrailsafe23 comments

I'm curious how people who don't fall into the obvious categories of visual artists, developers for iOS, and people who have extreme excesses of cash, effectively make use of it, such that it actually makes up for the price.

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The primary reason I bought my iPad Pro was the pencil and to take mathematics notes. One of my last professors at University had the iPad Pro and he would display it on the projector and write in the default notes app. It was for computational geometry and the teacher was more pseudocode focused, so he did lots of written algorithms and didn’t type or write code. I was very impressed by the functionality and he was able to share the notes with us which was nice. He would have used the whiteboard but it was a distance education class so some of the students who were at different campus locations couldn’t see very well when he wrote on the white board.

The 12.9 inch display allows me to easily splitscreen a pdf and the built in notes app. I’ll also sometimes split my notes with brilliant.org’s app. I use it quite a bit to read PDFs by themselves as well. I finally found a good markdown notes app that lets me add katex into it too. So, I can type my notes if I want them to be formatted well. I use iCloud a lot and pay $0.99 per month for 50GB storage. iCloud is where I store all my notes and PDFs, because I’ll buy pdfs in bulk from Humble Bundle so they are easier to sync across devices with iCloud.

Since I’ve purchased the new iPad Pro I’ve really appreciated their upgrade to the usb-c port. I have a MacBook Pro as well so I had already invested in a usb-c dongle which works for my iPad Pro too. I hear you can use storage devices now too from the usb-c port.

I've had one for almost three years and it's been a life saver many times over. The integration of email and pdf editor alone justifies the thing. The ability to edit and sign PDFs on the go is something that I have not seen in any other mobile device (and I have owned several $1k smart phones). With the "smart keyboard" and sftp/shell/X11 apps, I don't need to bring a laptop on the road anymore.

Coincidentally, the inspiration for the question was my having spent all day testing a new build of the PDF editor product I work on at my day job. Is this something that regular iPads don't have?

I love my iPad Pro. Here's why: I want to write more, as in be a writer, but seriously lack the discipline on a normal laptop because the internet is too appealing a playground not to spend hours in (and yes I've tried the page-blocking apps but always find a workaround).

With the iPad, surfing the web is too annoying and clunky. I don't really equate the iPad device with the internet the way I do with a Macbook. Instead, it's the tool I use to write. I got the keyboard it comes with, and it's the perfect writing setup. Enough functionality to write and organize and enjoy it, and not enough to go down the internet rabbit hole.

I'm sure you could sub 'writing' for some other creative discipline you could do digitally, like drawing, and it would have the same effect.

Also, it is so pleasant to use. I find it much more enjoyable than a Macbook and iPhone. Spotify is just more fun on it; it's hard to explain. It brings me a lot of joy.

As a dev, I tried to use it as my main machine for a bit but it was basically just a thin a client to my VPSes. I am back on my main laptop for any serious dev work.

But iPad has become my favorite toy now. It is one machine that can handle multiple of my hobbies & curiosities like photo editing, painting/drawing, video editing, making music in Garageband, reading PDFs, of course, regular entertainment like movies and music. I also do some writing and calligraphy in Urdu on it.

Sure I can do most of this stuff on a laptop, iMovie and Garageband has way more functionality on computer but iPad's form factor is more conductive to random creativity at the spur of moment. I love picking it up and drawing random things.

As for justification for cost, I think if my iPad Pro 10.5 lasts 4-5 years, then it would be well worth it.

I have a 12.9” 2018 Pro. The same way I justify an 13” laptop instead of an 10”, which is a similar price jump. There’s a screen size threshold below which I’m not as productive. I use an iPad for most of my non-programming personal computing so I want that to be a good environment. 12.9” is the right size for me because of my height and arm length (same reason I use a 15” laptop.)

The variable refresh rate feels better on my eyes and the lightness of the 2018 Pros make them very easy to pick up and put away for their screen size, which is important to me because I don’t like the lethargy that sets in with laptops.

It's just good enough, with the keyboard cover and Prompt2, for SSH that I feel cut off without it.

Other than the features others have mentioned here, and it having actually pretty good speakers, I don't have a good reason for spending extra over a normal iPad.

I'd do it again.

Honest. I like it.

An iPad is great for drawing image assets that you can use however you want because they're yours. This is great for authors of different kinds.

As an author it's hard to find relevant images for your articles, let alone images with permissive licenses. Drawing them yourself takes up more time but it has several benefits:

- You're free to use them however you want

- They're highly customised (and relevant) for your content

- Ditch the "stock photos" look on your pages

- Add a personal touch to the way you communicate

For those of us 9th visual impairments the larger display and ability to place that display at the correct position for our vision is crucial.

Also the portability is nice. I can keep it in a backpack and use it within a second. Laptops are not really designed for that.

Now I wish Apple would make the Pro have some Pro features like letting us decide which background apps to keep alive

For those of us 9th visual impairments the larger display and ability to place that display at the correct position for our vision is crucial.

Also the portability is nice. I can keep it in a backpack and use it within a second. Laptops are not really designed for that.

Now I wish Alex would make the Pro have some Pro features like letting us decide which background apps to keep alive

Just one example: iPad Pro 12.9" is an excellent pdf viewer. Especially in portrait mode.

Plenty of other functionality. The touch / pencil interface is another example. SSH is good on this machine as well.

Because the time savings and utility value of using it as a primary (or at least primary for you individually and on the go) device far outweigh the cost.

E.g., have one big computer for the house, but let household members’ “personal computer” be an iPad Pro.

Or, have one big workstation on your office desk, but let your roaming computer be an iPad Pro.

What do you primarily use it for on the go?

I'm all in on digital everything so here's my use cases

As a consumer: - Take notes on the iPad with Pencil - Watch media - Browse web - Reading (preferred)

As dev: - Testing purposes

As artist: - Drawing - Animation

As a music enthusiast: - Playing around with various music synth apps - Garageband

As a parent: - My kids love drawing on it among other uses

It's a game changer for students who need to take notes, mark up PDFs, store textbooks to lug around campus, etc.

It's the perfect machine for use on campus for most students. Of course, the regular iPad gets you 80% of the way there too.

Reading PDFs on anything else is unthnkable.

my wife loves it.

she does mostly web browsing, email, excel and word, notes among other stuff. a typical office user.

be sure to get the folio keyboard as well, the ipad pro is much better with them.

Apparently campaign workers for Michael Bloomberg are using some fancy Apple hardware, maybe you could become a door knocker for him and use it for signing up new party members?

https://nypost.com/2020/01/22/heres-how-mike-bloomberg-is-lu...

On a more serious note, there are a few features that the pro model has that the standard model does not. The pro has a usb C port instead of the lightning jack, the display can be larger and the 1TB version comes with an extra 2 gigs of ram. I suppose if you can justify paying more for any Ios device over Android, why not pay twice as much for the pro version? Maybe the pro will be supported for a longer period of time and wouldn't end up under a pile of magazines on the coffee table. (like my Ipad one is!).

There certainly are some technical advantages. As a mac/Android phone/ipad3 user, I appreciate the screen and ram in particular. But even the 4 or 6gb still seems meager and Safari still aggressively limits certain things. These are all nice vs my ipad 3 certainly, but apart from being a pure luxury device, I struggle to find how I'd make such different use of it than anything else. It's a great device to use for trivial tasks, but I just don't know what it's good for other than making most things smoother.

I would agree with you, I guess it's a sign of the times though as I would imagine Apple put in a great deal of time and thought into what the market would bear.

PS: I also have a hard time wrapping my head around why people pay for novelty skins for their avatars in games. But they do!!

I think that's a good analogy. I do occasionally spend a bit more for something a bit nicer. In this case, I guess my confusion is more a matter of degree. Would I trade in my iPad 3 for basically the same use but just very smooth? I haven't found myself remembering the times when I used my iPad $1k more, but I do remember the sort of magical feeling I got when playing around with it for the first time. The mac is a similar comparison. Now that all macs have great SSDs and great screens, what would it take for me to upgrade? Stands to reason that I'd more likely run into a real performance wall, so that extra 16gb of ram might make me switch, but the last few times it was because 1) stolen 2) numerous hardware failures 3) Upgraded from 2009 mbp because it couldn't effectively play 1080p video, the graphics card was failing, and the retina screen.

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