iPad Pro M4 review: ludicrously good hardware that's total overkill for most
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Honestly, this is the perfect tool for both many people in tech as well as the average person. I have a macbook air, why not a pro? Because I need a glorified ssh machine that can do word processing, I can carry around light weight, has long battery life, and I can do some basic coding on. Everything else is done upstream on a compute platform. For the average person, they're doing the same non-compute tasks as me: browsing the internet and some word processing or slide making.
So why don't I have a device that I can basically run MacOS on and have a detachable keyboard (yes, I know these are sold). Apple should be able to corner this market, but they continually seem to fall flat on their face. Why did it take so long for the fucking iPad to have a natively supported app to markup PDFs. And why is it still terrible? Isn't that one of the most common use cases? I swear, tablet makers don't seem to actually understand how people use tablets nor laptops and it is really hindering their ability to innovate.
The iPad's greatest weakness is that its developers are trying to stuff a phone into a computer while being neither.
Because people also want a faster horse, not a car.
The iPad has been developing its own identity and language as a product category. Yes, it takes a while to iterate on the features. But Apple clearly sees the iPad as a chance to develop a language for how to interact with a tabula rasa. The easy thing would be to just slap a desktop OS on it. How do we get any better as a species if we do that? The iPad does need something, yes. It does not need a desktop OS.
By providing people what they want and incentivizing businesses to create something superior to it so that the demand for the prior solution goes away?
If the new solution isn't competitive with the old one then we arguably aren't improving as a species anyways.
It feels like mixing idioms of a production (desktop) and a consumption device (mobile) and flailing at both. Not targeting a unique niche.
You know all the professional software, on your desktop? Avid Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Adobe Premiere, Blender, that stuff? It doesn't run on iPad; not just because the developers are stingy and don't want to make a native version, but because the iPad is fundamentally limited in what it's software can provide relative to Mac. On top of that, you cannot distribute software yourself which relegates you exclusively to using Apple's provided runtime and storefront. It's an insular system that prevents new and exciting features or experiences from getting made without Apple's express approval and profit.
Or look at games. The iPad should be giving the Steam Deck a run for it's money; you've got a great GPU, strong single-core CPU performance and a big punchy display up front. Instead of playing Fallout: New Vegas (like any respectable person should be able to do in 2024), you're replaying Monument Valley and Angry Birds HD for the billionth time. Or maybe you just get frustrated trying to set up Delta or UTM and go watch House of Cards in resigned frustration.
The Mac is headed the same way, but at least there's a core audience of vocal whistleblowers pushing back against pointless software limitations. Apple is desperate to crush any methods of content creation or consumption that does not directly benefit them. To that end they have avoided adding professional features to their mobile devices to reinforce the content consumption loop and artificially inflate demand for the Mac.
I’d further agree that mobile’s used for far more consumption (or, presenting [multi-]media) than PCs! But I think that has more to do with PCs being a lot worse at those tasks than mobile devices (generally speaking), than mobile only being good for that.
I think there’s only a little overlap between the productive tasks real computers are helpful for, and what mobile’s good for, and that mobile also happens to be better for presenting media in most cases.
> The Mac is headed the same way
I’ve been reading this stated as fact since like 2012 (I became a Mac user—in addition to Linux and Windows, which I still use for some things, especially Linux, in 2010 or 2011). I’ve seen no sign of it.
> To that end they have avoided adding professional features to their mobile devices to reinforce the content consumption loop and artificially inflate demand for the Mac.
I do believe that’s some of it, but I also think a lot of the features certain types of professional want them to add are absent for the good reason that few people want them and they’d likely harm ux or security. Not all such features! But probably some.
> Instead of playing Fallout: New Vegas (like any respectable person should be able to do in 2024)
Well that’s just true, yes.
> Or maybe you just get frustrated trying to set up Delta
It’s one of the easiest emulators-with-game-library I’ve ever set up :-) At least they do allow emulators now. Emulating a whole Nintendo DS is lighter on battery and faster to resume than nearly all the native iOS games in the App Store, which is just an absurd situation. Better overall game library, too.
> It’s especially great when you need the real world and computing to interact, “in the field” as it were.
I agree in a certain respect. Parallel to this statement though, I also see another two things as true:
- Anything an iPad can do, a Mac can do better.
- Many things a Mac can do, an iPad can't at all.
Adding software functionality to the iPad would not detract from the few areas it excels in today. It is absolutely and entirely undeniable that the iPad's software capabilities pale in comparison to what the hardware can do. Apple has no reason not to give people what they want; except for the fact that it might stop people from buying Macs. Therefore they create an artificial (and entirely unnecessary) segmentation scheme that drives more people away than it attracts.
The apologism for Apple's blatantly anti-consumer practice is baffling. Do we just... pretend like Apple doesn't break things on a constant basis for the express purpose of pushing proprietary shitware? Should we smile and pretend like nobody misses OpenGL or wants Vulkan support? They're the largest company in the world by now, I should hope they've learned how to share their damn toys.
My daughter has access to a computer with many of those programs if she wants to use them. I've showed them to her and what you can do with them, and offered to help her learn if she wants. She still does all her video, graphics and image editing on her phone or an iPad, because she genuinely prefers it. In her mind the only purpose of a desktop computer is gaming.
also lots of computer tasks require very precise clicks that mice do better with. touchscreens really need another interface and the keyboard only solves some of the issues. a solution here is to carry a stylus..
but if you’re walking around with a ipad, a key board, and a stylus, the laptop is simpler
I think you miss the setup. The keyboard is for being on the go. If I'm at a desk, I'm using my mechanical keyboard, not my shitty laptop one. Yeah, macs are better than most, but a laptop keyboard is still a laptop keyboard.
Also I don't particularly care how any of the touch stuff works in a hypothetical desktop mode as long as I can hook it up to external display with KB+mouse.
(It's a pretty clever idea though)
I think the answer is market cannibalization. Apple would much rather sell you both an iPad and a MacBook Pro rather than just an iPad.
I'm saying that my macbook air is a glorified ssh machine and word processing machine.
But clearly it would be better to walk around with a tablet (with detachable keyboard) as a glorified ssh and word processing/slide making machine than a macbook.
I want to be able to do some minimal work, walk around with my device and pull up slides (that I can fucking markup with my pencil -- not a glorified pointer), pull up docs, and etc because even though I'm mostly living in the cli I still have to show and communicate my work with others.
Because this is how Apple nudges/forces people to spend money on a 3th-party app for a $xx/month subscription (of which even Apple gets 30%), obviously...
> Apple iPad Pro review 2018: the fastest iPad is still an iPad
> And the one thing Apple didn’t really change on the iPad Pro is iOS 12, which has all of the same capabilities and limitations iPad users have come to expect. Apple wants you to think that the iPad Pro is the future of computing, but if you’ve already used iOS 12 on an iPad Pro, you know exactly how you feel about that idea.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/5/18062612/apple-ipad-pro-r...
It’s even there in this 2013 review of the first iPad Air - fast hardware held back by the software https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5062826/apple-ipad-air-re...
Given that an iPad Pro is a much better piece of hardware and linux-surface is made by some enthusiasts, there is no excuse for this.
iPads are great, some apps are great, but the overall experience is simply not there. It is way too constraining.
Probably better off adding a shortcut to the website in this case, since Instagram is so determined to not have an iPad app.
It’s possible to do SwiftUI development on device now, but god forbid you’re doing anything other than that (or even SwiftUI but it’s a real Xcode project already) then the iPad is practicaly useless.
I'd be happy enough with virtualization, at least then I could make proper use of the hardware.
I am told if you use Stage Manager and you have the terminal app in the same stage as, say, your browser app or editor, it is not "in the background" as a process, even when it's occluded.
Though it seems to me that as soon as a window is taken full screen, it's on a new stage. So you have to use them windowed?
Or in Split View, which grants the same "both in the foreground" privileges.
Which is as bizarre and arbirary as much of the rest of iPadOS. Which as you suggest, needs to stop feeling so much like a 1980s co-operative multitasking system.
(Edit to add: I suppose it is not _ridiculous_ that multitasking is in some ways tied to visual presence: apps don't need to be quit, and that which is not on the screen is not running full time. Even if it does make it very difficult to use one for work. It's quite an iOS-ish thing, to make the relationship between what you can see and what is happening more concrete. The camera works this way after all.)
And an app could support Background App Refresh to get around this.
The workaround Termius apparently uses is absurd (and rather amusing): it adds location tracking it doesn't really need. Because apps that have location tracking enabled don't lose their connections:
https://support.termius.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006226306-I...
This is a clever solution but it does have a Kafkaesque quality.
At that point, just allow background refresh! Everyone is just working around the rule anyway, why does it even exist?
The App Store is so dysfunctional.
Because most developers are not working around the rule.
And if you allowed every app to permanently background you would compromise the iPad experience.
(we develop apps for iOS that need bg functionality)
Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/calculator-app-for-ipad...
No need to dive into per-app settings except maybe to determine the default behavior. You can do this dynamically based on which applications are running that you'd like to keep running (or not).
They could even justifiably restrict this capability to the M-series iPads given the substantial performance improvements (including efficiency cores) compared to the older A-series iPads if they wanted to create motivation to upgrade.
I agree its complete overkill, but I like it because of that, its is completely instant in everything it does, reading books, browsing etc. A noticeable improvement over the older one even though the older was completely usable.
its also lighter and thinner and the screen is amazing, and the battery is also completely overkill for my use case, I can leave it for days and I have already set it to 80% charge cap to extend its life.
I like overkill in this case, its makes it a transparent device that completely gets out of the way.
I would agree but it only stays out of the way of a single app at a time.
I think the iPad fills a somewhat small gap very well, I would like to see it do more, but am happy with it as is as well. I also like its longevity, this is my 3rd iPad, the original, the 2nd gen pro and now the M4, 6-7 years between each with OS support for the whole time and the massive batteries last as well, and transparent backup restore with each carrying forward my settings. Almost as good as a Subaru.
I haven't pulled any LLMs onto it, and got the 8gb RAM version, so it's not going to be a great local inference device, but it is ultra, ultra fast and smooth for games, notes, reading, browsing, video - overkill, really. I really like it, enough that I might leave the remarkable 2 out of my bag for the next trip.
I also think iPadOS is now somewhat unjustifiably hamstrung and in some very arbitrary directions.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-laptops/leaked-dell-...
> [SDXE] processors are cheaper and less energy-hungry than all of Intel's recent chips, including Meteor Lake. So much so, that in some cases, battery life in equivalent laptops is extended by as much as 98%. And all that's done with chips that are half the price ... While I'm ambivalent about 2024 being the year of the AI PC, I'm becoming increasingly sold on it being the year of the Arm PC. With MediaTek and Nvidia rumoured to be joining the party, it's clear that I'm not the only one.
If Apple lacks the imagination or creative leadership to square the circle of iPad pro-fessional use cases, starting with a Terminal (which could be an iOS CLI in an isolated VM), perhaps they can open up the iPad to boot Asahi Linux, to compete with SDXE devices that will run both Windows and Linux.
Dell XPS was one of the first mainstream x86 laptop vendors to support Linux developers and they will ship Oryon-based devices in a few months, https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/15/24157120/dell-windows-on-.... Was the 300-page roadmap leak a response to M4?
The current head of Apple hardware engineering is on the shortlist for next Apple CEO. Notably absent from the list of CEO candidates is anyone related to "Services". Despite their vertically integrated software and app stores, Apple went out of their way to allow Linux to work on Apple Silicon. Why? Sometimes escape valves can enable more control. If Apple software continues to decrease in flexibility, they can open up their hardware to Linux, for those who want best of breed hardware and nothing else.
iPad Pro is one of the most flexible hardware devices on the market, offering a range of options across touch, stylus, wired/wireless keyboards, cellular (from Qualcomm), lidar, docking, display, storage and hardware-based virtualization. If iPad Pro is not unshackled from arbitrary software restrictions left over from VR vision quests, it will inspire an arm-y of alternatives.
https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20240514-The-iPad-P...
Many iPads have been "overkill" as far as the amount of power available in theory compared to utilizing it. That's nothing new.
I write that as an iPad Pro owner who really loves the device.
I acknowledge that I’m delusional for hoping they will make files easier to use on iPad OS at wwdc… but every year I hope.
If I could get vs code and sync thing on the iPad, I’d do it in a heartbeat and ditch my aging xps 13.
Too many people especially here on HN seem to think it’s the same kind of device as a desktop or PC but it’s really not. It was designed from the get go to be a content consumer/PDA, but I think people see the power to portability ratio and desire their PCs to have that.
I am a fan because for what the iPad does…it does it better than any other tablet out there.
But I'm simultaneously very disappointed. I started up logic pro, put in a chord progression on their new chord track and created 4 session AI players to make a little band going. I used their default instrument and fx plugins that came with each session players style, and the only tweak I made was to turn on side-chain compression off the AI drummer track i created. letting this loop on a 8 bar pattern for a little bit quickly maxes out the cpu and the ipad gets hot as hell until the logic alerts that it's doing too much and refuses to run unless i either freeze tracks manually or let it do so. 4 tracks thats ridiculously low.
So I tried running Github code-spaces in-browser for a bit to see how that experience is, and while it was nice at first, I could see a next.js app running in a preview and run shell commands etc. However many many times the layout got messed up by scroll position of the browser, which is pretty locked down in the GH CS layout to begin with, so its tricky to resolve it without randomly scrolling in different places/panes hoping it fixes itself. My muscle memory for cmd-w to close editor panes backfires because its (obivously) in a web browser. I was lucky because I made it a pinned-tab in safari so it didn't really close. But when you actually close the tab and try to re-open it GH CS can get in a weird state where it doesn't seem to boot or connect to the backing instance node.
All-in-all it still feels like just a toy. Even the prosumer use cases like Logic Pro, that Apple officially supports, seems like it doesn't really work the way I'd expect it to.