Apple Unveils the iPad Pro | Hacker News Reader

Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

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446 pointssalimmadjd842 comments

Predicted by a 3 year old comic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COenroJWEAAjLoi.jpg:large

The weird part for me is that everyone I know who tried an iPad for getting work done (ie: PROfessionals) gave up on it. iOS is simply not geared towards productivity nor content creation, it is a consumption device. The surface pro is the exact opposite, it is a machine that works for getting shit done on the go (for some people, not all obviously).

You're the wrong kind of user. I do end user architecture in a large enterprise, we ran into this with a lot of early adopters.

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!

The starbucks full of students typing out reports on iPads with bluetooth keyboards begs to differ. I mean, obviousy, you can't do all work on an iPad, but for a certain class of "work" it works fine.

Yeah, I'm with the other commenter.

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.

I use my iPad for content creation every day and it's fantastic.

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).

I got a Surface Pro 3 almost exclusively for using OneNote on it. It's pretty great for that, but having Windows in the way was sometimes annoying. The Surface is capable of a lot more than I do with it, but I have my MacBook for everything that isn't handwriting. The iPad Pro is exactly what I wanted - a device for writing down notes, sketching designs, and doing so seamlessly without the "bloat" of a full OS in the way.

My dad loves his iPad he got one with a keyboard cover. I think he does everything he can on it.

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.

If there were a fully functional iTerm2 port with the capability to remap caps to escape on a Bluetooth keyboard, I'd never need a laptop again.

Surface Pro is nice since you can run all the existing enterprise apps, but how many of those apps will offer great user experience on tables? Apple is kind of forcing companies to create apps specifically for the tablet use.

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.

And so it begins... the once innovative company is now playing catch up, losing a little bit of its sex appeal as it copies the bland competition.

I really don't give a shit who is copying who. It's technology; we're all building on the backs of inventions created by other people. The important thing to me is who does it the best, not who does it first.

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.

In all fairness I know many people who love to draw on the Surface and really wanted a more precise pen type of input on the iPad; I think this was a long time coming and really necessary.

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.

Apple strives with the nuances of its hardware. It's not necessarily how innovative and unique the product is, but the strength at which Apple secures the most unique hardware that sets them apart from the competition. Their touch sensors are different than everyone else's in supporting multi strength touches. They have good battery life with larger than HD displays. The device weights 1.5 lbs, which is much lighter than the surface. This is no trivial feat. The blanket statements on the device's general purpose and how it has been done before is a huge generalization and a refusal to grasp the power of Apple as a company. It hasn't been done before in the way Apple does it.

>the once innovative company is now playing catch up

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.

Well, it did take them about a decade to catch up with Microsoft when they introduced the iPad. Bill Gates announced tablets 15 years ago:

http://youtu.be/T5Va8XfuN9s

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.

Yes, they are playing catch up in the cover keyboard and stylus categories. However, they are still dominating mobile, revamping their TV line, and growing in a shrinking PC market. Oh and also they just released a pretty successful watch.

Just saying, I think Apple is still a pretty innovative company.

And so it continues, I point out that this has been said of every Apple announcement since Jobs' return.

Apple's stock and trade has always been to do what the competition is doing, but do it better.

If innovation were what mattered, everyone would be browsing with Opera.

It began a while ago, it is just now more apparent because the level of innovation in each successive generation has become so small. I wonder if we will look back at the last 8 years as Apple's golden years, because it is really feeling like their best is now behind them. The level of innovation that has created their most loyal of fans and zealots no longer exists, and there is so much less to indoctrinate the next generation. Newcomers no longer think that Apple is a head and shoulders above the rest innovator and Apple is built on the loyalty created by being different.

In what way is the Surface Pro 3 (which is really the only currently available competition) boring? I'd say it is the most innovative product in the tablet space in the last 4 years. Really they are trying to catch up to the only real competition they have in the space.

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.

Oh please. There were keyboard covers and pen input devices available for the iPad long before Microsoft released the first Surface.

Apple always prefers to release late and do it better rather than play race-to-the-bottom games in perfect competition markets.

Which competition's tablets is the iPad playing catch-up to?

Speak for yourself - the Surface Pro line is sexy as hell and the fact that it's not a walled garden is a huge plus.

They're doomed!

They sure copy, but so did others too all the time.

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.

Honestly, I'm more than happy with my Surface Pro 3, and the iPad Pro doesn't interest me at all.

Not only are they playing catch up, but they failed to adequately catch up.

It is so crazy how this is the PC wars all over again. Apple comes out of the gate with huge marketshare, begins to lose it due to their insufferable snobbery, panics and tries to copy everyone without alienating their base of insufferable snobs and with frilly copies that only the kool-aid drinkers fall for, and continues its descent into irrelevance. Will Samsung have to save Apple from extinction in 10 years in order to keep the DOJ off its back? Stay tuned.

I don't think it's accurate to say Surface Pro presaged the iPad Pro by three years. Surface Pro was a basically different vision (not to mention a severely compromised device). A laptop without a keyboard but with a fan and short battery life. A software stack that requires you to go into the desktop to access non-trivial settings.

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.

You're spot on. The fact that they moved all settings to one place and forced applications to do the same means a consistent feel - this is something that Windows has not got; each app may have options, preferences, hidden registry settings that can be tweaked, config files that can be tweaked, the system has Control Panel, MMC and snap-ins for other settings (or Computer Management) and then a new series of settings interfaces for Windows 8 and 10; settings can be accessed via multiple entry points (do I join a wifi network using the charm, the icon on the taskbar, control panel or something else???)

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.

> Some people may consider the iPad Pro to be a Surface 3 with less features.

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.

On the topic of retrospection: 8 years ago, Jobs himself said, "Nobody wants a stylus." [0] The times they are a changin'.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YY3MSaUqMg

I do think there's a distinction to be made between the stylus which Jobs was referring to then vs. the ones we have now.

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.

The surface pro didn't do anything new at all. It was windows for tablets with decent industrial design (great design aside from the keyboards). It's not like Apple hadn't dicked around with keyboard covers et al since back in the Newton days. This isn't a question of who did hardware feature X first but who did user feature Y right. The jury is out but when I went to a Microsoft store ready to buy a maxed out surface pro, five minutes with the keyboard and microsoft's horrible UI designs turned me off. (I see in the MS office demo that they've removed some cruft but still don't design decent touch UIs. )

The ground work for Surface Pro was Windows 8, so yes, Microsoft did hybrid OS, and Surface Pro was their "Hero" device. The touch/type cover was innovative but annoying. Surface Pro (with Windows 8+) like it or not is a ground-breaking device.

yes it did. outstandng stylus and multi-touch performance in a package that was a full OS, but also had the touch app ecosystem.

Yep I loved the idea of the surface; tried to use it to replace my mb air for but ended up returning it because the ecosystem was terrible and the keyboard was annoying.

haha... so good. I think the features at a high level are probably on par with the surface. The only difference is one of them is more or less limited in terms of functionality depending on how you look at it.

Invented by Alan Kay, Dynabook, 1968. Only achieved recently, by this model and its predecessors. Ask Alan.

Wow! Spot on!

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.

spot on

source?

http://hijinksensue.com/comic/surface-tension/

Has been online since at least March 27th 2014: http://web.archive.org/web/20140327014007/http://hijinksensu...

I am howling thank you so much for finding this!

It is interesting comparing Microsoft and Apple's convertible tablet strategy. Microsoft's devices use the full OS and are basically laptops first and tablets second while Apple is doing the opposite. If this is truly designed to be "Pro" as in enterprise , I think Microsoft's strategy is going to lead to more productive and therefore better enterprise devices.

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.

The risk with Microsoft's approach is that companies will think "our Windows app runs fine on Surface" and invest little on making their application work great on Surface because they form a small part of the market.

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.

I think Apple will have a very hard time convincing companies to port / produce complex apps that come with a lifetime of free updates. Mac App store has failed pretty objectively at applying iOS conventions to serious software.

It's interesting to note that the Surface 3 diverges from the Surface 2 and RT in that it has an x86 processor. I think this may be a concession that bringing developers over to write WinRT applications is an uphill battle, and the device marketplace is not going to stand still and wait for that to happen.

"Our Windows app runs fine on Surface" is a better story than "Our Windows app doesn't run on Surface at all".

I think the one important thing that Microsoft's approach has over Apple's is file management. File management is horrible on iOS.

File Systems is also a complexity that confuses a lot of non-technical people, which is why Apple tries to hide that one even exists on iOS - Where can I find the latest document I was working on? Just open the app you created it with, as a bonus you'll get transparent syncing across all your devices.

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.

Do you know what happens if you let people see their files? They try to edit them. Do you want people to be able to edit their files? Yeah... I thought so.

This a million times. Apple is just slowly re-inventing the Desktop OS (hey look multi-tasking, a keyboard, etc) while MS went full into a hybrid OS over all its lines that can adapt to whatever hardware its installed on. For all the grief MS got for Windows 8, the move it made was ultimately the right one and builds the proper foundation they need for the future. As side note, lets recall about three or four years ago that we were reading, and agreeing with, articles predicting the death of the MS, at the very least, if not WIMP computing in general. Now we're sitting here with Windows 10, Surface, etc. MS did what it needed to do to stop its fall into irrelevancy.

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?

Yeah, the whole hybrid thing went really well with Windows and Surface series was a success.

> I can't imagine shelling out near a $1,000+ for this thing (lets price in the keyboard and other accessories)

About $1350 for the cellular base model with a keyboard and stylus.

Surface Pro 3 has a fan, this doesn't. That's a big difference that I would pay a bit more for (I actually went with a surface 3 just for this reason). The screen is also higher res, I'm guessing the unit is lighter also. Looks like it might be time for a surface pro 4 though, so let's see.

I must say I sat opposite someone on the train the other week and thought "what is that noise?". It turned out to be his Surface Pro. I'm not sure whether he was doing anything particularly intensive or just checking email, but the fact that it was audible above the typical noise of a train put me off ever wanting to buy one. Imagine trying to read or watch a movie in bed with that whirring going on!

Keep in mind that Microsoft spent 2 generations before converging on the current strategy: 'non-Pro' Surfaces 1 and 2 were ARM-powered Windows RT devices that could only run Windows Store apps (similar to iPad). When noone seemed to want that, Microsoft went out and made 'non-Pro' Surface 3 just a cheaper, slimmer, lower-powered device, running the same version of Windows as its bigger sibling; also non-Pro was released after the Pro and just after the newest Intel Atom chip: http://ark.intel.com/products/85475/Intel-Atom-x7-Z8700-Proc...

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.

If a device has a frankenchip, it's guaranteed to be stuck with frankenapps. Which is exactly the state of Surface unfortunately.

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.

None of that really matters though. It's all about the applications. If you need to run Windows software, buy a Windows machine. If the applications you depend on require iOS, buy an iPad.

Other non-software features (like battery life and weight) matter as well.

Price doesn't really matter though.

If you need to run Windows software, buy a Windows machine. If the applications you depend on require iOS, buy an iPad.

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.

Lots of businesses build their own software. Do you think it's easier to deploy private software onto an iPad or a Windows machine?

What professional applications require ios?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro is basically the Android version of the new Apple device. I own one, albeit not for enterprise purposes, and it's not very well executed. I could never imagine using such a stripped down interface as my primary work device. People use Surfaces here all the time for whatever that's worth, it's a valid device choice option.

I have a Note 2014 edition and like you, I feel it is clunky by comparison.

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.

>I think Microsoft's strategy is going to lead to more productive and therefore better enterprise devices.

If that were true, SP3 should have been a huge hit by now. It's not.

> > I think Microsoft's strategy is going to lead to more productive and therefore better enterprise devices.

> 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".

Yet at the end of the day, the CEO will overrule the IT's multiples productivity arguments and tell them to get him an iPad Pro because it's Apple, because his Golf buddy told him today's presentation was awesome and because he is very satisfied with his iPhone.

Sad but true. Do you feel like a pawn in a giant chess game sometimes?

The announcements today just make me hang my head in chagrin. I love Apple products. Both my wife and I only use Macbooks, we have multiple iPads, iPods, and a second generation Apple TV.

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.

This comment is exactly why HN won't never understand anything about Apple announcements. Highly technical folks, unable to get out of their technical bias, reprimanding the extremely successful decision makers of a successful company because they pretend to know the matter, while completely ignoring the real world scenarios that actually drive Apple products sales.

It is not a "technical bias", it is more your bias towards Apple. Take the last year's iPhone 6 as an example: HN members complained about small screen sizes for a long time, and it took Steve Job's death to actually make that happen, but gues what? iPhone 6 is most succesfull iPhone ever. Apple did some innovations few years ago (original iPhone, iPad), but since then most of new features in Apple products are taken from Android an WP devices. I personally would like to see Apple's response to Lenovo Yoga 3 (convertible tablet/ultrabook) and for some time I hoped that iPad Pro will be just that. Unfortunately it isn't so the chances of me buying it just fell around 0%.

Even taking usability into account, an argument can be made that iPad Pro is neither here nor there. Consider a simple use case: let's say iPad Pro is the sole enterprise device handed out to employees at a company. AFAIK, even a simple thing like compressing multiple files (given irrational attachment size limits won't be going away any time soon) and sending them via email will be impossible given how closed and pared down iOS really is. How will you do file management? What about specific applications (e.g. Solidworks)? They will have to be re-done for iOS, which could be a pretty hard thing for small vendors. iPad Pro and the new iOS will have to be step change over iPad Air and current iOS to be appealing as a laptop replacement. The new iOS must be so near to OS X as for the difference to be immaterial.

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).

His comment doesn't represent someone 'highly technical, unable to get out of their technical bias'.

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.

It's the standard

". No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. "

response.

http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...

Suddenly, they are industry and product experts. Generally, HNers are experts about any topic.

Apple has made a lot of flop products. Their successful products are real killers, but there's this weird confirmation-bias-field surrounding them that makes fans forget their numerous flops.

> For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air

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.

I see this attitude of "I don't like this product that was never meant for my use case, therefore nobody else will want it either" a lot among tech people, and HN is no exception. Just look at yesterday's comments on the Raspberry Pi touch screen [1]. Or really, the comments on almost any large consumer-oriented product launch.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10184510

>For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air

You would, provided that MacBook Air had convertible screen (like Lenovo Yoga)

Yeah I can't wait for this guy to go buy his macbook air and start doing all his fancy graphic design on its non-touch non-retina screen.

Obviously the same use cases for both products!

I'm pretty pleased with the specs on this, because it's perfect for my usecase:

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.

Which utility are you using to treat it as a second screen? I've had modest luck with duet.

"since at least it runs a real operating system designed for "pro" use not the closed eco system that is iOS."

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 ?

It's 'pro' within the segment it's in, which is the tablet segment, not the laptop or desktop segment. Just like if they come out with an iPhone with power-user features for professional/enterprise usage, it's reasonably to call it a 'pro' line within the phone segment, without necessarily implying it's a more functional device than say a fully fledged desktop called a Mac Pro. I don't really see the issue but I get what you're saying.

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.

Yes, brace for it cause we'll be greybeards twice over on short notice.

Apple is moving full steam towards enterprise. All these partnerships with IBM and the like are to push iOS tablets into the corporate world. iPad Pro is at a perfect price point and feature set for businesses. Healthcare, retail and entertainment are industries that will embrace it fully.

You can already see it in action. Go to a Tesla showroom, a boutique clothier, a Square-enabled café, etc. They are all embracing the iPad as a multi-functional device. Oh, and those aren't usually even considered "enterprise" clients.

> For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air.

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?

Yep, I'm in the same boat. Apple devices and laptops, but we've moved on from iTunes to Amazon. Spent thousands in iTunes, still have a small home server running it for us to access it, but every new movie, tv show, or song is now purchased on Amazon. They're available everywhere on basically every device.

We've got Rokus on the small TVs and Xbox Ones on the big ones.

They will never make a device that appeals to everybody. Nor should they try.

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.

The SP3 is thicker by 2mm and is smaller on the other axes, and is 70g heavier. That's clunky?

There's one in every Apple announcement thread.

One what? It's unclear what you are trying to convey with this post.

My girlfriend have me have already decided to get one so we can watch Iplayer and YouTube in bed. We already use an iPad but our number one complaint is its too small!

The Acer Chromebook 15 is giant, has great battery life, stands itself up, and you can buy two of them for the price of an iPad.

No iTunes, but you can get the same content other places.

Youre going to spend that much money for youtube? Couldn't you do the same with a 35 dollar chromecast?

I'd just mount a tv; don't need to hold it.

For $799 you could get a nice TV and an Apple TV.

If all you want is something with a big screen to watch videos with, there are plenty of cheaper and bigger options out there than a $700 Surface knock-off.

It depends on one's use cases. I use an iPad Air for two main tasks: 1) to sketch and "paint" (using ArtRage); and 2) to make music in various apps. For these applications, screen size trumps portability (larger canvas for art, wider screen for audio timelines and more keys on keyboards).

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.

Exactly.

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 a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air.

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.

> For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air.

For some people's needs sure. I think that's why Apple sells the MacBook / MacBook Air?

I agree, so much useless stuff here. Long gone are the days when Apple produced powerful and exciting new Macs. Now they are catching up and behind... I think my next computer will be a PC again.

Eh, the pc world ain't that great either.

What new features would you like though? I can't think of anything I am missing on modern OSes and devices. (Until someone releases something that I use every day of course...)

I would agree with the sibling comment here - the PC market isn't that great at the moment

Also, let's hope the new Apple TV supports HDMI CEC so I don't need to tell the TV to change to another device!

I draw, I like the ipad pro and will get one.

I own surface 3 pro also for the same reason. But I don't like it and it can be bigger.

"Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em, put 'em away, you lose 'em. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus."

-Steve Jobs

  > 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.

--Jon Gruber, Daring Fireball

If you think a feature is a terrible idea then you shouldn't offer it. And if the technology or context changes sufficiently for you to change your mind then you should start offering it. This is just good product design. But I guess if you word it that way then you cant heavily imply that Jobs was a liar.

Apple got it right because they were the first to charge 99 bucks for it.

Gruber wrote about the stylus thing too, you could have quoted that if you wanted. Here ya go: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/01/20/if-you-see

Would that might it wrong, though?

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.

In context Jobs was talking about a stylus as the only/primary input for the device, meaning you would be required to have a stylus to ever use the device. Of course that would be terrible.

This stylus is an optional accessory with a very specific use case. A fundamentally different thing.

This is exactly right, and I'm sure it was a shot at the original Microsoft Tablet PC which required a stylus for input. The Pencil they announced today is very clearly for drawing applications and not intended to be the primary means of interacting with the iPad.

In context Jobs was talking about getting them, putting them away and losing them.

You are taking Apple apologetics to a whole new level.

Not sure you are completely correct there, as he said it repeatedly in many contexts.

"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

This is Apple definitely responding to high-end pressure from increasingly successful Surfaces in the same way the iPad mini was a response to pressure from the low-end by small Android tablets.

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.

For some context, I'd disagree with the "low-end laptop" characterization, though if you mean "low-end" in terms of, say, Thinkpads and MacBook Pros, then yeah you're right on.

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.)

> but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.

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.

The price point for Chromebooks is ~200-300. My ASUS Flip was $250.

$1000 gets you a powerful high end laptop in terms of hardware. You might be sacrificing build quality at that price though, but you can get good specs for that.

1k for a low-end laptop? come on now, that's not even close.

Your list adds up to $1070. That's no low end laptop. $399-599 is low to mid end laptop nowadays. Most Chromebooks kick in at under $300 now also.

For navigating and general use on a 3.5" screen, he was dead on.

For drawing on a screen of any size, especially a 12" one, the stylus makes plenty of sense.

Great. I love it when a company re-evaluates and introduces technology they previously said was a bad idea, but have reconsidered. More of this sort of thing!

"if you see a stylus, they blew it."

- Steve Jobs, after the 2010 iPad introduction.

While I do agree Jobs was saying that no one wants to use a stylus to use their devices, you have to admit this stylus is a pretty good idea. With the additional sensors you can actually do things you can't do with traditional styluses and you're not forced to use it with your device, it's just an add-on.

This quote

- 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.

And it's not a Wacom-like active digitizer, you need to actually charge this thing. I feel the stylus that came with Windows XP tablet edition in 2002 was probably better than this.

He said this at the iPhone unveiling. For an iPad, a stylus makes a lot more sense imo.

Who cares what Steve Jobs thinks? He's dead.

Wasn't he talking about the iPhone, not the iPad? At that time the dominant mobile platform was PDAs with styluses. I'm pretty sure that's the context in which he made those remarks.

So, if you don't want one, don't buy it. It's optional and cost $100. Would Steve have changed his mind on them 8 years later?

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-...

They did repeatedly mention that the main way of interacting with it was touch, and that the stylus and touch can be used together.

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.

On a 3.5 inch screen? Yeah, the stylus was terrible for that. Touch screen interfaces were held back for years because everyone blindly used a stylus as the primary input device.

This is for a much larger screen, and it is an accessory and not the primary input device.

This quote is making the rounds on Twitter right now. The non-snarky response to which is "that's an ancient quote", the more snarky one is "It's been 7 years. The market changes. Deal with it."

What's your point?

Steve Jobs was talking about a Phone. Not a 12 inches tablet.

Yeah thanks. He also told Tim Cook not to make decisions based on what Tim thought Steve would have done. Which nobody on twitter seems to remember when they post this quote.

I want to be able to pick up anything and use it as a calligraphic stylus

He was right for phones. You are quoting him out of context. Why?

Hence, it's not a stylus, but an actual active pencil-like device for drawing.

But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.

Looks like the Surface Pro with type cover and Stylus. As long as the mobile OS and locked down ecosystem limits it, many will be better off buying the Surface.

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.

SP3 stylus uses batteries. Two of them. Not an issue, and I find the technology far more accurate than the Wacoms, especially around the edges.

Thanks, I wasn't aware that SP3 wasn't using Wacom.

"No, no, the Surface Pro looks like our iPad Pro. Just ignore the specs" - Apple fans and iPad owners :-D

Speaking as an artist who uses the Surface Pro 3 for all of my work, an iPad Pro will be useless without the right software. And as great as Procreate might be, it's not Photoshop and will never be Photoshop. Without the ability to run full desktop apps, this would never be much more than a toy for me.

I sympathize with this, although playing devils advocate ... if adobe has web-based photoshop (which I think they do ?) then does it matter ?

I know this is petty, but every time I see an Apple demo and they are saying how many inches the screen is I think - wow that's a really uncool and old fashioned system of measures. If Apple can force standards - like Thunderbolt - how about using centimeters. Edit: they can even say they invented the metric system - ok with me ;)

Apple is a US company and the keynote is in the US. Inches are not considered "uncool" nor "old fashioned" in the US. The US tried switching to metric many years ago, but it didn't work.

I'm sure their localized advertising for other countries lists the dimensions in metric units.

Nope. The UK and German stores give e.g. iPad Air 2 thickness in mm, weight in grams and screen size in inches.

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.

This is one petty matter that I can get behind!

The iPad Pro is going to be available in November — 32GB for $799, 64GB for $949 and 128GB for $1,079. The $1,079 comes with Wi-Fi and cellular. The keyboard is going to cost $169 and the stylus is going to cost $99 — magic isn’t cheap.

Can someone explain this absurd pricing strategy to me?

I just want someone to explain the $99 stylus. What's so special about it?

There is no 64GB. It's 128GB without cellular for $949. They have high price points for latest models. Retailers discount.

charge as much as they're willing to pay?

They copied it off the Surface. When in Rome...

> absurd pricing strategy

Apple in a nutshell. Are you surprised?

https://i.imgur.com/sV4SZyD.png

What is going on with Apple's line-up? This is unnecessarily confusing.

Yeah for a long time it was higher the version number the better and the rest was old, sold at refurbished. Now they have new with lower version numbers selling along side the other ones? There goes that simplicity. Maybe in the end this is better for the bottom line but it's just uncharacteristic.

Also, how come on the slide they are selling iPad Mini 2 & 4 but not iPad Mini 3? This is so confusing

It looks like it would be really awesome to have, but I have a feeling that it's going to be much more expensive than the current iPads. If that's the case, it almost makes more sense to buy a Surface Pro 3.

Or, if you like the form factor, are price conscious, and don't need a full desktop Windows box squeezed into it, a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2.

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.

If you're going to be using the web and Microsoft apps exclusively, it does, sure.

& just announcing "The Smart Keyboard", smart case built just for iPad Pro with keyboard built in. "Unlike any keyboard you've ever used before."

With Apple Fabric! And an Apple Dome Switch!

For anyone that doesn't know this, you can connect USB keyboard to the iPad Camera Connection kit. It works with most keyboards, including mechanical ones.

If you see a stylus, you know (there's a video with whiskey-smooth voiceover coming)

Hmm ... call me stupid but ipad + keyboard << macbook . What is the point?

I am continuously amused at how the startup tech crowd can't see how innovative Apple products are... and yet they inevitably chase the markets Apple creates a few years later.

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.

And this is the most amazing thing ever: http://www.relato.io/

Your smug is leaking.

What about Pencil from 53? http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil

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.

Per the USPTO trademark database (on mobile so can't readily link), FiftyThree has a trademark on "Pencil by FiftyThree", not on "Pencil". Moreover the trademark they do have specifically disclaims exclusive rights to the word "pencil" by itself. (IANAL but typically USPTO will ask for these sorts of disclaimers if part of the trademark is deemed generic/descriptive.)

Similarly Apple's product is officially named "Apple Pencil".

So Apple is probably in the clear.

The exact same thing will happen that happened with Facebook Paper. 53 will write an angry blog post, get some free publicity, and then Apple will say they aren't changing anything.

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.

It is not clear what question you are asking.

"Who knows more about productivity than Microsoft" ?

Audience gave Schiller the exact response he wanted (notice the silence and the delayed laughter). On paper it look like Apple is giving credit to Microsoft, but the subtext is: it's a joke, don't take the sentence too seriously, and Apple is still better at productivity.

I found it interesting that there was no mention of handwriting recognition for the pencil input - just not on the radar, it seems. Probably for the best, it's always been a disappointment on every device it's been used on.

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?

I agree. Interesting. Typing became faster than writing is what caused it IMO.

Eat Up Martha

I know a lot of you will think this is ridiculous but I want one to read digital comics with. I find the 9.7" iPad screen too small for this but the iPad Pro might work.

surface pro 3 has been out for over a year. also has more storage capacity for all those comics you want to read.

Well they went and did it, finally released the iPad that I've been looking for, now it will be interesting to see who, other than me, buys one. Since it is my #1 reading device these days. Only way to make it perfect would be to add an SD card and boost the battery life to 18hrs+. I'm really interested in how well the pen compares to the Surface 3 Pro's pen as well.

Of course it would be really interesting to see a "stripe" cover, which has a stripe reader rather than a keyboard in it :-).

Two years ago I tried really hard to use my iPad as my primary workstation (or at least primary outside of the office). It didn't work. No mouse support, no multi-tasking, and very mediocre keyboard support. What they released today doesn't fix any of the above.

Did you try that with an Android tablet? Sadly battery life is miles worse on Android, in my experience.

After digging in a little more on the details, it doesn't look like Pencil will be compatible with any other device outside the iPad Pro. That is a little disappointing and there doesn't appear to be any specific hardware reason for it. I would welcome the opportunity to replace my paper notebook with a iPad Mini 4 and Pencil.

I don't understand the allure of a "pro" iPad. Wouldn't you just want a laptop then? The keyboard is (at least for me) the fastest accurate text input device ever invented. It's the main reason I type everything instead of write it by hand.

Most of the input they've been showing is drawing and using the stylus. It might not be ideal for programming or writing, but this is going to be ideal for artists, photographers and anyone who wanted a 13" Cintiq.

> I don't understand the allure of a "pro" iPad. Wouldn't you just want a laptop then?

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.

I wish this thing existed when I was studying math in school. It's not practical to do math with a keyboard.

Artists and musicians will probably feel differently.

Do you draw with your keyboard too? Retouch photos with your keyboard? Your laptop comes with 5million pixels?

People crying about Steve Job's views on a stylus:

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.

I didn't see the entire demo, but can I write on it? I have a pencil, can I write words and have them come out as text? I'm happy to write in Palm's Graffitti. It works now for iDevices and my finger, but the new pencil would make that easier.

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....

Exciting to see the Apple Pencil/Smart Keyboard - this appears to be very similar to the Surface Pro 3, leaving the ball in Microsoft's court for their Surface Pro 4.

(Leaving aside all the differences in software)

You can't really compare them without talking about the software, though. The Surface runs a full desktop OS in addition to tablet-style apps while the iPad Pro can only run iOS apps... making the Surface better for media/content creation and the iPad Pro better for consumption. The Surface also has an active digitizer compared to the passive one in the iPad Pro for better sensitivity, resolution, and accuracy.... unless of course Apple's Pencil is miraculously better than the dozens of similar products already on the market including the one they stole the name from: http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil

shoot, Microsoft doesn't even need to come out with an sp4 against the iPad pro.

Why am I always left yearning for more with these latest Apple keynotes? I feel like Apple's innovation has gone from "groundbreaking" to "safe". All of these products are just too predictable.

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.

no USB port to be able to easily copy files to/from seems a bit detrimental to pro usage, as well as no way to connect an external display for presentations.

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.

> no USB port to be able to easily copy files to/from

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.

You can use an external display with a dongle or wirelessly through AirPlay Mirroring (if you have an AppleTV on the other end). People have been using iPads to do presentations for a long time.

The Innovators Dilemma[1] is a great book for thinking about announcements like this. A "disruptive innovation" does something really well such that some people want it, but it is inferior in many ways to the market leaders. The market leaders can even laugh at the weak alternative and wonder why someone would want it.

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".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

I wouldn't imagine a device like that to literally goes out without any decent content creation thought in mind. I'm sick of using my medium (now) screen iPad as a comment maker. I want to use it for development. I want my iPad to run WebStorm , SublimeText, GitHub.

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.

Seems to me the iPad was always intended as a content consumption device. Seems like your use case is much, much better served by an iPad Air - which costs about the same as an iPad Pro but is way more developer friendly.

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.

Curious to see how long until Atom is ported to iOS. It's all just HTML and a JS engine, right? If Facebook can build React Native, someone can build Atom for the iPad Pro.

These techcrunch articles are little more than Apple press releases (i.e. ads)

Personally all I really want is a macbook air with retina.

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.

Isn't that the MacBook? http://www.apple.com/macbook/

Not for me to defend Apple, but the iPhone did launch six years after the iPod, and it's been only five since the iPad.

It is in direct competition to the 'Surface Pro'.

Except it runs iOS and not a full desktop operating system. Why would a "pro" user choose this over a surface pro/MBP/ubuntu certified system?

As it is a mobile OS (iOS) rather than a desktop OS (e.g., OSX), it seems more comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (Android) than the Surface Pro 3 (desktop Windows 8.1/10).

Later edit. It's iOS for fuck sake. It's ridiculous to compare iOS with full Windows. A keyboard is not that useful in a TOUCH based OS.

I still believe that in order for apple to get more iPads sold, Apple need to move towards enterprise which IMO means they need to loose the Sandbox requirements which is holding back a lot of innovation.

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.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/

Enterprise customers can already sign their own apps for internal use.

Mac got this product completely wrong. We needed a tablet that runs Mac OS that we can use for work not a bigger iOS form factor. One of the worst product decision I've seen Apple make.

Couldn't agree more. "Pro" is OS X, not iOS.

This makes the iPad ("finally") a legitimate successor to the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 (from the 1990s), and incidentally the first iPad that I personally am excited about buying.

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.

I know I'm taking the bate here but it seems to me that this is a product marketed towards artists and is clearly not a stylus for operating the device which was common practise before the iPhone was launched for the reason of mitigating the problems with resistive touch screens that were widely used at the time.

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.

In a dream world Apple would license all OS's.

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 would like to short APPL long term, say for 4-5 years. Is there a (simple) mechanism to short a stock long term, that is immune to local price fluctuations?

LEAP puts.

(second post different topic) Work uses Two Factor Authentication using certificates. Presently they are on a USB smart card or a device with a smart card reader. So far it works well on Surface and Android tablets. Did anybody see the iOS9 section if they will support certificates? Living in a smartcard world, this is also a must. Apple hasn't cracked the Citrix world so far, they keep saying iOSx+1.

Not excited at all. Mobile OSes are crippled by design, especially iOS, so why would I spend this much when I can just get a real computer with a very similar form factor? Mobile OSes are fundamentally designed for quick, limited interaction use cases like ordering an Uber car or checking a web site, not for "real work."

I'm sure someone will buy it, but I don't predict it'll be very big.

Just like the top of line products from any company. They fill a niche, and they're more about gaining a competitive edge than they are about generating tons of profit. You see one in a coffee shop, go to the store (instead of a competitor's) and see the price, and walk out with an Air 2.

Very interesting to see the Microsoft demo on it and warm welcome during the keynote. Very different to the shouts of "NOOOO!" during the Apple event where they had Bill Gates call in, and IE was made the default browser.

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.

They announced a Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2"

My initial thought precisely.

  Samsung Note Pro :  12.2" , 2560 x 1600
  Apple iPad Pro   :  12.9" , 2732 x 2048

So, about 15mm longer in the diagonal, and a higher resolution.

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.

Well, its bigger and has a somewhat higher resolution screen, but, yeah, its basically the iOS version of that.

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.)

The Note Pro 12.2 is cheap - I can only assume that they can't sell them for some reason

At that size it is balancing close to the edge where computers live.

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.

ASUS Transformer Books: http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-T300CHI-F1-DB-All-Aluminum...

Touch laptops already exist.

An iPad Pro that runs both OSX and iOS, or at least iOS apps inside OSX would be more interesting

Any indication if Apple is going to support pointer events[1] now since there is a stylus ?

[1]: http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer

I love my Nexus-series tablets. I'm a ruby guy, so I have a Macbook (and a hackintosh); if they were to release a Surface killer, I would be in line.

Kind of disappointing.

Depending on stylus input quality (both hardware and software, as well as screen), this might destroy Wacom's bottom line. Destroy? Annihilate.

From the iPad Pro landing page:

The New Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro The only thing we didn't reinvent was the alphabet.

A little shot across Google's bow?

Pencil. Jobs is spinning in his grave.

Edit: 99 dollars !!

I like to joke too, but not really, if you're serious - Jobs always hated things until he could claim that Apple reinvented them. Even Gruber was making fun of it yesterday. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/08/gizmodo-netflix

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.

you can get a low to medium end tablet for the price of apple's stylus. What magic powers are in this pen of his?

$99 is right on par with similar styluses.

>It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.

>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-...

I think as we've seen on Surfaces and on many other tablets, styluses can be pretty useful for pro-sumers.

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".

Does it have 3D or Force Touch?

if it had I would think they'd have said something, I wouldn't be surprised if it was only for the pen for now, it might also not be possible to be as precise when it comes to finger pressure detection on a larger screen compared to a smartphone

Unfortunately the keyboard seems similar to the keyboard on the New Macbook.

still runs ios? so it's not a surface pro killer, but a mere ipad RT?

It's hard to kill something that's already dead

Any word on how many levels of pressure sensitivity the pencil thing has?

Please don't complain about the next vim vs emacs debate. :)

They are saying all this and not saying how much Ram it has.

Seems like its only 2 gig. They touted the ability to edit video on this in relation to its CPU/GPU prowess but fail to mention the all important ram. This isn't editing anything but a 1 minutes HD video with 2 gigs of ram.

Gigabit Ethernet Port? USB or thunderbolt ports? NFC?

No mouse or trackpad? Really? I'm supposed to awkwardly and dangerously contort my wrist every time I want to click on something?

Look at the bright side: in a few years, Apple users might be able to run multiple programs... at the same time!*

* Like Windows and Linux.

I want that screen in a laptop.

"We can have both Word and Excel on the screen at the same time!" - Apple, 2015.

These Apple keynotes can be pretty funny.

I just watched a Computer Chronicles episode about Windows 3.0 introduction and it was .. the same (Windows allowed you to have multiple programs right). Every decade platform change introduce a regression cycle and then you have talks about how you can do all the same things but on new infrastructure.

I'm hoping that was deliberate phrasing...because it would reflect the (correct, IMO) opinion that Apple's office suite isn't a replacement for MS Office, and that that opinion is agreed upon internally.

That said, it'd be fun to hear from a Apple employee...do they frequently use iWork for intraoffice documents?

Odd isn't it? In the June (?) keynote and El Capitan preview they highlight snapping windows side by side in full-screen mode as a wonderful new feature. Considering that non-fullscreen mode allows you to do this and fullscreen mode basically removes your ability to do proper window management, this seems odd to me. It seems they are reinventing all the window management features INSIDE fullscreen mode and calling them new features.... they could just remove window decorations like running X with no WM and call it a wonderful new "less distraction" mode?

I never use fullscreen mode - why would I with two screens or if I am writing code with documentation next to it? Videos perhaps.

You compare current features against previous features, not globally available features.

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.

Time is a flat circle.

This is my thought as well-- but the iPad isn't for us, it's for grandmas and quasi-luddites. The marketing and feature set reflects this.

I don't want it unless it has an exposed CLI without jail breaking.

It's officially running iOS and not mainline OS-X-for-tablets, so I think it's safe to say that's out of the question.

What do you want the CLI to do? It's pretty fundamental to the iOS model (and the Android one) that apps are isolated from each other, so you certainly could have a CLI app that does stuff (ssh, git, vi?) within its own home directory, but can't interact with the rest of the system.

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.

There's the app 'Prompt' which gives you an ssh terminal.

Why? I don't think you're their target market?

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.

Right?

Why is this so difficult.

ASUS Flip + Crouton

Predicting now price of $1k or higher.

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.

$799 for 32GB model.

>Also the press is absolutely going to hammer Apple for copying the Surface Pro

The press only give the writers' equivalent of blowjobs to apple. It has been that way for a decade.

If they do, they'll be being intellectually dishonest, given that 'Pro' has been part of Apple's naming scheme for a decade. 'Mac Pro', 'MacBook Pro', 'iPad Pro'.

Microsoft wasn't even making computers when Apple started using the name.

It's official people, Apple has jumped the shark and it's getting rougher and rougher for them from now on.