Whoa, that's really bright.
The iPad Pro is one of Apple's more puzzling devices. The Pro moniker
implies it's made for professionals, and it certainly would seem that way. It's a
showcase of all the latest and greatest tech in the tablet world. And this one's
no different. It's got Apple's famed M1 chip. It supports 5G wireless
connectivity. And then if you get this bigger model, there's the screen. It's
called the Liquid Retina XDR, and it's a vibrant, bright screen that makes all
the difference on a device that's essentially all screen. Instead of being
lit from the side like many screens are, this 12.9 in is lit from the back by
over 10,000 miniLEDD lights, and they're
controlled through 2500 dimming zones.
It means each dimming zone gets about four LEDs and is about 812 micrometers
squared. The result is that black areas
of the screen become black and bright areas can get real bright to a peak of
about 1,600 nits. In a dark room with
dark dramatic footage, much like what you're watching right now, it really
pops.
If you put this screen right up next to last year's iPad Pro, you can see how
stark the improvements are. On the older iPad, you can make out where the edge of
the screen meets the border. On the new one, black is truly black. But this is
an iPad professional, and that means you shouldn't be watching anything you're
not making. The screen is great for professionals in the visual arts
industry, like photographers or folk like me NVIDIA. But even if you're in
another industry, we can all benefit from the increased performance. But
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Now, back to the show.
This iPad has the same M1 chip that's included in the new iMac, Mac Mini, and
MacBooks Air and Pro. It is faster than
the old A12Z chip in the last iPad Pro,
but that's not what impresses most. RAM is up from 6 GB in the old model to 8
GB. Or if you spec up the storage, like this one, to a terabyte or above, you
get a whole 16 GB of memory.
The USBC port is now a Thunderbolt port.
Hook it up to a Thunderbolt dock and you can push some massive bandwidth to
external SSDs, or better still, push 6K
resolution to the Big Boy XDR display.
Professionals working from home will also like the front-facing camera with
center stage. It's got more megapixels, 12 now, but more interestingly, a wider
field of view that lets the camera automatically pan and zoom on your Zoom
calls. You don't have to be attached to a chair anymore, or you can demonstrate
your whiteboard to your clients or something. And if you decide to do it in
the park like I have, the iPad Pro has
joined the race to 5G, which for me
means I'm not getting it. I'm getting LTE. But when I did test at the office,
I was able to get 99 megabits per second down on 5G and 130 megabits per second
down on LTE. Man, is 5G overrated. So,
the hardware is right up there with what professionals are looking for. Fast
chip, fast connectivity, and amazing screen. But I'm not sure very many
professionals are going to run out and get one.
When it comes to professionals and technology, workflow is what matters.
What is the process to do the work that needs to get done? Now, professionals
try to optimize this all the time and will often buy things to help improve
workflow. I'm a professional and the workflows that I'm familiar with are
video editing, writing, and photography. App-wise, these are things that are
easily done on the iPad, but it's the iPad operating system that lets things
down everywhere else. Let's take video editing for example. Video editors use
special codecs when editing because they're actually easier for the hardware
to process. But the iPad doesn't support
any of them, not even Apple's very own ProRes. Lumaf Fusion is a decent editor
that works quite well, but if you shoot with anything that isn't an iPhone or
basic DSLR, you won't be able to play it back unless you re-encode it, which you
can't do on the iPad Pro. So, what's the point? The only supported codecs on iPad
OS are the harder toit compressed codecs. And that means that even with
this M1 chip, footage scrubbing can get choppy, especially going backwards. It's
a shame, too, because it's really cool how when you're editing HDR video, the
preview frame is so much brighter than the interface. It just glows, showing
you how dramatic your video will be.
Photo editing can pose similar challenges. Adobe's Lightroom app is
great, and being able to use any USBC SD card reader is really convenient. File
management has improved immensely over the years, but then there are still
weird little things like no progress bars for some file transfers. They just
happen. And
hello. Hey, I just uploaded those photos onto Google Drive for you to edit. Could you
get them back to me by end of day? Yeah, sure. We'll do.
Thank you. Okay, so
this is where things can get ugly. There are many professionals who use Google or
situations where they have to use Google and that's going to cause some pain.
Okay, I'll go into Lightroom and then I'll import the photos from files. Okay,
uh Google Drive's here. I don't see the folder. Okay, it's probably cuz there's
a shared folder. So, I got to go into Google Drive here. There's the folder.
All right, I got all the photos selected. Move.
I can't. Okay, let me go in the browser. There's
the folder. Maybe I can download the folder.
It's a good thing that this is 5G. Well, LTE,
can't download file.
Open the files app. Google Drive.
They're all grayed out. Maybe Lightroom will sense it.
I just want these files in my iPad. I think I have to go back to the office.
There's more to iPad OS, too. Despite
this model having 16 GB of RAM, apps
can't use it all. The developers of Procreate recently revealed that they're
only able to use 5 GB of RAM. Now, that's more than the old iPad Pro,
meaning you get 95 layers on a letter sheet as opposed to 75, but it's still
also 95 layers on an 8 gig model, too.
So, what's all this RAM for?
Good morning and welcome to WWDC. At
this year's WWDC, I thought Apple was going to show off some awesome new
capability for iPad OS, but all we're
going to get are some improvements to multitasking, not even multi-user
support. So, we're still dealing with the limitations that a car kids can
drive brings. This model I have right here is $2,000.
Add a pencil and this beautiful white
magic keyboard and you're looking at an all-in cost of
almost $2500. That's not chump change. And I realize
professionals do spend more on things like say cameras,
but these are specialized pieces of equipment and the purchases are
thoughtfully considered in their workflow. This is still a computer. Even
at $1,100 for a 128 GB 12.9 in iPad Pro,
it's still a lot. And despite this beautiful screen, I think it's too big
as an iPad. It works extremely well docked in the Magic Keyboard, really
making computing quick, snappy, and desktop-like. But once you hold it in
your hands, it's a lot. You're going to
really have to need the big screen.
Otherwise, there's really something to be said about the smaller one, which at
$800 is a little easier to swallow. Then
there's the iPad Air, which for $50 less
will give you double the storage.
The iPad tends to complement already established professional workflows
rather than be the center of a workflow. It's usually connected to a professional
device or piece of equipment. And so it's not clear that all this power and
all this screen is entirely necessary even in those scenarios. In many ways,
the iPad Pro is a luxury item. Beautifully crafted with the best
technology at the highest price. It gets you the best screen, accessories, and
processor. But for iPad OS, that is all
headroom for the future. It's not something developers or professionals
can really take advantage of today. Apple's big challenge with the iPad Pro
is that they're adapting a book to a movie. It's fast-paced, fun, and
engaging, but doesn't really reach to the depths of the platform that all the
tech originates on. Maybe iPad OS will handle this translation better in the
future. But until then, most professional workflows are still better
served by macOS, which they can get on a much less expensive MacBook Air.
Thanks for blazing through this Mac Address. Make sure to like if you can't
afford the iPad Pro and subscribe if you'd accept one for free. And if you
are a professional who's not an artist who has found a really great app and
workflow that takes advantage of the iPad Pro, let me know in the comments
below. I'm curious how it helps you.