In the part of the office where I sit, there are a lot of arguments.
I don't care what you say, pineapple belongs on pizza.
Real mature. It could be about YouTubers. Mr. Beast is the greatest YouTuber of all time, I swear.
Or if I get involved, it's about the iPad.
macOS doesn't belong on the iPad.
BOOM! And Apple doesn't even help me make my case.
Thanks to the inclusion of the M2 processor on the brand new iPad Pro, there's technically
no reason why it can't run macOS, especially when docked to a Magic keyboard or USB-C hub.
Exactly. I just want one device for everything. Yeah!
That's what I was trying to tell you! But guys, alongside the new hardware, Apple announced that DaVinci Resolve would be coming
to the device. If Blackmagic thinks that its professional grade video editing suite is good enough for
iPad OS, then maybe I'm right. And to find out, I'm going to edit a whole video on this iPad.
Spoiler though, I wasn't entirely right.
Back when I tried the M1 iPad Pro, I had many gripes about its capability at the time.
It couldn't play ProRes video. File management was annoying and nothing could fully utilize its impressive processor and
display. Since then, iPad OS has changed by so much, I'm actually quite surprised how far it's
come. And some of the decisions, like putting a powerful PC processor in here, makes more sense.
In professional circles, DaVinci Resolve is best known for its capabilities as a color-grading
application to help transform the look, footage.
For the rest of us, the free version of the desktop app is an incredibly powerful video
editor for those who want to get into it. Editing on a computer with a big screen and mouse has obvious benefits.
The large canvas and precise controls are essential for translating a creative vision
into a finished product. So with only a finger and tiny screen, how does that work on the iPad?
It's a good question. And it's why, on first launch, DaVinci presents you with the cut and color pages, as opposed
to the seven pages available on the desktop app.
If you're used to a traditional timeline, the cut page has a bit of a learning curve,
but after a couple of days, I appreciate why they did it this way, especially on this
screen. I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed video editing on the iPad.
Yes, it is slower. Don't expect to see edited on iPad in Apple's next keynote.
But for short social videos, rough storylines, and quick news stories, it's not only possible,
it's even kind of fun. There's this delightful satisfaction to scrubbing and moving clips around with one finger.
However, if I had to choose between my finger or the pencil, I'd use the pencil.
It's particularly great on the new iPad Pro, because DaVinci Resolve takes advantage of
the new Hover feature. I was initially skeptical about Hover, I mean, it's just based off mouseover, right?
But in the real world, it feels like much more than that.
It adds a magical new layer of interactivity to the interface that just makes sense.
So as the tip of the pencil hovers over a button element, it comes to life, and when
it grazes over a video clip in the media window, it scrubs through it.
Woah, this is so cool. I have to show Ed.
Hey, Ed. Oh, yeah, I know, and I'm actually going to set up the iPad in the color booth.
What? You're going to set up an iPad as a computer here, like right now?
Yeah. I'm speechless. Let's go.
It turns out that Ed is so convinced by DaVinci on the iPad that he wants to actually set
one up in the color correction booth here at Linus Media Group.
Oh, so it's going in here. Okay, so I have to ask, is it because DaVinci is now available on the iPad that that's why
you want it to play here? That was the biggest reason, yeah.
I mean, like the screen's fantastic and our normal systems are expensive, so this being
like under 2,000. Will we need this anymore?
No. Okay, I'll take that out. Will we need this anymore?
No, that doesn't work either. Will we need this?
Uh, nope. We have the Apple Pencil, right?
What? I like clean the whole desk. Yeah, I mean, this is kind of all you need.
What have you learned in your time playing around with DaVinci on there? I've learned that the touch interface is fantastic, especially with a pencil.
You know, adjusting the curves or using the wheels, it's just a lot more intuitive than
like using a mouse. What's this? So I found all the stands that are out there for the iPad, kind of put it like over there
and then your keyboard's here and if you want to use a pencil, you're reaching over.
So I made this thing so that it puts the iPad over your keyboard so that the distance
between your keyboard hand and the pencil hand, relatively the same.
It appears that even here in the PC-ist of PC land, the iPad is getting a plinth to celebrate
its status as a fully capable computer. I wasn't expecting this, but even Ed thinks that there is merit to keeping the macOS interface
off the iPad. Oh, wow.
Whoa. Yeah, that's worse. Ah.
How does this change sort of the way you grade compared to how you did in the past?
In terms of ergonomics, it's just a lot better. It's a lot more comfortable, natural feeling, but this thing, you have to click on a thing
and then your whole ARM is under tension while you're moving it, right?
Yep. Or is this thing, I'm just like, bleh.
Would you say that this is an example of an application where the way the iPad is, it
actually is better not being a PC?
And features like all of these, they're fantastic.
It's, touchscreen is just better. So if you're just using it for color like you want to do, then this actually works out.
This actually helps my argument, right? It does.
Yes. Yes. And if you notice, not once has Ed mentioned that it should have macOS.
Yes, we're coming back to that. Even without macOS, it turns out that you can access what appears to be most of the functions
found in the desktop DaVinci Resolve by messing around with these keyboard shortcuts.
You can get all the pages except deliver and even audio syncing tools.
It's like there's a whole app hidden under here.
Well, almost playing around with some of the functions.
It's clear that we weren't really intended to be turning any of these dials.
So let's get back to using DaVinci as it was intended with my project.
It turns out that editing a full Mac Address video on the iPad is a lot harder than I thought.
Production environments like ours use expensive cameras, microphones and audio recorders that
need to be synced together. It's already chaotic on a computer and given the audio sync function isn't a menu option,
it just wasn't possible. Okay, so I may have been a little too ambitious with this project.
So I pivoted to editing a YouTube short I shot with an iPhone.
I actually think this is a truly excellent use case for video editing on the iPad.
Though the layout of DaVinci Resolve isn't optimized for vertical video, so we end up
with all this wasted space. Space that already comes at such a premium that Blackmagic couldn't afford to put labels
on many of the interface icons. So there's no quick way to figure out what they do.
This was a bit of a problem. On a Mac, you can just hover the mouse over a button and a tooltip should pop up explaining
its function. That would be a great use of the Pencils Hover feature.
I should confess that Ed's iPad setup isn't entirely perfect either.
He can output a full screen HDR feed to the external monitor, but if he switches apps
or pulls down the notification drop down, it resets the output to no longer be HDR.
Outside of DaVinci, dealing with files on the iPad is still a pain point.
Even just to edit, you'll either need to pay for lots of storage built in or be willing
to deal with an SSD dangling off your single, precious Thunderbolt port.
Editing off a Wi-Fi network drive is possible, but the network speeds aren't fast enough
for the professional file formats that DaVinci supports.
Then if you want to copy those files off the network drive, you'll be blind finding them.
For my project, I needed to find an old clip, and the file browsing unfortunately isn't
available within DaVinci, so I have to use the Files app.
The icon view thumbnails don't populate for video clips on network drives.
It appears that some of the arguments for macOS on the iPad remain.
I'd have no problem seeing thumbnails for these video clips in Finder, or better yet
I could simply use desktop DaVinci's fully featured media page.
But would we get the clever hover effect on the pencil, and would it not be hard to use
on the 11 inch form factor? There are things that make macOS good for certain tasks, but if we have the imagination
to think of them, there are things that could make the iPad more portable, more intimate,
and maybe even just better than macOS. And if Apple caves and puts macOS on the iPad, we might never see them come to fruition.
I can see why people are getting impatient. Apple has been bringing both the capabilities and pricing of their pro models closer to the
max, so it's frustrating to be asked to pay for potential that maybe will be realized
two years from now. Maybe.
Along with video editing, I tried the new stage manager on an external display.
It's much better than I remember, but still odd and glitchy. I wrote and edited this whole script in Word with a magic keyboard, and still encountered
maddening issues like a delay when moving the cursor and unpredictable scrolling speeds
when attempting to select multiple paragraphs of text.
I'm beginning to realize that most of my frustrations using the iPad come when I'm trying
to use it like a Mac. But I still believe that putting macOS on here is the wrong solution.
As I keep trying to tell my colleagues, that would come at the expense of how the hardware
gets used. The tablet would be best docked, not undocked, and that would kill the whole idea of the
iPad. I'm not saying it's perfect.
iOS and now iPadOS is, by Apple's own admission in the court of law, restricted to be the
car kids can drive. I think it goes a little too far in weird ways.
File management doesn't need to be this difficult. When Apple's controlling tendencies can make it hard for developers to make the most of
the platform, all this has hampered the pace of innovation and possibility for the iPad.
Because developers, already skeptical of the tablet form factor, aren't going to invest
in creating new uses for this device when there's a gatekeeper controlling more than
what they feel is reasonable. And so we're here, waiting to see who's going to invest in new use cases for this device.
Oh yeah, the video.
Well you may have already seen the short I made on the iPad. It's the one where I plug in a bunch of monitors into an M2 MacBook.
Turned out pretty good I think. I wanted to try editing on an iPad, and it's neat.
And let's keep it that way, and keep exploring how these fresh ideas can work elsewhere.
I might not have convinced you, but some people are clearly responding to Apple's strategy
of keeping the iPad, iPad. I keep meeting people who don't want it to be a Mac, and talk about switching to the
iPad on its merits. Hopefully in due time there are more merits to be uncovered, and I'll make believers out
of all of you. Thanks for editing this Mac Address with only a finger.
If you disagree with me and think that macOS should be in the iPad, give this video a like.
And if you think the future of the iPad is NVIDIA editing, well you might as well subscribe.
Now I'm curious in the comments what you think the next app that the iPad should adopt to
really bring its capability up. We've got video editing, what else?