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M4 iPad Pro

Tony L

Tony L

Administrator
Anyone tempted?


Marquess Brownlee kind of nails it in that it is a) amazing, but b) an iPad with all the constraints of iPadOS. I will be buying one as I feel it is a good time to retire my trusty gen 2 11 iPad Pro whilst it still has good resale value (Apple will actually give me £285 trade in, and I may be able to better that just by selling it). The apparently improved display quality is really the thing I’m interested in given I spend so much of my waking life staring at the thing! I’m not going to jump immediately as I’d like to see some more reviews, see if they bend too easily, wait for some nice cases etc, but I see one in my future (likely the base model, maybe 512GB, but I’m not convinced I need that (current is only 128GB, and I’ve not filled it as I don’t keep music on it)).
 
Nice, but by the time you go for the bigger screen, decent memory, the fancy keyboard and pencil you’ve hit over £2k and you are still lumbered with iPadOS. Perhaps if I could draw maybe .. Would be a great Roon control point. Have an older iPad Pro 10.5”, still good. Waste far too much time on it.
 
The 11” size is optimal IMO. Just the right size for portrait-mode web browsing etc. I‘d not want any bigger even if it was free. I’ve always used the iPad 100% as a tablet, I actually have mine locked in portrait mode. If I want anything more ‘computery‘ I just power up the Macbook Pro. iPadOS just isn’t quite there yet to be a proper computer replacement. It is just too locked-down, the file-handling too awkward etc.
 
"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 :)
 
The pricing structure is a fine lesson in upselling, and it makes their laptops look affordable.

Anything that helps a return to matte screens is welcome, but in typical Apple fashion, that good display is optional only on the highest-margin configurations.

I'm not an iOS fan in any of its variants, so I'd never buy one of these, but if you're bought in already and you've got lots of money, it looks like a reasonable buy. I would be worried about the screen though: this is Apple's first big screen OLED product, and the Heath-Robinson two layer system they're using makes me worry about longevity.
 
My 12”9 iPad Pro is 8 years old at this point and, if I wasnt obligated to use a Windows laptop for work, I struggle to imagine the circumstances in which I’d need either a Windows device or a Mac. I’ve run a web site from it for years; run Office 365; recorded music etc.

My first generation Pencil remains great for long form completion and signing stuff and the smart keyboard sees plenty of use even now.

People who don’t use them will always find some reason to angst over stuff which is rarely real and more of a function of the fanboy wars. I’m plenty familiar with the flaws in iOS but they’re no more a deal breaker than the many flaws of Windows and I say that as someone with MS certification.
 
KrisW said:
Anything that helps a return to matte screens is welcome, but in typical Apple fashion, that good display is optional only on the highest-margin configurations.
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I’m with Marquess Brownlee on this, no way would I take that option even if it was free and available on the base model I’m interested in. I’d just not trust it to wear well on a touch-screen. I bet they’ll have a recall a year or more in! They’ll just look like crap with shiny areas over where the virtual keyboard appears etc. The standard glass holds up very well.

My main concern is that it will bend too easily in a bag or if you accidentally lean or sit on it. Apple’s quest for ‘thinness’ as a performance metric baffles me. I’d take robustness and better battery life every time.

chartz said:
Tempted, yes. Not exactly affordable.
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It is actually a lot better than I was expecting, especially with trade-in. the 256GB 11” is £999, minus £285 for my existing iPad (which I may be able to better privately, it is mint, boxed, never dropped etc) so a worst case upgrade of £724 for the IT item I do the vast majority of work on and I’d expect a lifespan of 3-4 years. That’s only around £200 a year total cost of ownership for what is my main business tool. Bargain!

PS I’d been following the pre-release gossip so was actually expecting a huge price-bump for the OLED screen, some were suggesting it would start at $1300.
 
I can’t imagine any issue with bending. Mine has a robust plastic cover on the back and the smart keyboard on the front when travelling. Apple cases for iPads are largely useless but I’ve had a Macbook zip up case for all the time I’ve had mine and it’s been slung in a packed rucksack and gone to football weekly; been thrown around on my back when cycling or on public transport etc. with not one issue. The device may get thinner and theoretically more problematic but out in the real world you buy the right protection and never think about it again.
 
Tony L said:
My main concern is that it will bend too easily in a bag or if you accidentally lean or sit on it. Apple’s quest for ‘thinness’ as a performance metric baffles me. I’d take robustness and better battery life every time.
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It's not for customers at all; it's about reducing air freight costs. When you make your products so far away from your major markets, but insist on big-bang introductions, the first month or two of any new product line has to be delivered by air. Thinner, lighter products means you get more of them shipped for a given volume and weight.

I was told once how much Apple saved by reducing the weight of the iPhone 5 versus the 4S over the first six months of sales, and while I can't recall the exact figure, I remember it had eight zeros in it.
 
My trusty 1st generation Pro is now at the point where it won‘t run the latest iOS, so probably time to change it. The storage is interesting, mine is 128GB, which they still offer. I suppose folk stick everything in the cloud now so it’s less important.
 
Ponty said:
My trusty 1st generation Pro is now at the point where it won‘t run the latest iOS, so probably time to change it. The storage is interesting, mine is 128GB, which they still offer. I suppose folk stick everything in the cloud now so it’s less important.
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That’s the way I’ve worked until now. The iPad is just a tablet. The iPhone has needed more storage as I used it as an iPod (though now I have a Chord Poly/Mojo I’m not sure that is applicable). Everything else is on the MacBook Pro, so that gets used for accounts, site maintenance, fiddling about in Logic etc. Basically anything important that needs a real backup.

The only thing that’s making me think about storage is Logic Pro, as I didn’t even realise there was an iPad version, and looking at the App Store I think I may already own it as I have the MacOS version. That could be fun, though even there 256GB is likely enough as I could easily shift anything complete off to an external drive. I think I only need the base model. Apple always totally take the piss with storage pricing. Buying the extra 256GB to take the iPad to 512GB is about twice the price of a 1TB external SSD drive. The more I think about it the more I’m talking myself into the bog-standard base model 11” Pro. I bet it is an amazing tablet and I don’t think I need anything more.
 
Tony L said:
The 11” size is optimal IMO. Just the right size for portrait-mode web browsing etc. I‘d not want any bigger even if it was free. I’ve always used the iPad 100% as a tablet, I actually have mine locked in portrait mode. If I want anything more ‘computery‘ I just power up the Macbook Pro. iPadOS just isn’t quite there yet to be a proper computer replacement. It is just too locked-down, the file-handling too awkward etc.
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Totally with you on this, for day to day standard computing needs the iPad is everything most of could want, but the file handling aspect of it is what holds it back a little. Like you I have a Macbook Pro that I use for serious Excel work as part of my job, other than that I can use the iPad quite happily. I do wonder how much Apple are deliberately restricting some aspects of IOS so as not to damage sales of their laptops... pity they don't cut loose and empower IOS with the things it is obviously lacking, but they're in business of making money so I can see why they are doing what they are doing. Still think that overall they produce excellent devices and operating systems... we can all ask for more, but that's human nature.
 
Looks nice. My a12z 11” pro is still quick enough for what I need, but that oled screen is tempting. The 11” ipp has been a perfect travel companion since I’ve had it so I agree the size is just right. Hopefully the a12z will see another iOS update or 2, so I reckon it’ll be the next gen for me. Still, that oled screen though..
 
Been waiting a long time for these new iPads to arrive. Bought the 11” M4 Pro last night to replace Mrs AA iPad 6th Gen.

Haven‘t decided which one to replace my Air 4th Gen with, maybe time to go for the 13” M4 Pro, increasingly when seeing clients I use the iPad rather than a Windows laptop, think I may go for the 13” with a keyboard cover and stop lugging a laptop around too as a “just in case” option.
 

Some more good information here. The huge price differential between the smaller storage sizes and 1TB and above models explained (less chip cores, less RAM, less SSD throughput). Apple are doing this kind of thing a lot at present.
 
Tony L said:

Some more good information here. The huge price differential between the smaller storage sizes and 1TB and above models explained (less chip cores, less RAM, less SSD throughput). Apple are doing this kind of thing a lot at present.
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This is the first time they’ve linked CPU to storage size, before they tied Ram to storage now it’s CPU too. Not uber obvious when buying on the Apple site.
 
Amber Audio said:
This is the first time they’ve linked CPU to storage size, before they tied Ram to storage now it’s CPU too. Not uber obvious when buying on the Apple site.
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I bought an M3 Macbook Pro recently and the level of upselling and nobbled specs between the plethora of options is hugely triggering. I ended up with the 13” with the ‘binned’ M3 Pro chip, 18GB and 1TB SSD. Anything below that just seemed deliberately nobbled, anything above grotesquely overpriced. That said for £2.3k I’d have expected to be closer to the top of the spec range. A truly absurd amount of money for a laptop, but I got over 12 years out of its predecessor and it still works perfectly. I only hope this one lasts as well. It’s a nice enough piece of kit, but there is nothing to get excited about. It is just a Macbook, remarkably similar to every other Macbook. They stopped being interesting decades ago! It’s main advantage over its mid-2012 predecessor is it hasn’t been orphaned OS-wise so is fully secure and can run the latest versions of everything.

I’m far happier going base spec on the iPad Pro as I view it as having a shorter service life. I only expect 3-4 years there, whereas these days I want an absolute minimum of a decade out of a proper computer. I’m annoyed the 256GB iPad Pro has half the RAM of the 1TB model and one less CPU core, but this is just the level of grift and slight of hand I expect from the company post-Jobs. The annoyance is I really like the products from a user and system perspective. I’m not a fan of the company these days at all.
 
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