IS THE iPAD PRO FOR YOU?
There are a number of ways you can describe the iPad Pro – a really big tablet, a laptop screen without the keyboard, a really large drawing book with a special pencil, something you sell both kidneys for, etc. For us, it seems to be an effort from Apple to blur out the lines between a laptop and a tablet computer even further, and is obviously something which is intended to directly compete with the Microsoft Surface, which slowly but surely is creating quite a niche for itself.
The iPad Pro is a fairly sophisticated bit of hardware from Apple. It’s size makes you feel pretty much like using an iPad Air 2 multiplied by 2. The 12.9-inch screen makes it about as big as the new MacBook, and is a size we’ve learned to become comfortable with. The various buttons, including the Home Button are in their usual place, which means using the iPad is definitely not too much of a learning curve. There’s also the new Smart Connector, which is pretty much everything that the iPad has in the name of external ports. This is where the Apple Keyboard, and hopefully a lot of other future extensions will connect. There’s also the Apple Pencil, which is pretty easily the most impressive and capable stylus we’ve seen for Apple’s tablets so far, and is capable of adding a whole new dimension to computing. The machine runs on iOS 9, the latest version of Apple’s OS for its portable devices, and benefits from features such as Split View and others, that try to bring it as close to desktop computing as possible. The device also packs Apple’s latest A9 processor and 4GB of RAM, which means it’s more than ready for most of the things you can throw at it.
Available for a good Rs. 90,000+ on Amazon for the most basic model, without the keyboard and the stylus, the iPad Pro is a fairly expensive bit of kit, and not as easy a buy as say an iPad Mini or even Air. Apple’s pretty clear that the average consumer is either going to buy the iPad Pro or one of its MacBooks, but not both. With that price tag, there’s definitely a bit of thinking you need to do before getting yourself one. So who stands to benefit the most from an iPad Pro? Here’s our 2 cents on the kind of people we think can generate the most out of an iPad Pro: –
- THE NEW GENERATION: It goes without saying that the iPad Pro is designed as a laptop replacement, but most of us are still used to our good old trackpad and keyboard when we sit to get work done, however, there are a lot of people who are now more comfortable with a touch-based interface which can be much more intuitive than a trackpad-based one. We’re talking about the people who actually only need a physical keyboard for typing and nothing else. If you’re one of them, then the iPad Pro is all you’ve ever wanted. It’s powerful, huge, extremely portable, and handles multitasking like never before.
- THE TRAVELERS: Most of us are currently in jobs that require us to hop into planes or trains at short notice, and we need something to get work done on the go, as well as help in keeping us entertained. The iPad Pro is the perfect travel companion for somebody who likes to get a lot of work done in transit. While Apple’s current line of MacBooks is small and light enough to carry around, you still can’t ignore the fact that it’s permanently hinged to a keyboard and you can’t hold it at all kind of angles. The iPad solves that problem by being just as large as the MacBook, but more portable. You can easily stack away the keyboard and pencil when you know you’re not getting any work done, making your life much easier. And when you’ve got to get into numbers, or make that presentation, presto the accessories just come back out and the superior processing and multitasking features help you get work done easily! The iPad Pro even manages to beat Apple’s MacBook at some of the performance benchmarks!
- THE ARTISTS: By far, the kind of people we think are going to benefit the most from the iPad Pro is artists, especially ones who design for the digital medium. The Apple Pencil is an amazing device that’s makes you capable of drawing, shading and coloring with incredible accuracy and virtually no lag of any kind. You can use Apple’s inbuilt apps for drawing, and we’re surely going to see a lot of 3rd Party Apps taking advantage of the Apple Pencil soon enough. While the device is not as powerful as a desktop would be, but then it’s so much more portable. It’s the perfect device for sitting at the beach and drawing the beautiful scenery in front of you. We have to give it to Apple for making the drawing experience, as close to the conventional way as possible, and this is one area we think it is comprehensively better than the Surface.
This is our thought process on the Apple iPad Pro. Have you bought one? We’d love to know what you do with it, let us know in the comments!