Apple's sections about the environment in their announcements always makes me feel like I'm being gaslit as they mention anything but repair and supporting the consumer's right to reduce and re-use
Unpopular opinion here but Apple’s approach to environmental stuff is more right than wrong. The biggest environmental impact of devices are in the manufacturing and disposel of them. At Apple’s scale all of the things they do add up. Their use of recycled materials, elimination of certain more toxic materials, and even just making lighter products and packaging all help. At a minimum, those efforts are better than not having them and seem to be more than any other manufacturer is willing to do. Apple has set a goal to have a closed production loop, using only materials that they have recycled from older ones. That’s really ambitious and I doubt they’ll get there 100% but once again, what other company is even trying that?
Usually the only thing people can point to for Apple not being as green as they’d like is the repairability of the products. I’m willing to bet that whatever additional waste that is created by that is more than offset by having devices that last longer. Devices that require fewer repairs and have good software support allows either you, or whoever gets your old devices, to keep using the same device for longer. Every device has a lifecycle, making it as long as possible is the best way to avoid environmental impacts.
They're doing a horrible job. You're right that the biggest environmental impact is manufacturing and disposal. But keeping a device running longer is better than manufacturing a new one from recycled parts . The way Apple handles storage and memory means ENTIRE devices need to be replaced when a new larger SSD or a few more gigs of memory are all that's really needed to keep a device in service for a few years longer. Not to mention stuff like just being able to actually replace the keyboard in any reasonable fashion, etc.
There's really very very little reason for all the Macs at least to not have M.2 slots besides letting Apple save pennies on SSD controller costs and convincing users to spring for overpriced upgrades. Even the iPad could probably use an M.2 SSD! The Surface Pros do!
> The way Apple handles storage and memory means ENTIRE devices need to be replaced when a new larger SSD or a few more gigs of memory are all that's really needed to keep a device in service for a few years longer.
Most iPads are vastly overpowered and last for a long time. If someone needs more power/storage, then one usually passes them to the next person which might use it for many more years.
My old iPad Air 2 from 2024 is still used.
> Even the iPad could probably use an M.2 SSD!
Most users don't need that. I'm using fixed storage in my Macs (and iPads) for years. I've attached additional storage to USB-C for many years without problems.
My original iPad Pro from 2015 is still used and is still perfect for not just everything I want to do with it but always has no issue with new stuff... except, Apple finally decided that it won't get OS upgrades, and so the few bits of software on it that I use are going to rot -- even the web browser these days doesn't work long as people no longer believe in progressive enhancement... the few-year old version of iOS on my iPhone would just render blank white pages for major websites, which is what finally forced me to upgrade: the device has devolved to not much more than a dumb phone -- and so this iPad, with its glorious large screen, will soon be trash.
If I could install an alternative third-party web browser -- though it would have to be one by someone who also understood the importance of supporting the old OS -- or if I could pitch in and help maintain the operating system myself, even using binary patches if required (look into who I am if you laugh here, and then stop laughing: we can do quite a lot without source code) I would be able to keep using it, but only Apple can save it now, and they have absolutely zero in incentive to do so.
Yes, but android devices still have objectively inferior software support lifecycles. They have objectively inferior parts-supply lifecycles too, Android tablets and android phones do not offer an m.2 port either, or swappable memory, or whatever the silly ask is this week.
iPhones are literally compared against objective perfection while all their competitors are worse on every single repair-lifecycle outcome. More iOS devices are used for longer than most android devices in the real world, and your n=1 cherry-picked example of your android tablet from 2008 isn’t really a useful or meaningful rebuttal.
I don't understand where this 2008 Android tablet storyline came from? I didn't mention Android, nor did I mention 2008, nor do I believe that there existed an Android tablet of any form in 2008?... I certainly owned some early Android Honeycomb tablets, but neither they--nor my iPads from that era, by the way--are still usefully in service. I honestly do not at all understand what you are replying to :(.
I am just saying that Apple has gone out of their way to lock me out of being able to maintain this perfectly good, old iPad Pro. This is interesting as, frankly, the iPad hasn't really aged as a platform now in almost a decade, seemingly as almost no one is making software for it which needs new hardware (...likely in no small part due to Apple's restrictions on the otherwise very-general device, but the reasons don't matter much).
And yeah, sure: I happily agree that Android devices tend to be worse on many of these fronts... but, they also kind of don't matter, as effectively no one buys Android tablets and frankly no one wants to buy an Android tablet ;P which is a fact I don't see changing in the near future. Insisting that I should redirect my frustrations with Apple onto some no-name Android tablet maker is a big distraction from trying to make a difference in the world.
I’m confused by your confusion - not only is it the topic of this thread, it’s also literally the comment you were replying to.
> Most iPads are vastly overpowered and last for a long time. If someone needs more power/storage, then one usually passes them to the next person which might use it for many more years.
like again, this is in the context of tablets. Can you show a current-production model of an expandable, upgradable alternative from a vendor like google or Samsung or similar?
If not, I think it’s pretty clearly just wishful thinking and double-standards. Apple doesn’t need to solve the whole right-to-repair problem by themselves to go above and beyond the very low bar set by the market alternative vendors. Android’s lifecycle is abysmal for repairability and waste in practice - they are even more disposable devices than the iPad, with shorter software lifecycles and shorter parts lifecycles and much lower volume/worse parts commonality.
The wishful ability to install a custom rom and some Amazon knockoff parts doesn’t actually make that a significant factor within the actual realized lifecycle of these devices.
Does Samsung and apple market their products as eco friendly though? If they do, it went entirely over my head, but I'm usually not really paying attention to their marketing material either.
But let's address your argument itself by applying it to two other companies to see if it holds up: would you consider a "sustainable/green" marketing campaign done by BP, the oil company to be disingenuous, even if they're better then Shell?
I would consider such marketing by them downright offensive and thats why the comparison to android devices seem pretty useless to me, honestly.
In comparison to pretty much all android devices, Apples are better from an environmental perspective. I mean most android devices had an EOL cycle of roughly 2 years until 2023 iirc... But that doesnt change the fact that apple is hardly doing anything either, which makes their marketing claims disingenuous (at least to me).
They don't "last for a long time". I have an ipad that is barely five years old and no longer receives OS updates. You can't even install apps on it (like Netflix, or Youtube) because the OS is "unsupported."
Apple is running a HaaS (Hardware as-a Service) and your subscription is somewhere between two to three years.
> I have an ipad that is barely five years old and no longer receives OS updates. You can't even install apps on it (like Netflix, or Youtube) because the OS is "unsupported."
I’m currentLy using a 2016 iPad Pro (so 8 years running) and I use it for both Netflix and YouTube. It’s also still getting updates. Next year will be the first where it seems to have security updates only as well.
Edit: I also just booted up an even older iPhone 5 and both apps work
If it takes 2% more materials to make the components upgradeable, but only 1% of users will do it over the device's lifetime, then that's a net loss for the environment.
I don't like it either and I'm not sure I agree, but that's probably their logic.
What does that have to do with it? They’ll sell whatever stock they have - most people end up ordering upgraded models so the field split is skewed.
You’re reaching acting like Apple is purposefully creating environmental damage when they do by far more than any other OEM on this planet to minimize their impact. They should be praised for doing anything at all in the face of no competition motivation, not judged for “you can do more!!! >:(“.
They absolutely haven't. It's laughable to suggest they've done the most when they've started trends like gluing down batteries, riveting keyboards, etc. Using slightly more recycled parts in the chassis and removing power adapters from the box does not make up for making devices less repairable.
Until Apple makes their devices with user replaceable batteries all their environmental efforts are falling short. Making consumable part -- a battery -- an integrated component that requires special tools and training to replace is environmental crime in name of planned obsolesce. Everything else Apple does are second-order effects.
Personally I think it’s better to do some good for the environment than no good for the environment. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. They should absolutely let us repair every device, but I’m glad they make the environmental efforts they currently do as well.
Being alive is inherently bad for the environment, and yet – by and large – all humans strive to do it every day. For the most part, I'm convinced that this is a net positive.
I think the source of your sort of unconscious discomfort is because corporate speak is not about truth or justice or any moral/ethical system, it's about reputation-management of the firm and profit. They usually won't make direct provable lies, but will leave out any information that does not boost their reputation even if it's relevant or contradicts their messaging. But importantly, they are appealing to a sense of moral virtue when they brag about environmental responsibility or privacy, even if they aren't taking a lens of truth and justice to their analysis and messaging, but a biased one that ultimately favors profit.
This dissonance in tone vs real motive is really painful to people who care about nuance and truth and moral good, because it means they muddy the waters of what is right and wrong and confuse us.
AH could that be why their "thinnest iPad" advertisement was to crush usable piano, metronome, etc? the iPad division // department does NOT respect reuse?
They're bold enough to say they're carbon neutral.
"Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and life cycle of every product."
What’s the opposite of carbon neutral? That is to say, how much more damage could Apple be doing to the environment if they ended all of their current “Green talk” practices? They’re a business and they’re going to sell things no matter what, would you rather have them do nothing to mitigate the environmental damage, or have them do something?
They don't care. You don't think Apple with their trillions of dollars maybe could make a version of the iPhone version that's upgradable? The worst thing is the industry follows their lead so everything they don't do, the industry does as well.
Apple comes out with 4 versions of the iPhone every year right? How about a fifth version that is 2mm thicker with the ability to upgrade. This is the wealthiest company on the planet in history and they are doing almost nothing.
> Personally I think it’s better to do some good for the environment than no good for the environment. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. They should absolutely let us repair every device, but I’m glad they make the environmental efforts they currently do as well.
>> Personally I think it’s better to do some good for the environment than no good for the environment.
"Some good for the environment" is 0.1% better in some marginal areas (packaging , recycled X material, bundled cables, the stickers in the box it announced it will stop this year, and so on) combined with 20% worse in other areas (tens of millions of devices) for a net 19.9% worse.
And, yes, 19.9% worse is technically better than 20% worse.
Like "technically" removing a bucket of water from a flooding river is less flood than leaving it all.
Practically it's worse. It does nothing to stop the catastrophe, and even worse, this greenwashing is giving false assurances, which help maintain and compound the 19.9% worse year over year (as opposed to people demanding they do something real).
And of the course the hypocrisy, encouraged this way, doesn't stop with Apple.
They're clearly meant to be illustrative, not specific... except if you thought the argument was that Apple's damage to the environment is precisely 19.9% of some yet unspecified unit
You and I both know that would never happen. You can moralize and blame consumerism all you want, but the reality is people want these devices and that’s why they buy them. Apple would be hurting the environment further by eliminating their green practices, because nobody who is concerned about the environment buys an iPhone and thinks “yes, this is enough what I have done, I will do no further.”
Yeah their Watch bands are made of recycled plastic and they don’t use leather anymore. But the quality of the bands is often so bad that you have to replace them after a year or even only some months.
I bought a braided solo loop of theirs and it became stretched out within 5 months. I didn't do anything but take it off my hand each night to charge it. If that's the norm, and the Apple store employee made it seem that way, they shouldn't even sell them.
I genuinely don't grok who is buying iPad Pros; outside of maybe artists & graphic designers? Maybe? But even there, wacomb-like tablets on Mac is still super popular, and the iPad Air in a bigger size is going to be crazy popular.
A 13" iPad Pro with keyboard is $1650. And you can't even get the nanotexture glass below 1TB; so that + keyboard is approaching $2300.
I don't have a personal laptop and use iPad Pro instead. I have a work laptop that I only use for work and I never take on vacations with me.
iPad Pro gives me:
- amazing SSH terminal
- ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights
- a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere)
- a good steam/xcloud client
- when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad.
- a few games to play on the iPad itself when away
- I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac.
- nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there)
- nice screen to look at recipes while I cook
You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place.
If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.
The screen quality is surely good, but why wouldn't an iPad air or Samsung whatever work just as well for all these use cases?
Also, it seems that you connect a keyboard, a mouse, a game pad and a display... Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.
The airs screen was good but not great. Not compared to the 13” pro.
As for peripheral, not at all. My iPad lives mostly in its keyboard folio. I also regularly use a USB-C dock with it for either Ethernet access, HDMI output to hotel TVs, or memory card reading (camera). I know a few people who carry around 8bitdo Bluetooth game controllers for use with all sorts of devices (steam deck, laptop, phone, iPad). If you’re a diehard gamer, it’s well worth it.
> But why wouldn't an iPad air work just as well for all these use cases?
I don't remember whether it had USB-C at the time or not, but it definitely didn't have Thunderbolt, which is a requirement for me.
> Samsung
Same with thunderbolt, but also I can't stand Samsung's version of Android. I wish Pixel Slate kept evolving. The Android tablet experience in general isn't great. Blink terminal is 12/10 experience, there is no app like that for Android. However, on Samsung, I would be able to just install NixOS in VM on the tablet, so there is that.
> Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.
Well, yes, but first it's just one cable and a game pad that I already had. I didn't buy any of those things specifically for the iPad. For me, it was an out-of-the-box experience.
I'd like to mention that when I got my iPad Pro, I had zero apple products at my house.
Blink really turned me off when they started running some automatic shell script that curl | bash's some static version of mosh from their servers without me noticing in order to 'improve' the experience.
No, don't run anything on my servers thanks. I don't even care if there's an option to turn it off.
Switched to termius, I'll miss being able to use custom fonts but meh.
iPad Pro 4:3 264ppi screen = unmatched vertical real estate for SSH CLI and text editing, especially with vertical split screen window management.
Years ago there were 4:3 Thinkpads. Then OEMs moved to 16:9 aspect ratios for video content, some claiming that the economics were no longer viable for 4:3 displays. Yet Apple continues to ship millions of 4:3 screens for iPads.
Currently an iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is my main personal computer. I’ve found that it’s the most enjoyable device to use for internet browsing. It replaced my Chromebook, which had that role before. Like the Chromebook, it’s got a physical keyboard, so it’s good for typing. The cantilever also places the screen closer to my hands, helping me to fluidly switch between keyboard and touch navigation, which both work well. The browser is noticeably snappier than my Chromebook was, although that might come down to a better processor generation.
A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that.
The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer.
The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.
Every time I think about buying an iPad, I just find myself wishing there was a legit / better approach to, you know, computing on it.... I don’t do much for fun besides work on things that need compilers, debuggers, dynamic analysis, linking, JIT execution, tracing, and suchlike. All such endeavors are firmly impossible on iOS and iPadOS.
I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective.
This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
I think this is essentially a portable terminal, just like the phone. Most of my work on laptop for development is to get on high-powered workstation or servers anyway. For occasionally SSH-ing with tmux session, it’s pretty great (although I can’t swap ctrl with caps, which sucks).
I do wish iPad had something to push me over to replace my laptop for that use case, but I’m too used to windowed environment.
There is iSH but it needs to do some insane emulation to offer a linux userspace, and so is quite slow. I have still solved plenty of problems with it, disproving that native iOS is capable on its own, or that ssh/tmux is enough over local environment.
I am basically fed up with my iPad, looking to sell it and buy an Android with termux.
What difference should it make whether it’s a computer with a built-in touch screen or a computer with a mouse, keyboard, and whatnot? How is one “optimized” for this or that? They’re both just computers. The one running Apple’s software is utterly locked down, is the thing. I would like to be able to compute however I like on my computers, yes.
Heck, maybe it would be interesting to work on touchscreen software on a touchscreen computer in a touch oriented IDE or editor, no?
How is one “optimized” for this or that? They’re both just computers.
Well, a sports car and a truck, and a Mini Cooper and an 18-wheeler are all road vehicles too.
The difference is tradeoffs, optimization, cost, user experience, and so on.
The iPad could indeed get the ability to be used as a Mac (hook cable to hub, perhaps monitor, full macOS etc). It would still not exactly be optimized for that, it would need all the extra stuff, but it would work.
A Macbook with a touch screen not so much. It would either have to be detachable (like some PC models), which comes with certain tradeoffs, limits on construction, materials, battery life, thinness (as the screen would need to be able to work autonomously, thus have the CPU and everything), etc.
Or it could be a laptop with a touch screen (again, like some other PC laptop models), which would give an unatural, unergonomic experience.
>Heck, maybe it would be interesting to work on touchscreen software on a touchscreen computer in a touch oriented IDE or editor, no?
Based on our experience with laptops that have that, not that interesting in the end. There's a reason we don't see people using those PC laptops that have that using them for the touch screen in the wild, and that they haven't really caught on.
Yeah, you could have a device with the same form factor and UI that also has a normal terminal and can compile its own code. It’s ok for my personal use case but it’s a big limitation and rules out the device for many people.
With the allowing of emulators, there is now an app called 'a-shell' which you can write/compile (at least) c on.. (the built in clang compiles to wasm, vim/emacs only etc).
I expect this to improve, and I've not tried to build any complex software on it (yet).
I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen, screen is lower and further from my eyes. It’s physically less pleasant to use. There are also some use-cases I can’t even do with the MacBook form factor - eg. on planes, I mount the iPad on the seat in front of me so I watch movies at eye level. Sometimes I hold the iPad in my hands when in pure reading consumption mode.
>I have a MacBook from work so I do compare them. It’s a worse user experience. No touchscreen
And that matters for coding work because?
>screen is lower and further from my eyes.
The iPad screen doesn't have any fixed position, so what are you comparing it to? iPad propped on an Apple iPad keyboard (which would be even lower)? iPad handheld which would be unusable? iPad set flat on a table? iPad on a stand (if so, what prevents you putting the MacBook on a stand?)
MacBook works great at work! Based on my experience with my work device, it’s as pleasant for casual media consumption.
The Magic Keyboard actually lifts the iPad above the keyboard, which puts it in a better viewing position in laptop-mode than an actual laptop. Every little bit helps when you have creaky tendons and joints.
I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?"
The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.) The MBA also has no touch screen, and no stylus. The iPad can also ship with a built-in cellular radio. Now I'm carrying an extra tablet, plus an extra hotspot.
That sure sounds like a lot of compromises to me. If I needed more performance I'd be stepping up to a MBP for the active cooling, which pushes us into a different price bracket anyways. If I needed more disk/memory bandwidth I wouldn't even be considering a portable in the first place. (More realistically: I would be using my portable to shell into a more powerful box, and an iPad Pro or even an iPad Air would do that just as well as any MacBook.)
If you need more external I/O, well, I'm not sure I buy that the iPad Pro is a serious compromise over the MBA. It has 40Gb/s of bandwidth and that's _a lot_ for the vast majority of use-cases. My main MBP already sits docked all day via a single thunderbolt cable.
The only reason I would actually choose an MBA over an iPad is that I'm a developer. I place strangely disproportionate value on things like an untrusted boot-chain, kernel extensions, and freedom.[1] I like having the flexibility to be able to bless and enroll my own bootable volumes. I want to be able to tinker with the system partition. I want to introspect the system when things go wrong. The iPad challenges these things by design.
I cannot emphasize this enough: _all of my friends would be lost trying to follow along with the preceding paragraph._ They would look at me like I had two heads. _The above desiderata are not at all representative of the average computer user today._ For most of what I do (media consumption and some content creation) the iPad Pro would do an excellent job, I'd argue better than the MBA. For everything else I do: "iPad Pro vs. MBA" is a false dichotomy, I would not be choosing either of those machines. I would buy a workstation-class device at a minimum.
>I'm curious what makes you think the MBA is a more "full experience?"
The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.)
News to me, as it never prevented me from doing exactly that. Like hundreds of millions who don't own a tablet (and I do own some).
Meh a Chromebook let's you run Linux apps thought. I can run full blown IDEs locally without problems. And yes, that is with 8Gb ram, ChromeOS has superb memory management.
I'm going to. Every digital thing I do outside of my job happens on an iPad Pro and I absolutely love it. I make music in Logic Pro on an M1 iPad Pro - it's hard to overstate how amazing it is to be able to carry around an entire recording studio in such a tactile form factor. I can't get on with desktop DAWs at all.
One segment - old people. It’s a great device - reliable, fast, convenient, and portable. Large screen is a godsend for old guy like me. If you own one, I think you may find it really pleasant to use as side device on your desk.
I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(
I bought one last year to code with and give demos/workshops of our products. This worked mostly well given that I could remote into my work computer through a Tailscale subnet router.
I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment.
However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale.
Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home.
I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.
Not an artist but the Wacom-like graphic tablets are tethered to the laptop or workstation, with at least two cables (one for power, another for the HDMI) so some artists do prefer the more portable solution of iPad plus that nice Procreate app.
Any, amazon have several 6GB ram/64GB storage for $50-60 many of them even have a microSD slot for more storage, they'll all do fine for reading PDFs, my first iPad had 32GB storage and it did that task just fine.
Heck they have 4GB/32GB tablets for $30 that would no doubt just about manage running ReadEra or some other PDF viewer with no trouble.
I use my M1 iPad Pro for graphics work (from simple sketches to full illustrations), and for making music with multi-track recording apps. I don't bother with the keyboard since little of my input is text-oriented.
People with government grant or unrestricted access to company money. Already spoke to people wanting to know when they can use their Cost center for one.
Because the pro used to be the largest iPad with a pencil. Now you can get the air instead and "pen and paper" certainly does not need "pro" performance.
> With these advanced features, Apple Pencil Pro allows users to bring their ideas to life in entirely new ways, and developers can also create their own custom interactions.
Can someone please make it so that if you turn the "Pencil" upside down it acts as an eraser, like a real pencil would?
This has been around for so long I wonder if there's a patent that is in the way of apple implementing it.
Even though I tend to like Apple gear: if there is such a patent in the way I'm sure they'll add this once the patent expires, and call it a revolutionary development.
if it’s parent-encumbered, it’s literally been recognized as a novel and advanced innovation, that’s why it’s granted a patent in the first place. Choosing to license vs wait is a business decision but you’re spinning something that’s objectively true into somehow being a “trick”, which is a really common pattern when discussing apple for some reason (“selling or renting first-party tools is a trick”, for example).
> if it’s pa[t]ent-encumbered, it’s literally been recognized as a novel and advanced innovation
I think it's pretty clear by now that the patent system rarely works that way in practice, though that is the intent.
And I was merely joking that whatever apple announces has to be "revolutionary" or "groundbreaking" or "jaw-dropping". Whatever the quality of the product (and for their hardware, it's typically high), the company culture is to staple a bunch of superlatives onto the headlines.
(BTW I don't know what “selling or renting first-party tools is a trick" means)
I think it would depend on there being bits for the iPad to track where the tip is for it to work well. Kinda funny that Apple calls their stylus a Pencil and lack this functionality while the Surface and Wacom "Pens" do.
There's a double tap gesture on the second gen (and newer I think) version of the Apple Pencil that switches between the eraser and whatever tool you're using. I find this to be much more efficient and ergonomic than having to turn the whole pencil over to erase.
But you wouldn't be required to use it, just erase how you do now. I would love for this and for it to be customizable. It could be used to become a highlighter/selector tool or some other concept that we don't know yet. Adding in more features to a pencil and ones that mimic and improve on old analog equivalents sounds exactly like that kind of improvements I would like to see.
This is muscle memory that's built into every person who's taught to write. You should reuse that muscle memory if you can to make writing flow easier.
Sure if you were teaching people to write exclusively on these devices then coming up with something new would make sense but since we all go back and forth using the real world method makes the most sense.
The pencil for the Remarkable tablet has this feature. I found that it was a great way to ease into digital note taking. Matching a real-world feature felt very natural.
Yeah. It's actually one of the main reason I've switched to doing my lectures off a Surface Pro rather than my iPad Pro. Having to constantly change tools in the apps just to erase is a giant pain (Yes, I know about double tap, but it doesn't work half the time).
All these new chips and tbh it doesn't really matter if I still can't code on it yet.
These devices have been absolute workflow game changers for the artists in my life, but for coders, it's like a toy and nothing more. They're handcuffed from doing any creative work with it.
It's incredible how powerful these devices are, but so much potential only usable for watching youtube.
Running code from outside of the appstore is coming within the next six months in the EU. That should alleviate the problem somewhat. I look forward to apple getting more compliant with how the DMA is actually supposed to function.
This comment comes across as being from someone who has never paid attention to Apple’s business tactics. No offence.
Maybe I’m on the opposite end and too cynical, but I don’t think we know a) whether Apple will practice malicious compliance in a way that makes the ruling meaningless or b) whether they will comply at all.
And if they do comply in any way, we don’t know how long they will keep it that way before clawing back little by little or simply ending that compliance.
Is this tandem OLED display a first? I'm familiar with stacked LCD displays, they've been around for a while though mainly in reference monitors due to their inefficiency, but this is the first I've heard of anyone stacking two OLEDs on top of each other.
First I have heard of it in a consumer device. I suspect this is why the M4 is launching with this device. They are probably using the added efficiency to power the Tandem OLED without sacrificing performance / battery life compared to the previous gen.
I will be interested to see what this looks like in person and if it makes it to consumer televisions. I personally find OLED bright enough for indoor use, but a lot of people complain about the reduced brightness on OLED TVs and monitors.
Aside from higher peak brightness I would assume it's also less prone to burn-in, the rate that OLED pixels degrade is proportional to how bright they run, and distributing the brightness over two stacked layers means each layer only needs to run roughly half as bright. Not exactly half since the top layer won't be perfectly transparent, but close enough.
The most common situation where screen brightness is an issue for me is in rooms with big windows and a lot of natural light. On sunny days I find ~400nits to be about the minimum required to cut through glare on matte displays… for mirror-like glossy displays it’s even higher.
I don't understand the fluff about thin devices. I bought an iPad air a few years back and every time I picked it up the screen warped and I could see my fingers pressing through the back. I got a case for it thinking that'd help but I could still see it happen if I pressed hard enough. Returned immediately for the iPad Pro. I can't help but expect this would have similar problems AND it's Pro priced.
It's a feature, not a bug. Just like the iPhones, it doesn't sit flat on a table so that people can't grind dirt into it and scratch up the back and complain on the internet about how it scratches all the time.
It helps with convergence of iOS and macOS, supporting both Macbook keyboard (laptop) and detached slate (mobile) form factors.
There are professionals who operate in space-constrained physical environments, e.g. superthin iPad + rugged case with other electronics can still be close to laptop form factor.
On a related note, there are 90/180 degree USB-C M/M and M/F 40Gbps adapters.
Totally agree - I don't find "stunningly thin and light design" to be a selling point any more. I want to hold a durable device without feeling like it might break or slip out of my hands, without needing a chunky case.
I generally prefer thin devices to a certain point, and then after that I agree that it’s just fluff. I think showing how a product is “thinner” is an easy way to show that it weighs less, which is what I care about in thin devices.
For me, on the iPhone and iPad Pro that I use: I'd personally prefer 600g less, since the battery already lasts absurdly long for my uses and I'm rarely without a charger. But double the battery life for just 600g is a crazy good tradeoff, so I wouldn't begrudge anyone for making that deal. If Tim Cook came out and said the next iPhone/iPad was going to be 600g heavier but with double the battery life, I wouldn't be upset at all.
I don't know; I had an ipad air 2 (until now the thinnest ipad ever) and now use a 2020 ipad air and never had those issues -- I even carry my coffee using the ipad as a tray.
The ipad 2 would lie flat on the table. I don't understand the fetish for a camera bump. It makes the phones suck too. You need a case of some sort to make them lie flat. They could just make the batteries bigger and keep the whole thing flat.
The iPad Pro plus keyboard folio was thicker and heavier than a MacBook Air. So honestly, this change is welcome. If they can get the keyboard+ipad combo into the same range as the MBA…I’d take the iPad instead. Today I’m at a conference and took my MBA because it’s the lightest option for all day carry.
The home button was a nice UI affordance, but it tended to fail after a few years. Every old iPhone and iPad that my parents used had home buttons that didn't click correctly - an minor annoyance in the years where upgrading your phone every two years was normal, but not for the present where people keep their devices for much longer, especially iPads with a much bigger battery.
I never had a device with the solid-state home buttons (like the iPhone 7 and 8), but I assume these were not an option due to cost.
It hasn't been a button in quite some time - their last implementation is a fixed button that doesn't move, the same way the trackpad on Macs doesn't have any switches.
Don't get me started on the home button. I miss it dearly. The UI/UX of a home button is unmatched by any of the replacement gestures. Some of them are just plain bizaree too eg swipe up, right, up to get your apps.
The biggest problem is that swipe up depends on orientation of the app and that's not always clear, particularly if playing video. The app might be orientation locked in landscape even though you're viewing it in landscape.
And of course there's Face ID, which I personally hate. I know others like it but the false negative rate is horrendous. Plus they increase "security" by having a really lot limit on failed attempts before you have to enter your passcode anyway. And since attempts can be passive, you can hit the limit pretty often. Touch ID is just better in almost every way.
Plus Face ID is an accessibility nightmare as anyone who is vision impaired can tell you. The distance the device needs to be for Face ID to work is not the distance yo use the device at.
Every Apple device should have the option of Touch ID on the power button just like the iPad Air does. It's also why I own the iPad Air specifically.
Pretty sure they're talking about popping into recent apps. But that isn't the gesture, you just do a short swipe up and hold for a fraction of a second until you feel the haptic buzz.
edit: actually just tried and you can also pull it to the side, but it doesn't feel quite as natural
That button is an increasingly expensive component at scale, as it's a separate component to manufacture and build a supply chain for, as well as an additional component to add which can potentially fail.
This is why most carmakers are moving towards touchscreens now as well.
If you want to keep prices roughly comparable to previous SKUs in the midst of trade and supply chain kerfuffles, there has to be cost cutting somewhere.
if Apple of all companies -- after decades of moral high standing about polished user experience and charging a premium for their brand -- is shaving pennies off the cost by removing physical buttons ... that's a shame!
if 3nm chip manufacturing receives so much interest -- why not a fraction of that investment in engineering more durable, lasting, and cheap physical components too.
years later Apple might be the company doing "radical innovation", being "uncompromising when it comes to UX" and add a physical button and charge a premium for it
> is shaving pennies off the cost by removing physical buttons
These are not pennies at scale. These are 9-10 figure costs at scale.
Just using the iPhone 15 Max as an example [0], your BoM is around $550-650 (including labor), but sells for $1,200.
50% margins are not great, especially because the the BoM grew from $400-500 for the iPhone 14 Max (Edit: "The parts costs for the Max series ranged between $400 and $450 during the 2018 to 2021 period", not iPhone 14), which also sold for $1,200.
A 50% decrease in margins on the flagship phone is a massive decrease in margins, and it's most likely similar across all Apple SKUs.
Every single component if you're in the hardware space costs money and overhead to manage, and supply chain issues can push back releases.
This is why companies are moving towards digital displays. It's the same principle why EVs can be more reliable than ICE vehicles due to less parts
As an (I presume) Engineer drill the following mantra into your head: MARGINS, MARGINS, MARGINS.
This is what gives you your paycheck in the environment we are in today.
> if 3nm chip manufacturing receives so much interest -- why not a fraction of that investment in engineering more durable, lasting, and cheap physical components too.
3nm chip manufacturing is expensive and costs money. That money needs to come from somewhere. Turns out, a portion of that budget came from the budget for buttons.
> The 15 Pro Max's cost-to-price ratio, or the cost of the parts divided by the phone's price, came to 47%, a 1 percentage point increase from the 14 Pro Max
Your claim is contradicted by the article you linked.
I can tell you having been responsible for the aspects of a TINY scale in comparison button, about 30,000 units a year, that buttons are fucking hard man! It's so much harder to make a button than an entire PCB. You wouldn't think so, but you need to be GOOD at injection molding, stresses, DFM (design for manufacturing), cost analysis, generally know ALL the options to produce something, production tolerances and more just to talk to the actual experts in those fields.
Other poster is correct, it's a big deal, and it's why screens have replaced buttons in cars. It's so much cheaper to make a screen. Which is funny because as an EE, I judge a new vehicle first by how many buttons they still have.
As an electronics hobbyist who operates at an even smaller scale (where the cost of a pushbutton itself is trivial), I could not agree more strongly with this. Physical buttons are, counterintuitively, an absolutely massive pain in the butt from a design point of view. I tend to use touch sensitive pads instead. It makes the firmware more complex but the physical design so much simpler.
> Last I heard, carmakers are moving away from touchscreens.
Depends on the country and margins.
For example, Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese car manufacturers increasingly use touchscreens to minimize the amount of SKUs to manage and because touchscreen display manufacturing is commoditized in developing Asia.
The EU is pushing for regulation and limitations around touchscreen displays last month, but it was also around the same time the EU also announced anti-competitive action against Chinese automakers.
The US is a mixed bag around touchscreens. Some Chinese makes like a Volvo XC30 or a Polestar will be almost entirely touchscreen driven, and Tesla is also touchscreen driven for cost reasons, but other companies like your GMs or your Stellarises still have buttons, but are increasingly trying to move away.
Carmakers are moving to touchscreens because they don't have to custom design hard keys for each model and can just reuse the same design in every one, just tweaking the software. It's pure cheapness, not an improvement in any way.
Apple has been building the same home button for a decade. It's a simple, familiar interface. iPads cost hundreds of dollars. Engineering the cost of a button out of it at this point is pure greed.
> is shaving pennies off the cost by removing physical buttons
These are not pennies at scale. These are 9-10 figure costs at scale.
Just using the iPhone 15 Max as an example [0], your BoM is around $550-650 (including labor), but sells for $1,200.
50% margins are not great, especially because the the BoM grew from $400-500 for the iPhone 14 Max (Edit: "The parts costs for the Max series ranged between $400 and $450 during the 2018 to 2021 period", not iPhone 14), which also sold for $1,200.
A 50% decrease in margins on the flagship phone is a massive decrease in margins, and it's most likely similar across all Apple SKUs.
Every single component if you're in the hardware space costs money and overhead to manage, and supply chain issues can push back releases.
This is why companies are moving towards digital displays. It's the same principle why EVs can be more reliable than ICE vehicles due to less parts
As an (I presume) Engineer drill the following mantra into your head: MARGINS, MARGINS, MARGINS.
This is what gives you your paycheck in the environment we are in today.
The fact that nerds constantly react sardonically like this is unfortunate for multiple areas of tech discussion, just like people react so negatively to the rising costs of gpu SKUs as well. It’s poisonous to actual debate and discussion, just children lashing out in anger that their toys are getting more expensive.
I think this highlights your financial privilege more than anything. And it’s pretty tone deaf during a time of some pretty shocking inflation, not all of which is justified
Every company that has some form of manufacturing is doing similar cost reductions.
Supply Chain is hard enough in a globalized world, and it's only gotten even harder now that a multi-year pandemic shutdown, trade wars, and tariffs are coming to play.
For me at least, it's an excellent trade off. I haven't had an iPad with a home button for years, and I can't imagine why I'd want to give up screen real estate or device size for a button. The swipe interface works perfectly and does the same thing.
All I'm thinking about is what will Square do now. None of the iPads fit their Square Stand... I loved having a general compute iOS device on the stand for other apps, I hope they don't make us get their dedicated terminal...
What do you mean? The previous iPad Pros didn't have a home button either. The last iPad with a home button was the 9th generation iPad, released in 2021.
Yeah try as I might I'm not able to help my autistic daughter understand how to process this change. I should probably buy a few of the old ones to keep on standby.
Every time Apple ups their display game, I shout, "Finally, someone else will have to take action & up their game! This will finally spurn everyone else into trying!" So far, not much luck!
And once again, Apple critically one-upping their themselves, while it feels like no one's started competing with the old product. OLED with 1000 nit full screen sdr output? That's 4x what most OLED monitors can do! 1600 nit hdr is great too.
These are amazing systems, must be stunning to see. I wish there were general purpose computers like this that could run Linux. I wish others could compete. Apple keeps being the SpaceX to the industry's Boeing.
I just bought an almost completely maxed out MacBook Pro and it annoys me that every other Apple product brags about having a cellular modem and no matter how much one is willing to spend, one cannot have a cellular modem in their power user laptop offering.
I have had an iPhone since 2012 and an Apple laptop since they were called PowerBooks. I am often in road warrior mode. No, it is not seamless. I have to restart it quite often. It is nowhere near as convenient and always on like it is with my Apple Watch and iPhone and iPad. And it burns two batteries at once.
I am convinced that it is the Qualcomm royalty situation that keeps Apple from shipping a cellular modem like Dell does.
Really? Man, I hate to say this, but how long have you been restoring your iPhone and Mac when you replace them? Maybe you are importing a bug with your settings/environment. I've literally never had to restart my hotspot for my Mac in using both for over 10 years, at times as my daily driver for the internet. Has it gotten worse in the last few years? I haven't been using it as much lately, but 2015-2019 that was basically my main way of browsing the web on my Mac. Worked flawlessly the whole time, kinda amazing to be honest.
I have experienced this flakiness using Migration Assistant, using restores from backup, and with fresh installs. Many people do. I believe that it works for some people who don't need it very often. I am happy for them.
I have an android... and the hotspot integration (with my mac) is as simple as "click the hotspot button and everything works". Seriously wondering what you think "ideal" looks like if not that.
Well the wifi burns extra energy, but there's also the "plug them together with a USB cable, hit the USB tethering button, and everything works" option.
On MacOS, your phone automatically appears in the Wi-Fi menu and clicking it immediately starts a Personal Hotspot on the phone and connects to it. Disconnecting from it also stops the Hotspot.
I am well aware of how it is supposed to work. All of my devices are on the same iCloud account. Have been since there was an iCloud. It still is flaky for me and many others.
(Even if it was reliable, I would rather not have to click anything and pass every packet through another radio powered by another battery. I want my laptop to have my emails downloaded when I open it, just like the more "consumer" devices Apple ships.)
What's creeping me out is that there's zero mention of how the nano-texture display affects pencil use.
The nano-texture on the standalone display Apple offered a while back was very fragile (if I remember correctly)... I would imagine touching it, let alone dragging a pencil across it, could very quickly leave visible scratches?
If not - will this wear through Apple Pencil tips like they're made of rubber?
@apple team: whomever approved your hydraulic press imagery forgot that "standing on the shoulders of giants" is an appreciation of, not a license to stomp on. words matter, images matter, it's how you tell us who you are.
Even if 'no animals were harmed' in the making, as in they pulled some filming tricks... it's still a disturbing message. They once understood 'marketing is about values' // what a sad value they proclaimed today, destroy the essence for our entertainment.
I don’t get the controversy about this. At landfills with self service all over the USA, probably tens of thousands of Americans dumped substantially more useful stuff than that into the hydraulic trash compactor machine today. I sincerely don’t know what to do with old printers, I’d probably go drop it in there. Along with a bunch of old doors from my house. Sure they could be reused but how am I supposed to find the time and energy to get them to a new home? Have you ever tried to bring a bunch of stuff to goodwill? They sure say no to a lot of it!
Yeah, it looks pretty awesome, I am just a little afraid of the price. I want to see one of these in person so I can feel the textured screen. Does it actually have a "feel"? I currently use a textured screen cover for iPad art and it has a great feel but everything else about it is terrible, from the mandatory daily cleaning to the way it grinds pencil tips.
But I guess I will never find out since it would cost $1548 to replace my existing 12.9 iPad Pro, net of the trade-in. Yikes. Could probably get double the trade value they are offering on eBay or Craigslist.
I'm struggling to see why I'd buy this over a Macbook Air.
I have an iPad Air. I use it a lot but generally just to watch Netflix or Youtube. I don't enjoy typing on it at all. I have the Air specifically because it's TouchID. I hate FaceID with a passion.
But this update has pushed up the iPad Pro price well into the Macbook territory and that's a much more capable and flexible device.
The MacBook Air is better for sure, and if you only buy one, buy that one -- full stop.
But I use both, every day, at the same time. They are designed to work together. With universal control, my iPad sits next to my screen at work, and I do some things on the iPad, some on the MacBook. I also use my iPad on its own around the house. It's also incredibly nice for CAD work (Shapr3d) and photo processing (Lightroom).
The iPad is much more resilient to water, food, and dust. I design things in Shapr3d on the iPad and take the iPad to the garage to build them -- a little sawdust does not hurt it and it's easy to clean. It's also much better if you want to read while eating, especially with kids around. The keyboard doesn't get in the way and spilled water won't hurt it either. I use it while cooking and to watch TV while washing dishes.
The other thing the iPad can do that the MBA can't is that it's easily shareable. If you work with others, it's easy to pull up a PDF on an iPad and hand it to someone to look at or even annotate with the pencil. There is no awkward standing over your shoulder or handing off a laptop. Everyone instantly knows how to work with you on the iPad, and to review whatever you want them to review and hand it back.
Overall I still use my MacBook Air more, and it's more capable. You can't do serious coding or development work on the iPad, for example. But it's very much worth having the iPad as well, at least for me.
Those are almost exactly my use cases too; my difference is that I don't watch video but I do take my notes on the ipad, writing with the pencil. This works great because documents seamlessly work between the two devices.
By far I use the MBA the most, but the ipad is much better for a small number of use cases that are worth my spending on. And for those use cases the ipad air is sufficient, especially as I can now get a larger one. That's similar to the macbook air: I'm clearly a "pro" or "power user" and it has more than sufficient oomph (note: when I type 'make' the compilation doesn't happen locally)
Could you elaborate a bit more on your note taking workflow? I have an ipad and a macbook but I haven't figured out the best way to use them together that doesn't involve connecting with a cable and manually dragging files around in the finder. (The corporate admin has disabled icloud, which doesn't help).
I have a lot of pdfs on the laptop. I'd like to send one to the ipad, jot some notes, and send it back in a seamless way. Or generate a quick drawing on the ipad and easily add it to a document on the laptop.
I use notes and notability, each of which syncs using icloud. I also use the feature (I don't know the name) of the shared clipboard which also I think uses icloud for authentication.
Finally, if I, say, download a PDF from my computer, I can open it from the ipad because my downloads folder is in iCloud. This one, at least, you could use use if your company permits a different cloud provider.
Agreed about the iPad Air. The Pro is really a splurge upgrade over the Air. It's worth it for me personally, because I use it so much for photo editing, but I think for the vast majority of people who are smarter with their money the Air adds just as much practical value as the Pro.
iPad is better for consuming content and reading pdfs. That’s what I use it for, at any rate. There is no better device to plop atop my stationary bike while I pedal to watch shows, and there is arguably no better device to read scientific papers. And it lasts (and receives updates!) for years and years, thus becoming “inexpensive” over time even though the initial outlay is without a doubt eye watering.
Tha main reasons I own an (11") iPad Pro are, you can write on it, which is really damn useful, you can wedge it places like tables on planes easier, it weighs hardly anything and you can charge it off a phone charger. Plus being TB based I can suck stuff off my camera without a dongle or any of that faff.
But yeah an MBA is more powerful, but it doesn't have those attributes.
If I was to start again I'd buy a bottom end Mac Studio for the 32Gb RAM baseline config, hang some TB drives off it and use the iPad as my "portable" computer.
I think the iPad hardware has been outstanding for many years. It's the software which is is limiting it constantly. They should let us put macOS or Linux on it. Or be able to do full on dev work (I realize some dev work is possible). If I could do my iOS and Android app dev on iPad, it would be instant buy.
I need to be able to debug apps on physical devices from the iPad. And it needs to be wired connection because debugging over wifi even on my Mac is very bad (lots of complaints online about it too).
Yeah iPad hardware is sadly limited by software and I think Apple shoots themselves in the foot.
It took them a long time to start allowing apps to use meaningful amounts of ram and managing custom fonts is a mess.
I also suspect the limited number of “pro” apps is partly thanks to how the App Store runs. If I were going to invest in developing powerful software for iPad, being at App Review’s whims and ever-changing policies seems like a pretty big risk.
Wow, I didn't realize Final Cut Pro had all these features! The background clipping is sick. The document scanning is something I use my iphone for a lot and this new business with the flash to stitch sounds great.
Interesting how many different offerings they have now outside of just spending the initial ~$1000 on the ipad itself. Purchasing the pencil, usb-c, key board, smart folio, logic pro (subscription), final cut (subscription), etc...
I'd be curious to know the average age of an ipad in circulation is now. I used an ipad for school from 2012-2017, never used the apple pencil, but it always worked great for my needs. My girlfriend got one for med school and uses it with the pencil especially when shes not at home.
IMO the only things you need are a screen protector and an actual protective case like the otterbox one. I would think people have old Bluetooth mice and keyboards laying around
It doesn’t move the needle for me to purchase it. My m1 iPad Pro still does everything I want it to and I don’t use it that often, but when I do I love it.
I have iPad Pro from 2020 (pre M1). It's still way faster than I need (most heavy work I do on laptop) and still unbelievably good.
The only thing I miss is the ability to read under the bright sun. New Tandem screen unlikely to change it, so I'm opting in for 13.3" e-paper tablet. As I often read academic papers, that should be a killer one, but new 13" iPads also look promising for that!
I ordered Onyx Boox Tab X – seems to be the only real option out there. It has Android, so it's possible to use your favorite reader/app on it (I'm using ReadCube Papers). Can't wait to try it.
That's a good point actually. I can't seem to even bend my M1 Pro MBP. It just eats everything I throw at it and shrugs. It's coming up to 3 years old now and looks like and works like the day it was made.
yeah.. it's amazing how much time and money is thrown at these new cpu's with such tiny diminishing returns for the end consumer.
I wish we could do like a 4 year cycle of progress where engineers had longer cycles to innovate and like make a comprehensive upgrade rather than wasting all of these materials for a 10% upgrade that no one will notice.
I wanted the new apple pencil pro but it only works on the new ipads :( I have the m2 ipad pro. Literally there's no need but I love to draw on mine and that pencil with the accelerometer and gyroscope sounds amazing in procreate. I think we'll start seeing artwork where you can see the difference in brush work.
I think if you do a lot of drawing it makes sense, but otherwise not really. The only reason I bought the pro was for Face ID and it's a great product, but generally I need a Mac to complete any real work.
The only thing that has me thinking 'ah that would be nice' over my m1 version is that it's lighter, especially with the new magic keyboard. With the keyboard, mine is heavy as hell.
Frustratingly, I can't find a weight spec for the magic keyboards, so I have no idea whether it's significantly lighter or what.
An M4 in an iPad. It feels like the hardware between an M* Macbook Air and the M* iPads is really about the same (maybe screen differences, a keyboard) and memory. That said, the real hinderance / differentiator(?) is what the OS allows you to do with the device.
The megapopular free-to-play Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail (same devs) make full use of the Apple Silicon iPads. My M1 gets pretty hot when playing either at high settings. Not enough to make it worth upgrading to a M4, of course. Call of Duty: Warzone literally makes my fingertips hurt after one match and the graphics still aren't great.
Apple is pushing more for triple-A games being ported to the iPad (like Assassin's Creed they demoed), but it's a chicken-and-egg problem monetizationwise.
I try really hard to use my iPad but I forget about it most days. Sometimes I’ll watch movies on it in bed and that’s about it. A complete waste of money for me. The only time it truly was helpful was during online interviews when I could draw system design diagrams with the Apple pencil on them during zoom calls instead of using a mouse. Haven’t really used them since.
With every new iPad they release I'm hopeful they add a support for virtualization. If I could run linux in a docker on an iPad I would switch to it as my main computing instantly, but as of right now I don't see a reason to upgrade what's basically a glorified ebook reader and Netflix player.
iPad Pro's 2024 hardware overachievement eclipses even the iPhone, for the first time. Will iPadOS 18 be unshackled to drive the M4? We'll find out at WWDC next month, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40287922
The engineering efforts invested into thinning down devices could be more wisely spent on making them better. Sounds like an arbitrary top-down marketing requirement limitation. Who cares if their iPad is 1mm thinner?
Dave Jones did some quick calculations and if the iPad was 1mm thicker, the battery capacity would be at least 50% more! And if it was 2mm ticker, the camera lenses would be flush with the back instead of sticking out.
Why not an Android with termux? I guess it would depend upon your software stack, but my editor (Emacs) will have native Android port soon and I am stoked to try it. The latest Snapdragon processors are fairly powerful (and Mediatek/Dimensity ones aren't lagging behind either).
The fact that they specifically shouted out a portion of the M4 as being dedicated to driving the stacked OLED displays makes me think they'll be moving some of their laptops to OLED imminently as well.
The iPad is an excellent form factor for using on aeroplanes. I wish my iPad would let me play Fallout 4. That, with a normal Xbox controller, would be just perfect for passing the time while flying.
Very hard to be productive coding on iPadOS. Even if it does become more and more possible with side-by-side windows, native terminals, and more versatile copy/paste.
I was a long-time iPad fan for more than a decade, currently using 5 year old iPad Pro 10.5 which works flawlessly but its battery is quite degraded already.
With these new iPads introduced I no longer have a viable upgrade path: iPad pro is a no-go for me because of OLED screen (which I strongly oppose, PWM, irregular subpixels, etc.) and newly introduced iPad Air doesn't have 120Hz display (or ProMotion in Apple terms). So, there are no new iPads with LCD display and ProMotion.
What a sad state both Apple hardware and Apple software are in.
That seems a tad dramatic. Why don’t you buy a (now) previous gen iPad Pro? That’s LCD (mini-LED if you get the 12.9”), ProMotion, still absurdly thin and powerful (especially for anything you can actually do with an iPad), and likely soon discounted to clear stock.
Yeah, going with prev gen iPad Pro would definitely be a valid choice. I was talking about the general state of Apple hardware and software, not only iPad. The fact that base iPhone 15 model has 60hz screen (while obviously having more than enough power to drive 120hz display) is frustrating. Personally I perceive it as a hostile stance towards anyone who considers themselves a tech enthusiast.
There are many more examples of that. Like pop up warning about 10% battery left forcibly stops current audio message recording. Inexcusable.
What do you oppose with PWM, irregular subpixel displays? I'm curious why do you think these new improved displays are inferior to the LCDs of the past?
I went from a regular iPhone 11 to a 15 Pro Max, and when the screen is dim I can see it flicker, which is distracting and fatiguing to look at due to PWM rates being too low. OLED screens have plenty of pros, but aren't certainly without their cons.
One thing I learned in life is to try to not be miserable by being too pedantic. The world isn't perfect. While striving for one's own perception is honorable, thriving for perfection in their purchase decisions is futile.
Do you REALLY need 120Hz? How much do you scroll for it to be relevant enough?
Also you had plenty of time to buy the 11" iPad Pro with M1 and M2 chips, all come with a not-well-saturated LCD screen.
To be fair, the increasing lack of choice in both hardware and software/operating system is why I left the Apple ecosystem 5 years ago. I have no complaints now; tons of vendors and operating systems to choose from. Well, hardware vendors anyway.
It’s OLED in general, because of PWM flickering first of all. I strongly prefer IPS LCD for any screen that’s used for longer than brief periods of time. Btw Apple IPS screens in iPads, MacBooks, etc demonstrate that that tech is capable of producing great image quality
An under-appreciated user base for tablets is musicians. I can't speak to other genres but in recent years in the classical music world, a ton of professional and amateur musicians, and private tutors, have made the switch from paper sheet music, towards tablets. Most of the marketing around iPad and other tablets seems to target visual art, video editing, music editing, etc. But where a tablet may be a nice supplement to a desktop/laptop for those uses, it is a total game changer for sheet music since it can replace folders upon folders and boxes of sheet music which people have to lug around all over, and no other form factor can replace paper.
The iPad Pro, 12.9" has been by far the most popular model which, paired with the ForScore app (https://forscore.co/), lets users easily read and annotate sheet music.
What's interesting about THIS release for the sheet music use case is that, anything less than the 12.9" screen is just simply too small for reading music off of, full stop. 11" will not do. But musicians have been forced to fork over way too much money for the grossly overpowered pro model because it was the only one with the largest screen size. With this release, finally musicians can purchase a more appropriately-powered and appropriately priced 13" iPad Air, with a base model going for $800 rather than the pro model which starts at $1400.
However, for what it's worth, after doing a lot of research for my purchase I ended up going with the Samsung Galaxy S9 Ultra which actually sports a whopping 14.6" screen, allowing you to view two pages of sheet music in landscape mode. It also comes with the pen included for the price of about $765 USD. Samsung also makes available a cover which has a really cool origami design that allows you to prop up the device in portrait mode, which I haven't seen on any other tablet (https://www.samsung.com/ie/mobile-accessories/galaxy-tab-s9-...). This is actually perfect for sheet music reading! You can get by playing around the house without even a music stand, since you can just let it stand on its own. I was cautious about going the non-standard route with the Samsung rather than the iPad but I have to say I am quite pleased with the result, having used the tablet for practice every day for about a month. ForScore isn't available on Android but I have loved working MobileSheets (with https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/) which is actually cross-platform (windows/mac/android/ios).
I'm just a hobbyist myself, but it removes a lot of friction in my daily practice, private lessons, and rehearsals. I'm currently studying out of 3 different study books, as well as some scale studies, then some random duets, and then some "just for fun" pieces like the Halo game soundtrack. Then my orchestra has pieces. Using the app allows me to instantly navigate between all these much more easily than on paper, and I don't have to remember which books/pieces to take to lessons/orchestra/practice, everything's there all the time.
Plus, the ability to annotate music non-destructively lets me make better progress. I'm more willing to highlight tricky spots to remember what to focus on. Or, if I'm working through an etude book, I can annotate/re-annotate what tempo I practiced it at, so I can make sure I'm slowly making progress increasing speed.
Sorry for the long rant, all this is just to say that tablets for musicians are super awesome! There are also other benefits, like for instance with a tablet, you can get a bluetooth foot pedal which allows you to use your foot to turn pages which can be a challenge during performances (piano performances often even have a human page turner sitting beside the performer). Some people even use facial gestures like winking to trigger page turns.
Great point. I have an 10.x/11" iPad Air (the one that just got replaced) and I use it on the music stand frequently.
I disagree it is unworkable, but I would agree it's not workable in a performance. For me it is OK for practice. I use SoundSlice a lot, which is pretty good. PDF sheet music is a lot more annoying on the smaller screen.
I have wanted to trade for the 12.9" iPad but the "Pro" part is what keeps me from doing it. I may very well trade mine in on the new 12.9" iPad Air. The "Pro" Tax has just seemed way too high and pointless for me.
I have a MBP as well. People who don't play music regularly just don't understand how much better a tablet is for this use case.
Also for having a Zoom/Facetime/whatever with the iPad on the music stand while you work on music together.
The ipad pro is an absolutely stunning and amazing piece of hardware. The sad part is, to get the most out of it; say as a power user, you'll likely be spending a combined ~$300 a month subscription for any of its 'killer apps' on the app store. The subscription model for me personally has been such a turn off for these locked down apple products.
Here's the new iDevice. Same as the old iDevice, just with a ton of marketing and a 5% performance improvement. And you can do nothing with the added performance because it still runs a fully locked down OS. Yawn.
I have (sad) news for you:
That goes for MOST of the world. Do you truly think in whatever new version of Nike sneakers there's truly something new and revolutionary in it or more likely "a ton of marketing and a 5% performance improvement"?
The entry price for a virtualization-optimized iPad Pro (née Ultra?) is $1600 USD for 4 performance cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB storage. Keyboard, pencil, LTE will push the cost over $2K.
Is that sufficient tribute for Apple to unlock M4 and iOS 18 support for nested virtualization of macOS and Linux? Until then, iSH Linux emulation on iPad Pro offers a functional CLI, patience exercises and redlined CPU cores for hand warming.
Why spend expensive silicon real estate on hardware virtualization rather than AI with Neural Engine?
Why make a Macbook-aesthetic Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro?
Why was iOS implemented as a subsystem of macOS?
> They don't want to make a sub-par laptop out of an industry-leading tablet
Fortunately for healthy competition, Microsoft/HP/Dell/Lenovo don't have that constraint for their new Arm devices, based on M3-competitive Qualcomm SoC from former Apple Silicon talent.
> Why spend expensive silicon real estate on hardware virtualization rather than AI with Neural Engine?
Security is one good reason. Virtualisation allows near-complete sandboxing of applications or application sets for mixed personal/corporate use.
> Why make a Macbook-aesthetic Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro?
Because people use iPads for writing e-mails sometimes.
> Why was iOS implemented as a subsystem of macOS?
Because it'd be easier to develop a single core for two different user interfaces.
> Fortunately for healthy competition, Microsoft/HP/Dell/Lenovo don't have that constraint for their new Arm devices, based on M3-competitive Qualcomm SoC from former Apple Silicon talent.
I'll not hold my breath waiting for Qualcomm (or anyone else, for that matter) to catch up. At least for now, Apple has blocked a lot of production capacity at leading process nodes.
