There’s a pretty common argument in tech that though of course there are billions more smartphones than PCs, and will be many more still, smartphones are not really the next computing platform, just a computing platform, because smartphones (and the tablets that derive from them) are only used for consumption where PCs are used for creation. You might look at your smartphone a lot, but once you need to create, you’ll go back to a PC.
There are two pretty basic problems with this line of thinking. First, the idea that you cannot create on a smartphone or tablet assumes both that the software on the new device doesn’t change and that the nature of the work won’t change. Neither are good assumptions. You begin by making the new tool fit the old way of working, but then the tool changes how you work. More importantly though, I think the whole idea that people create on PCs today, with today’s tools and tasks, is flawed, and, so, I think, is the idea that people aren’t already creating on mobile. It’s the other way around. People don’t create on PCs – they create on mobile.
Evans is obviously exaggerating when he says that people don’t create on PCs; he acknowledges that high performance requirements limit some functions — app development, 3D movie making, etc. — to traditional PCs. But most people are using mobile devices to create more stuff, generally speaking. This is a line of thought that I was trying to articulate in my review of the base-spec iPad, and I think Evans does a much better job of it. I encourage you to read his whole piece, as I think it pairs well with my iPad piece.
One thing I’d like to point out specifically is related to the above quote, and expands on something I wrote near the end of my review:
That question is something I’ve thought about a fair bit with this iPad — not in the context of how I use it, but more in the sense of why, specifically, someone would choose an iPad over an iPad Pro, or vice-versa. With the exception of drawing software that supports the Apple Pencil, you can run a lot of the same kind of software on this iPad as you can on the latest iPad Pro. My best guess is that new software built specifically for the iPad Pro’s high-performance processors and capabilities will help materialize a lot of the advantages of choosing one over the other. But, while there are plenty of Mac apps that would be amazing on the iPad, developers have repeatedly pointed out that the economics of building an iPad app just aren’t favourable.
There’s an interplay between how customers actually use these devices and the capabilities Apple can give the devices through hardware, the operating system, and third-party apps. The side effects of the simplification of the iPad — compared to, say, a PC — are making some things1 far nicer to do, but also making other tasks2 more cumbersome. I think that became very obvious over the past few years, as people began using iPads in higher-performance environments — governments and businesses went crazy for the thing.
So I repeat this from Evans:
First, the idea that you cannot create on a smartphone or tablet assumes both that the software on the new device doesn’t change and that the nature of the work won’t change. Neither are good assumptions. You begin by making the new tool fit the old way of working, but then the tool changes how you work
He’s right, but this really only works if there‘s significant encouragement and commitment to a new device. The frustrations many critics — myself included — have expressed with the iPad3 is not that you couldn’t create anything on it; it’s that it didn’t feel like you could create enough on it — or, if you could, that it wasn’t easy enough.4 iOS 11 is the beginning of what I hope is a series of releases that will reinforce Apple’s position that the iPad really is the next generation of computing platforms. The irony is that, to make some complex things simpler, more complexity will be added throughout the system — just in a simplified way.
Web browsing, emails, basic image editing, watching movies, simple games, and the like. ↥︎
Juggling between a few different apps to compile a research paper, for instance. ↥︎
I didn’t mean to transform the framing of Evans’ piece into a rebuttal of the tired the iPad is just for consumption argument, but — in many ways — it serves that purpose well. ↥︎
I admire that Federico Viticci is able to do so much stuff with his iPad, but it will never be truly easy to use URL schemes and scripts to bridge functional gaps. ↥︎
For some odd reason “apps” think that every “like,” “message” or “comment” is of life-changing importance and thus needs to be viewed instantly. I mean, if I wanted notifications, I would have turned them on. Like I do for iMessage and Telegram. Those are important and have a time-value attached to them. When there isn’t value, I don’t turn them on. And that is why I find persistent nudging to turn on dumb notifications annoying.
It’s not just how many apps want to light up your phone, but what types of apps seem to think they deserve that privilege. I’m looking through my Notifications settings right now and there are photo editing apps, wallpaper apps, online shopping apps, video streaming apps, and other oddballs that have been denied their request — or, usually, demand — that I turn on push notifications. Why would I want any of these apps to be able to buzz my phone or tap my wrist?
And then there are notifications that amount to little more than ads. Apps from the biggest companies are the worst for this — Steven Aquino received a spammy notification from Amazon, while Pinterest and Postmates send out all sorts of garbage. These sorts of notifications are supposed to be prohibited by Apple’s guidelines:
4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used for advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes or to send sensitive personal or confidential information.
But is Apple really going to take the Amazon app off the store or disable their push notification privileges unless they comply? I think they should, but I also don’t run a multibillion-dollar public company that has to deal with other multibillion-dollar companies.
You know the story. Back in 1998, with the introduction of the first iMac, Steve Jobs presented a two-by-two grid that represented Apple’s product strategy: one consumer model and one professional model in each a portable and desktop format. That thinking has largely remained consistent, even to this day, and it has even spread into their non-Macintosh product lines with the introduction of the iPad Pro. Both sizes of iPad Pro represent Apple’s ideals of what tablet-based computing should look like: responsive, big, wide colour displays, very fast custom processors, lots of RAM, and Apple Pencil support.
So what is the rightful place for non-Pro iPads? What kind of users should they attract? What separates them from the iPads Pro?
I’ve been using a 2017 iPad — the no-suffix, 32 GB, WiFi-only base model that represents the cheapest entry point into the iPad line — since June 5. It is even less expensive than the iPad Mini, because you can’t get a Mini with anything other than 128 GB of storage. It’s the first new iPad that I’ve bought since the Mini 2 back in 2013 because I’ve been confused by the iPad line since. We’ll get to that in a bit.
The 2017 iPad — the fifth-generation product that is, somehow, not necessarily a successor to the iPad Air 2 — is, internally at least, a bit like the kind of one-pot meal you make from whatever leftovers you have in the fridge. It’s a blend of a couple of years’ worth of iOS devices: the A9 processor from the iPhone 6S, the display and chassis from the iPad Air — except with the handsome matte chamfer of the iPhone SE — the same amount of RAM as in the iPad Air 2, a camera similar to that in the iPhone 5S with a slightly different aperture, and the first-generation Touch ID module from pre-2017 iPads.
What that means, though, is that it is a bit of a downgrade from the Air 2. The display is the standard 9.7-inch size for an iPad, and has a full RGB colour gamut. But unlike the Air 2 — or, indeed, the iPad Mini 4 — it isn’t a laminated display, which means that there’s a slight air gap between the cover glass and the LCD. I’ve never owned an iPad with a laminated display, but I’ve used them for long enough that it is noticeable; but, for me, it isn’t a deal-breaker. It’s also a slightly thicker and heavier device than the Air 2, but only slightly.
The first-generation Touch ID module, though, is a very noticeable difference between my iPhone and iPad. I’ve become so used to the speed that my iPhone 6S reads my fingerprint that the module in my iPad feels really sluggish. I regularly fail to keep my finger on the home button for the right amount of time.
The rest of this iPad screams, though. It’s really fast. I rarely feel like I’m waiting for it — even in Safari, which has long been one of my biggest iPad pet peeves — and, as a result, I’ve been using it far more than I have any previous iPad. About a third of what I’ve posted on Pixel Envy in the last month has come from this iPad directly — and that’s a greater compliment than you might imagine, given how much I like MarsEdit on my Mac. This review was, of course, written on my iPad.1 I’m planning my iOS 11 review with Things on this iPad. It really has become an integrated part of my workflow.
None of that is revolutionary any longer, though. That people use their iPads for work is something that really only surprises people who, for whatever reason, are still attached to their computers. And there remain a lot of valid reasons for doing so: many development tools and professional applications are only available for traditional computers, the virtual keyboard and available accessory keyboards are still somewhat clunkier to use than a physical unit — and the virtual keyboard covers half the display area — the cursor gesture is imprecise, and it’s still not as elegant of a multitasking environment as is the Mac.
But despite the potential power of the Mac, it probably isn’t the device many of us use most frequently, or do the most stuff with — that honour would probably go to our smartphone. Even though there’s plenty of raw power inside our computer, we frequently choose our smartphone to send email, browse the web, shop, chat, and lots more. So, it’s only logical that we would gravitate towards a device that combines the user-friendliness of a smartphone with the bigger size and some of the greater power of a traditional computer. That’s a similar point to the one Apple made when they launched the first iPad in 2010, and we bought it.
It used to be that one of the most exciting things about a new iPad is the sense that this is the best that Apple could do in an iPad that year; now, I get the sense that they’re trying to create a division between iPad users and iPad Pro users. Will the standard iPad eventually support the Apple Pencil or sport a ProMotion display? I’m not sure; those features are, so far, reserved for iPad Pro users. I don’t think that’s wrong, but it is a relatively new line of thought for the iOS device lineup.
So what makes these devices different breeds? What delineates the difference between an iPad user and an iPad Pro user? My best short answer to both questions is that it’s similar to the difference between MacBook users and MacBook Pro users, but not the same.
Price is an obvious consideration: much as the MacBook is less expensive than the MacBook Pro, this iPad starts at just slightly more than half that of the least-expensive iPad Pro, which makes it pretty great value for the kind of user who just wants an iPad to be their big screen web-browsing-and-email-device.
Performance is another thing: the A10X SoC in the 2017 iPads Pro performs comparably in single core benchmarks to the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro; for multi-core performance, it beats that same MacBook Pro model. Both sizes of iPad Pro also pack 4 GB of RAM.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference, though, is that the iPad Pro line is where Apple’s highest iPad technologies ship. They both have ProMotion display controllers, so they support contextual refresh rate adjustments. They both have wider-gamut laminated displays with antireflective coatings and True Tone, to match the display’s white balance to the environment, and, of course, both support the Apple Pencil. The Pro models also come with more speakers, newer Touch ID sensors, better cameras — at the expense of a bump — have Apple’s Smart Connector for accessories, and are available with greater storage options. Oh, and you can get the 10.5-inch model in Rose Gold.
This iPad — and the Mini, but I doubt that will hang around much longer — is presumably for people who don’t know why they would need those things, or aren’t convinced those high technologies will help their workflow. If they are using their iPad primarily for their favourite apps, browsing the web, listening to music, and reading books, they probably aren’t clamouring for MacBook Pro-equivalent power.
And, if I’m honest with myself, I am that user with my iPad. It may not have the processing power of a laptop, but it doesn’t need to have that for me to use it instead of my MacBook Air for many of the things I do daily. If you liked what you could do with an iPad a couple of years ago and you’d like to keep doing those things better and faster, you’ll like this iPad.
That, for me, raises the obvious question of where this type of iPad goes next. What, in that giant list of high technologies in the iPad Pro, fits the context of an iPad for lighter users? Aside from bumps in processing speed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a True Tone, laminated, less-reflective display in a future base level iPad, given how great those things are for text-centric use. At some point, the base iPad could conceivably get a newer Touch ID sensor, better cameras, and greater storage options. All of these things would make the base iPad even better for what I do with it, but they don’t change its function for me. In terms of the technology afforded to it, is the base iPad destined to retain the same kind of role for the conceivable future?
That question is something I’ve thought about a fair bit with this iPad — not in the context of how I use it, but more in the sense of why, specifically, someone would choose an iPad over an iPad Pro, or vice-versa. With the exception of drawing software that supports the Apple Pencil, you can run a lot of the same kind of software on this iPad as you can on the latest iPad Pro. My best guess is that new software built specifically for the iPad Pro’s high-performance processors and capabilities will help materialize a lot of the advantages of choosing one over the other. But, while there are plenty of Mac apps that would be amazing on the iPad, developers have repeatedly pointed out that the economics of building an iPad app just aren’t favourable.
iOS 11 is coming this fall with plenty of enhancements specifically for the iPad, but it will also introduce a new App Store. My hope is that a combination of daily editorial components, greater visibility for non-game apps, better search, and other enhancements will make the iPad a more compelling investment for developers and a more valuable platform for users. In turn, a greater amount of professional software could be available specifically for the iPad Pro, and the case for two unique models should, I hope, become clarified beyond price and pure performance.
Every aspect of this review was made on this iPad, with the exception of taking the photo at the top and transferring it from my camera’s SD card. ↥︎