Gadgetory

at first glance you might think the most notable thing about Apple's new iPad pro is its giant size or it's gorgeous high-resolution display but actually the more interesting thing about the new iPad pro is its price because when you consider the price of it seven hundred ninety nine dollars for the base model a thousand seventy nine for the top-of-the-line iPad pro then an optional $99 stylus $169 keyboard you're entering a new category the big leagues that's as much as Apple's own MacBook Air or a Microsoft Surface pro and they're you know real computers not just tablets I know I know the distinction almost feels outdated but isn't that the point so the big question around the iPad pro is who is it for do you really need this much iPad and can it replace your day-to-day laptop okay let's start by talking about how big the iPad pro is it has a twelve point nine inch diagonal display larger than any iPad before it and at a pound and a half it's also on the heavy side for an iPad but as with almost everything in tech gadgetry it's really a matter of relativity is the twelve point nine inch diagonal display big sure for a tablet but that's about the same size and weight as Microsoft's new surface pro 4 and it's still smaller than my 13-inch MacBook Pro and lighter than the MacBook Air the iPad pro has a super high-resolution display so photos videos even text look insanely good on it it has Apple's newest chip architecture the a9x chip which apple claims offers double the CPU and double the graphics performance of the chip and iPad air 2 and apple claims ten hours of battery life though in my test it came in just under that it is without a doubt the most powerful iPad ever in fact there are a lot of things about it that make this feel like a full computer it can multitask with split screens so you can run various apps like mail and slack or Microsoft Word in Microsoft Excel side-by-side in their full size and if you pony up for the Apple pencil you can do printing remarkable stuff with software like AutoCAD 360 paper by 53 Adobe Photoshop fix mix sketch I've been working on my dream kitchen and paper making a mock-up of a Christmas card and Adobe comp I edited photos and Photoshop fix I even tried to design a 3d model for a car in the app you make although honestly it looked more like a car crash than a car there is something unapologetically Apple about revealing a white pencil and calling it pencil and charging $99 for it and it's lacking some basic design elements that something like Microsoft Surface stylus has the top part of it doesn't work as an eraser it's not magnetized and it doesn't have a clip if you want to get old-school nerdy and stick it in your shirt pocket or something but this pencil is technologically impressive we're using other styluses often results in a tiny bit of latency the Apple pencil felt really accurate when I was using it it has a tilt sensor so it knows when you're shading basically it felt like using a pencil then there's the keyboard maybe even more so than the pencil Apple really is taking a page from Microsoft here with this cover keyboard but the addition of Apple's own keyboard really does make the iPad pro feel like a PC replacement it looks like a standard iPad Smart Cover but a quadrant of the cover is all keys using a magnetic smart connector the iPad snaps into the Smart Cover keyboard and then the keyboard itself draws power from the iPad so you don't ever need to charge it it's layout mirrors the MacBook keyboard layout though it's missing the whole top row and of course a trackpad ok so just who is the iPad pro 4 the most obvious answer is that it's for people who just want a giant iPad and have some cash to spare but it's also for people who want to play in the surprisingly big world of creativity apps for iOS and it could end up being used quite a bit in the enterprise market the bigger question for everyone else then is whether this can replace a laptop on the one hand it can't fundamentally do all the things and MacBook can it can't give you Adobe's desktop versions of creative apps or even Apple's own Final Cut Pro and while split screen and slide over features are nice it just isn't a replacement for the ability to position and manipulate multiple windows on a desktop but even with those limitations I can say firmly that it comes dangerously close to being a macbook replacement i would actually take this on my next business trip in lieu of my top I have never felt that way about an iPad before five years ago Steve Jobs said that pcs were trucks implying that tablets would be cars or something else more efficient that never happened with the iPad which consumers have primarily seen as a consumption device not a creation device but with the iPad pro that very well could change