Tag Archives: iPad Pro

The iPad Pro is such a neutered device

I have had a long & complicated history with various devices in the iPad lineup over the years. Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is a fantastic device for what its made for. Is just not made for some of the things I want to do; which is making it work like a real computer.

What it is good at

After using iPads (Mostly Pro versions) over many years, I have realised that the iPad is good at:

  1. Media consumption – Great for watching movies, TV shows on the go, browsing through photos. The mini-LED Display is great with high contrasts and peak brightness.
  2. Reading magazines and newspapers.
  3. Sketching stuff & taking hand-written notes.
  4. Looking at websites.
  5. Photo and Video editi…

I love the sexy slab design and the folio cover. But spending this amount of money just for the above items doesn’t make sense (at least, to me).

What it is bad at

Again, not blaming Apple. The iPad can do exactly what Apple claims it can do. The fault is squarely on me for expecting the iPad Pro to act and behave like a real computer.

Why did I even have these expectations? Because I assumed that surely a device this expensive would be able to do some of the things that a computer can do. Why else would you put an M4 processor or 16GB RAM in a tablet? Also, after Apple bought Stage Manager to the iPad, I hoped they would bring more features. Obviously, I hoped wrong.

Over the last year, my frustrations kept mounting till I felt compelled to write this post.

Virtual Machines

You can read about my tryst with UTM SE here. The powerful CPU/GPU are so severely crippled by iPadOS that a 27 year old OS runs slower on it, than it used to, back then.

Again, this is not what the iPad is built for, so my fault for expecting this.

Mouse/Keyboard

The iPadOS technically does support mice, but the experience is severely crippled (stupid round shaped pointer, jumping from element to element, no pointer acceleration).

My frustrations with the external keyboard experience on the iPad is unrivalled. It would keep capitalising the first alphabet of each new sentence, even for things like URLs etc. You can disable this globally, but then it also gets disabled for the on-screen keyboard.

Correction – I found a way to disable this, just for the hardware keyboard.

Disable Auto Correct for Hardware Keyboard on iPad
Disable Auto Correct for Hardware Keyboard on iPad

Web Browsing

Every time I try to scroll up to the top of my WordPress post compose page too fast, it refreshes the whole page and I lose gobs of data. Strangely, this problem didn’t exist on the Magic Mouse 2.

Many websites are not optimised for Safari on iPad. Eg. WordPress hyperlink popup doesn’t show the save option (Is hidden below the window).

Wordpress hyperlink popup on Safari, iPad
WordPress hyperlink popup on Safari, iPad

Wordress also frequently gets stuck on saving a post with the page unresponsive and the button greyed out.

Wordpress stuck autosaving, Safari iPadOS
WordPress stuck autosaving, Safari iPadOS

Basic Text Editing

I discovered this one when recently trying to make a small change to an HTML file. To open an html file from files, you need a 3rd party option and there are no good free ones. They either all require you to pay or have loads of intrusive ads.

Don’t blame developers for this, they have to go via Apple’s App Store and hence pay fees to Apple, why should they release apps, even basic for free?

Eventually I settled on the excellent Runestone Text Editor.

GitHub

I know, I know, the iPad is not meant for application development. But all I wanted to do was upload my website landing page, some 200 files in different folders.

I was horrified when I found out that there’s no support for uploading multiple files and folders to GitHub from the files app. GitHub’s iPad app is just a glorified mobile app, not the Desktop equivalent.

Working Copy to the rescue, which is paid, but very powerful.

Proper File Management

Recently I transferred 400GB of data from mega to my NAS. Although the Files app does have basic file management, I couldn’t find a way to get all 400GB to my iPad to further transfer to the NAS.

Mega (Like most other file sharing apps) does support the connector in the files app, but the experience is buggy at best and times out after a few GBs and needs to be started from scratch.

Eventually, I had to use my daughter’s notebook to get it done. She laughed at me.

Proper Photos management

The only reason I got the 512GB variant of the iPad was because I wanted to store all my photos offline and in case Apple terminated my account for some reason, I would be able to export everything out. However, the only way to export all the photos from the Photos app is to start selecting photos and hold your finger at the bottom of the app for more than an hour for it to select all the photos.

The fun part? Even when you manage to do that, export fails and it knocks you out of the selection mode to start again from scratch.

What, then?

Switch to a Macbook? Even that doesn’t tick all the boxes.

TaskiPad ProMacBook
Reading Books/MagazinesExcellentPoor
Watching VideosExcellentAverage
Virtual MachinesPoorExcellent
Mouse/KeyboardPoorExcellent
Web BrowsingAverageExcellent
Text EditingAverageExcellent
File ManagementAverageExcellent
Photo ManagementAverageExcellent
DisplayExcellentAverage

I really don’t want to also buy a Macbook to complement or replace the $2000 iPad Pro.

My opinion is that if not for the Pro Motion (120Hz) Display, the iPad Air is perfectly sufficient for most purposes and there’s very little market for the Pro model.

I can just hope that iPadOS matures enough to do some basic computing tasks in the future and makes use of the powerful hardware.

iPad Debacle : 2023 edition

I couldn’t end 2023 without another iPad debacle. I already went through how I bought an iPad Pro 12.9 and iPad Pro 11 back in 2022. After the 2022 debacle, I ended up without an iPad, but reasonably satisfied. Then 2023 came around and things went wrong.

As part of my New Years’ resolution, I started reading again. The only problem was, English books are very expensive in Thailand. On top of that, English Indian books are very hard to find. To solve this problem, I bought a Kindle. All was good for a few months, till I felt like I wanted to read comic books & magazines. Of course you cannot do that on a kindle. So what does one do?

iPad Air (5th Gen) 64Gb

One day while walking through the mall, I saw a good deal on an iPad Air (5th Gen) & bought it. Things were OK for a while, I read both books and magazines on it, no problem. However, the poorly storage space (64Gb) and the 60Hz screen started nagging me. Especially when I switched from using my iPhone to the iPad, it felt really bad. I decided that it won’t do. My daughter’s 4 year old iPad was acting up, so I gave her my Air and started looking around.

iPad Pro 11 (4th Gen) 512Gb

The iPad Pro 11 was seemingly perfect. It addressed the storage and display refresh rate limitations of the Air. Weeks went by, with me oblivious to what’s coming next. And then I made a mistake of checking out iPads at the mall. Once I compared the iPad Pro 11 and iPad Pro 12.9 displays, it was game over for this iPad, too.

I hadn’t done my homework before buying this iPad. If I had, I would know that the iPad Pro 11 had a regular LCD screen which goes up to 600 nits. The iPad Pro 12.9 on the other hand, has a Mini LED display and the difference is mind blowing. The contrast and brightness were incomparable. And once I saw this, I couldn’t go back to the iPad Pro 11. It was outside the return window, so I sold it on Facebook Marketplace at a slight loss. I was lucky I got such a good deal.

iPad Pro 12.9 (6th Gen) 512Gb

The next logical step was to buy the iPad Pro 12.9. I chose to forget what happened last time and bought one from the Apple Store. The good news was, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I even went a long way towards getting used to its huge size and weight. Then I saw a deal on Studio 7 and I returned the iPad to Apple (The process took less than 10 mins).

iPad Pro 12.9 (5th Gen) 512Gb

The deal I saw was for an iPad Pro 12.9 (5th Gen) for less than what I paid for the last one. The kicker is, this was a 2Tb model. I couldn’t ever use the 2Tb, but the 1Tb/2Tb models do come with 16Gb RAM, too and appealed to me no end. I ended up saving money with the last transition, but didn’t lose much because the 5th Gen to 6th Gen upgrade was minor at best. I had second thoughts after buying this one, too and even contacted customer care to return it, but eventually slapped myself hard twice and stopped it. But after the holidays came and went and it didn’t even ship, I cancelled the order.

iPad Pro 12.9 (6th Gen) 512Gb

Eventually, I gave up and went back to the Apple Store and bought the same iPad I bought before the last one, but this time in Silver colour.

Analysis

After the dust settled, I tried to think about why this happens to me and why specifically only with iPads. Why did I go through 7 iPads in a span of 10 months? My iPhone is more than a year old and I felt no yearning to upgrade when the iPhone 15 Pro came out. My AirPods Pro lasted 4 years before I had to change them because they died. My Apple Watch is 2 generations old and the last one lasted 4 generations. I have never wanted a Mac or a MacBook. This literally doesn’t happen to me for anything except the iPad.

Eventually, I realised it is because I am looking for a single device to do all of the below

  1. Read books
  2. Read comics, magazines & newspapers
  3. Use as a PC for blogging & budgeting on Buxfer
  4. Making FaceTime calls
  5. Watching TV shows when the TV is occupied or when I am out

The fact is, there’s no one device which fulfils all the above criteria perfectly.

  • The Kindle is good for 1 but not any of the others.
  • The iPad Air and Pro 11 are good for 1 & 4 but not for 2, 3 or 5.
  • The iPad Pro 12.9 is good for 2, 3, 4 & 5, but too big and heavy for 1.
  • A MacBook is good for 3 & 4, but not 1, 2 or 5.

Eventually, I decided to compromise and use a Kindle to read books and an iPad Pro 12.9 to do everything else.

My Worst Purchases-iPad Pro 11”

Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the iPad Pro 11”.

iPad Pro 11″, PC: Wikipedia

So it had been only a few days since my last folly and the palms of my hands started itching already. So I decided to buy the iPad Pro 11″. I justified it by telling myself I deserved it for my birthday.

This time I didn’t get the Smart Folio Keyboard. I again got the 512Gb version with cellular. Like before, I ran out of money so I couldn’t justify buying the Apple Pencil.

I got into a feverish rage on my birthday and woke up early to stand outside the still-closed store to buy one.

This one was just the right size and OK for one handed use. Like before, the device was gorgeous in every way. The body was awesome and the display was mind blowing.

By the second day, I started having serious misgivings about what I had done. All day, I tried coming up with use-cases for the iPad, but came up empty. This time, I even considered buying a Mirrorless camera to use the iPad as an image processor. Luckily, that moment passed without more expenses.

On the third day I bought the Apple Pencil but it failed to spark any creativity from within me.

By the fourth day, I realized that the device was more suited to professionals and people with creative hobbies and I could do nothing with it. I promptly listed it for sale and sold it the next day to someone at a significant loss. After that I slapped myself on the face 13 times.

My Worst Purchases-iPad Pro 12.9”

Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the iPad Pro 12.9”.

iPad Pro 12.9"
iPad Pro, PC: Wikipedia

So it had been a few months that I had bought a new gadget and the palms of my hands started itching. Lately I had not been truly happy with my iPhone (declining battery, low storage). So I decided to get an iPad to supplement the iPhone.

I wanted to read magazines on it, so I got the biggest one at 12.9”. Also wanted to blog on it, so I got the Smart Folio Keyboard. I wanted all my cloud content available offline, so I got the 512Gb version. Ran out of money so I couldn’t justify buying the Apple Pencil.

I got into a feverish rage last Sunday and woke up early to stand outside the still-closed store to buy one.

My first impression of the iPad was that it was huge. And heavy. Bigger than my wife’s MacBook Air, and with the smart folio, heavier, too. But I found it awkward to back out at the store so I handed them all my money and took the iPad.

My second impression was that the device was gorgeous in every way. The body is awesome and the display is mind blowing.

At home after setting everything up, I decided to read a magazine. Far from the experience I imagined, I had to hold the iPad with both hands and it still felt too heavy. I tried blogging on it and it felt weird, switching between the touch screen and the keyboard.

By the second day, I started having serious misgivings about what I had done. All day, I tried coming up with use-cases for the iPad, but came up empty.

By the third day, I realised that the device was more suited to professionals and people with creative hobbies and I could do nothing with it. I promptly listed it for sale and sold it the next day to someone at a significant loss. After that I slapped myself on the face 3 times.