Apple iPad Pro announced

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's a different market. I paid more for my iPad than for my laptop and was happy to do so. I have a Surface Pro, but use it as an ultra-portable laptop, not as a tablet. For me it's too heavy and has too short a battery life to make a good tablet. I do pretty much all the work (other than essay writing) for my degree course, however, on my iPad.

I won't talk about work as I have a business laptop, we only upgraded to W7 last year, but for me my hobby is reading and reviewing books for a blog. I used to use my ipad for the reviews and type them using pages but the real issue was the posting.I need at least four browser sessions open at the same time, with no refreshing and the ipad just didn't work. Plus I really wanted calibre on a tablet for converting and editing books as I never know what format I'm going to get.


For me the Surface is a much better device and the 10.8 of the 3 is big enough, if I need a bigger screen I have an external monitor at home that I use for work. Plus I have a Bluetooth mouse. I still have an ipad but it's the mini 2, but Tbh I use my Kindke fire 7 more.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I won't talk about work as I have a business laptop, we only upgraded to W7 last year, but for me my hobby is reading and reviewing books for a blog. I used to use my ipad for the reviews and type them using pages but the real issue was the posting.I need at least four browser sessions open at the same time, with no refreshing and the ipad just didn't work. Plus I really wanted calibre on a table for converting and editing books as I never know what format I'm going to get.


For me the Surface is a much better device and the 10.8 of the 3 is big enough, if I need a bigger screen I have an external monitor at home that I use for work. Plus I have a Bluetooth mouse. I still have an ipad but it's the mini 2, but Tbh I use my Kindke fire 7 more.

I can certainly appreciate that, for your specific requirements, the Surface is indeed a better device. Just goes to illustrate that everyone's needs are different!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

I don't really disagree with what you say but MS included a Stylus with all their editions and they got slammed by almost every review site for not including the keyboard as well.
If it only runs iOS9 then it's essentially a giant iPad. The base model ($800) only comes with 32GB of RAM. In 2016! I can see some people on the fringe buying it but it doesn't seem like a solution that most consumers are even asking for or one that will suit the needs of businesses.

Time will of course tell, but remember that people said the same about the original iPad: "It's just a giant iPhone. Who on Earth would want one?". Despite the scepticism (and the titters over the name) the iPad went on to essentially create the tablet market.

Perhaps it will be a commercial failure, but kudos to Apple for giving people the choice. How many threads have we seen on this forum over the years bemoaning the lack of large-screen tablets? Well, now there is one. Whether or not people will buy it in large numbers remains to be seen, but Apple have a pretty good track record of doing market research to find out what people actually do want.

I suspect that not many people will buy the 32GB version, but the appeal for business people will probably be the ability to read and mark-up documents on the go, and 32GB storage (not RAM!) is enough to store 3000 1MB documents.

Let's wait and see before writing it off as a failure before it even sees the light of day .

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

@johnnyb,

If you're satisfied with your iPad Air (and I'm very happy with my Air 2), can you not accept that there are people who have a wish for a similar device with a larger screen? With the greatest respect, I don't think it's fair to compare iOS with Windows RT; iOS has a huge range of applications available, and many people these days find that an iPad (or Android equivalent) meets all their computing requirements.

I suspect it depends on well how the Samsung 12 inch has sold.
Different market obviously, but comparing a 12 inch media tablet with a 12 inch media tablet seems like the best comparison to me (and they do seem to be the 2 main competitors in the expensive premium market at the moment).

Personally if I was having to hawk around something that size I'd want a full o/s on it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Personally if I was having to hawk around something that size I'd want a full o/s on it.

The requirements, though, for a device aimed primarily at content consumption, as a tablet, differ from those of a desktop or laptop PC. You want a tablet to be lightweight and have a decent battery life, neither of which is the case for the Microsoft Surface range.

I too have a need for a decent laptop PC (on which I'm typing this now), but I also have other, and different, needs for a tablet. I don't think I'll be buying an iPad Pro, because I've only recently bought my iPad Air 2 and I'm very happy with it, but who knows what the future will bring .

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The requirements, though, for a device aimed primarily at content consumption, as a tablet, differ from those of a desktop or laptop PC. You want a tablet to be lightweight and have a decent battery life, neither of which is the case for the Microsoft Surface range.

Yep. I'll note, though, that you can also do a whole lot of content creation and editing as well as communications (a huge usage need) on a tablet. They're not purely, and possibly not even predominantly, just consumption devices nowadays.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

Yep. I'll note, though, that you can also do a whole lot of content creation and editing as well as communications (a huge usage need) on a tablet. They're not purely, and possibly not even predominantly, just consumption devices nowadays.

Very true.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by BenG

It seems to be placed to compete with Microsoft's Surface.

Exactly my thought. And to add to the comparison, from the software perspective....MS with Win 10 had 'integrated' it's tablet and desk/laptop OS that Apple has been headed/doing for a while now.

The battle continues only the terrain has changed.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Exactly my thought. And to add to the comparison, from the software perspective....MS with Win 10 had 'integrated' it's tablet and desk/laptop OS that Apple has been headed/doing for a while now.

The battle continues only the terrain has changed.

More choice for the consumer is always good.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

More choice for the consumer is always good.

What's interesting to me is that they seem to be converging on a similar product offering.

and yes choice is good.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly in the company I work for, all our internal applications are web-based, so all a user needs to access them is a device with a web browser. Yes, they use SQL, but on the server, not the client.

Lucky you.
In tons of companies the inhouse apps are legacies. Some from the turbo Pascal days.

Corporate IT's first rule of platform evaluation is: does it mean more work for me? And it goes on from there. It is a different world and you know it. Hype is meaningless to CIOs. There are companies who have been paying MS for custom support for XP rather than move to Win7. Move to an entirely different platform? OMDB!!

There are companies that offer "support" for BYOD and Apple will get sales there.
They'll get sales in small businesses where Macs have a presence and everything rubs of shrinkwrap.
But big volume, corporate sales? Yes, they have IBM trying to move them. But surface has HP, Dell, and Accenture. And it's not just Surface they have to contend with.
They also have HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo and their horde of touch enabled laptops and convertibles.

Apple added a new option for users and choice is always good.
But there already was no shortage of choices.

Again, look to Apple server sales.
The iPad Pro will sell enough to bring in money.
(Probably less than Apple TV, though.)
But like the watch and the new catch-up Apple TV it will have a bigger impact on their stock price more than the balance sheet. Or the corporate IT world.

People need to temper expectations.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Lucky you.
In tons of companies the inhouse apps are legacies. Some from the turbo Pascal days.

Absolutely. I work for a large multi-national IT company, however, which implements corporate systems for its clients, so fortunately we have pretty decent in-house systems ourselves. Pretty much everything is web-based these days. One of our key selling points for our clients is what we call the "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) approach, meaning that customers should be able to access systems on Smartphones, tablets, laptops, or whatever else they choose.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As is, the Pro 3 is still way ahead of the iPad Pro.
There probably were a lot of smiles at MS today.

(At Amazon, too. re: Fire TV, which is outselling the Apple TV and has had the "new" features since day one.)

Different audiences, really.

The market for those who shop based on OS of choice (i.e. 'yes, I could use a bigger iPad/yes, I would like for my windows laptop to change into a tablet') is much bigger than the market of those who'll be deciding between the two.

[WillAdams]

I think this is more interestingly viewed as an opening salvo and Apple's return to having a stylus on a machine.

The next few moves are:

- adding support for the stylus to other iOS devices
- providing an option in Mac OS X to directly run iOS apps
- adding a tablet or convertible device running Mac OS X

[pl001]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Absolutely. I work for a large multi-national IT company, however, which implements corporate systems for its clients, so fortunately we have pretty decent in-house systems ourselves. Pretty much everything is web-based these days. One of our key selling points for our clients is what we call the "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) approach, meaning that customers should be able to access systems on Smartphones, tablets, laptops, or whatever else they choose.

I've seen the same thing at our company, almost all the new products we bring in are web-based.

Even so, the need for Windows is not going away anytime soon.

I will say that Windows 10 has been an utter disappointment on my Surface 3. Awesome in concept and functionality but so full of bugs and glitches it completely ruins the experience. If Microsoft could execute the details like Apple the iPad Pro would be blown out of the water. But they can't, so there will be a fairly strong market for it.