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iPad Pro and Mac event scheduled for October 30th


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17 minutes ago, ort said:

How do you charge the pencil if your iPad is in a case??? (like 90% of the iPads I see are)

It really doesn't look like there is any other way, so I guess cases are either going to need to have a space for it on the top or assume that you won't be using a pencil.

 

Personally I use Apple's covers, but that is a good point that I imagine will frustrate a lot of people.

 

The other thing is that even if the magnet is very strong, I don't know if I'd even want to keep it attached all the time. It would probably live in a different pocket of my bag, like it does now. The lightning charger on the current pencil is ugly, but it does charge fast. If it's entirely dead, I wonder how long it'll need to charge before it's usable.

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The MacBook line is a hot confusing mess.

 

You've got...

 

12" MacBook $1300

13" Air (old model) $1000

13" Air (New model) $1200

13" Pro w/o Touchbar $1300

13" Pro w/ Touchbar $1800

15" Pro $2400

 

What is with the low end?

 

The 12" MacBook has turned into a joke. No update? It not small enough or cheaper enough compared to the Air or Pro to justify the performance hit.

What are the different markets the 13" Pro w/o Touchy and new Air are targeting? They are basically the same damn computer for the exact same kind of consumer. Why do both models exist?

 

I still think the old Air (which is STILL for sale) will be the most appealing for a lot of people. First of all, it's $200 cheaper which is a big deal for most people. Second, it has a "normal" keyboard and actual ports on the side that are useful. USB-C is nothing but a pain in the ass for 95% of Apple's market.

 

Remember this?

 

4-Macs.medium.jpg

 

Modern Apple has taken a massive dump all over it. It keeps getting more and more ridiculous every year.

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33 minutes ago, ort said:

The MacBook line is a hot confusing mess.

You're not wrong. I wish it was cheaper, but at least now if someone asks me what Mac to buy, I can just tell them to get a new Air. The screen and performance difference over the old model seem easily worth it, I can't imagine the portability of the MacBook is worth the performance hit and the extra money, and if you need to ask me what to buy you don't need a Pro.

 

I think all the confusion is over Apple's stubborn refusal to update the Air for so long. If they'd just been making normal upgrades to the Air, the 13" Pro w/o touchbar probably wouldn't exist, and I have to imagine that the 12" MacBook would be a different product.

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Something I didn't initially realize about the USB-C port on the iPad Pro is that it's a USB 3.1 port and not a Thunderbolt 3 port. I was going to say that makes it the only non-Thunderbolt USB-C port on an Apple product, but in checking on that I figured out that the 12" MacBook is also a USB 3.1, although the MacBook is Gen 1 (5Gbps) and the iPad is Gen 2 (10Gbps). Both apparently support displayport alternate mode.

 

This is a certifiable no "big deal," especially compared to the software limitations that will actually limit the usefulness of USB-C on an iPad, but it does mean further confusion among potential accessories, especially docks. Every day I use a thunderbolt 3 dock with my Dell XPS 15, and I've no clue what would happen if you plug an iPad pro into it. I guess we'll find out.

 

Mostly, I'm just curious what this all points to with the future of the Apple ecosystem and how they envision these products being used. Apple's really pushed thunderbolt and USB-C, and I think their implementation has been almost universally excellent. It's wonderful that on all Macs (other than the MacBook) every USB-C port is equal. They're all thunderbolt and they all can take power in (on the notebooks at least). Compared to a lot of Windows devices, that's a model of simplicity. It's a shame that we're seeing a new device that doesn't entirely follow that mold. If Apple did start to allow more uses for the connector, it might be very beneficial for pros to be able to connect that fast thunderbolt 3 NAS or monitor with a built in hub.

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4 hours ago, TwinIon said:

Something I didn't initially realize about the USB-C port on the iPad Pro is that it's a USB 3.1 port and not a Thunderbolt 3 port. I was going to say that makes it the only non-Thunderbolt USB-C port on an Apple product, but in checking on that I figured out that the 12" MacBook is also a USB 3.1, although the MacBook is Gen 1 (5Gbps) and the iPad is Gen 2 (10Gbps). Both apparently support displayport alternate mode.

 

This is a certifiable no "big deal," especially compared to the software limitations that will actually limit the usefulness of USB-C on an iPad, but it does mean further confusion among potential accessories, especially docks. Every day I use a thunderbolt 3 dock with my Dell XPS 15, and I've no clue what would happen if you plug an iPad pro into it. I guess we'll find out.

 

Mostly, I'm just curious what this all points to with the future of the Apple ecosystem and how they envision these products being used. Apple's really pushed thunderbolt and USB-C, and I think their implementation has been almost universally excellent. It's wonderful that on all Macs (other than the MacBook) every USB-C port is equal. They're all thunderbolt and they all can take power in (on the notebooks at least). Compared to a lot of Windows devices, that's a model of simplicity. It's a shame that we're seeing a new device that doesn't entirely follow that mold. If Apple did start to allow more uses for the connector, it might be very beneficial for pros to be able to connect that fast thunderbolt 3 NAS or monitor with a built in hub.

 

I feel like this is more a statement about what a clusterfuck of confusion the introduction of the Type C connector has been than anything else. One of the best things about USB was that if it fit it would work, maybe just suboptimally (slow charging or data transfer). Whereas now you have to worry about shit like lack of support or frying your devices from providing too much power. 

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So the reviews for the iPads are out, and they're creating an interesting discussion. I'd say the common theme of the reviews is that, true to their word, these new iPads are easily as capable as most new laptop computers, and they should be for the price, but the hardware capability is still consistently held back by the software. Browsing or rendering speeds might be on par with MacBook Pro, but odds are your professional workflow probably doesn't translate.

 

Interestingly, Steven Sinofsky (of Microsoft fame) has a counterpoint:

On the one hand, I think he makes a few good points in that thread. I think the way my photography workflow should be less dealing with distinct files on specific drives and more focused on the content. I should be able to take a photo with my DSLR, transfer the RAW file via Wifi to my device (any device), have it available through the cloud on all my devices, and edit it on my $2000 iPad just as well as on my desktop computer. Still, it's obvious we're not there yet. Lightroom CC on the iPad isn't as good as Lightroom on my PC. The wifi transfer on my $3000 Nikon DSLR that came out last year is terrible, and even when it does work, dealing with hundreds of 30-50MB files wirelessly just isn't great when storage is so expensive on the iPad and in the cloud. I really hope my whole photo workflow could be done just as well on an iPad in a way that feels modern, but I just can't yet, and I think in a professional setting that's largely the case. I can't imagine what it would be for video people.

 

I'm also still dubious on the idea that touch is necessarily the sole future of computing. Maybe touch is to mouse what the mouse was to the keyboard, but while people that defended the command line in the ways Sinofsky describes were wrong, the keyboard still remains incredibly useful, and we still see physical keyboards present on these devices. Maybe touch is the defacto standard way to interact, but the mouse feels like it has strong future ahead of it.

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