- Wow, that's really bright.
The iPad Pro is one of Apple's more puzzling devices.
The Pro moniker implies it's made for professionals
and it certainly would seem that way.
It's a showcase of all the latest and greatest tech
in the tablet world.
And this one's no different.
It's got Apple's famed M1 chip.
It supports 5G wireless connectivity.
And then if you get this bigger model,
there's the screen,
it's called the Liquid Retina XDR
and it's a vibrant, bright screen
that makes all the difference
on a device that's essentially all screen.
Instead of being lit from the side
like many screens are,
this 12.9 inch is lit from the back
by over 10,000 mini LED lights
and they're controlled through 2,500 dimming zones.
It means each dimming zone gets about four LEDs
and is about 812 micrometres squared.
The result is that black areas of the screen become black
and bright areas can get real bright,
to a peak of about 1600 nits.
In a dark room with dark dramatic footage
much like what you're watching right now,
it really pops.
(orchestral music)
If you put this screen
right up next to last year's iPad Pro,
you can see how stark the improvements are.
On the older iPad,
you can make out where the edge of the screen
meets the border.
On the new one, black is truly black,
but this is an iPad Professional.
And that means you shouldn't be watching
anything you're not making.
The screen is great for professionals
in the visual arts industry,
like photographers or folk like me in video.
But even if you're in another industry,
we can all benefit from the increased performance.
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Now back to the show.
(upbeat music)
This iPad has the same M1 chip
that's included in the new iMac, Mac Mini
and MacBooks Air and Pro.
It is faster than the old A12 Zed chip
in the last iPad Pro,
but that's not what impresses most,
RAM is up from six gigabytes in the old model
to eight gigabytes.
Or if you spec up the storage like this one
to eight terabyte or above,
you get a whole 16 gigabytes of memory.
The USBC port is now eight Thunderbolt port.
Hook it up to a Thunderbolt dock
and you can push some massive bandwidth
to external SSDs or better still push 6K resolution
to the big boy XDR display.
Professionals working from home
will also like the front facing camera with center stage.
It's got more megapixels, 12 now,
but more interestingly a wider field of view.
That lets the camera automatically pan
and zoom on your Zoom calls.
You don't have to be attached to a chair anymore,
or you can demonstrate your whiteboards
to your clients or something.
And if you decide to do it in the park,
like I have, the iPad Pro has joined the race to 5G,
which for me means I'm not getting it, I'm getting LTE.
But when I did test at the office,
I was able to get 99 megabits per second down on 5G
and 130 megabits per second down an LTE,
man is 5G overrated.
So the hardware is right up there
with what professionals are looking for.
Fast chip, fast connectivity and amazing screen.
But I'm not sure very many professionals
are going to run out and get one.
When it comes to professionals and technology,
workflow is what matters.
What is the process to do the work
that needs to get done?
Now, professionals try to optimize this all the time
and will often buy things to help improve workflow.
I'm a professional
and the workflows that I'm familiar with are video editing,
writing and photography.
App wise, these are things that are easily done on the iPad,
but it's the iPad operating system
that lets things down everywhere else.
Let's take video editing, for example.
Video editors use special codecs when editing
because they're actually easier for the hardware to process,
but the iPad doesn't support any of them.
Not even Apple's very own ProRes.
LumaFusion is a decent editor that works quite well.
But if you shoot with anything that isn't an iPhone
or basic DSLR, you won't be able to play it back
unless you re encode it, which you can't do on the iPad Pro.
So what's the point?
The only supported codecs on iPad OS
are the harder to edit compressed codecs.
And that means that even with this M1 chip,
footage scrubbing can get choppy,
especially going backwards.
It's a shame too, because it's really cool
how when you're editing HDR video,
the preview frame is so much brighter than the interface.
It just glows showing you how dramatic
your video will be.
(orchestral music)
Photo editing can pose similar challenges.
Adobe's Lightroom app is great,
and being able to use any USBC SD card reader
is really convenient.
File management has improved immensely over the years
but then there are still weird little things
like no progress bars for some file transfers
that just happen and.
(phone buzzing)
Hello?
- [Caller] Hey, I just uploaded those photos
onto Google Drive for you to edit.
Could you get them back to me by end of day?
- Yeah, sure will do.
- [Caller] Thank you.
- Okay, so.
This is where things can get ugly.
There are many professionals who use Google
or situations where they have to use Google,
and that's going to cause some pain.
Okay, I'll go into Lightroom
and then I'll import the photos from files.
Okay, Google Drive's here.
I don't see the folder.
Okay, it's probably 'cause this is a shared folder.
So I gotta go on the Google Drive here
and there's the folder.
All right, I got all the photos selected.
No.
(upbeat music)
I can't.
Okay, let me go in the browser, there's a folder.
Maybe I can download the folder.
It's a good thing that this is 5G, no LTE.
Oh, can't download file.
Now where are the files at?
Google Drive,
they're all grid out.
Maybe Lightroom will sense it.
(upbeat music)
I just want these files in my iPad.
I think I have to go back to the office.
There's more to iPad iOS too.
Despite this model having 16 gigabytes of RAM,
apps can't use it all.
The developers at Procreate
recently revealed that they're only able to use
five gigabytes of Ram.
Now that's more than the old iPad Pro
meaning you get 95 layers on a letter sheet
as opposed to 75,
but it's still also 95 layers on an eight gig model too.
So what's all this RAM for?
(crowd applauding)
- Good morning and welcome to WWDC.
- At this year's WWDC,
I thought Apple was gonna show off
some awesome new capability for iPad OS,
but all we're gonna get
are some improvements to multitasking,
not even multi-user support.
So we're still dealing with the limitations
that a car kids can drive brings.
This model I have right here is $2,000,
add a pencil and this beautiful white magic keyboard,
and you're looking at an all-in cost of almost $2,500.
That's not chump change.
And I realized professionals do spend more
on things like say cameras.
But these are specialized pieces of equipment
and the purchases are thoughtfully considered
in their workflow.
This is still a computer,
even at $1,100 for a 128 gigabyte 12.9 inch iPad Pro
it's still a lot.
And despite this beautiful screen,
I think it's too big as an iPad.
It works extremely well docked in the magic keyboard,
really making computing quick, snappy and desktop like.
But once you hold it in your hands, it's a lot,
you're going to really have to need the big screen.
Otherwise, there's really something to be said
about the smaller one,
which at $800 is a little easier to swallow.
Then there's the iPad Air,
which for $50 less will give you double the storage.
The iPad tends to compliment
already established professional workflows
rather than be the center of a workflow.
It's usually connected to a professional device
or piece of equipment.
And so it's not clear that all this power
and all of this screen is entirely necessary
even in those scenarios.
In many ways,
the iPad Pro is a luxury item,
beautifully crafted with the best technology
at the highest price.
It gets you the best screen, accessories and processor,
but for iPad iOS, that is all headroom for the future.
It's not something developers
or professionals can really take advantage of today.
Apple's big challenge with the iPad Pro
is that they're adapting a book to a movie
it's fast paced, fun and engaging,
but doesn't really reach to the depths of the platform
that all the tech originates on.
Maybe iPadOS will handle this translation better
in the future.
But until then most professional workflows
are still better served by macOS
which they can get on a much less expensive MacBook Air.
Thanks blazing through this Mac Address,
make sure to like
if you can't afford the iPad Pro
and subscribe if you'd accept one for free.
And if you are a professional who's not an artist,
who has found a really great app
and workflow that takes advantage of the iPad Pro,
let me know in the comments below.
I'm curious how it helps you.