Review of the iPad Pro 2018: "What is a computer?"

Earlier this year, Apple released an ad featuring a girl using an iPad as the primary computing device. An older woman asked the girl about her computer and she replied, "What is a computer?"

The announcement was largely mocked. To begin, an iPad is a computer. But also, the hypothetical future where kids do not even know what a desktop or laptop looks like at best is very far away. Yes, tablets and smartphones have replaced laptops and desktops among a large number of young people for personal uses such as social media, web browsing and games. But despite some high school students who sometimes write their academic papers on their smartphones, mobile devices are not yet the ones where the real work is done. The real work is done on a laptop or desktop.

But now, Apple has released an iPad Pro that he has very explicitly positioned as a computer, uh, to do that real job. Really. Apple's "Why iPad Pro" page says, "Here are some reasons why your next computer might be an iPad Pro."

After using the new iPad Pro 12.9 inch from 2018 for a week, I almost wonder what a computer is. This device breaks many rules and challenges some misconceptions about what a true productivity machine looks like, especially for creative work.

But the 2018 iPad Pro is both impressive and deeply disappointing. It delivers unmatched performance to anything we've seen before on a mobile device. Its Pencil accessory is a really powerful art tool. In addition, some robust applications such as Photoshop and AutoCAD are moving towards the platform, challenging the preconceptions that a tablet should be a punchy and clean experience.

But it has become apparent in a day of use that iOS, which is otherwise an excellent operating system for phones, is still not designed with this kind of work in mind. Limitations on how the new USB-C port can be used eventually undermine the fact that this tablet is a real workaholic.

The new iPad Pro is trying to redefine the computer, but in many ways it looks like a technical demonstration of this redefinition, not the end product. Despite incredible progress in terms of performance, the software seems to be a little late.

Contents

Characteristics

We will dig on silicon (perhaps the most exciting thing about this device) in a moment. First, let's move on to the other specifications.

Starting at $ 799, but up to $ 1,899, the new iPad Pro comes in two sizes: 11 inches and 12.9 inches. The 11-inch unit measures 247.6 x 178.5 x 59 mm (9.74 x 7.02 x 0.23 inches) and the other 12.9 inches, 280.6 x 214 , 9 x 5.9 mm (11.04 x 8.46 x 0.23 inches). Apart from the size and resolution of the screen, the technical specifications are identical. Both come in configurations with or without LTE support. The smallest weighs 468g and the largest weighs 1.4kg (633g) for the LTE model or 1.39lb (631g) for the Wi-Fi model only.

You can set them up with 64GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB flash storage. Curiously, the developers using the devices discovered that there are two different RAM configurations, and they are not advertised. The configuration of 1 TB seems to come with 6 GB of RAM, but the others with 4 GB – identical to the iPad Pro from last year and the iPhone XS or XS Max this year. Our 1 TB exam unit has 6 GB of RAM. Apple has probably increased RAM on the 1 TB configuration because users who need 1TB of flash storage need it, for example to open large Adobe Photoshop files. More RAM would help that to work well. (A full Photoshop arrives on the iPad Pro next year.)

Both units have a number of sensors used for various features: an accelerometer, a barometer, an ambient light sensor and a three-axis gyroscope.

The 11-inch model has a battery of 29.37 watts-hour, that of 12.9 inches has a battery of 36.71 watts-hour. In these models, Apple promises the same autonomy as that of last year: 10 hours of Web browsing via Wi-Fi or consumption of music or video content.

L & # 39; A12X

The show's star is Apple's custom on-chip system, the A12X. It follows the 2017 A12 iPhones of 2018 and A10X, which were already the best in their respective product categories.

The A12X is the first SoC tablet manufactured in a 7 nm process. This means that it delivers better performance while consuming less energy and taking up less space. It houses a central processing unit (CPU), a graphic processing unit (GPU), an image signal processor (ISP), a neural processing unit (NPU) called by the neural engine, a controller for storage, an integrated memory controller, etc. .

The processor has eight cores: four high performance and four high performance. Unlike older iPad Pro, all cores can be engaged simultaneously when needed. According to Apple, A12X 's single – core processor performance is up to 35% faster than last year' s A10X of the iPad Pro and the performance of the A12X. multicore processor are up to 90% faster. The company has not been informed of many technical details about the architecture, but a recent in-depth study at Anandtech with its iPhone counterpart, the A12, suggested that increasing the size of the caches could be part of the equation.

Apple also claims nearly double the graphics performance of the iPad Pro from last year thanks to improvements made to its graphics processor in the A12X. Thanks to the 7-nm process, Apple has managed to insert another heart into the graphics processor, bringing the total to seven.

We performed tests to verify these claims and found that they were generally true, which puts the iPad Pro away from some of the most powerful laptops, including the most recent models of MacBook Pro.

The other development to note here is that the neural engine arrived on the iPad for the first time. The first iteration of Apple's automatic learning silicon was introduced in the SoC A11 of the iPhone X and a second generation arrived in the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR earlier this autumn. While the A11 neural engine could handle 600 billion operations per second, the A12 and A12X can handle 5 trillion billion. The neural engine contributes to the computer photography features of Apple, to Siri, looking for, rejection of the palm when using the Apple pencil, face recognition, augmented reality, and so on.

The A12X is what is more interesting in the iPad Pro. So we have a lot more detail in a related article. This article also includes our interview with Apple representatives about the company's internal silicon strategy.

USB-C

The iPad Pro has only one port, but the change of strategy compared to Apple's previous iOS device strategy is the USB-C port, not the proprietary connection Lightning. This is a welcome change and brings many benefits. At first glance, it seems that we are heading towards utopia without a dongle (or at least dongle-lite) that we have long dreamed of. USB-C means support for a 5K external display, support for a wider range of headphones, support for a USB-C and USB charger. more extensive support for accessories in general, at least in theory. It even means that you can charge devices like your iPhone, an Android phone or even a Nintendo switch. of your iPad Pro.

There is no doubt that the port situation of the iPad Pro is now better than in Lightning. But there are warnings and exasperating limitations.

First of all, iOS does not offer file system access for external drives via USB-C. Frankly, it's ridiculous. Yes, applications can access files on external drives under certain conditions if they have been specifically designed to do so, but that is not enough. No device bearing the name "Pro" should be delivered without this basic functionality. Apple has long had a "Files" application for browsing file systems, but that does not work for that.

This is a similar situation with external screens. Yes, mirroring the native resolution of the iPad Pro on external displays is supported at the scale of the operating system. But to switch to display rather than mirroring, application developers need to implement specific support for that. I have no doubt that the most popular and prominent pro applications will do this, but it should be integrated with the operating system, like on a MacBook Pro, for example.

Oh, and the USB-C (strangely short) cable that comes in the box? This is USB 2.0, so you have to buy an extra cable to do all that.

On paper, it seems really exciting that the iPad Pro now uses USB-C. As I said, it's better than the previous situation. But that does not bring the promise that business users projected when they first read rumors that it was going to happen. I'm sure these are all limitations in iOS, not in hardware. Apple could solve this problem, and it may be the case in the major iOS version of next year. But until then, USB-C seems half-implemented, at least as far as the specific needs of professional and seasoned users are concerned.

It's very disappointing. The USB-C applications here are sufficient for a consumer device such as an iPhone, but the iPad Pro has the appearance of being for professionals who need of these features. If Apple had implemented this solution as desired by the target users of this product, I would have spent half of this review happily sharing all the clever and powerful new things you can now do with an iPad. Unfortunately, these limitations mean that there is not much to say for the moment.

Samuel Axon's inscription image