The Apple Pencil Pro: A Game-Changer for Digital Artists and iPad Enthusiasts

It's something that slows you down, it's something that contributes to the clunkiness, and just feeling like you're not in control. For digital artists and anyone who uses their iPad Pro or iPad Air, this is a familiar feeling. But with the launch of the Apple Pencil Pro, all of that changes. The second-generation Apple Pencil may have been an upgrade over its predecessor, but it's clear that Apple has taken it to the next level.

One feature that's new to the Apple Pencil Pro is hover support. This allows users to get a preview of what they're about to create without having to actually draw anything. It's not just a visual representation, either - the Apple Pencil Pro also gives you shadow effects, which can be adjusted based on how you rotate the pencil. For example, if you're using a highlighter and rotate it to the side, you get thick lines that mimic the effect of an actual highlighter. This level of attention to detail is insane, and it's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into making this feature work seamlessly with the iPad Pro.

But barrel roll isn't just for show - it actually has functional uses. When you rotate the pencil, you can get different types of weight in your stroke. For instance, if you're using a highlighter and rotate it to the side, you get thick lines that are perfect for highlighting text or creating borders. This level of control is exactly what digital artists need to create stunning artwork.

Another feature that's new to the Apple Pencil Pro is haptics. These allow users to feel a range of effects, from subtle vibrations to full-on tactile feedback. You can fill them in by double-tapping the pencil, or use the squeeze gesture to reveal a palette of options. This level of interactivity is exactly what digital artists need to create complex artwork.

The Apple Pencil Pro is a significant upgrade over its predecessor, and it's clear that Apple has listened to user feedback to make this version better than ever. The hardware is amazing - the pencil feels sturdy and comfortable in the hand, and the performance is silky smooth. But what really sets the Apple Pencil Pro apart is the software. iPad OS has made significant strides in recent years, and it's clear that Apple is committed to making it a more robust operating system.

One area where iPad OS still needs improvement is multitasking. While Stage Manager has improved significantly since its introduction, there are still some limitations to using multiple apps at once. The lack of continuity between apps can be frustrating, especially when you're working on complex projects that require multiple steps. But overall, the experience is more intuitive and natural than ever before.

One thing that's not new to the Apple Pencil Pro is its compatibility with the iPad Pro and iPad Air. These devices have long been popular among digital artists, and it's clear that Apple has designed the pencil specifically for use on these devices. But what's new is the level of detail and attention to detail that goes into every aspect of the experience.

The attention to detail is insane - from the way the shadow effects adjust based on how you rotate the pencil to the subtle vibrations that give you feedback when you're creating something complex. It's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into making this device work seamlessly with the iPad Pro and iPad Air.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: A Mixed Bag

One thing that's not new to the Apple Pencil Pro is its compatibility with Final Cut Pro for iPad. This app has been around for a while, but it's still not perfect - and Apple's latest version doesn't change that.

One of the main issues with Final Cut Pro for iPad is the lack of continuity between apps. When you're working on a complex project, you often need to switch between different apps to get something done. But in Final Cut Pro, this can be frustrating - there are no keyboard shortcuts, and you can't even create compound clips or copy and paste effects. It's not exactly intuitive to use.

But despite these limitations, the experience of using Final Cut Pro for iPad is still enjoyable. The app feels designed with touch-first functionality in mind, which means that it's responsive and natural to use on the iPad. And while some features may be missing, there are others that make up for it - like the ability to create stunning visual effects with just a few taps.

It's not perfect, but Final Cut Pro for iPad is still an excellent app. It's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into making this experience work on the iPad - and while there's room for improvement, it's still one of the best video editing apps available.

Conclusion

The Apple Pencil Pro is a game-changer for digital artists and anyone who uses their iPad Pro or iPad Air. With its hover support, shadow effects, and haptics, this device offers a level of control and interactivity that's hard to find elsewhere. But it's not just about the hardware - the software has also improved significantly in recent years.

While there are still some limitations to using multiple apps at once, the experience is more intuitive and natural than ever before. And with Final Cut Pro for iPad, you get a top-notch video editing app that feels designed specifically for use on the iPad.

Overall, the Apple Pencil Pro is an excellent device that's sure to revolutionize the way we create digital art. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this pencil is sure to inspire - and it's clear that Apple has put its heart and soul into making it work seamlessly with the iPad Pro and iPad Air.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enno the iPad does not need to run Mac OS to reach its full potential it just needs to be the very best version of iPad OS in this iPad Pro top features video which I fully edited on this iPad Pro with Final Cut Pro for iPad I intertwin my conversation about the current state of this Computing platform and you might be surprised now first of all I just want to give the iPad as a Computing platform it's do props because think about this there is a large contingent of iPad users who are using computers today only because of iPad OS and how accessible it is to them otherwise they may not even use a computer at all or if they did it would be very cautiously the iPad has made Computing accessible and that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment and should be lauded folks this is its own Computing platform form on its own unique Journey but like clockwork all the reviews came out about the new iPad pros and you know I could probably tell you the story in full before they even came out the hardware is wonderful but the software is holding it back that's the same story we've been hearing for the past several years and it hasn't changed this year at all so what to do you could either get rid of iPad OS and adopt something else or make iPad OS better there a lot of problems that you could pick with iPad OS but I think the issue really boils down to three main areas number one apps have no Common Thread and I'll explain what I mean as we go on in this video number two there's a lack of shortcuts and then number three file management is still clunky at best okay so this is a top features video Let's do an unboxing of the new iPad Pro and we'll continue this conversation all right so we're going to do an unboxing first this is the 13-in iPad Pro in space black and it is the base model version so that's 256 GB of storage which is actually double the amount of storage that the base iPad Pros used to come in so that's a definite Improvement and here is what you see when you first open it up pretty familiar experience there designed by Apple in California packet so inside this you'll notice conspicuously missing are the stickers of course we all heard Apple got rid of the Apple stickers in the box which is going to save on waste I never use those stickers anyway so what do you guys think let me know uh you get the getting started guide and inside you also get the 20 W power adapter of course you can use a higher wattage charger like the one when it came with your MacBook for faster charging and inside the Box you also get a color matched USBC cable this is just a regular USBC charging cable it's not Thunderbolt enabled or anything like that but it is color matched on the ends for the first time which is you know kind of a nice touch all right so we got all that out of the way let's go ahead and get the iPad itself unwrapped so here it is the space black 13-in iPad Pro so let's just walk through what we see obviously on front dominating the front is that 13-in OLED display and in landscape orientation for the first time on the iPad Pro you have your true depth camera system so that's going to be great for video calls because that landscape orientation will make it just a lot more natural and you also have an antenna band well several antenna bands that wrap around the edges that are viewable from the front of the display now at the top you see the speaker grills and this one has more cutouts than my M1 powered iPad Pro there's another antenna band and oh yeah forgot to mention this is actually the 1 tbte 13-in Pro in silver yeah this is going to be my actual day-to-day device uh whereas the other one is sort of a test device so here's the top button which can be used to sleep or wake or invoke Siri and then on the side you can see the volume buttons up and down down which actually changed based on orientation and here is the inductive charger for the apple pencil Pro you have a microphone here next to that antenna band and then on the bottom more speaker grills so you have two speaker grills that flank each side of these antenna bands and in the middle of course is the USB type-c Thunderbolt 4/ usb4 Port okay so back to the state of the iPad I mentioned those three areas that contributed to the friction that makes the iPad OS experience a little less than ideal so that very first item was apps have no Common Thread you may be wondering what do you mean by that but think about the mac and think about what basically every Mac app has access to something very familiar and that would be the menu bar right the menu bar is a universal concept on the Mac that most apps have access to I look at the the menu bar is sort of like a long hallway where you can Traverse and quickly gain access to all these various areas of the app and that is something that iPad OS apps just don't have I don't think iPad OS should necessarily adopt a menu bar clone but it needs something to help contribute to the cohesiveness of the app experience because right now apps just F like freefor alls on iPad OS it's like there's no sort of continuity one app does things this way another app does things that way and that's fine but the underlying fabric on Mac OS is that menu bar because it it's something that's familiar no matter what the app is you know you can go to the minu bar to do this this this and that uh whereas on iPad OS every app FS like its own little mini operating system within iPad OS and it just I don't know it takes extra brain Cycles it seems like it slows you down it leads to friction maybe the answer isn't like copying the menu bar from from Mac OS but there definitely needs to be some sort of common link between apps that's just not there yet so one of the biggest differences with this year's iPad Pro is how thin it is so it went from 6.4 mm in the 2022 version down to 5.1 mm which is an insane reduction in thickness and it also lost a lot of weight as well going from 1.5 lbs to just 1.28 lbs so that reduction in weight and thickness makes for a much more portable device that's easier to hold and because of that it makes the magic keyboard that much more compelling so the ultra retina xdr display is a tandem OLED which passes light through multiple electroluminescent units to significantly improve brightness and that makes sense because brightness is traditionally been one of the weaknesses of OLED displays but thanks to the tandem OLED apple is able to maintain the same brightness from its mini LED display on the previous iPad Pro 1,600 nits for HDR and up to 1,000 nits for everything else and for the first time there's a new Nano texture glass option for the 1 in 2 tbte models and although the inherent disadvantages of mat displays are still present this is probably the best matte display I've ever seen thankfully the anti-glare properties of the regular iPad Pro are pretty good as well so in this new iPad Pro Apple for the first time launched in its new M4 chip which is based on that second generation 3 Nom process which is an approved version of the M3 chip that's cheaper to build and produces better yields now there's debate as to whether the M4 is an actual improvement over the M3 and IPC or instructions per clock cycle or if the gains are related to scalable Matrix extension support which is a part of rv9 but if you're an iPad Pro user you see the eyew watering single core scores there and pretty good multi-core scores there as well if you're an iPad Pro user it doesn't really matter because there was no M3 iPad Pro you were coming from an M2 so regardless you're going to get some pretty good gains with this new iPad Pro if you're upgrading besides there's more that matters than just Brute Force speed for instance now the iPad for the first time gets av1 Hardware decoding support which gives you access to watch 8K videos in YouTube right there in Safari which is great there's a lot of 8K stuff going on here with these new iPad pros and with the iPhone for that matter so anytime I talk about AK I referen this YouTube video of the homepod Mini review that I did and the reason well it's because I shot it with a red V Rapture in 8k 60 frames per second HDR and you can see when I go into the stats for nerds you see av1 right there so that is what allows us to watch 8K video in Safari thanks to av1 support but it doesn't just stop there now you get Hardware acceleration for akk h.264 h.265 PR and PR raw so you can see me playing back an 8K hvc video here I just slapped it in a da Vinci resolve played it back and it's playing back pretty good shout out to Oliver X if you you want to test out these sample videos you can find the link here and as I mentioned earlier during the unboxing for the first time you get 256 GB of storage on the base configuration which is double the 128 GB of storage on previous base config now the second thing in iPad OS that leads or contributes to friction is keyboard shortcuts or the lack thereof like obviously apps have keyboard shortcuts you hold commands and you get the list of keyboard shortcuts that's cool but there aren't nearly enough shortcuts in the apps that I like to use for instance Final Cut Pro is a wonderful example of how bad this is right now because like the ability to copy and paste effects from one clip to another clip something that video editors do all the time you can't do that with a keyboard shortcut and Final Cut Pro for iPad you have to meticulously go in copy an effect and then paste it on each clip which is it just blows your mind how slow and how clunky that is it it makes editing an absolute shore on the iPad with Final Cut Pro but I want to take it one step further iPad OS needs the ability to set custom keyboard shortcuts uh just like you can in Mac OS that would make everything so much better more customized I can go in and set the shortcuts that I want if they're missing and create my own shortcuts now again on Mac OS that relies on the menu bar in order to do that so again there is that that lack of that Common Thread between applications but it is one glaring Omission that contributes heavily to friction and it just slows you down it feels like you're running through water and it's not a very fun experience for the first time the iPad Pro gets a landscape oriented camera and I don't know about you guys but that is a feature that I have been wanting and clamoring for for years it's always been so awkward to try to look at the camera when it's to the left or to the right side of the display well now the camera rests right at the top of the display when in landscape mode just like it would with the a traditional laptop and thanks to that you can now hold the device like this without having to worry about blocking the camera and there's also the Adaptive true tone flash on the rear you can see that flash there with the ambient light sensor next to it and that helps to adjust the flash but the cool thing about this adaptive flash is that when you use the scanning feature within the photos app the Adaptive flash provides better quality more reliable scans even when there's Shadows on the paper that you're scanning the Adaptive flash can compensate for that and give you a nice highquality scan so that's a welcome new addition to these new iPad Pros speaking of welcome new additions you now have battery health for the very first time on the iPad starting with this new iPad Pro and the new iPad Air super handy for keeping an eye on your battery status now if you're going to purchase an iPad Pro in my opinion the magic keyboard is a must and this new magic keyboard has been redesigned to be better in a lot of ways so the most obvious thing much bigger trackpad as you can see there and just like on our laptops this is a capacitive trackpad with no moving parts so it's significantly quieter than the previous generation magic keyboard for the iPad Pro and that larger trackpad yields a larger wrist rest area and that inside surface is made out of aluminum Which is far nicer to typ on compared to that rubbery plastic of the previous version now you also get a function row which is super nice more viewing angles and apple got rid of the little rubber cover on the hinge as well which seemed to attract a lot of dirt and grime the third iPad OS item that contributes to friction is file management now the files app is a lot better than it has been in the past it's improved but it still has a long way to go for instance I can't do a quick look on some of the hvc videos that I shot with my Sony fx30 which is just it's Bonkers to me so I I do a quick look and it's just nothing it's just just blank um so that in and of itself slows me down because I can't preview stuff quickly within the the uh files app so I have to actually import it into an app in order just to view you know a preview of the clip which slows you down tremendously Apple let us see where we're storing our stuff for instance when I add uh Clips to a Final Cut Pro project there's just no way to go out and see where those clips are being referenced from it's just it's just out there somewhere on the i iPad OS file system that's inaccessible to normal users the inability to reference media back to its storage location is just again it's something that slows you down it's something that contributes to the clunkiness and just feeling like you're you don't have control basically and apple launched the apple pencil Pro with significant enhancements over this second generation apple pencil if you have the iPad Pro or the iPad Air I would definitely recommend it because it brings a lot to the table so one thing that I like that isn't new is hover support I didn't have that on my M1 iPad but M2 iPads and higher get hover support so basically you could just hover over the screen and it will give you a preview of what to expect but not just that now you get shadow effects as well so you see that little Shadow right under that shadow represents whatever tool you're using so if you're using a fountain pen you'll see a fountain pin Shadow and no matter how you Orient the pencil it gives you a corresponding Shadow but not just that it also works with the gyroscope to orient the shadow based on the way you're rotating the apple pencil which is crazy right the attention to detail is insane but barrel roll isn't just for the looks it actually has function so when you rotate you can get different types of weight in your stroke for instance if you're using a highlighter and rotate it to the side you get thick ER lines just like an actual real life highlighter so you can see that it change as I rotate using that barrel roll but that's not the only new function of course in the apple pencil Pro you get haptics and they are fairly prominent you can fill them when you double tap or when you use the new squeeze gesture and that squeeze gesture reveals a palette or you can configure it to do a lot of other things even laun shortcuts so this apple pencil is a nice upgrade over the second generation if you're a digital artist I could see it potentially speeding up your workflow so this is going pretty much how we expected it to go like the hardware is amazing we all knew that going into it and the software is still lagging behind a bit but that all being said I think iPad OS has made significant strides to be not only a better operating system but one that can stand on its own what that without having to feel like something needs to replace it I think iPad OS is a very good OS no question um there's tons of people that use it every day it's a great OS that still needs to mature it's a relatively young OS um as far as being separate from IOS is concerned for instance I think things like stage manager have improved the experience a whole lot like multitasking feels like real multitasking in on the iPad now but it's the lack of continuity and it's like the convenience features the the little things that make or break the experience for a lot of people and that's what iPad OS really needs to hunker down on and just address all these little things that add up it's like a million paper cuts and it makes it almost unusable in certain situations for instance I edited this whole video within Final Cut Pro for iPad and it it was not easy at all it it took me way longer than it should have because there's so much manual work that I'm used to basically hitting a few keyboard shortcuts on the Mac version and being done with it for instance you cannot create a compound clip in Final Cut Pro for iPad you can't copy and paste effects so those two things combined really make the experience of editing anything but the most basic of videos and this video isn't complicated but it makes editing anything but the most basic of videos an absolute Shore now all that being said I do really appreciate the touch first mentality that Apple went with with Final Cut Pro unlike Da Vinci resolve which is basically just a port of the desktop version Final Cut Pro feels like it was made for Touch first actually now I know I sound like probably over the top but I don't know I just love the iPad Pro form factor it's fun to use you can see the potential but it's not being realized entirely and I just wish Apple would just do it and just just like address all these little things and once and for all and bring us the experience that we know these things are capable of uh that's all we want and appreciate all you guys that are working hard on this stuff behind the scenes um like I said this was not a um a disparaging video if anything it's an encouraging video because I think iPad and iPad OS is awesome and I'm excited for the future of iPad for sure what do you guys think about the new iPad Pro let me know Down Below in the comments section and just let me know what you think about everything I said here do you agree do you disagree let me know Down Below in the comments section I'll have much more iPad content coming in the future this is Jeff Benjamin with 9 to-5 Mac forno the iPad does not need to run Mac OS to reach its full potential it just needs to be the very best version of iPad OS in this iPad Pro top features video which I fully edited on this iPad Pro with Final Cut Pro for iPad I intertwin my conversation about the current state of this Computing platform and you might be surprised now first of all I just want to give the iPad as a Computing platform it's do props because think about this there is a large contingent of iPad users who are using computers today only because of iPad OS and how accessible it is to them otherwise they may not even use a computer at all or if they did it would be very cautiously the iPad has made Computing accessible and that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment and should be lauded folks this is its own Computing platform form on its own unique Journey but like clockwork all the reviews came out about the new iPad pros and you know I could probably tell you the story in full before they even came out the hardware is wonderful but the software is holding it back that's the same story we've been hearing for the past several years and it hasn't changed this year at all so what to do you could either get rid of iPad OS and adopt something else or make iPad OS better there a lot of problems that you could pick with iPad OS but I think the issue really boils down to three main areas number one apps have no Common Thread and I'll explain what I mean as we go on in this video number two there's a lack of shortcuts and then number three file management is still clunky at best okay so this is a top features video Let's do an unboxing of the new iPad Pro and we'll continue this conversation all right so we're going to do an unboxing first this is the 13-in iPad Pro in space black and it is the base model version so that's 256 GB of storage which is actually double the amount of storage that the base iPad Pros used to come in so that's a definite Improvement and here is what you see when you first open it up pretty familiar experience there designed by Apple in California packet so inside this you'll notice conspicuously missing are the stickers of course we all heard Apple got rid of the Apple stickers in the box which is going to save on waste I never use those stickers anyway so what do you guys think let me know uh you get the getting started guide and inside you also get the 20 W power adapter of course you can use a higher wattage charger like the one when it came with your MacBook for faster charging and inside the Box you also get a color matched USBC cable this is just a regular USBC charging cable it's not Thunderbolt enabled or anything like that but it is color matched on the ends for the first time which is you know kind of a nice touch all right so we got all that out of the way let's go ahead and get the iPad itself unwrapped so here it is the space black 13-in iPad Pro so let's just walk through what we see obviously on front dominating the front is that 13-in OLED display and in landscape orientation for the first time on the iPad Pro you have your true depth camera system so that's going to be great for video calls because that landscape orientation will make it just a lot more natural and you also have an antenna band well several antenna bands that wrap around the edges that are viewable from the front of the display now at the top you see the speaker grills and this one has more cutouts than my M1 powered iPad Pro there's another antenna band and oh yeah forgot to mention this is actually the 1 tbte 13-in Pro in silver yeah this is going to be my actual day-to-day device uh whereas the other one is sort of a test device so here's the top button which can be used to sleep or wake or invoke Siri and then on the side you can see the volume buttons up and down down which actually changed based on orientation and here is the inductive charger for the apple pencil Pro you have a microphone here next to that antenna band and then on the bottom more speaker grills so you have two speaker grills that flank each side of these antenna bands and in the middle of course is the USB type-c Thunderbolt 4/ usb4 Port okay so back to the state of the iPad I mentioned those three areas that contributed to the friction that makes the iPad OS experience a little less than ideal so that very first item was apps have no Common Thread you may be wondering what do you mean by that but think about the mac and think about what basically every Mac app has access to something very familiar and that would be the menu bar right the menu bar is a universal concept on the Mac that most apps have access to I look at the the menu bar is sort of like a long hallway where you can Traverse and quickly gain access to all these various areas of the app and that is something that iPad OS apps just don't have I don't think iPad OS should necessarily adopt a menu bar clone but it needs something to help contribute to the cohesiveness of the app experience because right now apps just F like freefor alls on iPad OS it's like there's no sort of continuity one app does things this way another app does things that way and that's fine but the underlying fabric on Mac OS is that menu bar because it it's something that's familiar no matter what the app is you know you can go to the minu bar to do this this this and that uh whereas on iPad OS every app FS like its own little mini operating system within iPad OS and it just I don't know it takes extra brain Cycles it seems like it slows you down it leads to friction maybe the answer isn't like copying the menu bar from from Mac OS but there definitely needs to be some sort of common link between apps that's just not there yet so one of the biggest differences with this year's iPad Pro is how thin it is so it went from 6.4 mm in the 2022 version down to 5.1 mm which is an insane reduction in thickness and it also lost a lot of weight as well going from 1.5 lbs to just 1.28 lbs so that reduction in weight and thickness makes for a much more portable device that's easier to hold and because of that it makes the magic keyboard that much more compelling so the ultra retina xdr display is a tandem OLED which passes light through multiple electroluminescent units to significantly improve brightness and that makes sense because brightness is traditionally been one of the weaknesses of OLED displays but thanks to the tandem OLED apple is able to maintain the same brightness from its mini LED display on the previous iPad Pro 1,600 nits for HDR and up to 1,000 nits for everything else and for the first time there's a new Nano texture glass option for the 1 in 2 tbte models and although the inherent disadvantages of mat displays are still present this is probably the best matte display I've ever seen thankfully the anti-glare properties of the regular iPad Pro are pretty good as well so in this new iPad Pro Apple for the first time launched in its new M4 chip which is based on that second generation 3 Nom process which is an approved version of the M3 chip that's cheaper to build and produces better yields now there's debate as to whether the M4 is an actual improvement over the M3 and IPC or instructions per clock cycle or if the gains are related to scalable Matrix extension support which is a part of rv9 but if you're an iPad Pro user you see the eyew watering single core scores there and pretty good multi-core scores there as well if you're an iPad Pro user it doesn't really matter because there was no M3 iPad Pro you were coming from an M2 so regardless you're going to get some pretty good gains with this new iPad Pro if you're upgrading besides there's more that matters than just Brute Force speed for instance now the iPad for the first time gets av1 Hardware decoding support which gives you access to watch 8K videos in YouTube right there in Safari which is great there's a lot of 8K stuff going on here with these new iPad pros and with the iPhone for that matter so anytime I talk about AK I referen this YouTube video of the homepod Mini review that I did and the reason well it's because I shot it with a red V Rapture in 8k 60 frames per second HDR and you can see when I go into the stats for nerds you see av1 right there so that is what allows us to watch 8K video in Safari thanks to av1 support but it doesn't just stop there now you get Hardware acceleration for akk h.264 h.265 PR and PR raw so you can see me playing back an 8K hvc video here I just slapped it in a da Vinci resolve played it back and it's playing back pretty good shout out to Oliver X if you you want to test out these sample videos you can find the link here and as I mentioned earlier during the unboxing for the first time you get 256 GB of storage on the base configuration which is double the 128 GB of storage on previous base config now the second thing in iPad OS that leads or contributes to friction is keyboard shortcuts or the lack thereof like obviously apps have keyboard shortcuts you hold commands and you get the list of keyboard shortcuts that's cool but there aren't nearly enough shortcuts in the apps that I like to use for instance Final Cut Pro is a wonderful example of how bad this is right now because like the ability to copy and paste effects from one clip to another clip something that video editors do all the time you can't do that with a keyboard shortcut and Final Cut Pro for iPad you have to meticulously go in copy an effect and then paste it on each clip which is it just blows your mind how slow and how clunky that is it it makes editing an absolute shore on the iPad with Final Cut Pro but I want to take it one step further iPad OS needs the ability to set custom keyboard shortcuts uh just like you can in Mac OS that would make everything so much better more customized I can go in and set the shortcuts that I want if they're missing and create my own shortcuts now again on Mac OS that relies on the menu bar in order to do that so again there is that that lack of that Common Thread between applications but it is one glaring Omission that contributes heavily to friction and it just slows you down it feels like you're running through water and it's not a very fun experience for the first time the iPad Pro gets a landscape oriented camera and I don't know about you guys but that is a feature that I have been wanting and clamoring for for years it's always been so awkward to try to look at the camera when it's to the left or to the right side of the display well now the camera rests right at the top of the display when in landscape mode just like it would with the a traditional laptop and thanks to that you can now hold the device like this without having to worry about blocking the camera and there's also the Adaptive true tone flash on the rear you can see that flash there with the ambient light sensor next to it and that helps to adjust the flash but the cool thing about this adaptive flash is that when you use the scanning feature within the photos app the Adaptive flash provides better quality more reliable scans even when there's Shadows on the paper that you're scanning the Adaptive flash can compensate for that and give you a nice highquality scan so that's a welcome new addition to these new iPad Pros speaking of welcome new additions you now have battery health for the very first time on the iPad starting with this new iPad Pro and the new iPad Air super handy for keeping an eye on your battery status now if you're going to purchase an iPad Pro in my opinion the magic keyboard is a must and this new magic keyboard has been redesigned to be better in a lot of ways so the most obvious thing much bigger trackpad as you can see there and just like on our laptops this is a capacitive trackpad with no moving parts so it's significantly quieter than the previous generation magic keyboard for the iPad Pro and that larger trackpad yields a larger wrist rest area and that inside surface is made out of aluminum Which is far nicer to typ on compared to that rubbery plastic of the previous version now you also get a function row which is super nice more viewing angles and apple got rid of the little rubber cover on the hinge as well which seemed to attract a lot of dirt and grime the third iPad OS item that contributes to friction is file management now the files app is a lot better than it has been in the past it's improved but it still has a long way to go for instance I can't do a quick look on some of the hvc videos that I shot with my Sony fx30 which is just it's Bonkers to me so I I do a quick look and it's just nothing it's just just blank um so that in and of itself slows me down because I can't preview stuff quickly within the the uh files app so I have to actually import it into an app in order just to view you know a preview of the clip which slows you down tremendously Apple let us see where we're storing our stuff for instance when I add uh Clips to a Final Cut Pro project there's just no way to go out and see where those clips are being referenced from it's just it's just out there somewhere on the i iPad OS file system that's inaccessible to normal users the inability to reference media back to its storage location is just again it's something that slows you down it's something that contributes to the clunkiness and just feeling like you're you don't have control basically and apple launched the apple pencil Pro with significant enhancements over this second generation apple pencil if you have the iPad Pro or the iPad Air I would definitely recommend it because it brings a lot to the table so one thing that I like that isn't new is hover support I didn't have that on my M1 iPad but M2 iPads and higher get hover support so basically you could just hover over the screen and it will give you a preview of what to expect but not just that now you get shadow effects as well so you see that little Shadow right under that shadow represents whatever tool you're using so if you're using a fountain pen you'll see a fountain pin Shadow and no matter how you Orient the pencil it gives you a corresponding Shadow but not just that it also works with the gyroscope to orient the shadow based on the way you're rotating the apple pencil which is crazy right the attention to detail is insane but barrel roll isn't just for the looks it actually has function so when you rotate you can get different types of weight in your stroke for instance if you're using a highlighter and rotate it to the side you get thick ER lines just like an actual real life highlighter so you can see that it change as I rotate using that barrel roll but that's not the only new function of course in the apple pencil Pro you get haptics and they are fairly prominent you can fill them when you double tap or when you use the new squeeze gesture and that squeeze gesture reveals a palette or you can configure it to do a lot of other things even laun shortcuts so this apple pencil is a nice upgrade over the second generation if you're a digital artist I could see it potentially speeding up your workflow so this is going pretty much how we expected it to go like the hardware is amazing we all knew that going into it and the software is still lagging behind a bit but that all being said I think iPad OS has made significant strides to be not only a better operating system but one that can stand on its own what that without having to feel like something needs to replace it I think iPad OS is a very good OS no question um there's tons of people that use it every day it's a great OS that still needs to mature it's a relatively young OS um as far as being separate from IOS is concerned for instance I think things like stage manager have improved the experience a whole lot like multitasking feels like real multitasking in on the iPad now but it's the lack of continuity and it's like the convenience features the the little things that make or break the experience for a lot of people and that's what iPad OS really needs to hunker down on and just address all these little things that add up it's like a million paper cuts and it makes it almost unusable in certain situations for instance I edited this whole video within Final Cut Pro for iPad and it it was not easy at all it it took me way longer than it should have because there's so much manual work that I'm used to basically hitting a few keyboard shortcuts on the Mac version and being done with it for instance you cannot create a compound clip in Final Cut Pro for iPad you can't copy and paste effects so those two things combined really make the experience of editing anything but the most basic of videos and this video isn't complicated but it makes editing anything but the most basic of videos an absolute Shore now all that being said I do really appreciate the touch first mentality that Apple went with with Final Cut Pro unlike Da Vinci resolve which is basically just a port of the desktop version Final Cut Pro feels like it was made for Touch first actually now I know I sound like probably over the top but I don't know I just love the iPad Pro form factor it's fun to use you can see the potential but it's not being realized entirely and I just wish Apple would just do it and just just like address all these little things and once and for all and bring us the experience that we know these things are capable of uh that's all we want and appreciate all you guys that are working hard on this stuff behind the scenes um like I said this was not a um a disparaging video if anything it's an encouraging video because I think iPad and iPad OS is awesome and I'm excited for the future of iPad for sure what do you guys think about the new iPad Pro let me know Down Below in the comments section and just let me know what you think about everything I said here do you agree do you disagree let me know Down Below in the comments section I'll have much more iPad content coming in the future this is Jeff Benjamin with 9 to-5 Mac for\n"