The iPad Pro: A Productivity Powerhouse with Room for Improvement

There are a number of features that I have to say are really, really useful. The best one in my opinion is being able to pull text from photos and being able to take the photos right on the iPad. I've always kind of made fun of people who take photos with their iPad - it's kind of ridiculous. You know, in middle school, I would be up doing a band performance, and some guy with the iPad 2 that was brand new and flashy would be sitting in the audience looking like this: "What? What is that?" But now you can actually use the camera to do something useful if you see something written down like notes in a meeting or class, you can just take a quick pick of it, copy the text from it, and stick it in your notes. That's super duper useful, and I absolutely love that new feature.

Another thing that increases usability but doesn't arguably add a ton of functionality is the ability to put widgets wherever you want - just like on iOS. I have no earthly clue why it took them a year to implement this on the iPad when it was on the iPhone last year, but whatever. Here we are. One thing that I really like is just like on iOS, you can make an entire page just out of widgets. Although, that does look eerily similar to the Windows 8 Metro interface - oh god, is it happening again? Now.

There are a number of other features in iPad OS, but the way that I've structured this video is not to tell you about all of them, but about the ones that are actually interesting. There are a number of other features that are present in iPad OS 15, but honestly, I don't find them all that helpful. Like Focus, for example - it's kind of cool, but I probably am not going to use that super often. The new Facetime features are neat, but they're not implemented yet, so I can't test them. There's also the Messages updates, which are very nice - I like that you don't have to see a huge block of photos, but again, it doesn't really impact the usability of the iPad.

And then there's Universal Control, which is something that I'm really looking forward to. As I mentioned in my Mac OS video, that is not implemented yet, so I can't test it. There's also the new version of Safari, which appears here in much the same form as it does on the Mac - although, there are a couple of things that just don't make sense that irk me for example, if you want to create a new blank window, you can't Command N - instead, it makes a new tab. If you want a new window, you have to hold the plus until a new window dialog pops up or, if you make a blank tab, you can drag it out into a split screen, but I don't know why it's so complicated just to make a new window.

Overall, my simple answer is that the iPad Pro is fantastic and would be great for artistic use - if you're doing drawing with the Apple Pencil and can really use that. But as a productivity machine, personally, I think that the iPad Pro cannot match the utility of the Mac and it has some great things going for it, like the mini LED display, which looks really, really good. And I'll be honest - the blooming isn't as bad as I first thought, and the 120Hz display is wonderful. I really wish Apple would put that on the Mac.

However, apart from those features, the iPad Pro just can't compete with the utility of a Mac, especially when it comes to price. The base model 128GB iPad Pro is more expensive with the keyboard case than the base MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage. Frankly, I don't see why I would want to pay more for less functionality and more annoyance.

iPad OS is a great operating system on a refurbished 2018 iPad Pro for $550 or on an iPad Air for $600 or on the entry-level iPad for $330 - that's a great operating system. But at $1,450 for the cheapest configuration with the keyboard, it's just not good enough and it's not taking advantage of the M1 chip in the slightest. So, I'm curious to know what you guys think - do you agree with me? Let me know in the comments below! Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Follow me on Twitter at @lukemiani, and I'll see you guys in the next video.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensince i unboxed the new base model m1 12.9 inch ipad pro i've thrown away my base model m1 macbook pro as well as all the other macbooks that i have in my rotation and i have been using exclusively this since it came out a couple of weeks ago but the reason i didn't make a review talking about this in more detail earlier is because i was waiting for the beta of ipad os 15 and now that it's here i'm ready to give my thoughts can the ipad pro 12.9 m1 replace a mac let's find out there's no denying that the hardware is magnificent the m1 ipad pro is a technical marvel the amount of horsepower packed into this incredibly thin tablet is simply ridiculous and it's gorgeous mini led xdr 120 hertz refresh rate display is second to none however the ipad pro's biggest limitation has always been its software and a lot of us were expecting apple to basically solve this problem with ipad os 15. but the question is did they see mac os has been around for a long long time well it was called mac os only a few years ago but it's been around in this general form for 20 years now and even that has been worked on for another 20. so this is the product of years and years and years of refinement and frankly some people find it boring the ipad pro has been seen as an alternative it's a different take on what a computer could be but a lot of people including myself have found a number of limitations that prevent this from truly replacing a full fat desktop operating system now apple has taken a number of steps to try to make ipad os feel a bit more usable a bit more pro but in my opinion the biggest problem is that it's always going to be an adaptation remember when windows 8 came out and a lot of people were very confused because it was kind of a desktop trying to be a tablet and a tablet trying to be a desktop at the same time i get just a hint of that with ipad os you get the sense that the ipad pro is just ios trying to be a bit more desktopy and it doesn't quite pull it off so the biggest feature that apple talked about and the biggest feature that people really care about that own ipad pros is the new multitasking because multitasking has always been the weak point of the ipad pro so the way apple has fixed this is with a new multitasking menu and a window shelf so these are an attempt to make multitasking a little bit less painful and basically the way it works is you have three different modes that you can run an application in that hasn't changed you've got full screen you've got a half screen side by side and you've got like a thin boy that kind of slides in from the side that one i've always found to be a little weird and not super duper helpful but it's still there and it is objectively easier to move in and out of multitasking however i'm gonna just say this right off the bat there is no replacement for just opening up a bunch of windows all right it's it's just not no amount of fancy os swipe controls could possibly match just being able to put my finger over an app in the dock and just kind of going crazy you literally can't top this i'm sorry if i opened final cut pro that's awkward we all thought that that was going to make it to the ipad pro and it didn't i don't know why the biggest problem that i have with multitasking here is that it's just frankly not very intuitive to me i have been a desktop user for a long time but i'm 22 and i guarantee a lot of people have been using desktops that look like this for 20 or even 30 years and so moving over to a system of swiping and enlarging and it just doesn't really translate the same for certain things ipad os really doesn't feel that much different than mac os like for example if i want to copy some text all i have to do is select it hit copy pull up my notes app and then go ahead and paste it in super easy but what if i wanted to paraphrase something right so then i would drag safari and i would put it over here on the side and again this is pretty simple so i've got my windows going on i've got notes over here and i can very easily see both of those things and i can even bring in another app that i've got waiting in the wings and honestly this works pretty well however with three applications open i'm starting to get pretty crowded here and my numbers application in this little sideboard is very cramped it's covering up safari or it's covering up my note and i can't really have these apps be side by side oh no see look at this i've just accidentally gotten rid of safari and well now i have to go back up here and rebuild my split screen that's not super convenient is it and what if i wanted a different application right now i've got numbers but if i wanted news for example i'd have to get rid of that go on down into my multitasking maybe and find news and then drag it nope now it's in pages oh gosh okay let's pull it out of pages and try to nope drag nope that's not it now i'm home gotta drag it over here and now i can add it to that is there a better way that i could do that though i don't know maybe if i opened up news and then dragged it to the side and then picked my sephora well now i'm side by side in safari but i want my notes app back so now i gotta i'll pull this out nope that didn't work didn't do it right okay pull it out over there open this up i love notes is missing oh there it is okay anyway i'll drag that on nope doesn't want that no no okay okay go on top and now there it goes that was a mess okay that's just me trying to rearrange windows and yeah i'm sure that there was something in there that i did wrong or in the wrong order but the point is if i put aside the ipad pro and i wanted to do the exact same thing on the macbook all i'd have to do is open up safari there it is i don't have my tab pulled up but you get the idea i'm going to go ahead and open up my notes app and there's my note and then i'll just open up news and there's news and if i wanted a different app well then i would use a gesture and there they all are and there's everything just where i left it i just don't understand why it has to be so complicated basically the problem that apple has here is that in order to do anything you have to do it in the way that apple wants you to do it and that is you know start with one app add another app maybe it's adding an app that you've got in your doc they're okay with you doing that but if you want to add an apple you have two apps then you have to like remember this whole process whereas on mac os you just click it you open it and yeah you can resize the window i could put them all next to each other i can do whatever i want i don't have to do it the way apple wants me to do it and that whole mess of a screen recording on the ipad pro was just me trying to get three applications open if i wanted four forget about it i mean even if you could set up multiple different windows of split screen apps so you could do them in pairs of twos and then swipe between them that you could kind of manage but it's just easier to do that on the mac now a lot of the solutions that people have proposed basically end up leading down the road of just put mac os on an ipad but mac os has a lot of small little buttons that are very easy to control with a trackpad or a mouse but are not easy to control with a finger and taps what happens when you detach the screen how would you implement an on-screen keyboard in mac os would it be a window or would it pop up like in ios it it's not a practical application what you're saying when you say i want mac os on an ipad is basically i want windows free floating drag them around windows that i agree with but i don't think mac os on an ipad is ever going to happen or would be usable if it did now in terms of using this ipad pro instead of using a macbook pro there are a number of features that i have to say are really really useful the best one in my opinion is being able to pull text from photos and being able to take the photos right on the ipad now i've always kind of made fun of people who take photos with their ipad it's kind of ridiculous you know in middle school i would be up doing a band performance and some guy with the ipad 2 that was brand new and flashy would be sitting in the audience looking like this like what what is that but now you can actually use the camera to do something useful if you see something written down like notes in a meeting or class you can just take a quick pick of it copy the text from it and stick it in your notes that is super duper useful and i absolutely love that new feature another thing that increases usability but doesn't arguably add a ton of functionality is the ability to put widgets wherever you want just like on ios i have no earthly clue why it took them a year to implement this on the ipad when it was on the iphone last year but whatever here we are one thing that i really like is just like on ios you can make an entire page just out of widgets although that does look eerily similar to the windows 8 metro interface oh god is it happening again now there are a number of other features in ipad os but the way that i've structured this video is not to tell you about all of them but about the ones that are actually interesting there are a number of other features that are present in ipad os 15 but honestly i don't find them all that helpful like focus the quick note is kind of cool but i probably am not going to use that super often the new facetime features are neat but not implemented yet so i can't test them there's also the messages updates which are very nice i like that you don't have to see a huge block of photos but again doesn't really impact the usability of the ipad and there's also the one feature that i really am looking forward to is universal control but as i mentioned in my mac os video that is not implemented yet either so i can't test it there's also the new version of safari which appears here in much the same form as it does on the mac however there's a couple of things that really just don't make sense that irk me for example if you want to create a new blank window you can't command n just makes a new tab if you want a new window you have to hold the plus until a new window dialog pops up or if you make a blank tab you can drag it out into a split screen but i don't know why it's so complicated just to make a new window and also you can't then get rid of that window because no matter how many times you command w even if you run out of tabs it keeps the blank start page window it doesn't ever just get rid of it you have to do that separately i don't know why but apart from that the new safari is pretty great so the question at the beginning of the video was is the new ipad pro specifically on ipad os 15 good enough to use instead of a macbook not just this m1 macbook pro but any macbook well to be honest my simple answer is no the ipad pro is fantastic and i'll tell you what if i were an artist if i were doing drawing with the apple pencil and i could really use that then this would be a great device but as a productivity machine i personally think that the ipad pro cannot match the utility of the mac and it has some great things going for it the mini led display looks really really good and i'll be honest the blooming isn't as bad as i first thought and as many people have been saying the 120 hertz display is wonderful i really wish apple would put that on the mac but apart from that it's just not as useful and my base model 128 gigabyte ipad pro is more expensive with the keyboard case than the base macbook pro with 256 gigabytes of storage so i frankly i don't see why i would want to pay more for less functionality and more annoyance ipad os is a great operating system on a refurbished 2018 ipad pro for 550 bucks or on an ipad air for six hundred dollars or on the entry level ipad for three hundred and thirty dollars that's a great operating system but at fourteen hundred and fifty bucks for the cheapest configuration with the keyboard it's just not good enough and it's not taking advantage of the m1 chip in the slightest so i'm curious to know what you guys think let me know in the comments below if you agree with me and as usual don't forget to like comment and subscribe follow me on twitter at lukemiani and i'll see you guys in the next video yousince i unboxed the new base model m1 12.9 inch ipad pro i've thrown away my base model m1 macbook pro as well as all the other macbooks that i have in my rotation and i have been using exclusively this since it came out a couple of weeks ago but the reason i didn't make a review talking about this in more detail earlier is because i was waiting for the beta of ipad os 15 and now that it's here i'm ready to give my thoughts can the ipad pro 12.9 m1 replace a mac let's find out there's no denying that the hardware is magnificent the m1 ipad pro is a technical marvel the amount of horsepower packed into this incredibly thin tablet is simply ridiculous and it's gorgeous mini led xdr 120 hertz refresh rate display is second to none however the ipad pro's biggest limitation has always been its software and a lot of us were expecting apple to basically solve this problem with ipad os 15. but the question is did they see mac os has been around for a long long time well it was called mac os only a few years ago but it's been around in this general form for 20 years now and even that has been worked on for another 20. so this is the product of years and years and years of refinement and frankly some people find it boring the ipad pro has been seen as an alternative it's a different take on what a computer could be but a lot of people including myself have found a number of limitations that prevent this from truly replacing a full fat desktop operating system now apple has taken a number of steps to try to make ipad os feel a bit more usable a bit more pro but in my opinion the biggest problem is that it's always going to be an adaptation remember when windows 8 came out and a lot of people were very confused because it was kind of a desktop trying to be a tablet and a tablet trying to be a desktop at the same time i get just a hint of that with ipad os you get the sense that the ipad pro is just ios trying to be a bit more desktopy and it doesn't quite pull it off so the biggest feature that apple talked about and the biggest feature that people really care about that own ipad pros is the new multitasking because multitasking has always been the weak point of the ipad pro so the way apple has fixed this is with a new multitasking menu and a window shelf so these are an attempt to make multitasking a little bit less painful and basically the way it works is you have three different modes that you can run an application in that hasn't changed you've got full screen you've got a half screen side by side and you've got like a thin boy that kind of slides in from the side that one i've always found to be a little weird and not super duper helpful but it's still there and it is objectively easier to move in and out of multitasking however i'm gonna just say this right off the bat there is no replacement for just opening up a bunch of windows all right it's it's just not no amount of fancy os swipe controls could possibly match just being able to put my finger over an app in the dock and just kind of going crazy you literally can't top this i'm sorry if i opened final cut pro that's awkward we all thought that that was going to make it to the ipad pro and it didn't i don't know why the biggest problem that i have with multitasking here is that it's just frankly not very intuitive to me i have been a desktop user for a long time but i'm 22 and i guarantee a lot of people have been using desktops that look like this for 20 or even 30 years and so moving over to a system of swiping and enlarging and it just doesn't really translate the same for certain things ipad os really doesn't feel that much different than mac os like for example if i want to copy some text all i have to do is select it hit copy pull up my notes app and then go ahead and paste it in super easy but what if i wanted to paraphrase something right so then i would drag safari and i would put it over here on the side and again this is pretty simple so i've got my windows going on i've got notes over here and i can very easily see both of those things and i can even bring in another app that i've got waiting in the wings and honestly this works pretty well however with three applications open i'm starting to get pretty crowded here and my numbers application in this little sideboard is very cramped it's covering up safari or it's covering up my note and i can't really have these apps be side by side oh no see look at this i've just accidentally gotten rid of safari and well now i have to go back up here and rebuild my split screen that's not super convenient is it and what if i wanted a different application right now i've got numbers but if i wanted news for example i'd have to get rid of that go on down into my multitasking maybe and find news and then drag it nope now it's in pages oh gosh okay let's pull it out of pages and try to nope drag nope that's not it now i'm home gotta drag it over here and now i can add it to that is there a better way that i could do that though i don't know maybe if i opened up news and then dragged it to the side and then picked my sephora well now i'm side by side in safari but i want my notes app back so now i gotta i'll pull this out nope that didn't work didn't do it right okay pull it out over there open this up i love notes is missing oh there it is okay anyway i'll drag that on nope doesn't want that no no okay okay go on top and now there it goes that was a mess okay that's just me trying to rearrange windows and yeah i'm sure that there was something in there that i did wrong or in the wrong order but the point is if i put aside the ipad pro and i wanted to do the exact same thing on the macbook all i'd have to do is open up safari there it is i don't have my tab pulled up but you get the idea i'm going to go ahead and open up my notes app and there's my note and then i'll just open up news and there's news and if i wanted a different app well then i would use a gesture and there they all are and there's everything just where i left it i just don't understand why it has to be so complicated basically the problem that apple has here is that in order to do anything you have to do it in the way that apple wants you to do it and that is you know start with one app add another app maybe it's adding an app that you've got in your doc they're okay with you doing that but if you want to add an apple you have two apps then you have to like remember this whole process whereas on mac os you just click it you open it and yeah you can resize the window i could put them all next to each other i can do whatever i want i don't have to do it the way apple wants me to do it and that whole mess of a screen recording on the ipad pro was just me trying to get three applications open if i wanted four forget about it i mean even if you could set up multiple different windows of split screen apps so you could do them in pairs of twos and then swipe between them that you could kind of manage but it's just easier to do that on the mac now a lot of the solutions that people have proposed basically end up leading down the road of just put mac os on an ipad but mac os has a lot of small little buttons that are very easy to control with a trackpad or a mouse but are not easy to control with a finger and taps what happens when you detach the screen how would you implement an on-screen keyboard in mac os would it be a window or would it pop up like in ios it it's not a practical application what you're saying when you say i want mac os on an ipad is basically i want windows free floating drag them around windows that i agree with but i don't think mac os on an ipad is ever going to happen or would be usable if it did now in terms of using this ipad pro instead of using a macbook pro there are a number of features that i have to say are really really useful the best one in my opinion is being able to pull text from photos and being able to take the photos right on the ipad now i've always kind of made fun of people who take photos with their ipad it's kind of ridiculous you know in middle school i would be up doing a band performance and some guy with the ipad 2 that was brand new and flashy would be sitting in the audience looking like this like what what is that but now you can actually use the camera to do something useful if you see something written down like notes in a meeting or class you can just take a quick pick of it copy the text from it and stick it in your notes that is super duper useful and i absolutely love that new feature another thing that increases usability but doesn't arguably add a ton of functionality is the ability to put widgets wherever you want just like on ios i have no earthly clue why it took them a year to implement this on the ipad when it was on the iphone last year but whatever here we are one thing that i really like is just like on ios you can make an entire page just out of widgets although that does look eerily similar to the windows 8 metro interface oh god is it happening again now there are a number of other features in ipad os but the way that i've structured this video is not to tell you about all of them but about the ones that are actually interesting there are a number of other features that are present in ipad os 15 but honestly i don't find them all that helpful like focus the quick note is kind of cool but i probably am not going to use that super often the new facetime features are neat but not implemented yet so i can't test them there's also the messages updates which are very nice i like that you don't have to see a huge block of photos but again doesn't really impact the usability of the ipad and there's also the one feature that i really am looking forward to is universal control but as i mentioned in my mac os video that is not implemented yet either so i can't test it there's also the new version of safari which appears here in much the same form as it does on the mac however there's a couple of things that really just don't make sense that irk me for example if you want to create a new blank window you can't command n just makes a new tab if you want a new window you have to hold the plus until a new window dialog pops up or if you make a blank tab you can drag it out into a split screen but i don't know why it's so complicated just to make a new window and also you can't then get rid of that window because no matter how many times you command w even if you run out of tabs it keeps the blank start page window it doesn't ever just get rid of it you have to do that separately i don't know why but apart from that the new safari is pretty great so the question at the beginning of the video was is the new ipad pro specifically on ipad os 15 good enough to use instead of a macbook not just this m1 macbook pro but any macbook well to be honest my simple answer is no the ipad pro is fantastic and i'll tell you what if i were an artist if i were doing drawing with the apple pencil and i could really use that then this would be a great device but as a productivity machine i personally think that the ipad pro cannot match the utility of the mac and it has some great things going for it the mini led display looks really really good and i'll be honest the blooming isn't as bad as i first thought and as many people have been saying the 120 hertz display is wonderful i really wish apple would put that on the mac but apart from that it's just not as useful and my base model 128 gigabyte ipad pro is more expensive with the keyboard case than the base macbook pro with 256 gigabytes of storage so i frankly i don't see why i would want to pay more for less functionality and more annoyance ipad os is a great operating system on a refurbished 2018 ipad pro for 550 bucks or on an ipad air for six hundred dollars or on the entry level ipad for three hundred and thirty dollars that's a great operating system but at fourteen hundred and fifty bucks for the cheapest configuration with the keyboard it's just not good enough and it's not taking advantage of the m1 chip in the slightest so i'm curious to know what you guys think let me know in the comments below if you agree with me and as usual don't forget to like comment and subscribe follow me on twitter at lukemiani and i'll see you guys in the next video you\n"