It's early in the morning for me as I write this, but that's not why I'm yawning. You can cure morning yawns with coffee,
but there's no cure for listening to marketing execs overhype the underwhelming. If you decide to watch the playback of Apple's Special Event, "underwhelming" is all you're going to get.
I'm the business guy, so I won't comment on the Apple Watch, the iPhone 6s, or the new Apple TV. I'm putting fingers to keyboard because Apple had to go and tack on "Pro" to the end of "iPad" and that usually means business. But, for business users, there's really only one takeaway from Sept. 9: Stick with the MacBook Air.
Apple stuffed a lot of hardware bling into the iPad Pro, but all the company has succeeded in doing is building a touch-sensitive MacBook Air that only runs mobile apps and comes in three parts. According to the specs, if you put all three iPad Pro components together (i.e., tablet, keyboard, and stylus), they even weigh the same as a MacBook Air. And since I didn't see a built-in holster for the fantastically overpriced $99 Apple Pencil, you can count on losing that a few times, too.
Tim Cook summed up the iPad with a quote that neatly encapsulates not just the iPad Pro but its inspiration, the Microsoft Surface RT (and the Samsung Galaxy NotePro 12.2, too): "The iPad is the purest expression of our vision of personal computing; a simple multitouch piece of glass that instantly transforms into virtually anything you want it to be."
From a business standpoint, that should end with: "except anything really useful." I keep reading that the iPad Pro was inspired by the Microsoft Surface Pro 3. Now that I've seen it, I know it wasn't. If it was inspired by anything from Microsoft, it was the failed Surface RT—which is weird because Microsoft had that failure beaten into it in a bloody orgy of nasty press, mean user reviews, and sob-worthy sales.
Apple seems to have missed all of that. Instead, it has exactly followed Microsoft's RT disaster recipe: Take the latest mobile hardware bling you can find, stuff it into a big-screen tablet with lots of pixels, run the thing with a mobile-oriented operating system that almost-but-not-quite matches what you can do on a PC, add a breakaway keyboard that gives customers the illusion of a notebook, and sell it with a significantly lower price tag in the hopes of creating a new market.
Oh wait. Apple didn't quite follow that recipe, did it? Surface RTs were selling for under $300 and under $200 near the end. Apple wants over a grand for the high-end iPad Pro, and the keyboard and stylus will run you another $300. So its, "Please, come buy our device that's too big to deliver on the primary mobile benefits of a tablet but too underpowered to run the full desktop productivity apps you like—and please pay us the same money you'd pay for a full-on ultraportable while you're at it." Only Apple can deliver that kind of pitch while simultaneously telling me they've redefined personal computing.
All through the iPad Pro segment of Apple's Special Event, I was hoping for that killer app that could justify this overpriced behemoth. But all were reminiscent of the old Microsoft Surface RT demos in which the theme was always how you can now do almost anything you can do on a real PC—if you're just willing to waste some of your precious life hours learning to do the same things a little differently.
Well, Microsoft's customers gave it a clear answer to that message: "Why don't we not learn to do things any differently and keep using full-powered apps on an actual laptop?" After all, that's what the Surface Pro 3 really is: a slickly designed, 2-in-1 notebook that runs Windows, not some stunted imitation designed for vague "mobile-only" use cases. That's why it's still alive and selling (though not fantastically), while the Surface RT—and indeed the entire RT ecosystem—has gone bye-bye.
I had a brief moment of hope when Apple actually invited Microsoft to the stage during the iPad Pro segment of its event. I was hoping it would discuss Pro-style (read: business-grade) features that are so important in today's work environments but not at all glitzy, little things like manageability and security. No such luck. Microsoft just showed off the mobile version of Office—and even that was a disappointment: side-by-side apps, notes in the document margins, and "Look, we can recognize hand-drawn shapes!" Then a "thankyouverymuch" and a veritable sprint offstage.
I wanted to hear about more management depth for iOS 9 in device management platforms like Microsoft Intune, or better device-level security like hardware encryption or biometrics. But that's not what "Pro" means in Cupertino. Apparently, "Pro" means the same talk about games, movies, and doodling—just on a bigger screen with a bigger price tag.
This iPad is no more professionally oriented than any of its forebears. In fact, you could argue that it's actually less so since it doesn't even retain the key benefits of mobility. At least the more recent iPads (certainly the mini) are small enough to use one-handed. In many front-line business scenarios, that can be a real benefit, and it's a key reason why the iPad was so unexpectedly successful in the business arena—well, that and logo worship.
But not this 12.9-inch monster. You're not going to be a happy camper trying to one-hand this thing. It weighs too much and it wants a solid surface on which to use its keyboard. Which brings us right back to the MacBook Air. If you've got one, keep using it. You'll have access to the real desktop-style apps you need, without jumping through nerdapalooza app virtualization hoops—and you'll have PC-level management and security thrown in, too.
In the end, when it comes to "revolutionizing business computing," Apple is lacking the same thing for the iPad Pro that Microsoft did for the Surface RT: a killer app. There's no reason to short shrift security and management, break my notebook into three pieces, and learn to communicate with the thing in a different way—just so I can almost do everything I can do right now.
What I have right now might be broken in some ways but this kind of device doesn't fix it. I'll keep my ultra-portable, thanks very much—and so should you.
Source: pcmag.com
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