Standing Still. iPad Pro 2018

Apple released an awesome new iPad yesterday. Beautiful edge to edge display, Face ID, crazy fast.

But, even with all those new bells and whistles, it’s still the same iPad running the same iOS. It’s an iPad. A device that was perfect when it was released. And then kinda rested on its laurels and iterated with safe bets and predictable improvements

For example: the iPad was released with a great browser that took the mobile experience from iPhone and made it bigger. JavaScript and other benchmark results got faster. Split screen, h264 video, it all got better.

But when it comes to managing SAAS applications or using other web apps it’s still way behind what macOS has to offer. Why? Because it’s based on a browser that expected to display the mobile web and push all complex use cases to Apps.

Ever tried doing anything in the Squarespace backend from an iPad? You’re stuck in autozoom hell. Change settings in Zendesk? Better hope both the toggle and the save button are within view when the page loads. Cause scrolling ain’t working.

Similarly: Do you need to demo and present how an app or service works with your notes open in a Google Doc? Good luck. Whatever App the iPad shows on its screen is presented to your audience. You can’t have two instances of Safari open, and you can’t present one app and read from another.

The entire external display solution the iPad offers is based on opening the Photos app with lots of thumbnails on the iPad, and a tv that shows a selected photo nice and big to your grandmother. But it can’t and doesn’t support multiple displays or different apps on different screens.

Don’t get me wrong. I love iOS and if I could, I’d do without the Mac altogether. Apps are better, the interface is nicer, it’s more versatile and battery life is awesome. But even after the addition of Files, multitasking, a wicked fast cpu and gpu, it still lacks in professional use cases.

Maybe the iPad is not meant to do these things. But both of the use cases I described above are professional use cases fitting for a Pro moniker. Neither of them needs faster, better, stronger devices. They need a more versatile OS. It’s an iPad. Not a bigger iPhone.