Apple’s amazingly powerful iPad Pro is a computer from the future, with software from yesterday

“I love my iPad. I am conflicted by my iPad. I am bullish on the A-chips that power iPads as the future of Apple’s computers,” Craig Mod blogs eponymously. “In fact, these new iPad Pros are so high-powered that they benchmark close to top-of-the-line MacBook Pro Intel-powered laptops.”
“This is magic — getting this kind of power into a device so devoid of mass and heat,” Mod writes. “Super computers shoved into thin space beneath extra-tough glass. Digi-Slates. Actual Gibsonian, Stephensonian objects from the future. Throw them in your backpack, a few hundred grams, big screen, cellular high-speed connectivity, all-day battery life. Uhm, yes, please.”
“Since 2017, with the release of iOS 11 and basic multitasking, you could maybe — just maybe — earnestly use them as potential laptop replacements,” Mod writes. “These new iPads may be gorgeous pieces of kit, but the iPad Pros of 2017 were also beautiful machines — svelte and overpowered. In fact, the iPad Pro hardware, engineering, and silicon teams are probably the most impressive units at Apple of recent years. The problem is, almost none of the usability or productivity issues with iPads are hardware issues. Which is to say: For years now, the iPad’s shortcomings are all in iOS.”
All-new designs push 11-inch and 12.9-inch Liquid Retina displays to the edges of iPad Pro.
 
“Having used the heck out of iPads these past few years, I believe there are two big software flaws that both make iOS great, and keep it from succeeding as a ‘pro’ device: [1] iOS is primarily designed for — and overly dependent on — single-context computing. [2] Access to a lower level (i.e., a file-like system) components is necessary for professional edge-tasks,” Mod writes. “And one big general flaw that keeps it from being superb: Many software companies still don’t treat the iPad as a first class computing platform.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s some more nice weekend reading for Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Craig Federighi and Co.
Perhaps articles like this one, along with many other similar pieces (see sampling below), and with Adobe’s (real) Photoshop for iPad launch coming soon, the floodgates will be unleashed at Apple and with third-party software companies.
If you want it to be considered a “real computer,” Apple, how about Xcode for iOS?
Imagine an “iOS Pro” mode.
Turn on iOS Pro on your iPad Pro
1. Tap Settings > General, and make sure iOS Pro is turned on.
2. There is no step two.
Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Shouldn’t such a thing already exist? Where would iPad sales be if it did? — MacDailyNews, December 29, 2015
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The answer isn’t to try to make the iPad into a MacBook. The answer is to provide all the tools possible in iOS for developers to make robust apps that can take advantage of the multi-touch paradigm. — MacDailyNews, May 16, 2017
Interns, go get that mic… uh, keg and tap away! TGIF! Prost, everyone!
SEE ALSO:
I can’t put Apple’s new iPad Pro down, but we really need ‘padOS’ – November 8, 2018
What Apple’s iPad Pro enables matters more than what it replaces – November 7, 2018
The Verge reviews the new iPad Pro: Apple’s approach to iOS is holding back powerful hardware in serious ways – November 5, 2018