Apple should not have run ads for ”what’s a computer?” – it ruined the reputation for iPad Pro
Ever heard comments like these: ”The iPad Pro is too fast”? I have been reading blogs, social media posts and news articles from Mac rumour websites for the past year, with reports saying that the iPad Pro is only bringing value to customers if you can squeeze out every bit of CPU load percentage from it, more or less, if you summarise it all.
Wait, what?
Let me tell you why this makes sense to reviewers and no sense at all for the actual professionals and prosumer customers who buy the iPad Pro devices from Apple.
Journalists, influencers: constantly reviewing new devices
Imagine you work at a Mac magazine or rumour website. Every year you get review devices made by Apple, fresh from the factory (sort of!). You’re told to write about what’s new this year: new hardware feature and major changes to iOS/iPadOS impacting users’ workflows. This used to be easy 10 years ago: there was one iPad, available in two colours. The iOS yearly updates combined with new hardware brought major improvements to device performance and every now and then you would get to try out a new exciting feature from Apple. Your article was almost writing itself. Of course, it took time to write it up which is only fair and natural, but you had lots to write about.
Now, fast-forward to 2015, when the first iPad Pro launched (12.9”). Great device, but Apple was trying to convince people it was a computer. Media outlets weren’t impressed. I understand why because it was still a tablet OS. This was the first time (in my opinion!) that scepticism around the iPad was starting to show. The year earlier, Apple released the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus. The Plus model was the first big-screened iPhone device from Apple. From what I could see it caused the iPad to go down in popularity as the phone was big enough for certain groups of customers (Not me. The iPad is my go-to device).
What’s a computer?
Fast-forward again, to 2018. Apple releases the redesigned iPad Pro 11” and 12.9”. The iPad Pro is celebrated for the new design and the performance is excellent. The OS is looking stale, though. It is the same thing as last year’s but marginally faster. Journalists were waiting for the computer experience. Now, here’s the thing:
Apple, in my view, made a mistake when they started advertising campaigns trying to convince customers it was a computer.
Journalists were upset. They were being told by Apple the Pro model was a computer, but it wasn’t. This was the same tablet OS. Business as usual, year after year. Why would they go out with a big ad campaign without having the OS in place beforehand?
My iPad Pro is too fast for this OS – and other bizarre claims
One thing lead to another: Journalists once again got iPads to review in 2020. This time it used the same exterior design and the OS was similar to the previous one. Journalists started to sound annoyed in their reviews. ”Great hardware but it lacks software to utilise the power”. Not a good view for Apple.
In 2021, Apple decides to release the M1 iPad Pro line. The breakthrough SoC from the Mac enters the iPad Pro. The response from journalists? ”It’s too fast! I don’t need it”, they would write or something along those lines, anyway. Another example of opinion sounded something like ”fantastic hardware without an OS to take advantage of it”. Ouch, Apple.
Painted into a corner 🖌️🪣
This is where Apple had painted themselves into a corner. They were subliminally ”promising” people (without direct contractual obligation) an Apple-designed computer with a touch screen. In many ways that’s what iPads are and always were from day one, in 2010 and onwards from the tech specs. However, it was marketed as a tablet, sitting in-between the iPhone and the Mac, as its own category of devices. Suddenly, when Apple assured people they were selling an iPad Pro with computer-like abilities, customers rightfully assumed Apple was turning the iPad into less of a tablet and more into a next-generation touch device with Mac-like capabilities.
The M1 chip blurred the lines (another marketing mistake)
As soon as they put an M1 chip in the iPad Pro, discussions started to heat up. Apple wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that this was marketed as a computer, when the only huge differentiator between a Macbook and an iPad was the touch screen itself and the lack of built-in keyboard and touchpad. Why tell people it was called the M1? Why not the Apple AX-1 or similar? Anyway, Apple was selling the keyboard as a separate add-on (on top of that, there are various models of keyboards).
On the software side, we saw support for touch-customized mouse cursors in iPadOS. Universal Control made it possible to control the iPad from a Mac and move the cursor from the edge of one device to another, making the devices part of a tight ecosystem.
Yet, iPadOS wasn’t ready to take on the role of a desktop-class OS.
Now, let me get back to the argument “My iPad Pro is too fast”.
An iPad should always be “too fast”
Think about it: how long do you keep your iPad Pro before you upgrade? Because, for the last 10 years I have kept my iPads running for several years at a time. My most recent purchase was the M1 iPad Pro 11” (2021). I plan to use it as the primary device for 5–7 years, depending on the OS and software support Apple provides for it.
Think about that for a moment: five or even seven years of updates.
Remember how people complained in the past about iPhones getting slower over time with new major OS updates? What if the iPad Pro is “way too fast for its own good” in the view of journalists today, but in seven years it’s still excellent albeit not “too fast” anymore?
The iPad Pro reviews of the future
This is where journalists’ arguments start to sound strange to consumers. At their desk they will have the iPad Pro from 2026 or 2027 some day eventually and I bet they are going to say it’s “too fast”, while I’m still using the “too fast” device from 2021. See what I mean? That’s why I praise Apple for selling me an extremely fast device. It’s very environment-friendly and the smoothness of the display refresh rate and the extremely fast response times makes me more productive than ever.
Thank you Apple, for caring about the customers, because we want to keep the same Pro device for multiple years while retaining high performance and OS fluidity. I’m very pleased with the rocket-fueled M1 performance. We aren’t changing hardware every 18 months like reviewers are doing. However, what about not overpromising computer abilities before you have software to support your claims? This applies to Stage Manager, too.
