iOS and macOS : Feature and Service Parity

I love my iPad Pro (9.7), and I am very much enjoying the iOS 10 public betas since I started to use them at release 3.

Last Autumn (I don’t use “Fall” as I’m a ‘Brit’) I made the move from a long held Mac to the iPad Pro (12.9) selling my purchased earlier in the year 13.3" MacBook Pro to fund the purchase, and loved the device. The big screen was beautiful and the Smart Keyboard really did make for the promise of a laptop free existence — could I move to a single device for all my needs? At first, yes. Then my personal workflow cracks started to show.

My wife is a senior leader of a primary school and as a music leader, she often creates CD’s for playing through the school assemblies which reasons of DRM their old iPod can’t work with Apple Music plus some music is just too ‘niche’ for that service. As such, I frequently burn a CD through iTunes for those events. I am guessing CD burning via a USB connection to the iPad Pro and the Music app is a reach too far for the I/O!!

Then, and the biggest parity miss for me, are the services running under Photos. Every year I create a photo book or calendar for my family with collections of my children from the year gone by. And, as my Mum had just passed away a couple of months previously it was a poignant opportunity to bring some positive memories and stories to my Dad. But, the iOS photos app didn’t have the capabilities to work with these services and still doesn’t.

As such, I had to use an alternative service (not as good as Apple’s) and earlier this year with the release of the 9.7 iPad Pro, I sold the 12.9 and bought a refurbished 13.3 MacBook Pro Retina from the Apple store. But, I still hanker after the opportunity for the 12.9 to be my single go to device in place of the laptop.

I hope that as iOS 10 develops, that the iPad Photos app (and others) comes to bring parity with the macOS stablemate and I (and I’m sure many others) can make the final move to the single device for the mainstream consumer with both an enterprise focus and simplified customer experience.

Reference: Apple advertisement for iPad Pro, August 2016.