THE NEW iPAD PRO: LEVELING UP THE TABLET EXPERIENCE
LEVELING UP THE TABLET EXPERIENCE
With Apple pulling the plug on its March Special Event over coronavirus fears, where it planned to show off new iPads and MacBooks, the company decided to launch its biggest update to the iPad in a press release. But don’t be fooled by the lack of fanfare: the launch puts the “Pro” back into the tablet, creating a nextlevel experience ideal for professionals.
ENHANCING THE 2018 MODEL
When Apple overhauled the iPad Pro in 2018, the company made it clear that it was placing a new focus on its professional users. For too long, Apple had been targeting its everyday consumer market with iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks, and though innovations did allow the company to stay one step ahead of the competition, professionals had to choose between a Mac or a competitor product, like a Microsoft Surface, which combined the power of touch with the internals of a high-end computer. The 2018 iPad Pro offered both in abundance and alongside a controversial “What’s a Computer?” ad to persuade users to make the switch, Apple managed to convert its power users - think photographers, architects, and designers - over to the Pro. Though the 2020 models have no major design refreshes over the 2018 models, the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro is just 5.9mm thick, 1.04 pounds, and offers a stunning edge-to-edge display with 6mm bezels at the top, bottom, and sides, which keeps the focus on the content, removing unnecessary distractions like buttons and frames.
Rather than Touch ID, found on cheaper iPhones and iPads, Apple’s iPad Pro uses a TrueDepth camera system with facial recognition capabilities as part of Face ID, which not only makes logging in more convenient, but allows for Apple Pay purchase authentications to create a truly seamless shopping experience; and, of course, offer the tools needed to deploy creative VR and AR applications, like Animoji and Memoji on iPad and iOS. One small change to this year’s iPad Pro design is a square-shaped camera bump, housing the all-new wide-angle camera, ultra-wide-angle camera, True Tone flash, and an LiDAR Scanner - all inspired by Apple’s iPhone 11 family and designed to give professionals even greater control over their work, taking HQ photographs and shooting 4K video on the go.
The 2020 iPad Pro models feature the Liquid Retina edge-to-edge display with 600 nits brightness and an antireflective and fingerprintresistant coating, with wide color support for supporting true-to-life images and True Tone support to match the white balance of the room. ProMotion technology offers a 120Hz display refresh rate, which is dynamic and changes to preserve battery life. For example, if you’re playing a new game on Apple Arcade, you can take advantage of the full 120Hz display refresh rate; if you’re browsing the web, you can’t.
A12Z BIONIC CHIP
Where the iPad Pro really comes into its own is with the A12Z Bionic chip, designed to add some extra power to everyday tasks and make the device even more capable than before. It is short of the A13 Bionic chip that was included in last year’s iPhone and rumored iPhone 9, and it is far removed from the upcoming A14 chip which could make the iPhone 12 family of smartphones as fast and as capable as a 16-inch MacBook Pro, but it’s an upgrade on the 2018 iPad Pro models nonetheless. Featuring an 8-core CPU, with upgraded GPU, improved thermal architecture and tuned performance controllers, Apple is offering the highest performance in an iPad ever, making the iPad Pro faster and more capable than most Windows PCs in the process. The company says that the new device was “built for demanding tasks” like 4K video and even 3D model manipulation.
The new chip also includes Apple’s patented Neural Engine, which performs up to five trillion operations per second, meaning users can do more than ever before in real-time. No more waiting for an application to load or for a video to render; for everyday tasks and indeed some of the more demanding ones, the Neural Engine offers powerful machine learning like photo searching, Face ID, and augmented reality, all on a dedicated chip element for speed.
It’s this Neural Engine which makes Face ID facial recognition faster than before, as well as faster plane detection inside of augmented reality apps, and juice for the new LiDAR sensor. When all of this is combined with 6GB of RAM as standard (the previous generation only
offered 6GB of RAM on its one-terabyte storage options), the iPad Pro is a real powerhouse.
REAR CAMERAS
As smartphone innovation slows from year to year, most manufacturers - including Apple have placed greater emphasis on cameras. This year’s iPad Pro is no exception, and though most users are unlikely to take a 12.9-inch iPad Pro out of their pocket to take a picture on a day trip, the 12-megapixel wide-angle camera with an f/1.8 aperture and a 10-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with an f/2.4 aperture and a 125-degree field of view elevates the iPad experience. According to Apple, the new ultra-wide-angle camera can zoom out two times for a wider field of view, doubling photo and video possibilities and allowing for new perspectives. And that’s without mentioning True Tone Flash, five-times digital zoom tools, 63-megapixel panoramas, a wide color capture, noise reduction, smart HDR, burst mode, Live Photos support, and auto image stabilization, creating many world’s firsts for the tablet.
The iPad Pro has also been given a spec bump in regards to video quality, with budding photographers now able to record 4K video on their tablets at up to 60 frames per second with either camera, alongside slow-mo videos, timelapse videos, and cinematic video stabilization when videos are recorded at lower qualities of either 720p or 1080p.
Sitting proudly alongside the two new cameras on this year’s iPad Pro is an LiDAR Scanner, which stands for light detection and ranging, designed to “enable capabilities never
before possible on any mobile device”. Widely expected to launch on this year’s iPhones, the new scanner uses reflected light to measure the distance from the iPad Pro to objects up to five meters away, taken at the photon level at nano-second speeds, with frameworks in iPadOS then used to combine those points with data from the two cameras to create a more detailed understanding of a scene, ideal for capable augmented reality experiences on the iPad.
The LiDAR Scanner works alongside ARKit and offers improved motion capture and people occlusion, and a new Scene Geometry API uses the scanner to create scenarios “never possible before” on the iPad. The Measure app also uses the new LiDAR Scanner to make it faster, calculating a person’s height in seconds, whilst new vertical and edge guides can be used to help people accurately measure objects, from a bedside cabinet to a football field.
IMPRESSIVE INTERNALS
Apple hasn’t skimped on the internals with this year’s upgrade, introducing a 28.65-watt-hour battery to its 11-inch iPad and 36.71-watt-hour battery to its 12.9-inch iPad, each capable of up to ten hours of battery life whether surfing the internet or watching video on Apple TV+, whilst a dedicated USB-C charger offers fast charging. On models with cellular connectivity, up to nine hours of battery life is achievable, an impressive figure for a power-hungry device.
Five new studio-quality microphones have been packed into the 2020 iPad Pro, designed to capture “super clean audio and the quietest details,” and a four-speaker audio setup now adjusts sounds to any orientation for better quality, including stereo sound, whether watching a movie with friends in a car or listening to your favorite podcast whilst working out at home.
Apple has also bumped up the iPad Pro’s storage capacity, up from the previous base level of 64GB to a new 128GB starting capacity. Users can upgrade up to 1TB of storage, and storage and processor upgrades are now cheaper than they were for the 2018 iPad Pro. A new Apple-designed U1 chip has also been included, offering Ultra-Wideband technology for improved spatial awareness. The U1 first appeared in the iPhone 11 range, enabling precise location of other U1-equipped Apple devices, suitable for Apple’s expanded Find My app.
TRACKPAD ON THE MAC
Users have been clamoring for an iPad/MacBook crossover since the introduction of the tablet more than ten years ago, and though Apple has made it clear that macOS and iPadOS devices will always be separate, this year’s release introduces the biggest change to the iPad since its launch; a trackpad.
Apple’s new Magic Keyboard is a folio-style case with a fully-backlit keyboard, inspired by the new scissor-switch keys on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and a trackpad. Connecting to the iPad Pro using a magnet, the optional accessory has cantilevered hinges which allow for a 130-degree viewing angle, allowing the iPad able to effectively “float” in the air like a laptop. When the keyboard isn’t in use, its design protects the expensive Pro, covering its front and back, and its integrated USB-C port offers passthrough connectivity and charging benefits, allowing professionals to plug in peripherals.
Apple will launch iPadOS 13.4 in the coming weeks, introducing trackpad and mouse support to the iPad Pro, an experience that has been ‘completely reimagined’, according to Apple. Rather than porting over the macOS
cursor experience, Apple’s touch-first interface has taken a priority, with a circular cursor that mimics a thumb, allowing for gestures like Slide Over, dragging and dropping, and opening the Control Center with ease. The best part is that most third-party apps won’t need to change their code to work with the new operating system or trackpad, but new APIs will be introduced to provide deeper trackpad support. It is also important to note that the new Pro will work with a Magic Mouse, Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad, Magic Trackpad 2, and third-party mice options using Bluetooth, making the tablet the perfect laptop replacement for those who prefer to work with a keyboard and mouse.
There’s no denying that the new iPad Pro is the most advanced tablet Apple has ever created, and the improvements introduced in 2020 take it even higher. Though the 12.3-inch Surface Pro 6 and Google Pixelbook are comparable in price and specs, no other tablet can benefit from the iPadOS experience, nor Apple’s individual operating systems. With SideCar, Project Catalyst and iCloud bringing Macs, iPhones, and iPads closer together than ever, the future for professionals is clear: working inside of the Apple ecosystem just makes sense!