Who Is an iPad Pro For?

I use it every single day and it is the only reason I'm able to get anything done. I've taken paper notes my entire life, never referenced them once, I have 10's of notebooks all filled to the brim with unintelligible nonsense. Impossible and exhausting. On the iPad, I can fluidly take notes much quicker due to how fast I can edit, switch colors, erase, etc. And I don't end up with a monster stack of crappy notes. One of my main problems is I get ideas when I'm going to sleep, and so many times I've fumbled because I had the wrong notebook or no light or crap pencil etc. iPad I flick it open, click my shortcut to most recent note, sketch away, put it away.

I use ProCreate, Goodnotes, Concepts (hate the subscription aspect) and Numbers daily. I've done more studying and better work in the past 2 months than I have in my entire life. For the first time I'm able to make meaningful progress in math. For the first time all of my finances and files and emails and communications are sorted and in order, and not only that, but they are pleasurable experiences now too because the UX is great.

When I share ideas with people I can open Quicktime and pipe my iPad output to it and quickly illustrate ideas on the fly, use it as a wireless second monitor, etc.

I see it as a replacement of the traditional assistant, previously secretary. Siri manages my meetings and emails and reminders, and the rest is just for supercharging my note-taking abilities.

I'm not an apple guy at all, I'm a "don't want to spend 1 second on setup/messing with it" guy and don't care about much else. If Google came out with a suite that functioned better I'd switch yesterday. I've tried every note taking system under the sun. I spent 3 months in a basement inhaling org-mode. Nothing stuck. But I will say there was my life before the iPad, and my life after the iPad. It's a brilliant device. It saves me so, so much time.'

There's really not much else to it besides it being a smooth and fast device that makes even the most mundane tasks like logging transactions somewhat fun.

The iPad and Apple Pencil are hugely popular for artists and designers. The leading iPad app for digital painting is Procreate. (Adobe are late to the game with their own painting app called Fresco. However, Adobe has failed to dent the popularity of Procreate.)

There is also a wide variety of design apps for the iPad (e.g. Clip Paint Studio, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo).

The Apple Pencil offers superb pressure sensitivity - why the iPad is so popular for artists, illustrators and designers.

An iPad Pro has been my primary work machine for 4 years. For video calls, and Office-like use cases it’s great. I’ve tried some lower power tablets - not iPads - and latency became unbearable.

If you can successfully fulfill your work within a Microsoft Office like suite - try an iPad for 3months - you might be pleasantly surprised. By comparison I’ve found a normal laptop is probably too much and too heavy - also doesn’t have a persistent cellular connection to work outside of WiFi

I have a colleague designer and UX researcher who uses her iPad Pro with the pencil to generate beautiful sketches and collections of materials and thoughts. They quickly become the centerpiece of our conversations because an iPad laying flat on the table is much less invasive than a screen with webpages, keyboard, presentations etc.

My spouse on the other hand is a more traditional graphic and type designer. She uses a iPadPro/Pencil/MacMini combination to effortlessly go from simple sketches to illustrator sort of drawings. The quality and speed of her work just increased radically with that combination, and she’s not very technical.

My dad, who is a very very old retired design professor has always accumulated incomprehensible piles of sketches on pieces of paper. He is one of those guys who was always an early adopter for styluses with PalmPilots and whatnot. But based on those experiences he was firmly against any sort of stylus. But when he saw how well this one works, his iPad basically replaced his computer and all those pieces of paper. He taught drawing for design classes for half his career and doesn’t stop talking about how great it is.

I guess there is a common denominator here - it’s a really really sleek tool for anyone who uses the hand for drawing visual shapes. It’s especially attractive to the kinds of users that need focus on just one thing at a time. And it’s just a super friendly sort of device.

Personally however, I can’t imagine not using my laptop for everything. I owned an iPad at one point but not drawing anything I don’t see the point.

The 12.9 pro is my main machine for anything non work related (including taxes, legal procedures, amateur video editing etc.)

For me it’s the screen. It’s the only iPad with a 12.9” screen, and it really makes a difference:

- Having two apps side by side, each at roughly the same size as they would be full-screen on an iPad mini.

- Reading manga with the right + left panel both visible, “as intended by the author”. Even for novels I find it more comfortable.

- the screen being roughly A4 size, PDFs are displayed almost at the standard print size, so size adjustments, zooming in and out etc. are rarely needed. I’d often ”scan” the instructions at the administrations and keep them displayed on the iPad while filling the paperwork, and it’s perfect.

- Pixel peeping photos is great, editing with the pencil makes it better, as a photo viewing/editing device it’s perfect.

If tomorrow the Air got a 12.9” or bigger screen I might switch (I love the additional ‘Pro’ features , but that wouldn’t justify the cost compared to the other models in my use case). I actually eyed at 14” chromebooks as a replacement, and might actually do the jump if the ecosystem improves enough when the Pixel tablet arrives.

Not work, but a good purpose is long-lived general computing device.

An iPad pro purchased today, put in a case/screen protector, and (optionally) covered with AppleCare should give you 7 years of use.

It's really nice to have one for working while traveling, just in case an emergency comes up. If you just work on a git branch workflow like nextjs/vercel, you could make github.dev work as editor. It'd be super annoying to actually have to use it, but beats carrying around a laptop sometimes.

My anecdotal evidence may be out of date, and my information comes from casual conversation with a graphic designer that frequented the same Yoga studio I did. That being said: 3 years ago the ecosystem for graphic design on an iPad Pro was good enough to replace a Wacom Cintiq Pro. There were tradeoffs between the two. I'd imagine situation is relatively similar nowadays.

> Why does the iPad Pro make your life better than doing the same thing on a MacBook/notebook/Desktop?

Editing photos on an iPad Pro 12.9" with Lightroom and the second-gen Apple Pencil is the best experience I've found. For me, editing flows better than using a laptop/desktop, Mac or PC.

I currently use a latest-gen iPad Air.

I used the iPad Pro before the redesign for school.

Currently a lot of my friends use the device as a second screen because they're always traveling. Secondly, many content creators use it as a portable workstation because it works really well for certain types of editing. I personally prefer Lightroom on an iPad to the one on the computer. Lastly, it's my favorite media consumption device. I've been thinking of turning in my iPad Air for the newest iPad Pro because I want the improved screen.

The 12.9” is a huge, quality canvas for drawing or viewing photos and videos. It’s great for entertaining kids: make a drawing together, look through photos, or open a children’s book.

Yet for its size it is agile and light, easy to carry. My laptop is far less agile.

Edit to add: it was also my only computer at university. I typed up papers with a magic keyboard sitting on my lap - a comfortable setup for long sessions.

Dear ye gods, for creative shenanigans the iPad Pro is perfect.

Drawing with ProCreate, graphic design with Canva or similar, and works well with Ulysses and GoodNotes for writing.

Then, when you need to publish, it's a second screen for your MacBook or iMac. Or I can take notes on the iPad while my main screen has Zoom or Coursera up.

The amount of the power in an iPad Pro is probably overkill, but I don't want ProCreate to stutter -- it's a joy to use, I can enter flow easily, and paying a premium so I can create faster and more freely is a premium I'll happily pay.

Landscapers, home contractors, pool designers, door-to-door salesmen, inventory takers, pollsters, remote medical caretakers, architects, civil engineers and students.

Those are off of the top of head.

I primarily use mine for content creation, reading/learning, and as a machine I can take with me when I'm out-and-about for those times when I need jump online and fix an issue.

On the content creation side, I'm using Scrviner for writing, Snapseed and Lightroom for photo editing and LumaFusion for video production.

I watch a lot of online courses on it and use it as my primary kindle reader.

For those times when I'm out in the city, I keep it with me in case I need to jump online and troubleshoot an issue, do code reviews, etc. I'm using Terminus and Shelly for SSH, Github and Jira/Confluence apps, and of course, the AWS management console.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a Surface Go2 and put Debian on it. So far, I'm finding that to be a better machine for taking with me while I'm out in the city. Being able to run VS Code and Linux CLI apps on a portable device is an big advantage over the iPad Pro. Also, as a lower cost machine, I'm less worried about it getting stolen or damaged relative to the iPad. I never would have imagined that one of my all-time favorite Linux devices would be made by M$...

On my MacBook Pro, I have rules in my /etc/hosts that remap Facebook and Insta to a local page that reminds me to get back to work. So, I do all my social media from the iPad and prevent time-wasting and doomscrolling from my workhorse machine.

I use a M1 12.9 iPad for mostly work. It is a glorified email machine that I use for the Microsoft suite of business products (Outlook, Teams, Office, etc.). I can either use an iPad to directly work with these apps, or use a laptop to Citrix in and have a Remote Desktop. The iPad is really fast and the display is amazing. But, I would gladly give it up for the small Surface Go that I own personally, but the apps running directly on my hardware are not supported or permitted by my IT group. So I am stuck with the iPad. It is heavier than a M1 or M2 air, and doesn’t have the same full functionality. Again, I would gladly give it up for small, light and convenient. It really isn’t even good as a media consumption machine because of the screen format. But is everything on it a smooth, buttery experience? You bet. But it isn’t worth the money for the beauty of the screen. I bought it as a hope to utilize it as a single device, but the limitations of the device and lock down strategy behind the os limits its true depth of functionality (at least what the hardware would permit) and forces me to keep a mini running as a home server to remotely connect to. I regret the purchase, if you hadn’t guessed.

I like to segment my workflows, so I keep a tablet for certain things.

Any social application is kept on the phone.

Any application for reading books or taking notes in kept on the tablet. Also used for light internetting.

Any application for doing "real work" is kept on the laptop.

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That being said I will be upgrading to the Pro from my 5th Generation Mini come the next year, specifically for note-taking/drawing space. (As well as stage manager).

> Why does the iPad Pro make your life better than doing the same thing on a MacBook/notebook/Desktop?

IME in comes down to two questions most of the time:

- do you live alone ? (including pets like cats or ferrets)

- do you like sitting at desks/tables outside of work ?

If you answered no to both, a laptop is viable, but an iPad will make your life much much easier. Scrolling with the trackpad while your cat comes to sit on the keyboard is not great. Having a laptop open while you lay down next to a toddler is a death wish for the laptop.

Even sitting next to someone in a sofa: the iPad is a mostly rounded, pretty rugged and overall smallish device, a macbook is bigger in volume as it’s unfolded, more angular and way more fragile. Also you can pass the device around, it’s great when making plans.

Then using an iPad in weird positions is fine, a laptop not so much.

Primarily the bigger screen (12.9 inch). I can take handwritten notes with pictures using the camera or access electronic procedures to be used in the workplace, and everyone has access to the same procedure. Anything I write can also be projected to an Airplay-supported TV, so it can work like a whiteboard.

It's also great for presenting documents or CAD models in one-on-one meetings, and for showing information about products at a trade show to attendees.

Finally, split screen on a 12.9 inch iPad is much better than it is in smaller screen sizes, and improves workflows for dragging and dropping of files and content from one app to the other.

I have a second hand, first gen iPad pro. I use it as a colour pdf reader for academic papers and for carrying a large number of books around for teaching students with the ability to look stuff up on it. It's jailbroken and I enjoy being able to SSH in. The big screen is good for looking at high res images (part of my work) but fundamentally I'd never buy it at full price. I don't find typing on it easy at all and I prefer a real pen for real maths.

I use an iPad for work sometimes and the one killer feature for me is built-in cellular. I can just rip the iPad out of my bag and go, anywhere I may be.

I use it heavily for note taking and drawing notes interactively in meetings. I _want_ to use it as my primary machine, but iPadOS is limited, as you mentioned. The Pro is the only iPad with a 120Hz screen, which is just visually pleasing.

Until recently the 12.9 was the only portable TV with good HDR and strong battery life.

Anything involving Apple Pencil interaction. The higher refresh rate makes all the difference, to the point where it actually feels like writing with a pen on paper.

Music making on the iPad is getting more popular and refined every year and I imagine both the extra screen real estate and processing power could be useful for power users.

Now that it’s got stabilisation, can run DaVinci, and shoots ProRes, I can see the Pro becoming more and more popular with low budget filmmakers and YouTubers.

Some people use the iPad as a portable second monitor and I think the bigger size of the pro is probably better there.

People may prefer the bigger screen size if they’re using the iPad primarily for maps e.g sailors, pilots etc.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head that hasn’t been mentioned already. I’ll add any more if they come to me.

Only option IMHO for reading sheet music, and also good for reading ebooks and PDFs of all kinds.

Its for someone willing to pay >$1K for a tablet

I bought an iPad Pro 3 years ago for school and it's now completely useless.

I've reinstalled it several times but the device has gotten so unbelievably slow.