As an iPad user since the first version over a decade back, I was quick to adopt and adapt to the iPad Pro. For years leading up to the pandemic, it was the device I carried with me on my many travels, keeping my MacBook Air safely on my desktop back home. But the new iPad Pro announcements today have made it clear to me that I am no longer in the target group for this flagship tablet. Let me explain. The reason I moved from a regular iPad to an iPad Pro was the multiple advantages of a device that offered both a keyboard and a stylus input, not to speak of the power to crunch a heavy spreadsheet in Numbers. As a power user of the iPad, the Pro was an upgrade good enough to let me do all my work and not just the writing part that I executed well on the regular iPads. The iPad Pro, since the first generation, packed more power than I could use. From the LiDar scanner to the Apple Pencil, there were elements that I could not fully utilise with the kind of work I did. But there was still a lot that I could do here as easily as I did on the Macs. But the new ultra-thin iPad Pro with the M4 processor, the Tandem OLED, and the Apple Pencil Pro might have pushed the envelope well beyond a regular boring power user like me. It would have stepped a tad beyond what most creative users are expecting out of a tablet. But that is exactly why the iPad Pro exists, to make creative professionals push the envelope on what they can do with a device like this and maybe what they can do itself. For instance, I’m sure till yesterday no filmmaker was thinking of using multiple iPads with Live Multicam to record multiple angles and mix them in almost real-time during a shoot. That’s the kind of stuff Apple does… making all of us think beyond what we know as the realm of possibility. Look at the Reference Mode, which gives the colour precision for which a lot of creators would have earlier invested in a special display. Suddenly, this device is changing workflows across industries. But while running pivot tables on Numbers with the iPad Pro will seem like taking a Ferrari for grocery shopping, I am thrilled to consider an upgrade primarily because of the thin chassis of the new iPad Pro and the 13-inch form factor. In fact, with the new MacBook Air, I have for a few months been feeling the iPad Pro is a bit heavier and thicker than the laptop. But with the new iPad Pro, this concern has died a quick death. Also, while on the move, the new iPad Pro, with its Ultra Retina XDR display with the four speakers set up, makes it a perfect entertainment device to binge-watch Netflix shows on a long-haul flight. The one thing that will make it an easier pick for me is knowing how good the battery life is now, given the device has jumped one generation to the M4. So while the iPad Pro has become irrelevant for a weak power user like me, I would like to move to a tablet with more installed capacity than I can use because there are improvements here I never knew I wanted…
