The future of the Mac

Apple recently held an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House.

Along with a new Macbook Air and new Mac Mini, they also announced a new iPad Pro, in 11-inch and 12.9-inch models. They feature Liquid Retina Display, Powerful A12X Bionic Chip and Face ID.

Let’s take a quote from Tim Cook;

“The new iPad Pro is powered by Apple’s A12X Bionic chip, which features a seven-core GPU, an eight-core CPU, and 10 billion transistors. Workloads are now up to 90% faster, and graphics performance is 1,000 times faster, according to Apple. It says these new iPads are faster than 92% of all portable PCs and offers Xbox One-class graphics performance.” – Tim Cook,  CEO of Apple, October 2018

Let’s examine this statement, in particular ‘these new iPads are faster than 92% of all portable PCs’.

iOS 12 and 13

As of writing (November 2018) the current version of iOS is 12. The hardware in the new iPad Pro is amazing, incredibly fast with a beautiful screen. So, with iOS 12 is the iPad still a consumption device rather than a creation device?

It could be argued with the addition of the new Apple Pencil and new Smart Keyboard Folio, both of which attach magnetically to the iPad Pro (make sure you don’t leave your iPad Pro close to iron filings!), that you can create content with the iPad. The Microsoft Office suite for iOS is impressive, Adobe’s Photoshop and Project Aero are exciting, and the games; amazing.

Conspiracy theory – was iOS 12 crippled?

The impressive hardware specs of the new iPad Pro are being held back and limited in usefulness by the OS. Here’s a quote from Tim;

“Many people are telling us that the iPad Pro has become their primary computing device” and this “They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones.”

However, that all said, the jury’s verdict is that OS isn’t up to it to make the iPad Pro a proper Mac replacement. A fellow tech journalist described his new iPad Pro as the most expensive Netflix viewer he’s ever bought.

The wonderful Mac OS experience allows you to easily multi-task, streamlining your productivity without being held back by the OS.

So, it has to be asked ‘why is Apple Pro being crippled by the dated iOS’? Rumours are that many of the more useful features in iOS 12 were held back, that would have enabled the iPad Pro to be functionally in line with Mac OS.

iOS 13 rumours

iOS 13 should be released in Spring 2019. Apple has codenamed iOS 13 ‘Yukon’

So, here’s a few things you may expect from iOS 13;

• Proper multi-tasking
• An improved File Manager
• A new home screen
• iPad and Mac OS cross OS compatibility for Apps

How iOS 13 will impact on the iPhone is anyone’s guess, although I think the time has come to create two version of iOS, one for the iPad and one for the iPhone.

Conclusion

So, to answer the question ‘can the new iPad replace the Mac?’. Currently the answer is no.

Here’s another question; ‘is the iPad the future of Apple?’, I think probably yes. Going back to the original quote “It says these new iPads are faster than 92% of all portable PCs and offers Xbox One-class graphics performance.”, it’s clear Apple see’s the future of mobile computing in the iPad Pro.

Apple are clearly going after both the business market and the gaming market. However, I’m not giving my Mac away any time soon.

Keep an eye on this blog, I’ll update it with news and rumours as they surface.

iOS 12.1.1 update 17.12.18

Following on from this recent post Apple have updated iOS 12 to version 12.1.1.

The update includes;

• Capture a photo during a conversation using FaceTime (as long as both users have FaceTime Live Photos enabled through Settings)
• New menu options for FaceTime and FaceTime Group Chats
• eSIM support for Europe
• News app updates

All in all a good update, especially for FaceTime, free for both iPhone and iPad.