The new iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) shows great potential. It came out on top in last week’s vote and garnered many positive votes, although it is an expensive entity which obviously limits the appeal.
A consensus formed in the comments section – the Apple M1 chipset is great, but it’s wasted on iPadOS. Although it branched out from iOS, it is still much closer to a phone OS (an iPhone in it) than it is to macOS.
Accessories can extend the features of the iPad Pro, but it’s still not a Mac
This locks you out of a lot of professional software, limits what you can do with the file system and makes the Thunderbolt 4 port less useful than it could have been. This would have been much better as a macOS tablet. We already know that the hardware supports it, and macOS Big Sur can run iPadOS apps, so there was nothing to lose and much to gain.
Well, maybe nothing to lose. Look at the result of the iPad Pro 11 (2021) – it edged the M1-powered Macs, but just barely. The 11 “tablet costs $ 200 less than a 13” MacBook Air ($ 100 less if you want the same storage space). If the tablet was running macOS, which of the two devices would you rather have? By keeping their software separate, Apple does not have to figure out the answer to it and lose sales to its own devices.
In any case, the discussion in the comments was centered around performance and software. The mini-LED display on the 12.9 ā€¯model came up a few times, but it is not an important sales factor.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) starts one month from June 7th. There, the company will share details on the upcoming versions of its operating systems, including iPadOS and macOS. iPadOS 15 will redesign the home screen, but more changes are needed to get the most out of the M1 chip. The conference could be a huge deal for the new iPad pros.
