Wait, what?
What does the old-PC statistic have to do with the iPad Pro? He might as well have said, “Eighty-seven percent of Americans don’t eat enough vegetables. These people could really benefit from an iPad Pro.”
An iPad is not a PC. Never has been. There are so many things that you can do only with a real computer:
1.run full versions of Photoshop, Quicken, Microsoft Office, Final Cut, etc.
2.organize files and folders at the desktop
3.open multiple windows, multiple apps
4.type on real keys
5.plug in peripherals like keyboards, mice, flash drives, musical instruments, cameras, etc.
Now, the Microsoft Surface is a different story. It’s an actual PC. It runs actual Windows — with a desktop, multiple windows, real USB jacks — and actual Windows programs. It’s got all five of the things a real PC has that an iPad doesn’t.
Even so, Apple has been making steady strides toward closing the gulf between an iPad and a real computer. First, in November, it introduced the enormous iPad Pro with a folding keyboard cover that’s a lot like Microsoft’s:
Last week, it introduced a 9.7-inch (standard-size) version of the same thing. It’s a smaller iPad Pro, accompanied by its own keyboard screen cover. That takes care of item 4 (“type on real keys”).
Apple also released a new adapter that lets you plug all kinds of interesting PC-like gadgets into the iPad (more on that shortly), so that’s difference number 5.
And on the Pros, you can split the screen between two apps. Not all apps can be split like this, and the mechanism to trigger this feature is completely hidden and nonintuitive. But it can be done.
So all of this brings up two questions. First, how is the new, normal-size iPad Pro? Second, is using it as a PC replacement as silly an idea as it sounds?
Meet the normal-size iPad Pro
Of course, “normal-size” isn’t Apple’s official terminology. The new device is known as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. But it is, in fact, the size of the regular iPad — the iPad Air 2 — which remains on sale and which looks identical.