Three professionals test iPad Pro and find it falls short - The Seattle Times
When Apple released the iPad Pro last November, company CEO Tim Cook predicted that people would start using the jumbo tablet and "conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones."
So three months after the big tablet's debut, we decided to test that hypothesis with a panel of creative professionals who have integrated the tablet into their work lives. We found that all were still clinging to their personal computers.
"We're on PCs for the day-to-day work," said Larry Anderson, chief engineer of Teecom, an architectural engineering firm that bought iPad Pros last year to present drawings to clients and carry digitized blueprints to construction sites. "But when I go to a meeting, I don't grab my laptop — I grab my iPad."
The iPad Pro, which starts at $799, stands out from other tablets because of its especially large, 12.9-inch screen. It also supports the Apple Pencil, a digital stylus with pressure sensitivity and angle detection.
The professionals we followed unanimously agreed that while the big screen and stylus were helpful for crucial tasks, such as mocking up illustrations or giving presentations, they still had to turn to a computer for more powerful apps.
Stephen Gates of Citigroup: At Citigroup's Citibank, about 30 of 80 designers are using iPad Pros and the company plans to order more, said Gates, the head of design for Citi's Global Consumer Bank in New York. He said he bought an iPad Pro on the day it was released because he had been waiting for a device that supported a capable stylus like the Apple Pencil.
Gates said Citi designers had used the iPad Pro to work on a new design for a Citi mobile app, among other projects. Designers used the big iPads to sketch out and present mock-ups of the app and discuss where they wanted images or buttons, for example.
The big screen and stylus also came in handy in meetings for communicating with clients. A designer can easily use the Apple Pencil to illustrate ideas on the screen for the client and vice versa, he said.
Gates said the Apple Pencil also lets him digitize his whole creative process, from sketching to production — though a major part of his workflow still involves a computer.
The iPad Pro primarily helps Citi designers conceive ideas, not create final products, he said. When it comes to production, Gates said, he moves his initial ideas to a computer to use desktop apps such as Adobe Photoshop to refine and polish the designs.
He said he thought the iPad Pro could eventually replace his computer, but not yet. Many creative apps designed for the iPad Pro focus on the start of the design process, while desktop apps can do more complex image manipulations, animations and other functions.
Jennifer Daniel of The New York Times:Daniel, a graphics editor at The New York Times, recently tried to do her job on an iPad Pro but was unsuccessful.
Her work generally involves talking to reporters about how to tell their stories visually, researching topics on the Internet, interviewing experts, sketching out concepts with Adobe Illustrator, and writing and publishing code directly from her computer, often all at once.
Such multitasking is difficult on an iPad Pro. While Adobe offers a suite of mobile apps for Photoshop and Illustrator that Daniel can use on a tablet, the apps do not replicate a full-size computer's ability to multitask easily on projects, and they aren't compatible with colleagues' desktop apps, she said.
And while Daniel found the iPad Pro's screen to be big and beautiful and said the Apple Pencil felt like an upgrade compared with drawing on her laptop's trackpad, the tablet can run only two apps at the same time side by side. Daniel said she preferred having many apps open in multiple windows to juggle more tasks simultaneously.
"It forces me to focus on one thing at a time, which is just not how my brain works," she said.
It doesn't help that few others at The New York Times are using the iPad Pro to produce stories, Daniel added, because she needs to use tools that are directly compatible with other staff members' computer apps.
"As an illustrator, can the iPad Pro replace a part of my process?" she said. "Maybe for the initial research and writing phase, but it stops when I have to conform to other people's workflows. Adobe software is a prison, and my work, its prisoners."
She said the iPad Pro still feels like an object to consume things with, not to make things on.
Larry Anderson of Teecom: Engineers at Anderson's company, based in Oakland, Calif., design technology systems such as data centers for corporations and hospitals. They rely heavily on a mix of computers and iPads to do their work.
The engineers use extremely powerful Windows laptops to use 3-D modeling software such as Autodesk Revit to design the technology systems for buildings, Anderson said. Then Teecom moves those drawings to PlanGrid, an iPad app that displays and edits blueprints. From there, the engineers use the iPad to show the construction projects to clients or to take notes on blueprints while at construction sites.
The firm's engineers use iPad Minis and began buying iPad Pros last year for the larger screen and stylus. Anderson said he enjoyed seeing more drawings on the screen and marking up blueprints with the Apple Pencil while on job sites. One complaint: He constantly worries he will lose the Apple Pencil, because there is no compartment to hold it in the iPad.
"For what we do, it's not there yet," he said about the iPad Pro. "Engineers still need that high-powered laptop for the mouse and the ability to have a big screen connected to it."
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