Glad to see that unlike last time with the M4 release, this time they released M5 in more devices than just the iPad Pro at the same time. That said, there’s still room for improvement: the MacBook Air and Mac mini weren’t updated yet.
iPad Pro with M5 chip
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Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#52I have a 2018 iPad Pro that is due for replacement but I cannot bring myself to spend the money on a new iPad. No matter how much I think I'll use it, it becomes a web browsing and YouTube machine on the couch. It's a shame because I think the hardware design is quite good, but the OS itself is so limiting, even with the "improvements" iPadOS 26 introduced.
I'm still on an older 12.9" Pro but will definitely upgrade at some point—and may not bother with another (personal—work-supplied is another matter) MacBook when my M1 starts to get long in the tooth in a couple years, now that Preview is available on iPads.
It beats the hell out of either laptops or phones, for me, for these tasks:
- Music. Excellent as a sheet music display; can record and edit midi quite well; play tutorial videos; act as a tuner, tone generator, or metronome (my phone beats it on that front due to portability, but still, if I already have the iPad out on the stand...); plenty good enough at audio recording and editing for my extremely-amateur purposes, plus its ability to play loops and beats and such.
- Reading. It's especially amazing for comic books (in landscape mode a 12.9 incher is almost the same size as an open comic book! You can read two-page side-by-side on it, no problem) and PDFs. I prefer iPad mini sized devices for prose books in ordinary ebook formats, but the 12.9" pro is damn near perfect for those two things. Laptops and desktop computers also work for comic books and PDFs, but are a pretty big downgrade, UX-wise.
- Drawing. Obviously.
- Long-form writing. Laptops work great for this too, of course, but you still need a separate keyboard if you want decent ergonomics. iPad doesn't have an attached keyboard taking up space that I could instead use for a separate keyboard.
It's also just as good as a laptop (to me) as a remote SSH terminal, VNC terminal, video/music player, web browser et c. I can't really think of much I do on my (personal! Not work-supplied) laptop that I can't do just as well on an iPad, maybe supplemented by a headless RPi hanging off my router, or a cheap VM rental (or just the Linux server in an old desktop workstation tower that I already have anyway).
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#53I have a 2018 iPad Pro that is due for replacement but I cannot bring myself to spend the money on a new iPad. No matter how much I think I'll use it, it becomes a web browsing and YouTube machine on the couch. It's a shame because I think the hardware design is quite good, but the OS itself is so limiting, even with the "improvements" iPadOS 26 introduced.
the walled-garden completely destroys the ipads potential as a productivity device.
How? I've never understood this. There's tons of good software for creating things in the App Store.
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could consider getting into drawing/design. They compete incredibly well against the display-based tablets made by wacom, especially these days where you can also do 3d and animation in procreate.
If I was starting this as a hobby, my first step would not be to spend several hundred dollars on a tablet and pen. I'd probably grab some sketchbooks and pencils first for <$50 and see if it sticks for more than a month.
Drawing with undo, layers, gradients, transparency, and infinite brushes is very different from sketching on paper. I don't think a sketchbook is anything like it.
Just borrow someone else's underused ipad if you want to give it a try.
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#55Great hardware spoiled by a toy OS.
What doesn’t the OS do as of OS 26 that most ordinary people care about?
"Ordinary people" wouldn't care about anything above even an M1 CPU. The post is about the iPad Pro. The target audience would care about having the software features that macOS has.
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normal-ish files and filesystem access, and dev types could use access to the terminal (on the system)
What’s not “normal” about the files and why do most people need access to the file system and not a method to share files across apps that’s already available?
> a method to share files across apps that’s already available
like a filesystem ?
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could consider getting into drawing/design. They compete incredibly well against the display-based tablets made by wacom, especially these days where you can also do 3d and animation in procreate.
If I was starting this as a hobby, my first step would not be to spend several hundred dollars on a tablet and pen. I'd probably grab some sketchbooks and pencils first for <$50 and see if it sticks for more than a month.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome. It's interesting how many people try to pick up new hobbies to justify large purchases when it rarely works out that way
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#58I have a 2018 iPad Pro that is due for replacement but I cannot bring myself to spend the money on a new iPad. No matter how much I think I'll use it, it becomes a web browsing and YouTube machine on the couch. It's a shame because I think the hardware design is quite good, but the OS itself is so limiting, even with the "improvements" iPadOS 26 introduced.
I follow largely the same path. I basically find that mine ends up used for only two things:
1. Reading technical papers where I use the pen to make notes
2. Sketching household projects (a few of the apps are very nice for this).
Outside of that, I simply want a real, physical keyboard most of the time.
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#59I get the impression they're trying to market this to laptop users. I'm still very skeptical of iPads as a productivity device. The problem isn't the hardware, it's the OS, the app store and the model for selling apps. Apple's app store policies make it hard to sell expensive software (which most productivity apps are somewhat expensive), it also makes it hard to distribute free software (as in open source -- because…
My sister in law has used an iPad as here primary compute device for school. Frankly, it works absolutely fine for her. 95% of her need is reading, email, and writing papers (in Google Drive).
Re: iPad Pro with M5 chip
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
What doesn’t the OS do as of OS 26 that most ordinary people care about?
"Ordinary people" wouldn't care about anything above even an M1 CPU. The post is about the iPad Pro. The target audience would care about having the software features that macOS has.
Im talking about the operating system.