AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Friday published a new series of iPad Pro advertisements that depart from past commercials by positioning the tablet not as a PC replacement, but as a "new way" of accomplishing various tasks, from taking notes to podcasting.
Published to Apple's official YouTube channel, the five shorts run just over a minute each and highlight unique iPad Pro capabilities including powerful hardware, integration with Apple Pencil, access to a bevy of iOS apps and more. Like previous "how to" ads from Apple, the iPad Pro spots released today highlight both first- and third-party software.
Each commercial was filmed, edited and designed on iPad Pro.
The first ad, "A new way to take notes," shows what users can do with iPad Pro's Smart Keyboard Folio, Apple Pencil and note taking app Notability. Beyond typing and writing notes, the app supports convert to text functionality, a feature-rich drawing tool, camera and microphone integration, and a search tool with handwriting recognition.
In "A new way to design your space," Apple throws a spotlight on its own Measure app, which leans on augmented reality technology to enable three-dimensional measurements of a user's surroundings in real time. With a photo from Measure, Apple moves into CAD sketching app Morpholio Trace to add in shelving with Apple Pencil.
Next, the AR-capable Houzz app is employed to test out what furniture looks like in the space. The user takes a screenshot of a couch, marks it up with Apple Pencil and sends it via Messages. The ad ends with a Face ID purchase processed through the Houzz app.
The iPad Pro's camera is on display in "A new way to go paperless," which walks viewers through a tutorial on iPad Pro's built-in document scanning feature. Once a document is "scanned" in the Camera app, or photographed and automatically corrected for color and orientation, users can sign and send the digitized version in Mail.
Apple goes on to tout iPad Pro's drawing and sketching capabilities, which can be used to draw in Paper by FiftyThree, edit text in Microsoft Word and log receipts in Shoebox Receipt Tracker. The ad wraps with a reference to iCloud, where users can opt to store content saved to the aforementioned apps.
Apple shines a light on its Keynote app in "A new way to create a presentation." With Keynote, users can create professional presentations with text, drawings, photos, video and more. Apple shows off Split View when adding graphics to the piece, while AirPlay gets a mention as an easy way to display the work on a larger screen.
The last ad, "A new way to host your own podcast," features podcasting app Anchor, which can be used to record and edit audio from a USB-C microphone. Users can turn to Split View to keep notes handy during recording sessions, create a soundtrack with GarageBand, drag and drop audio content from Files and listen to the results in Apple Podcasts.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
15 Comments
All true, and I use my iPad Pro in many/most of these ways, if not as fast :) it’s a great tool.
At present though Apple is overselling it.
Until it has a file management system that integrates into the typical workplace (aka a Microsoft world) and peripheral support like accessing data and transferring files from any old external storage, it isn’t there. Ditto with AirPlay. Useless for presentations as most conference rooms don’t have Apple tvs. You end up tethered like any laptop, except you have a dongle as well of course. Intergration with win10 wireless presentations systems would be handy.
all these problems would be fixed with OS changes. Then it becomes the laptop killer.
Maybe. Security becomes pointless if it means the device isn’t useful though. Also, that sort of security is fixed at the network by security at the server end and the profile the workplace puts on the iOS device. At present access to the file system outside something like Citrix isnt even an option. It should be OS level.
I suspect it is they don’t want to do it to iPhones for the reasons mentioned, but do not want to go to the step of an iPad OS to provide a file system to iPad either. In the end they just decided not to, and concentrated on hardware beauty and margin.
Also I expect the biggest reason is they want you to use iCloud to store data instead of local servers. My workplace has a profile on iPads that prevent access to it. Which also means a lot of personal services also don’t work on it.
I use my iPad a lot both for work and leisure. But I use my Mac much, much more for work since it’s way better as I am far more productive.
There are a ton of basic, simple things for which the iPad is really clunky. I could provide a reasonably large list, but let me mention just one: network printing.