The Transport Guy: No one can make up their mind about the iPad Pro

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Transport Guy: No one can make up their mind about the iPad Pro

Steve Kovach November 11, 2015 at 08:32AM

ipad pro with apple pencil

The early reviews for the new iPad Pro are out, and they're all over the place.

While the reviews are relatively positive (except for maybe the one from Walt Mossberg of The Verge), tech pundits can't seem to reach a consensus on what the device is for. Is it a replacement for your laptop? Is it a niche product aimed at professionals like graphic designers? Is it just a big iPad?

It's impossible to tell from the reviews.

And even Apple doesn't know.

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been pushing the narrative that the iPad Pro can replace your laptop. That's the most consistent pitch we have from the company that made the device. The claim is that Apple pushed the iPad to the limit, making it powerful and capable enough to do everything a traditional laptop can do.

So far, it seems only one reviewer agrees with that sentiment: John Gruber of Daring Fireball. He says the iPad Pro "stands as an alternative to a MacBook."

But other than Gruber, no one is buying Apple's pitch. (TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino comes close, saying the Pro "could be the central computing device for a home," but he doesn't go so far as to call it a replacement or alternative to a laptop.)

Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal says the iPad Pro is just a big iPad. It's nothing we haven't seen before, just the same old iPad with a bigger screen and optional keyboard and stylus. Mossberg agrees that the iPad Pro isn't a laptop replacement, and might be better for graphic artists that want to use the well-reviewed Apple Pencil stylus.

Those are just a few examples, but overall they're representative of the initial reviews of the iPad Pro. It's a good tablet, but it's still unclear what you need to spend all that extra money for when a regular-sized iPad will serve most people just fine.

I think The Verge's editor Nilay Patel put it best in a tweet Wednesday morning. Reviewers are doing a better job than Apple at figuring out what the iPad Pro is for:

Every iPad Pro review I've read so far is better at creating a narrative for the product than Apple has been.
— nilay patel (@reckless) November 11, 2015