Apple iPad Pro Review: Best of Both Worlds?

Apple iPad Pro

This is the rumor that just won’t go away: a big iPad designed for enterprise customers and called the iPad Pro, or possibly iPad Plus.

The conditions are certainly right for a big iPad, because iPad sales are slowing. That’s partly because we hang onto tablets longer than we do smartphones, and partly because big phones are good enough for many people – a trend that Apple’s embraced with the iPhone 6 Plus. An enterprise-focused device could shift serious units – especially now that Apple and IBM are best friends – and it would appeal to prosumer users, too. 

Smart Active Stylus

The hardware doesn’t need to be too different from the iPad Air 2. The bigger screen (rumours say 12.9 inches) would need to be higher resolution, presumably 4K, but the A8X processor is perfectly capable of driving that and the bigger case would mean more room for a bigger battery.

Some speculation has suggested that the iPad Pro will be a hybrid device, either in the form of a tablet-cum-notebook or as a dual-OS device. We don’t like either option, and we reckon Tim Cook doesn’t either: as he said during Apple’s most recent earnings call, “you can merge a toaster and a refrigerator, but that’s probably not going to be pleasing to everyone.” Why run OS X when you have a 64-bit, touch-first OS designed specifically for Apple’s mobile devices? Why make a hardware hybrid when you could simply craft a Smart Cover with a keyboard in it?  

One rumour that might be credible is the iPad Pro’s stylus. Yes, Steve Jobs slammed styli – but Apple’s patented a smart “Active Stylus” with multiple tips and a light sensor, and it’s patented other stylus ideas in the past. You’ll recall that Steve Jobs also slammed small tablets; two years later Apple launched the iPad mini.

Retina Macs

The future of all Apple displays is clearly Retina – no pun intended – so it’s not a question of whether the smaller 21.5-inch iMacs will get Retina; it’s a question of when Apple is going to do it. We’d expect them sooner rather than later, because it just so happens that if you take the panel from a 5K Retina iMac and cut it from 5K resolution (5120 x 2880) to 4K (3840 x 2160), you end up with a panel of around 21 inches.

That’s not the only place we’d expect those panels to end up: a 5K display for the Mac Pro would delight video and imaging pros, but they’ll probably have to wait for the next Pro: the current Thunderbolt interface doesn’t have the bandwidth for 5K video, and while the Thunderbolt 3 spec does, it requires Intel’s Skylake architecture, which is the successor to the Broadwell processors.

Taking the tablets

As far as the iPhone is concerned, 2015 is likely to be a ’tweener year: if Apple follows its usual pattern the next models we’ll see will be ‘s’ models, such as an ‘iPhone 6s’. That means the same design, a few minor spec bumps and at least one headline new feature, which may well be the same inductive charging we’ve already seen in the Apple Watch, or the sapphire glass everyone expected to see in the 6. We’re hoping that Apple doesn’t bin four-inch iPhones now it has the 6 and 6 Plus: iPhone 6C, anyone?

We’re not expecting massive changes to the iPad (although a massive iPad is likely), and the non-Retina iPad mini probably won’t last long. Reports suggest Apple plans to scale back all mini production, partly because of the success of the more profitable iPhone 6 Plus.