A Serious Talk about iPads.

[Music] okay so I've actually wanted to make this video for a really long time but I had to wait for WWDC to be over just to kind of summarize all of my thoughts because I actually think it's time to have like a proper serious chat about the iPad from like where the amazing Hardware is to where the software is to who's it for and where it sits in the lineup and kind of just everything about it I've had so many thoughts lately and I've kind of rounded them all up so in this video I'm going to go over kind of everything and where I think the iPad is right now I'm also not trying to apologize for the iPad or tempt you into getting one for this video I just wanted to say where my thoughts are currently at with the iPad as a whole okay first up I wanted to talk about the M4 iPad Pro and kind of expectations that we had because the M4 iPad Pro I genuinely believe is Apple's best piece of Hardware it's an incredible device and an incredible bit of engineering you know the brand new M4 chip the tan the moled display the fact that it's so unbelievably thin and unbelievably powerful just makes for an incredible device and I think because this came out like 2 or 3 weeks before WWDC which is where Apple announced all of their software a lot of us were kind of roped into this for like wow this is a serious new piece of Hardware so some serious new software must be coming or at least some sort of iPad OS overhaul and I'm guilty of that as well I was really expecting for that to happen I actually said it in all of my previous reviews and to be fair that didn't not happen the Apple intelligence stuff which is coming to iOS 18 is all coming to iPad OS as well and some of that stuff looked absolutely incredible but there is nothing kind of specific to iPad OS that was big that was kind of really really cool and interesting unless you're really into maths and you like the idea of the calculator having that scratch maths which is cool not for me personally but a cool update nonetheless but there's nothing there in iPad OS to kind of really push it forward in the ways we kind of thought might happen now they actually announced this thing for Mac OS which lets you snap Windows which is like a really kind of simple core feature which I'm glad to see finally turned up and I thought oh they're going to put that on iPad OS so when you're using stage manager you can flip your windows wherever but that actually didn't come which I thought was a huge shame I probably would have been happy of just that coming but it didn't and look the WWDC that's just gone was clearly an AI Apple intelligence-based event that's totally fine I think even announcing iPad stuff during that event may have taken away from how kind of magical that AI stuff is going to be and it truly does look awesome I can't wait to get my hands on it but yeah as a huge kind of iPad user and the fact that they pushed this iPad Hardware so hard I thought there might be a little something for iPad OS there and that leads me on to where does kind of the iPad stand right now as a device and I think I've known this for a long time but I really noticed it when I was making my aena life with the iPad a couple weeks ago is that the iPad is really really good at being like this instant sort of C capture device you can jump into an app or an experience with the iPad really really quickly so if you have a spark of inspiration and you want to record you know a song idea you've got you can literally get two Taps into it and start recording or if you want to write down a app idea which is something I had you can do that really quickly as well without having to open up a bunch of series of apps and do this and do that and if you just want to play a game or something like that you don't need anything extra you can just jump into kind of like a fully-fledged experience and that even goes as far as to like video editing if you want to on the iPad you can film the entire video on there edit the entire thing on there and then upload it straight to Youtube or something like that the iPad is this kind of really good instant creativity and capture machine while it can kind of shape shift to what you need if you do need a keyboard if you do want the pencil or something like that and there's actually this really good video by minimalist Tech which I'll link below you should definitely check it out where he's still managing to be creative despite not having loads of time or the right setup and you can do all those things on a Mac of course you can but sometimes the Mac is just slower at capturing those ideas if you have a song idea or something like that you might need to plug your guitar into a sound card and then load up a door software and then kind of capture it all that way if you want to make a video you're going to have to shoot the video on a camera import all the footage then open up Final Cut on there or something and then edit it all it can be a slower experience for sure and sometimes when creativity hits you want to capture that straight away and the iPad I don't think will ever be a Mac it's never going to replace a Mac so if you're looking for that kind of replacement with an iPad then honestly you should probably stop looking because it's just never going to be quite the same and this thought of being instantaneous and you know capturing things quickly is why I think that Pro apps are never going to match up to what you get on a MacBook or a Windows or anything like that and this also comes around to kind of the desktop and the kind of touchscreen experience and like this kind of shapeshifting nature of it right so if you have an app that's built for touch and you want it to work really well on the desktop when you plug your iPad in for that external monitor experience that app is never going to be quite as good as one that's even designed specifically for touch or one that's specifically designed for desktop use the only good one I've really tried is Lightroom that works really well across both so I can do my main photo editing on there either by touch or by connecting it to an external monitor but most of the apps which are really really good for iPad are built from the ground up and ones like procreate I'm going to throw in there that's incredible on iPad Luma Fusion is incredible on iPad and that's why some of the other ones don't feel quite as well rounded and the other thing with Pro apps as well is you got to remember they're now competing with things like the Tik Tok editor and the Instagram editor and things like cap cut because those are all what new creators are using right now they edit on their phone and they upload immediately so they've already got this instant nature so these Pro apps now have to kind of also be good for people like me who want to edit really kind of complicated stuff but also appeal to kind of this younger generation that are just so used to editing stuff super quickly and hitting upload so those Pro apps aren't specifically competing with Pro apps on the Mac they're competing with kind of these simple easy like AI powered apps on the iPhone so they've kind of got to hit that middle ground too as well before we move on I wanted to thank the sponsor of this video paper like if you weren't already sure paper like is a screen protector for your iPad that really makes it feel like your writing drawing or sketching on paper not only protecting your screen but also removing that unfamiliar feeling of writing on glass if you're an avid apple pencil user like I am you'll notice the difference immediately using their own proprietary Nano do technology paperlike adds resistance and haptic feedback to the pencil emulating that wonderful pencil on paper feeling it also reduces screen glare in bright situations in a similar way to Apple's Nano do technology on the newer iPad Pros but it's still the only physical way to get the feedback on the pencil so you can use it here too so if you are looking for a screen protector for your current iPad or for your shiny new one be sure to check out paper like in the description below and a huge thank you goes out to them for sponsoring this video so who is the iPad 4 is one of the big questions which always comes up and I think I've got the answer for it and I want to try and explain it with a diagram I'm going to call this the iPad funnel and at the top of the funnel is every kind of user you can could possibly imagine me you kids old people people that just want a simple computer for this people that want to write on it people that want to draw on it and as that funnel gets smaller and smaller and goes right down to the spout we've got what I'd like to call kind of iPad Nirvana and this is people that have made the iPad work incredibly well for them and it could only work well for them on an iPad so right at the tip here you've got artists you've got people that just want a simple computer to do simple based things or you've got students who are just doing a lot of note taking and want things like that but as you can see the user base isn't massive so if we go back to the start of the funnel as people start using the iPad myself included the funnel starts to pinch and then people start dropping off it because it doesn't do what this computer does or it's not good for this or it's not good for that and I'm somewhere along this line for sure for me it comes to kind of video editing I edit videos all the time it's my main deal and right now a Macbook for me is just better for that but for some people as that funnel keeps going down the iPad OS and iPad software just gets better and better and better for them so they come out at the end of this funnel and they're in this beautiful place where the iPad Works seamlessly with everything they're doing and it's a really attractive place to be I wanted to be there for a long time I'd love the idea of switching to an iPad and I think a lot of us do which is why we watch these videos but as that kind of funnel starts to pinch it's actually better for you to kind of just stand back and be like you know what maybe this wasn't the right device for me but I can still use it for this and I can still use it for that that's kind of where I am right now and I think that's where a lot of people seem to trip up is they really want it to kind of do everything eventually they just kind of get squeezed out of the funnel I hope that makes sense I wrote that diagram like months ago so let's hope it still does I wanted to give some examples of people that have you know been blown away by the iPad Christopher ly he's got a YouTube channel he shoots everything on a camera edits everything on his iPad and runs his entire kind of life from the IP IP ad I don't think he even has a Mac at this point there's Fernando from 9 to5 Mac who shoots everything on iPhone and edits everything on an iPad and also example I've given before is my friend who runs a tattoo studio who does absolutely everything from the iPad from designing tattoos to contacting customers to taking payments to doing absolutely everything to run that shop she does it all from the iPad and for her I know she'd never ever look at a Macbook because it just works way too well and also I get a bunch of people in the comments saying how well the iPad works for them and their really specific workflows the other thing I really have to bring up because it's one that's affected me the most in my iPad usage is the macbook's got really good one of the reasons my iPad usage really peaked in 2019 2020 21 is because it filled a hole where my MacBook couldn't at the time it had the power the performance and most importantly for me it had battery life that would last all day and I wouldn't have to baby it and my 29 19 MacBook Pro at the time and the ones I had before that you know I couldn't take it off the power without having to worry about the battery life or the fans kicking up and being loud in like a social situation or anything like that but the MacBooks have taken like a Quantum Leap since then and I don't have to Baby the battery life and they've got incredible power and they've got amazing screens and they've kind of got everything and more what I was getting out of my iPad at the time so my iPad use since those have come out has gone down somewhat because the MacBooks now are just so good good this tiny slim MacBook Air which is actually funny enough still Slimmer than the new M4 iPad Pro of the magic keyboard by an absolute hair is pretty much everything I could ever want in a portable computer it's absolutely fantastic and it's definitely eaten into some of my iPad use one of the final things I wanted to touch on as well is something which I kind of mentioned a little bit in my M4 iPad Pro review is that sometimes I kind of think that these iPads are made for the next generation of creators so not for people like me not for people that have been making videos for a long time but people who are just getting into making content now who are just making movies now or just making music now the iPad might make so much more sense to them if they've used nothing but a phone for pretty much all of their Computing tasks and especially for Creative ones the fact that you could jump up to a bigger screen version of your phone and keep making everything you're making on a like better more large scale kind of makes a lot of sense when you think about it and for people like me there's still the desktop and the Mac experience and that's fine that's not going away but it's definitely something that's hit me recently and jumping off from there the iPad is like an evolving ecosystem every time they release a new one or they release a new accessory it can kind of fundamentally change what it does you know the introduction of the apple pencil completely changed up the iPad I'm sure it brought a lot more people into it the fact that you can snap off a keyboard if you don't need it or connect to an external display if you do need it just mean that hasn't kind of completely set itself where it wants to be yet it's like the ultimate Shape Shifter at the moment and when you compare that to a laptop or a Macbook or a Windows one they fundamentally haven't changed in years and years and years this is a laptop and it does laptop stuff and the iPad definitely doesn't have that limitation right now okay that kind of wraps up all my thoughts and feelings on the iPad at the moment and where it stands as a computer I think for some people when they make it work it is an incredible device and it's really really tempting for people like me to try and give it a go but my best advice really is if it's not working out for you and it can't replace a Macbook or anything like that then you know it's fine to stand back and be like maybe it's just not the right thing for me anyway if any of you are in that iPad Nirvana I talked about earlier then I'd love to hear from you in the comments below and as always I'll see you all in the next one [Music]

Channel: Byte Review

Views: 38,826

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Id: 6yEgco2vzEQ

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2024