Despite the fact that we are all accustomed to perceiving Apple as a company that does well, but little, in recent years the range of its products has grown greatly. This is especially noticeable in the variety of models in the same product line. Take at least the iPad. If earlier it was just two devices that differed from each other only in size, now the lineup of Apple tablets includes as many as 5 models for every taste. The flagship of the line, of course, is the iPad Pro. But to be honest, I want to buy them less and less.
It seems silly to discourage people from buying the very best tablets on the market. But for the price that Apple puts on them, these should be the perfect devices that could be if not for their fragility. Still don’t understand what I mean? Now let’s take a closer look.
Let’s immediately dot all the “e”. The iPad Pro is truly the most powerful and most feature-packed tablet in Apple’s lineup. They are almost on an equal footing with the company’s laptops, offering users a wide range of functionality and a truly professional level in working with the software.
iPad Pro – what can
No other tablet, not only in the Apple lineup but even on the market as a whole, can offer such opportunities as the iPad Pro today. Well, think for yourself, what other tablet has support for at least a stripped-down Photoshop, not to mention layers and other advantages? Obviously none.
But Apple annually upgrades the iPad Pro, improving both software and hardware. But the improvement of the technical part is globally playing against the line. No, of course, when a new tablet gets the coolest hardware, it’s good. However, if we take the perspective of several years, it turns out that the iPad Pro is only good in the first year after its release.
I think you already understood that I’m alluding to Stage Manager and RAM virtualization, which are only available on M1 tablets. I don’t know about you, but this alignment seems a little far-fetched to me. There are several objective reasons for this, it seems to me.
Stage Manager on iPad – Availability
- Firstly, the iPad Pro 2020, which was powered by the A12Z Bionic chip and had 6 GB of RAM, is clearly not the weakest tablet. We remember well how at the presentation we were shown that he can easily draw up to 32 layers in Photoshop, and this is – excuse me – the load be healthy.
- Secondly, the Stage Manager mode itself is just another multitasking option that allows the tablet to simultaneously run several applications and switch between them. But after all, almost the same thing was available to us before. What are the Split View and Slide Over modes, which together form a kind of Stage Manager, which clearly does not pull on a super-heavy function?
- Thirdly, we know that in iPadOS 16 the Stage Manager mode is implemented in a strange way. On the one hand, we are told that it requires virtualization of RAM, but, on the other hand, the basic iPad Air 5 does not have this feature, but Stage Manager does support it. Strange is not the right word.
Should You Buy an iPad Pro?
Perhaps recommending not to buy a tablet, which is almost the only one that supports the new mode, seems illogical. But I’m not sure that Stage Manager will be the killer feature of iPadOS 16. Yes, in general, it’s convenient when you have the ability to quickly switch between several applications.
But Split View and Slide Over allow you to display up to three windows on the iPad screen at once, and the picture-in-picture mode is the fourth. So spending crazy money on a tablet just for the sake of it clearly does not make sense, not to mention the fact that already this year Apple will probably release a new iPad Pro that will support those features that the iPad Pro 2021 will not receive.
Yes, the previous-generation iPad Air also did not receive Stage Manager and RAM virtualization. So, all the same, do claims apply to it to the iPad Pro? Yes and no. On the one hand, of course, it’s a shame that Apple has deprived him of new features. But, on the other hand, this is still not a flagship tablet. From him, simply by inertia, you do not expect the same opportunities as from the iPad Pro – even if it was last year.
Not that I mean to say that the iPad Pro is a bad tablet. Not at all. The lack of Stage Manager support on last year’s model doesn’t make it bad. It rather leads to asking certain questions of Apple. For example, how did she allow the most expensive tablet in her line to turn into a pumpkin in just a year? Or, say, will the same thing happen to the iPad Pro M1 this year that happened to the iPad Pro on the A12Z Bionic?
