As much as I love new Apple products, and I’m an AppleTV household, I can’t think of a benefit to making it faster. It’s already super fast at everything, and I’ve used the latest Roku and FireTVs. It’s way better as is.
It could be smaller, I guess.
It could use a $1,000 stand.
Refresh should be cheaper, faster (even the 4k one is slow at many Apple Arcade games), and with a less terrible remote.
Oh yeah, I haven’t used mine basically ever so I always forget how bad it is!
I had one of the first 11” MacBooks. I didn’t mind the keyboard at all, but I am not picky about that stuff either.
I have a 2016 MBP 15" at work and I despise the keyboard. If I had to use it I would have replaced the laptop. Luckily I use an external mechanical keyboard so it isn’t an issue.
How many ports does the new MBA have?
Two TB3/USB-C ports on the left and a headphone jack on the right.
Finally had a chance to look at the iPad and keyboard. Nothing on the iPad makes me want to update from the 2018, but I would love that keyboard. I don’t mind the current keyboard, it’s fine, but it’s something I only use if I have to. Being able to change the angle would almost make it worth that price. Throw in the trackpad and it could be pretty great.
Still, with the current world situation, no way I am buying a $300 keyboard.
Have to be out of your mind buying a $300 tablet keyboard last month too! Really the thing should be $99 at most. It’s just a plastic piece of electronics. They must have a 10000% profit margin.
I wonder if the only reason it’s so expensive is so that their low-end laptops are still appealing to people. I mean if you could get a great iPad Pro and keyboard that’s pretty much as good as a Macbook Air (and better at some things), but for $200 less, why not?
They’re different things, you buy a tablet for tablet stuff and a computer for computer stuff. Apple has been trying desperately to make the iPad Pro into a computer for years now.
If I really wanted to rationalize it, I would compare it to the price of a Mac laptop and the total price. That would work for me. :-)
Not surprisingly, I don’t understand this iPad Pro as a laptop with iPadOS (or whatever it is called). If it ran MacOS then yeah, that would make me think it could be as good as a Surface for computer needs beyond basic stuff. My iPad Pro works great as a note taker and media consumer. I own both (again, not surprisingly) and the iPad Pro excels at writing, battery life, and general reading but it just isn’t as good as a Surface for stuff like Excel, Office suite integration, statistics programs, and even responding to email. There does not appear to be any reason why someone that uses the iPad Pro as a tablet would want to upgrade from the current 12.9 inch unless (I guess) the folks that use an iPad for photography and video stuff.
Edit, I just priced a 12.9 with 1TB SSD and cellular at $1484 for just the iPad with the vet discount. Add $314 for the keyboard and that is almost an $1800 combo. Insane.
A Surface Pro 7 i7 1TB costs $2.069 with education discount. Keyboard is $159. $400 dollars more for a more complete OS and computer.
For me, Windows is better at Excel and gaming, but a Surface isn’t great at either of those things. I have owned 2 Surfaces, I hated using them as tablets. They are heavy, awkward to hold, have fans/get hot, are slow (even with decent specs), and 90% of the software was not written for touch controls. Maybe that has changed?
I would rather have an iPad over any Windows tablet myself. You can do a ton with an iPad nowadays. It has a file system, a desktop browser, and now even a trackpad. It is a computer, just with a touch friendly OS. It sounds like you are a heavy Office user, so yeah, it would be crazy for you to get one. Heck I wouldn’t even want to get a Mac if I was a heavy Office user.
You said it’s better at writing, but not as good at email? You lost me.
Yeah, but an iPad would run circles around that Surface and wouldn’t even get warm doing so. Is it expensive, but I am sure there are plenty of people willing to pay that.
Edit: and for me a Surface wouldn’t even run most of the software I use. Office is about it. Pretty much everything on my Mac has an iPad app as well.
I think that is probably where the rubber meets the road. Outlook, teams, etc. are much better in Windows for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t game on a Surface, but I would (do) run office programs and statistics programs for a quick analysis. Every program I run for the most part requires some compromise on Mac (let alone iPad) or needs to be run in Windows on Mac.
Surface is not as good at being a tablet as an iPad, which is why I am typing this on a Tab S6. But it is great at being an ultralight laptop with limitations. An iPad is great at being a tablet with major OS limitations for the programs I rely on.
Edit - by writing I mean using the Apple Pen to write with.
That’s what I never understood about people here comparing Apple stuff to Windows/Android like they can switch easily to a new platform. If I switched to Windows/Android I would have to find all new software for almost everything I do on a computer. Do people not buy software anymore? (I know my friends and family definitely do not.)
Anyway my iPad Pro is not a Mac replacement, its a supplement to my Mac. There is stuff I prefer to do on my Mac, but I don’t feel like I need an Apple laptop now, I just do everything on my iPad. If I was a heavier user, I could justify that keyboard to myself, even at that ridiculous price.
The Logitech keyboard/trackpad isn’t exactly cheap at $150, and it has that horrible case that I do not want. Hopefully some better options come along.
Oh and for the record I think Surfaces are great computers, but I would never buy one to use as a tablet. I will never forget firing up Civ V on my Surface 3 and the thing got too hot to hold comfortably and the fans were going full speed.
The new iPad Pro and keyboard are the closest I can get to a true laptop replacement. As I mentioned before, the hardware runs circles around almost any portable device, but it’s the software that sucks. Very few iPad apps have fully-featured clones of their desktop apps. And it’s the big ones like Office, Outlook, etc, that need to work for regular users who do “stuff.” At this point, I wish Apple would give MS whatever money it takes to have them develop a good iPad app.
Apple also needs to bring their Pro apps to the iPad as well.
Right now, the cost to get a Pro and a keyboard is more than getting a MacBook Air.
I don’t really buy software except for a personal Office365 license for my family. In some ways I hope Apple makes the ARM switch and blows everything up so that the developers for the programs I use won’t make cross platform versions. Then the OS choice is made for me. Right now, there are a few legacy programs that don’t have some sort of working MacOS version, but most do and that is the enticement for someone like me that can, in theory, work across platforms. The hardware as mentioned above is in many cases superior on the Apple side of things, so that is another reason people try to work in both worlds.
My hope is that as Android becomes friendlier with Windows and there is some level of integration that is at least close to Apple’s ecosystem. It is slowly moving there (especially with Samsung).
I don’t know if that is true, but I guess it depends on what you use. Looking at my apps, a lot of the are replaced by a browser on a Mac, but a lot of them also do have great full featured apps. Pixelmator, Drafts, Banktivity, etc.