Apple WWDC 2017 - Leaks, Keynote and Other Info

I have the 12.9" first gen and love it.

The Apple Smart Keyboard and the Pencil are a great combo. The place I work at, laptops for notes and stuff are very common in meetings. What’s also nice is I’ll usually take a picture of the whiteboard in meetings and attach it to the note.

If you are going to be using a keyboard a lot, I’d recommend the ASK. It adds only a little bit of bulk to the ipad and you don’t have to fuss with the external keyboard. Using an external keyboard and an ipad – especially in meetings and the like – has always felt a little janky to me.

The iPad Pro is close to becoming my main device. It is clearly the device I do most of my writing on these days.

I think iPads are actually superior for free-form writing or “undemanding” Word compositions than laptops, if you can find the right keyboard. They last forever on battery and have screens superior to most laptops making text and fonts much sharper, where the only hangup is their floppy keyboard cases make using them in a lap or in bed problematic.

That’s a pretty huge hangup for my professional use cases. I’m constantly working with a laptop on my lap, at conferences and hotels and such.

With the ASK and the 12.9, lap usage isn’t that bad. Using the ASK in bed, is. But at conferences I’ve plopped the iPad in my lap and had no problem taking notes.

What’s the ASK btw? Not sure what you’re talking about.

Apple Smart Keyboard.

Oh, yea, forgot the “proper” name of it, thanks.

Yes, everything is either smart or magical at apple.

@TimJames another important difference between the iPad and the iPad Pro is that the iPad has two speakers which are unfortunately both on the same side of the iPad when movies or TV is played in Landscape mode, so you get this weird effect similar to mono instead of stereo when the iPad is used for watching movies. iPad Pros have four speakers which adjust themselves based on the screen orientation so that you always correctly have left and right audio channels coming from the left and right sides of the screen.

As with the other posters here, I’m a big fan of the Apple Smart Keyboard, but you should keep in mind it is $160, so if you’re already on a budget, it’s likely to blow a huge hole in the budget. It is awfully convenient though and much less fuss and fidgeting than using a Bluetooth keyboard.

Oh yes, the speakers on the ipad pro are dramatically superior to every non-pro.

Also of course the pro has the laminated anti-reflective screen, which is a huge deal in the car or outside.

I ended up getting an apple-refurbished (and thus essentially brand-new) iPad Air 2 instead of a 2017 iPad for the screen. It’s slightly slower but a much better screen, thinner, and lighter.

Okay, I’m convinced. It’s a promotion present anyway, so I’m not trying to nickel and dime her. I just don’t want to throw money away for shiny new Apple crap. Like I think the latest model Pro would be a waste for her use case.

A sturdier smart keyboard would be nice since she tends to drop things. I’ll look around.

There are a few options.

The Apple Silicon Case also works with the ASK attached. In a way it is too bad Apple got rid of the 9.7" Pro, because the Logitech Create keyboard case for that Pro was very good. The Logitech Slim Keyboard for the 10.5 is poorly reviewed. I also don’t recommend the create for the 12.9 as it is too big and bulky.

Apple also makes a leather sleeve for the Pros that has a holder for the pencil. However, I bet you can find neoprene sleeves that will fit also. You can find one for an 11" Air, that while roomy, might still fit.

That looked pretty handy for the pencil but there doesn’t seem to be a solution that can both hold the keyboard and the pencil. I ended up going with a generic 10" tablet neoprene sleeve which has an outside general purpose pocket that I dump the pencil in.

For the Pencil, I got two Lechiturn (SP) pen loops, stuck them to my iPad, and put the Pencil in there.

I got the 10.5" iPad Pro w/Pencil and it’s great. I agree that the case that holds the Pencil is nice – too bad it doesn’t support the keyboard. I also just put iOS 11 on it yesterday. It’s a little crashy but looks to be a great change for the iPad.

While I agree the Apple Smart Keyboard is great, I find writing on the iPad really frustrating due to the lack of a mouse. The touchscreen/pencil make selecting text so tedious and inefficient that I end up actually remoting into a PC so that I can use the Citrix mouse and Jump Desktop to just run the regular version of Word via remote access instead of using the native iPad client.

Keyboard shortcuts are your friend. Option-Arrow lets you select text, control arrow lets you select entire lines. Arrows keys naturally move you through the text area.

A quick update about my new iMac experience. The only game that I play regularly is World of Warcraft and in theory, the new iMac should handle this with no problem. My intent was to shut down my Windows gaming machine and just use the iMac with its maxed out graphics card.

WoW works at 2880 in OSX very smoothly (didn’t try it at 5K) and I was able to raid with my guild with no problems. My main issue is that WoW on the iMac looks much worse than it does on my Windows machine with its 1080 Nvidia card. The lines and character graphics are very crisp on the Windows machine. The graphics on the iMac look a bit blocky and muddy. Both machines are running the game at a “7” level.

So I am back on my Windows machine for WoW raiding, etc.

My guess is the mac version is actually running at an even lower resolution and upscaling to 5k. There’s a setting in there somewhere to control that. Also try using Metal rather than OpenGL.

Hmm, will look into this tonight. Have not tried it in Metal.