Jason Snell wrote up a nice summary of the current rumors and his opinions on the upcoming iPad at Macworld. It seems a near certainty that we’ll get at least one new iPad next month with Face ID since the current iOS 12 betas on iPad have gone out of their way to move all information to the top right and left of the screen, thus making room for a notch. That bit of evidence also makes me think the iPad Pro will have an edge-to-edge screen since the current iPad Pro design has plenty of room in the forehead to accommodate the Face ID sensors without adding a notch.

Another interesting point is that with an edge-to-edge screen, what will happen with finger detection on the edges? When the iPad was first released, Apple made a pretty big deal out of the fact that it needed borders so you could hold it without touching the capacitive screen on the device. I know they’ve been working around that on the iPhone but I expect that problem to be harder to solve on the iPad where everyone will nearly always have at least one finger holding (and touching) the front of an edge-to-edge screen.

Over the weekend I took a trip to the Apple Store to check out the new 9.7 inch $329 iPad. There is a lot to like about the new iPad, starting with price. It’s roughly half the cost of the 10.5 inch iPad Pro. For that price, you get an iPad that supports Apple Pencil, looks great,and is plenty fast. I tried to get it to drop frame rates, and it felt just as fast as my 10.5 inch iPad Pro. (I know that it is not but it still felt plenty fast.) I think, for most iPad users, the new 9.7 inch iPad is fine. 

9to5 Mac has a postdetailing the differences and there are quite a few but having used one in person I can tell you for most people those differences won’t matter. Going forward, when friends and family ask me for a recommendation for an iPad, I’m going to point them at the new $329 iPad unless they’ve got a good reason to move to the pro. When you consider the rich assortment of software available for iPad plus the fact you can get a Bluetooth keyboard in the $30 range, the new iPad is a heck of a deal.

For those of you that are interested in the iPad Pro, I think we’ve officially entered the “don’t buy unless you must” zone. I expect a new iPad Pro shortly, probably with Face ID and more bells and whistles to distance it from the impressive new $329 iPad.

Over the years, Apple Products have become increasingly less repairable. The latest teardown of the new iPad evidences this fact with photos of densely packed electronic components and copious amounts of glue. This led iFixit to give the new iPad a low repairability score.

I get that, but also don’t see it as big of a strike against the iPad as most people make it out to be. For years now, repairing these devices, even without the glue, has been no walk in the park. To make these devices small, they have to be dense, and things are locked together inside, so the contents don’t move around. This also leads to that sense of sturdiness you feel with an iPad in your hand.

I can’t help but feel to make it more repairable you’d lose some of that. I’d also argue that for the vast majority of us, we’re not going to take a screwdriver to our iPad at any time, no matter how repairable it is. As a result, for most of us using less glue, adding more space inside, making the device less sturdy for the sake of repairability is a cost without a benefit.

I don’t envy Apple in having to make that decision between repairability and sturdiness. I understand there is a screwdriver-wielding crowd out there that won’t be happy as Apple increasingly locks these devices down. However, I think they generally make the right decisions when you consider the abundance of Apple Stores and certified repair centers where we can get a professional to fix our devices and the fact that we buy these devices to use them every day, not take them apart.

I enjoyed reading Gabe Weatherhead’s thoughts following his attempts to do more on his iPad. Although I have to admit that I could never see Gabe going into the iPad-only crowd, at least not in the foreseeable future. Gabe is far too clever in the way he uses his Mac. Indeed, Gabe never was looking to replace his Mac. While that is possible, and even preferable, for some, I still think for most of us the question should not be about whether one platform can replace another so much as us users figuring out which platforms work for us best under which circumstances, which is exactly what Gabe did.

Jason Snell wrote an excellent piece today about how he uses his iPad for a lot of his work. The post references a recent quote from Microsoft’s Satya Nadella that implies the iPad is not a real computer and a recent iPad ad that makes its point nicely.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing and podcasting about the iPad as a potential laptop replacement. In the early days, I went iPad only while writing the book, iPad at Work. Back then it was rough. The hardware, operating system, and software were all in need of improvement. Things did, however, get better. iPad hardware these days benchmarks alongside currently shipping Macs very respectively.

iOS also is a lot more powerful than it used to be. Last year I gave my laptop to my daughter and used my iPad as a laptop for about six months before buying a replacement laptop. That was during iOS 10, and the reasons that I ultimately bought a laptop rested largely on the operating system. Before iOS 11, managing multiple files and email attachments felt masochistic. iOS 11 fixes that. Now with iOS 11 and the Files App, I’m able to manage files nearly as fast on iPad as I am on Mac. If I had 35 years experience using a tablet like I do the mouse and keyboard, I’d probably be just as fast. 

All that said I still find times where I need the laptop. The interesting bit for me is that while Apple has improved the hardware and the operating system, I’ve got some lingering problems with third-party software. 

Two such roadblocks that immediately come to mind are Microsoft Word and Googe Docs. I spend a lot of time in both these apps doing day-job legal work. In many ways, Microsoft Word on iPad is superior to its Mac counterpart, but it has one glaring omission, the inability to modify style preference. If I want to change a style format or line spacing, it’s simply not possible in Microsoft Word for iPad. I’ve used styles in Word forever. If you know what you are doing, they dramatically improve document editing and tricky legal paragraph numbering. Likewise, Google Docs has a change tracking feature that works fine on the Mac but has never been properly implemented on the iPad app. I’ve found ways around these problems, but they are workarounds and get in the way of productively using my iPad.

It didn’t hit me until reading Jason’s piece tonight, but with each step forward, the iPad’s limitations get narrower. The hardware and operating system problems are, for the most part, solved for me. Likewise, there are alternatives for my software problems. There are iPad word processors that support styles. Google’s passive-aggressive approach to the iPad leaves them ripe for disruption by some other company that wants to make a Google Docs-like experience for iPad without second-class iPad software. I’d honestly be surprised if these problems (along with two or three other on my particular list) don’t get solved in the next year. 

But getting back to the original point, if you are asking yourself whether or not the iPad is a “real” computer, the fact that I’ve got to go to Microsoft Word style formatting for distinction should tell you that the question was already answered a long time ago.

Now that I’ve got a bezel-less iPhone in my hands, I’m looking at my iPad(s) a little sideways. Turns out I’m not alone. Benjamin Geskin did some lovely renders of a bezel-less iPad that feels to me like the direction Apple has to be going with this. The trick on iPad will be the swipe up gesture. Currently, there are two separate gestures: short up for dock and long up for the control center. If I was a betting man, I’d say that a bezel-less iPad would switch the long swipe up to match the behavior on the phone and they’d move the control panel to some other gesture.

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I’ve spent a lot of time now with both the 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros. I’m hearing from a lot of listeners and readers who want some help choosing which iPad to buy. I have a few thoughts about that.

The Good News: They Are Both Great iPads

The first point to acknowledge is that Apple has largely leveled the playing field. A new 10.5-inch iPad and 12.9-inch iPad have the same internals. They have the same screen technology, processors, quick-charging capabilities, camera, RAM, and all the other internal bits. In the past, choosing one size over another usually came with compromises. One had a better screen than the other. One had a better camera than the other. That is no longer the case. Now you just get to pick which screen size is most appropriate for you, and you are going to have a great iPad.

The Case for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro

You would think that the difference in screen space between 9.7 inches and 10.5 inches does not add up to much. That would be incorrect. While the additional space and pixels do not bring the smaller iPad Pro into the same league as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, that extra space significantly improves typing.

Typing is noticeably easier both on glass and using an attached Apple Magic Keyboard. Making things that much wider makes the keys just a little bit larger, which makes typing much easier.

I did not find the small increase in pixel count with the increase in size from 9.7 inches to 10.5 inches noticeable. The 9.7-inch iPad could not display two full-sized iPad apps next to each other in landscape mode. (The 12.9-inch iPad Pro can.) This remains true with the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Instead, the best you can get is one iPad class view next to one iPhone class view. I took the 10.5-inch iPad on my vacation and did a lot of split-screen work with this setup. For a lot of tasks, it was all right, like iPad class Safari next to iPhone class Apple Notes. However, some other multitasking setups without two full-sized iPad apps, such as a PDF next to a word processor, were a pain in the neck.

One of the best things about the 10.5-inch iPad is its convenient size. It is a lot easier to carry around. When I’m holding up the 12.9-inch iPad Pro to read while in bed, I’m worried I’ll drop it on my face. The 10.5-inch iPad feels much more convenient. 

The Case for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro

In contrast to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a definite presence while you are holding or carrying it. I can even feel the width of the 12.9-inch iPad when I lug it around in my backpack, whereas the 10.5-inch iPad Pro disappears when I carry it around. “Carry it around” is key here. If your iPad is going to primarily sit at a desk with a keyboard attached, this isn’t a problem at all. Indeed, when setting up the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard while sitting on the couch, the wider stretch of the device is more comfortable in my lap than the narrower 10.5-inch iPad Pro.

Once you set up the iPad with that larger screen, there are some real advantages to the bigger screen. First, everything is just bigger. The larger screen allows you to see more pixels and more content. PDF documents show you more (or bigger words). Productivity apps have room for white space. Games are easier to play. The experience spoils you.

Second, multitasking is a great deal easier with the larger iPad. With the 12.9-inch iPad, multitasking allows you to see two full-size iPad apps next to each other when held in landscape view. This was not the case with the 9.7-inch and 10.5-inch iPad Pros. With the smaller iPad Pros, you get one iPad-size app and one iPhone-size app. For some folks, that’s a dealbreaker.

The 12.9-inch iPad also has some benefits in certain situations. For instance, I spend a lot of time annotating contracts with an Apple pencil. That job is made significantly easier with a few additional inches of screen real estate. The bigger iPad gives me more room to annotate, and the words are larger so it’s easier on my middle-aged eyes. Another example for me is reading sheet music. My iPad is my primary sheet music device. I have hundreds of songs stored on the iPad, and it makes practice so much easier than the old way of digging through piles of paper. With the smaller iPads, the notes are just small enough that I will misread them and end up playing a clunker. That doesn’t happen with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

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A Few Closing Thoughts

The conventional wisdom is that if you want to replace a laptop, you get a 12.9-inch iPad, and if you are keeping a laptop, get the 10.5-inch iPad. I think that is too simplistic. You could replace a laptop with a 10.5-inch iPad. Likewise, I use my 12.9-inch iPad alongside my laptop all the time.

I think for most folks the 10.5-inch iPad Pro is the starting place. It is big enough without being too big. The fact that the slightly larger screen now makes it even easier to type on than the 9.7-inch iPad Pro will make the 10.5-inch iPad Pro the most popular choice by far.

I think the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is the one you would choose for particular reasons. Maybe you do a lot of multitasking and getting two full-size iPad apps on the screen is important. Or maybe you just have less than perfect vision and need things a little bigger. Either way, if you plan to use the iPad on the go, the bigger one can be a pain, and you need a tangible reason to justify putting up with that.

For me, if my vision were better, I would be tempted to work with the 10.5-inch iPad exclusively. However, I do a lot of work on my iPad and being able to pull out the bigger one for certain tasks sure is nice. I won’t be upgrading my 12.9-inch iPad to the latest iteration, but I won’t be getting rid of my first generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro either.