There have been rumors of a possible 12.2-inch “iPad Pro” for ages now, and a new video from YouTube user Canoopsy offers a glimpse of what that might look like — comparing the giant-sized tablet the current iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, and recent iPhones.
While Apple isn’t the first company that would “go big” with its tablet (Samsung has its GALAXY NotePRO 12.2, for instance), the idea of a larger iPad frankly has us salivating. And given the success Apple has had with its “phablet” iPhone 6 Plus, it would be surprising if Apple was feeling any different.
Check out the video after the jump:
According to previous reports, the iPad Pro’s 12.2-inch LCD display will be powered by a new A9 processor, compared to the A8X used in the iPad Air 2. It has further been suggested that a larger iPad may boast improved stereo audio and a thinner form factor somewhere between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Other less believable rumors have claimed that the iPad Pro may run both OS X and iOS, or even feature some form of eye-tracking technology.
Canoopsy’s video notes that a larger iPad could be a difference maker in the education market, which could be especially valuable as Apple loses ground to other cheaper tablet makers.
The device is supposedly set to arrive in 2015, although KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently suggested it might not be until later in the year.
Photo: Nowhereelse.fr
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
13 responses to “iPad Pro concept video demonstrates that bigger really is better”
One of the biggest problems in going from paper to paperless is the reduction in the size of the document and the text.this is especially important in the medical industry where old records or scan and need to be reviewed.A larger tablet and screen area would allow us to view documents at full resolution.
I just use pinch-to-zoom for seeing small detail.
Thats a limited use case and in truth a scanned record really isn’t any more useful than having a piece of paper. The power of electronic records is search ability and being able to do things like verify the patient hasn’t taken or even worse, is taking a medication that could interfere with what you are about to give them. or has an allergy to it
I’m a professor who uses iPads every day to lecture, and I’d never go back. I write my notes and show slides on it, and it displays the screen on the classroom projector. So I don’t have to write on the board, and I have a permanent copy of my lecture notes. Also, I record the screen display with audio, and so have videos of my lectures.
You’d think that more screen real estate, in order to write more on one slide, would be a benefit, and it may be. But, I don’t think I’ll go for it. It’s large and it’s going to be heavier, it’s not going to fit well in my briefcase. It’d be heavy to carry as I walk from classoom bilding to classroom building and back to my office building and back and forth to my parking lot.
I have several classes, I need a separate iPad for each one, and more than one backup device always available. I currently have five iPads, actually, that I use only for teaching. And, I buy them with my research grant money, which is, of course, limited, so I buy old models cheap (four iPad2’s and one iPad 4) and use them forever. How could I afford five large iPads? How could I carry two or three in one normal-size bag?
A larger screen would be nice to write on, but that’s the only advantage, and there are a lot of disadvantages. I won’t be upgrading, and don’t think any of my fellow professors will either.
Apple has never understood that the education market isn’t only students, that every professor (there are 35 in my department *alone*) is a potential customer for many devices each. They’ve never considered what we might need, and I think they’ve missed again with this one,
Why do you need so many iPads? How much storage do you need for each class? Wouldn’t one with 128GB of memory work? Or how about putting each course on a MicroSD cards and use the camera connection kit?
If you have any suggestions, submit directly to Apple. You’d be surprised at they actually do read them. I’ve submitted a bunch of requests that came to fruition. I think Apple is releasing a new size iPad simply to address another market for them. I don’t know if it’s necessarily just for education, I think it’s just for people that want more screen real estate. The Music, Video, graphics design, CAD design markets would probably want a bigger screen size.
Well, you always need more than one backup. Even with laptops,
sometimes the one you use and the backup fail. I had one iPad in the
shop recently, and the projector cable sent a pulse to the one I was
teaching with, so I had to run and get the third. It happens, even with
laptops.
It isn’t the storage, it’s that each one needs to be
set up differently for the particular class it’s used for. Especially
when I have back-to-back lectures, there isn’t time to change the one I
used first over the be ready for the next class. And, the organization
of the many, many files that are used for each class is sometimes
overwhelming and gets confused: it really is easier to have one device
per class.
I’ve spoken and written to Apple many times, pointing
out that the market to professors is a big one, and suggesting things
that would be useful. Apple gives presentations here, where they show
us how we could use iPads to teach. And what they want, and what they
show us, is how every student should have an iPad. This is impossible:
there are more than 2000 students in the intro chemistry class, how
could the university buy an iPad for each one? And we can’t require
that the students buy one, tuition is high enough.
Then Apple
wanted us to let students use Facetime to contact us! We shrieked with
laughter at the thought of ever letting students (I have 600) contact
us, any time of the day or night! They really had stupid ideas.
So we told them what we really could use, but nothing has changed yet.
I
know a lot of people could use more screen real estate, but the article
suggested uses in education, and it’s not really right for professors.
Maybe for students? I don’t know.
“But, I don’t think I’ll go for it. It’s large and it’s going to be heavier, it’s not going to fit well in my briefcase.”
That’s my point as well. But imagine if your desk was a giant iPad like surface. You could use it for your prep work, when the real estate might be more useful for laying out several screens of information and dragging between them. But you carry the final copy on your 10 inch Air which is portable
As long as they keep the mini around Apple will be doing the right thing adding an additional size. The biggest one should have better specs and the smaller should be about the same besides the size of the screen, same as the Air and Mini 2.
I think they need to figure out a kickstand so it could be used in both portrait and landscape mode. If they could figure out a really good dual kickstand design, that will make this way more useful. I think the weight is going to be the biggest issue with these things. At least they managed to get the weight down on the 9.7inch model. I hate to say it, but they might have to use, er, um, plastic or something a lot lighter weight than aluminum, plus the battery is another concern.
I have been craving a large iPad since the iPad 1 came out. Hope this happens.
It was high time somebody pointed out that 12.2 inches is larger than 8 inches and that it is very nearly as large as 13 inches. This is the kind of investigative reporting only those journalists brave enough to go out and buy a ruler can do properly.
The reporter in the video clarifies these size issues further when he points out that 12.2 inches is also larger than other objects that are smaller than 8 inches. This is the kind of technical detail we’ve come to expect from Cult of Mac.
Other, less technically oriented outlets tend to lose sight of these things, I’m afraid. Only last week, an article in the New York Times, a paper you would think would know better, reported that there is “no discernible difference between objects of roughly 8 inches and objects of roughly 12.2 inches.” Nonsense! There is, I maintain, nearly 4 inches of difference. Possibly more.
The mock-up in the video is also helpful in making clear the important concept of scale. Scaling up, we see clearly, makes things larger. Scaling down seems to have exactly the opposite effect.
Furthermore we need the kind of journalist willing to admit he cannot see much use for a product that there is absolutely no evidence Apple has any plans to build. It seems to me an important part of Cult of Mac’s job to invent products that Apple might potentially bring to market, dismiss them as useless, and then criticize Apple three months later for not bringing them to market.
In the music world we have long grown accustomed to reading two letter size sheets of music and not needing to turn pages frequently. The introduction of the iPad has been wonderful for going paperless, or sheetless I should say. However its small screen size means the musical symbols are difficult to read and page turning, although needing just a tap on the screen or on a footswitch, is necessary way to often. I have to imagine there are many other areas where pinching and zooming isn’t convenient or even possible.
as a portable I think a larger iPad sounds horrible. If they wanted to go harder to something like the Pixelsense tablet or the wall or floor equals that I saw at Disneylands Home of the Future, okay I’ll go for that. Especially if they work in coordination with the iPhone and iPad (airdrop items over to them or off them, similar UI and so on)