Get ready for the iPad Pro

Ted Landau looks at what we can expect from an iPad Pro

Apple’s iPad Air has received overwhelming 

praise as the best full-size tablet you can 

buy, and it racked up sales records. And 

why not? It’s lighter, thinner, smaller, and faster than 

its predecessor. In fact, it’s so ‘impossibly light’ 

that Macworld’s Jason Snell described handling it 

as being “like picking up a movie prop”. Thus the 

rationale for adding the word Air to the iPad’s name.

Still, it’s tempting to consider a potential 

second implication of the name change. Apple 

sells another product with ‘Air’ in its name: the 

MacBook Air. It’s marketed as an entry-level laptop, 

with the MacBook Pro as the alternative for those 

who crave more power and higher-end options. 

While predicting Apple’s future product releases is 

often a fool’s errand, we believe the introduction 

of an iPad Air suggests that an ‘iPad Pro’ is in the 

works for 2014.
That’s the easy prediction. The hard one is
describing exactly what an iPad Pro might be. In
particular, how would Apple distinguish an iPad Pro
from the iPad Air and iPad mini? Understanding that
we are about to go so far out on a limb that it might
well break beneath me, here’s my speculation.

A larger display

This would almost certainly be the primary
distinguishing feature of an iPad Pro. How much
larger? There are rumours that Apple has already
settled on a 12.9in display. This strikes us as just
about right. It places the iPad Pro at around the
same display size as 13in MacBooks. Furthermore, it
would allow for a clear separation between the three

iPad models: 7.9in mini; 9.7in Air; and 12.9in Pro.

Touch ID

Apple’s Touch ID fi ngerprint detection debuted on
the iPhone 5s. The handset remains the only Apple
product to include this feature thus far, and while
many people had hoped to see Touch ID on the iPad
Air, that didn’t happen. Apple might well reserve
the option for the debut of an iPad Pro, but if so, it
will almost certainly be only a temporary distinction.
Within a year or two, we anticipate that Touch ID will
be included in almost all iOS devices.

Laptop/tablet hybrid

There’s been much debate about the
ideal mobile computer: if you can have
only one, should it be a laptop or a
tablet? Or is neither su cient on its own?
A potential solution to this dilemma is for
one device to serve as both, as Microsoft
has attempted with the Surface.
Some have envisioned an iPad 
Pro that goes in this same direction,
functioning as an iPad/MacBook hybrid.
At one point, we imagined a hybrid that
would have a detachable display (as
opposed to, say, a 180-degree swivelling
display). When the display was attached
to the keyboard, it would function as a
MacBook running OS X. When detached,
it would instead serve as a touchscreen
iPad running iOS. While some might see
this as combining the advantages of
both worlds, others view it as merging
the drawbacks of each platform. Apple is
clearly in the latter camp. At Apple’s October media
event, Tim Cook said: “Our competition is di erent.
They’re confused. They chased after netbooks. Now
they’re trying to make PCs into tablets and tablets
into PCs.” He went on to assert that Apple has no
intention of going in that direction. In other words,
despite predictions of an OS X/iOS hybrid device
this year, our expectation is that an iPad Pro would
remain purely an iOS device.

Physical keyboard

Although an iPad Pro might not be a hybrid, it
needn’t eschew a physical keyboard altogether.
Keyboard cases and covers for iPads, from
companies such as Logitech (see above) and Zagg,
are already popular options, and it’s easy to see why.
If you do a lot of typing, a physical keyboard goes a
long way toward making that task easier.
Make no mistake, however; there’s a downside
here. Even the thinnest, lightest keyboard cover
adds significant heft to an iPad. And a keyboard case
too often gets in the way when you want to use an
iPad for tasks where no keyboard is required. Still,
for the intended market of an iPad Pro (more on this
in a moment), a physical keyboard would probably
be a welcome addition.
Then again, Apple could continue to market its
Bluetooth stand-alone keyboard as an iPad Pro
accessory, leaving keyboard cases and covers to
third-parties. However, we believe that Apple will
o er something new, such as a keyboard case and/
or keyboard cover that’s specifi c to the iPad Pro.

Pro-specific hardware features

For us, this is the biggest question of all. Will an
iPad Pro simply be an iPad Air with a larger display?
If so, we’ll be surprised and disappointed. For an
iPad Pro to carve out a niche for itself, we believe
it needs to di ffer in some more significant way.
Of the features we’d most like to see, the top
one would be external connectivity. In particular,
an iPad Pro should expand beyond the ubiquitous
Lightning connector, offering a fully functional
USB and/or Thunderbolt port. This would allow for
options such as directly connecting an external
drive to the iPad, which is essential to enable full
local backups without requiring a Mac. A USB port
would also make it much more practical to access
peripherals such as portable scanners. We know
that the future is all about wireless connectivity, but
we’re not there yet.
Unfortunately, given the company’s history of
avoiding any moves in this direction – by restricting
access to file storage on iOS devices as well as
keeping ports to a minimum on all Apple computers
– we have little confidence the company will
implement such a change.
If not external ports, then what? We don’t know. In
the end, this has us thinking that an iPad Pro could
turn out to be little more than a larger Air after all.

Target audience

At this point, we can imagine many readers throwing
up their collective hands, decrying: “This makes no
sense. The iPad market is moving toward smaller
displays, not larger ones. The iPad mini’s market
share continues to grow. It’s expected to eclipse the
sales of the Air. No one wants an iPad that is even
less portable than the iPad Air.”
These are excellent points that are hard to argue
with. Still, we see a potential audience for a larger
iPad. Apple could target it at iPad users who value
a larger display more than maximum portability. If
you plan to use an iPad primarily in just one or two
locations, with an emphasis on productivity tasks,
you might fi t the profile. Bear in mind that, even with
a 13inch display, a hypothetical iPad Pro qualifies as
portable; it would still likely be smaller and lighter
than a MacBook Air.

Mac replacement

The web is overflowing with articles about the shift
away from traditional computers and toward tablets.
For a significant minority of users, a tablet is already
their primary or only computing device. An iPad Pro
would likely further that trend.
Still, for the vast majority of professional users,
with their emphasis on work and productivity over
leisure and consumption, a Mac would likely remain
essential for the foreseeable future. Yes, you can get
 work done with an iPad; that debate has largely
been settled. And, as this Apple video makes clear,
there are already many “work” situations where an
iPad functions better than a MacBook.
Still, there’s no way any iPad can compete with
the raw power of a Mac Pro or even a top-end
iMac. At least not yet. Until an iPad can run Final
Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Photoshop CS, BBEdit, Terminal,
and other ‘pro’ apps; until an iPad’s touchscreen
interface is as e ffective as a Mac’s trackpad for
working with these apps; until iOS adds features that
close the fi le system gap with OS X; and until you
can develop iOS apps on an iOS device, pro users
will continue to need Macs.
That aside, an iPad Pro would up the ante.
Accelerating a trend that has already begun, many
desktop Mac owners would potentially choose an
iPad over a laptop as their secondary computer. For
an increasing number of non-pro users, an iPad will
su ffice as their only computer. Whatever an iPad
Pro turns out to be – even if it turns out to be more
rumour than reality – the iPad itself will remain at the
core of Apple’s future.