Tag Archives: iPad Pro

Top 5 Sketching Apps on iPads for Product Designers

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All product designs, big or small, great or dismal, start with a sketch. OK, technically, they start with the germ of an idea, but these ideas need to be given visual form sooner or later. Many designers are partial to using paper and pen or pencil at the start but eventually bring their ideas to the digital realm sooner or later. With the advent of powerful mobile devices like the iPad and the Apple Pencil, it has never been easier to put those concepts directly on the screen when inspiration strikes. Navigating the app landscape, however, can be a bit of a doozy, so here are the five best apps for your iPad or iPad Pro to bring those creative ideas to life, at least digitally.

Procreate

You might presume that the venerable Photoshop would be at the very top of the list, but clearly, it isn’t. It wasn’t until later that Adobe finally realized the large market for Photoshop on iPads, but by then, others had already tried to fill its large shoes. Of the many apps that tried to capitalize on its absence, there is perhaps none more popular than Procreate.

Technically, Procreate could be considered as a painting app, but just like Photoshop, it has become a sort of jack-of-all-trades when it comes to digital content creation. It has all the tools you’d need in visualizing your design concepts from start to finish, fleshing out details as you go on the go. It’s easy enough to simply just sketching with the dozens of brushes available, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Procreate can help you animate your designs, a handy tool for products that have interactive moving elements. It even has a unique 3D Model Painting feature that can make your concepts pop out of the screen, figuratively, of course. Along with the iPad’s portability, Procreate gives designers the digital equivalent of an art studio whenever and where ever they need to work on their latest ideas, all for a flat fee of $9.99.

Designer: Ivan Belikov

Designer: Georgie

Concepts

As the very name suggests, Concepts is an app that was specifically designed to support designers in creating concept designs and illustrations. Unlike Photoshop and Procreate, Concepts works with vector lines, similar to Adobe Illustrator, though you probably won’t even feel it because of how fluid and natural sketching feels like. What it does mean, however, is that you have very fine control over each and every line or curve, and those lines remain smooth and crisp whether you zoom in or out and at any resolution.

Concepts’ defining feature, however, is its infinite canvas, designed to adapt to the way designers work and think. Rather than constraining them to pages with fixed sizes, designers can explore ideas and sketch them out as far as they can. The canvas size will adjust to their needs, not the other way around.

The app’s tools are designed to closely mimic their real-world counterparts, offering a toolset that’s familiar to designers. Even its color wheel resembles the popular COPIC format, a clear indication that this app was made with designers in mind right from the start. Concepts is available for free, but certain features require in-app purchases. Alternatively, there is also a subscription option that also unlocks more features that you won’t be able to buy.

Designer: Jonny Gallardo

Designer: CYNIC

Sketchbook

Autodesk is a name that has been near and dear to many designers’ hearts, particularly those in the industrial design fields, for its AutoCAD products. The company, however, also once had its own sketching app, and Sketchbook was, in fact, one of the very first of its kind to embrace mobile devices. Sketchbook has now struck off on its own, but it still brings with it all the features that made it a household name in the digital art market for a while.

Admittedly, Sketchbook might not be as feature-rich as Procreate or Photoshop, but what it lacks in features it makes up for in agility and speed. By no means does it mean that it doesn’t have a decent set of features, and the app is quite capable of translating your ideas into images on a digital canvas. It boasts of hundreds of brushes right off the bat, and each one can be customized to your needs and tastes.

One of the key strengths of Sketchbook is its ease of use and minimalist interface. The user interface gets out of the way, and you can even work all the way without seeing a single button or slider. Best of all, it’s completely free with no hidden purchases, so what you see is really what you get, and it is available on all major platforms, so you won’t miss a beat when switching between your iPad and your Mac.

Designer: Sketchbook

Designer: Michael DiTullo

Affinity Designer

With a name like Affinity Designer, you’re pretty much sure that the app is designed for designers. Its expressed intent is to be a professional tool for creating concept art, designs, and even branding imagery, pretty much all the things designers will need in their work process, especially when it comes time to create a more refined version of a sketch for the final presentation.

Like Concepts, Affinity Designer uses vector lines to create shapes and curves, giving the designer more control over how something looks without degrading the quality of a line. It does, however, also offer typical raster-based paintbrushes when you need more pixel-precise control, particularly when trying to paint textures or recreate more organic materials. The app boasts an unlimited number of layers and 1,000,000x zoom, though you’ll technically still be limited by how much memory your iPad has left.

One of Designer’s most unique features is the ability to have multiple instances of the same object across your work, so that editing one will instantly update the rest. It also presents your artboards in a Pinterest-like gallery that should be familiar to many designers. Affinity Designers has a flat price of $9.99 and has no further in-app purchases or subscription fees.

Designer: Denny Lambo

Designer: Yaron David

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is, of course, the granddaddy of digital art and graphic design software, and its absence on Apple’s tablets was acutely felt for years. Sure, the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil didn’t arrive until 2018, but the likes of Procreate have already been making do with what’s available for almost a decade. In the meantime, Adobe chose to bring several watered-down experiences to iPhones and iPads, focusing on very specific use cases only, biding its time for Photoshop’s full entry into the mobile space.

That has finally happened, somewhat, which is also why Photoshop isn’t placed that high on this list. This new version, first revealed in 2019, is supposed to be the same Photoshop on the desktop, but one that is being ported to the iPad in bits and pieces. Functionality still isn’t on par with what most Photoshop users will be familiar with, and it will take a lot more time for things to settle down. It does have some of the basics, but the focus seems to be more on being able to access your Photoshop files from Creative Cloud from an iPad rather than on a completely independent mobile workflow.

There’s also the fact that it’s the most expensive option in this bunch if you don’t have an Adobe subscription yet, something that’s absolutely necessary to use the app beyond its free trial period. There’s, of course, some hope that Adobe will pick up the slack, but with its new focus on making Photoshop work flawlessly on Apple M1 Macs, iPads might have again been pushed to the background for a while.

Designer: Erica Horne

Designer: Paola

Bonus: Good Notes

All of these apps empower designers to put pencil to paper digitally, so to speak. They let them sketch their ideas on a nearly infinite canvas, anywhere the Muse beckons, with all the conveniences (and sometimes drawbacks) of a digital workflow. Sketching and making beautiful designs, however, isn’t all that a designer does, of course. A large part of the process involves writing down notes or annotating drawings, which is where this bonus app comes in.

GoodNotes is regarded to be one of the best note-taking apps for the iPad, recreating much of the look and feel of traditional paper notebooks but without physical limitations. While it places a heavy emphasis on the pen-driven experience, it allows you to insert almost any kind of digital content into a note, from a typed text to an image. It does also have basic drawing features, so you can even just use it for sketching out your ideas as a rough draft before moving them to the more specialized apps listed above.

Designer: thalamustudy

The post Top 5 Sketching Apps on iPads for Product Designers first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple just filed a patent for a new MacBook design with its own integrated Apple Pencil

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Earlier this week, a patent filed by Apple at the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) was discovered that outlined a schematic for a MacBook with a new input device – the Apple Pencil. According to the patent images, the pencil would conveniently sit docked within the keyboard when not in use, and could be easily popped out and used as an input device, either on the screen or the trackpad. Apart from being a mouse-alternative, the patent even mentions that the pencil would provide extra features to the MacBook like F-key functionality.

Based on these patent drawings, I decided to put a 3D model together and take it for a spin. Conceptually, the presence of an Apple Pencil within a MacBook feels confusing but also potentially exciting. The minute you introduce a pencil to the MacBook, you’re singlehandedly killing the iPad Pro’s upper edge, but the more you think about it, the more it feels like it just might work. A Mac”Book” and a “Pencil” just instinctively go together, like a notebook and a pencil, right? Besides, it creates a synergy between the two products, and I can just imagine Craig Federighi dragging files from the iPad Pro with a Pencil onto the MacBook and having them carry over from one device to another, extending the user experience of Apple’s Universal Control feature!

Potentially (at least according to the schematics in the patent), the Pencil or ‘Pencil-like device’ would sit right above the keyboard, replacing the area originally reserved for the largely ignored Touch Bar. At least for the concept, I’ve shrunk down the Touch Bar instead of removing it entirely. For now, it sits in the top right corner, between the Pencil’s docking area and the Touch ID button.

The Pencil or ‘input tool’ would sit within the MacBook’s magnetic docking area, charging while not in use. Pop it out and I’d imagine you could use it on both the screen as well as the trackpad, although Patently Apple’s article doesn’t really highlight usage. It does, however, show that the Pencil is no ordinary stylus. This new input device would have multiple buttons or touch-zones on it, allowing it to double up as a row of Function keys when docked, and even letting you calibrate/control settings like your screen’s brightness, media volume, or more specifically brush sizes as you sketch on the MacBook screen.

However, like all patents, this one should be taken with a pinch of salt too. Most patents serve a singular purpose – of protecting intellectual property. They aren’t indicative of what Apple plans on rolling out to the public, although my gut tells me the Pencil is due for a redesign too, so maybe it isn’t too farfetched to assume that new touch-features could be coming to the Apple Pencil. As for being able to dock a stylus inside your MacBook, the patent document (which can be found below) and these images are all I have to offer!

Visualizer: Sarang Sheth

Patent discovered by Patently Apple

This handcrafted iPad Pro Stand carved from a single piece of wood comes with a magnetic Apple Pencil holder!

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Sculpted into a shape that permits ergonomic usability and comfort, the iPad Pro Stand from Yohann boasts a final form that allows for multi-angled usage, achieved by reducing the light, thin profile to its bare necessities.

Keeping track of all of our smart electronics and their accessories can get messy. Depending on what you use them for, smart appliances guide us through the week and keep us on top of our personal and work-related agendas. 2016’s Apple Pencil, for one, was designed for iPad Pro but has a tendency of getting lost. Yohann, a sustainable brand passionate about crafting wooden Apple accessories, created a wooden iPad Pro Stand with a built-in Apple Pencil holder so there will always be a place to store it.

Click Here to Buy Now!

Stationery in general gets lost all the time. Our favorite pens fall into hard-to-reach cracks and our pencils roll under our beds, never to be seen again. The iPad Pro Stand from Yohann features an exact slot for your Apple Pencil to slink into when not in use.

The secure lip allows the iPad Pro to remain stationary on the stand. The Apple Pencil holder features magnetic ends to ensure secure storage and that you’ll never lose your Apple Pencil again. The stand itself is handcrafted from a single piece of wood for a solid and durable structure that ages well and stands the test of time. The iPad Pro stand features a winged back for multi-angled use.

Navigating our library of smart electronics and accessories can become as overwhelming as managing our photo library. To help declutter our desks of wires and gadgets, Yohann crafted the iPad Pro Stand with a built-in Apple Pencil holder.

Following their handcrafted and high-quality design process, Yohann built the stand to be ergonomic, intuitive, and long-lasting. Illustrators and graphic designers can draw on their iPad Pros using the stand as a bolstered. Best of all, we love how the magnetic Apple Pencil holder snaps onto place and that’s a feature we’ll be toying with it for a while!

Designer: Yohann

Click Here to Buy Now!

The iPad Pro stand can even remain upright on soft surfaces, perfect for nighttime Netflix-binge sessions.

The precise slot for your Apple Pencil ensures that it won’t go missing.

Get the iMac-style workflow on your iPad Pro with Brydge’s standalone trackpad for iPadOS

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Your M1 iPad Pro is as good as an iMac… Brydge’s iTrack trackpad brings iMac-style functionality to it. Up until last month, Apple marketed the iPad as a laptop replacement, however that perception changed when the iPad was introduced alongside the iMac at Apple’s SpringLoaded event at the end of April, both with Apple’s supercharged M1 chip. The iPad is more than just a laptop now, it’s a machine with more processing power than most machines with Intel chips, and its graphical power is comparable to high-end gaming consoles. In short, it looks and behaves like an iMac with a touchscreen, so it just made sense to bring the iMac’s accessories to it too.

The iTrack comes from the fine folks at Brydge, who’ve developed some of the best accessories for Apple products over the years (they released a keyboard+trackpad attachment for the iPad before Apple did). Debuted at CES back in 2020, the iTrack (which officially launched just last week) is a compact multi-touch trackpad that’s designed to give your iPad workflow a significant upgrade. Styled to look just like Apple’s own Magic Trackpad 2, the iTrack is much smaller (with a 6.1-inch diagonal) and sports the same space-grey aluminum body and touch-sensitive glass top.

Designed to work seamlessly with iPadOS (versions 14.5 and higher), the iTrack automatically and instantly connects with your tablet via Bluetooth, providing an experience as seamless as Apple’s own trackpad. Sensors within the device detect subtle pressure differences that let you tap, scroll, swipe, and use other multi-touch features on your iPad Pro. Just like a Trackpad or a Magic Mouse, you can work within programs, intuitively select and edit text and spreadsheets, and switch between apps… besides, the iTrack even works seamlessly with other connected accessories like a keyboard or Apple Pencil, complementing most workflows.

The iTrack debuted back in 2020, but its launch wasn’t until last week, owing to delays because of the pandemic. It ships for $99.99 (that’s $20 cheaper than Apple’s Magic Trackpad 2), has a USB-C port for charging, and boasts of an impressive 6-month battery life on a full charge, with 2-hours of use every day.

Designer: Brydge

Radical Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Tab patent shows a two-part folding screen + magnetic S-Pen docking area

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It’s slowly becoming pretty clear that Samsung wants to be the dominant player in the foldables market. We’ve seen Motorola, Xiaomi, Huawei, Royole, and even the oddball TCL try their hands at folding devices, but none of them have invested the amount of time and effort as Samsung has. Based on a patent filing uncovered by LetsoGoDigital and rendered by Sarang Sheth, here’s a look at the Galaxy Z Fold Tab, a Note-style smartphone with 2 hinges and a nifty ‘crawl-space’ to dock and charge your S-Pen. The Z Fold Tab hopes to form a third device in Samsung’s line-up alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3, which are set to launch this year – in effect consolidating Samsung’s position in a questionable yet rather interesting foldable-devices market.

The Z Fold Tab concept takes on the avatar of a folding device with an outward screen. However, unlike the Huawei Mate X or any of Royole’s Flexpai devices, the Z Fold Tab comes with two hinges on its massive screen, creating a novel folding format that has a rather interesting set of pros as well as cons. In its closed mode, the Z Fold Tab can obviously be used as a regular smartphone (albeit being slightly thicker) with a waterfall display on both left and right edges thanks to the folding screens (this obscures the volume and power buttons, but those could easily be translated to the screen via force-touch like in the Vivo Apex 2019). However, unfold the screens on either side and you have yourself a larger tablet. The obvious cons are that instead of one crease running across the screen, you’re now faced with TWO creases, however, given how we consume content and the amount of time we spend looking at centrally aligned elements, this format oddly works, because the two creases sit on the sides of the screen rather than along the center.

The foldable design comes with a unique detail. The two halves leave a distinct gap when folded completely, solving two purposes – the gap exposes the main camera lenses, enabling you to take photos and videos without worrying about unfolding your phone; and the gap even acts as a safe space to magnetically dock your S-Pen. Unlike previous Note devices that came with hollow slots that allowed you to slide an S-Pen into the phone, the Z Fold Tab lets the S-Pen dock outside, almost like the iPad Pro. The magnetic dock charges the S-Pen while that comfy gap prevents the pen from accidentally sliding out or getting lost.

The Galaxy Z Fold Tab is not unlike the Z Fold 3 concept we featured last year, however, its key difference is that the two-part hinges don’t overlap to form a 3-layered device. Even when folded, the Z Fold Tablet still remains relatively slim by foldable standards.

For now, however, the Z Fold Tab exists only in conceptual form, protected by an international patent filed by Samsung. The Korean consumer-tech giant is slated to host its annual Galaxy Unpacked event in August this year, although according to analysts and experts, we’re probably only going to see the Z Fold 3 and the Z Flip 3 devices this year along with the usual suspects. According to LetsGoDigital, Samsung may have this under wraps until 2022.

Designer/Visualizer: Sarang Sheth for LetsGoDigital

This concept was first published on LetsGoDigital. Click here to view the original piece.

elago’s Apple Pencil protective case turns your stylus into a nostalgic rubber-tip graphite pencil

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I don’t know about you, but those generic yellow pencils with pink erasers were a very strong part of my childhood. I practically grew up on them, developed a love for sketching, took on a career in Industrial Design, and I’m finally here, reliving those fond memories through elago’s Apple Pencil cover cases.

Designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia, elago’s Apple Pencil (2nd Gen) covers come with that familiar hexagonal pencil aesthetic, complete with the rubber-tip at the back. Slip them onto your Pencil and apart from giving you a blast from the past, the covers enhance your grip, thanks to the silicone construction, and protect your hardware from accidental drops and scratches. Moreover, the cover is compatible with the iPad Pro and even supports charging the Pencil by magnetically attaching it to the side of your tablet!

Designer: elago

Click Here to Buy Now

Click Here to Buy Now

iPad Pro 2021 with a bezel-less design would have been the perfect showstopper at the Apple Spring Loaded event!

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Apple Spring Loaded 2021 event blew us all away, and Apple fans are so eager to experience the new products announced at the event. While the task of reinventing a well-designed product line every year seems like a herculean task, the team at Apple has managed to keep its fan satisfied with most of its releases, and with the M1 chip finally making its debut in the iPad Pro, the iPad is easily the most powerful tablet in the world.

For those of us who were hoping for a more bezel-less experience, this concept by Lester John Antiller is here for you! The M1 really unleashes the tablet’s potential, giving it incredible storage, transfer, and read/write abilities… or as Apple calls it, the most powerful chip on an iPad. The M1, apart from being a productive beast, also allows the iPad to have 5G capabilities, and even up to 2 Terabytes of storage… let’s see Microsoft’s Surface match that! Nothing much changes on the form front. The iPad Pro’s design is in a place where it doesn’t need to refine its exterior design. but how we wish it they would! A bezel-less design is all that is needed to take that ‘piece of magical glass’ to a revolutionary new level!

The iPad Pro still retains its last year’s camera module on the back, albeit with better computational photography thanks to the M1 chip. The camera on the front, however, sports an ultrawide-angle lens that captures more within the frame. Apple even showcased Center Stage, their new feature that uses machine learning to have that ultrawide camera zoom in on subjects and follow them around as they move, panning the camera while the iPad stays stationary. How the minimal front-facing cameras will impact the face recognition technology in this concept remains to be seen, but that is the beauty of a conceptual design. It helps us imagine the next big thing, inspire us, and help us achieve that target. So Apple, we have set our next expectations and we hope you are listening!

Designer: Lester John Antiller

The 2021 iPad Pro is now easily the most powerful tablet in the world

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It’s funny how there’s absolutely no argument when it comes to comparing tablet PCs. Sure, with laptops, desktops, phones, and even smartwatches, there’s a healthy competition between rival companies and a spirit of one-upmanship that helps products get better with time… but in a strange way, that doesn’t exist in the tablet market at all, because there’s clearly only one superior tablet, and its only real competition at this point of time, is itself.

Every year, Apple is tasked with the difficult job of making better versions of its cutting-edge products. With the iPad, it feels like a pointless endeavor after a certain moment, because as iPads get better and better, their older versions don’t get worse… they just stay good (because even after 2-3 years, they don’t really have any serious market competition). Now, with the M1 chip finally making its debut in the iPad Pro, the iPad is easily the most powerful tablet in the world. Some would say it’s even more powerful than most laptops.

Nothing much changes on the form front. The iPad Pro’s design is in a place where it doesn’t need to refine its exterior design. Apple’s team calls it a magical piece of glass, because that’s what holding it in your hand feels like. It’s ridiculously slim, has an absolutely incredible screen, capable cameras, and now even sports a Thunderbolt-ready USB 4.0 port. It has magnets that let it snap to a keyboard case, has a LiDAR sensor for 3D scanning, an Apple Pencil for sketching, designing, and note-keeping. The most logical next step was to bring Apple’s silicon architecture to its internals…

Continuing its tradition, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes. However, just like the larger iPhone 12 Pro Max has a measurably better screen and camera system than the 12 Pro, the larger iPad Pro comes equipped with a screen that’s much better… XDR-level better. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes with a Liquid Retina XDR display that’s comparable to the Pro XDR display that Apple debuted with their ‘cheesegrater’ Mac. It sports a dizzying 5.6 million pixels with 1600 nits of peak brightness, a mind-numbing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and extreme dynamic range. That allows your pro-level workflow to seamlessly be carried from your desktop to your iPad with no perceivable loss in quality as you view it on the screen… and if you think your iPad can’t handle that workflow, that’s where the M1 comes in.

The M1 really unleashes the tablet’s potential, giving it incredible storage, transfer, and read/write abilities… or as Apple calls it, the most powerful chip on an iPad. The M1, apart from being a productive beast, also allows the iPad to have 5G capabilities, and even up to 2 Terabytes of storage… let’s see Microsoft’s Surface match that!

The M1 significantly empowers your workflow, allowing you to work on CPU or GPU-intensive tasks with absolute ease, and even letting you work with incredibly heavy files and run processes like video editing, green-screen, and the kind of work you’d normally do on a laptop. Plug your keyboard case in and the iPad even becomes a makeshift laptop.

Things just get better on the AR front with the iPad. The M1 chip allows the sensor and the AR algorithms to really get to work, crunching numbers, and realistically rendering out your virtual files in the 3D space around you. A rather cool sneak preview below also shows how Procreate’s v5.2 runs on the iPad, and users will be delighted to know that it now supports sketching directly on 3D models!

The iPad Pro still retains its last year’s camera module on the back, albeit with better computational photography thanks to the M1 chip. The camera on the front, however, sports an ultrawide-angle lens that captures more within the frame. Apple even showcased Center Stage, their new feature that uses machine learning to have that ultrawide camera zoom in on subjects and follow them around as they move, panning the camera while the iPad stays stationary.

The iPad’s biggest competition is itself. It’s now reached a stage where it’s difficult to think of what Apple could do next, apart from refining and making its internals better… however, this M1 is a monumental leap for the tablet and really leaves the other tablet manufacturers biting the dust. The iPad Pro ships in two sizes, the 11-inch, and the 12.9-inch. It starts at $799, is available in silver and space-grey (no colors for this one), and with that powerful internal architecture, 5G capabilities, up to 2 Terabytes of storage, 16 Gb RAM, an onboard LiDAR sensor, and support for the Apple Pencil, the 2021 iPad Pro really leaves little for skeptics to grumble over. All hail the most powerful tablet ever built!

Designer: Apple

The 2021 iPad Pro is now easily the most powerful tablet in the world

Posted on by




It’s funny how there’s absolutely no argument when it comes to comparing tablet PCs. Sure, with laptops, desktops, phones, and even smartwatches, there’s a healthy competition between rival companies and a spirit of one-upmanship that helps products get better with time… but in a strange way, that doesn’t exist in the tablet market at all, because there’s clearly only one superior tablet, and its only real competition at this point of time, is itself.

Every year, Apple is tasked with the difficult job of making better versions of its cutting-edge products. With the iPad, it feels like a pointless endeavor after a certain moment, because as iPads get better and better, their older versions don’t get worse… they just stay good (because even after 2-3 years, they don’t really have any serious market competition). Now, with the M1 chip finally making its debut in the iPad Pro, the iPad is easily the most powerful tablet in the world. Some would say it’s even more powerful than most laptops.

Nothing much changes on the form front. The iPad Pro’s design is in a place where it doesn’t need to refine its exterior design. Apple’s team calls it a magical piece of glass, because that’s what holding it in your hand feels like. It’s ridiculously slim, has an absolutely incredible screen, capable cameras, and now even sports a Thunderbolt-ready USB 4.0 port. It has magnets that let it snap to a keyboard case, has a LiDAR sensor for 3D scanning, an Apple Pencil for sketching, designing, and note-keeping. The most logical next step was to bring Apple’s silicon architecture to its internals…

Continuing its tradition, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes. However, just like the larger iPhone 12 Pro Max has a measurably better screen and camera system than the 12 Pro, the larger iPad Pro comes equipped with a screen that’s much better… XDR-level better. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes with a Liquid Retina XDR display that’s comparable to the Pro XDR display that Apple debuted with their ‘cheesegrater’ Mac. It sports a dizzying 5.6 million pixels with 1600 nits of peak brightness, a mind-numbing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and extreme dynamic range. That allows your pro-level workflow to seamlessly be carried from your desktop to your iPad with no perceivable loss in quality as you view it on the screen… and if you think your iPad can’t handle that workflow, that’s where the M1 comes in.

The M1 really unleashes the tablet’s potential, giving it incredible storage, transfer, and read/write abilities… or as Apple calls it, the most powerful chip on an iPad. The M1, apart from being a productive beast, also allows the iPad to have 5G capabilities, and even up to 2 Terabytes of storage… let’s see Microsoft’s Surface match that!

The M1 significantly empowers your workflow, allowing you to work on CPU or GPU-intensive tasks with absolute ease, and even letting you work with incredibly heavy files and run processes like video editing, green-screen, and the kind of work you’d normally do on a laptop. Plug your keyboard case in and the iPad even becomes a makeshift laptop.

Things just get better on the AR front with the iPad. The M1 chip allows the sensor and the AR algorithms to really get to work, crunching numbers, and realistically rendering out your virtual files in the 3D space around you. A rather cool sneak preview below also shows how Procreate’s v5.2 runs on the iPad, and users will be delighted to know that it now supports sketching directly on 3D models!

The iPad Pro still retains its last year’s camera module on the back, albeit with better computational photography thanks to the M1 chip. The camera on the front, however, sports an ultrawide-angle lens that captures more within the frame. Apple even showcased Center Stage, their new feature that uses machine learning to have that ultrawide camera zoom in on subjects and follow them around as they move, panning the camera while the iPad stays stationary.

The iPad’s biggest competition is itself. It’s now reached a stage where it’s difficult to think of what Apple could do next, apart from refining and making its internals better… however, this M1 is a monumental leap for the tablet and really leaves the other tablet manufacturers biting the dust. The iPad Pro ships in two sizes, the 11-inch, and the 12.9-inch. It starts at $799, is available in silver and space-grey (no colors for this one), and with that powerful internal architecture, 5G capabilities, up to 2 Terabytes of storage, 16 Gb RAM, an onboard LiDAR sensor, and support for the Apple Pencil, the 2021 iPad Pro really leaves little for skeptics to grumble over. All hail the most powerful tablet ever built!

Designer: Apple

The 2021 iPad Pro is now easily the most powerful tablet in the world

Posted on by




It’s funny how there’s absolutely no argument when it comes to comparing tablet PCs. Sure, with laptops, desktops, phones, and even smartwatches, there’s a healthy competition between rival companies and a spirit of one-upmanship that helps products get better with time… but in a strange way, that doesn’t exist in the tablet market at all, because there’s clearly only one superior tablet, and its only real competition at this point of time, is itself.

Every year, Apple is tasked with the difficult job of making better versions of its cutting-edge products. With the iPad, it feels like a pointless endeavor after a certain moment, because as iPads get better and better, their older versions don’t get worse… they just stay good (because even after 2-3 years, they don’t really have any serious market competition). Now, with the M1 chip finally making its debut in the iPad Pro, the iPad is easily the most powerful tablet in the world. Some would say it’s even more powerful than most laptops.

Nothing much changes on the form front. The iPad Pro’s design is in a place where it doesn’t need to refine its exterior design. Apple’s team calls it a magical piece of glass, because that’s what holding it in your hand feels like. It’s ridiculously slim, has an absolutely incredible screen, capable cameras, and now even sports a Thunderbolt-ready USB 4.0 port. It has magnets that let it snap to a keyboard case, has a LiDAR sensor for 3D scanning, an Apple Pencil for sketching, designing, and note-keeping. The most logical next step was to bring Apple’s silicon architecture to its internals…

Continuing its tradition, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes. However, just like the larger iPhone 12 Pro Max has a measurably better screen and camera system than the 12 Pro, the larger iPad Pro comes equipped with a screen that’s much better… XDR-level better. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes with a Liquid Retina XDR display that’s comparable to the Pro XDR display that Apple debuted with their ‘cheesegrater’ Mac. It sports a dizzying 5.6 million pixels with 1600 nits of peak brightness, a mind-numbing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and extreme dynamic range. That allows your pro-level workflow to seamlessly be carried from your desktop to your iPad with no perceivable loss in quality as you view it on the screen… and if you think your iPad can’t handle that workflow, that’s where the M1 comes in.

The M1 really unleashes the tablet’s potential, giving it incredible storage, transfer, and read/write abilities… or as Apple calls it, the most powerful chip on an iPad. The M1, apart from being a productive beast, also allows the iPad to have 5G capabilities, and even up to 2 Terabytes of storage… let’s see Microsoft’s Surface match that!

The M1 significantly empowers your workflow, allowing you to work on CPU or GPU-intensive tasks with absolute ease, and even letting you work with incredibly heavy files and run processes like video editing, green-screen, and the kind of work you’d normally do on a laptop. Plug your keyboard case in and the iPad even becomes a makeshift laptop.

Things just get better on the AR front with the iPad. The M1 chip allows the sensor and the AR algorithms to really get to work, crunching numbers, and realistically rendering out your virtual files in the 3D space around you. A rather cool sneak preview below also shows how Procreate’s v5.2 runs on the iPad, and users will be delighted to know that it now supports sketching directly on 3D models!

The iPad Pro still retains its last year’s camera module on the back, albeit with better computational photography thanks to the M1 chip. The camera on the front, however, sports an ultrawide-angle lens that captures more within the frame. Apple even showcased Center Stage, their new feature that uses machine learning to have that ultrawide camera zoom in on subjects and follow them around as they move, panning the camera while the iPad stays stationary.

The iPad’s biggest competition is itself. It’s now reached a stage where it’s difficult to think of what Apple could do next, apart from refining and making its internals better… however, this M1 is a monumental leap for the tablet and really leaves the other tablet manufacturers biting the dust. The iPad Pro ships in two sizes, the 11-inch, and the 12.9-inch. It starts at $799, is available in silver and space-grey (no colors for this one), and with that powerful internal architecture, 5G capabilities, up to 2 Terabytes of storage, 16 Gb RAM, an onboard LiDAR sensor, and support for the Apple Pencil, the 2021 iPad Pro really leaves little for skeptics to grumble over. All hail the most powerful tablet ever built!

Designer: Apple