Be Excellent To Each Other

You misunderstand. I won't need it as a laptop often. I will use it every day as a tablet.

Nope, I already said what I bought in my original post.

iPad Pro Wi-Fi 128GB £799
Apple Pencil £79
3rd Party smart case £13
Magic Keyboard £79

Neither the official smart keyboard nor the Logitech one seem to be great solutions according to reviews.

Holy shit Myp is rich.

Not anymore!

Apple Pencil at £79? Bargain. Just...wow.

Comparable price to a surface pro 1/3 at release. Not a lot of Apple tax there by comparison.

IKR. And once it's worn down to a nub I have to buy another one!

Good job you didn't get something too large and heavy to comfortably hold as a tablet then.

Oh.

Seeing the numbers laid out there it does seem pretty bonkers to spend that on a tablet. That can't be a kick in the balls away from what you've just spent to get a high spec gaming PC but this time it bought you something barely as capable. Also, what are you going to do with 128Gb of storage?

Is it a comparable device, though?

Depends on use cases. I'd say for most sp3 users, 90% yes. There's more possibility with a surface but it's rarely used.

Also at £800 price point for a surface it's only 4gb ram i5. Which isn't going to blow the world away

I can't imagine any people are buying Surface's just to use it in the same way you could use an iPad.

If you don't want it for laptop style usage, why on earth would anyone buy one over a cheaper/better/lighter iPad/Android tablet.

The Windows App Store is an atrocity. Surely most people using a Surface at least to an extent chose it for "legacy" support of Win32 apps.

Put another way, if a hypothetical magic iPad could run Win32 apps well, I don't think anyone would buy a Surface.

You can run two apps side by side on the Surface and it supports the apps you actually want to use. Whereas on the iPad, each individual app has to support it, and most don't.

I once saw a wise and lovely lady say on Twitter 'Don't yuck somebody else's yum'. I think Mrs Gaywood's advice was super, there.

Myp knows I'm just envious of his new toy.

We all like new shinny.

The iPad is quite a bit better than the gaming PC at being usable in the hand on the sofa, at being taken out of the house and used elsewhere, and at running iOS apps. In fact it's not really comparable at all, is it?

With the iPad pro, it's 32 GB or 128; and 32 is a bit lightweight even just for apps and games. If you ever think you might (say) put a few movies on it for a plane trip you need the 128 really.

Joking aside, once I handled one at the Apple Store I was quite intrigued by the Pro. There's definitely use cases the enormous screen is far more useful for, and although many of those don't interest me (eg drawing and music creation) I would like to live with one for a bit and see how it grows on me. There are two things I'd want to see before pulling the trigger though: a credible photo workflow with Lightroom, and split screen for some apps I really want it for (chiefly Ocado, Paprika, OurGroceries.) If both of those things existed I'd be shopping for a Pro or Air 2, I suspect. As it is, I'm flirting with the idea of a pre owned Surface Pro 3.

It's 30g heavier than the original iPad. I don't remember getting sore arms from holding that (title).

Also stop yucking my yum you complete bastard!!!

It's certainly very comparable on price, which was a large part of my point there. That aside, if you genuinely can't compare two general purpose computing devices that are going to spend most of their lives in one's house then I would suggest you're not trying very hard. More pertinently though your use cases there make an argument for an iPad, but not the iPad Pro specifically; which is the entire conversation here.

I guess what Bamba's getting at is you're really into 'proper computer' money there, I mean, that's £1000 on a large tablet - and for that money you can get a full-fat gaming PC or indeed a genuinely capable gaming laptop or a MacBook. (Whereas normal tablet money is more in the £300-£400 range, or £150 if you're a scummy Nvidia Shield owner like me Either way it won't get you a computer/laptop of any particular note.)

Now I entirely take the point that it's not comparing apples with apples, plus at the end of the day it's myp's money and if he wants an iPad Pro for whatever reasons they're his reasons and as such are valid - but then again when I saw the raw numbers I couldn't help but think 'Woah, a grand on a big tablet'.

I'm sure the iPad Pro is a gorgeous piece of kit, and I hope myp is very happy with his, for me the price would really stick in the craw though.

EDIT - Oh, Bamba posted whilst I was typing. Lol.

I'll set 'em up, you knock 'em down.

(Title.)

So is a sixth hand 1995 Ford Fiesta, though. I mean, you need more axes than price alone here. And a device chained to a desk is pretty different from a device you can carry around.

You'd have been on more solid ground if you'd compared it to a laptop, I think. But comparing a physically mobile device to a PC that weighs six or seven kilos seems odd. (Citation: everyone who ever owned a desktop already and then bought a laptop to use elsewhere in the house.)

Well, yeah, the other axis is 'is a general purpose computing device'. Obviously you and myp disagree with me here (which is fine of course) but, in my opinion, an iPad Pro just isn't worth as much as a high spec gaming PC. While it offers some advantages over a full fat PC it doesn't balance up; not least because a non-Pro iPad brings most of those benefits without the brain-boggling price point. In an attempt to offer my own automotive metaphor, a lot of people prefer motorbikes to cars for various reason, but if you tried to charge them the same amount for a bike as a car they'd laugh in your face.

I'm really interested in the pencil. I write so much maths, and as much as I love LaTeX for typesetting, it's no good for thinking. You have to think on paper, then write up onto a PC.

I genuinely think something really interesting is going to happen for Physics soon with tablets with such high quality stylus inputs. I want to be able to write maths, and either keep it free hand, or OCR render it into glorious type.

I'm really hoping a tiresome step in my workflow can be cut away with that £79 pencil.

For mathematicians and physicists I can really see tablets not just finally becoming a creative device, but the creative device.

I'd love an iPad pro and pencil for drawing on.

Yeah I plan on getting back into that. Also for writing lyrics which is just so much easier writing than typing.

Trust me, you would. It's a revelation.

I'll wait until the pencil tech trickles down to future entry level iPads and maybe get one then.

Well it's certainly a decent size!

V. Smart.

What happens when a flashy red sports car is out of your financial reach...

Had a meeting with a potential client today who (like me) was notetaking on a Surface Pro 3. Wasn't sure how the meeting had gone until the end when he said "Does it piss you off as much as me that the iPad Pro people think that Apple invented 'Writing' last fall?"

Get this right. You can make squiggles on the screen that vaguely approximate keyboard letters. Then it sort of looks like normal words and you can read it like a regular document!

Did you shout "AUTUMN!" and punch him in the face?

Also for putting 'Writing' in quotes with a capital letter. Verbally.

That would be worth quite a bit.

Yep, it's lovely. Any non-ruined late 80s/early 90s quick cars are going up in value quite rapidly.

I saw a pristine Nova when I was at Nurburgring. It was like something out of a time warp, and (I suspect) worth a fortune.

Yeah, pretty fucking happy with this.

You need to read Civil War faster.

If he moves his finger quicker under the words, he'll get there.

But then his lips won't keep up.

The opening line of your book seems a bit cliche to me, needs work.

Box of tissues handy for when you start using the internet properly.

Poor Warbot

I got distracted by Squirrel Girl and Ms Marvel.

Hands off.

They're a bit young for you, mate.