We first reported and Apple today announced that iPad Pro will go on sale starting Wednesday with a retail launch later this week, and Apple executives are taking the 12.9-inch tablet on a media tour to hype it up. Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling around London today, visiting Touchpress and chatting with The Independent, while CNN Money has shared its interview with Eddy Cue showing off the massive iPad.In his pitch, Cook described the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil as a potential replacement for the sketch pad, something past iPads have attempted but struggled to do. Cook went as far as to say that the Apple Pencil isn’t actually a stylus but something else entirely.
“Well, we didn’t really do a stylus, we did a Pencil. The traditional stylus is fat, it has really bad latency so you’re sketching here and it’s filling the line in somewhere behind. You can’t sketch with something like that, you need something that mimics the look and feel of the pencil itself or you’re not going to replace it. We’re not trying to replace finger touch, we’re complementing it with the Pencil.”
When asked about Apple’s strategy to introduce a more expensive iPad and not a more budget-friendly version, Cook declared that “there are no good £50 tablets” while adding that he believes the iPad Pro will attract PC users and non-Apple customers as well as existing iPad customers in need of an upgrade.
iPad Pro is sold at $799 and up in the United States; The Independent says it will go from £679 in the UK.
Cook also described the Smart Keyboard accessory as benefiting from being made by the same company as the iPad, adding that he’s traveling with just his iPad Pro and iPhone (well and Apple Watch but sorry Mac fans): “I’m travelling with the iPad Pro and other than the iPhone it’s the only product I’ve got.”
Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of iTunes and iCloud, has also been promoting the new, larger iPad. Cue brought out an iPad Pro last week at Dropbox’s enterprise-focused event, and today CNN Money has shared new footage from their recent interview with Cue.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzSTE7d9XAs]
While the Pro name in the larger iPad suggests it’s geared toward professionals, Cue hints on something that others will likely agree on: the iPad Pro is also better for consuming content, not just creating it. Cue discusses the immersive experience of web browsing and reading emails on the larger iPad, something you can do simultaneously in full-size now. You can also see CNN’s iPad app running on the iPad Pro in the clip.
Four separate speakers and a 12.9-inch Retina display should make the iPad Pro a nice portable screen for watching movies and TV shows, assuming that’s not the only reason you buy the $800 tablet.
iPad Pro goes on sale this Wednesday online with inventory hitting Apple Stores, carrier stores, and authorized resellers later in the week in 40 countries.
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I’m in now way knocking the iPad Pro because I think it will be an AWESOME device for productivity and media consumption but Tim Cook looks kinda ridiculous holding that thing 😀. Me personally I’ve become very much addicted to IOS since coming back and getting the iPhone 6s Plus and looking forward to getting a iPad in the near future. $800 is a little steep for me right now but I’m eagerly awaiting the update to the iPad Air 2 and my fiancé really wants the iPad mini 4.
I already have it in my head that I;m getting it. My first new iPad since the iPad 2. Now that’s how you upgrade.
Finally. I’ve been seeing “professional” sites give first looks at the iPad Pro and overusing the 2007 Steve Jobs clip: “Who wants a stylus?”. It’s quite irritating to see supposed tech geniuses failing to notice the difference.
The Apple Pencil is a graphics pen. Digitally formatted to leave no discernible lag and work in perfect sync to a particular device. A stylus is prodding stick at best, used to finely tap letters and keys your fingers are too big for. That’s why Jobs thought they were awful back then, and that claim was 100% correct. “Who wants a stylus?”
As a designer, the set is entirely justified in its asking price in my eyes. People are saying $99 is ridiculous for a stylus, but I say, $99 is great for a graphics pen if it works as advertised.
Jobs was talking about requiring a stylus to use the screen/device by default. If you cannot use the device without a stylus, you’ve failed. What Apple’ve done is made Pencil a complementary to iPad Pro, not a requirement.
I do recall him saying that, yes. It’s okay though, since styluses are still awful from my experience. It’s one of the biggest reasons I couldn’t get on with the Surface Pro devices; as much as they made fun of Apple Pencil for not having an eraser built into the hardware, their pen’s eraser is so clicky-blocky awful I regretted ever turning the pen around.
I wonder why palm rejection technology is not ever mentioned by APPLE in any of the iPad Pro announcements. I believe it is one of the Pencil’s best and most important features. I have read about palm rejection technology in reviews, but not in any Apple material. Hmmmm…
It is possible Apple isn’t pushing it hard because there are not enough apps optimized to show it off, they don’t want to see people disappointed on the first day as they’re not sure how long until the ecosystem takes to catch up.
The apps have to be optimized for the pencil, it’s not built-in by default. Considering that almost all apps have built their own palm rejection technology, it might interfere with Pencil as well.
Procreate is ready for this, and it’s the best art app imho
Cant wait!!!!!😎
Is Tim trying to bend it?
Wish there was someway to “attach” the pencil to the iPad. I don’t see anywhere this is pictured. So I’m assuming we are left up to keeping it close and not losing it. I bet though, that if it isn’t magnetically attracted to the side of the iPad, that will be the chief complaint when people start misplacing their pens. And that’s an expensive & costly mistake.
Just bring your lightning cable around with you. The Pencil comes with an adapter that allows you to charge through the lightning port without sticking it directly into the iPad’s port. It’s almost like a safety leash.