Is the iPad Pro Ready to Do Real Work in Your Company?

How do you know if an iPad Pro will do real work in your company?

There is no need to ignore the elephant in the room. Apple has just announced the new 2021 iPad Pro. In some ways, it is the same tablet story we have had for many years. Not much has changed. It is without competition and at the top of its game. But is its game good enough to play a starring role in your company? Or is it still just another expensive supporting player? With every new release, companies are wondering if this is the one. This year, the question is even more insistent. But the answer is still not clear at the moment.

Currently, Android tablets are not even in the conversation that businesses are having. Amazon Fire tablets are playing things for people not looking to do anything serious with the hardware. Microsoft has a contender with the Surface line of tablets. They are the ones to get if you are looking for a Windows tablet for work. But that is just the thing: When it is all said and done, Windows tablets are just Windows PCs in a slightly different form factor. iPad Pro is not a Mac. It presents as something different that is hard to categorize. Before your business springs for this excellent new hardware, there are some things to consider before trying to slot it into your workflow:

Does it Make the Grade?

You expect to see a lot of Macs in high-end graphics design studios all over the world. iPad Pro is a logical companion because it has an optional and quite excellent stylus and a high refresh rate screen. Many of the same characteristics of the studio-grade Pro Display XDR have made their way to the new iPad Pro. It now has a screen capable of 1,000 nits sustained and 1,600 max brightness for HDR, and a million to 1 contrast ratio thanks to the new mini-LED technology.

But none of that makes it a good choice for your business. If you want to become a computer graphic designer, you need the hardware tools on which the industry has standardized. That does not include the iPad Pro. And the most recent offering will not change that right away. 

If you are looking to go back to school for computer graphic design, there is a reason why the computer remains an essential tool for students. Apple’s pro tablets are more expensive to set up with everything you need to get the most from it. There will also be compatibility issues. Graphics design is a demanding field, both professionally and academically. At the moment, iPad Pro does not quite make the grade. 

Is There an App for That?

No other tablet on the market has more apps specifically made for it than the iPad. That said, it falls well short of the mark in professional apps for enterprises and creatives. For example, if you own a company that sells wedding sparklers, chances are you have a few Windows apps that you can’t live without. Unfortunately, an iPad will not cut regardless of how fast it runs. The new iPad Pro features the world-beating M1 chip that debuted in consumer Macs near the end of 2020. 

If you buy one of these speed demons, it will be the fastest computer in your company. And that won’t matter one bit if the app support isn’t there. You can’t run Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or a myriad of enterprise apps on the iPad Pro at the time of this writing. Nothing like that has been announced or rumored. If you have specialized work that requires a specialized app, the time for the iPad Pro in your company has not yet come.

Power User

Do you like to use an external monitor at work where there are different things on each screen? Maybe you use one screen to upload images of wedding balloons and another to access your customer service management application. Either way, the iPad does not support that right now. Do you like to have multiple, arbitrary windows on a single screen? The iPad does not support that right now. 

Do you need advanced audio support for recording professional podcasts? The iPad… You get the idea. It is no longer the hardware holding the iPad back and hasn’t been for some time. As impressive as the new hardware is, it does not shift the positioning of the iPad in business. 

The things that held it back last year are still holding it back. It is still a bride’s maid and not the bride. It still does not have professional creative and enterprise app support. And it still frustrates the needs of power users. Now that it is running the same internals as the Mac, perhaps this year’s WWDC will be the one that changes the narrative of the iPad Pro. Taking a wait-and-see attitude is the right move for your business.