In 2024, we saw the release of the newly redesigned Mac mini, the Apple Vision Pro, a whole brand new platform. But my favorite computer that was released that year was the M4 iPad Pro. Now this isn't going to be some shocking surprise to anyone that's seen my videos before. Most people that have watched my videos probably know by now that I work entirely from the iPad.
This video is sponsored by Surfshark. Let's get into it. I get asked a lot why I work from an iPad. It's one computer that can handle my whole workflow, whether it's running my business, like doing email stuff, spreadsheet stuff, I can handle it all right there on the iPad. Then there's reading, writing, and research, which is a big part of any video or even podcast episode that I do. I do a lot of research.
I do a lot of writing. I take a lot of notes. All of that can be handled on the iPad. And then there's post-production stuff like editing those videos and podcasts, editing those. I do a lot of photography stuff as well. My whole post-production workflow can work right from the iPad.
The iPad is a machine that adapts, and I've talked about this before, and it's something that I just, I like to hammer home on why the iPad is a good computer for people. It's a tablet. You can hold it in your hand, scroll, tap on it, do whatever. Then you can pair something like the Apple Pencil with it, and it can become a notebook. You can journal, you can draw, you can just handwrite stuff out, sketch documents up, mark documents up, sign things, whatever.
Then you can put it in the Magic Keyboard, and now it's a laptop. Then you can plug it into an external monitor, and now it's a desktop computer. It's flexible, and that is something that I want in my life. I want computers and technology to adapt to my needs.
I don't want to be adapting to its needs. Another reason why I love working from the iPad is it has a vibrant app ecosystem. There's constantly new apps coming out. There's always something new to try, whether it's a productivity app or a utility app or whatever. There's always something new to try there.
Plus, the iPad has cellular option. I still don't understand why the Mac doesn't have this. I don't get it, but having cellular built right into the iPad is killer.
I used to have a day job where I used to travel around a lot, and I had to tether my phone to my work laptop constantly, and it sucked. It never worked well. I don't like tethering. It just never works. Having a static cellular connection built right into the iPad is really nice, and I can totally understand some people don't want another monthly expense. There are some pretty cheap cellular plans out there for the iPad if you're curious.
But most importantly for me, and this was the original reason I got drawn to the iPad way back, like iPad Air two days, is it's a focused device. It's limited in what it can do, and that can be a pitfall, but also a really good thing. So I have ADHD, and I can distract myself really easily, especially on something like a Mac. With the iPad, because of the way the OS is built, when I open up an app, let's say my note taking and writing app, Obsidian, whatever I had opened previously is going to close.
Now I could add that to my current stage or do multitasking, but for the most part, I can just keep what I need open and what I'm focusing on at that given time, and I don't have a bunch of background stuff happening. I don't have like discord happening, and I could just see text going up and up and up because people are chatting. For me personally, and everyone's different, I'm not trying to make this a blanket statement that everyone around the world will have the same results, but for me personally, I get a lot more work done on my iPad than I could ever get done on a Mac. At the end of the day, with all of those reasons put together, I kind of just want one computer. I don't want to be bouncing between a desktop computer and an iPad and a laptop and an iPhone. I kind of just like having a very simple system and having an iPad for me to get my work done and an iPhone for when I'm like, you know, out and about and stuff like that.
It's kind of like the perfect system. I can get everything done with these two devices. This video is sponsored by Surfshark.
Surfshark is a VPN service that not only protects you, but your data. With Surfshark, your traffic is completely encrypted from the source of your computer to its destination. Whether you're working from a public wifi network in a coffee shop or wifi in a hotel, your data is completely secure with Surfshark. Now this isn't a, well, I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to lose kind of thing. Data is the new gold and scary people do scary things to get ahold of it, frankly. Now something I really appreciate about Surfshark is they don't keep logs.
Keeping logs absolutely defeats the purpose of using a VPN. You can even use Surfshark to check out price discriminations based on regions. With Surfshark, you can change your location.
So you can be, hey, I wonder what UK Netflix has going on because these different streaming services have different libraries based on your location. So you can use this to check out what's going on over there. Or if you're traveling abroad, you can use it to remote back into your home country to finish that show you were watching. I really like Surfshark.
In fact, it's a service I pay for myself. Go to surfshark.com/lolly for an extra four months for free. My thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video. But let's talk about the actual M4 iPad Pro. I was lucky enough to be at the event where this was introduced in New York and it was a really exciting time for me.
It was actually the first time I've ever been to New York. Best pizza I've ever had in my life. But there are four big upgrades to this iPad. There are a ton of little things like internal redesign, better cooling and all that stuff. It's not going to affect most people.
It's nice that that stuff's there. It helps in the long term. It's important stuff, but I want to focus on the four big updates for this iPad Pro.
The first thing you're going to notice about this iPad before you even touch it is the screen. This has the first OLED screen in an iPad and it's amazing. It's actually a tandem OLED screen. So technically it's two OLED panels put together working together. It's kind of interesting technology. I won't dive into it too deeply.
And because you have these two panels working together, it means you get better color reproduction. Like the colors are much more vibrant and it's not like they're bumping up a saturation slider. The blacks are a lot blacker. The contrast ratio on this display is 2 million to one, which is really nice. Like it's such a noticeable difference even compared to the mini LED display of the previous 12.9 inch iPad Pros.
Now I've gone so far as to watch movies on this iPad while traveling and to me that's sacrilege. Movies belong on the biggest screen possible and a 13 inch screen is not that big, but you know what? It's a great experience. Movies look amazing on here, especially like really high end stuff.
Like back when I did the original review of this, I watched a good chunk of Avatar Way of the Water on here and it was just absolutely stunning. Like the color reproduction and the black levels looked beautiful. But when it comes to my own production workflow, the OLED screen really handy. My work has never looked better, whether it's video production or photography stuff.
I've never seen my work look like this and I'm not trying to like pat myself on the back, but it looks good. Having a properly calibrated display is invaluable when you're doing videography or photography. Just having that display so you know when you're color grading that, hey, I'm moving this blue slider that these blues are actually, this is what it's going to look like. Not having some random LCD panel of like, uh, yeah, sure.
I guess this is what it's going to look like. Hopefully it doesn't look washed out. I said way back in my original review eight or so months ago that this OLED panel made me want Apple to make a TV. Now it would be stupid expensive because it's Apple, uh, and a big screen TV. I mean like this iPad pro isn't exactly cheap.
Could you imagine, you know, a 75 inch TV from Apple or even if they just made an OLED monitor to replace the studio display, if it used this tech, I would be the first person in line. Now the big surprise of this iPad pro update was the M4 chip. This was the first computer in Apple's line to get the M4 processor. So the version of the iPad pro I have here is the two terabyte model. The one and the two terabyte models are slightly different than the two 56 and the five 12.
The one in the two terabyte come with 16 gigs of Ram. The two 56 and the five 12 come with eight gigs of Ram. Now the one and two terabyte models also come with the full 10 core M4 chip. Uh, it has four performance cores and six efficiency cores. The two 56 and the five 12 come with three performance cores and six efficiency cores.
So the lower storage tiers come with a bin chip and eight gigs of Ram. Now for the most part, eight gigs of Ram and a bin chip is going to be fine with iPad iOS. I can pretty much guarantee you if you're doing normal iPad stuff, watching videos, answering emails, surfing the web, stuff like that, you're not going to notice the difference where the edge cases are going to come out is if you're doing my kind of stuff. So videography or photography workflow or procreate and you have like a ton of layers or if you're using one of the, well frankly quite a few 3d apps out on the app store. I know like shaper 3d is the big one.
That one's there. Uh, if you're using one of those, that's when you're definitely going to feel it. Uh, if you're using something like procreate dreams, the animation app, that's when you might start to feel it, stuff like that.
But for most normal tasks, you won't feel the difference. I think the bigger limiting factor of the M4 chip is iPad iOS multitasking. The fact that I can have a device like this, that's running the M4 chip, which is the same chip that's in the Mac lineup, uh, with the same amount of cores and 16 gigs of Ram, but I'm limited to four windows at a time using stage manager multitasking is kind of wild, uh, that we're here. I, iPad iOS multitasking is probably the biggest hurdle right now to using the iPad as a main computer.
Now for me, I've gotten used to it. I figured out ways to like make multitasking work for me. Um, but I can see people coming from the Mac and being like, no, I'm not going to even try this. I'm not going to even give this a shot. Now, despite the fact that the M4 chip is the base chip in Apple's lineup, it's no slouch.
Back in my original review, I talked about how it's geek bench scores were clocking in close to the M2 max chip. And that thing was no slouch either. That was a beast of a chip.
I can only speak from my personal workflow. I know some people get really annoyed when YouTubers talk about video work and photography work and stuff like that, but that's what I do for my work. It rips through 4k video editing. It rips through raw photos, like batch raw photos. It can just handle everything. And all of that is in a computer without a fan.
Now, the third big change to the iPad pro lineup is the weight and size. The 13 inch iPad pro lost about a quarter of a pound from the previous 12.9 inch iPad pro. It also became the thinnest device Apple has ever made.
Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but if you've ever used one of the old 12.9 inch iPad pros, you could know they could be really uncomfortable holding them in tablet mode. They can be kind of a bit unwieldy.
The weight is weird. The size is a lot. It just can be a bit much. Now, this new 13 inch M4 iPad pro isn't perfect by any means, but the fact that it lost a little bit of weight and it got a little bit thinner does make it a little bit more comfortable to hold in this tablet mode. After a while, it can get uncomfortable. I don't do it often.
Like, I don't sit there and spend three hours just using it as a tablet. In fact, most of the time I just keep it in the magic keyboard case. But when I do use it in tablet mode, I do appreciate the weight loss.
It is significantly better. A quarter of a pound may not sound like a lot, but when something was already just a pound and a half, a quarter of a pound does make a difference. Or a lot of times what I'll do is I'll be holding it one handed reading and I'll have the Apple pencil in one hand and I'll be marking stuff up. That makes a huge difference for me.
But the weight difference actually means a lot more for me when I'm traveling. Because not only is the iPad pro lighter, but the new magic keyboard is lighter as well. Now, when I travel, I have to carry camera gear and a bunch of other tech.
And that makes my backpack really heavy. So anything I can do to make that backpack lighter, I take it. Now on these new iPad pros, the front facing camera and the face ID array have been moved to the landscape edge. This is to make video calls just a little bit better.
When using the iPad pro in the magic keyboard, the camera is still really low to the ground. But I do appreciate the fact that the camera has now been centered because now when you're looking at the iPad, it looks like you're looking into the camera. It doesn't look like you're looking off to the side. That was a big issue with the 12.9 inch one where I would have to be looking off to the
side to make it look like I was making direct eye contact, but I was ignoring the video. So now that it's centered, I can be looking at the video and looking at the camera at the same time. That all being said, if I know I'm going to be doing a video call, like I have something scheduled, like somebody didn't just call me out of the blue, I know something's scheduled, I will grab a laptop stand and put this iPad on. So that way the camera is eye level with me.
It's not looking up at me. It's not looking up at my nose and seeing all the nose hairs I need to trim. It's just looking eye level. And this isn't just an issue with iPads. This is an issue with laptops and this entire form factor.
As far as the actual cameras go and taking photos, never taken a photo, never taken a video using my iPad. I just don't do it. I have scanned a few documents using the camera. That's really nice.
Honestly, that's the only thing I use that for. Now outside of the iPad pros and arguably I would say these were even bigger updates were the iPad pro accessories. The magic keyboard is my absolute favorite update to come out of that whole keynote series of releases. This new magic keyboard, it's like I mentioned, it's much lighter, so it works a lot better when traveling, especially in my backpack that's already heavy enough as it is. It has a bigger trackpad, which is solid state and has haptics now, which means it's a lot quieter than the old one. The old trackpad on the old magic keyboard was incredibly loud and it also means you can click anywhere.
The old magic keyboard, you could only click at the bottom of the trackpad. You couldn't click at the top and just having a bigger trackpad is just so much nicer, especially for dragging and dropping files across the files app or any other apps or dragging and dropping just about anything across the OS. There's a function row, which honestly I didn't think I really needed, but now that I have it, absolutely love it. It's really nice just to be able to have media keys, volume keys, brightness levels, all that stuff right there. Really helpful. The multitasking button has kind of been my quiet hero.
I didn't use it a lot at the beginning, but then I kind of like was like, you know, that's there. And I've been hitting it a lot more. My only wish is that you could reprogram the do not disturb button into different focus modes because I would love to tie that to my work focus mode so I could just hit that button and tie it to work.
And then the USB-C port on the magic keyboard actually supports faster charging than the old one. It's about the same charging level as the iPad pros USB-C port. So around 35, 38 Watts right around there, which is a really nice feature. I actually like using that USB-C port more than the one on the side because it just keeps the cable low to the ground and just kind of looks nicer, especially if I'm recording a video and I forgot to charge up my iPad pro before I did that on my podcast comfort zone. So my co-host and I, Matt, we were talking about these new iPad pros and we basically decided if we had a pick between using the new iPad pro with the older magic keyboard or the older iPad pro with the new magic keyboard, we would pick the older one with the new magic keyboard and a heartbeat because it's such a huge update.
I didn't even go into the fact that like it has more viewing angles. It tilts back even further, which is such a nice quality of life improvement. If you're planning on using the magic keyboard a lot and you're sitting there debating between getting an iPad pro and an iPad air, the extra money towards the pro and this new keyboard is absolutely worth it, especially considering this magic keyboard is the same price as the other magic keyboard for the iPad air. Now there was also the Apple pencil pro and I'm not a huge artist.
So this was kind of lost on me, but I've watched enough videos from other YouTubers and artists and things like that. Talk about the Apple pencil pro and how it's been a really nice quality of life improvement for them, especially with features like barrel roll. I use the Apple pencil for marking up documents and contracts and signing those documents and contracts. I really liked the squeeze feature for jumping between tools quickly. This will bring up the whole swath of tools right where the tip of the pencil is, including the undo and redo feature that gives you the ability to step back, which is really cool because you can make a bunch of changes and then hit this and not just like command Z once, but like you can go back a bunch of times.
The haptic feedback is a nice touch. It's not something that's necessary. Like I don't think it's going to like 10 X anyone's productivity, but it's one of those things. It's like, okay, I have this. I really like it. I don't want to go back because it's kind of a nice touch.
That all being said, if I didn't cover the iPad so heavily, like if it wasn't the main focus of my channel, my personal Apple pencil would just be the USB-C Apple pencil. I don't need pressure sensitivity. The other features I talked about while they're absolutely nice touches, I could live without them. Fine.
My is built into the Apple pencil pro, but not the USB-C one. Okay. That's a nice feature, but to be honest, my Apple pencil is always attached to my iPad pro when I'm not using it. So overall, if you're not an artist, if you're just going to use the Apple pencil to kind of mark things up or even just handwrite, like not, not even draw the USB-C one might be the way to go for you. Overall, this is the biggest update to the iPad pro lineup since the 2018 iPad pro, the one that lost the home button that kind of gave us the modern design of the iPad pro. I love this iPad and I still get a ton of joy sitting down on my iPad and working from it.
Now there are some areas that Apple could sit down and really focus on to improve the iPad, but other than like, give me a bigger screen iPad pro or folding iPad pro the hardware side of the iPad. Isn't the thing that needs the improvement. It's the OS, the fact that the iPads have two different versions of multitasking and one of the versions of multitasking is on some iPads, but not all of them. It's very confusing to people. I hear from people all the time about that. Why I have windowing on my iPad, but they don't have it on theirs.
It's a bit much. Plus stage manager could have some huge improvements like losing the four window limit. And then also iPadOS like iOS and the U S is locked down in the EU. They can have third party app stores, which gives them the ability to have apps that don't follow Apple's rules.
So I hate to say it, but a lockdown iPad is always going to be held back, especially compared to something like the Mac where you can install utilities like Raycast that replace spotlight and do a whole bunch of stuff. And then there are system level features that it could really use like time machine, a clipboard manager, multi-stream audio support for those that record podcast right on their iPad. Now that all being said, I'm not trying to be a Debbie downer. I'm still really hopeful about the iPad's future, especially the iPad pros line.
So that's it for this video. Thank you all so much for watching and thank you to surf shark for sponsoring this video. If you liked the video, hit the thumbs up button, subscribe if you haven't already, and have a great day.
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2025-02-03 02:59