Courtesy of a couple of reports from Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPad Pro has re-joined the Apple rumor carousel. It seems that the company and it’s manufacturing partners are having some success getting Mini-LED ready for prime time, and the iPad Pro may be the first device to benefit from that. Well, sort of.
I’ve seen where a lot of tech bloggers and Apple fans are talking about the irrelevance of the iPad Pro in the wake of Apple’s hardware announcement earlier this week. I get it, so much so that I’m buying a new iPad Air, myself. It has most of what the typical users would like from an iPad Pro at a much more reasonable starting price of $599. I think it strikes a great balance between performance and affordability and it’s also compatible with all the same accessories as the 11″ iPad Pro.
However, while it is true that the iPad Air is now encroaching on the territory of its higher-end sibling, I’m not ready to write off the Pro quite yet. Here are a few reasons why.
The tech world is pretty stable at the top, where CEOs and high ranking staff at the biggest companies often stay in one place for long periods of time. However, there are still interesting moves that take place, sometimes by choice and others times, well, not so much. Such was the case for Steven Sinofsky, at least if you believe what the tech press had to say about his departure from Microsoft back in 2012.
I got my Brydge Pro+ keyboard with trackpad for the iPad Pro right on the heels of my Magic Keyboard a few weeks ago. The backlit keyboard and overall hardware quality are great, which is what I expect after owning and using a Brydge Pro for months before this. However, what everyone wants to know about is the Pro+’s new trackpad.
I’ve been writing about the Magic Keyboard for a full three weeks, covering the good, the bad and the battery life. After spending a few days with my second one (see here for my reason for getting a replacement), now it’s time to put a bow on things and wrap up my final thoughts on the device.
So I’ll give Brydge credit for one thing. They are working really fast to try to get the Pro+’s trackpad working better. They shipped their second firmware update for the device today, courtesy of their free Brydge Connect app. If you have a Pro+, just update the app in the App Store, run it with your Pro+ plugged into a power supply and run the update.
While I’ve had some issues with the Magic Keyboard’s limitations when using it at work, it’s just about perfect for the way I use my iPad Pro at home. My primary complaint with the Magic Keyboard so far has been with battery life. I wrote about this last week and got enough responses from others with similarly poor performance that I believe there is something to it.
I don’t think the problem I am having is affecting all, or frankly even a large number of Magic Keyboards. However, based on my testing, I do believe the issue I’m experiencing is related to the hardware.
Tim Chaten from the iPad Pros podcast recently reached out and invited me to be interviewed in an upcoming episode. We met on Twitter recently discussing Apple’s new Magic Keyboard and from there started talking about how we both use the iPad Pro, especially for work. I definitely appreciate his point of view and his podcast’s focus on how much you accomplish with Apple’s tablets.
I just want to say a big thank you to him for the invitation. Mr Chaten is a very good host and interviewer and it was a lot of fun being on the show.
I got an email from Brydge this afternoon letting me know that they had just released a new firmware update for their new Pro+ Keyboard and Trackpad. The update came in the form of an iPad app that connects to the Pro+ via Bluetooth and is very easy to use. I did have to plug my keyboard in to run the update, but that was the only minor hassle.
While all eyes, including my own, have been focused on Apple’s Magic Keyboard, Brydge has been starting to ship their new Pro+ Bluetooth Keyboard and Trackpad. While it was announced and preorders opened before iPadOS 13.4 and the Magic Keyboard were unveiled, Apple still beat them to market, putting them at a bit of a disadvantage. That’s the game, I guess.
I’ll say right up front that I think my case may be the exception, rather than the rule with the Magic Keyboard. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it is taking a major toll on my iPad Pro’s battery life right now. You can see a good example highlighted in the chart above, which shows me dropping a massive 50% of battery life with only 2.5 hours of screen time on Thursday. That time was split between working on an article and marking up some PDFs for work. That is downright terrible performance that I don’t even see during gaming or watching movies.