Today, Apple invited press and others to a pretty quiet event, over all. It lasted almost exactly an hour, and the company had just as much to say about health and the environment as it did for its new products. All that to say that, ultimately, the Cupertino-based company did indeed announce new devices for people to buy, if they’re into that sort of thing.
It’s good that Apple didn’t waste any time on stage, honestly, because let’s face it: They were announcing smaller variants of products that already exist. In the case of the iPhone SE, we get an iPhone 6s in terms of specifications, from the camera to the chips working under the hood, but in the iPhone 5s frame. That drops the display down to four inches, whereas the iPhone 6s starts at a 4.7-inch screen.
And then there’s the new iPad Pro, the item that I was genuinely excited to see get announced. It’s the same scenario with this product, too. Apple took the features that initially made the iPad Pro with its 12.9-inch display stand out, including the A9X processor, four speakers, support for the Apple Pencil, and more, and shoved them into a tablet with a 9.7-inch screen. This probably signifies the expiration of the iPad Air line, but that’s ultimately just a name, right?
I tried out the iPad Pro when it launched, and, for the most part, liked it. There were some parts I loved, though, including the display and speakers. Watching a movie on that gigantic tablet was pretty great, but it didn’t take me long to realize that it was just too big for my needs. I want my tablet to be portable, and while the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is ridiculously light and thin, it still felt unwieldy for the most part. So when I ultimately stopped using it, I knew that what I really wanted was all of those iPad Pro features in an iPad Air.
And here we are, with that reality now upon us. The new iPad Pro offers all of the things I loved about the bigger variant, and brings them down to my favorite tablet size. I still need to watch a movie on it to figure out if it’s something I’ll end up keeping, because a part of me is worried the speakers won’t sound as great as they did on the larger model. Fingers crossed, though.
I wish I could say the same for the iPhone SE, but I’ll be sticking with the iPhone 6s as my daily driver for now. The 4.7-inch screen size has won me over, and while it’s great that Apple is offering a ton of features in a smaller non-flagship, it still isn’t what I want to use on a daily basis.
Do you plan on picking up the new iPad Pro?
