2024-04-14

A few spring 2024 iPad thoughts

In the first months of 2024 the story of the iPad being told by the Apple pundits was along the lines of "2023 was such a disappointing year for the iPad because there was no new hardware". An oddity given that the same group has been complaining for years that the iPad Pro hardware is too powerful for its OS along with a complaint of no Apple Pro software for the iPad. Their story being that new hardware isn't really what's needed but, rather, pro apps and a better OS. Even stranger given that in May of 2023 Apple had surprised everyone with a pretty huge iPad release: Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the iPad!

But really, it's old hat at this point, the goal posts are always moved or the story is just flipped: improvements to iPadOS, the new pro apps were largely ignored in the buzz of "where was the new iPad hardware?" New iPad hardware rumors changed from a March to April to May release. So, any day now. And, predictably, the pundits that have been clamoring for new hardware will be disappointed. Review headlines will, across the board, exclaim with great frustration: "Amazing new hardware but it's too pricey for hardware running such a limited OS! Apple should just allow macOS on the iPad!" And, predictably, the pundits will then all echo one another for the few weeks leading up to WWDC: Apple should just let us run macOS on the iPad.

I'll guess that their frustration will continue after Apple does not announce macOS for the iPad at WWDC. Apple will continue to improve iPadOS year to year. They'll continue to improve FCP and Logic Pro on the iPad. Those improvements will never be enough for Mac users. But here's the thing, those frustrated pundits and Mac users are only a tiny portion of the iPad user base and I'm not just talking about the casual users but also "pro" level users. Take this relatively small bit of iPad hardware news announced last week: Blackmagic Design releases a DaVinci Resolve editing panel for iPads - The Verge:

Blackmagic Design announced its video editing software, DaVinci Resolve, was coming to the iPad back in 2022, and although it supports multitouch input and the Apple Pencil, sometimes, nothing beats purpose-built hardware. On Friday, Blackmagic announced the $495 DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel, which it says will be available worldwide in May and is specifically designed for the iPad.

It's the sort of news that won't likely get much attention from Apple pundits because it is a niche iPad peripheral created for a very small subset of pro video creators. But it demonstrates the gap in their thinking and a lack of recognition that there are people and companies that are using and investing in the iPad as it is today. Whether it's video oriented creators using DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro, artists using Procreate, designers using the Affinity suite of apps or even folks using more mundane tasks completed with Microsoft Office apps.

I've shared this list before but I think it's worth sharing again as it illustrates that while pundits have gotten stuck in a very negative rut regarding their view of the iPad there are millions of users out there just doing their thing. Here's just a quick sample of some of the big hitters I looked at. These are the number of ratings and average rating, not the number of app downloads:

Microsoft Word, 2 million ratings, 4.7 stars
Microsoft Outlook, 6.6 million ratings, 4.8 stars
Microsoft Teams, 3.2 million ratings, 4.8 stars
Microsoft Excel, 1 million ratings, 4.8 stars
Microsoft OneNote, 855,000 ratings, 4.7 stars
Microsoft Power BI (I'd never heard of it but it's for business data analytics ) 67,000 ratings, 4.7 stars
Salesforce, 295,000 ratings, 4.7 stars
LinkedIn Sales Navigator, 42,000 ratings, 4.8 stars
LinkedIn Learning, 78,000 ratings, 4.8 stars
Procreate, 40,000 ratings, 4.5 stars
Sketchbook, 216,000 ratings, 4.8 stars
Canva 1.9 million ratings, 4.9 stars
LumaFusion 23,000 rating,s 4.8 stars
Adobe Premier Rush, 120,000 ratings, 4.6 stars
Adobe Photoshop 61,000 ratings, 4.4 stars
Adobe Lightroom, 40,000 ratings, 4.8 stars
Adobe Illustrator, 32,000 ratings, 4.5 stars
Adobe Fresco, 39,000 ratings, 4.7 stars
AutoCAD, 6,000 ratings, 4.4 stars
Morpholio Trace - Sketch CAD 9,600 ratings, 4.7 stars

That is just a small sample. The reality of the iPad in use by hundreds of thousands to millions of users in 2024 is a very different story from that being repeated by the pundits to themselves. Perhaps in 2024 will notice that it is their story that needs an update.