The iPad Pro, 10 years later
The first iPad Pro came out ten years ago. Last month, on the tenth anniversary of the announcement, I wrote about it at Macworld:
In a decade, the iPad product line has progressed to the point where the iPad Air can possess a load of features that debuted in the iPad Pro in a lower-priced, “mainstream” iPad. Meanwhile, the iPad Pro itself has shot into the stratosphere, with cutting-edge processors and an outrageously good display, not to mention the thinnest body in any Apple device ever.
Where the iPad Pro goes next is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to deny that it’s changed the perception of what iPads are capable of. And thanks to the numerous multitasking upgrades in iPadOS 26, it feels like the iPad’s software has also embraced all the possibilities an iPad Pro offers.
It took a little too long, I think. But a decade on, it feels like today’s M5 iPad Pro is fulfilling the original model’s destiny.
My words would have been much more harsh were it not for iPadOS 26 and the M5 iPad Pro. (I just spent a week in London with only an iPad Pro. It was informative. More on that a little later.)
It means it’s also ten years since I reviewed the iPad Pro:
The iPad Pro isn’t a Surface. Instead, it’s a product that brings out the contrast between Apple’s mobile-device strategy and Microsoft’s… iOS is Apple’s flagship operating system, so rather than mash the Mac and iOS together, it’s decided to keep them separate. There’s no Mac compatibility layer, no requirement for Mac developers to recompile their apps to run on the A9X processor. The iPad Pro is unapologetically an iOS product….
If Apple made a Retina MacBook whose screen popped off and became an iPad, would I buy it? It seems like such a Frankenstein product, so inelegant a concept and so clearly not the way the world is going. And yet, I would be tempted. Not because it’s a bold direction forward, but because it’s a compromise that grants me some comfort in a time of change.
The iPad Pro does not exist to give comfort to Mac users.
Today’s iPad Pro resembles the Mac a little more closely, but it still isn’t a Mac.