Mr. Tim Cook said the PC is dead — Ipad Pro is the real deal

“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?”

A really bold statement from Apple CEO, Tim Cook also continued in an interview “the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people.” What he’s said is not 100% accurate and there are reasons why the PC is not dead and also certain aspects in which the iPad Pro has bested PCs.

To begin with, the new iPad Pro starts selling at USD 799 (approximately MYR 3500), equipped with an A9X chip, 32gb storage, 4GB of RAM, a 12.9 inch Retina display and comes in pretty light at 713gram. Wait a minute, it’s “not even its final form”, I don’t think it can truly call itself a PC killer without a stylus and keyboard. Yes, Apple does offer those accessories, at a price. To get an iPencil in your hand, you will need to shell out USD 99, and the Smart Keyboard will cost you USD 169.

How an iPad Pro can be a good device for multitasking and productivity? Multitasking, from Adobe press release we know the iPad Pro comes with 4GB of RAM which is plenty for iOS as we could see even the iPhone is efficiently handling RAM resources. Regarding productivity, the iPad Pro has a great advantage because of the stylus, especially if the user is keen on digital art and drawing on the iPad Pro is really quite convenient. The iPad Pro really can do multitasking and improve productivity, in its own way.

Let’s move on to the CPU performance. Apple claims that the A9X is 1.8x faster than its predecessor, the A8X which you can find in the iPad Air 2, and the GPU is two times faster. Taken from Weibo, below is the benchmark score for the iPad Pro.

Apple does claims that the new A9X is faster than some Intel Core i5 mobile CPU. So I took the Intel Core i5 6300U that used in the Microsoft Surface Book 4 which is priced at USD 999 (approximately MYR 4350,) without the Surface Pro Type Cover that costs an extra USD 130. So I searched for the Surface Pro 4 benchmark score and yes, they are actually almost on par with each other. The iPad Pro almost has the same performance as the Intel Core i5 6200U.

Below is a short comparison of specifications of the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4:

By looking at the table above the iPad Pro is cheaper than the Surface Pro 4, and note that both devices comes with a stylus and detachable keyboard. But on the Surface, you will get full USB 3.0 port and bigger storage. This could be a hard decision for the consumer to decide which is the best choice, as we know Apple marketing gimmicks are pretty powerful.

Even though specification-wise they are quite similar, the big difference is here, the processor architecture. The iPad Pro is using the A9X chip, based on ARM architecture and running on iOS, while the Surface Pro 4 is running on a X86 CPU and Windows 10. Software wise, the Surface Pro 4 has an obvious advantage against the iPad Pro. You can get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere for iOS but you will not be getting Adobe After Effects yet.

It is not only in the Adobe suite where we can see a disadvantage, take a look at students who are taking engineering courses, most of them need  engineering software for learning that obviously does not exist on iOS yet, like Matlab or Autodesk 3D. How about if the student is taking a digital arts course, surely they need 3D creation software like Autodesk 3D Max, Maya or the open-source Blender. Let’s not forget the game design student who needs to design game characterr, coding the game on an iOS device? Except Unity and Unreal engine, there are not many game engines which support iOS platform, Windows on the other hand…

This is enough proof that the iPad Pro is not enough to kill the PC. Of course this article wouldn’t make a big headline on the internet. But to me the iPad Pro is a failed product if it aims to replace the PC notebook. The mistake lies in the processor and operating system, and the only way iPad Pro can even come close to killing PCs is by using a X86 processor and full Mac OSX operating system. Then, there is definitely the possibility of “killing” PCs and would at least threaten the PC market. For now, just no.

Pokdepinion : The iPad Pro is not going to kill the PC, but it will definitely be akin to a cancer and eat into the sales of PCs. As I said earlier, Apple marketing gimmicks has always worked, and I am quite sure that the iPad Pro sales will be a success but is it really worth it to get the iPad Pro? For me it depends on your usage and workloads. For now, the iPad Pro can’t even replace the Macbook Pro ever, much less come close to “killing” PCs.