iPad Pro at 10: A decade of unrealized potential

The iPad theory has always been simple: size matters. Even at its first public appearance in 2010, the iPad was mostly just an iPhone with a larger screen, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs thought that was enough. Remember the way Jobs sat in an ergonomic chair to read on his iPad, scrolling and scrolling his way around New York Times‘Website?’ He was certain that the way you look at the big screen, the way you hold it, and the way you touch it will all change your relationship with your device. All because it was bigger.

When the iPad Pro came out five years later, it went on sale 10 years ago on this day – Nothing much has changed. The Pro ran all the same apps, did the same things, and had almost the same things in almost the same places. It was just bigger. Its 12.9-inch screen made it the largest iPad yet, and Apple seems to think that might change something about how you use it. No one was sure what exactly. Larger documents, perhaps? Apple’s Phil Schiller was enthusiastic about larger documents.

Ultimately, that 12.9-inch screen looked a little familiar. Apple wanted people to see a larger canvas they could hold, touch and create on, the mythical third device between the computer and the phone. But most people seem to see something to do with the size of their computers, just using Much better screen and much fewer features. The iPad’s strict security policies, weak browser, and scant ideas about multitasking made the device feel like less than the sum of its parts. Users He wanted a new laptopApple asked them to kick stones. An iPad is another thing, and if you want a laptop, you should buy a Mac, she said.

But ten years later, the iPad Pro has changed. Instead of trying to turn it into something other than a laptop, Apple made it…a laptop. The fonts of the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, which launched with the first Pro version, have continued to improve. iPad multitasking (slowly and chaotically) just got a lot more powerful. The iPad Pro was one of the first Apple devices to switch to USB-C. It began supporting external drives and devices such as microphones and game controllers. Even the Files app has gotten better. Slowly but surely, Apple’s tablet is starting to resemble a computer. Apple gave the people what they wanted.

the Current M5 iPad Pro It’s one of the most impressive pieces of hardware Apple has ever made. Apple’s thin and light design It appeared first on the M4 Pro It’s still the best tablet design you’ll find anywhere, and feels more advanced than even the latest Macs. The OLED display (which now comes in 13- and 11-inch sizes) looks better than ever. With the Magic Keyboard included, you get the same quality trackpad and keyboard as you would on a MacBook. With the Apple Pencil, you can do things you can’t do on most laptops.

But the most important change was in the software. Take this year’s release, iPadOS 26. It includes free-form multitasking, a menu bar, the Preview app, and more features previously saved for Apple’s PCs. And it’s not to overthink a single feature, but the fact that the iPad’s webcam is now positioned for use with the device in landscape mode, almost certainly in some sort of dock, suggests that there’s a very correct way to use this thing.

I’ve been using the latest Pro as my laptop of choice for a few weeks now, just to see what all this change adds, and I’m shocked at how close this thing is to a truly all-purpose PC. There are obvious things, like built-in cellular connectivity and the Apple Pencil, that give the Pro powers that the Mac doesn’t have. The combination of touch and trackpad is really great too; I’m constantly moving back and forth on the screen, scrolling or swiping with the trackpad, but doing more precise and complex things with my hands. And there’s no substitute for the fact that you can turn on a movie, capture the screen, and lie back on the couch. Add to that powerful speakers, a good camera, and great battery life, and there’s a lot to like about life with an iPad. If you do creative work of any kind — and more and more people do — it’s a uniquely useful device.

Which makes it more annoying every time you encounter some system restriction that is completely unnecessary. There are still a lot of those. Apple laptops are allowed to run any application, not just those in the App Store. They can interact with more accessories. They can access almost everything related to the system through the terminal. They can run better browsers. The utility apps I rely on to make my computing life easier, like Raycast and the Better Touch Tool, don’t exist in the same way on the iPad. There’s almost nothing a Mac won’t let you do, but the iPad is full of limitations. They’ve been there so long, and they’re so blatant, that we’ve been mad at them in reviews Since at least 2018. Apple saw it as a feature, not a bug.

Now that Apple has embraced iPad computing, the project over the next decade is to start shedding those limitations. If not all of them, then most of them. Apps need more power to run in the background and interact with each other. System-level applications should have more access to actually interact with the system. The iPad deserves a desktop-class browser. Reasonable people will likely disagree about whether terminal access is important to most computer users, but in general you should be able to do anything your computer can do.

Years ago, the iPad Pro inspired one of Apple’s most interesting commercials. He showed a day in the life of an iPad, with all its features in use, and asked a simple question: What is a computer? Advertisement It made a lot of people angrybut it points to a dilemma that Apple itself has been grappling with. If you believe the iPad is the future of computing — and make no mistake, Apple certainly does — you have to decide what makes something a computer. The answer, more than any app or accessory, is about access. A computer is a device without artificial limitations, where you can do anything it can do. Anything less is simply not enough.

Apple has spent a decade trying to reject the idea that the iPad is a computer, and trying to invent a third space in the computing ecosystem. But the iPad, and the iPad Pro in particular, is not a third thing. It’s a laptop. A damn good idea, even. The hardware, the operating system, the accessory ecosystem – everything is in place for this to be not just a complete computer, but perhaps the best computer Apple has ever made. Now Apple just needs to let it act like it.