Apple's iPad Pro Is A Big Fat Enterprise Failure

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Ouch, that's not a very nice thing to say. ;)

While I enjoy using the device, and it's an impressive piece of technology, I have come to the conclusion that like all other iPads that have come before it, the unit is totally inappropriate and undesirable for enterprise use.
 
Steve, I know you had the biggest grin on your face when you wrote that smiley face.




:D
 
There are many *many* people who could have told you the same thing months and months ago.

When their innovation lists boil down to "let's make it smaller" wait, no let's make it bigger, now lets make a pencil that costs a lot of money but doesn't really do anything that special, you can tell they are reaching for ideas.

Still won't stop them from making money hand over fist thanks to an entrenched consumer who just doesn't really know any better after all these years.
 
I've known this from day 1. You can't have a business that operates largely on windows technology and expect them to adapt the iPad for everyday work use. Our office did a test run of iPads and so far half of them collect dust and the other half are used by the employees for non-work related useage.
 
many of our customers used to have users that used their ipads for work. Long story short it was a nightmare.

The surface 2 pro made many of them make the switch, with the 3 pro pretty much all of them have dropped the ipad even for personal use and many of them are eager to move to the surface 4 pro. There's very little interest in the surface book though.

Their wives/kids are probably having a blast with the ipads they "inherited"
 
There's actually a lot to like about the iPad Pro for work, but the greatest detriments in being locked to only iOS library, godawful design decision and dirt-poor peripheral support kills it for work.

I love that pencil. It really is competitive to the Wacom stylus that we'd find on Note 4 or Surface Pro 2. The N-Trig still lags just a bit. That pencil is beset by its design though, for charging the thing is just an accident waiting to happen.

The Photoshop demo does showcase what is possible, but so far, only the Office suite feels more or less fully ready, and even so, you can't simply plug your iPad Pro in and do a presentation with it. It's a pity actually. And that leads straight back to the iOS limitations.

This is not a portable workstation replacement. Laptops for corporate use can range anything from using it to troubleshoot network to a portable notetaking machine that you'll whip out a report on as well, and that's where iOS simply cannot perform as Windows does. I've seen rabid fans decrying this by saying that x64 belong in the dustbin of history and that those 'apps' are barely optimized for tablet use, but that's a folly when we consider the use case of tablet PCs.

Tablet PCs are meant to function in both roles with heavy PC emphasis. It is expected of tablet PCs to support KBM and then switch over to stylus and touch input, and to be flexible as mentioned above. That's not the way how iPad Pro is designed, and that's the real blow to using it productively.
 
NickJames said:
I've known this from day 1. You can't have a business that operates largely on windows technology and expect them to adapt the iPad for everyday work use. Our office did a test run of iPads and so far half of them collect dust and the other half are used by the employees for non-work related useage.
Click to expand...

Even if you are on linux its still not easy.
 
Stoly said:
many of our customers used to have users that used their ipads for work. Long story short it was a nightmare.

The surface 2 pro made many of them make the switch, with the 3 pro pretty much all of them have dropped the ipad even for personal use and many of them are eager to move to the surface 4 pro. There's very little interest in the surface book though.
Click to expand...

Surface Book has some problems.

First up, that Nvidia GPU in the base is not upgrade-able and there's no thunderbolt port for any sort of eGPU solution to ever be supported on it.
Two, the tablet requires the base to act as the 'stand'. It cannot stand alone. This limits its mobility in a sense, as you have to plug it into that base no matter what you do.
Three, it's not as easy to hold in the hands as SP4. I find the tablet with the dock a bit more awkward. It's also more awkward to take that screen and flip it given its design.
 
Steve said:
the unit is totally inappropriate and undesirable for enterprise use.
Click to expand...

Like all tablets. Yes, there are niches where they can be useful, but I'm sick of the tech 'press' and all the other marketing clowns acting like they're the next big thing in computing.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Like all tablets. Yes, there are niches where they can be useful, but I'm sick of the tech 'press' and all the other marketing clowns acting like they're the next big thing in computing.
Click to expand...

Well, there's Tablet PCs. iPads or Android tablets are more than enough for general consumption usage, but business 'niche' needs are something else.

ie: I can hackintosh a Surface into that modbook pro, and then run Android on that as well, and that's consider a 'niche' use.
 
Reimu said:
There's actually a lot to like about the iPad Pro for work, but the greatest detriments in being locked to only iOS library, godawful design decision and dirt-poor peripheral support kills it for work.

I love that pencil. It really is competitive to the Wacom stylus that we'd find on Note 4 or Surface Pro 2. The N-Trig still lags just a bit. That pencil is beset by its design though, for charging the thing is just an accident waiting to happen.

The Photoshop demo does showcase what is possible, but so far, only the Office suite feels more or less fully ready, and even so, you can't simply plug your iPad Pro in and do a presentation with it. It's a pity actually. And that leads straight back to the iOS limitations.

This is not a portable workstation replacement. Laptops for corporate use can range anything from using it to troubleshoot network to a portable notetaking machine that you'll whip out a report on as well, and that's where iOS simply cannot perform as Windows does. I've seen rabid fans decrying this by saying that x64 belong in the dustbin of history and that those 'apps' are barely optimized for tablet use, but that's a folly when we consider the use case of tablet PCs.

Tablet PCs are meant to function in both roles with heavy PC emphasis. It is expected of tablet PCs to support KBM and then switch over to stylus and touch input, and to be flexible as mentioned above. That's not the way how iPad Pro is designed, and that's the real blow to using it productively.
Click to expand...

I've been hearing good things about the performance of the Pencil. It seems to have lower latency than many Windows devices like the Surface line and the tilt feature looks pretty sweet for artistic work. I think that this is a great device for artistic work.

But as a general productivity laptop replacement it creates more problems than it solves. No track pad. iOS 9 is great for basic productivity but it's still just not up to a desktop OS for much beyond that. And then there's the cost and weight of this device. With the accessories and 128 GB of storage its pricing is at the low end of the MacBook line and it's quite expensive when compared to Windows laptops entering into a price range with very good Windows laptops that are simply much better laptops.

Good for artistic work but not really a general purpose laptop replacement. Not at all a slam on the device, just a realization of what it is and that it doesn't really bring much new to the table in the tablet that can replace your laptop. Nothing that other devices aren't already doing better.
 
I'm guessing Enterprise means deploying to a large workforce?

Because the iPad has been pretty successful in the commercial sector. Point of Sale, Ordering systems, out in the field (like literally, out in the field construction), kiosks, etc.
 
Reimu said:
Surface Book has some problems.

First up, that Nvidia GPU in the base is not upgrade-able and there's no thunderbolt port for any sort of eGPU solution to ever be supported on it.
Two, the tablet requires the base to act as the 'stand'. It cannot stand alone. This limits its mobility in a sense, as you have to plug it into that base no matter what you do.
Three, it's not as easy to hold in the hands as SP4. I find the tablet with the dock a bit more awkward. It's also more awkward to take that screen and flip it given its design.
Click to expand...

The Surface Book really is a laptop though. Most people wouldn't even notice that it is a 2 in 1 device until you take off the screen. The tablet section is actually pretty light for it's size but it's certainly not a one handed device, much like what this article points out about the iPad Pro.
 
it's too damn expensive and IOS cannot replace a real laptop. If it was like $599 and the pencil wasn't so much I probably would have bought one to replace my iPad AIr.
 
westrock2000 said:
Because the iPad has been pretty successful in the commercial sector. Point of Sale, Ordering systems, out in the field (like literally, out in the field construction), kiosks, etc.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but this isn't the target market for the iPad Pro. The point of the iPad Pro is to appeal to new markets given the shrinking of iPad sales for almost the last to years. 2 in 1 devices have been growing at a healthy clip so the iPad Pro is Apple's initial entry into that market.
 
We have the standard iPad's for our sales team (plus a Windows laptop). First thing that gets done is install Angry Birds (or other game of choice). Yes, it can bring up websites for sales stuff, but it gets more use with casual gaming. It has a business purpose, but the gaming aspect is used a LOT more.
 
Pads are end point devices.
Until that changes they will always only be +1 machines.
Never the development or content delivery device of choice.
 
heatlesssun said:
The Surface Book really is a laptop though. Most people wouldn't even notice that it is a 2 in 1 device until you take off the screen. The tablet section is actually pretty light for it's size but it's certainly not a one handed device, much like what this article points out about the iPad Pro.
Click to expand...

I agree. I actually like the Surface Book as one of the best laptop I've laid my hands on, but I can't help in wishing that Microsoft would make a dock cover for Surface Pro 4 which lets me tap into more graphics power on the dock cover when need be, and being able to go back to the type cover at will.

That and I wish the entire Surface line can get the fast charging demonstrated on Qualcomm and now Huawei's phones. It'd be just smoking to juice 10000 mAh in 30 minutes, and getting N-trig to equal the Apple pencil and the Wacom digitizer. Oh yeah.
 
You would think that the best use of the iPad Pro (outside of the artistic market ... which is pretty niche) would maybe medical (larger screen would be better for reviewing medical data) but that is possibly niche or maybe transportation (as the airlines are becoming more segmented between the steerage class and the more lucrative business and first classes, a large screen entertainment device might be an attractive add to their cabins) ... outside of the Surface I don't see any tablet offering a viable Enterprise experience yet
 
kbrickley said:
You would think that the best use of the iPad Pro (outside of the artistic market ... which is pretty niche) would maybe medical (larger screen would be better for reviewing medical data) but that is possibly niche or maybe transportation (as the airlines are becoming more segmented between the steerage class and the more lucrative business and first classes, a large screen entertainment device might be an attractive add to their cabins) ... outside of the Surface I don't see any tablet offering a viable Enterprise experience yet
Click to expand...

But that just means that the iPad Pro would still be pegged as a high-end consumer meant mostly for consumption purposes. I really find it a pity that the iPad Pro is designed this way. If there's removable storage and better peripheral support, then it can be used as a highly portable Cintiq, while medical use can be addressed by specialized apps.

Unfortunately, the iPad Pro is what it is, being a bigger, faster iPad with a really good stylus, and not much else.
 
Finally people are starting to get it, ipads are just media devices and hopeless for any type of work.

This would be a massive kick to the face to mr foot in month tim cook.
 
Freebo said:
Finally people are starting to get it, ipads are just media devices and hopeless for any type of work.

This would be a massive kick to the face to mr foot in month tim cook.
Click to expand...

Well, realistically there is only one tablet capable of doing work, the Microsoft Surface ... the iOS and Android tablets are media devices for play only and are not capable of any serious computing tasks
 
I have both an Ipad and a Android Tablet. I did just buy a SP4 and love it. It will be 100% replacing both others. You can just do more with a Windows Tablet vs IOS or Android.
 
kbrickley said:
Well, realistically there is only one tablet capable of doing work, the Microsoft Surface ... the iOS and Android tablets are media devices for play only and are not capable of any serious computing tasks
Click to expand...

Guess what. Lots of people's jobs don't involve fuck tons of computing.

The guy who wrote the article is an idiot and when he said "enterprise" what he really meant was what he liked.

Lots of suits go to meetings. They like their ipads for notes. The things are fully provisionable via active sync for security settings, they do mail and calendaring pretty well, and they are good displays for documents and imaging. A bigger one does so even better.

My workplace has about 32,000 employees. Do they replace laptops? Hell no. Do we have significant numbers of employees who make use of them effectively and are productive for work? Definitely. The lawyers love them, as a device we can enforce HIPPA policy on, they work and make the short list of permissible devices, the suits love them for meetings. Increasingly we are moving to SaaS type deployments where everything is web based if possible. That means more work can be done on them as time goes on.

For most of that stuff, android in general is a GIANT pita fro a variety of reasons, but mostly it boils down to google not prioritizing a lot of the enterprise management features, then vendors get their grubby mits on it, and the carries rub the resulting operating system parasite hybrid on their pox ridden asses and what you wind up with is an android device with an unknown level of security, that may or may not behave like any other android device.

You need to code, deal with large data sets, etc. Then no you want a real machine, not a tablet or hybrid. Oddly, the surface pro made less inroads here than I thought it would.
 
raz-0 said:
Guess what. Lots of people's jobs don't involve fuck tons of computing.

The guy who wrote the article is an idiot and when he said "enterprise" what he really meant was what he liked.

Lots of suits go to meetings. They like their ipads for notes. The things are fully provisionable via active sync for security settings, they do mail and calendaring pretty well, and they are good displays for documents and imaging. A bigger one does so even better.

My workplace has about 32,000 employees. Do they replace laptops? Hell no. Do we have significant numbers of employees who make use of them effectively and are productive for work? Definitely. The lawyers love them, as a device we can enforce HIPPA policy on, they work and make the short list of permissible devices, the suits love them for meetings. Increasingly we are moving to SaaS type deployments where everything is web based if possible. That means more work can be done on them as time goes on.

For most of that stuff, android in general is a GIANT pita fro a variety of reasons, but mostly it boils down to google not prioritizing a lot of the enterprise management features, then vendors get their grubby mits on it, and the carries rub the resulting operating system parasite hybrid on their pox ridden asses and what you wind up with is an android device with an unknown level of security, that may or may not behave like any other android device.

You need to code, deal with large data sets, etc. Then no you want a real machine, not a tablet or hybrid. Oddly, the surface pro made less inroads here than I thought it would.
Click to expand...

My thought exactly when I read this. Lot's of jobs won't involve computing, and hell no they will not replace laptops.
 
kbrickley said:
You would think that the best use of the iPad Pro (outside of the artistic market ... which is pretty niche) would maybe medical (larger screen would be better for reviewing medical data) but that is possibly niche or maybe transportation (as the airlines are becoming more segmented between the steerage class and the more lucrative business and first classes, a large screen entertainment device might be an attractive add to their cabins) ... outside of the Surface I don't see any tablet offering a viable Enterprise experience yet
Click to expand...

Medical imaging tends to require fairly specialized displays. One basic requirement is much greater than 256 shades of gray. Generally medical grade displays can do 10b:12b or 10b:16b (input to output) whereas most consumer grade panels don't really do more than 8b in or out. In addition, medical grade panels are properly calibrated for grayscale.
 
NickJames said:
I've known this from day 1. You can't have a business that operates largely on windows technology and expect them to adapt the iPad for everyday work use. Our office did a test run of iPads and so far half of them collect dust and the other half are used by the employees for non-work related useage.
Click to expand...

My company issued these things to our field techs, took their laptops away... sigh... guess how stupid they look to our customers when they don't even have a ethernet port they can plug into to troubleshoot stuff? I can't imagine how we ended up with these idiotic things as the rest of our company is Windows and MS everything. So our guys don't even have a native Internet Explorer to use their SharePoint-based tools with, Safari sucks at everything and Chrome is barely enough to let them work.. someone must be golf-buddies with someone at Apple or something... Or typical corporate IT using people who aren't qualified to be making major enterprise platform hardware purchase decisions with their accounting degree. One VP to another: "Field operations are a shamble and web based tools wont load but the spread sheet and half-hour apple-sycophant fluff presentation this decision was made from looked amazing!" :(
 
I disconnected my old desktop (and it was old - my work revolves around remote access to various systems, so I don't need a ton of power), in favor of a Surface Pro 4. I picked up a surface pro 3 dock for a bit under $100, and am very well pleased. I come into the office, slap the pro in the dock, and turn on the 2560x1600 monitor to get some work done. I leave for the day by just popping out of the dock. Simple. Easy. I graduated my laptop to my nieces use, and am waiting for another cheap dock to pop up so I don't have to connect my usb hub and display port cable at home. Added bonus I can work anywhere with just the typecover and the sp4 itself, although without the external keyboard/mouse/monitor I would say im down 20-40% in terms of actual work done per hour, depending on the task. As I work with it more, I expect those numbers to be lower. I am ecstatic at just how flexible this device has made my work life. My laptop just didn't compare (to be fair, it was also aging, and not gracefully). That being said, I could do the same things with an ultrabook for perhaps 65-80% of the cost of the sp4, but I do have to admit that even an ultrabook wouldn't be quite as quick and easy.
 
Jahx said:
I am ecstatic at just how flexible this device has made my work life. My laptop just didn't compare (to be fair, it was also aging, and not gracefully). That being said, I could do the same things with an ultrabook for perhaps 65-80% of the cost of the sp4, but I do have to admit that even an ultrabook wouldn't be quite as quick and easy.
Click to expand...

A big argument against the Surface and other 2 in 1 devices is cost. Many will point out that many cheaper conventional laptops with better compute specs at lower cost are available and that's absolutely true. But a conventional laptop just isn't the same kind of device. If all one plans to do with a Surface is to use it just like a laptop always then it's probably not the device for them. But if you want something that can work in multiple configurations and with different input types, even different kinds of apps depending on the device is being used, then something like a Surface can be very interesting.

It's been a long time coming but I think the era of the Tablet PC has finally arrived. 2 in 1s probably won't ever outsell laptops but I think most of the high end business and professional devices will mostly be 2 in 1s and that it will be the sector for growth and premium devices through the rest of the decade in x86 mobile.
 
heatlesssun said:
A big argument against the Surface and other 2 in 1 devices is cost. Many will point out that many cheaper conventional laptops with better compute specs at lower cost are available and that's absolutely true. But a conventional laptop just isn't the same kind of device. If all one plans to do with a Surface is to use it just like a laptop always then it's probably not the device for them. But if you want something that can work in multiple configurations and with different input types, even different kinds of apps depending on the device is being used, then something like a Surface can be very interesting.

It's been a long time coming but I think the era of the Tablet PC has finally arrived. 2 in 1s probably won't ever outsell laptops but I think most of the high end business and professional devices will mostly be 2 in 1s and that it will be the sector for growth and premium devices through the rest of the decade in x86 mobile.
Click to expand...

Although I don' think that the premium will continue to be so high. PC Convertible for one does not incur such a big premium. I realistically think that we can look a future where the tablet may be at 120-130% of a typical ultrabook's cost. I am optimistic about eGPU on these tablets as well, for lightning and USB type c can finally meet those bandwidth demands.
 
Reimu said:
Although I don' think that the premium will continue to be so high. PC Convertible for one does not incur such a big premium. I realistically think that we can look a future where the tablet may be at 120-130% of a typical ultrabook's cost. I am optimistic about eGPU on these tablets as well, for lightning and USB type c can finally meet those bandwidth demands.
Click to expand...

There are pretty affordable convertible devices to. By premium I mean a market that just goes for top dollar. I think most of those devices will be 2 in 1s, indeed it may be pretty close even now.

I was reading a review of a cheap $150 laptop by Walt Mossberg on the Verge last week and he's theorizing that the mobile PC market is going basically align itself into to major categories, cheap stuff which will be the bulk of sales and premium devices that will go for top dollar and make most of the profit and the middle of the market will get squeezed out. So growth on the ends and lot of shrinking in the middle with an overall smaller market but one that could potentially see the major players doing ok if the right lineup of premium devices.

So more of an Apple model as the days of major growth are gone and flooding the market with cheap junk has reach the end of much return.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Like all tablets. Yes, there are niches where they can be useful, but I'm sick of the tech 'press' and all the other marketing clowns acting like they're the next big thing in computing.
Click to expand...

Tablets can easily replace probably 90% of the enterprise computers out there. Where most are just doing office work and such. They won't, because you still have cheaper desktops, thin clients, etc. Why buy a $1200 tablet, when you can buy a $500 desktop. If power consumption is an issue, can go with those Intel NUC style PCs.

I don't see tablets being the next big thing, unless their prices become competitive against a normal laptop. If that ever happens, I see the normal laptop market shrinking.
 
I'm not a fan of Steve, and his almost hourly click-bait anti-Apple "stories" which actually fill up the front page here on a weekly basis, but I actually agree that the iPad is not totally suited to enterprise use, as really it only make sense to use a Windows based tablet.

However, for just general office use, as well as art creation, the iPad pro is probably the better choice. It just depends on what you're using it for.
 
Stimpy88 said:
I'm not a fan of Steve, and his almost hourly click-bait anti-Apple "stories" which actually fill up the front page here on a weekly basis, but I actually agree that the iPad is not totally suited to enterprise use, as really it only make sense to use a Windows based tablet.

However, for just general office use, as well as art creation, the iPad pro is probably the better choice. It just depends on what you're using it for.
Click to expand...

I went to try out the iPad pro again today just to make sure if I wasn't seeing things over how good the response is on the pencil, and I have to say that the Pencil outperforms the N-Trig. Having said that, you won't get the full-blown photoshop or illustrator on the iPad to take advantage of the Pencil, which leaves a rather bitter taste in my mouth.

Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book offer a better typing experience for office productivity, and Apple could have come much closer had they support all sorts of peripherals while giving the iPad Pro an adjustable kickstand. As it is right now the keyboard cover and the Pencil cannot equal Surface Pro in data entry or word processing, for typing is not a joy on the iPad Pro.

heatlesssun's comment about a premium product is where I think that there's a need to wait it out more on the Surface Book. I think that Microsoft is onto something here though. Surface pro on the other hand has matured and come of age wonderfully.
 
raz-0 said:
The guy who wrote the article is an idiot and when he said "enterprise" what he really meant was what he liked.
Click to expand...
Isn't that where 50% of the Apple hate on tech websites comes from - entitled nerd rage because Apple is making highly desirable devices that aren't marketed/targeted at them and having huge success with it.
 
raz-0 said:
Guess what. Lots of people's jobs don't involve fuck tons of computing.

The guy who wrote the article is an idiot and when he said "enterprise" what he really meant was what he liked.

Lots of suits go to meetings. They like their ipads for notes. The things are fully provisionable via active sync for security settings, they do mail and calendaring pretty well, and they are good displays for documents and imaging. A bigger one does so even better.

My workplace has about 32,000 employees. Do they replace laptops? Hell no. Do we have significant numbers of employees who make use of them effectively and are productive for work? Definitely. The lawyers love them, as a device we can enforce HIPPA policy on, they work and make the short list of permissible devices, the suits love them for meetings. Increasingly we are moving to SaaS type deployments where everything is web based if possible. That means more work can be done on them as time goes on.

For most of that stuff, android in general is a GIANT pita fro a variety of reasons, but mostly it boils down to google not prioritizing a lot of the enterprise management features, then vendors get their grubby mits on it, and the carries rub the resulting operating system parasite hybrid on their pox ridden asses and what you wind up with is an android device with an unknown level of security, that may or may not behave like any other android device.

You need to code, deal with large data sets, etc. Then no you want a real machine, not a tablet or hybrid. Oddly, the surface pro made less inroads here than I thought it would.
Click to expand...


Well, it wasn't until last year that the iPad/iPhone made better inroads in the enterprise market. Before that, they really were a huge pile of junk. Not so much for using, but for managing. The device had to come to the IT dept to be configured. Now, no need. Things can be pushed remotely to them.

I'll probably never see an iPad used on our networks, but that's due to device design. We can't have a camera, wifi, or microphone in the thing. We have Dell tablets that we opened up and ripped all those things out.
 
Reimu said:
I went to try out the iPad pro again today just to make sure if I wasn't seeing things over how good the response is on the pencil, and I have to say that the Pencil outperforms the N-Trig. Having said that, you won't get the full-blown photoshop or illustrator on the iPad to take advantage of the Pencil, which leaves a rather bitter taste in my mouth.
Click to expand...

I'm hearing this as well. Some think the Pencil is much better than the Surface Pro 4/Book pen, some about the same. Pen tech has always been tricky so it is impressive that Apple got it right on its first attempt.

Reimu said:
heatlesssun's comment about a premium product is where I think that there's a need to wait it out more on the Surface Book. I think that Microsoft is onto something here though. Surface pro on the other hand has matured and come of age wonderfully.
Click to expand...

New products especially new ones almost always face some teething pains. I've actually been pretty happy with how well my Surface Book has worked as a new product. Still one that's annoying is that it will blue screen under certain circumstances if the tablet section is removed from the keyboard in sleep or hibernation.

Very slick device overall. It will be interesting to see where Microsoft is headed with this.
 
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