The term itself makes me cringe, but I fit the description of a “digital nomad” — someone who makes a living working online from various

Apple’s new iPad Pro is amazing, but iPadOS holds it back from its true potential

submited by

Style Pass

2021-05-30 22:00:04

The term itself makes me cringe, but I fit the description of a “digital nomad” — someone who makes a living working online from various locations — to a tee. Well, I did anyway, until COVID-19 killed travel for most of the world. But before COVID-19 though, I was traveling out of my Hong Kong base at least once a month, and I’d work from random coffee shops around the world. And like any tech enthusiast, I’m always looking to upgrade my gear — in this case, I wanted my portable work machine to be smaller, lighter, even more portable.

This explains why I have such a fondness for great foldables. I dream of a future in which the phone in my pocket can fully double as my large screen work machine too. But foldables aren’t quite there yet, so for now, the only logical product that’d be considered more portable than a laptop is a tablet. That’s exactly the marketing angle Apple has used to sell iPads too — that the iPad, especially the Pro model, can replace the computer.

But the iPad Pro is also not quite there as a full time work machine for many people. The problem isn’t hardware — the new 2021 M1-powered iPad Pro has more processing power and a better screen than most laptops in the world right now. The thing holding the iPad Pro back is software.