No, and you know what, neither would Apple, otherwise they wouldn't offer M1 Macs.
The mistake is that everyone thinks Apple wants its product to be everything, just because their marketing tends to encompass and emphasize bold claims of universality.
The reality is that Apple knows pretty well its segmentation.
The Pro in the iPad Pro is the same Pro of the iPhone, it simply doesn't mean what the average hackernews reader thinks it means.
The Pro is a videographer, a photographer, an influencer, a consultant and so on. In general, a subset of the creative professions or someone that needs a slick device to show its presentations on.
I'm lucky enough to review tech products for a living and I've been through the last seven generations of iPads. iPad Pro is a product of its own league. It's perfect for low-distraction pro tasks like writing, for example, with light research on the side, but it's absolutely the best device I've ever used for professional photography workflows.
I have, indeed, suggested to many photographers to absolutely buy the iPad Pro, as it's simply a game changer. The quality of the screen paired with the speed of the the AXX chips is unrivaled on Macs, unless you spend quite some money to buy a Eizo monitor or some other professional device.
So here's a simple "Pro" definition that in my book is way more effective at explaining why the iPad Pro does not need to be what so many users here think it should be.
I agree that the target market might be different. However, even though multimedia workflows work pretty well on the iPad, some of the same restrictions that apply to development apply there.
For example, there's no notion of rendering a video in the background, organizing project files independent of the application, a plugin ecosystem for creative software, and proper IPC between these apps. So even though the market is different, there's still a lot to be done to come close to desktop editing workflows.
I've always desired an iPad Pro for displaying PDFs of piano sheet music while practicing, because it's light enough to not damage the piano stand, and has a high resolution display. But then I realize the iPad Pro is kind of overkill if I don't intend to use it for anything else. Can you recommend a cheaper alternative? Maybe one of those e-paper things, or some other light tablet?
iPad Air? But any non-Pro iPad is ok if you don’t mind much about the bezels and the less spectacular display.
In general, if you have just one intended use for a tablet as a “smart lightweight device with a display”, and that use isn’t tied to an App Store app, then Android tablets are worth checking. The high-quality display might be a bit more of a problem, though, unless you go for a product with a similar price range. If you have other Apple products, the ecosystem advantage is huge.
Ah I didn't mention, for music purposes a big screen is ideal for reading letter/A4-sized sheets of fine-print music for long periods of time. It's a pretty niche use case, I guess.
I've tried that, unfortunately regular iPads are just too small for full-page display of musical notation. Actually right now I just prop up my MacBook Air, but then the keyboard sticks out, and similarly it only displays 1/2 page at a time, and so forth.
gotcha, that makes sense. You might be able to get a cheap chromebook with a big enough screen that folds into a tablet form. One thing to be careful with on these is the brightness of the screens if you want to use it outside.
