Nilay Patel Is Wrong, Again
During the month of October, Apple seeded their iPad Pro with tech journalists in order to get advance reviews published the week of the launch. Only this group completely missed the mark of what an iPad is and who it’s for. I listened to Nilay Patel of The Verge go on and on in his podcast about how the iPad isn’t a real computer. He may as well have talked for thirty minutes about how the Earth must be flat. Because the fact that the iPad isn’t a real computer is news to people like me who’ve been using it as their primary computing device for years. In fact, I’m typing this blog post out on my 10.5” iPad Pro with Smart Keyboard cover in a restaurant.
And like the flat-earthers who believed that the sun revolved around them, Nilay believes that the “professional” market revolves around The Verge and the kind of work that they do to put out media content. But there’s a big problem with that logic. Professionals who do media content are only one segment of the pro market. And I’m not sure how big that segment really is. Further, I’m not certain his assertion that you can’t do media work on an iPad Pro, is even valid.
I’d say that you could split the professional market into at least two major groups. Media and business professionals. Everyone in tech kind of understands what the media professionals do because those are their people. But they don’t really understand how the rest of the business world operates. Those of us in the Fortune 500 who make industrial or medical products as opposed to media use computers quite differently. We basically only need communications, Microsoft Office, and some sort of window into the company ERP system. That’s it. Many companies don’t even allow the use of USB sticks or SD cards. They are strictly forbidden. I’d say that the use of local hard drives isn’t too far away from getting banned as well.
So what do I think about the new iPad Pro? It’s a home run. More screen in a lighter body coupled with a greatly improved Apple Pencil is music to my ears. In fact, the Apple Pencil alone would have been enough to get me to upgrade. I use my Apple Pencil every day at work and my biggest gripe is the hassle of charging it. The iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil is the true notebook computer that you can carry with you as you roam the halls of your office.
The iPad Pro is aimed at my crowd of business professionals, not Nilay’s crowd of media professionals. And as I’ve been saying for at least two years, the tech media is the last group to understand what business professionals need from a “computer”.
I’d say that you could split the professional market into at least two major groups. Media and business professionals. Everyone in tech kind of understands what the media professionals do because those are their people. But they don’t really understand how the rest of the business world operates. Those of us in the Fortune 500 who make industrial or medical products as opposed to media use computers quite differently. We basically only need communications, Microsoft Office, and some sort of window into the company ERP system. That’s it. Many companies don’t even allow the use of USB sticks or SD cards. They are strictly forbidden. I’d say that the use of local hard drives isn’t too far away from getting banned as well.
So what do I think about the new iPad Pro? It’s a home run. More screen in a lighter body coupled with a greatly improved Apple Pencil is music to my ears. In fact, the Apple Pencil alone would have been enough to get me to upgrade. I use my Apple Pencil every day at work and my biggest gripe is the hassle of charging it. The iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil is the true notebook computer that you can carry with you as you roam the halls of your office.
The iPad Pro is aimed at my crowd of business professionals, not Nilay’s crowd of media professionals. And as I’ve been saying for at least two years, the tech media is the last group to understand what business professionals need from a “computer”.
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