I almost returned it, and wrote about Why iPad Pro Isn’t Worth the Money. It was hard to shake the feeling that it’s just a huge, expensive iPad for designers with money to blow. “The highly-specialized drawing tool digital artists have been waiting for.” Great for a small and highly-specialized group, not so much for everyone else.“Now you can draw on your documents/photos/etc.” Nice, I guess, but in most cases probably not worth buying an iPad for.“Desktop-class drawing tool / UI design tool, etc.” Similar to the ones you’d find f0r your MacBook Pro, but with a limited feature set, less control, and much more annoying to use.Most apps optimized for iPad Pro seem to be focused on one of three things: Still, I was quickly frustrated that despite how polished the hardware is, the software to take advantage of it is surprisingly underdeveloped, or doesn’t have a clear purpose. The first two were under the influence of heavy pain meds for a wisdom teeth extraction-don’t judge me The precision and control for drawing and sketching - especially when paired with an app as elegant as Paper (by FiftyThree) - is remarkable. It was blazing fast, and the screen was beautiful, but it wasn’t until I picked up an Apple Pencil that I was truly impressed. It would be a 2-week experiment, and if it proved useful enough, I’d keep it. So I took the plunge and bought a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. With the Pencil stylus, I could keep all my sketches in one place (using an app like FiftyThree’s Paper), iterate on ideas (just duplicate that page), share (email or AirDrop), and import into project documentation or storytelling (they’d already be JPGs or PNGs). I couldn’t easily iterate either every time I wanted to try a variation, I had to redraw, photocopy, or start over.Īt that point I realized I could really use an iPad Pro. It worked in the moment, but keeping track of it all quickly became impractical.Įventually I had an unwieldy mess of loose paper and photos, and it was increasingly difficult to bring someone else into the process. As I explored design solutions in low-fidelity and brainstormed with other designers, I found myself leaving behind a trail of whiteboard drawings, marker sketches, post-it notes. In my work as a product designer, I always felt like I needed one, but aside from some basic illustration tools, I couldn’t come up with a solid reason.Ī FEW MONTHS AGO, after completing the research, strategy, and conceptualization work for a new product, I was ready to start working on the UI. Photographers and writers have found niche uses, but for designers, tablets are generally nice to have and a bit hard to justify. Hence the endless debates about whether they’re content creation tools or content consumption tools, and the handwringing about whether Apple should be making them at all. They don’t quite have the power and precision of your trusty MacBook Pro, and they’re not quite as conveniently omnipresent and versatile as your iPhone (for the purposes of this article, I’m talking about Apple products-mostly because that’s what I have experience with, and because they’re the tablet of choice for most designers). Tablets are the tweeners of design tools. They’re good at more than one thing, but on teams built for well-defined, complementary roles, it’s hard for them to find contracts. IN NBA BASKETBALL, “tweeners” are the guys who aren’t quite big and powerful enough to play a forward or center role (the “big men”, like Shaquille O’Neal), and not quite small and nimble enough to be a guard (the ball handlers and range shooters, like Steph Curry).
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