TWiP 430 – iPad Pro for Photographers
TWiP 430 – iPad Pro for Photographers
Apple impacts the photography industry…again!
Last week our friends in Cupertino announced several new products that had photographers across the globe salivating. iPad Pro, iPhone 6S and 6S Plus and an update to Apple TV. In this episode, I'm joined by Juan Pons and Dan Ablan to take a look into what these announcements mean for photographers, and the industry at large.
From Apple's Press Release:
SAN FRANCISCO — September 9, 2015 — Apple® today introduced the all-new iPad Pro™, featuring a stunning 12.9-inch Retina® display with 5.6 million pixels, the most ever in an iOS device, and groundbreaking performance with the new 64-bit A9X chip, rivaling most portable PCs. The new larger iPad Pro is thin and light and provides all-day battery life. There are more than 850,000 apps in the App Store℠ designed specifically for iPad®, and the new iPad Pro will enable a new generation of advanced apps for everything from productivity, design, illustration, engineering and medical, to education, gaming and entertainment.
Apple today also introduced Apple Pencil™ for iPad Pro, a precision input device available for purchase separately, which makes drawing and sketching feel remarkably fluid and natural. The touch subsystem of the Multi-Touch™ display in iPad Pro has been redesigned to work with Apple Pencil to dramatically reduce latency and deliver incredible accuracy for activities like fine art illustration and detailed 3D design. Advanced sensors in Apple Pencil measure both pressure and tilt for a fast and fluid drawing experience, while a built-in Lightning® connector makes for quick and easy pairing and charging. Apple Pencil also works with popular apps like Mail, Notes, Procreate and Office 365 for iPad, offering new levels of creativity and productivity.
Apple’s new Smart Keyboard further extends the utility of iPad Pro, offering a full-sized keyboard in a thin, durable design so you can take it anywhere. The Smart Keyboard, available for purchase separately, attaches to iPad Pro’s innovative Smart Connector port, eliminating the need for a separate battery, on/off switch or Bluetooth pairing. The Smart Keyboard is covered in custom woven fabric and features keys that provide the accuracy, stability and satisfying key feel of standard keyboards, but is also easily foldable and can transform into a Smart Cover®. The Smart Keyboard also works seamlessly with new QuickType® features in iOS 9 to make typing even faster and easier.
“iPad Pro is the most advanced and powerful iPad we have ever made. Its beautiful and large 12.9-inch Retina display has 5.6 million pixels and provides an immersive experience for content and apps. The iPad Pro is far and away the fastest iOS device we have ever made — its A9X chip beats most portable PCs in both CPU and graphics tasks, but is thin and light enough to hold all day,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The innovative Apple Pencil and new Smart Keyboard enable users to customize their iPad Pro experience to the particular apps they use and the work they do, making iPad Pro ideal for everything from professional productivity to advanced 3D design.”
Links Mentioned in This Episode
- Apple announces the iPad Pro & the Apple Pencil
- Astropad
- Apple announces the iPhone 6s & 6s Plus
- Adobe demos three mobile apps coming in October
- Juan's Bosque del Apache Workshop in NM
Picks of the Week
TWiP 430 is brought to you by:
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Connect with Our Hosts & Guests
- Dan Ablan: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Google+
- Juan Pons: Website, Twitter, Google+
- Frederick Van Johnson: Website, Twitter, Google+, Instagram
Credits
- Pre-production by: Bruce Clarke
- Post production by: Suzanne Llewellyn & Vince Bauer
- Bandwidth provided by: Cachefly
- Intro Music by: Scott Cannizzaro
I’ve got a lot of respect for the show and the guests, but I feel compelled to challenge comments made about the Wacom Cintiq lineup by amazing photographer Juan Pons. He characterized the devices as slow to respond and commented that the thickness of the glass creates registration issues between pen and target. With great respect, I am going to disagree. I have used the 24 inch Cintiq since release and have a 12″ one to use with my Macbook. Using a Cintiq requires practice, and can be frustrating at first. Once one has developed technique for this tool and set it up properly, the artificial dislocation disappears and when one uses a Cintiq with the correct drivers, there is no lag. A Cintiq is not for everyone perhaps, but with a bit of attention and practice, as in anything, it becomes an incredibly versatile and opportunity opening tool.
I lost respect for the apple fan boys featured weekly on this show a long time ago. I notice when they were slagging off the Cintiq and saying how much better the new ipad pro will be they never mentioned the Surface Pro, the product apple have ripped off. Must really stick in their throats, “hey when they improve functionality of lightroom on the ipad pro and with the pencil that will be something”. News flash, it is something on a machine with real processing power and more than 128GB storage built in and expandable via micro sd and USB 3, they call it the Surface Pro, it’s made by Microsoft, it’s the product all the grafix designers are ditching their mac airs for.
No I’m not a Microsoft Fan Boy, I have Microsoft, Apple and Android products, use various software and various form factors of computers and cameras. I do get annoyed at ill informed one sided discussions about tech. So many people jump on bandwagons and wave their flag. Great I’m really happy for you that you all love your ipad’s, I quite like them too I have 2 myself but they are what they are and I suspect that the ipad pro will not be any great leap forward.
Apple are simply responding to the slow growing strength of the Surface and the realisation by a lot of professionals that in actual fact it is a well made powerful viable creation tool. It does have some software issues admittedly but these are getting less and less with updates and tend to be quirks rather than problems on the whole. It’s amazing how when other companies react to apple innovation they are publicly mocked by apple in presentations and press releases yet apple have the brass neck to go on stage with an announcement that amounts to nothing more than blatant plagiarism and try to sell it as innovation. They should have been shame faced not bullish!!
A quick update. Cintiq’s are under $1000 dollars new. Baseline model without touch features are $799 with touch are $999 for a 13″. The Cintiq companion 2, a Tablet that runs full Windows (which means full desktop programs, like Photoshop or desktop the version of Lightroom) runs $1399. With the companion you could ditch the iMac and the iPad, keep the desktop for sheer horsepower for real pixel punishing.
For those that want to wait a while before updating their iPhone 6/6+ for the “4k” video possibilities of the 6S/6S+ !I have been shooting Apple’s “4K” video on my present iPhone 6 for quite a while with a photo/video app called Procam! Looks great!
I feel Apple’s choice to use iOS instead of the Mac OS is telling of their long term strategy. Instead of attacking the Surface head on, they were willing to cripple the device at launch with a lack of compelling apps (well, namely nothing from Adobe that is all that great), no external storage support, and no way to (physically) tether to a camera. Instead it seems they are banking on developers to fill in these gaps to further boost iOS. What is most interesting is what this says about the Mac OS – its clearly not something they are focusing their efforts on (which perhaps makes sense, they haven’t made meaningful in roads into the dying PC market). Is the Mac OS in maintenance only mode? (Much like Microsoft treated its mobile efforts)