Jeffrey Mincey plays Devil’s advocate and points out that the new iPad Pro is as powerful as notebooks running Intel’s new Core i7 CPUs.
Yes, our favorite Mac maker, the company that tells technology gadget manufacturers which way the future points, has become a chip maker, and in just a few short years Apple’s own CPUs, those that power the iPhone and iPad, are nearly as powerful as those that power the new line of MacBook Pros that feature Intel’s Core i7 inside.
More powerful is better, right?
The contrarian question I ask is obvious. “What good is a more powerful Mac?” Yes, I know, so-called professionals want as many cores and as much RAM as is humanly possible, but the rest of us get by just fine on a few cores and nominal RAM because the applications we use most don’t require anything more.
Faster CPUs do not better usability make.
The Bare Feats’ benchmark scores are not usability testing, though. What apps we use and how we use them– with a limited exception to the aforementioned and so-called professional Mac user– tells me that hardware power has outpaced usability power in a big way. A new iPad Pro competes well against a mid-range Mac notebook. In benchmarks. Usability is a different issue, and it’s obvious that more horsepower doesn’t help the productivity of the average Mac user, but might have some impact on the new breed of iPad Pro user who eschews the Mac in favor of mobility.
One thing neither of the new iPad Pro models can compete with is screen real estate in an iMac with 5k Retina display.