Apple iPad Pro 2018

I've gotten 7 years out of my 2018 iPad Pro and, for my use case of video, browsing, and Procreate, it feels like new. And I believe a big part of that is that the A12X was wildly overpowered when I bought it. I think someone deciding between an M4 and an M5 today should consider its value 5 years down the road, rather than its value today.

I've been using a Bluetooth mouse and a keyboard with my old 2018 iPad Pro for at least 5 years. It's basically our travel computer when we're on vacation. In older versions of iPadOS (it might even have just been iOS back then) you had to enable the mouse under Accessibility to make it work, but in current OS versions it "just works".. You can even cmd-tab between apps and a lot of the keyboard shortcuts you know and love work in most apps.

I use an ipad pro with the keyboard/trackpad case daily. I find the combo of keyboard, pointer, touch, and pencil interfaces very useful. The touch interface is even useful sometimes when remoted in to a desktop. The biggest thing wrong with ipads (and the reason I’ll probably never upgrade this old 2018 model) is the lack of macos.

I'm going to order one of these to replace my 2018 iPad Pro which is the computer I use the most. I'll spend around $2k and I want to get at least 5 years of use out of it. That will make it cost me a little more than $1 / day which, fortunately, I can afford.

I can understand the reasoning behind - maybe new revision is more usable and make them use it more. I use my 2018 iPad Pro every day, though. Ironically, that's the reason why I'm not replacing it - it works just fine.

I bought an 13" M4 iPad Pro when it was released and returned it a week later because I didn't like the magic keyboard. I went back to my 2018 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio. I've been waiting and hoping for some third party to come along and clone the Smart Keyboard Folio. If they did, I'd repurchase an M4 iPad because other than the keyboard it was great. I was just looking at the apple website to see if the Smart Keyboard Folio is available for the new iPads and it looks like that product line is gone for all iPads. Such a shame because it was a great product. I suspect it didn’t feel premium-enough for Apple management.

I wish somebody would figure out a way to get the Smart Keyboard Folio working with the 13" M4 iPad Pros. I bought one with the Magic Keyboard and returned it. The MK makes it into a laptop and that's not really what I want. The folio is perfect for me. It doesn't add much bulk, it can fold all the way around to be flat, it's easy to remove, and is nice to type on (IMHO). So I'm back to using my well loved 2018 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio. It's my favorite computer to work on. Not sure what I'm going to do when it finally dies. I don't think I'll have many options aside from giving in and getting a Magic Keyboard. To me, it seems to be the least worst option.

Been using this for a while on my 2018 iPad Pro for college. I just SSH into my pc at home and am able to work on all my assignments with neovim. Works well enough to save me from having to buy a laptop since I was able to get this iPad for ~$300 locally on Facebook marketplace. Would recommend to non-power users on a budget (e.g. college students)

Is it telling that my 2018 iPad Pro gets significantly more use than my ThinkPad P1? iPadOS is a joy to use compared to Fedora 40 and Windows 11 Pro.

None of those things happen on my 2018 iPad Pro with 4GB RAM or my iPhone 13 Pro with 6GB. I currently have 366 tabs open in Safari.

I very rarely wish the battery of my iPad Pro 2018 would last longer, as it's already so good, even considering the age factor.

If we are talking about running from remote servers, my 2018 iPad Pro with A12Z (or whatever letter) can do that almost just as well.