Linus Tech Tips explains why Apple “screwed up” new iPad Pro

Alan Bernal

Apple is trying to reinvent how people optimize their productivity on-the-go with the iPad Pro 2020, but Linus finds it hard to see how much of an upgrade the new tablet really is.

There’s a slim, but present, market for people who want their workspace to be as mobile as them. Though there’s a sacrifice in the hardware of the device, Apple aimed to make up the difference with thoughtful new features on the iPad.

But it didn’t hit the mark for Linus, with the YouTuber coming down on the integrated mouse-support, the tech inside that is the same as the year before, and built-in components that Apple are fixing at a later date.

Apple’s new iPad Pro wants to be more like a computer, but in tablet form.

“[Apple] are trying to help the iPad Pro become more useful as a computer with iPad-OS specific features,” he explained.

In marketing the device, Apple wanted the iPad to become the “new way for you to take notes, make music, or create a presentation” but Linus couldn’t help but be confused at the direction the 2020 tablet was taken.

Previously, the iPad came with features that were not only unique to the tablets, but made the experience on the device entirely its own. That isn’t as prevalent in the latest iPad Pro.

“Instead of leaning further into the iPad Pro’s identity as a unique, hand-held computing device, it seems like Apple has decided it wants to make the iPad Pro into a bad MacBook after all,” Linus said.

The tablet’s bizarre take on a mouse-pointer, the confusing settings for said mouse-pointer, its near-identical hardware to the 2018 iPad Pro, as well as the subpar LiDAR (Light detection and range) compared to its predecessor, drags the 2020 iPad Pro to the point where Linus thinks Apple “screwed this up.”

A lot of the sentiment didn’t revolve around the device itself being bad, just that it seemed to go in a lopsided direction, unlike the version before it.

Some features in the iPad Pro 2020 actually worked better, albeit marginally, than the 2018 version.

The state of the iPad left Linus wondering who were the “unicorns that Apple are searching for, who need more than an iPad and less than a Macbook.”

While Apple introduced a few upgrades in the iPad Pro 2020, it wasn’t enough to separate itself further as the revolutionary mobile workspace it was aiming to be.