Posts tagged with "iPad Pro"

Apple Airs New iPad Pro Commercial, ‘A Great Big Universe’

Earlier today, Apple aired a new commercial for the iPad Pro, with a focus on the Retina display, iOS 9 Split View multitasking, and drawing with Apple Pencil on the new device.

There’s a great big universe in the new iPad Pro. It’s the largest iPad ever and takes your creativity and productivity to an epic scale.

In the ad, featuring Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color as the background song, Apple starts by showcasing the space-themed imagery that’s been on marketing materials for the iPad Pro since its introduction in September. Then, the video zooms out to reveal Sky Guide and Procreate, working simultaneously in multitasking on the iPad Pro. Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro’s stylus accessory to draw and annotate, is also showcased in the commercial with annotations in Procreate – one of the apps that has been updated with early iPad Pro support.

Today, Apple confirmed that the iPad Pro is launching this Wednesday, November 11, for online orders, with retail availability to follow later in the week. You can watch the ad below.

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Apple Confirms iPad Pro Is Launching This Week

In a press release, Apple has confirmed that the iPad Pro, the company’s new 12.9-inch tablet, will be launching this week. Online orders will begin on Wednesday, November 11, and the iPad Pro will be available at retail stores, select carriers, and authorized resellers later this week.

“The early response to iPad Pro from app developers and our customers has been incredible, and we’re excited to get iPad Pro into the hands of customers around the world this week,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPad Pro is the most powerful iPad we’ve ever made, giving users the ability to be even more creative and more productive with the epic 12.9-inch Retina display, powerful 64-bit A9X chip and groundbreaking Apple Pencil and new Smart Keyboard. We can’t wait to see what they do with iPad Pro.”

In the press release, Apple has quoted several developers of iPad apps that will be updated to take advantage of Apple Pencil, a new stylus built specifically for iPad Pro with support for pressure sensitivity, tilt, and high precision.

iPad Pro features a bigger display than the iPad Air 2, a new four speaker audio system, and nearly double the CPU performance and double the graphics performance of previous iPads. You can read more in our original overview from September here.

Disney Artists Test iPad Pro and Apple Pencil→

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac on the iPad Pro’s latest appearance:

Disney’s team of designers used the iPad Pro to sketch a variety of different characters from Disney classics, including Olaf from Frozen and Mickey Mouse.

The testing seemingly went well for Disney. “Let’s order a bunch,” product manager Paul Hildebrandt said at the end of a Periscope stream showcasing the device. In a separate Periscope steam, Disney animators Jeff Ranjo and Jeremy Spears used the iPad Pro to draw caricatures of each other.

Videos shared by Disney employees (via Periscope) show that palm rejection when using the Pencil appears to be as impressive as Pixar artists described it. You can view one of the videos here and take a look at some drawings below.

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Pixar Development Team Tests iPad Pro and Apple Pencil→

Ben Lovejoy, writing at 9to5Mac:

Michael B. Johnson, who heads the Pixar team that develops the tools used to create its animated movies, tweeted that his team had been given the chance to test the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – and described palm-rejection as perfect.

Palm rejection has been one of my primary concerns following the iPad Pro announcement. If it’s good enough for Pixar, it sounds like it should perform fairly well for the rest of us, too.

Update: Don Shank, artist at Pixar, has shared a picture of a drawing on an iPad Pro on Instagram (via Harry McCracken).

Got some play time on an iPad Pro today. So fun! Can’t wait until November.

A photo posted by Don Shank (@donshank) on

Here’s some of his most interesting comments:

pressure sensitivity is great. Each individual app determines how pressure data is used. So its effect can vary from preset to preset. But I got some very light delicate lines all the way to thick bold lines very nicely. And shading with the side of the pencil was pretty awesome.

yes! You can rest your hand anywhere and it totally ignores it and it just reads the pencil. It’s pretty amazing. I did a number of scribbles but I didn’t take pictures of any of them.

I was using Procreate in this photo. Apple Notes and 53’s Paper were also working with Apple Pencil as well. Pixelmator is another favorite but the version they had on the iPad wasn’t yet taking advantage of the pencil.

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Office Apps for iPad Pro to Require Office 365 Subscription→

Writing for Ars Technica, Peter Bright reports that the iPad Pro version of Office for iOS won’t offer the same free tier available for smaller iPads, which was later confirmed by Microsoft to the publication.

The Office apps on the current iPads offer both viewing and editing documents for free. A handful of features require Office 365 subscriptions, available as in-app purchases, but the core editing capabilities are all zero cost.

Install those same apps on the iPad Pro once it arrives in November, however, and all those editing features will go away. Office on the iPad Pro will require an Office 365 subscription for any and all editing.

This is part of Microsoft’s “cut-off” policy that identifies devices above 10.1 inches as computers that are too big to get the Office apps for free. I’m curious to see how they’ll handle this in the same app for multiple iPads.

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Apple Posts September 9 2015 Keynote Video & New iPhone 6s, iPad Pro, Apple Watch, and Apple TV Ads

For those who didn’t follow the live stream or announcements as they unfolded on Twitter and blogs, Apple has now posted the video of its September 9 keynote held earlier today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.

The video can be streamed here, and a higher quality version should be made available in a few hours through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast). To avoid streaming errors, Safari is recommended for the best viewing experience.

In addition, Apple has also posted new commercials and product reveal videos for the iPhone 6s, iPad Pro, Apple TV, and Apple Watch on its YouTube channel. You can find all the videos below.

You can also follow all of the MacStories coverage of today’s Apple’s keynote through our September 9 Keynote hub, or subscribe to the dedicated September 9 Keynote RSS feed.

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