Using USB-C on Apple’s new iPad Pro

“The USB-C port on the new iPad Pro is a big deal,” Alex Cranz writes for Gizmodo. “Besides charging the device and showing off Apple’s decision to take baby steps away from Lightning, it also allows the iPad to use the wide variety of USB-C dongles and doodads available.”
“My cheap USB-C hub with Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports worked perfectly when plugged in, but USB-C only hubs aren’t as common or as high quality as Thunderbolt 3 hubs,” Cranz writes. “Using a keyboard with the iPad Pro is wonderful—the Smart Keyboard case is just as expensive as a high-end USB-C keyboard, and not nearly as pleasant to type on. So when you’re sitting at a desk, or even lugging a full-sized keyboard to a coffee shop, that doesn’t feel quite as obnoxious as you’d expect, especially when you plug it into the iPad Pro and it just works.”
The new iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard Folio offer take-anywhere power and versatility.
 
“The monitor is another matter. I plugged the iPad Pro into a 4K Dell monitor, and the image on the iPad immediately appeared on my monitor,” Cranz writes. “It’s not an extra monitor—it’s just a mirror. And that is annoying. While there are plenty of situations when it’s useful to mirror your smaller display on something larger, not including the option to use an extra display area seems like a missed opportunity.”
“Monitors and hubs don’t work well, and that’s disappointing,” Cranz writes. “But when the iPad Pro does do USB-C right, it’s pretty special and makes me wish Apple would finally, FINALLY, bring mouse support to its touch-based operating system.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you want a mouse, get a Mac.
We find that there are many older users longing to make iPad work like a laptop, because that’s what they know.
Take a look at a twelve-year-old who’s only really ever used an iPad for personal computing. It’s an eyeopener. It’s like looking into the future.
The answer isn’t to try to make the iPad into a MacBook. The answer is to provide all the tools possible in iOS for developers to make robust apps that can take advantage of the multi-touch paradigm. — MacDailyNews, May 16, 2017
In the meantime, while we wait for iOS and iOS developers to progress (it took personal computers 40 years to get to this point), we ask again: Who’d be in the market for a 12.9-inch device that’s a macOS-powered MacBook when docked with its keyboard/trackpad base and an iOS-powered iPad when undocked?
As we wrote in January: Here’s an idea: Apple could sell iPad Pros as they do now, and for those wanting a “Mac,” Apple could sell them the macOS-powered display-less keyboard/trackpad/cpu/RAM/SSD/battery base unit. Attach your iPad for the display and off you go, you Mac-headed truck driver! Plus, you get to use the iPad’s battery, too, extending battery life to provide a truly all-day battery for portable Mac users. Detach the display and you get your iOS-powered iPad back, same as always.
Too outside the box? We’d love to be able to take our 12-inch iPad Pro, mate it with this theoretical Mac base unit, and turn it into a portable Mac. Right now, we carry 12-inch iPad Pros and MacBooks in our backpacks. Guess what’s redundant? Right, the displays. We don’t need to carry two screens on the road. The iPad Pro’s screen would do just fine, thanks.”
Buy the Mac base on its own (for those who already have 12.9-inch iPad Pros) or buy it as part of a package (get a new 12.9-inch iPad Pro at a nice discount when you buy it with the Mac base). Imagine if Apple had unveiled this headless MacBook that you use with your iPad at their iPad event last fall. How many more 12-inch iPad Pro sales would such a product have generated? Enough to return iPad to unit sales growth, we bet. And, how many more Macs would have been sold, too?