Considering the purchase of an ipad

[Sigfried]

—[SOLVED]—

 

I have a wacom tablet at home and I'm fairly happy with it.

 

But I would like something to bring digital drawing with me and Wacom's "mobile" offerings are offensive at best.

 

So I was considering spending money in an Apple product for the first time...

used.

 

Any suggestions?

 

I will use it for:

• Procreate  

• that's it.

maybe youtube but idc.

 

I don't want any of the latest overpriced apple rectangles, I only need to run procreate on it, what should I go for to save a buck?

[jaslion]

Get the screensize you like the most and then make sure it supports the apple pencil. Oh and check to get enough storage.

 

Thats about it.

 

A paper feel screen protector might be a nice buy too.

 

Can also get a last gen or 2 surface for about 400$ with nice specs

[Commodus]

5 hours ago, Sigfried said:

I have a wacom tablet at home and I'm fairly happy with it.

 

But I would like something to bring digital drawing with me and Wacom's "mobile" offerings are offensive at best.

 

So I was considering spending money in an Apple product for the first time...

used.

 

Any suggestions?

 

I will use it for:

• Procreate  

• that's it.

maybe youtube but idc.

 

I don't want any of the latest overpriced apple rectangles, I only need to run procreate on it, what should I go for to save a buck?

Snag a refurb of the previous-gen iPad Air with the A14 chip. You're definitely going to want the second-gen Pencil (for both features and convenience), but you don't need an M1 model for Procreate.

[Sigfried]

13 hours ago, jaslion said:

Get the screensize you like the most and then make sure it supports the apple pencil. Oh and check to get enough storage.

Yeah, I know I need that XD

I just don't know which models can offer those funcions.

I have no Idea how to navigate ipad models.

It's like asking me to navigate intel cpus, I have no clue what the namings mean.

[rikitikitavi]

iPad Pro lineup - if you want the fanciest (better contrast, high refresh rate, etc) or the biggest 12.9" screen. So, you either splurging, or you want the best screen, or ultimate delux iPad experience. Also, only the 2022 iPad Pro has pencil hover feature, for example it shows the brush outline while hovering the pencil ~1cm above the screen.

 

iPad Air - great iPad and pencil experience but cheaper. Top tier choice for most users.

iPad Mini is similar to Air, just smaller with less horsepower.

 

iPad (2022) - still a great iPad, however, the pencil experience is compromised. You buy it because you know that you can live with these pencil related compromises:

- have funny experience with Apple's 1st generation pencil charging (needs extra adapter) OR buy Logitech pencil with usb-C charging.

- the screen has a 'noticeable' gap between the picture and the surface/glass (non-laminated screen). If you used Wacom Cintiq, then you know what I'm talking about.

- Procreate might limit canvas size or # layers because of lower RAM. Only a problem on big/complicated projects.

 

iPad (2021, with a button) - good iPad, cheap. Still has enough horsepower for everything. Similar compromises as in iPad 2022, but you can charge the pen just pluging it into the iPad's charging port (so it looks like a popsicle). Good iPad with the price tag being the main feature. Also only one side (bottom) has speakers, so if you care about better stereo in landscape - step up to 2022 or Air. Pro has 4 speakers.

 

... maybe a used iPad Air or Pro at a very low price, like previously mentioned is the best choice.

 

All of the current iPads (and even somewhat old) can handle Procreate (unless you are doing some sweaty projects) and all other tasks.

My experience of daily iPad Pro (2017) user - everything still runs well, battery only last a day (years ago I would charge it 1-2 per week).

 

If you are not a fan of a 'pencil on a glass' feeling try matte screen protectors that can add some texture/resistance to drawing, like iCarez or Elecom.

 

Go to the store and check the screen/pencil differences I mentioned.

 

On 11/16/2022 at 4:22 AM, jaslion said:

Get the screensize you like the most and then make sure it supports the apple pencil. Oh and check to get enough storage.

iPad (2022), iPad Air and iPad Pro 11" - all the same/similar sizes (11, 10.9).

All iPads support Apple pencil. (Edit: depending on the model, since 2015-2019)

[Sigfried]

On 11/17/2022 at 5:43 AM, rikitikitavi said:

Also only one side (bottom) has speakers, so if you care about better stereo in landscape

Bruh, the speakers can straigth up be exploded, the aux port obliterated and the camera reduced to a shattered glass hole.

the cheaper the better, all i care about is the screen, and pen

 

 

(btw thaks for all the info about the various models, that's exactly what I needed)

[yazzmatazz]

I've been using a 3rd gen 12.9" iPad Pro (2018 model with A12X chip) as a secondary device for about four years now. I love every aspect of it, except for the lack of support for stage manager on an external monitor. Stage manager is useless on the 12.9 inch screen but could be useful if you think you'll be multitasking on it. For that reason, I would suggest looking into used or refurbished iPads that have an M1 chip and also support the second gen apple pencil.

 

I expect the 12.9 screen would be better for drawing than the 11 inch. I would also look into a good stand for drawing/writing. I heard the new lab22 ipad stand is great for that.

[rikitikitavi]

Forgot about this guy, he does artist related tech reviews. Has plenty of material on iPad+Procreate

 

On 11/19/2022 at 11:16 PM, yazzmatazz said:

Stage manager is useless on the 12.9 inch screen but could be useful if you think you'll be multitasking on it.

Atm stage manager is a useless gimmick and not a multitasking solution.

[yazzmatazz]

3 hours ago, rikitikitavi said:

Atm stage manager is a useless gimmick and not a multitasking solution.

Ah that's too bad. I heard it's quite useful on macOS ventura. I hope they do make it useful on iPads soon. I really do wish iPads can become true laptop replacements someday. I probably won't upgrade mine until apple stops being so stupidly stubborn and develops a hybrid version of masOS and iPad OS.

[hishnash]

23 minutes ago, yazzmatazz said:

I probably won't upgrade mine until apple stops being so stupidly stubborn and develops a hybrid version of masOS and iPad OS.

As a develop writing apps for the platform I do not want them to make a hybrid OS. Having a clear target hat iOS (and thus iPadOS) is touch first, pointer second is very important from an app design, UX and it would be massively more complex if we were expect to make apps that were point first (like macOS apps) but somehow also touch first (as they need to be for iOS).

What apple needs to do is build more apis and system level features that are shared across the platforms, but what we do not need to a single binary target as the result of that would be windows 7 style UI. 

Some of what makes the iPad (and iPhone) so great and an app developer is that when a user is using your app you have 100% of the system.   If your building apps that are on the ends of the performance envelop this is like building apps for a console as you can test on all the possible hardware (its not that many devices) and can have a very good idea of the perfomance profile of how your app will perform.  If you take the same SOC and put it in a Mac (as we have seen with the MBA) the perfomance you can expect from your app ranges from 5% worse to 20% worse depending on what else is going on in the background even when the user is not doing any explicit background tasks. 

[yazzmatazz]

1 hour ago, hishnash said:

As a develop writing apps for the platform I do not want them to make a hybrid OS. Having a clear target hat iOS (and thus iPadOS) is touch first, pointer second is very important from an app design, UX and it would be massively more complex if we were expect to make apps that were point first (like macOS apps) but somehow also touch first (as they need to be for iOS).

What apple needs to do is build more apis and system level features that are shared across the platforms, but what we do not need to a single binary target as the result of that would be windows 7 style UI. 

Some of what makes the iPad (and iPhone) so great and an app developer is that when a user is using your app you have 100% of the system.   If your building apps that are on the ends of the performance envelop this is like building apps for a console as you can test on all the possible hardware (its not that many devices) and can have a very good idea of the perfomance profile of how your app will perform.  If you take the same SOC and put it in a Mac (as we have seen with the MBA) the perfomance you can expect from your app ranges from 5% worse to 20% worse depending on what else is going on in the background even when the user is not doing any explicit background tasks. 

Makes sense! I probably shouldn't have said a hybrid OS since what I was thinking was more along the lines of android desktop mode. In most use cases I would use iPadOS which is a touch first system, but would be nice to have the option to switch to a version of macOS that is mouse pointer first. People that would take advantage of this secondary mode would probably have a keyboard cover and mouse. Otherwise, macOS mode could be limited to just external monitors. This option could be restricted to just the highest end iPads that have a fair bit of RAM and storage.

 

It just a fantasy but I really hope apple is going to head in that direction. The 2-in-1 laptop market seems to be growing after all.

[hishnash]

7 hours ago, yazzmatazz said:

Makes sense! I probably shouldn't have said a hybrid OS since what I was thinking was more along the lines of android desktop mode. In most use cases I would use iPadOS which is a touch first system, but would be nice to have the option to switch to a version of macOS that is mouse pointer first. People that would take advantage of this secondary mode would probably have a keyboard cover and mouse. Otherwise, macOS mode could be limited to just external monitors. This option could be restricted to just the highest end iPads that have a fair bit of RAM and storage.

In a way you are describing what stage manager will likly become. The main issue however is developers. Stage manager right now could be great if apple provided developeds a way to even detect it was enabled but also do things like allow for continues re-sizing etc but they do not and. But even if they did a very small number of apps would bother to support it (just look at how many apps on iPadOS still do not support split screen). 

Having a way to switch from touch first to pointer first is not something the OS vendor can do through some system layer, developed of apps need to be on-board and do the work and this is not at all easy.

The main issue is a pointer first UI can have much smaller click targets than a touch first UI and on a pointe keyboard UI you can expect advanced features to use keyboard shortcuts etc for quick access but on a pointer first UI you must find some way to expose all these advance features in a quick way (not just 5 levels deep in sub menus).. then you also need to consider accessibility. Some of this is the same but other bits are quite different, for indirect touch things like parkinson that result in unstable hand movements can be compensated for but on a direct input device to compensate for that you need to increase the touch target even even more (very very large buttons). And that is just the start, if you require users to do drag drop for example that gets even more difficult for someone who cant maintain a constant contact with the screen. 

Building a UI that transitions from pointer first to touch first without hiding most of the functionality when in touch first is very very hard, doing this and supporting the different accessibly requirements of these input modes is even harder.  It is easier to build different UIs (completely seperate) and share a common lib between them for app core features than to try to build somthign that can smoothly transition between them. 

[Sigfried]

On 11/21/2022 at 9:55 AM, rikitikitavi said:

Forgot about this guy, he does artist-related tech reviews. Has plenty of material on iPad+Procreate

 

Atm stage manager is a useless gimmick and not a multitasking solution.

Thanks again for everything, You were of undeniable help me take the following decision:

F*ck apple's absurd pricing and f*ck Procreate's exclusivity.

 

After spending the last few days scouring the web I realized finding a decent price for a used Ipad was a lost cause.

 

I don't know if it's a thing of apple customers, simple ignorance, or just mentality in my country (found way more reasonable pricing in other countries, but shipping would be crazy expensive), but the used prices I found were simply preposterous.

 

And after watching some reviews, hearing about the RAM layer limitations, the silly ways to charge the pen, not to mention the cost of that awful stick (yes I have tried it)
Factoring things like the cost of accessories, repair etcetera...

I decided:
Apple still hasn't found a reasonable way into my wallet.

 

So I began looking for mobile iPad alternatives and found out about the Samsung tab s6 lite 2022 revision.

And with Black Friday pricing, I was immediately sold:

 

Laminated screen for 250€? (new) Battery-less (black) pen? Android? Expandable storage? Aux port?

 

hell. yeah.

 

Sure, the screen isn't the fanciest but realistically I will be doing mainly sketches while on the go, I don't need fancy colors.

[hishnash]

6 hours ago, Sigfried said:

hearing about the RAM layer limitations

Ram limitations? You mean not having enough ram or you mean OS restrictions?   

OS restrictions were reduced 3 years ago, (this is opt in per app so some apps have never opted in). For a drawing app you do not need swap in unless your looking at something like photoshop with 100s of layers however so the memory restrictions typically will not be an issue (apps that need it have been updated to use this). 

 

6 hours ago, Sigfried said:

f*ck Procreate's exclusivity

As a developer that is working on their own iPad drawing app I do understand why they are excessive,  just supporting one platform (well) so that you can do complex drawing without lag is hard enough.  It is better to build an app were you who effects instrancly as you draw and put all your efforts to do that on a platform were you have a readable chance of buying and testing all the hardware that users might be using.

Trying to build a responsive drawing app on android is just orders of magnitude harder for a few reasons:

* Hardware variability: There are so many different android tablets out there and many of them are realy sub-par (not just in CPU but also in touch input polling frequency, latency and accuracy) Yes there are android tablets that have good hardware but the number of users with these is so low that it is not an addressable market and on the play store you cant limit your app to only show up for these devices so you will end up with lots of bad reviews from users who download your app on a sub-pair device. (these bad reviews will effect your ability to sell to users on a good devices).

* Background junk: on iOS if your app is running in the foreground you have priority and everything else (including the OS) is pushed back to less than a few % on a single low perf cpu core (and cant use the GPU or NPU at all). While this is annoying for users that might want more of a multi tasking desktop OS this is great for developers that want to optimise thier apps to be responsive.  But on android all bets are off, if the user has just been browsing the web with chrome open and switch to your app at least for a few seconds (if not longer) chrome might still be running full tilt burning up a good 20% of the cpu and 50% of your addressable memory so you either run the risk of going into swap or just not having enough memory or stalling waiting for chrome to be swapped. 

 

In general if you want to build a responsive (complex) drawing app you cant target android, it takes a lot more effort for a much smaller number of users. And a drawing app that is not responsive becomes a creative block, the app must show the stock as you make it it cant lag, jitter or put a spinner on the screen as you draw.  Sure a simple drawing app is not that big an issue but somthing like pro-create or any of the other apps out there that push the envelope it is a big deal.

 

 

If you are looking for android tablets I expect you will find that those that have good touch pooling, low latency and good enough cpus/gpus to power drawing will cost just as much as an iPad.  And following on from that there will be very little high end drawing software written for them. 

 

[rikitikitavi]

12 hours ago, Sigfried said:

Samsung tab s6 lite 2022

Afaik, great budget option, especially if iPad pricing is bad in your area

[Sigfried]

On 11/27/2022 at 2:09 AM, rikitikitavi said:

Afaik, great budget option

Yup, for what I need to do "on the go" is more than enough, especially the laminated screen at the 250 pricepoint. 

Not even my overpriced Cintiq's got that lol.

 

[Sigfried]

On 11/26/2022 at 8:45 PM, hishnash said:

 

I always love hearing from Developers, there's always something to learn, thanks for the insights.

I understand the exclusivity argument.

 

After some time with the tab6 lite I can safely say It's exactly what I was looking for, 250 bucks is perfect for it.

 

Also, I found out Celsys makes a version of their software for mobile too and I must say, It runs surprisingly well.

I tried 8 of the most popular drawing apps and aside for Infinite Painter and Autodesk's Sketchbook they all ran like shit after a certain resolution.

Altough infinite painter lacks tools and Sketchbook lacks a sensible interface.

 

But now I am content, I would definitely go for an Ipad if I didn't have a cintiq at home, but for sketching on the go, Ipad had way too many un-needed features for me.