back to article Chuck this on expenses: £2k iPad paints Apple as the premium fondleslab specialist – as planned

None of the new products Apple announced yesterday – laptops, desktops and tablets – are cheap, and all are more expensive than the models they supersede. But the introduction of a £2,000 iPad is by far the most eye-catching. That's the size of the hole an iPad Pro makes in your wallet if you choose the maximum specs – a 12.9- …

  1. oiseau
    WTF?

    2000 quid?

    Hello:

    All very nice, but ...

    These 2000 quid will get me exactly what?

    I mean, in addition to a sign on my forehead with the legend "IDIOT" in bright red lettering?

    1. 3man

      Re: 2000 quid?

      Nobody in our management team got the sign with their fondleslabs.

      I can feel a BoFH moment coming on...

      1. oiseau
        Facepalm

        Re: 2000 quid?

        Hello:

        Nobody in our management team got the sign with their fondleslabs.

        Read the manual.

        It's actually 'virtual': it lights up at the exact moment the owner opens the thing and starts it up.

        It's a new thing, bleeding edge, state of the art and all that, y'see?

    2. Spazturtle Silver badge

      Re: 2000 quid?

      It's a similar price to it's nearest competitor the Wacom MobileStudio Pro 13.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: 2000 quid?

        "It's a similar price to it's nearest competitor the Wacom MobileStudio Pro 13."

        Sure. But firstly, I'd much rather have the studio, because it runs a normal OS and has some expandability with normal ports and second, that is also overkill/nearly useless for most use cases. You can beat both of these machines in most areas. Compute power? You can get a lot more for the price with a desktop, a laptop, even some tablets with full OS's on them. Battery life? Use a machine with a similar processor but a less power-hungry screen or one you can control better. Functionality? Use something else; check. When comparing this to a laptop, virtually any modern laptop, it loses. People don't typically want to approach their computing devices and draw on the screen. Some designers and artists do, but it's been tried a lot for the rest of the computer user population, and we said no. So what feature does this iPad have that warrants it costing twice as much as a comparable laptop, with touchscreen, with the capability to run a full OS and maybe be somewhat repairable. You could even get a not bad apple laptop for half the price of this one. They're putting the price far too high.

      2. BGatez

        Re: 2000 quid?

        Which is famously overpriced so...

    3. Philippe

      Re: 2000 quid?

      Nobody is forcing you to buy a fully specced one.

      £799 will get you an 11 tablet more powerful than many laptops sold at the same price.

      People spend close to £2000 for a MS Surface Pro, they run Office on it, nobody called them "idiots"..

      I have 200 Engineers in my firm just here in the UK using iPad Pros with dedicated applications and none of them could be called "idiot".

      There are different products for different needs, and different prices.

      1. elaar

        Re: 2000 quid?

        "People spend close to £2000 for a MS Surface Pro, they run Office on it, nobody called them "idiots".."

        Erm, yeah they do..

        1. steviebuk Silver badge

          Re: 2000 quid?

          I'm one of those Surface idiots. I regretted it. Now sold it but only got 800 for it considering it was hardly used a top spec v4 one.

          I was def an idiot.

      2. Captain Hogwash

        Re: Nobody is forcing you to buy a fully specced one.

        I rather hope nobody is forcing me to buy any one.

        1. Gordon 10
          Unhappy

          Re: Nobody is forcing you to buy a fully specced one.

          £2000 quid gets El Reg another clickbait headline and allows them to give Apple a poke, hence the rather spurious addition of Apple Care - you can bet corporates wont be buying Apple care, they'll either hold excess inventory or pay a thirdparty repair service or negotiate a corporate discount with Apple. For consumers and SME's I'd love to know the uptake - my WAG - 12.7%

          Nothing else to see - move along....

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: Nobody is forcing you to buy a fully specced one.

            >£2000 quid gets El Reg another clickbait headline

            Agree, from having used iPads in business since the iPad2, I've not really found it necessary to have huge amounts of memory and cellular modem. However, I note that if you want the full configuration: pencil, keyboard folio cover and the HDMI adaptor then you'll be adding a little under £400 to that headline price...

            However, given the target market, the offered 2 year Applecare T&C's do seem rather restrictive compared to say Dell's 4-year next business day all risks cover.

        2. Gordon 10
          Joke

          Re: Nobody is forcing you to buy a fully specced one.

          Shut up nerd and get back in the sales queue - BzzzzT!

      3. oiseau
        Stop

        Re: 2000 quid?

        I have 200 Engineers in my firm just here in the UK using iPad Pros with dedicated applications and none of them could be called "idiot".

        No, surely not.

        They just got the gear and use it to work.

        Makes me wonder if they were actually asked about the kit's suitability.

        In any case, whoever at IT approved and in management/accounting actually signed off on deploying those 200 pricey iPad Pros may well be called upon by the powers that be to actually justify (both technically and economically) the move.

        And then, who knows ...

        Maybe all the board members got one too.

        But just wait till the shareholders get a whiff of it.

        1. Philippe

          Re: 2000 quid?

          I did say "just in the UK", this is a global roll out involving 3000 of the things, and yes other devices were tested over 3 months by test users in several countries.

          They all said "iPad" at the end of the test.

          1. steviebuk Silver badge

            Re: 2000 quid?

            So they could watch movies on it.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: 2000 quid?

              "I did say "just in the UK", this is a global roll out involving 3000 of the things, and yes other devices were tested over 3 months by test users in several countries."

              3,000 "engineers" all said yes... you don't see the bigger problem? I guess you wouldn't, make that 3,001 to the obvious problem.

            2. JDX Gold badge

              Re: 2000 quid? So they could watch movies on it.

              Um, no. You buy the basic iPad for £300 for that, or the 10" Pro for £600.

              The £2000 clearly has a LOT more to it which most of us don't need. But for those who do, I guess it's worth the price.

              The MS Surface is a far better use for your £2k though in my view, if you really want/need a powerful, ultraportable device. That's a small but significant market for people who spend their time out in the field or travelling.

          2. Eeep !

            Re: 2000 quid?

            What were the other devices?

            1. werdsmith Silver badge

              Re: 2000 quid?

              I knew there would be a lot of butt-hurt about this price, which El-Reg have deceitfully inflated by including the Apple care.

              But really, if you don't think it's good value for money then don't buy it. Leave it to the corporates to buy for their staff. It's the cost of a business class return flight to New York and people wouldn't be happy with cattle class seats can buy this and the cost wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow on their profligate sundry budget.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 2000 quid?

          I have 200 Engineers in my firm just here in the UK using iPad Pros with dedicated applications and none of them could be called "idiot".

          And what do those 200 engineers actually do on the iPad pros?

      4. hmv

        Re: 2000 quid?

        "People spend close to £2000 for a MS Surface Pro, they run Office on it, nobody called them "idiots""

        I beg to differ.

      5. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: 2000 quid?

        £799 will get you an 11 tablet more powerful than many laptops sold at the same price.

        Nope, it isn't. Not while it runs iOS on an ARM SoC anyhow.

        People spend close to £2000 for a MS Surface Pro, they run Office on it, nobody called them "idiots"..

        And they keep them for five to ten years (well, they're supposed to keep them that long). An iPad could give you like three years and five on life support (aka waiting for the upgrade that'll "un-crap" it a la iPhone 4S / iPad 2 and what they became with iOS 8)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 2000 quid?

          You seem stunningly ignorant about iPads, ever used one ?

          Single threaded performance of the latest Apple chips is indeed equal to or better than a mid-range Intel laptop chip with a typically lower power draw.

          As for old iPads, my original Retina iPad is still going fine, at 6.5 years. Battery is fine, display is still good, and it works. Can't use latest iOS, but the version it has is quite OK.

          1. Waseem Alkurdi

            Re: 2000 quid?

            You seem stunningly ignorant about iPads, ever used one ?

            I had a pair of iPad 2s at home. They shipped with iOS 5.1.1.

            They ran iOS 6 like a beast, they ran iOS 7 like a beast. iOS 8 comes and the devices slow down to grinding halt. iOS 9 doesn't change much. Still unusable.

            Really much of a change between 7 and 8? Nope.

            And now with many, well, most apps (and games) not supporting iOS versions before 9 (and the oncoming 64-bit-only apps not going to ever run) ... the devices are scrapyard material.

            I'm not ignorant, I'm being realistic.

            On the other side, Android devices don't suffer from that problem. I am in care of several Note IIs (2012 era devices) and they work surprisingly well with Android 7.1.1 via custom ROM.

            Tell me, how's the iPhone 4 doing in its graveyard?

            (That's not to say that Samsung devices are better than Apple. Each has its own advantages.)

            Single threaded performance of the latest Apple chips is indeed equal to or better than a mid-range Intel laptop chip with a typically lower power draw.

            Apples to oranges.

            As for old iPads, my original Retina iPad is still going fine, at 6.5 years. Battery is fine, display is still good, and it works. Can't use latest iOS, but the version it has is quite OK.

            'Nuff said.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 2000 quid?

          The iPhone Xs can kick the crap out of many laptops when it comes to cpu performance and it has just two performance cores. The new iPad Pro has 4 of the buggers and won't need to throttle as much as the phone.

      6. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 2000 quid?

        >I have 200 Engineers in my firm just here in the UK using iPad Pros with dedicated applications

        Fortnite? Still a bit OTT for that, don't you think?

      7. Roj Blake Silver badge

        Re: 200 Engineers... ...using iPad Pros... ...none of them could be called "idiot"

        That because it's not the engineers who bought them.

    4. macjules

      Re: 2000 quid?

      Would get me a very nice ASUS laptop, slimmer and faster than a MacBook Air, plus a 4k screen from the loose change. I might even stretch to buying a copy of RHEL Workstation for it.

  2. Spanners Silver badge
    Meh

    What Part of that?

    What part of that is the Gullibility Tax?

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: What Part of that?

      The 2,000 $CURRENCY. Make that five.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What Part of that?

      Tree-Fiddy.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Keeping it real

    After adding extra coolness with the Beats headphones purchase, maybe the iPad Pro should be co-branded with Hublot and the price increased to £3,000?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Keeping it real

      I would definately prefer the Hublot...

      They are garish, big and bold. They've got some sex appeal. They are definately not common place Apple consumables.

      2000£ for a tablet, I said jump foolhardy, jump; and all the little Applites jumped.

  4. 0laf
    FAIL

    Two grand and it can't open two word document simultaneously?

    For a 'pro' tool that's pretty much fuck all use isn't it?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Does split screen mode not address this - it might not, that would after all be two word instances...

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        As it currently stands, two instances of the same app are not supported.

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      > FAIL Two grand and it can't open two word document simultaneously? For a 'pro' tool that's pretty much fuck all use isn't it?

      Not if the professional in question is using Photoshop with a stylus. In other news, Land Rovers make shit minibuses, Nissan Micras aren't very fast and Lamborghinis have rubbish fuel economy.

  5. SVV

    Crippled I/O? Won't support external hard drives?

    Just what consumers need on a 2000 quid portable device with 1TB of storage for convenience of adding lots of media files to consume! What are they thinking? (apart from insisting iTunes is used instead for reasons of control and money) . The idea of such an easily portable and convenient mass storage media player and sundry app device was appealing, right up to the point where I realised what a pain all the restrictions on these things are again.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Crippled I/O? Won't support external hard drives?

      If it was being pitched as a Mac replacement this would be an issue, but they're not - they're designed to complement a Mac workflow.

    2. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Crippled I/O? Won't support external hard drives?

      Just what consumers need on a 2000 quid portable device with 1TB of storage for convenience of adding lots of media files to consume!

      The only use case I can think of is a photographer who uses loads RAW files into Adobe Lightroom on the iPad where they then load into the "Creative Cloud".

      Annoyingly Lightroom doesn't sync with "Photos" so you have to do a cull manually.

  6. Waseem Alkurdi

    Apple makes super-expensive professional tablets. It probably won't mind one bit.

    Nope.

    A professional tablet is repairable, extensible, and, er, not Apple.

    And please convince me how could "apps" originally designed for mobile substitute for real productivity packages on a desktop?

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      "A professional tablet is repairable, extensible, and, er, not Apple."

      Companies don't repair professional equipment, they ring up their supplier and they get a replacement to you next day and pick up the broken one free of charge.

      "And please convince me how could "apps" originally designed for mobile substitute for real productivity packages on a desktop?"

      Clearly you haven't been paying attention because the iPad Pro can run full productivity packages like Photoshop and AutoCAD which are the same as the desktop versions.

      1. BeerTokens

        It's not just Photoshop.

        We have just done a server migration for a design company using 100+ macs. They were using two mac mini's with 16gb Ram i5 500gb ssd connect via thunderbolt to storage arrays to serve the files used by photoshop currently 15Tb. now because apple hates professionals, see current mac pro (bin) and lack of apple server love. We started trying to convince them that the best way to get a stable system was to move to windows. However the amount of kick back because some plugins aren't available and workflows would be too different for the designers that we had to use another approach.

        Unless these fully support both AFP and SMB3 all current plugins for photoshop and autoCAD and can manage multitasking, there is no way we could put one out in the field for this company.

        However if it's for the person I saw yesterday who justifies his time with pointless meetings and wants to feel important we could definitely sell him one...

      2. sprograms

        I'm not in the target audience for a loaded 2018 iPad Pro, but they aren't silly for the money. The typical target user is doing design, architecture, or other graphics work. The OS suits them, as they know it already from their iPhone. The thing is actually fast. It has been targeted by first-tier app developers.

        I have a friend that seems to code in C, Python, and a few other PLs. He uses a "good value" laptop and an Android phone. But I'll point out that he has a mega-expensive gaming machine, and burns electricity like mad, paying through the nose...but "it's entertainment, relaxing."

        I find the compulsion to overlook the the aesthetics and ease-of-use of Apple products overdone. Some people feel they get value from having one set of preferences satisfied. Others pursue a different set. Also overlooked is the value of OS software updated for free for many cycles. Choice. It's good.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Companies don't repair professional equipment, they ring up their supplier and they get a replacement to you next day and pick up the broken one free of charge."

        That's right. But as this is Apple, you'll be shlepping the damn thing to the nearest iStore yourself, which will get it repaired and give it back to you when they see fit.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "A professional tablet is repairable, extensible"

      So I guess there is no such thing, as I'm not aware of any that qualify given your metrics. The Surface Pro certainly doesn't qualify given that iFixit's repairability rating for it is 1, the worst score you can get. The previous gen iPad Pro's repairability is 3, which is still crap, but 3 > 1.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: "A professional tablet is repairable, extensible"

        They are hard to find, but I'm typing on one: an HP EliteBook convertible. HP made them for years, Dell did (Latitude series), and Lenovo did (various ThinkPad tablets).

        All are super-duper-repairable.

      2. Updraft102

        Re: "A professional tablet is repairable, extensible"

        The Surface Pro certainly doesn't qualify given that iFixit's repairability rating for it is 1, the worst score you can get

        Close. The Surface Laptop got a score of 0, the first ever (and only) zero. It's not hard to repair... it's impossible. The case can't be opened without destroying it. I wouldn't pay half or a third of what MS is trying to get for it for a disposable item like that.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    £2k - excellent! Sign me up for a couple...

    One for emailing, and one for surfing the web in my local "house of bean". Smooth...!

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: £2k - excellent! Sign me up for a couple...

      a couplea couple dozen

      Fixed!

  8. Arachnoid

    level one Apple Care

    Im surprised apple haven't introduced a newer and much dearer, level one Apple Care for the higher priced items they are now selling to the Sheep.

    Anyhow that now £3K+ iSheep will need to find as the new phone will make it a matching set.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: level one Apple Care

      Presumably Apple Care should have:

      Level One - for plebs gives them repairs if they wait a week

      Level Two - 24 hr onsite replacement

      Operating Thetan - helicopter-mobile hookers will come and pleasure them while they wait for onsite repairs in under an hour.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: level one Apple Care

        They'd have to partner with someone for 24 hr on-site service, or limit it only to areas where an Apple store is somewhere in the vicinity. There are plenty of places further than a day's drive from the nearest Apple store, since they don't tend to put them in rural areas of the US (to say nothing of the ROW)

        I suppose they could offer next day shipping for advanced replacement, but that's gonna be pricey. Be cheaper for a corporate customer to just keep a few spares on hand and allow repairs to proceed the slow way if they don't have an Apple Store in town.

  9. LenG

    Multiple documents

    "Many professionals need multiple documents to be open at once – two Word documents, for example... and this is still a problem. "

    Of course it is not a problem. Just buy two tablets.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Multiple documents

      In fact what people do is convert one document to a pdf.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I know....

    ....some councillors will demand those and let the local tax payer fund then.

    Dicks.

  11. BGatez

    yeah yeah

    "OK then, a MILLION BILLION dollars!"

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2000 effin quid !

    That's a whole lot of coke to miss out on.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Only if you buy the Ipad...

    2. Spiz

      Yeah, but

      It makes a damn fine platform for cutting it up on when you re-supply.

      I’ve been told...

  13. dave 93
    Happy

    Don't worry about Apple

    The new iPad Pro is pretty much sold-out already. You will just have to wait....

  14. Arachnoid
    WTF?

    I can just hear the distant bleating of the iSheep now

    "iPaaaads Good, Tablets BAAAAD!"

  15. Tezfair

    Perceived quality?

    Seems to me that putting a high ticket price on it will make buyers think that this is the dogs bollocks when in reality it's probably little more than a standard ipad with a few tweaks here and there.

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: Perceived quality?

      Seems to me that putting a high ticket price on it will make buyers think that this is the dogs bollocks when in reality it's probably little more than a load of bollocks

      FTFY

      1. tfewster
        Facepalm

        Re: Perceived quality?

        Vimes Theory: Quality is expensive

        Reverse-Vimes Theory: Expensive means quality

  16. Roland6 Silver badge

    USB-C v Lightning

    "The most significant technical aspect of the new iPads launched this week is the USB-C port so it gains more of the versatility of a the laptop."

    Whilst there is no question about the data connectivity and power handling capabilities of USB-C, I wonder whether it is a mistake to do away with the more robust and easier to connect lightning connector.

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