Longevity of the iPad Pro 2018

Hardware Reviews
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For context, I have an iPad Pro 2018 12.9 (3rd gen) and a Macbook Pro 16" 2020 with custom 6-core Intel i7, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and 4GB AMD Radeon Pro VRAM.

I’m working on a mural project that will be printed on mosaic tiles with a dimension of about 5520mm (18ft) x 3130mm (10ft). I use Affinity Designer as my main illustration app and regularly switch between my MBP and iPad Pro, depending on the task. While my MBP can handle most of the workload, when I hit around 6,000 objects with vector brushes, there is a considerable lag when I paint. The iPad Pro took all the finishing touches from there on. I only used the Mac when I had to export the file to multiple formats and send it to my client.

The client loved it but wanted it to be more painterly and emulates watercolor strokes. I can do it with Affinity Designer, but the lines and shapes are too precise, and I can’t just execute it with the kind of work my client demands. That also means I have to start from scratch. The default is to switch to Procreate. But since my iPad Pro is a 2018 model, Procreate has restrictions on the canvas size and resolution. It can only reach the same size but with only 50DPI and leaving me with just 4 layers to work from. That’s too much limitation, plus the 50DPI isn’t enough to make the artwork look good.

Decided to switch to Affinity Photo to paint instead. Same canvas size and about 128 resolution. My MBP exhibit’s huge lag when I’m painting. Most of the work must be done on the iPad version of Affinity Photo. About a few hundred layers later, there’s a lag when I paint sometime, but tolerable. Took me a cumulative work of 64 hours painting on Affinity Photo versus the first draft on Affinity Designer for just 40 hours. It did crash once when I was on finishing the details, but my progress was saved. Despite the hardware limitations, I’m surprised at how well my iPad Pro performed.

This made me want to upgrade to the latest iPad Pro but also made me think that even though my iPad Pro is 5 years old, I can still use it for work for another year. The hardware limitation I hit was enough information to know what kind of projects I could work on both my iPad Pro and MBP. I’m just disappointed at my MBP’s performance based on the amount I paid 3 years ago ($3600).

The only saving grace of my 16" MBP is that I can run Bootcamp with Win10 and play PC games with better performance than the Mac counterpart. Tomb Raider on Steam PC>Tomb Raider on Steam Mac.

Just shows how powerful the A chips are versus Intel. I would love to switch to any M series chips, but the price tag prevents me. I will need a few dozen projects more to afford a new machine. Having the latest will save me more time for sleep and gaming, but at this point, it’s about being able to afford a new workhorse. The amount I paid for the 2018 12.9 iPad Pro, a folio keyboard, Apple Pencil, and Applecare will be the same for the latest 12.9 iPad Pro.

But for now, the iPad Pro 2018 will live on another year until it stops working or I win the lottery.

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Did this at first and moved around the layout as a guide. But seeing the old illustration hindered the work, and I wasted a week trying to salvage it. So I did the next best thing, dumped it, and started over.

The same thought crossed my mind since they brought the old keyboard design and the first MBP with a 16" screen. I saw my friend with her old MBP with a butterfly keyboard had it replaced twice, so I held on to my 2014 MBP as much as I could.

The exchange rate is also making it expensive. We’re paying $300 more than the US price tag.

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Interesting. I’ve been meaning to make a thread with the opposite point: my 2018 11" iPad Pro has been performing poorly for most things I tried to do with it, while my previous MBP (a 2013) lasted almost 10 years.

I recently wiped the iPad Pro and only reinstalled the bare minimum apps I use, and that has helped somewhat. Still, I was pretty disappointed when I realized that the device only lasted 5 years.

Similarly, we have an iPad Air lying around from about 10 years ago. It is barely usable. I decided to wipe it and convert it to a Pok Pok (an Apple Design Award-winning imaginative game that basically simulates a play room) machine for my toddler, but sometimes the device can’t even open the app, even though it’s the only thing installed. The weird thing is that this wasn’t true a year ago, so I guess recent updates have left the device behind, performance-wise.

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Would love to hear about your experience with the 11". So far, I’ve always had a positive experience with all my iPads as they age, except for the iPad 3 (it was the worst even in its first year). I still have my first-generation iPad, when I miss playing some classic iPad games.

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Is your 12.9" the 1TB model? Those have 6gb of RAM instead of 4gb, could make the difference.

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just the 256GB model. That’s way over my budget.

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We were still using early 2009 iMacs, with 4GB ram, in 2017. And their performance was indistinguishable from much newer machines because all work, except email, had moved into the browser.

How we use a computer goes a long way in determining how long it will last. As more work moves to the web I suspect many of our devices may remain useful for the life of the hardware.

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That’s exactly the issue for me. The iPad Pro — with all of my stuff on it — had gotten noticeably laggier in general operations. E.g., stuttering and waiting times when searching for an app.

It’s much smoother now that it’s limited to only the dozen apps I actually was using.

The iPad Air is more disappointing. Sometimes Pok Pok just fails to render, especially when the battery is low. So you’re presented with just big colourful squares instead of the objects in the game. It’s weird!

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a $300ish device doesn’t last ten years, but it’s too bad that it would have lasted longer if software updates weren’t a thing — or if I could trivially roll back the OS and the apps I was using to when they were more performant.

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That was really noticeable on Windows machines in the last days of XP. A clean install ran great on a 5 year old machine, but by the time we installed all the updates, etc. it was “reasonably useable”.

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My daily computer is the M1 iPad Pro and secondary is the previous generation iPad Mini. But seeing this I was inspired to pickup my iPad Air 2 again. That old iPad has two day-to-day tasks. One, it runs a slideshow of a Photos album. I just pop new photos into the album every so often and enjoy them in the slideshow. Second, I have it connected to speakers and running Dark Noise running a mix I made to mask an ongoing issue I have with tinnitus. For those two things it’s perfect.

But I knew I had a software update to run so I took it off the shelf, cleaned the screen and started the update. Thought I’d use it again this morning for a few things just to see how it’s running at 9 years old. No problem running apps like Safari, Mail, Notes, Reminders and Messages. Obviously, nothing heavy in that list. I also reinstalled iA Writer, Textastic and Overcast. Again, nothing too heavy but I’ve had no problem. Oh, lol, Safari works fine with two to three tabs but that’s the limit. Anything beyond that and tabs are reloading. Again, not too surprising but being on the M1 iPad it rarely happens.

The only noticeable issue is of course these iPads had a minimal amount of memory so, while, 2 apps side-by-side work fine it’s not a surprise that I see far more reloading of apps from memory when switching between apps. The multi-tasking still feels fairly smooth in that I can easily bring up the multitasking view, arrow between apps and most be working again with little to no delay. Also, combining apps into split view using drag and drop in the multitasking view still works perfectly.

I wouldn’t want to go back to a screen this small but I could certainly spend a day working on this iPad again with no problem (assuming lighter, text-based tasks).

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I bought a 256agb 2018 iPad Pro 12.9” with cellular the day it was released and it’s still my daily driver. In the interim I have also owned an endless collection of Macs, including a 27” intel iMac, a 24” M1 iMac, a 13” M1 MBA, a 13” M2 MBA, a 15” M2 MBA, and 14” and 16” M1-series MacBook Pros (some of those i retuned within the return window).

Ultimately nothing sticks other than the iPad Pro — something about its sheer flexibility, ruggedness and cellular is just always the deciding factor when choosing what to use.

My work is nowhere near as computer intensive as the OP’s (I’m an academic), but for me the only limitations have been:

  1. battery life with Magic Keyboard — it doesn’t compare to the latest MacBooks
  2. not having access to the grown up features of Stage Manager with the 2018 model and
  3. well, I miss my applescripts on my Mac but over time I found ways to control them remotely.

Personally I have no interest in the latest iPad Pros as they have only gotten thicker without any real new feature that I care about. I may get my battery looked at under AC+. And I will probably be the first to buy a redesigned model when it launches

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My 1st gen 13" iPad Pro is practically unusable today. I still use it for camera tethering (using a CamRanger) and my kids can watch movies on it still, but it lags on nearly everything and the battery took a huge hit a number of software releases ago (I don’t remember the version) and I never got that back. It makes me wish Apple’s OS’s had more “modularity” to them so you could switch off the stuff that might slow it down—kind of like graphics settings in video games. It’s a shame because the screen is still beautiful and the tablet as a whole is in good shape and could be used for years to come with more basic tasks. Contrast that to my 2015 5k iMac (a year older than the iPad Pro)—it was locked out of OS’s beyond Monterey, but I can still get work done on it and until recently it was my main machine.

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I find it an issue on most iOS device on their end of life. I think it I got lucky with my iPad as its not receive an update this Fall.