I’m going to split from my usual articles this week so I can talk about another one of my passions. I recently decided it was time to retire my original iPad Air. It was actually the first Apple product I purchased myself. Someone gave me a Mac mini in 2009, but that doesn’t count. When I got it in June 2014, iOS 7 had just come out and I remember being totally sold on the new direction iOS was taking. I also liked the shift in form factor that came with the Air. It served me well over the years, went on many trips, watched hours of movies and TV shows. It’ll serve a good purpose as my new HomeKit base station. I have it set up in my living room next to my TV. I also use it to Airplay content to my TV.
So what did I replace it with? Well, much like in 2014, iOS 11 really sold me on the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro. I was also genuinely impressed with performance specs that actually rival some laptop computers. I actually confirmed this by running Geekbench on both my 10.5-inch iPad Pro and my MacBook Air (circa 2014). Generally, the iPad had higher scores across the board. Some scores were comparable, but where the iPad really shined was in multicore performance. My MacBook Air is a dual-core i5, while the iPad Pros use a 6-core A10X. More cores is obviously going to push that score up a lot for the iPad.
The 120Hz screen refresh rate is something you really have to see in person, and it affects every single thing you do on the device. That combined with what is otherwise a very nice display makes for a really nice user experience. For me, one of the other reasons I wanted this iPad was so that I could get the Apple Pencil and start doing some fashion design. I’m actually a terrible artist, but I wanted to give this a try. So far it’s gone very well. I can’t speak to how the Pencil worked on previous iPads without the 120Hz refresh, but I’ve found it to be actually very useable. Other pen inputs I’ve used in the past, even good ones, have had far too much lag. I’ve found that using the Pencil doesn’t get annoying over time, which I like.
There are actually a handful of apps out there specifically designed for fashion design. One that I really liked initially was Prêt à Template. It gives you all sorts of body form templates that you can draw your designs on top of. I liked this because I had no idea how to draw a body form that looked like an actual human. The problem with Prêt à Template is that instead of just being able to purchase the app, it has a weird subscription model that I did not want to do.
I can however recommend two other apps that have worked very well for me with my designs so far. The first I tried is free. Adobe Sketch is a powerful drawing app with great brush assortment and good layering. Obviously just sketching out fashion designs isn’t intensive digital art, but I love the ability to have such a wide variety of colors and textures available to me anywhere I am with my iPad. The ability to undo is also pretty handy.
The second app isn’t free, but it’s the one I’ve started using exclusively now. It’s called Procreate. It costs $6 in the App Store, but for such a powerful app, I think it’s totally worth it. I prefer Procreate because it has a bit better brush assortment, seems to be better tuned for the Apple Pencil than Adobe Sketch and the undo feature is a bit better. I felt there was a bit more of a learning curve on Procreate, but once I got the basics down for what I wanted to do, I definitely get the results I want.
It’s been a few weeks with the iPad Pro so far and I’m starting to think that once iOS 11 comes out, this device might genuinely be able to replace my MacBook Air in many ways. I’m also excited to see how well it can do with video editing and music creation, two other creative hobbies I enjoy.