USB-C might be a game changer

By now you're probably aware that Apple finally ditched its proprietary Lightning port here in favor of the ubiquitous USB-C standard. Forget the screen, and the A12X Bionic chipset and just about everything else: This might be the single most important change to how people actually use the iPad. My main work computer is a MacBook Pro, and to really get anything out of it, I had to buy a USB-C dongle with a load of extra ports: a few USB-As, an SD card slot, Ethernet and so on. Turns out, this little accessory has come in remarkably handy in testing the iPad Pro, because I've been able to put every single one of those ports to good use.

While messing around in GarageBand, I used that port to connect a Blue Yeti microphone and record audio that sounded noticeably better than when I used the tablet's built-in mic. (The lack of input controls meant it was tricky to get my levels right, but a little determination goes a long way.) When it came time to edit the photos you see in this story, I just popped in my Canon's SD card -- the iPad launched the Photos app and allowed me to directly import my pictures to the device's internal storage. And since iCloud generally does a fine job syncing images between multiple devices, I could start tweaking those photos in Photoshop on my Mac without having to reimport them there too.

I even connected the iPad to my home network through Ethernet, and it worked seamlessly. Will you ever actually need to do that? Probably not, unless you're, I don't know, setting up an iPad as a kiosk of some kind. The point is, you can if you want to, and that's a degree of flexibility I'm just not used to on an iPad.

Not everything I tried actually worked, though. Rather than allowing you to, say, move images and documents around using iOS's built-in Files app, plugging in a USB thumb drive just prompts Photo to try and import whatever is on it. That's the thing about using this connector sometimes, though: You'll never really know what to expect until you plug something into it. Aside from briefly outlining a few use cases for USB-C during its launch event last month, Apple hasn't really explained how else people can expect to use it, making my time with the Pro one long trial-and-error session. I've been pleasantly surprised with how I've been able to put that new connector to use, but I'm starting to get tired of this guessing game.