As a long-time Mac user, I gravitated to the two iPad Pros out of our test devices. Designed with the typical Mac aluminium case and black-framed screen, the two tablets look different than most tablets and are more eye-catching than the rest of our test devices. The two iPad Pros certainly win out on aesthetics and would suit the poser in the coffee house or at client meetings, although there is a price premium for Apple fetishists.

At first glance, both iPads look typically composed and practical, but after just a few minutes use I found my first limitation; no functional USB input. As someone who is not that tech-savvy, I have been storing my data externally on a hard drive for as long as I can remember, so the cloud is somewhat of a foreign word to me as I imagine it is for many other people too. Hence, I found myself at an impasse before I made my first brushstroke. Should I work on a device from which I have to email all my work to then transfer it to an external drive from another computer? I am already accustomed to the often unnecessary obfuscations of Apple products, but despite my exposure to them I can still get a little critical, so on to turning on the device.

The iPad is ready to use in no time and functions like an iPhone, which is something of a safe haven; I admit I am a creature of habit. Should I start by heading to settings or immediately activate the Apple Pencil and start drawing? My primal instinct won, and I tapped my finger on the display to open Notes; my fingerprint on a glass surface, the first of many I suspect.

Are my expectations of Apple too high? With the older iPad Pro 12.9 (2017) certainly as its slight misalignment of the stroke with the Apple Pencil feels striking. This does not apply to the new iPad though. While this drawback of the first iPad is relatively short-lived, it leaves a bitter aftertaste, nonetheless. The Apple Pencil has great pressure sensitivity and feels intuitive; the more I strain the pen, the thicker its stroke becomes. Likewise, when I relax my grip the lines become finer, and I can even create a reasonably acceptable dot work with my first attempt, such is the accuracy of the Apple Pencil. If the Pencil runs out of battery power, then you simply plug it into the charging port and wait a few minutes before starting up again. Somewhat unfamiliar to me is the surface of the iPad though even after repeated attempts at drawing; painting on glass is a feeling unto itself.

Apple has attempted to rectify the mistakes of the iPad Pro 12.9 (2017) with the iPad Pro 11 (2018, Wi-Fi, 64 GB), which it achieves in my opinion, particularly in the behaviour of the new Apple Pencil. Nevertheless, I will probably hardly implement the iPad in professional projects, but there remains a hitherto unreported issue for which Apple can do nothing, but it is essential for any creative, nonetheless. At the time of writing, there are still no full versions of Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, which are crucial to many a creative’s workflow. At least Photoshop should arrive sometime this year though.