If there is no breaking news to confirm rumors of a postponement, the iPad Pro 2 will be made public throughout the month of March with the important challenge of counteracting the push of convertibles and Windows 10. One of the tricks that Apple is trying to play here is the keyboard Smart Keyboard, with which he seeks to give the team a side answer to create a certain balance with the merely playful.
The apple is profiling your iPad Pro 2, a device that will come out in the middle of a complicated situation. To begin with, it does not help that this generation of the tablet is seen as something continuous. The segment is experiencing difficult times and needs renewal. On the other hand, we know that the great and true news will not arrive until 2018, a year in which Apple will be able to have the OLED displays curves from which new shapes can be built for the device.
What do we know about the Smart Keyboard 2?
Although the patents of the boys of Tim Cook do not always end up materializing in something concrete, in the last hours the medium Patently Apple (as we read in iPadize) has published a concept with a lot of logic for a hypothetical second generation of the Smart Keyboard. The most striking thing, from our point of view, is that there is still no trackpad, but new keys are identified that will speed up certain tasks.
For example, in the images we see a button to Share, from which different methods and applications would be deployed, such as social networks, email, messaging, Evernote, etc. There is also a key with a magnifying glass whose use will be contextual. Surely, if we touch it a certain number of times, it will activate Crab. On the other hand, if we have selected a word or phrase, it will allow a quick search on the web, or, if we are in the menu of iOS, it will probably help you find applications, photos, documents or the like.
On the left you can see a key for Emojis, whose usefulness seems more or less clear, although we would like to see if its implementation has any resemblance later with the touch Bar of the MacBook Pro. Finally, this schematic drawing contemplates new ways to copy, paste and manipulate text in general.
Is it what the iPad Pro 2 needs to compete with convertibles?
Here is the truly complex question. The Apple tablet continues to fall while the windows 10 convertibles they seem more attractive at times. With the last generation of the iPad Pro, the commercial approach of the product was oriented to compare this device to a computer, which was worth the ridicules on the part of Microsoft y Huawei. We have no doubt, even so, that this year the apple will insist on the same, especially if what they continue to pull are hybrids.
In this sense and in front of its competitors, Apple has a treasure: the loyalty of his fans. Despite the drop in the segment, the iPad Pro continue being the best-selling tablet in 2016 in all its quarters, which makes us think that the problem is with the rest, and that moving the block is not going to be an easy task.
Not forcing the iPad Pro's productive spin too much may be a good idea. After all, it is still a lightweight device or with a trackpad I would bring it too close to the properties of a computer, when iOS is something else. The combination of Apple Pencil as a pointer and the Smart Keyboard for writing can be good considering that the pure tablet is still important for a good number of users, who do not ask for more from a large format computer than the fact of being able see things on your mobile in a big way and, in a moment, given to write comfortably.
It will be interesting to see how the demands but it seems, nevertheless, that Apple's plan must be restructured in the medium term, if the requirement is to achieve a total device.